Bankers Go Home, Tellers Stay: Virus Exposes Office Inequalities - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-13/virus-is-exposing-worker-inequalities-as-corporate-offices-empty <comment><USER2> The doctors and surgeons don't get to go home, but the hospital administration clerks might be able to. The doctors are higher status and make more. I wonder why that might be?

This is just cherry picking imo. Jobs that require f2f and physical interaction as a core responsibility don't get remoted? You don't say.

<comment><USER3> Hospital admins might be paid more than you think.

<comment><USER4> average admin staff is paid much less than the average doctor.

average admin staff is perhaps even paid less than the average RN in some places.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _Bankers Go Home, Tellers Stay: Virus Reveals That Some Jobs Are Different_

<comment><USER6> This would be the reasonable title. However, in the current zeitgeist everything needs to be framed as some sort of injustice.

<comment><USER7> When the bodies start stacking up, we'll all have a chance to decide which decisions were injustices and which were pragmatic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Bankers make more money, tellers make less. The inequalities were really always there...

Life and the human experience have never come with any guarantees of being fair or equal.

All that said, I fully expect bank branches to be closed just like other retail establishments will be.

</comment><comment><USER9> While this is true, and unfair, IMHO it's not really an appropriate thing to try to fix in isolation. Some jobs are more remotable than others. We want to isolate people physically, so remotable jobs get remoted. The fact that those jobs are distributed inequitably is bad, but not something we can fix right now. And once this is over, it's probably not going to seem like something worth fixing at all, I suspect.

And FWIW: a much bigger injustice is how many of these jobs in the service sectors are ephemeral in these situations. Wait staff and shopkeepers don't merely have to go in physically to work, they're at a _much_ higher risk of losing their jobs entirely (or having their hours cut as, say, restaurants scale back).

That latter problem is something we can address with appropriate policy.

<comment><USER10> I'd agree except I have friends in sales and almost unilaterally they were told to keep coming into the office, despite their entire job being done from phones and computers. Theres a pretty toxic culture in sales where everything is war, and you have to show how committed you are everyday.

<comment><USER11> I'm in sales and every role I've held (a grand total of 2 tbf) has been a "be in the office if you need to be" type deal. Same as other people I know in it or other other positions I've considered.

If spending the weekend at a convention in another state is what's needed to make the sale I do that. If drinking with a visiting client until 2am is what's needed to make the sale I do that. If coming in to the office when there's no need and I might get sick and die and more importantly not be able to make sales, I don't do that.

"Sales" is a very broad role to the point where I think someone saying they do it is closer to someone saying they "make things" or "perform services" rather than "software developer" or "lawyer". It's more of a department than anything. Experiences working in it thus vary greatly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> At my internship, everyone used to joke about how interns are t real people. However, I was treated 10x better than any labour or retail job I have ever worked. It is amazing how well people treat you once you have a piece of paper that says "engineering" on it, I can't even describe it

<comment><USER13> This was true for my office as well, but at the same time when I was in elementary and high school in advanced math classes with mostly other guys, I was always mocked for it by students of parallel classes. Life's not fair for sure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> As someone who has worked for a bank for years, what is a "banker"? Is it the legal team? the risk team? middle management? software developers? QA team? risk team? The execs? the cleaning staff?

And why are tellers not bankers? They perform one of the main public facing banking tasks/services.

Also how are tellers supposed to work from home? This is a rather unfair situation, but it's just the nature of the job, not some attack on the lower class.

I just find this whole article weird.

<comment><USER15> > And why are tellers not bankers? They perform one of the main public facing > banking tasks/services.

This question/claim only makes any sense if you're willing to consider that the cleaning staff might deserve to be called "bankers" too.

Tellers don't provide any banking services. They can't agree to hold your money or loan you money. They don't provide any advice. They're an implementation detail of the banking agreement you set up with an actual banker, a piece of plumbing that happens to be how you move money into or out of your account. Hence the popularity of automatic teller machines.

<comment><USER14> I don't know what the definition of a banker is in the first place other than an employee of the bank.

That is where my confusion lies. What is the definition of a banker? And what is their job title?

<comment><USER15> There are a large number of job titles. But I would say someone qualifies as a "banker" if they are responsible for a flow of money, or if their work consists of helping other people implement flows of money.

I would be comfortable calling e.g. a corporate treasurer a "banker" in this sense, though I wouldn't expect corporate treasurers to be included in the category "bankers" in the context of this piece.

For this piece, something like the intersection of (1) the definition I provide with (2) the class of people employed by "banks".

A teller occupies a position of responsibility in that they can cause a lot of mischief by misbehaving. But I don't think the responsibility to refrain from stealing from the company is the relevant kind of responsibility. A teller at work isn't supposed to be making any decisions of any kind.

<comment><USER16> A teller is responsible for flows of money from the bank to its customers and vice versa, no?

<comment><USER15> No. The teller isn't responsible for those flows by transporting the money any more than the security guard is responsible for them by letting the customer go through the door.

<comment><USER16> You're right, the security guard is also a banker by your definition.

<comment><USER15> I suggest you show my definition to a few people, ask them whether it includes security guards, and see what they say.

On the negligible chance that you made this comment in earnest, the results may surprise you.

<comment><USER16> It was in earnest. What seems to be going on here is that we have a very different understanding of what "responsible for a flow of money" means.

In my mental model, someone who handles, protects, counts, transfers, etc. money to and from customers is fairly literally "responsible for a flow of money".

I suspect you believe your definition requires a higher threshold and/or type of responsibility that these roles do not entail, but I don't see where that is in your definition.

I think maybe you what you mean is that our hypothetical banker is independently making some decisions around how / where / etc this money flows with some degree of autonomy ?

My point here was primarily just to say that it is maybe a bit thornier of a thing to define than you realize given that your definition in my honest opinion and in what I consider a reasonable reading did not clearly leave out one of the primary categories of employee that you intended it to exclude.

Sidenote - stating that "you will find most people will agree with me" is an, um, interesting method of argument.

<comment><USER15> > Sidenote - stating that "you will find most people will agree with me" is > an, um, interesting method of argument.

Not at all. That is the standard for determining what something means.

What you're saying here is that I expressed an idea, you agree with me as to both what I meant by it and what other people would understand by it, but, for unstated reasons, you think my expression was metaphysically incorrect. Why?

The project of communication is for the listener to understand the same thing the speaker intended. If that happens, the communication was correct. As applied here, if I think "responsible for a flow of money", elucidated by a negative example, means something, and everyone else agrees with me that it means that thing... then that is in fact what it means. Words hold their meaning by common agreement, and solely by common agreement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> How is this inequality more so than it is simple role differentiation?

Can tellers not be trained for better-paying roles? Better yet, education is available to those who wish to utilize it (though the education system clearly has its own inefficiencies).

<comment><USER18> How is "simple role differentiation" not a description of inequality?

When you ask that question, you are doing this thing where you don't try to address the concern people actually have, which is about what an equitable employer-employee relationship looks like, not "role differentiation".

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Currently experiencing a similar situation. I work in quality assurance(medical devices) and we're the only ones on site right now besides manufacturing. About half of our department has been set up to work from home and management is working on getting the equipment necessary to set up everyone. Not to mention they'll now be paying "designated essential workers" double time and we will not be included because our job doesn't necessarily require us to be on site, just that we're lacking the hardware as of now.

</comment><comment><USER20> What about traders operating Bloomberg terminals? Do they need to come in, or can they VPN into their terminals remotely?

<comment><USER21> bloomberg anywhere exists (cloud version) -- but there are regulations that require trader behavior to be monitored. no personal devices on the floor, for example, last thing you want is someone to send encrypted messages over signal that the SEC/your bank can't read. these seem to be mostly waived: [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-09/finra- con...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-09/finra-concedes- virus-may-impact-wall-street-oversight-of-traders)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is the distinction between staff and line. Line produces, staff is overhead. Easy to cut staff but not line, as cutting line reduces production.

Problem is in some industries, staff have more political power than line, as we see in higher-ed and medicine. This upsets the balance and results in less/poorer quality production from line.

</comment><comment><USER23> The hazard is jobs that are 1) not remoteable, 2) done by old people, and 3) done at high people density.

What I'm hearing from a friend who runs a branch of a major bank is that almost no one comes into the branch, because that's only needed for loans. The ATMs outside are busy.

<comment><USER23> Looking at the above critera, what comes to mind is politics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Nine out of ten things I need a teller for a bigger ATM could handle. Like an ATM that will dispense any denomination of coins or bills or cashier's checks. I've seen ATMs that take checks, too.

<comment><USER15> > I've seen ATMs that take checks, too.

I didn't know there were ATMs that didn't take checks.

In my experience with depositing checks into ATMs, they originally just asked you how much the check was for. This would obviously require human oversight at some point, but you as a customer never needed to interact with a human.

Eventually they started OCRing the checks and proposing to you what they thought the amount of the check was, subject to your correction. Human oversight is still needed, but dramatically reduced.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This doesn't seem to be about inequality as much as just practicality.

Back office folks have always been not as necessary day to day in person as much as front line anyone / anything.</comment>


The App Store Hype Gets A Dose Of Reality - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/25/the-app-store-hype-gets-a-dose-of-reality/?awesm=tcrn.ch_2Y1&utm_campaign=techcrunch&utm_content=techcrunch-autopost&utm_medium=tcrn.ch-twitter&utm_source=direct-tcrn.ch <comment><USER2> It seems to me this is just one big made up story. I seem to recall TechCrunch was one of the sites reporting these hyped up stories of someone successfully quitting their job to develop iPhone apps or a teenager making $20K a week. Now they're telling us not to believe the hype they helped create? Seems they're milking this thing for all its worth.

<comment><USER3> In Drew Curtis's book _It's Not News, It's Fark_ , he talks about how more than anything, the media loves talking about media, because they understand it the most. That means any huge story almost inevitably turns into reports of "Has the media gone too far?" and "What role do we have in stories' getting out of hand?"

I see no reason why this wouldn't apply to mass-market tech blogs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm going to toot my own horn an link to an article I wrote six months ago: <http://20bits.com/articles/the-099-app-store/>

It's the same fundamental misunderstanding. It's like launching a Facebook app and hoping the app directory helps you take off (in the early days there were people who did just this), or banking on getting mentioned on TechCrunch.

Now, I don't know what Rick Strom did or didn't do to market his apps, but success or failure isn't the App Store's fault. It removes a huge chunk of friction from the sales funnel, but it's all at the final, transactional step.

There's a big chunk in the middle which consists of marketing and, AFAIK, no app developer has talked extensively about their marketing efforts, only about their position in the App Store.

Rick is right: you're probably going to lose that game. Rather than go home I'd try to figure out a better game to play.

<comment><USER5> _Rather than go home I'd try to figure out a better game to play._

Downloadable software where the main source of app discovery is Google rather than the App Store? (i.e. for Macs or PCs or both)

App Store: 600,000 competitors, success by any of which decreases your visibility.

Whole wide Internet: lots of other people writing software, but if they're not in your niche they might as well not exist. I don't lose sales just because DeliciousMonster launched.

App Store: sales curve starts with initial spike, then dies within 2 weeks.

Whole wide Internet: sales curve typically gradually increases as you tune your site and marketing with step increases at new releases

App Store: iFart

Whole wide Internet: you make apps people use on a daily basis for things that are important to them. They send you letters about how happy your app made them.

App Store: $4.99 is expensive

Whole wide Internet: $19.99 is cheap

<comment><USER6> I think there's a lot Apple needs to do to improve the IA of the App Store, and they need to make the iTunes store accessible from standard web browsers rather than just the iTunes software. But there's nothing preventing iPhone app developers from creating websites for their apps, and there are a variety of sites that review apps. That you cannot _buy_ an iPhone app outside of the App Store does nothing to prevent developers from gaining visibility outside of it. There is nothing preventing anyone from Googling for iPhone apps (just as you can Google for non-iPhone apps), than the developers themselves.

As for the differences in sales curves, that's actually reflective of how much easier it is to find and purchase new apps on the App Store (as well as the increased competition -> price reduction that their aggregation provides), as opposed to having hundreds or thousands of different purchase sites with their own method for payment processing. Also note that most iPhone apps tend to be for entertainment, for which an early sales spike and sudden drop-off is the norm regardless of platform...or medium.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I keep reading all these stories about how bad the App Store is, and how you can't sell stuff after the first few days. I've got one app up there that took me a day to write, is typical of the 'this is my first iPhone app' apps, hasn't been updated in about 5 months (and thus would be _well_ towards the back of the pack) and yet still sells a moderate number of copies each month.

</comment><comment><USER8> "To those of you who keep building things anyway: rock on."

I think that for developers and pretty much anyone in a creative pursuit the above mentality is key. If you set out to build something solely for the money you are not going to produce something of the same quality as someone who builds something they want to build anyway, and consequently you will fail at your objective.

</comment><comment><USER9> "Strom likens the App Store to a lottery, with the time and cost spent developing your application as the price of admission. And I think he's right in this respect. The thing is, I don't really see how this differs from many professions where the rich and elite are given heavy media coverage while everyone else toils away in obscurity."

Maybe not, but it's a lot different than developing for the web or Facebook, where you can continuously iterate on your product, get better over time, attract a few loyal users and expand from there. The difference between iPhone and other software platforms is like the difference between trying to become a pop star or starting a software company.

</comment><comment><USER10> Inevitably every dev that comments for an article on how the App Store is flawed/overhyped falls into one of two categories:

1\. Those that relied on merely having their app in the app store to generate purchases. 2\. Those that spent far too long and far too much developing an app then fell into trap #1.

</comment><comment><USER11> The AppStore has become such a successful magnet for developers that it is being attacked from every front just to push them away from the ecosystem.

They are afraid Objective-C and XCode become the next development platform.

Well you know what? With all its defects, it is still the number one marketplace for online apps. And Objective-C, a complete unknown a couple of years ago, is hotter than never.

Period.

<comment><USER12> Who is attacking the AppStore?

Who is afraid Objective-C and Xcode will be the next development platform?

What does "the next development platform" even mean?

ObjC and Xcode are just fine, and developing apps for the iPhone is a lot of fun (outside of the AppStore experience, apparently), but I'm not sure they deserve any sort of conspiracy theory.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Duh? Any developer knows that the success of their app is a crap shoot. We don't need techcrunch to tell us the bloody obvious.</comment>


The family who sold everything for Bitcoin - <AUTHOR> https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/j5jq93/we-talked-to-the-family-who-sold-their-belongings-for-bitcoins <comment><USER2> Reading that makes me feel sick.</comment>


Beware Isolated Demands For Rigor - <AUTHOR> http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/14/beware-isolated-demands-for-rigor/ <comment><USER2> Since this seems to be the overall point

>But when other people are totally happy to talk about speed and blood pressure and comas and the crime rate, and then suddenly switch to a position that we can't talk about IQ at all unless we have a perfect factor-analytical proof of its obeying certain statistical rules, then I worry they're just out to steal cows.... But when people never even begin to question the idea of different cultures but make exacting demands of anyone before they can talk about different races – even though the two ideas are statistically isomorphic – then I think they're just out to steal cows.

There is of course, the opposite problem, which is that people take things like IQ and infer wild conclusions, usually in the service of white supremacy. An example of this is the MAO "Warrior Gene." There are several studies showing a weak correlation between a variant of the gene and violence. Black Americans have this gene more often.

There is a specific, very bad, study that is often quoted. It cherry picks its data, and still can't achieve a significance of p > .05.[1] Yet it is often brought up as indisputable proof of the savage nature of black people. It's ridiculous, and IMHO, much worse than the tendencies criticized in the blog post.

[1] [http://www.soc.iastate.edu/staff/delisi/MAOA%202013.pdf](http://www.soc.iastate.edu/staff/delisi/MAOA%202013.pdf)

<comment><USER3> Side note...

Funny thing about white supremacy. If you go on raw IQ statistics alone, then whites are certainly not the master race. That title would belong to Asians and Ashkenazi Jews.

But then again I'm a skeptic of IQ = everything.

<comment><USER4> It's a benchmark for the brain. It's not close to everything, but it measures something and that something is significant. I'm sure you agree, but I need to get it out.

<comment><USER5> IQ is only significant within its own context and that significance is functionally limited even within that context: an individual requires an IQ above a certain threshold to not be considered "developmentally delayed" but above a certain threshold, it also doesn't mean much.

By context, I mean that IQ has meaning for the way life is for humans right now, but given a return to an earlier context (hunter-gatherer) or a transition to a new context (say some high-tech utopia where computers do the heavy thinking), it becomes functionally meaningless.

<comment> barry-cotter You've been Gladwelled man.

[http://neoacademic.com/2011/10/05/gladwell-was-wrong-high- an...](http://neoacademic.com/2011/10/05/gladwell-was-wrong-high-and-very- high-ability-employees-perform-differently/) [http://pss.sagepub.com/content/22/10/1336](http://pss.sagepub.com/content/22/10/1336)

The nature of the relationship between ability and performance is of critical importance for admission decisions in the context of higher education and for personnel selection. Although previous research has supported the more-is- better hypothesis by documenting linearity of ability-performance relationships, such research has not been sensitive enough to detect deviations at the top ends of the score distributions. An alternative position receiving considerable attention is the good-enough hypothesis, which suggests that although higher levels of ability may result in better performance up to a threshold, above this threshold greater ability does not translate to better performance. In this study, the nature of the relationship between cognitive ability and performance was examined throughout the score range in four large- scale data sets. Monotonicity was maintained in all instances. Contrary to the good-enough hypothesis, the ability-performance relationship was commonly stronger at the top end of the score distribution than at the bottom end.

<comment><USER5> I haven't been Gladwelled as I avoid the guy and this is my own opinion formed from being around a fair number of very smart people over the course of my life. In my opinion, IQ matters to a point, "good-enough" if you want to call it that, and then other personality factors or strengths and weaknesses take over.

<comment><USER6> Does the cited study affect your opinion?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> While I agree with the admonishment (see also [http://lesswrong.com/lw/km/motivated_stopping_and_motivated_...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/km/motivated_stopping_and_motivated_continuation)), I think the PBS example is bad.

The question of how we trade off different methods of achieving broadly humanitarian ends is a different question than how we trade off broadly humanitarian ends against different ends. If the only case being made for the air strikes is humanitarian, then it makes sense to see if it's reasonable humanitarian bang for the buck. Of course, there are other ends that the air- strikes might serve, though I have no sufficiently informed opinion on their effectiveness (or counter-productiveness).

</comment><comment><USER8> This is a tactic that I've yet been able to counter effectively. It's more about mixing levels of rigor.

Case in point: a tech company releases diversity numbers. A reasonable point is to ask for a breakdown into tech, admin, support, etc. Often in these companies the diversity is shoved into sales and marketing.

But then another commenter will ask about the diversity of the candidates, and speculate that they are identical to the company's hires, and then "prove" that the company's practices are unbiased.

So then you point out that a company is not a blushing maid, that they choose the people they recruit, project an image that influences self-selection, and heavily encourage people to refer their friends. And then you get attacked for demanding too much rigor.

What the argument is really about is whether there is a problem to fix. The diversity numbers clearly indicate that there is. But people who like to believe there is not alternately dig trenches and build walls of rigor to block the debate.

<comment><USER9> _What the argument is really about is whether there is a problem to fix. The diversity numbers clearly indicate that there is._

You can't draw a normative conclusion from a positive claim alone. You additionally need some normative axiom. No fact can tell you what you _should_ do.

In the discussion you cite, the disagreeing parties have different normative axioms. Some people believe in statistical equality as an end goal, whereas others have equal treatment. If you believe in statistical equality (as I think you do), then the facebook numbers are a problem to fix. If you believe in equality of treatment (as I suspect the others do), then you can draw no conclusion - the numbers do not directly imply anything about equal treatment.

Similarly, consider a debate between a "meat is murder" activist and a carnivore. No one disagrees that animals are killed - the only disagreement is over whether that's a bad thing.

<comment><USER8> A good example of the debate and tactics I'm describing. :)

If you agree that women are not somehow less mentally capable than men, then the fact that technical jobs are 85% dominated by men should be a concern. Not just for "normative" reasons or "statistical equity", but simply that there are a lot of talented people being excluded for one reason or another. If not, you should explain WHY not. Anomalies demand explanation.

You dismiss the numbers because of an assumed equality of treatment and saying, well, I don't see anything therefore it's not a problem... and if it is, it's somebody else's problem. That's exactly the mismatch of rigor I'm talking about. You put the burden on others to "prove" that something is amiss, then when they do, demand more.

<comment><USER9> Claiming that "a lot of talented people being excluded for one reason or another" is a _positive_ claim. It's merely a fact about the world. If you are against this, that's a _normative axiom_ (or possibly a normative conclusion derived from another normative axiom).

As for the undue rigor involved, it's you who seems to be demanding a lot: you demand proof that men and women are statistically unequal merely to admit it as a possibility.

More precisely, let A = "women are unequally treated" and B = "women are not statistically equal to men" (at the point of application for Facebook employment). The diversity numbers imply A || B. You are assuming that B is false because there is no proof it is true, and therefore concluding A must be true (since A || B and !B => A). But strangely, you are not asserting that A is false without a rigorous proof that A is true (which would imply B).

That's the fundamental asymmetry that Scott Alexander is talking about. The people you disagree with are merely saying "A || B, we don't know which."

<comment><USER8> "We don't know which", and will stop there. That's fine. All I ask is you be explicit about where you stand: on the side of the status quo, not wrapped in the flag of math as you would like pretend, but simply content with the way things are, and utterly incurious about how to change it.

[edit] For fuck sake - if you had noticed a 50% imbalance in CPU usage on your server farm, surely you'd spend some time trying to understand it. What the hell is wrong with so many people who are busy inventing facile excuses and dredging up mathy reasons why to NOT recognize the problem as a problem and looking into why it might exist?

<comment><USER9> If I narrowed the source of CPU usage down to this block of code:

        for {
          x <- f()
          y <- g()
        } yield (x+y)

I would not immediately conclude that f() is the source of the problem. That's what you are advocating doing.

And if someone suggests g() might be the problem, you are assuming they are wrong and demanding an excess level of rigor from them. That's exactly what Scott Alexander is warning against.

[edit: I'm sticking to epistemology. I'm not hijacking the thread to discuss gender.]

<comment><USER8> Still going on that vein, eh? If you notice a global imbalance in CPU usage, you should be totally focused on _understanding the cause_ , not inventing excuses why g() is not the problem or why people investigating f() are wrong.

I frankly don't care whether it's a pipeline problem or a filter problem, or both. I have more than a decade of performance work under my belt; I'm familiar with the usual arguments. What makes me take notice is that so much effort is put into arguing why there isn't a problem at all, or that people who say there is a problem are somehow mistaken.

Seriously. Do you think that women are intellectually flawed? Yes or no? If yes, I'd love to hear why. If no, what is your best guess why they are underrepresented? No tricks, no shifting of levels. Why do you think it's so? "I don't know, let's find out together" is a perfectly good answer.

<comment><USER10> > _Do you think that women are intellectually flawed? [...] If no, what is > your best guess why they are underrepresented?_

My best guess is that relevant male math-type skills have a higher _variance_ than female math-type skills. That means that even if the _average_ ability is about the same, there are more men than women at the very top of the skill distribution and ALSO at the very bottom of the skill distribution. If you look for math morons, you'll find more men; if you look for math geniuses, you'll find more men. If you look for people with roughly average math ability, you'll find more women. If the variance is even a LITTLE larger, it can explain an arbitrarily large imbalance at the high end, and we have both (some) statistical evidence that it IS larger and plausible biological reasons to expect that it MIGHT be larger.

Women have two X chromosomes; men only have one. All the important stuff that makes us human is on the X chromosome. So for the sake of intuition, let us imagine that there were only THREE available genes for math ability, all equally prevalent in the population, and any X chromosome you inherit includes one (and only one!) of these three "math ability" genes. The genes are:

(1) "moron" (recessive)

(2) "genius" (recessive)

(3) "average" (dominant)

In that world, men would have a 1 in 3 chance of being a genius and women would have a 1 in 9 chance of being a genius.

Similarly, men would have a 1 in 3 chance of being a moron and women would have a 1 in 9 chance of being a moron.

In that world, having two X chromosomes makes women "more average" than men, which means that if some career requires the "math genius" gene, that career will be 75% male.

Does that all make sense?

Okay, now let's suppose that "genius" gene is a bit more rare. Let's say that only 10% of X chromosomes have the "potential math genius" gene. In that case, men would outnumber women 10-to-1 instead of 3-to-1 in professions requiring it. The rarer that gene is, so long as that gene is either _recessive_ or to some degree _averages out_ with its counterpart on the other X chromosome, it will be hugely rarer that women fully express the properties that gene codes for.

If this analysis is valid, it suggests that women are less likely to be at the very TOP of math-related fields (or will have to work a lot harder to get there) for essentially the same reason women are far less likely than men are to be colorblind.

(relevant study: [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7604277](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7604277) )

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Personally, what concerns me most often in argument these days isn't any sort of peer to peer inconsistency, but that argument often takes place in and is hurt by the broadcast mesh of blog posts, responses to blog posts, comment sections and tweets.

In isolation, any two peers are either going to fail to negotiate entirely or converge in short order.

There's little hope for convergence of vocabulary or context much less rigor among the chatter of a hundreds, thousands or millions of nodes trying to dictate the protocol. More likely, you end up with a split brain where each island establishes its own consensus totally apart from the other.

</comment><comment><USER12> I think it is interesting to note that machine learning is succeeding where the philosophers failed, in defining common sense notions like these.

</comment><comment><USER13> > they're just out to steal cows.

What does this idiom mean? I've never heard of it before.

<comment><USER14> The reason you haven't heard of it is that it is a new phrase that he just made up in the article to refer you back to the case of the philosopher selectively applying logic so he can take his neighbors cow and justify it by this being a new cow. It basically means that you are grasping at whatever logic supports your pre-existing desire/belief rather than using logic to determine your desire/beliefs.</comment></comment>


Printing with conventional rotary presses will create cheaper electronics - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21702741-printing-conventional-rotary-presses-will-create-cheaper-electronics <comment><USER2> Solar cell researchers have been talking about roll to roll processes for at least two decades. There are startups [1] but so far, the regular IC wafer processes still seem to be winning on cost. Here's a study of roll to roll processes.[2]

Many battery parts are printed by a roll to roll process. OLEDs have been produced that way. Flexible displays have been made, but not sold in volume.

This is a real technology, but so far, it hasn't been able to beat out the mature technologies with which it competes. Anything it can do can be done with a regular IC fab, one several generations old because this is a low- resolution technology. So it's all about cost per unit.

[1] [https://www.infinitypv.com/](https://www.infinitypv.com/) [2] [http://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2015/02/f19/QTR%20Ch8%20-...](http://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2015/02/f19/QTR%20Ch8%20-%20Roll%20To%20Roll%20Processing%20TA%20Feb-13-2015.pdf)

<comment><USER3> I wonder if the reason roll-to-roll processes haven't caught on is that there is so much capital investment in IC/wafer processes at scale that the unit economics just don't add up (until/unless very large capital investments are made to scale up and refine margins on roll-printed circuits).

If this is the case, are there areas to attack the market? Any smaller markets which don't attract the attention of major electronics fab and might be delved to help bootstrap roll-printing? Any old/displaced technology areas that no longer have the advantage of large fabs/infrastructure investments where roll- to-roll processes could come online to replace them at competitive prices?

Any idea what it'd take, in terms of unsolved R&D and in terms of capital investment, to create a roll-to-roll process capability of printing some circuit that would be cost-competitive in some area like solar cells or maybe simple ICs?

<comment><USER2> Low-end ICs are so cheap it's not worth the trouble.

Solar cells are the most promising area. There have been roll to roll processes. Applied Materials worked on one. Energy Conversion Devices (bankrupt 2012) had a production roll to roll process for flexible solar cells. But it wasn't cheaper than silicon wafers from China.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is good to see, since machines that build complex things is one of the requirements for the scifi-style economy of surplus. The ideal is a machine or collection of machines that can build anything you'd need, including all the parts needed to duplicate themselves, starting with raw materials like rocks, sand, plant matter and sea water. Electronics has always been difficult, but these machines can build components directly.

</comment><comment><USER5> e-Ink promised to make huge walls of displays, but couldn't really make the economics work due to the cost of the electronics behind it. I wonder if this could solve that issue.

</comment><comment><USER3> "...recently fabricated a flexible transistor that operates at 110 gigahertz"

I know there have been other transistors from R&D projects which operate at 690+ ghz as well. But does anyone with much better EE and chip manufacturing experience than me know how this 110 ghz transistor might translate to actual chip/IC speeds, if this thing were scaled up and produced?

<comment><USER6> I'm not an EE, but if that 110 GHz is the transistor's Ft or gain-bandwidth product, then I think that's a respectable but not exceptional transistor speed— something you'd get from a silicon-wafer process a few generations ago. Which is actually pretty nice, because it means you could use this flexible process to produce actual computational elements, not just displays and things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It seems to me that the only advantage here is that the substrate is flexible, instead of rigid (like a wafer). Or is there more to it?

</comment><comment><USER8> In this instance, appending the subtitle would be helpful:

"Printing with conventional rotary presses will create cheaper electronics"

<comment><USER9> Thanks, we updated the title from "On a roll".

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Oh, more disposable junk is exactly what we needed!</comment>


Do not install or develop mobile apps unless you have to - jor-el https://www.dwheeler.com/blog/2018/10/23#no-mobile-apps <comment><AUTHOR> I tell this my customers all the time.

Still an app in the App Store is seen as a must have.</comment>


Persistent Django on Amazon EC2 and EBS - The easy way - <AUTHOR> http://thomas.broxrost.com/2008/08/21/persistent-django-on-amazon-ec2-and-ebs-the-easy-way/

<comment><USER2> Very well written article. It's nice to see the usage of EC2/EBS in a simple to follow, step by step tutorial.

</comment><comment><USER3> Huh? It costs $2.40 a day to run Django on that? Is that not a bit...expensive?

<comment><USER4> That's nothing about Django, it's just having an instance running. At 10¢ an hour it adds to $2.40 a day.</comment></comment>


Exploring an alternative to git-subtree - <AUTHOR> http://www.mos6581.org/git_subtree_alternative <comment><USER2> _Things get even more exciting when you want to push that submodule commit afterwards to fix things, only to find out that someone sneaked in a commit in the meantime! Now you'll have to create a new commit on the top-level project to point it to your rebased commit, hah!_

I don't quite understand this one. "Now you'll have to create a new commit...". At this point, you haven't yet created a top-level project commit at all.

If the sequence is commit to submodule, push submodule, update top-level module, where is the headache that is unique to submodules here?

 _If that's not enough to convince you, you should try branching with this setup. You'll have to manually branch (and later merge) each of your submodules when you create a new branch. In the past, I have worked with a git repository containing a dozen tightly-coupled submodules for code-sharing with other teams. Needless to say, it didn't take very long to realize that submodules are not suited for that use case._

Why was submodule better than just using a single repo and multiple remotes in this case? Or put another way, what did you gain by having separate repos if all the repos branch and come back in exactly the same way.

I feel like i can still make a lot of commits on both top-level and submodules but not have a headache, the parallel branching thing seems odd to me.

<comment><AUTHOR> _I don 't quite understand this one. "Now you'll have to create a new commit...". At this point, you haven't yet created a top-level project commit at all._

That sentence intends to illustrate what can happen when you forget to push your submodule commit before commiting on the top-level repository.

 _Why was submodule better than just using a single repo and multiple remotes in this case?_

I'm not sure what you mean with this.

 _Or put another way, what did you gain by having separate repos if all the repos branch and come back in exactly the same way._

We used submodules because the code in the submodules was shared with another team.

You want to also branch the submodules so as not to break another branch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is better than git-subtree, but it unfortunately still results in an ugly commit history graph. I've actually been working on another alternative to git-subtree: [https://github.com/laughinghan/git- subhistory](https://github.com/laughinghan/git-subhistory)

Splitting is the same as git-subtree, but doesn't duplicate commits when merging upstream commits to the library, by inverting split, creating commits in the main project corresponding to the upstream commits made to the library.

This results in a beautiful commit history graph: an upstream commit that adds a file to the library, becomes a commit that adds a file to the path to the library in the main project, that gets merged into the main history, which is exactly what you want. It does currently have the same performance problems git-subtree has, but I believe that is not fundamental.

<comment><USER4> Serendipitously, I've been working on a new Git command called `git-subrepo` for the last 3 months that deals with all these concerns and more. The command became fully usable about a week ago.

The [https://github.com/ingydotnet/git- subrepo](https://github.com/ingydotnet/git-subrepo) addresses all the known concerns of the project owner, project collaborators, and end users. It keeps state in `path/subdir/.gitrepo` which means that git commands like `git mv` just work.

It also has squeaky clean history, which I've documented here: [https://github.com/ingydotnet/git- subrepo/blob/master/doc/in...](https://github.com/ingydotnet/git- subrepo/blob/master/doc/intro-to-subrepo.md#clean-history)

Feel free to contact me by GitHub, IRC firstname.lastname@example.com or email firstname.lastname@example.com.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interesting idea. A motivated hacker could turn this into a git wrapper that could act as an intermediary to the real McCoy and make proper subrepo support baked into the commands.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, it sounds like wrapping the relevant git commands to make them git- subrepo aware is the solution rather than using hooks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have anyways seen git submodules (and svn-externals before) to be a quick and dirty workaround for managing dependencies between modules.

I've been under the impression that using an artifact management tool such as Apache Ivy or Bower provides a more manageable and scalable solution, especially in projects with 20+ developers.

How does the solution proposed by the author compare? Does it compliment a managed artefact based solution?

</comment><comment><USER8> The only downside he lists for git-subtree is that "your history will be complicated unnecessarily" if you use the rejoin option, and subtree pushes are slow if you don't use that option. But his solution also creates more than one commit whenever a change modifies a "subrepo" / library as well as the main codebase. So it doesn't really seem any better from the history point of view. Am I missing something?

<comment><AUTHOR> git-subtree duplicates history. First you make a regular commit containing both your main project's changes _and_ the subtree changes. Afterwards the subtree change is merged in again (or "subtree split --rejoin" or "subtree merge").

The advantage of git-subrepo is that your changes are immediately split up between the main project and the subrepo. Eventually, you should also be able to supply a separate commit message for the subrepo change (see "random ideas" section in the article).</comment></comment>


Google's New Patents - <AUTHOR> http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20110731130800781

<comment><USER2> Someone on reddit had an interesting idea: What if Google invited people to join them in a big pool of patents? Anyone who signed in would gain use of the pool's patents, but would have to sign all of their patents over to the pool as well.

If someone in the pool decided to sue someone outside the pool over a patent, the latter could just join the pool and avoid the lawsuit (since now they own the patent as well). This would probably lead to an equilibrium point where _everyone_ is in the pool, and thus make patents meaningless.

<comment><USER3> What if you genuinely innovate, patent your innovation and hope to exploit your IP ? One or more likely, several, pool members will sue you, force you to join the pool and thus destroy your advantage. If they have an established manufacturing division and supply chain, they can churn out your gadget before you even come up with a name. If your innovation is in any way disruptive to their business model, you'll have plenty of legal broadfires thrown your way just to make you go away.

<comment><USER4> > One or more likely, several, pool members will sue you, force you to join > the pool and thus destroy your advantage.

What are they suing you over, if your work is truly "innovative"?

<comment><USER5> A trivial/obvious detail, which unfortunately describes the majority of software patents.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What's the FSF copyleft equivalent of patents? Filing a patent and licensing it out to anyone who will agree to not use their patents offensively?</comment>


Goodbye Current Events - <AUTHOR> http://peebs.org/goodbye-current-events

<comment><USER2> Makes sense. I can relate. Maybe even give it a try. Good ideas, especially the observations on US politics and the two party system.</comment>


The Ins and Outs of Growing a Business - <AUTHOR> http://www.inc.com/print/59 <comment><USER2> _John Sculley: Don't Be Afraid to Make Tough Decisions_

No matter how stupid they are?

Seriously, Inc, you want us to take business advice from the guy who fired Steve Jobs?</comment>


What Startups Can Learn From Sun Tzu's The Art Of War - <AUTHOR> http://techli.com/2012/06/startup-the-art-of-war/

<comment><USER2> Good stuff. Personally, I've been spending a lot more time lately getting serious about strategic thinking, doing competitive analysis and formulating meaningful strategies instead of just "winging it" so much.

The book _Outhink The Competition_ [1] really inspired me to start down this path. There's some good stuff in there, and that led to me finally picking up my copy of Porter's _Competitive Strategy_ [2] and digging in. I take this seriously enough now, that I wrote a quick and dirty internal app just for managing competitive intelligence and keeping track of documents and links related to competitive analysis and strategy formulation.

Which, when you think about it, is a Good Thing. I mean, if you're talking to an investor and they say "how do you intend to compete with $FOO?" It's probably good to have a solid understanding of exactly how you intend to do that, instead of just saying "Oh, we'll out execute them." Especially when you choose to play in crowded markets like we do[3]...

[1]: [http://www.amazon.com/Outthink-Competition-Generation- Strate...](http://www.amazon.com/Outthink-Competition-Generation-Strategists- Options/dp/1118105087)

[2]: [http://www.amazon.com/Competitive-Strategy-Techniques- Indust...](http://www.amazon.com/Competitive-Strategy-Techniques-Industries- Competitors/dp/0684841487)

[3]: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4054540>

<comment><USER3> Seems like if you could automate your app a little you might have a decent app targeted for the startup crowd :)

<comment><USER2> Funny you would mention that. This app has been so useful to me already, that I've considered making a SaaS offering out of it. If I don't do that, we might just release it as open-source. Or both. The biggest argument against making a SaaS offering out of it, is that this type of app isn't really core to what we're doing, and I'm worried that it would just turn into a distraction.

<comment><USER3> Open sourcing it would seem like a nice way to potentially have other people help make a product better for you that isn't your core product.

Or do what I think 37signals should have done with sortfolio. Start a subsidiary and put 1-2 people removed from your company in charge of it. That way you still own the IP, but you aren't required to focus on it.

<comment><USER2> Heh, I don't think we're big enough for a subsidiary yet. :-) But yeah, at some point I think we'll do something with it, even if it's just putting it up on Github. We're an Open Source startup anyway (as in, all of our core offerings are Open Source / AL 2.0 licensed), so doing that kind of thing is in our DNA.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The Facebook, Twitter, Google.. buttons hover over the text. Not everyone is surfing the web on a 32' monitor in full screen you know!

<comment><USER5> Social interstitials / floating elements are rapidly becoming one of my least favorite elements of current Web design.

"Remove It Permanently" plugin rocks Firefox. No such love on mobile browsers, unfortunately.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The Art of War is a work that I often hear recommended, but I seldom see endorsements for specific translations. Can anyone who is familiar with the work remark on which translations are considered best? Bonus points for versions available as free ebooks, although I'm not averse to visiting my local library either.

<comment><USER7> I have read The Art of War at least 12 times in the past few years, from multiple translations, and my favorite one is from Ralph D. Sawyer: [http://www.amazon.com/The-Complete-Art-Of- War/dp/0813330858/...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Complete-Art-Of- War/dp/0813330858/ref=sr_1_39?ie=UTF8&qid=1338613639&sr=8-39)

Translations can be extremely different, most of them are pretty vague, and many are just plain wrong. The above one is known between scholars to be one of the best translations out there, if not the best. He also gives a very nice 46-pages-long introduction to the context of where the book was written, and about who Sun Tzu was. Other than that, there at the end of each chapter there are some good comments from him, explaining certain aspects of it, which is good for the first reading.

I would stay away from the free ebooks/versions, I haven't yet found one with a good enough translation, and that causes issues like for example, the sixth chapter (one of the most important ones, in my opinion), which usually has a completely different interpretation in the free ones I've read, because of the bad translation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I disagree with the author's interpretation of some of these points.

The author inteprets "... when able to attack, we must seem unable..." as meaning you should lay low. On the contrary, this is talking about the element of surprise and sending a signal that what's going on is the opposite of what's really going on. Are you about to launch? Say you're still hunkering down working on product. Do you have a ton of money available? Make it seem like you're operating on a shoestring. Are you operating on a shoestring? Then make it seem like you have plenty of funds. My understanding of various "Art of War" and military strategy type things I've seen is that the element of surprise is the single most important tool for leveraging a weak position into a strong one.

And the second quote, about "It is only one who is thoroughly acquainted with the evils of war that can thoroughly understand the profitable way of carrying on" is I think referring to people who have been through the horrors of war and hence know enough to be cautious and not rush into it, as opposed to younger/newer soldiers who can't wait to get into a battle and show how awesome they are. If this has any analogy to the startup world I'd think it would be more like "only those who've experienced the downsides of taking on VC funding will know whether they should take funding again next time vs. bootstrapping".

</comment><comment><USER2> And on a related note, be sure to check out:

 _Hide a Dagger Behind a Smile: Use the 36 Ancient Chinese Strategies to Seize the Competitive Edge_

[http://www.amazon.com/Hide-Dagger-Behind-Smile- Competitive/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Hide-Dagger-Behind-Smile- Competitive/dp/1598693808/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1338585005&sr=1-1)

 _The Prince_

[http://www.amazon.com/Prince-Niccolo- Machiavelli/dp/03121497...](http://www.amazon.com/Prince-Niccolo- Machiavelli/dp/0312149786/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1338585053&sr=1-6)

and

 _The Art of Worldly Wisdom_

[http://www.amazon.com/Art-Worldly-Wisdom-Balthasar- Gracian/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Art-Worldly-Wisdom-Balthasar- Gracian/dp/1619491648/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1338585085&sr=1-1)

<comment><USER9> The Prince is an excellent book. However, it provides practical and ruthless advice on how to run a country. It's insights into human nature aren't very helpful in how to perform in the business world.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey - This article and it's responses tell me that there should be something available for anyone who just wants to learn from other people's experiences. To just throw something out there, imagine that something could be an app or website, possibly called "experienced" with nothing but a search bar when you arrive at it's homepage. Type in anything, click search and you get other people's experiences and stories on that subject organized by ratings. Quora is closely related to this idea, however Quora is about asking anything, it's not focused. The goal is to have a database of experiences, stories, quotes, etc. that people can quickly and effectively search through and learn what to do or not to do resulting in gaining confidence to accelerate to their goal in their current situation. Your thoughts?

</comment><comment><USER11> I appreciated the examples the author cited. So often we see posts that layout generic advice by non-founding writers, its important to back your points up with case studies and examples.

<comment><USER12> I generally dislike articles like this--where they try to back up their "wise advice" by appealing to some tangentially-related ancient wisdom--but the examples made it worthwhile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's the 21st century and there's a field for this: Complexity Theory applied to organizations. There's no need for ancient dogma, we have science.

<comment><USER14> It's instructive to compare the two. 'Ancient dogma' is, after all, the result of hundreds, or in the Chinese case, thousands of years of social evolution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is a great book and I'd recommend it to anybody.

Despite the militaristic title, it's not about aggression or destroying your enemies. Throughout the book, open warfare is always depicted as the most costly and least desirable option. Adding an enemy's strength to yours, with zero destruction, is regarded as the ultimate form of victory.

<comment><USER16> You seem to be using destroy and open warfare synonymously. The Art of War is about one of these, not the other:

<http://www.thefreedictionary.com/destroy>

      de·stroy  (d-stroi)
      v. de·stroyed, de·stroy·ing, de·stroys
      v.tr.
      1. To ruin completely; spoil: The ancient manuscripts were destroyed by fire.
      2. To tear down or break up; demolish. See Synonyms at ruin.
      3. To do away with; put an end to: "In crowded populations, poverty destroys the possibility of cleanliness" (George Bernard Shaw).
      4. To kill: destroy a rabid dog.
      5. To subdue or defeat completely; crush: The rebel forces were destroyed in battle.

See 5.

<comment><USER14> _The pinnacle of military excellence is not to win one hundred victories in one hundred battles. It is to subjugate your enemy without fighting. -- Sun Tzu_

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> What utter tripe. The author of this article "worked at startups in Boulder, CO and New York, where she worked to develop communities and delight users."

Translate that into English as "has spent her time writing navel-gazing articles like this that are unnecessarily idolised by a ton of adoring fans hanging on to every word."

</comment><comment><USER18> The Art of War can really be applied to any domain or thing you want to do. It's beautiful in that it's specific and general at the same time. I once had a guy tell me to read it in high school when I was trying to win back a girl. It worked.

You can apply The Art of War to anything that involves competition. I don't know about anyone else but for me I think a lot of the success I've had in applying what's in the book to my life can't be totally attributed to just applying the advice in and of itself. For me, part of my success in its application most likely came from feeling more confident and like you knew some sort of secret ancient wisdom that someone else didn't know. Reading through it and thinking of applying it to your own situation really will have that confidence boosting effect I think.</comment>


Why the NSA Called Me After Midnight and Requested My Source Code - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/datadriveninvestor/why-the-nsa-called-me-after-midnight-and-requested-my-source-code-f7076c59ab3d <comment><USER2> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18293940](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18293940)

</comment><comment><USER3> Strange that they would need the source code. I would think that it should be easy to figure out what encryption algorithm it uses by looking at the binary if it wasn't blatantly advertised anyway.

<comment><USER4> one guess might be they wanted to know exactly how the software seeded the PRNG, to cut down their search space dramatically.

<comment><USER5> The binary would tell them that - in fact, it'd tell them that better than the source if there were any overlaps into garbage memory for example.

Wanting the source is purely for speedy analysis.

<comment><USER4> I've never done windows (95?) disassembly, but from what little VSC++ I did back in the day, for the sake of speed, I would probably have wanted to see the source code instead of disassembling! Don't know how good at this stuff the NSA was back then.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Why is it midnight when the NSA calls, in Connecticut (EST), and 1AM when he calls to his partner, IN CALIFORNIA, for the source code?

<comment><USER7> Must have been 4 hours later?</comment></comment>


Personalized STEM-motivational books for girls - <AUTHOR> http://www.custemized.org/

<comment><USER2> Looking at the skin tone picker. Evidently sub-Saharans need not apply.</comment>


Ethos Capital to Acquire Public Interest Registry from the Internet Society - <AUTHOR> https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ethos-capital-acquire-public-interest-170000695.html <comment><AUTHOR> I am quite not sure why an investment firm, would like to own the .org registry?</comment>


John Oliver rips Amazon's warehouses; Amazon operation leader calls it insulting - <AUTHOR> https://www.geekwire.com/2019/john-oliver-rips-amazon-warehouse-work-tech-giants-operations-chief-calls-insulting/ <comment><USER2> Please note that Mr. Clark only said that it was insulting -- he didn't refute Oliver's information.

\-- disclosure: disgruntled former Amazon employee, believe that breaking up Amazon is a no-brainer, would like to see Bezos brutally impoverished (no one should have a billion dollars, just as no one should own an H-bomb).

<comment><USER3> "Insulting" is the best bang for the buck as far as non-denial denials go: unlike "absurd" or "ridiculous", it comes with an implicit request for an apology from the other party.</comment></comment>


The Real Story Behind Apple's 'Think Different' Campaign - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/onmarketing/2011/12/14/the-real-story-behind-apples-think-different-campaign/ <comment><USER2> There is an amazing, astounding paragraph in this article. Picture the scene. Steve Jobs looks at the pitch, and is actually, viscerally grabbed by fear. The fear that all of us experience once in a while when we realize there is a big opportunity ahead, but one that we need to jump off the cliff to grab. And he realizes the fear has grabbed him, and he pushes it away. "What am I doing?" he asks himself. "Screw it. It's the right thing." And he jumps off the cliff, taking one great leap towards saving Apple.

Here's the paragraph in full:

"Jobs was quiet during the pitch, but he seemed intrigued throughout, and now it was time for him to talk. He looked around the room filled with the "Think Different" billboards and said, "This is great, this is really great … but I can't do this. People already think I'm an egotist, and putting the Apple logo up there with all these geniuses will get me skewered by the press." The room was totally silent. The "Think Different" campaign was the only campaign we had in our bag of tricks, and I thought for certain we were toast. Steve then paused and looked around the room and said out loud, yet almost as if to his own self, "What am I doing? Screw it. It's the right thing. It's great. Let's talk tomorrow." In a matter of seconds, right before our very eyes, he had done a complete about-face."

<comment><USER3> One of the elements that made the TV ad so effective (and is common today with premier brands such as Nike) - was that the actual Apple Logo only appeared for a few brief seconds at the very end of the commercial.

It's a fine line between setting the mood, and not being crass - (for the opposite, see "GoDaddy") but hopefully not being so subtle nobody can figure out what the ad was for.

<comment><USER4> There is a chipotle ad playing in the movies to the tune of "back to the start" that has a similar effect.

The first time I saw it, I was blown away by the Chipotle logo in the closing seconds.

<comment><USER5> Yes, it's a very effective ad. I spent every moment after the first five seconds trying to figure out what it was an ad for, and in that last logo reveal it all made perfect sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The final Apple TV version:

"Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. While some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do."

The version for which Jobs said "It sucks! I hate it! It's advertising agency shit!":

"To the crazy ones. Here's to the misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. Here's to the ones who see the world differently. They're the ones who invent and imagine and create. They're the ones who push the human race forward. While some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to believe they can change the world are the ones who actually do."

The devil is in the details. I'd be also very unsatisfied with the line: "They're the ones who invent and imagine and create." Like a kid writing.

Also note that Jobs practically selected the whole concept, before, "on the spot" even if he expressed doubts -- most people would "sleep over it" or whatever -- he decided immediately. Really to be respected.

<comment><USER7> Every edit there blows away the original. Perfect example of the power and value of precise, exhaustive editing.

I think the turns of rhetorical device are most notable: why would the original not start with "here's to"?! You don't just rip into a toast mid- paragraph. The pacing and repetition in the first draft had no logic behind the choices, while the final piece is pitch perfect on several levels. Editing!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I wish that the Isaacson's biography of Jobs had contained this level of detail. I just love reading about how all the different threads of the story came together to produce the Think Different commercial. I often found the biography to be brief on detail and too verbose when it came to repeating Jobs's flaws. Overall the book was inspiring but I felt it was despite, not because of, Isaacson's writing.

<comment><USER9> Given the length of this piece on just a small part of the book, I think you'd end up with encyclopedic tomes about Steve Jobs + Apple. This may not be a bad thing, but it would be a huge thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Seems that the biggest contributor to the Think Different concept was whoever created Nike's athlete ads. Think Different follows essentially the same style/format but instead starring athletes it stars historical figures. Really quite derivative.

Jobs even mentions the Nike ads in a talk about Think Different: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vNjpgLD0Xw>

<comment><USER6> "Just do it" ads started in 1988, almost a decade before Think Different campaign, here's to compare:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENi1SvEFqsQ>

Thanks for posting the Jobs' ad introduction, I've seen his talk before, but I as watched it after reading both the article and Isaacson's bio I saw something new and different.

I also have an impression that Rob Siltanen didn't remember correctly the Jobs' attire on that day as he saw him, that it was not actually a "black mock turtleneck" but a black sweater just like in the video.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Kinda OT, but forbes.com doesn't let me view the whole article on one page and as an avid instapaper user, this makes the experience cumbersome.

<comment><USER12> Use viewtext to un-paginate it [http://viewtext.org/article?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.forbes.com%...](http://viewtext.org/article?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.forbes.com%2Fsites%2Fonmarketing%2F2011%2F12%2F14%2Fthe- real-story-behind-apples-think-different-campaign%2F)

<comment><USER11> Exactly, what I was looking for, thanks a ton! :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> When I read about the 'Think Different' campaign in the Isaacson book, I was surprised to find out that they had recording a version of the ad with Jobs doing the voiceover instead of Richard Dreyfus.

I looked the ad up right away on YouTube, along with the Dreyfus one, and compared the two. The Jobs one was so much more powerful, but the power likely came from 1) his death and 2) everything that occurred AFTER the campaign and before his death. Apple was clearly better off with the Dreyfus ad at the time, even though the Jobs version seems so much better now.

<comment><USER14> I think Jobs' voice works surprisingly well for that ad. I especially like they way he says "and they have no respect for the status quo" for some reason.

[1] Steve Job's Voice <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQaAg3uxS24>

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm particularly interested that this article seems to defy the anecdote about Chiat/Day presenting the campaign with the tagline 'Think Differently', and Jobs making the change to 'Think Different'.

Whichever the case, the decision to use _Different_ instead of _Differently_ is profound.

<comment><USER16> That's not how it's recounted in the Isaacson biography. Jobs says it was pitched as "Think Different." and that they debated Different vs Differently after it was pitched.

 _This chokes me up, this really chokes me up. It was so clear that Lee loved Apple so much. Here was the best guy in advertising. And he hadn't pitched in ten years. Yet here he was, and he was pitching his heart out, because he loved Apple as much as we did. He and his team had come up with this brilliant idea, "Think Different." And it was ten times better than anything the other agencies showed. It choked me up, and it still makes me cry to think about it, both the fact that Lee cared so much and also how brilliant his "Think Different" idea was. Every once in a while, I find myself in the presence of purity—purity of spirit and love—and I always cry. It always just reaches in and grabs me. That was one of those moments. There was a purity about that I will never forget. I cried in my office as he was showing me the idea, and I still cry when I think about it._

[…]

 _They debated the grammatical issue: If "different" was supposed to modify the verb "think," it should be an adverb, as in "think differently." But Jobs insisted that he wanted "different" to be used as a noun, as in "think victory" or "think beauty." Also, it echoed colloquial use, as in "think big." Jobs later explained, "We discussed whether it was correct before we ran it. It's grammatical, if you think about what we're trying to say. It's not think the same, it's think different. Think a little different, think a lot different, think different. 'Think differently' wouldn't hit the meaning for me."_

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> "Nobody stands around the water cooler talking about print ads." Outside ad agencies, does anybody stand around the water cooler talking about TV ads? This reads to me as if Julia Ward Howe were to explain how she turned the tide of the Civil War after First Manassas...

<comment><USER18> If you lived in Silicon Valley, Apple had HUGE banners with their Think Different campaign that you could see from 280. I distinctly remember driving around there in 1997, and seeing the banner with Einstein's face, if I remember correctly, and getting goosebumps.

And this was when Apple was a laughingstock at the Brass Ring job fairs (if any of you remember those). I remember no one even bothering to line up for a job for Apple.

<comment><USER17> I have never lived in California. As to Einstein, the columnist Charles Krauthammer remarked that one common attribute of the notables depicted in the campaign--Einstein, Gandhi, etc.--was that none had ever used a computer, let alone a Mac.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> So it was copied from IBM.

</comment><comment><USER20> TL;DR Please

<comment><USER21> Business folks have over-simplified Jobs' contribution to the Think Different campaign by making it seem he single-handedly was responsible for it. A handful of people on Lee Clow's team were primarily responsible for the creation of the ad. Jobs originally hated the concept and within a few minutes decided it was the right one to choose. Then he changed his mind again after seeing the script for the ad. This original script -- strictly in my opinion -- sounded bland. It is given in the article. I can see where his "it's shit" comment came from. The agency investigated some other options while the author of the original script got fed up and moved onto other companies campaigns. Jobs then re-visited the original script along with Lee Clow. Jobs was able to use his influence to make this version better by getting Clow to lure more talented writers to tweak the script, voice actors to read it, and nicer pictures/scenes for the imagery in the ad.

<comment><USER22> Business folks have over-simplified Jobs' contribution to _everything_ by making it seem he single-handedly was responsible for _anything_.

<comment><USER23> I heard he even cured can-- aww.... sorry...

<comment><USER24> Too soon. He was a very flawed person, but will be missed nevertheless.

<comment><USER22> Missed, yes, but, if there were two Steve Jobses in this world, you can be sure of two things:

      1. They'd hate each other
      2. The other would have laughed at that joke.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The moment that about face happened, when he said, "Screw it." That was when Mr. Jobs created the campaign. Certainly there was creative work involved that deserves much credit, but the leap was made in that mind and in that moment. In the first page of the online article, more deference ought to have been paid to the man for that reason.

I am NOT a Mac.

</comment><comment><USER26> I gave up on reading this article after the first page. Please spare us the X is great but I am greater speeches.</comment>


Ask HN: What are some of your UX hacks? - <AUTHOR>

I'm not a designer by training and have no formal education in art or cognitive psychology, human factors, usability, or ergonomics but I often find myself tasked with coming up with the user experience for an application.<p>What are some UX hacks that you have, especially for people who have no formal training like myself who want to create a great experience for their website or mobile app. <comment><USER2> Clarity of purpose. Focus on functionality.

My favorite sites get this right: Hacker News, Facebook, Google, Craigslist, Techmeme, Berkshire Hathaway, Dropbox, Espn (though I can't stand its automatic video play function).

Imo, many areas of design (e.g. graphic design) screw up functionality.

"Design is how it works."

<comment><USER3> Just saw the Berkshire Hathaway site for the first time, and thought "ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!!??" I don't think I've ever thought in caps lock, but this time I did. This is a company with the highest-priced stock in the world (just below $200k a piece!), and the laundromat across the street from my place has a fancier site.

This is an amazing eye opener! Thanks!

P.S. I know the site does not seek to gain the firm credibility and if WB started BH today he wouldn't start with a site like this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you have no training and want to create a great experience, the best advice is to get some training.

Can you imagine somebody walking into a symphony hall and saying, "OK, guys, I don't really know much about music, but I want to create a masterpiece. How do I do it?" What do you think the answer would be?

It's nice to imagine that areas outside your expertise can be conquered with just a few helpful tips and some elbow grease, but it's unlikely to yield anything above "mediocre." Whether a poor or uninspiring experience is good enough for you is a personal choice. But don't fool yourself about what you're creating. If you want to create something great, you need to get really good.

<comment><USER5> What do you think the answer would be? -> The Sex Pistols, pretty much. Not so bad.

Training is overrated, so is talent. Practice with feedback is what really matters. The feedback part is what's hard to find. The Sex Pistols got a lot of feedback.

<comment><USER4> I have I feeling you're playing a No True Scotsman with this talk on "official" training. There are many good ways of training that could not remotely be described as "official." Which "really, really good experiences" were created by first-timers with no relevant experience or learning?

For example, the Sex Pistols had been doing their thing for years before they hit it big.

<comment><USER5> Training isn't the same as experience or learning. If you meant that you should have said that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Get the concrete stuff right:

-Links should be underlined, and a different color. No exceptions.

-Get button padding right. (make the entire button clickable, not just the text).

-Pick the right verbs for buttons. ("Submit" "Delete" "Copy" etc... not "OK")

-Web-form Usability: <http://theoatmeal.com/comics/shopping_cart>

-Do simple, task-based usability testing on real users.

-Etc.

</comment><comment><USER5> 1\. Remove stuff until it hurts (links, words, buttons, ...). Designing mobile first helps with that.

2\. Don't make me think.

<comment><USER7> I don't think I can up-vote this enough. #1 is key. I personally find it to be an iterative process but just keep removing things until it feels clean. Not drab and useless but clean and as though things aren't competing for your attention anymore.

<comment><USER5> Yes, it's totally iterative. And it's hard: I even find it hard after 10 years of this, it still takes me a while to keep removing stuff.

<comment><USER7> Definitely. I've been employing a trick recently that has been working well. Hide everything that isn't vital until the user needs it. Things like message times or delete buttons, hide them until mouseOver. Helps to make clean interfaces that allow you to design the key functional UX while not eliminating important functionality.

<comment><AUTHOR> How have people been responding to such interfaces?

<comment><USER7> Positively so far. Like with removing things it's easy to go too far and I'm trying to strike a balance between what to show and what to hide. I haven't mastered it yet but I'm liking the direction it's going.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Make it predictable - don't surprise a user by making ui fancier than it needs to be. Buttons for psychological 'triggering' actions (submit a form, start a process, fire a missile) and links for navigation between sets of information, etc. Reeducating users on how standard widgets work differently in your app kills the mood.</comment>


If Capitalism Is Our Future, What Will It Look Like? - <AUTHOR> https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2019/09/11/if-capitalism-is-our-future-what-will-it-look-like <comment><USER2> I'm aspiring for the else in this conditional.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't have to read the article; it will look like corporatism. Unless you mean current corporatism when you say capitalism -</comment>


Ask HN: How can I make outsourcing easier/better?  - <AUTHOR>

I strongly believe the classic bidding system we see in outsourcing websites is WRONG both for the provider and the buyer.
Two years ago, I started a website called TaskArmy (http://taskarmy.com) that aims to simplify outsourcing and produce better results.
I originally envisioned an all-email based outsourcing system, then it evolved into a fixed price service marketplace a la fiverr.
Today TaskArmy has slowly matured to the point that I want to start exploring new ways to make outsourcing better / easier.
I am reaching out to HN to ask the following:
1. What annoys you when you outsource stuff?
2. If you don't outsource stuff, why? what are the resistance factors?
3. I am considering bringing back my idea of a email-based posting system (you send an email with the task you want to outsource and the system deals with it), what do you think of this?
4. What kind of things do you outsource?
Thank you for your help,
Aymeric <comment><USER2> I love outsourcing stuff that is nota core to the business. At the office I want to have the best people that have a direct impact on the core offering of our product. So outsourcing is good and works for us, for stuff we don't want our great devs to work on or spend a minute on. we have a team building budget every year, to try new guys on outsourcing every year. so we even invent projects so we can get to know top developers, designers, copywriters, etc. Then when we need them we know which one is good, which one delivers, and we already have a working relationship. This has a huge impact in times where business is kicking in and we need people fast that delivers. It's a great strategy and it works for us. We can build a great team in no time because we have built this internal ecosystem of outsourced resources.

We get them from everywhere and linked in has been he best. Now that we can target by position/title the ads, it should be much better.

</comment><comment><USER3> I just started testing outsourcing to help out some of the more mindless things involved in freelancing.

On oDesk I had a person working on a project (he was slow and had poor English skills) but he ended up bailing out before completing the project...

...long story short he tried negotiating his rating/feedback by refunding my money.

I did find one guy on oDesk I am still working with but funny enough he is a fellow hn-er.

Now I am giving freelance.com a try.

<comment><AUTHOR> Are you outsourcing dev work mainly?</comment></comment>