This American Life Retracting "Mr. Daisey & The Apple Factory" - <AUTHOR> http://www.thisamericanlife.org/blog/2012/03/retracting-mr-daisey-and-the-apple-factory <comment><USER2> While reading Daisey's response[1], something jumped out at me: as a defense for "embellishing the truth" he says: "What I do is not journalism. The tools of the theater are not the same as the tools of journalism."

Why does that defense (from a disgraced journalist) sound familiar? Oh yeah, David Pogue, when faced with serious charges of conflict of interest: "I am not a reporter. I've been an opinion columnist my entire career...I try to entertain and inform."

And where did I read that? The Atlantic Wire piece[2] on Dave Pogue. And how did I find that piece? Oh yeah, Mike Daisey linked to it from his indictment[3] of David Pogue on his blog.

Summary: Daisey endorses a critique of Pogue that calls the defense of "I'm not a journalist" ridiculous, then Daisey invokes the exact same (pitiful) defense. Yechh...

For the record I _support_ Daisey's crusade and think Pogue is a fool on this issue, but it's really irritating to find out that the highest profile critic of Apple labor conditions is both a liar and a Class-A Hypocrite. Now those who want to dismiss critiques of gadget-makers' labor practices have a _great_ new reason to do just that. The campaign to improve working conditions for gadget makers would be better off if Daisey had stayed out of it completely; his contribution was (imo) a net setback.

[1] <http://mikedaisey.blogspot.com/2012/03/statement-on-tal.html> [2] [http://www.theatlanticwire.com/business/2011/05/david- pogue-...](http://www.theatlanticwire.com/business/2011/05/david-pogue-nicki- dugan-pr-dan-lyons/38250/) [3] [http://mikedaisey.blogspot.com/2012/02/david- pogue-is-only-c...](http://mikedaisey.blogspot.com/2012/02/david-pogue-is- only-competent-to-review.html)

<comment><USER3> Yeah, but...Daisey really _isn't_ a journalist. He's a playwright and an author. He does one-man shows off Broadway. As far as I know, he's never had any training in journalism, nor has he worked as a reporter.

This is a case where I suspect that both parties were mis-interpreting the intent of the other party; This American Life does a _lot_ of "artistic" work (e.g. nearly everything by David Sedaris, or David Rakoff), and perhaps Daisey felt that he fit into that model. Likewise, TAL seems to have felt that Daisey was venturing into journalism, even though he's clearly an amateur at it (they make skeptical statements to this effect in the original piece).

That said, I think there's a bright-line distinction between "art" and "fabrication" -- when you present your work as a documentary without disclosing it as a work of fiction -- that Daisey seems to have crossed.

<comment><USER2> The point is that the argument is totally specious. It's built upon the premise that only journalists are held to any standard of honesty or factual integrity. Can you cheat on your wife and say "well to be fair, I'm not a journalist!"?

The question isn't "is he a journalist or isn't he" it's "did he lie and intentionally mislead" and the answer is "yes;" his chosen profession has no bearing on this fact.

What really chaps my butt is that he could have told this _whole_ narrative without lying. To wit: clearly present it as a work of fiction, _based on_ fact, and thoroughly footnote the whole thing to real sources. Awareness raised, emotional connection with consumers made, _integrity still intact_. This is essentially what he did (the issues he cites are real), he just lied about it and said they were his personal experiences, presumably to sell more tickets and get some insta-gravitas.

<comment><USER3> _"The point is that the argument is totally specious. It's built upon the premise that only journalists are held to any standard of honesty or factual integrity. Can you cheat on your wife and say 'well to be fair, I'm not a journalist!'?"_

Oh, come now. You're assuming something critical: that Daisey went into the project representing his work as factual. If he walked into WBEZ and said _"hey Ira, this segment is a dramatization of what I encountered in China, but I'm not a journalist, and I don't know all the rules"_ , and the staff ignored that statement, or neglected to fact-check completely, then Daisey has a legitimate defense.

Likewise, if I create a radio show that sounds like an NPR news program, but is actually a fictional simuation of an NPR news program, full of falsehoods and distortions of the truth, am I lying? Technically, yes. But I don't think anyone would hold me to an ethical standard that requires absolute truth in a work of art. And perhaps that's what was going on here (that's certainly Daisey's defense.)

As I said before, I _doubt_ that this is true -- it certainly seems as if Daisey crossed an ethical line with all of his appearances on news programs and whatnot. But there's wiggle room here. There's room for someone else to be wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> From a naive viewpoint: Why is all this reporting about factory conditions focus on Apple, i.e. Foxconn? Is there proof that factories operated by Foxconn are worse than the typical Chinese factory? Or is Apple pushing them to Draconian measures, e.g. guards with guns, child workers, etc.?

How's this any different from any other Made in China electronics product?

EDIT: The replies are aligned with what I was thinking: If anything, Foxcon is above average in factory conditions. The major reason for the Apple focus is because of its high visibility.

I despise this easy targetism! I felt the same while watching _Supersize Me_ , which focused on McDonalds, and some of Michael Moore's films. The basic premise may be correct, but selecting targets to ride on their name (McDonalds, Walmart, Apple) is an easy tactic and in fact puts off the critical thinking people who resist the manipulation (well, at least it puts me off). And what's more, in most of these cases the (more naive) audience is led to believe that the situation is _this specific company's fault_ , leading to behavior like "Man, I'm never gonna eat another BigMac, will go to Burger King instead".

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not. A generous interpretation: nobody thinks about the branding on their Samsung phone or their LG television, but people feel a personal connection to Apple's brand (or, alternatively, are hit over the head with it every day). So if you're optimizing your story for relevance to a US audience (a perfectly valid thing to do, if you stay within the bounds of the truth), you naturally focus in on Apple.

<comment><USER5> I think it's demographics-related as well; Apple owners are more likely to be vaguely left-ish, interested in sustainability and fair trade, etc., than a typical Dell owner is. Same reason imo that Starbucks has more image problems with coffee sourcing than Dunkin Donuts does, because Starbucks customers as a demographic care more about things like coffee sourcing, or at least are more sensitive to hearing complaints about it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm a Chicago Public Radio member and just got this in my email. Wow:

 _I'm writing to tell you that tonight, This American Life and Marketplace will reveal that a story that we broadcast on This American Life this past January contained significant fabrications._

 _We're retracting that story because we can't vouch for its truth, and this weekend's episode of our show will detail the errors in the story, which was an excerpt of Mike Daisey's acclaimed one-man show, "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs." In it, Daisey tells how he visited a factory owned by Foxconn that manufactures iPhones and iPads in Shenzhen, China. He's performed the monologue in theaters around the country; it's currently at the Public Theater in New York._

 _When the original 39-minute excerpt was broadcast on This American Life, Marketplace China Correspondent Rob Schmitz wondered about its truth. He located and interviewed Daisey's Chinese interpreter Li Guifen (who goes by the name Cathy Lee professionally with westerners). She disputed much of what Daisey has been telling theater audiences since 2010 and much of what he said on the radio._

 _During fact checking before the broadcast of Daisey's story, I and This American Life producer Brian Reed asked Daisey for this interpreter's contact information, so we could confirm with her that Daisey actually witnessed what he claims. Daisey told us her real name was Anna, not Cathy as he says in his monologue, and he said that the cell phone number he had for her didn't work any more. He said he had no way to reach her._

 _At that point, we should've killed the story. But other things Daisey told us about Apple's operations in China checked out, and we saw no reason to doubt him. We didn't think that he was lying to us. That was a mistake._

 _Schmitz does a 20-minute story on our show this weekend about his findings, and we'll also broadcast an interview I did with Daisey. Marketplace will feature a shorter version of Schmitz's report earlier in the evening. You can read more details on our website, and listen to our show on WBEZ at 7 p.m. tonight, and noon tomorrow._

 _We've been planning a live presentation of Daisey's monologue on stage at the Chicago Theatre on April 7th, with me leading a Q &A afterwards. Maybe you've heard me advertising it on the air. That show will be cancelled and all tickets will be refunded._

 _I've never had to write an email like this. Like all our friends and colleagues in public radio, I and my co-workers at This American Life work hard every day to make sure that what you hear on WBEZ is factually correct. We will continue to do that, and hope you can forgive this._

<comment><AUTHOR> Daisey responds: "It uses a combination of fact, memoir, and dramatic license to tell its story, and I believe it does so with integrity".

Calling to mind Jack Shafer (now at Reuters, formally Slate's media critic) on the problematic nature of narrative journalism:

[http://blogs.reuters.com/jackshafer/2012/03/14/dismantling-t...](http://blogs.reuters.com/jackshafer/2012/03/14/dismantling- the-capote-myth/)

<comment><USER6> Up until very recently, I was a long-form narrative non-fiction feature (:)) writer at a very prominent Israeli magazine; I'd like to share a bit of my experience and respond to the remark about "the problematic nature of narraive jounalism".

I have always considered Truman Capote, Tom Wolf, Terry Southern and their ilk my heroes and sources of inspiration, even though I have been well aware of their use of composite characters and other "embellishments" that are frowned upon in modern magazines and newspapers. While I have never created a composite character myself, a couple of times I did describe a composite scene: say I had spent a week with my subjects and one night one of the characters made a remark at dinner, and the next night someone else said something else during dinner, I chose to recount those two events as taking place the same night during the same meal. I made that decision (which I'd discussed with my editor) becaue either the two events occured on two different nights randomly, and could have just as easily taken place on the same night, and I didn't want to interrupt the flow of the story or the reader's image of the scene, or, they may have been a good reason for these two events to have occured separately, but that reason was complicated, and explaining it would have detracted from the story. Did I do a disservice to the truth? I don't think so. Here's why.

To explain it in terms familiar to the readers of this forum, journalism is a "reverse problem". The journalist's job is not listing facts, but extracting a model of the truth from a sample set of observation data. This is a very difficult problem. In contrast to what many critics think, a good journalists must not only stick to "the facts", because the facts are simply a biased sampling of reality. Sticking to the facts is just like connecting sample points with lines - it's called overfitting and it's as gross a mishandling of the truth as negligent interpolation or extrapolation is. Neither sticking to facts nor "completing" them is "the truth". A good journalist is one who is able to recreate a good model of reality, a fine approximation of it, by relying on observed facts as well as on gut instinct and genuine emotion, and who's able to convey the model as clearly as possible to his audience, introducing neither outright fabrications nor irrelevant and confusing facts.

<comment><USER7> There's a big difference between the (apt) metaphor of a model you describe and this case.

To extend your model, you're conflating direct data collection/experimentation with literature assessment, and essentially saying that's acceptable. It's not.

A journalist interviewing an expert (academic, or other specialist) is analogous to the literature review in a research context: you do not have direct observation, but you are assuming that peer review and other mechanisms have ensured the literature is grounded in direct observation.

A journalist recounting first-hand experiences or recounting those of people he/she has interviewed is really doing direct data collection or experimentation: the reason you try to get multiple sources for a significant claim is precisely why scientists run experiments multiple times.

A journalist claiming second-hand experiences as first-hand is equivalent to claiming to have observational data when in actuality you are relaying the conclusion of another experiment.

Take this neuro-toxin example: it happened to N people, but by claiming to meet them personally, he's implying it happens _more often_ but is covered up, which would mean the real prevalence is higher (when in reality, we have no evidence that they are).

Or take the suicide rates. By claiming concentration via personal experience, the claim is contrary to what we know through more rigorous data collection, which is that the rates firm-wide are lower than for the Chinese population in general.

Also, the problem of your metaphor is you presume that the model f(observed facts, gut instinct, emotion) yields more valid inference than the sum of multiple journalists' f(observed facts). This is crap. If f(gut instinct, emotion) skew systematically -- a more reasonable conclusion than the counterfactual -- then no, your approach is less valid.

Nassim Taleb had a nice bit about how he doesn't read the news; instead he reads textbooks or other long-production-cycle reports. This is because, he says, the frontier of knowledge doesn't change very often. So what you get in the news is a fundamentally biased sample of only the outliers (which sells papers) and never the consensus that is generally 99% of the body of knowledge.

TL;DR: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VyFpOp8Ft0Q>

<comment><USER6> Oh, sure, I wasn't referrimg to this case but to tptacek's remark about narrative journalism and the article on Truman Capote he linked to.

And just to make sure: I'm not claiming that a longer, more careful and more rigorous observation does not yield a more accurate approximation. I'm just responding to a common complaint against journalists that if only they would stick to what they've actually observed and can prove that would necessarily produce better journalism; this is wrong.

And as for Nassim Taleb not reading the news, only textbooks - well, I don't have a problem with the first part, but if the obsessive, anal Mr. Taleb insists on only the most rigorous sources for learning about this world, than he has a very limited soul, indeed.

<comment><AUTHOR> How'd you get started doing long-form print journalism? Why'd you stop? What are you doing now?

<comment><USER6> Hmmm :), it's a long story, but I can tell you the gist of it. My bachelor's degree is in math and computer science, but after 9 years in professional software development, I came to realize that it wasn't fulfilling enough. I went back to university and studied medieval history (which proved to be a tremendous help in my job as a journalist) and started working for a small web magazine. After a year of doing that, I began pestering a lot of people, walking the streets of Tel-Aviv with hard copies of my stories that I gave out to any big-name journalist that I happened to bounce into, and eventually I was lucky to get an interview with a magazine editor who hired me as a fact- checker; things started rolling quickly from there. Alongside that I worked on a big personal software project, my reporting sustaining me just barely, and not taxing the math circuits of my brains too much - I needed those for my software. After four years at the magazine, with my software project nearly finished, I realized it was time to either turn it into a business or let it remain an interesting algorithms research. I chose the former, and since January have been putting the finishing touches. I've applied to YC, I'll be launching my startup later this week with an announcement here on HN, and will be releasing a big, and I think very interesting, open-source product (an important component of the main software) later in April. I hope to go back to writing eventually, if only part-time.

Actually, I've learned a lot of interesting things about the startup culture (specifically that of Silicon Valley) from reading HN comments (seriously, it's fascinating). There's probably a story there, one that hasn't been told yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What's really tragic here is that the truth in Mr. Daisey's story will get dragged down by the weight of his lies.

Chinese factory conditions are often horrible, and there's often a blatant disregard for human life and dignity. Mr. Daisey did a pretty good job of conveying these ideas in a way that well-heeled westerners could understand at a gut level.

However, his pursuit of storytelling over journalism is going to destroy all that. People are going to (rightfully) pitch the fact out along with the fiction, because there's no way to distinguish the two.

It just makes me sad.

<comment><AUTHOR> What "truth" in his story? How do you know? The most dangerous thing you can do with a story like this is try to pick apart the things that seem true; your brain is wired to make the wrong things seem authentic.

<comment><USER8> I know because I've seen it. My wife and I used to live in China, and we did traveling in both the high and the low places.

I can't speak to the particulars in Daisey's story (since I don't know which ones were made up), but the overall picture he painted sounded familiar. It's unquestionable that there are horrible working conditions in Chinese factories.

That's the tragedy here. There's millions of awful wonderful horrible stories you can tell about Chinese factories, and Mike Daisey is obscuring them by making up his own.

<comment><USER9> And how would you compare the work in the factories to being a Chinese farm worker, for example? Why are millions choosing factories over farms?

I think it is more important that there is a trend towards improved work environments and opportunities than bemoaning the fact that any particular work environment isn't as good as some cushy 1st-world white-collar job.

<comment><USER6> Oh, no. Again with the "choosing". Since I read similar arguments quite often here on HN, I want to give a general, rather than particular answer. The short version is, people under duress can't really "choose" anything, even if it may seem to some free-market capitalists as if they do.

Let me paint a fictional picture for you. Say there's this island that's been ravaged by natural disasters and famine, and its entire population is starving. Rich people from a nearby country realize the islanders are in real distress and will be willing to do a lot for anyone who will save them from certain, horrible death, so they decide to use them as workers. So the rich people set up shop on the island, and the locals start working for them. Some of the rich people pay the workers (each of them producing, say $100's of product a day) with one loaf of bread, oh, and they also rape the women. Some pay their workers $2 a day, and they don't rape the women. Naturally the locals love the latter group, while that group of rich people from the mainland describe how they've saved the poor islanders from certain death and have even treated them rather humanely - well, at least compared to some others. They praise the wisdom of the market who let them gain from the islanders' cheap workforce, while letting the islanders survive.

Now, this (fictional) story is not about China. It's about anywhere an impoverished population, or anyone under extreme duress, lives. Speaking about choice under such conditions is preposterous. People will choose a quick death over slow mutilation. People will choose enslavement over annihilation. Believe me, there's no "free will" at work here, and whether or not the rich people from the mainland have done any good to the island, they certainly have nothing to brag about because they're exploiters who've saved a population merely to enslave it.

My story is extreme and I am not making any direct comparisons. I _am_ saying that poor people are not "free" and they most certainly can't "choose", and if they do have a sliver of choice in their miserable lives (akin to the choice an innocent man might have for his last meal before execution), there is certainly nothing for anyone here to be proud about - certainly not about providing them with "alternatives" (like commuting the innocent's sentence to a life of forced labor).

<comment><USER10> As another anecdote for the lack of social mobility that the vast majority of people experience, how many people born into wealth has anyone witnessed transition into the working class? What's the ratio of that population to people born into wealth who stay wealthy? Just as it is extremely difficult to be born poor and end up rich, so it is the other way round. People often forget the ever looming hidden factors in these situations; morale and mind- set. From all of the research I've done on what makes people successful, it's all in the mind. From all the research I've done on what makes people change, it's all in the environment. In other words, mindset is intimately linked with the conditions one finds himself in which in turn dictate actions. A nuance of this is that mind-set also modifies environment which, in turn, affects mind- set again. It's a self-modifying system; the feedback loop that is your consciousness.

This is all hardly surprising - just as individual physical particles have inertia, so do we.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> In Daisey's response: _"I am proud that my work seems to have sparked a growing storm of attention and concern over the often appalling conditions under which many of the high-tech products we love so much are assembled in China."_

He doesn't seem to get why lying and exaggerating and sensationalizing a topic for the sake of its awareness doesn't work out in the long run.

If it's accepted when you do it for your cause, it's accepted when others do it for their cause. Now all you've done is diminished the attention garnered by the nature, impact and realities of a given issue by legitimizing the use of hyperbole and alarmism spun by its champions. To take a page from The Power of Nightmares, in the end the winners aren't the issues that genuinely need more attention, but the issues whose supporters can pitch the scariest stories to the public.

Any issue still needs good supporters and good supporters still need to frame strong, influential narratives, and there's plenty of room in journalism for creating a narrative while staying within the bounds of facts. There's also room in theater and the arts in general to contribute fictional narratives towards an issue but the distinction is very important. To lower that gate of verifiable facts and evidence for journalism does nothing but to erode the important role journalism has in society at large.

If what TAL says is true about Daisey misleading them with the fact-checking rounds, then Daisey certainly crossed a line and knew full well that he was passing off performance as reporting. His peers in this respect are the likes of Fox News where it's considered acceptable to spread information you want others to believe as truth, for the sake of the issues you yourself feel are important. It's a shame because I think objectively most would agree the working conditions in china are an issue that doesn't deserve the same tactics used by say the Obama birth certificate "issue".

Saying he regrets doing so now, while simultaneously saying he's proud of the attention raised on the issue, shows that he is in fact not regretful at all. It's even easier to see it since he never expressed regret until now. His only regret is that he was caught.

</comment><comment><USER12> from [http://www.marketplace.org/topics/life/ieconomy/acclaimed- ap...](http://www.marketplace.org/topics/life/ieconomy/acclaimed-apple-critic- made-details):

 _I pressed Cathy to confirm other key details that Daisey reported. Did the guards have guns when you came here with Mike Daisey? With each question I got the same answer from Lee. "No," or "This is not true."

Daisey claims he met underage workers at Foxconn. He says he talked to a man whose hand was twisted into a claw from making iPads. He describes visiting factory dorm rooms with beds stacked to the ceiling. But Cathy says none of this happened._

I must say that while listening to the story some things seemed a little exaggerated, and the his whole style didn't seem very objective. But I didn't suspect that he made things up from whole cloth.

<comment><USER13> Has no one considered the possibility that this Chinese citizen, who lives and works in China, might not be well served by asserting the truth of Daisey's story?

His apology seems to concede a fair amount of dramatization, and he didn't (in advance of hearing the Ira/Mike conversation) appear to assert the truth of those specific parts of the story. But supposing he did stand by some of these details, we'd have a he said/she said, with strong incentives on each side.

<comment><AUTHOR> Daisey has himself conceded dishonesty (though he calls it "dramatic license").

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Site's having major load problems, but the google text-only caches work reasonably well:

Link: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.thi...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.thisamericanlife.org/radio- archives/episode/460/retraction&hl=en&biw=1123&bih=679&site=webhp&strip=1)

Blog post: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.thisamericanlife.org/blog/2012/03/retracting- mr-daisey-and-the-apple-factory&hl=en&strip=1)

</comment><comment><USER15> Mike's response: <http://mikedaisey.blogspot.in/2012/03/statement-on-tal.html>

<comment><AUTHOR> "It uses a combination of fact, memoir, and dramatic license to tell its story, and I believe it does so with integrity".

There is no integrity in lying to fact checkers to ensure your piece gets on the air.

Shafer:

 _[...] But what joins D'Agata and Capote is this: Both love "real" facts, but when blocked by journalistic convention from the literary effects they desire, they willingly leapt that fence to create whatever rules they needed to enhance their work. Because he admits to his shape-shifting, D'Agata's work is harmless. Capote's book, on the other hand [...]_

[...]

 _That other field, the much smaller one strewn with landmines, rusting rebar and barking dogs is called non-fiction — or in its less effete incarnation, journalism. Oddly, without an accurate record as our anchor, it would be difficult to create fiction, as former New York Times Executive Editor Max Frankel observed in a 1998 essay. "Wrong facts and the truths derived from them are always correctable — with more facts. Fictional facts are forever counterfeit," Frankel writes._

 _I believe in journalism, not journalists, and welcome anybody with a notebook, a recorder or a 94 percent total-recall memory to help clear our field and plant it with their work as long as they have a true story to tell. As for latter-day Capotes and D'Agatas, I can give you Google Maps directions to the land of fiction._

<comment><USER16> the last time I heard a similar line was from Ben Mezrich, the guy who wrote 'accidental billionares' about Facebook.

<comment><AUTHOR> Even the response is dishonest. "I'm sorry I _allowed_ TAL to run an except from my story". The guy lied to fact-checkers to get the story on the air. There's nothing passive about that. Nothing he says is trustworthy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> My biggest problem with Daisey? The fact that the only thing he gains from his fabrications is self-aggrandizement.

So many of the things he claims to have seen aren't in essence untrue: hexane poisoning _did happen_ , he just didn't meet (and tell a true story) about _how_. Underage workers do exist, but I think it is less than clear whether Daisy met any of them. Terrible abuses resulting in lasting, terrible physical damage (or death) clearly are occurring, but _Daisey isn't the one uncovering them_ , he isn't the heroic reporter interviewing the victims to reveal their plight.

When Daisey defends his work, he's really defending _himself_ as the champion of the oppressed. This, I think, is really about his _ego_ , not about the plight of any abused Chinese worker.

</comment><comment><USER18> "I'm not going to say that I didn't take a few shortcuts in my passion to be heard [...] My mistake, the mistake I truly regret, is that I had it on your show as journalism, and it's not journalism. It's theater."

What kind of explanation is that? Public accusations should be supported by things like evidence and facts, "journalism" or not.

</comment><comment><USER19> Welcome to America. Standard behavior with all broadcast media. I'm not blaming NPR.. but the producers of This American Life, in their zeal of catching a top story cut corners. And now, I consider this Daisey fellow as low as Rush Limbaugh; making up crap as hes running to the bank cashing checks.

It's sad.

</comment><comment><USER20> Respect for Ira Glass to so totally and transparently own the problem.

He's not blaming anyone but himself, and by devoting his next show to this topic, is demonstrating more integrity than what we have come to expect. The public deserves no less, but in our era that is still rare.

</comment><comment><USER16> I haven't listened to this episode yet (I am about 40 behind) but it seems that a lot of these claims could have been debunked with a few emails to people on the ground in Shenzen.

It would be interesting if TAL (or others) would gather together a group of experts who are connected in various industries and bounce stories off of them before publishing.

This could even be a startup idea - a marketplace of experts and connected people for the purpose of fact checking. We live in a super-connected society where 'stories from China' should be easy to debunk.

</comment><comment><USER21> In all honesty, what did This American Life think it was reporting? Daisey presents a one man show, surely the folks at NPR can distinguish that from investigative journalism.

Marketplace's journalism is akin to investigating the false claims in Upton Sinclair's _The Jungle_. That no person named "Stanislovas Lukoszas" was ever eaten alive by rats, is hardly a revelation.

It's _This American Life_ which is unclear about where journalism begins and ends and what constitutes journalistic integrity and what constitutes muckraking.

</comment><comment><USER22> I am reminded of a short article from Harpers which suddenly feels relevant all over again.

<http://harpers.org/archive/2012/02/0083770>

</comment><comment><USER23> With the claims of using "dramatic license," it sounds like he's trying to have it both ways, especially since he was on _Real Time with Bill Maher_ recently, and a lot of these things that turned out to be fabricated he mentioned in the interview as though they were fact: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iebnHvxKqlY>

</comment><comment><USER24> Notably as well, This American Life released the podcast and audio stream early to their website so everyone could hear it. I listened to the podcast this morning and was impressed at the way they approached it.

A particularly poignant bit for me was near the end, as Ira Glass is having a conversation with Rob Schmitz. I'm paraphrasing slightly from memory. Ira asks Rob after discussing the fact that it is established fact that many Foxconn workers do double shifts and insane amounts of overtime, "I own many of these products, should I feel bad?"

Rob replies (again paraphrasing), "It isn't my job as a reporter to tell you how to feel. It is my job to gather facts and report them as accurately as possible and let you decide."

I feel like that is one of the most important ethics missing from so much of journalism today. And it isn't just Fox News: almost every journalism source which fits into mainstream reporting these days seems to want to editorialize the news and push us on how we should feel.

</comment><comment><USER25> On this week's episode of This American Life, we will devote the entire hour to detailing the errors in "Mr. Daisey Goes to the Apple Factory."

That's a stand-up move. I hate it when a retraction gets far less attention than the original story.

</comment><comment><USER26> It's nice to know that real journalism is not dead. I love NPR.

<comment><USER27> FYI, This American Life is WBEZ, not NPR (although TAL cooperates with NPR for things like the excellent Planet Money)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I've never understood why no one asked Daisey a simple question. The clothes that he is wearing at the moment, the shirt, pants, undergarments. Where were they most likely manufactured? And does he think plants that manufacture clothing are in any way better than Foxconn? My guess is no, they are not.

</comment><comment><USER29> Daisey isn't a journalist, he does theatre. He shouldn't've gone on a journalism program.

</comment><comment><USER30> the real headline here is that you can turn around a bad beat with good intentions and proper follow-through. good job being forthright and correcting the problem, this american life. perhaps sony could learn from this example.

</comment><comment><USER31> the need to improve working conditions in third world factories is real. Mr.Daisy in his 'passion' to be broadcast and the rare sloppy work by TAL will cast a shadow on future investigative reports of this kind. Apple did release the list of its suppliers after the TAL story. i hope they keep up their drive to be more transparent irrespective of this blotch by TAL.

</comment><comment><USER32> Kudos to Ira Glass & TAL for being honest

</comment><comment><USER33> Are they still worth listening to?

<comment><USER34> With very few exceptions, everything from This American Life is worth listening to. I would still listen to this, as not _everything_ he said was fabricated, but I wouldn't file away anything I heard as objective fact.

<comment><USER35> It's a well told story, it's good radio. You can definitely see the appeal of it as a monologue. But it was presented as fact and is not, not completely. I would recommend listening to both the original show and the redaction back to back, they are both very powerful and well made.

<comment><USER34> Agreed. I am very eager to hear the retraction show.

<comment><USER35> If you didn't know, it's already online (earlier than usual). Here's the link: [http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio- archives/episode/460/r...](http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio- archives/episode/460/retraction)

<comment><USER34> I didn't know. Thanks for the heads up, I'm downloading it now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Anyone who's ever spent more than a couple days in China (or HK, or Singapore, or Taiwan, really) can tell you that very, very little of what you see published about China/Chinese people in the western media is accurate. Much of it is hyperbole or selective truths or just downright fabrications.

It's designed for a western audience and plays on assumptions and stereotypes that exist of China/Chinese people - apart from interviews with serious professionals or scholars who have spent time there (like on Charlie Rose) you're bound to be left with a very distorted view of what "China" is (and isn't).

How do you describe one quarter of the entire population of earth in any sort of accurate way? It's impossible, but it sure does sell copy when you try.

<comment><USER37> Very much true. I'm constantly amazed at the beliefs that people in the US and EU have about day to day life in China. In my (admittedly limited) experience, in the cities, it's a lot like day to day life in any western country. In extremely poor rural areas, it's somewhat different, but that's because of the extreme poverty, not because it's China.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> So exciting when a giant global corporation has a PR coup against its naysayers.

<comment><USER39> By 'naysayers', do you mean people spreading false statements?

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I predict that the anti-Apple movement will say that the story was mostly true as told, and any denials by the Chinese interpreter were politically motivated, forced by Foxconn and the Chinese government.

<comment><USER41> It's not an anti-apple movement its a fair and humane electronics manufacturing labor movement. Apple is a huge and well known brand so they are natural fit for a story, but its also well known and reported that foxconn and friends are widely used by other electronics companies.

These are serious issues about how human beings are treated and they deserve more from than a reframe into a silly tribal squabble over who prefers what brand.

<comment><USER42> "It's not an anti-apple movement its a fair and humane electronics manufacturing labor movement."

China's labor problems aren't limited to their electronics factories.

<comment><USER41> Fair point, but electronics has been the recent center of it. There's long been an overall fair labor movement no?

<comment><USER42> Not sure how much that has reached into China. And industries like coal mining in China desperately need worker protections, but Western consumer purchases are unlikely to have any way to cause that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> This is certainly going to turn out in an interesting way. So far, the main thing being questioned is apparently the people he met, and while that is important to _his_ integrity, it doesn't affect the story of the factory workers.

I'm going to listen very intently to this episode. Is he telling what _could_ be true, or is he the worst kind of liar, manufacturing controversy?

</comment><comment><USER44> My takeaway from the TAL email is that the conditions he describes are true the most part, with the exception of underage workers being common. This doesn't match the media coverage at all -- I suppose we'll all find out when they release the full episode. The impression I get from these parts:

>"In our original broadcast, _we fact checked all the things that Daisey said about Apple's operations in China," says Glass, "and those parts of his story were true_ , except for the underage workers, who are rare."

>Some of the falsehoods found in Daisey's monologue are small ones: the number of factories Daisey visited in China, for instance, and the number of workers he spoke with. Others are large. In his monologue he claims to have met a group of workers who were poisoned on an iPhone assembly line by a chemical called n-hexane. _Apple's audits of its suppliers show that an incident like this occurred in a factory in China_ , but the factory wasn't located in Shenzhen, where Daisey visited.

>"It happened nearly a thousand miles away, in a city called Suzhou," Marketplace's Schmitz says in his report. "I've interviewed these workers, so I knew the story. And when I heard Daisey's monologue on the radio, I wondered: How'd they get all the way down to Shenzhen? It seemed crazy, that somehow Daisey could've met a few of them during his trip."

But he mushed them all together into a narrative and framed it as if he has personally seen and talked with these people.

Skimming the mainstream coverage I get the impression that both his personal story and the facts about the manufacturing culture were equally wrong. So he did the cause was fighting for vastly more harm than good: people now believe the problem itself doesn't exist. Whoops. Way to go dude.

I'll be interested to hear the correction episode to see how they detangle the falsehoods in the author's personal story vs things that aren't happening (or aren't happening with enough frequency to be concerned about.)

Certainly suggesting that a westerner with a single week in China would encounter all these problems exaggerates their frequency even if the problems are real. It suggests that if he can find all this out so easily, what else must be going on? On the other hand, many of his claims about conditions so seem to be real issues backed by other reporting. It will be a tricky episode.

edit: lol, lowest rated comment out of hundreds. my judgement must be out of whack, i'll take another look at this story tomorrow with a clear head.

<comment><USER39> What makes you think the conditions he describes are true?

<comment><USER44> I quoted the parts of the email that led me to that impression in the original post.

<comment><USER39> Daisey tells horrifying stories including one of a guy with a useless and twisted hand from making iPads.

Those create a very impression different from the one that we're left with. I'd say that for the most part what Daisey adds beyond the official reports is his fabrications.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Was this a stage play? If that's the case the "Reality Distortion Field"? is part of the schtick. If ThisAmLife crimped "facts" from it, it's their fault.

<comment><USER42> It's a one-man monologue, but the thing is, Daisey was widely interviewed and published, restating his claims about what he "found" in China. Not just on stage and This American Life, but also a NY Times Op/Ed, and interviews on CBS, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I am an iOS developer and I listened to the episode with "Mr. Daisey & The Apple Factory".

It definitely struck a cord in me; two specific things.

#1 Excellence is in the culture. Unabashed, aggressive, and strident. If you didn't read the docs then why are you even talking? That kind of attitude. iOS more than any other language is a club for readers, because devs here respect the legacy of code. But since I am American and because I have my pick of whatever platform or language, I have a choice. No matter what my situation, what excuse I may make, at the end of the day I chose iOS and I adopted Apple's culture. But, if I were in a different situation, where there really isn't another job out there, and culture is not really a choice, and I was forced to perform on such a level (and Apple's culture bleeds into every facet of its organization, software, hardware, sales) it might be a waking nightmare. It is one thing to embrace the grind to stay up night after night, eating garbage, working on your next startup because it is in your blood, and being broke and poor and performing to the beat of a driven man's rhythm.

#2 I'm sure there is a significant reason why China doesn't see the release of iOS products until much later but it still just rubs me the wrong way. Having iOS products released sooner than later in your country is a privilege. Does the country that make these products not deserve that privilege?

I love This American Life, I love iOS and the objective-c language, and am an admirer of Steve Jobs and the company he created. I don't have any heated feeling about anyone in all this so let me say I have nothing but respect for all parties involved. However there is a common thread in all this between Apple, Steve, China and startup culture--the pursuit of excellence at the cost of normal human needs, and the amount of suffering/neglect man is willing to put himself through to achieve his/her goals--that widened my eyes, because it somehow reminded me of what I was doing to myself. You all know what I'm talking about. If you have ever hustled, tried your hand as a founder, embraced the grind you know; the depth of depravity we all put yourselves through to reach an ephemeral goal. It has no taste though sweet in our minds. Always driven with trained eyes unwavering stares, focused, mental, cold as some might describe us. All for what? But to perform at a high level. All else being secondary.

I look forward to the corrections episode and am working harder to embrace my fun side.

</comment><comment><USER47> I'm all for journalistic integrity, but it sounds like all the important facts of the story were at least based on actual events and the rest was dramatic license to make the piece resonate emotionally. I think dedicating a whole show just to explaining the discrepancies is a little overboard and as a listener i'm not interested in spending that much time just for them to say "some of the things in the story were inaccurate". A simple 5 or 10 minute explanation and a long-winded piece online would have sufficed.

</comment><comment><USER48> An interesting coincidence - NPR is underwritten by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. I wonder if Gates helped fund this show in particular?

<comment><USER45> This is not a dumb comment. B&M Gates foundation does put a lot of money into NPR. To think that the management and producers at NPR are not aware of this is ingenuous. Every editor in the country is aware of who's paying for the ads. There's certainly cases where MSFT has gotten prominent puff pieces placed into All Things Considered. Both AAPL and MSFT have "long arm" marketing strategies; don't put it past them to pull a stunt like this.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a dumb comment because NPR has nothing to do with This American Life even if you believe that the largest private charity foundation in the world is a shill for Microsoft.</comment></comment></comment>


Cataclysm – Dark Days Ahead. A massive post-apocalyptic roguelike - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/CleverRaven/Cataclysm-DDA <comment><USER2> When I tried this game a few months ago my character got trapped in a character generation menu that couldn't be exited. A world record, but reaching at least turn 1 of the game would be better.</comment>


Dear Tech Community, We Have A Communication Problem - <AUTHOR> http://blog.untogether.co.uk/post/16070447348/dear-tech-community-we-have-a-communication-problem

<comment><USER2> The problem is the tech community is largely full of hyper-logical people, for better or worse. The average American, however, responds best to logical fallacies like appeals to emotion, authority, and the clever use of language to frame issues in a dishonest way. I firmly believe there will not be much progress in American democracy until the "good guys" realize it's time to embrace the 'if you can't beat em, join em' philosophy and start creating controlled, disciplined messaging that, while carefully navigating the line between truth and fiction, manages to stand toe-to-toe with the spin masters over at Fox News et al.

<comment><USER3> Wow. I do not agree with this at all. When I've heard this sentiment before it's from people who, despite the fact that they think they are hyperlogical and despite the fact that I think I'm hyperlogical, don't in fact agree with me on all public policy issues.

Moreover, at least when it comes to the two dominant parties, carefully controlled and dishonest messaging is already the order of the day.

Logic is not the only, or even the most important, factor which undermines productive debate. It's the failure to recognize that a lot of what people believe about public policy is rooted in unprovable assumptions. If two people start with separate premises (e.g., different vision of what an ideal world looks like), all the logic in the world won't make them meet.

I don't believe the answer is more dishonesty. I believe the answer is new tools that are somehow captivating while simultaneously inoculating against the well-known human mental frailties. I sometimes idly imagine a new type of news show with built-in checks and balances to root out logical fallacies, explain assumptions, and guard against cognitive biases. I'm not yet sure how to make people watch it though. ;)

The state of public debate sucks, but I think we've made progress. Just because we have further to go doesn't mean we should start going backwards. Also, when you're so certain your "side" is right that you start wanting to cheat, it's time to check your own premises and cognitive biases and see if there's any way you may be giving your policy opponents shorter shrift than they deserve.

<comment><USER2> You'll notice I didn't say we have to be dishonest. The problem is that in the quest to be unequivocally, unquestionably correct, the message ends up getting diluted and ultimately destroyed.

The reasons the Republicans control the debate is because they come to a decision on an issue, and focus on getting their message and viewpoint across in the simplest way possible. They do not play devil's advocate, do not focus on arguments against their point, because it's an ineffective use of their time when being listened to. They frame issues in a way that people can understand them, and, in their own perverse way, respect their audience for the fact they often are not very interested in the details and would like someone to sum up their views succinctly and in a way that makes a value judgement possible quickly.

Where they cross the line is where they outright lie. But it's not their responsibility to point out the flaws in their own argument, nor is it their responsibility to avoid logical fallacies in making their case if those appeals to emotion make the issue more 'real' for their audience.

Meanwhile, Democrats trying to do the right thing end up in-fighting over the most minute detail of how to frame their argument in a way that is both pure and honest. They acknowledge the argument of the other side, and always posit themselves as a refutation to the primary mover, the Republicans (or in this case, the big media industry.) They do not frame the argument. They do not set the grounds for discussion. They do not assert their power.

A lot can be learned by watching the way the right-wing spin machine works. It is a tool that can be used for good or evil, and used in a way that is ethically sound. Of course, it is important to avoid the trap of going too far, and we can see clearly the result of doing so. But this doesn't mean that we can't channel the power of messaging, framing, and so on in order to bring about progress.

For example, we've already lost this debate in so many ways. The response to this shouldn't just be "block this bill" it should be "block this bill", and:

\- Here is a concise message that summarizes our position: "Don't break our Internet," "Get your hands off our Internet", "Leave the Internet alone," "Stop trying to break the Internet" (Edit: Right now, Google's position is "Please don't censor the web!" Say that in the voice of a little girl and you might understand why this messaging sucks. Don't say please. Don't use the word censor. Tell them to fuck off without using profanity.)

\- Here is a pledge that you as a representative must sign about passing Internet legislation or else you will not receive any votes from this consitutency.

\- Here is a bill we would like you to pass (pushed by lobbyists from Google/Facebook/etc) that prevents future legislation from tampering with the free flow of information on the Internet.

\- We now refer to the companies pushing SOPA as the "Old Media", "Content Monopolies", "Pre-Internet Media", "Legacy Content Providers", "Anti-Artist Media", or "Copyright Law Abusers". We refer to sites like Spotify and Youtube as "Modern Media", "Open Media", "Pro-Artist Media", or "Modern Content Providers."

\- "Copyright infringement" is not "piracy" but is "missharing." "Net Neutrality" is "Free Internet" or "Web Freedom". DRM is on "Chained Content" or "Locked Content". Etc.

It's not dishonest. It's controlling the debate from a position of power and righteousness.

<comment><USER4> > It's not dishonest. It's controlling the debate from a position of power and > righteousness.

Thank you for writing this. I've really been feeling the same way. Not very many people understand group psychology and they argue and fight in ways which are self-defeating.

We are not even fighting deeply irrational people, mostly they are smart rational people employed by big industry and taught the simple fact: appealing to people's emotions and unconscious mind is the foremost way democratic decisions are won.

It might be an awful truth but it is reality and a rational person must therefore accept it or face defeat over and over again.

I hope you and others do something great with this insight.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You're right, but I think the better tl;dr would be:

1\. Free communication, not filtered. You shouldn't need permission, of any kind, from anybody, to get on the Internet. No one should have license to kick you off. Translation of a domain name to a dotted quad is free speech activity.

2\. Don't create liability by association. You cannot justify encroachment of my rights by preventing the abuses of others. If I make reasonable efforts to enforce your copyright, why shouldn't I have safe harbor against further liability? Why is it my job to do your policing for you?

3\. Don't make your problem my problem. Copyright violation is a problem, but that doesn't justify adding costs and risks and complications to millions of people who have nothing to do with the problems of the MPAA.

4\. Copyright does not justify compromised rights. Copyright is important, but not so important that we should compromise a person's right to speak. A business model built on compromised rights is not ultimately beneficial to society, no matter what the short or medium term costs may be.

<comment><AUTHOR> _Why is it my job to do your policing for you? [...] Don't make your problem my problem._

I'd be wary of using that kind of argument because why does Mr. Average Joe care who polices piracy online? Maybe I'm too cynical about people but I think that they respond better when you angle it to how it'll affect them personally. The fact that the MPAA's problem has become our problem is of little consequence to the end user.

 _If I make reasonable efforts to enforce your copyright, why shouldn't I have safe harbor against further liability?_

Again, maybe my cynicism, but I think this is already too complicated (i.e. not soundbite-y). "We don't want the government in control of what you can look at on the internet" is definitely vaguer, but it's more memorable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> These points were covered though.

 _We are a success_

When the audience was polled for how many people worked in a NY start-up, a massive amount of hands were raised. When asked how many of these start-ups were hiring, a majority of hands were raised again. The point was shown and explained that we are a striving tech scene and are bring job opportunities to NY.

 _We- the job creators- are fighting against intrusive government regulation_

It's been mentioned, most notably in the reddit blog post by alienth, that there will be a burden on the tech community, and especially the smaller start-ups, in keeping up with these legal requirements of censorship.

 _We are anti-piracy_

One of the speakers at todays NYTM protest (I believe it was Alexis Ohanian, but I could be wrong) mentioned they are a copyright holder. They don't want to see piracy, nor copyright infringement - but they also don't want to oppress innovation.

 _Innovation is better_

Pretty much the same counter argument as above, and it was also mentioned that the MPAA was scared of the VHS back when it was introduced; citing that it would ruin them - but instead it became a large part of the movie industries revenue model. The point was made that they should be embracing the internet and that with those innovations they can make boatloads more money without having to censor us.

<comment><AUTHOR> I assumed that the points would be covered- that's why I prefaced my comments with "my experience is anecdotal". But the guy who walked past asking about the protest would have had the same experience that I did, and may well have gone away with a negative impression.

Don't get me wrong, I'm genuinely excited that the protest happened and had the level of support that it did. I think that _overall_ it was great, but that there is definite room for improvement in terms of getting everyone on the same page.

<comment><USER6> Oh I agree, but I also want to make those points for people who weren't there so they have an understanding of what was spoken about. There is a need of making it easier for your average person to understand what is at stake - something that they can understand.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Does the DMCA really work well or have we just been browbeaten into accepting and even embracing it so as not to appear as if we support all out piracy when we oppose SOPA and PIPA? This is the second time I've seen someone speak in favor of the DMCA as an example of the law done right when opposing SOPA.

<comment><USER8> The failure of the DMCA is that there is no consequences for filing an incorrect takedown request. The entertainment industry has, on many occasions, taken down content that doesn't belong to them. In one instance, with the megaupload video, it appears the DMCA was used maliciously.

This is, in fact, the main reason to oppose SOPA and PIPA. It gives the entertainment industry even more takedown powers (ads, financial instutions, domain names) and even less oversight.

You could argue that SOPA/PIPA isn't unreasonable if there were added protections of due process and significant penalties for abusing the system. But there isn't. If the DMCA is currently being abused, it stands to reason that SOPA/PIPA will be as well.

<comment><USER9> I see the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA as another really bad part of that law. Bascially the reason why watching legally DVD's on a pure opensource system is no longer possible in the US.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Explaining SOPA/PIPA to a non-techy:

Imagine you owned a small, boutique t-shirt store. Your business depends on local artists bringing you t-shirts that they designed, you display them, and sell them. Taking your cut, to pay your bills and send your kids to school.

On a cloudy Tuesday afternoon, the Feds show up. They take your merchandise, close down your shop, and shut down your bank account. Nobody tells you why. There is no court case and no due process. Nobody you can talk to about this.

You are confused by this and depressed. No idea what happened. You go to the movies to take your mind off of things. And then it hits you, you now know who came after you...

You remember that one of the artists supplying you with t-shirts designed a t-shirt that had a girl, with a dragon tattoo on it.

</comment><comment><USER11> One point I haven't seen made is that these laws will _actively harm_ independent creators that depend on the Internet to reach their audience. How many indie musicians would no longer be able to host their music and videos on Soundcloud or YouTube? How many film and game makers depend on sites like Megaupload and Mediafire for distribution? Sure, some of these solutions aren't ideal, but they are surely _accessible_. Anyone with a minimum of familiarity with computers can upload files for free and go back to what they do best.

</comment><comment><USER12> I think I know which speaker most of these points are targeted at, and I agree in reference to that specific speaker. However, the majority of people who went up to the microphone emphasized the first two points here. One of the best moments was when Alexis Ohanian asked for a show of hands if their company was hiring, and maybe 70, 80% of the people in the crowd raised their hand. Speaker after speaker made the point that the tech startup scene in NYC is a huge economic powerhouse and some of the only real job creators in the city. My favorite speaker (sadly, I can't remember who it was -- perhaps it was the former White House staffer?) talked about how what we need to do is have the tech industry work with media producers to come up with creative solutions to combat piracy. I think you may have just been there for one of the few speakers that didn't emphasize that point.

</comment><comment><USER13> This good feedback, there is a definite risk of muddling up messages. The #1 takeaway is that we need to speak in terms of what this act WOULD do if passed, not what it was INTENDED to do. Because the road hell (you know the rest)...

</comment><comment><USER14> Why are we even talking about piracy? This bill provides mechanisms that give large corporations extreme tools to censor content. We should be talking about the Internet censorship acts SOPA and PIPA - we shouldn't even use the word piracy, except to say that they won't do anything to combat copyright infringement.

</comment><comment><USER15> Here's a very simple soundbite that will get anyone's attention: "the government is trying to seize the Internet"

It need not be technically accurate. What matters is that you want the listener to think: "stop - say what? How is that possible?"

Then you can explain what is really going on.

</comment><comment><USER16> The reason for this is because a lot of the tech community _are_ pro-piracy and tend to talk more about how they should be able to freely download and distribute copyrighted material because traditional distribution channels are outdated in light of current technology. That's certainly something worth discussing but now isn't the right time and the protests aren't the right place at least when talking to the public. A lot of the discussions I've read focus on piracy and throw in web censorship as an afterthought.

We need to leave torrents, file sharing, the Pirate Bay, and the others out of this and focus in on domain seizures, the cutting of funding, the lack of due process.

 _Most importantly we need to Explain it in a way that they can relate to!!!_. Don't talk about Google and other sites being censored, search result censorship, and all of that as much as you _should_ be saying things like:

"The government is giving media companies the power to:

\- take down your Facebook post, your YouTube video of your cute baby son singing along to a copyrighted song...

\- shut down your mom and pop shop website because you used a logo you shouldn't have by accident, mentioned a wrong name, or even slightly threatened to take away a single customer from a larger company

\- etc. etc. etc. _all without due process!_ All it takes is some company making a single complaint and you can be lose money, business, sources of funding, your domain name"

That's the kind of conversation that we, who know about this stuff, need to tell the public. Remember, a lot of these people think Internet Explorer is the Internet. They think you have to type in a URL in Google _then_ click a link to get where you want to go (I've even seen someone type in www.google.com in Google's own search box!). We need to talk to them in a language they understand. It's not their fault they aren't tech savvy but it's still our responsibility to make sure they understand what we're talking about.

No jargon. No big words. Make it relatable. Don't talk down to them but do educate them on the issues, not technology.

<comment><USER17> I totally disagree that we should leave piracy out of it completely. The bill is _called_ the Stop Online Piracy Act, if we don't mention piracy at all it will look like dodging the issue. We need to say something like

"It _claims_ to be about piracy, but it won't have any effect on piracy because tech-savvy people like pirates can easily get around the restrictions, it will only harm legitimate internet users like you."

From then on the person is inoculated against the "but piracy!" argument.

<comment><USER16> That's one way to do it. That's fair. If it were me I'd only bring up piracy if they did and I wouldn't repeat the word piracy, I'd call it file sharing but I wouldn't go into it more than what's absolutely necessary. We have to do like the Republicans. Pick a slogan and hammer it hard.</comment></comment></comment>


Caml trading - <AUTHOR> http://ocaml.janestreet.com/?q=node/61

<comment><USER2> I was confused when he mentioned the importance of code correctness. Wouldn't it be easy to write more software to monitor how your trading software is doing and intercede if it seems to be losing you a lot of money?

<comment><USER3> Did you really watch it? He explains that at the speed and volume with which they handle transactions, an error could cause them to disintegrate in a handful of milliseconds.

Besides – why write more code to check if your original code is correct, when you can just write correct code? And if you write software to check your software, then do you have to write software to check the checking software? Police police police police...

<comment><USER2> >He explains that at the speed and volume with which they handle transactions, an error could cause them to disintegrate in a handful of milliseconds.

Right. That's why you should have software monitoring things instead of a human.

>Besides – why write more code to check if your original code is correct, when you can just write correct code? And if you write software to check your software, then do you have to write software to check the checking software? Police police police police...

Same reason it makes sense to have proof checking software like Metamath. It's fairly easy to write software that has an 90% probability of being correct. It's maybe three times harder to write software that has a 99% probability of being correct, so it's cheaper to write 90% likely to be correct software and then another piece of 90% likely to be correct software that checks it. That's what my intuition says.

Anyway, I think monitoring software would be much easier to write than actual trading software.

if bank_account < 0.9 * prev_bank_account: stop_trading()

<comment><USER3> Try to think it through.

First of all, they cannot increase the latency of their software; in fact, as is explained in the presentation, they work hard to keep it as low as possible and to continue to lower it. An extra layer which must monitor everything would increase latency.

Secondly, what are the algorithms used for determining sanity for this monitoring software? The same ones used to determine behavior of the original system? Then what is the point of writing the second, monitoring system? If it's different, then one of them is incorrect.

 _if bank_account < 0.9_ * _prev_bank_account: stop_trading()_

What does this mean? As a demonstration of generalization, you might as well have written "if (should_stop) stop;" and similarly affected the discussion.

 _It's fairly easy to write software that has an 90% probability of being correct. It's maybe three times harder to write software that has a 99% probability of being correct, so ..._

Their software needs to be as close to 100% correct as can be reasoned. The speaker notes that the static type checking in OCaml helps a great deal with both reasoning about specifications (what do I think this should actually do?) and preventing errors. Easy factorization in functional programming style helps break the problems into smaller components with little state, as well.

 _it's cheaper to write 90% likely to be correct software and then another piece of 90% likely to be correct software that checks it._

Assuming those statements are true and it were possible for two discrete systems to function in that manner, that still leaves you with a large amount of known probability for error.

You should watch the video, I think you will find especially interesting the part where he describes how they were unable to pay enough money to get people to even carefully review certain types of code.

Additionally, I think you may be conflating static checking (which OCaml does) with live monitoring of a working system: _Same reason it makes sense to have proof checking software like Metamath._

That is a static check. Metamath does not fork a process and monitor your proof, assuming that were somehow possible.

 _That's what my intuition says._

Intuition is often correct when dealing with things which are intuitive.

<comment><USER2> >First of all, they cannot increase the latency of their software; in fact, as is explained in the presentation, they work hard to keep it as low as possible and to continue to lower it. An extra layer which must monitor everything would increase latency.

Right. So there is a sweet spot: you want to monitor often enough that you aren't bankrupt in a millisecond, but not so often that your profit becomes 50% of what it could be. I'm not familiar with the algorithms used in trading, but assuming they're complex, the sanity check that I'm proposing would not use a very large portion of your cycles.

>If it's different, then one of them is incorrect.

The presenter spoke of humans shutting off the system when it was causing them to lose a lot of money (in older days when their system was slower?) Presumably the humans were using some algorithm other than the one they implemented to decide whether to shut the system off. Which algorithm is incorrect?

How complicated do you think the algorithm the humans use would be to implement?

>You should watch the video, I think you will find especially interesting the part where he describes how they were unable to pay enough money to get people to even carefully review certain types of code.

I watched the first half. I stopped watching when it became apparent that I would get more out of the video if I knew OCaml, and I plan to learn it at some point.

>That is a static check. Metamath does not fork a process and monitor your proof, assuming that were somehow possible.

I'm talking about the effectiveness of using one system to confirm the correctness of another. For some reason, someone put a lot of hours into Metamath when they could have put the same hours into checking their own proofs. Why do you think they did that?

A final point: He mentioned that their software is in constant need of updating. Every update is an opportunity to introduce a critical error. It seems likely to me that monitoring software would not be in need of constant updating, since the algorithm that the humans use to determine when to turn off the machine probably does not change along with the things he mentioned.

<comment><USER3> I would reply again, but you have missed points made by the speaker, especially those in the context of OCaml. Please watch and make an effort at understanding before any offhanded dismissals.

<comment><USER2> I watched the other half of the video. It was pretty good, but I didn't see anything relevant to our discussion. I'd appreciate it if you replied.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: So what do you want in a mobile phone - <AUTHOR> I've been watching conversations about phones here for years. Most of it is the normal iPhone vs Android debate. Little of it has been innovative.
Recently Amazon came out with the Fire. Reviews here were tepid to say the least. Tizen, by Samsung, seems to be viewed as nothing more than a cudgel. Even in the best comments it's met with Fire-like apprehension.
So what does the community want? Some time ago there appeared to be a small faction of WebOS cohorts. Many panned that idea too. I realize that there is not a single, unified view of phones. I hope that this question provides a touchpoint for startups in the hardware/os space to reference for future ideas.
Thanks. <comment><USER3> I'm not happy with the lack of physical buttons, I had a Nokia N86, and I miss several features a lot:

\- slide-to-answer

\- one-handed operation for calling with no need to look at the phone

\- the camera button (something Windows Phone does right)

[http://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_n86_8mp-2713.php](http://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_n86_8mp-2713.php)

for some time I thought the perfect form factor would be a slimmer Blackberry Torch with Android:

[http://www.gsmarena.com/blackberry_torch_9800-3203.php](http://www.gsmarena.com/blackberry_torch_9800-3203.php)

However, I think I'm a very small minority.

One group I do think isn't being adequately addressed is nearsighted 50 years- old (baby boomers in the U.S.?)

My relatives in that age group struggle to use their latest phones (both iPhones and Android flagships) because of the tiny font sizes, and the lack of physical buttons hurts as well - I have an LG G2 mini, and the power button in the back and software buttons are a no-no for them.

That age group still has the money and motivation to buy a high-tech phone, and aren't well-served by the market.

Edit: however, you have to be very careful in your message, old people don't like to be called old :) or think of themselves as "old".

<comment><USER4> I would also like a torch formfactor with android. The closest I have come was my old experia pro.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> First, I second the call for totally open client code for all core functionality. I think it's find that Google keeps some apps like Maps closed for competitive reasons. But there is little or no secret sauce in the GMail client, it ought to be open and support web-of-trust and strong encryption.

Second, I would like a phone that actually takes advantage of what the network can do. I should be able to set up virtual PBX-like groups, for example, have rolls for automated and human attendants, and have call control functions for moving calls around the group. I know that's boring old telephony stuff, but _some_ people still dial and answer calls on these things.

And I want an audio path for phone calls that the app processor can access and encrypt.

</comment><comment><USER6> I want a 100% open source solution (hardware + software).

The OS itself should have a flexible permissions system for applications - <USER2> would an app need access to all my photo's or text messages for example while they only need a specific item?

Interface should be as simple as possible.

</comment><comment><USER7> Better network QoS and noise canceling. It's odd -- and somewhat appalling to me -- that there's all this innovation to which call quality (the point!) seems to be inversely correlated.</comment>


Ask HN: Should job announcements on HN have a prefix like Ask HN does? - <AUTHOR> I've seen an increase of companies posting job offers. It's been going on for awhile so I don't think it will stop. Should those individuals add a prefix such as "Offer HN:"? I think it would make it easier to filter mentally and then later in a search. Any thoughts on this? <comment><USER2> I think tags would work very good in HN, and I've often wished for the possibility of adding "private" tags for posts, comments and users, so yes, a prefix for something as clear-cut as a job announcement self-post would be nice. I usually notice the lack of upvote arrow, though, so it wasn't one of my pet peeves, until now! :)</comment>


Show HN: An assembler for the LC-3 fictitious computer - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/pepaslabs/lc3as.py <comment><USER2> The LC-3 was part of my computer architecture course in my CS program over a decade ago. Glad to see it's still being used.

<comment><USER3> Mine too at UIUC almost 20 years ago! We had to design a working CPU for the instruction set in verilog or VHDL, then run a program in the simulator.

I still vaguely remember that exactly one instruction needed 2 passes through the core pipeline. During decode, we would inject the reserved word into the instruction pipeline to represent the 2nd pass. We were pretty proud of that "innovation".

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN, I wrote an assembler for the LC-3. This is part of my journey of learning how to write a compiler.

The assembler is written in Python, and tries to stick to as simple a subset of Python as possible (essentially, just functions and dictionaries with dot syntax sugar). All control flow leaf terminations are explicit (e.g. continue, break).

Idiomatic Python style is not a goal. Rather, the goal is to minimize the amount of syntax knowledge needed to follow the code. The code could be made much shorter with some clever refactoring, but brevity is a non-goal.

This trivial coding style will hopefully make hacking on the code more approachable for others just learning about lexers / parsers / assemblers / compilers.

The assembler is a simple two-pass implementation: create the symbol table (determine the addresses of all labels) in pass 1, then generate the machine code in pass 2. This is described in chapter 8 of the LC-3 book (Introduction to Computing Systems: From Bits and Gates to C and Beyond).

The LC-3 ISA consists of only 15 instructions, making this a simple task. One oddity is that the ISA is word-addressable, not byte-addressable.

The lexer is a simple regex-based implementation, and the parser is simple recursive descent. This approach is described in Gary Bernhardt's "A Compiler From Scratch" [https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/screencasts/catalog/a-com...](https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/screencasts/catalog/a-compiler- from-scratch)

The lexer and parser output can be dumped (in JSON format) via command-line flags.

Additionally, the assembler also _accepts_ pre-parsed JSON input. This allows one to build a custom assembly syntax front-end and use this assembler as the back-end: all they have to do is generate the appropriate JSON output. Again, hackability is a goal! (How I wish other compilers allowed AST input!)

A good practice project would be a reimplementation in Golang, focusing on speed.

If you enjoyed this, you may also enjoy my trivial lisp interpreter in C series: [https://gist.github.com/cellularmitosis/d8d4034c82b0ef817913...](https://gist.github.com/cellularmitosis/d8d4034c82b0ef817913a01138b115bf) or my lang-related list of links: [https://gist.github.com/cellularmitosis/1f55f9679f064bcff029...](https://gist.github.com/cellularmitosis/1f55f9679f064bcff02905acb44ca510)

Happy hacking!

<comment><USER4> You might enjoy

[http://pythonwise.blogspot.com/2012/06/python-based- assemble...](http://pythonwise.blogspot.com/2012/06/python-based- assembler.html)

[https://raw.githubusercontent.com/tebeka/pythonwise/master/a...](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/tebeka/pythonwise/master/assembler.pdf)

<comment><USER5> Your first link unfortunately appears to be broken. If you click on the link "You can view the presentation I gave on this here." It shows an error message that the repository has been deleted.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, it moved to the second link. Cheers

<comment><USER5> I see. Is there any chance that the talk you gave that goes along with the slides is also available on line?

<comment><USER4> This isn't mine. I don't know if the talk is available.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Awesome work! Targetting the LC-3 is a great idea.

[https://github.com/ajxs/ajxs-elf-as](https://github.com/ajxs/ajxs-elf-as)

I embarked on a similar project a little while ago ( see above ). I attempted to write an assembler targeting the MIPS ISA, and assembling ELF relocatable object files. It's 95% complete, with the notable exception of implementing proper bi-endianness. That being said, I'm sure there's so many cases in which it would fail to create linkable object files. At any rate, it was an amazing project for me. I learned so much in doing this that has continued to help me as a developer.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh awesome! Targeting something real like MIPS was going to be my next step!

<comment><USER6> It shouldn't be much more work than you've already done, so you should definitely go for it! Maybe even build multi-target support into your assembler, it shouldn't be too difficult. I implemented the framework for this.

Instead of MIPS, it might be a good idea to target RISC-V. It's a more modern RISC ISA which apparently has a few less quirks. I found the MIPS documentation to be great, mind you. There's lots of resources available online about MIPS programming. So there are advantages to targeting MIPS, no doubt. RISC-V is on the cutting edge, however. If you're interested in embedded development, learning RISC-V now will have other advantages.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great idea!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Ha. I'm an alum of Yale Patts 306 course. He's a character! Happy that the LC-3 is still around. I regularly use the basic knowledge I gained that semester in my understanding of software.

Our first assignment in that class was a program written in binary with manually addressed jump statements.

</comment><comment><USER8> Lol, nice. I worked on littlecomputer3.com. I look forward to playing with this!

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh this is great! I had trouble with the github button, but "view source" revealed it :) [https://github.com/0x213F/littlecomputer3](https://github.com/0x213F/littlecomputer3)

<comment><USER8> Def. an unfinished project. The killer feature was to step forwards and backwards through executing the code.

I did this back when I was going through ECE 385 and had frontend knowledge but no backend.</comment></comment></comment>


DVC – Open Source Machine Learning Version Control System - <AUTHOR> https://dvc.org/ <comment><USER3> In the intro video they say it's "based on git but supports large files".

Are they using Git LFS [1] or did they make something else?

And what is their proposed value add over using git directly?

Edit: They say a little more about the large file stuff

> DVC keeps metafiles in Git instead of Google Docs to describe and version > control your data sets and models. DVC supports a variety of external > storage types as a remote cache for large files.

So from what they said in the video and what I read on the page this is probably a limited front-end to make using git easier for people that don't know git.

And in terms of the large file stuff it seems from what they are saying like they have implemented the equivalent of git-annex [2]. Or maybe they are using that even. I didn't look to see if they wrote their own or used git-annex.

[1]: [https://github.com/git-lfs/git- lfs/blob/master/README.md](https://github.com/git-lfs/git- lfs/blob/master/README.md)

[2]: [https://git-annex.branchable.com/](https://git-annex.branchable.com/)

<comment><USER4> honestly i'm confused..i went to the site, watched the video. I don't get it.. what is it?

<comment><USER5> Basically you're not going to check-in to GIT your data used to train models and models themselves if they are multi-GB.

DVC basically sym-links those big files and checks-in the symlinks.

It also can download those files from GCS/S3, and track which file came from where (e.g. if you generated output.data using input.data, then whenever input.data changes, DVC can detect that output.data needs to be regenerated as well).

That's my understanding.

<comment><USER6> > if you generated output.data using input.data, then whenever input.data > changes, DVC can detect that output.data needs to be regenerated as well

To my understanding you could do the same with Docker. E.g. if you COPY your input files into the image, rebuilding the image would only be an action if the input files changed.

<comment><USER7> Docker can help only if there is a single step in your project. In ML projects you usually have many steps - Preprocess, Train. Each of the steps can be divided: extract Evaluate step from Train etc.

Also, Docker has an overhead - copy of data needs to be created. While DVC just saves links (sym-links, hard-links or reflinks) with a minimum overhead. It is crucial when you work with multi-GB datasets.

<comment><USER6> Good points, I'd appreciate if you could elaborate since it seems you've thought a lot about this.

> Docker can help only if there is a single step in your project. In ML > projects you usually have many steps - Preprocess, Train. Each of the steps > can be divided: extract Evaluate step from Train etc.

Yeah this is something I've been struggling with. In a project I'm working on I use docker build to 1) set up the environment 2) get canonical datasets 3) pre-process the datasets. However I've left reproducing as manual instructions, e.g. run the container, call script 1 to repro experiment 1, call script 2 to repro experiment 2, etc. I think I could improve this by providing `--entrypoint` at docker run, or by providing a docker-compose file (wherein I could specify an entrypoint) for each experiment.

What do you think are the generalizability pitfalls in this workflow? How could dvc help?

> Also, Docker has an overhead - copy of data needs to be created. While DVC > just saves links (sym-links, hard-links or reflinks) with a minimum > overhead. It is crucial when you work with multi-GB datasets.

Good point!

<comment><USER8> I could see using an entry point for that. The entry point script could take as an argument the experiment to run and then the docker command would be: docker run -ti experiments:latest experiment-1

I could also see creating a base dockerfile, and a dockerfile per experiment. The base docker file would do the setup, and the experiment docker files would just run the commands necessary to reproduce the experiment, and exit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> loving-g Basically, it computes a fingerprint of each large file (large = too large for Git) and commits the fingerprint to Git, while the large files are stored on some remote location of your choice (AWS S3, local, cache...). So you have Git commands to update your fingerprints, and the same commands with dvc (add, push, pull...) to interact with the large files. Quite simple and neat actually.

We've started using it as a replacement for git LFS for different projects internally, not especially for Data Science, and we're very happy with it. Works like a charm with Linux, Mac and Windows.

<comment><USER9> I haven't used Git LFS but I am planning to use it. What made you guys want to replace git LFS with DVC?

<comment><USER10> My experience with Git(hub) LFS was that it doesn't work with files that are several GB in size. Was constantly getting upload/download errors from Github.

<comment><USER7> The sweet spot for LFS is a few 100Mb files with less than a couple Gb overall. While DVC was designed with 10Gb-100Gb scenarios in mind.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is a bit different, but commonwl.org ( [https://github.com/common- workflow-language/common-workflow-...](https://github.com/common-workflow- language/common-workflow-language) ) has similar aims, at a pipeline / workflow level and used in genomics, astronomy, imaging etc.

</comment><comment><USER12> For those who familiar with cookiecutter-data-science, there is a good example how DVC can version and manage data -[https://github.com/drivendata/cookiecutter-data- science/issu...](https://github.com/drivendata/cookiecutter-data- science/issues/158) \+ this PR to play with it - [https://github.com/drivendata/cookiecutter-data- science/pull...](https://github.com/drivendata/cookiecutter-data- science/pull/159)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I haven't tested yet but I would have to say this would be the key feature in testing new models: Reproducible The single 'dvc repro' command reproduces experiments end-to-end. DVC guarantees reproducibility by consistently maintaining a combination of input data, configuration, and the code that was initially used to run an experiment.

</comment><comment><USER13> Hmm. If I understand correctly, in order to reproduce the steps taken in creating machine learning models, I need to version control more things than just the code:

1\. Code

2\. Configuration (libraries etc)

3\. Input/training data

1 and 2 are easily solved with Git and Docker respectively, although you would need some tooling to keep track of the various versions in a given run. 3 doesn't quite figure.

According to the site DVC uses object storage to store input data but that leads to a few questions:

1\. Why wouldn't I just use Docker and Git + Git LFS to do all of this? Is DVC just a wrapper for these tools?

2\. Why wouldn't I just version control the query that created the data along with the code that creates the model?

3\. What if I'm working on a large file and make a one byte change? I've never come across an object store that can send a diff, so surely you'd need to retransmit the whole file?

<comment><USER7> @mcncfie your understanding is correct. #3 might include output data\models as well and intermediate results like preprocessed data. DVC also handles dependencies between all of these.

Answers:

1\. DVC does dependency tracking in addition to that. It is like a lightweight ML pipelines tool or ML specific Makefile. Also, DVC works just faster that LFS which is critical in 10Gb+ cases.

2\. This is a great case. However, in some scenarios, you would prefer to store the query output along with the query and DVC helps with that.

3\. Correct, there are no data diffs. DVC just stores blobs and you can GC the old ones - [https://dvc.org/doc/commands- reference/gc](https://dvc.org/doc/commands-reference/gc)

<comment><USER14> > Correct, there are no data diffs. DVC just stores blobs and you can GC the > old ones

Have you looked into using content-defined chunking (a-la restic or borgbackup) so that you get deduplication without the need to send around diffs? This is related to a problem that I'm working on solving in OCI (container) images[1].

[1]: [https://www.cyphar.com/blog/post/20190121-ociv2-images-i- tar](https://www.cyphar.com/blog/post/20190121-ociv2-images-i-tar)

<comment><USER7> Content-defined chunks - very interesting. I'd suggest you ask this question in DVC issue tracker or DVC channel [https://dvc.org/chat](https://dvc.org/chat)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think maybe this could better illustrate what can be done using DVC: [https://dagshub.com/DAGsHub-Official/DAGsHub-Tutorial- MNIST](https://dagshub.com/DAGsHub-Official/DAGsHub-Tutorial-MNIST)

You can navigate branches, and be able to download the data, model, and intermediate pipeline files from a shared team AWS,GS,Hadoop, or plain NFS or SSH server, as they were in a specific commit. Also compare metrics between branches for comparison of different experiments, etc. A team member can checkout a branch, immediately get the relevant files which were already computed by someone else, modify the training code, reproduce the out-of-date parts of the pipeline using dvc repro, and then git commit the resulting metrics + dvc push the resulting model back to the shared team storage.

</comment><comment><USER16> Just ran thru official tutorial and I'm pretty impressed.

As I understood the idea is to: \- use git branch for each experiment (change of hyperparameters etc.) \- define pipeline stages (preprocessing, train/test split, model training, model validation) \- after this steps you can change any part of pipeline (say data preprocessing or model parameters) and run `dvc repro` to reproduce all stages for which dependancies changed and track metrics for all branches, which os pretty cool and reduce experiment logs in wiki

<comment><USER7> Exactly. And it is flexible as Git. You can define your own workflow. For example, some data scientists avoid using git-branches for experiments - <USER2> use directories.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is definitely needed and DVC has a few cool ideas. I think the most useful feature missing from existing tools is integrating data versioning with git, and simple commands to tag, push, and pull data files.

I'm not sure I buy the pipeline and repro functionality as useful. I'd rather see nice integration with Docker since it can be used to define the environment as well as repro steps.

<comment><USER7> Great point! `dvc pull\push mydataset` actually exists in DVC. But `dvc tag` is missing and now we (DVC team) understand that it prevent DVC from a proper datasets and ML models tracking. It will be implemented soon.

There is an ongoing discussion in DVC GitHub about datasets tracking and tags [https://github.com/iterative/dvc/issues/1487](https://github.com/iterative/dvc/issues/1487) and some discussions in DVC discord channel [https://dvc.org/chat](https://dvc.org/chat)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> How does this compare to pachyderm?

<comment><USER12> From a very high level perspective - Pachyderm is a data engineering tool designed with ML in mind, DVC is a tool to organize and version control an ML project. Probably, one way to think would be Spark/Hadoop or Airflow vs Git/Github.

<comment><USER17> Thanks.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: eRegulations, open-source government software - <AUTHOR> http://www.consumerfinance.gov/eregulations/

<comment><USER2> This is fantastic and I would love to see the Government Printing Office adopt this platform for the entire Code of Federal Regulations. This is much more user-friendly than the current eCFR platform.

Even better, the source for the site and the parsers are on GitHub: [http://cfpb.github.io/eRegulations/](http://cfpb.github.io/eRegulations/)</comment>


Ask HN: assertEquals, assertEqual, or assert_equal? - <AUTHOR>

Which variant I should use in my own unit-testing library for bash? I using assertEqual now, but I saw both assertEquals (shunit) and assert_equal (bash-unit).<p>English is foreign language for me, so it is hard to decide. :-/ <comment><USER2> camelCase vs. underscore_delimited is really a religious preference: use whatever the people you're working with are using..

as far as equal vs. equals: both make sense, but I would favor 'equal' exactly because of this. I don't feel there is a need to constantly add a frivolous character to all of your statements.

</comment><comment><USER3> In my experience, with SimpleTest in PHP and unittest2 in Python, assertEqual() seem to be the convention.

Indeed, in unittest2, both assertEquals() and assert_equal() both appear to be deprecated in favor of assertEqual().

</comment><comment><USER4> It depends on how you read the code. Equals is the singular and would read as "I assert A equals B". Equal is the plural and would read as " I assert A and B are equal". I tend to think the second phrase, but both are correct from an English standpoint.

<comment><USER5> This is a nitpick, but "A equals B" uses the verb "equals", and "A and B are equal" uses the adjective "equal", describing a state of being. That said, reading code like English would probably suggest something like assertEqual(A,B) or A.assertEquals(B). At the end of the day, it's all just what looks best to you.</comment></comment>


Learning to Code? Get off my lawn. - <AUTHOR> http://programmingisterrible.com/post/59675545557/learning-to-code-get-off-my-lawn <comment><USER2> I guess I qualify for "the monks in their monasteries" group because I'm "complaining" about the "plebeians". It isn't though because of the reasons that the article pointed out. I am annoyed most of the time because now and again the new wanna-be material keeps pushing for stupid things, or merely stupid ideas. And the worst part is when it's based on just political, and not some practical useful reasons. Of course, in time enough information gets its permit from their patience and things get better. We have to admit though - the phenomenon I'm complaining about didn't happened in '70s, '80s, or even '90s. It happened only recently, with the entrance-bar set on low. Overall, the entrance accessibility is a good thing for the industry and humanity, but the "monks" are the ones paying the price. This, I think is the other side of the story that the article is trying to tell.</comment>