Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders? (2013) - <AUTHOR> https://hbr.org/2013/08/why-do-so-many-incompetent-men <comment><USER2> This is based on my experience and has no other basis; I hope it's worthwhile:

Many people overlook obvious incompetence in men. We let men off the hook too easily when they demonstrate poor judgment, ignorance, irresponsibility, or disrespect and a lack of understanding of others. It's ok as long as they do it in a hyper-masculine way, aggressively or boisterously; it's even enouraged in many situations as a byproduct and demonstration of strength. Think of Donald Trump, for example.

I think it's a result of lowered expectations: People think that it's the way men inevitably will behave; boys will be boys. Also I think people are intimidated, both by the aggression and by knowing that socially, such behavior is generally acceptable and criticizing it likely will be a losing battle and will make the critic look 'soft' for not appreciating 'strength'.

EDIT: Some of the angry rants in this thread so far in a way support my idea: Many are ignorant, poorly reasoned, and providing little value to readers. So why is that behavior acceptable? Why do we let it pass or even take it seriously?

As a counterpoint to my own question: I generally associate that behavior with men, based also on my experiences, but I don't know the gender of the commenters (though HN is likely mostly male) and I don't know that women behave differently online.

<comment><USER3> I think it's more gender-biased, in that incompetence is overlooked in areas where we expect one gender to have better skills. If a man fucks up changing a nappy, "well, he's just a man". If a woman fucks up changing a tyre, "well, she's just a woman".

When it comes to leadership, we haven't allowed women to be visible leaders for very long; there is still cultural baggage suggesting it as a male area.

<comment><USER2> > incompetence is overlooked in areas where we expect one gender to have > better skills.

I agree and that's a good point. However, 1) if leadership is a male field then men should face higher standards, not lower ones; and 2) the consequences for high-level leaders can be much more serious than tires or nappies, too serious to dismiss with casual gender stereotypes.

<comment><USER4> > However, 1) if leadership is a male field then men should face higher > standards, not lower ones

I suspect that anthropologists and sociologists would say that the OPPOSITE is true: that people inside peer-groups are often subject to less criticism than those _out_ of the groups. ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A mostly not well written piece that is likely to do poorly on HN, but this one bit is good food for thought:

 _So it struck me as a little odd that so much of the recent debate over getting women to "lean in" has focused on getting them to adopt more of these dysfunctional leadership traits. Yes, these are the people we often choose as our leaders — but should they be?_

A lot of advice given to women with ambition boils down to "behave more like men." From what I have seen, that tends to not work well for women.

<comment><USER2> Perhaps men also should be learning leadership traits from women. If you're male and competitive, consider that the male leadership traits are easily found in your peers; the female ones could give you a big advantage - if you dare.

(I'm greatly simplifying by categorizing some traits as 'male' or 'female'. To the extent there is a difference, I expect much of it is socialized. In many ways I suspect the difference is due to the expectations of the beholder.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm firm believer in the "Peter Principle" whereby "managers rise to the level of their incompetence."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle)

</comment><comment><USER7> Are they incompetent, or do they just have different success criteria? In theory, managers are supposed to be dedicated to advancing the interests of the shareholders, and a board of directors supervises their managerial activity. But an individual manager may be much more interested in maximizing his own wealth, and may occupy a job only for as long as he can make a lot of money without getting into trouble, moving on to another firm as soon as he sees that his tenure is unsustainable (but before everyone else has worked out that he's a liability). I mean, why work hard at managing a widget factory if you can more profitably devote your time to learning about doohickeys and playing golf with the owners of the doohickey factory across town?

While I agree with the author's contention that businesses are bad at hiring managers and so reward pathological candidates, I disagree with his assumption that they're merely incompetent as opposed to self-serving. There's also the question of whether corporate boards are always aligned with the interests of shareholders. I know of one small-cap firm that brought in a new CEO who began alienating everyone in sight almost immediately, and whose previous appointments had generated a small forest of red flags, which would have been very obvious to the board. Not long after the new broom arrived the share price fell, the firm was de-listed...and the former founder-CEO sold his shares at a loss, lost his seat on the board, and the firm's IP and book of business were transferred for a song to another firm owned by other directors. (Writing it this way it sounds wildly illegal but my impression was that the activity fell into the unethical-but-legal grey area. Of course I am leaving out a lot of ancillary details, not least to avoid slandering anyone.)

<comment><USER2> > While I agree with the author's contention that businesses are bad at hiring > managers and so reward pathological candidates, I disagree with his > assumption that they're merely incompetent as opposed to self-serving ...

The author contends that businesses hire "self-centered, overconfident and narcissistic" managers. Whether that covers for incomptentence or for intentionally harming the business seems an orthogonal question.

I generally think your points are good, but I'm not sure they address this article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> There's a lot of begging the question fallacies in this article, the most prominent being that confidence has nothing to do with leadership. Which is nonsense - confidence is a fundamental part of leadership. Leadership is definitely more than confidence (as the second-last paragraph of the article suggests), but this article makes it sound like they're orthogonal traits.

It also moves the goalposts: First up, it says that the best leaders are humble. Then it says that the best leaders, since they don't show this humility (eg Jobs), are not representative of the _average_ manager... so now we're talking about middle managers, not 'best leaders'.

Curiously, the article makes no mention of the Peter Principle - people can be competant, and keep getting promoted until they reach a level where they can no longer perform well. While that doesn't explain the gender difference, it does somewhat answer the article title - something the article doesn't actually do.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> _" we (people in general) commonly misinterpret displays of confidence as a sign of competence... This is consistent with the finding that leaderless groups have a natural tendency to elect self-centered, overconfident and narcissistic individuals as leaders"_

I've seen this happen over and over again. How do you think you can limit the damage done?

</comment><comment><USER8> It is interesting to compare this to the conjectured "Glass Cliff"

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_cliff](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_cliff)

The claim is that women CEOs are likely to get hired at failing companies. Personally I bought Lucent stock and had it go down $1000 in value the next day because of an earnings statement under Carly Fioria and then later things went badly at HP under her shift.

Oddly enough, Meg Whitman presided over ebay's long decline, and then took Carly's old job. It's so amazing how small the talent pool seems to be in the U.S.

</comment><comment><USER9> If women are such good leaders, how come there aren't companies that have exclusively female leadership?

I mean, if the owner thought that this would give him the highest returns, why would he care about the gender of his employees?

</comment><comment><USER10> Better question: why do so many incompetent _people_ become leaders. I've had the mispleasure of working under some fabulously incompetent men _and_ women in my time (and I've worked under some brilliant people of both genders as well).

</comment><comment><USER11> Because of the Peter Principle

</comment><comment><USER12> check out "the gervais principle"

</comment><comment><USER13> So to recap:

> women outperform men on emotional intelligence

> a quantitative review of gender differences in personality involving more > than 23,000 participants in 26 cultures indicated that women are more > sensitive, considerate, and humble than men

Nothing wrong with these. The (helpfully linked!) science backs them up.

> Unsurprisingly, the mythical image of a "leader" embodies many of the > characteristics commonly found in personality disorders, such as narcissism > (Steve Jobs or Vladimir Putin) , [...]

Hold on. Okay, the listed people may not be perfect, but why do so many people feel it is appropriate to diagnose others with some kind of mental disorder, especially without having examined them in person? Shameful, clickbait-tier stuff.

Oh, and why are those mentioned in an article that brings up gender differences? Are those supposed to claim that women lack disorders? Even if those people did actually have those disorders, is it a good idea to claim that women are better just because one or two men have disorders?

> In fact, most leaders — whether in politics or business — fail.

Doesn't answer the question, because it leaves out _men_ , which the title raised specifically.

> There is now compelling scientific evidence for the notion that women are > more likely to adopt more effective leadership strategies than do men.

Great! I'm really happy to hear that! But what does it have to do with men and their incompetence? Surely just because men are slightly less efficient, you wouldn't discard all male leaders? Where are the "incompetent men" here?

> In sum, there is no denying that women's path to leadership positions is > paved with many barriers including a very thick glass ceiling. But a much > bigger problem is the lack of career obstacles for incompetent men

So there is a societal problem with women becoming leaders which I'll accept without argument. But why is the "the lack of career obstacles for incompetent men" relevant? Why should we, as a society, make it harder for men or for incompetent people to get jobs?

I don't believe an authoritarian approach to job granting will actually benefit anyone. Why would you try to stop certain people from getting jobs? Why not make it easier for other kinds of people to get jobs instead? And I have to raise the argument (as mine would not be complete without it), why not just allow people to act on their own merit and decide who is the best leader based on what they do?

The article stirs up a controversy (or whatever) but doesn't leave the reader with any actionable suggestions. Perhaps reevaluating managers more seriously for more accurate metrics could be a good idea! The author implies that we should learn to counter "our inability to discern between confidence and competence"... and I agree with that! It was simply not stated directly.

But it has nothing to do with men or women. It should be about making things more fair. Which actually has nothing to do with gender, in this case. Learning how to tell good leadership from a good show really doesn't have to do with gender.

I appreciate replies or direct emails. Fire away.</comment>


Who will win the 2014 Dicty vs. HL60 cells world race? - <AUTHOR> https://scicast.org/dicty

<comment><AUTHOR> Also the project's official site where you can get more background about the race and what relevance this has: [https://sites.google.com/site/dictyworldrace2014/](https://sites.google.com/site/dictyworldrace2014/)</comment>


'You did not act in time': Greta Thunberg's full speech to MPs - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/apr/23/greta-thunberg-full-speech-to-mps-you-did-not-act-in-time <comment><USER2> [https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2019/04/the-trouble-with- greta...](https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2019/04/the-trouble-with-greta- thurnberg/)</comment>


UI Fail: How Our User Interfaces Help to Ruin Lives - <AUTHOR> http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/001112.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Lauren Weinstein looks at UI design, and misdesign, and the human cost.

Themes: the pervasiveness of bad design (I've been saying for a while: Web design isn't the solution, Web design is the problem), the frustration _across all levels of user expertise, including engineers_ , the isolating effects for those without immediate access to local technical support from caregivers, and the sheer thoughtlessness behind many of the undrelying problesm.

Weinstein also makes a highly laudable modest proposal that really should be taken to heart by HN's WebDev community:

 _I would like to see major Web services commit themselves to the proposition of providing optional and easily enabled "basic interfaces" to their main services, alongside the existing "primary" interfaces._

Of the rest, some highlights:

 _A couple of months ago, in Seeking Anecdotes Regarding "Older" Persons' Use of Web Services, I asked for stories and comments regarding experiences that older users have had with modern Web systems, with an emphasis on possible problems and frustrations...._

 _It was immediately obvious that many of these respondents were long frustrated by these issues, and viewed the survey as finally an opportunity to get these concerns off their chests. Much of what they described was heartbreaking..._

 _While some of the users had indeed never had much computer experience, a vast number of responses involved highly skilled, technologically-savvy individuals -- often engineers themselves -- who had helped build the information age but now felt themselves being left behind by Web designers who simply don 't seem to care about them at all...._

 _The frustration of caregivers in these contexts was palpable._

 _They 'd teach an older user how to use a key service like Web-based mail to communicate with their loved ones, only to discover that a sudden UI change caused them to give up in frustration and not want to try again...._</comment>


Why are so many smart people idiots about philosophy? - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/627989/why-are-so-many-smart-people-such-idiots-about-philosophy/ <comment><USER2> Aside from the general points in other comments as well as the article itself, I would contend that even modern philosophers are ignorant of real and abiding philosophy.

The contemporary conception and definition of philosophy, of what it is about and its methodology, is directly related to the misinterpretation and misunderstanding of the approach adopted by some of the well-known ancient Greek philosophers from their public works. From this error of conception and approach, over time a solely intellectual approach has been developed by the modern pseudo-philosophers with their equally pseudo-philosophy. Academia has never truly understood the real nature of philosophy.

As for science, well a similar paradigm exists for it in its proclivity to be defined and developed around a partial representation of what it means and should be, from the point of human concepts and its bias. In other words, it's been defined entirely from one philosophical perspective of life and its methodology oriented around that restrictive perspective. This is the reason that, until science itself learns to extend their perspective and conceptual viewpoint, it will never arrive at real causes or origins but rest on mere effects.

</comment><comment><USER3> If "smart person" is a proxy for "scientists and engineers", the answer seems obvious; it's not included in their education.

Not in primary school, not in secondary school, not in their major, and not in graduate school.

If people truly believed in the importance of "smart people" learning about philosophy, they would put more effort into making sure they were actually taught some at some point.

</comment><comment><USER4> The ignorance of philosophy among educated people is a relatively recent phenomenon. It happened in part because the American philosophical community after WWII shifted away from pragmatism and adopted a type of philosophy, namely analytic and logical positivist, that is quite counter-intuitive and also quite irrelevant to most real problems in the world.

</comment><comment><USER5> To paraphrase whoever said it originally about Stephen Fry 'Nye is a stupid persons idea of what a smart person is'.

A 'truly smart' person wouldn't dismiss an entire discipline out of hand simply because they don't know anything about it, especially not philosophy which is arguably the 'mother' of all science.

I do think it should be a part of basic education, philosophy and programming are two skills that really teach you to think and will last a lifetime.</comment>


Timeline of Web Frameworks - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mraible/history-of-web-frameworks-timeline <comment><USER2> Missing a lot.. maybe too much.

</comment><comment><USER3> has it got any better?

<comment><USER4> Modern front end frameworks are certainly a step up from jQuery. The amount of incompatibility and inflexibility you'd see before is vastly improved upon with reusable and composable components. Sure, now you have other problems like bundling and packaging, but those problems can frequently be solved just with research, and hopefully those particular dev experiences will be smoothed over with time.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do I get better at CTFs - <AUTHOR> I've recently started doing the pwnable.kr challenges and I find most of them really challenging, and am able to understand and solve a few with difficulty. What do you guys suggest as good resources for getting better at CTFs. <comment><USER2> I recently stumbled upon these slides for an introductory course on C, memory management and computer architecture from a programmers point of view ([https://cs.nyu.edu/courses/spring17/CSCI- UA.0201-001/resourc...](https://cs.nyu.edu/courses/spring17/CSCI- UA.0201-001/resources/))

</comment><comment><USER3> Found this on HN nearly 4 years ago: microcorruption.com

Was able to solve some; went through solutions for the others, in any case walked away with a much better understanding of assembly.</comment>


Something is erasing my program while it's running (oh wait oops) - <AUTHOR> http://jvns.ca/blog/2013/12/16/day-43-hopefully-the-last-day-spent-fixing-linker-problems/

<comment><USER2> Ah, bummer. I was hoping it would end up being something cooler.

Like in the 80's, writing games for the Commodore 64... Where they kept the memory for the program at a location shortly after where they kept the screen memory... So if you forgot to bounds-check the coordinates of the little guy you had running around on the screen, you could run him right off the bottom.

Where he'd start overwriting random bits of memory. Until eventually he walked right over your source code. Which was being interpreted. Until, of course, the guy caught up with the current execution point.

At which point, you hoped you had spent 10 minutes saving a copy of your code recently. Because listing your source you'd find it speckled with random special characters and changed values. Tire tracks from that little guy.

And you learned that the first thing you do when implementing that joystick routine is to also implement bounds checking.

<comment><USER3> "I was hoping it would end up being something cooler."

It reminded me of this classic GHC error: [https://twitter.com/bos31337/status/116372971509121025](https://twitter.com/bos31337/status/116372971509121025)

Not quite the same, but still "outright program destruction" of a sort.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Ah, the wonders of low-level assembly programming. I was a teaching assistant for an assembly course this semester at school, and one of the students was running a program in the debugger. (Specifically, Microsoft CodeView running in DOSBox.) F10, F10, F10, until she got to the load instruction that would fill the cx register. Press F10 again, and suddenly, the debugger shows "cx = DEAD."

She freaks out a bit, I freak out a lot. We're both worried that something really bad happened, then I realized that DEAD is actually a number in hex. I look through the data segment, and I see a AD DE in there (yay Intel byte reversal!).

I check through the code a bit, and even though it looks like the data segment is being initialized properly, it's still reading from the Program Segment Prefix. So, I find the Wikipedia article on the PSP and see that address 05h in the PSP has a cross-segment jump to CP/M compatibility code.

But, there's nothing at address DEAD (at least, nothing sensible). So I go searching through the DOSBox code for that string, and I find these lines:

        // far call to interrupt 0x21 - faked for bill & ted
        // lets hope nobody really uses this address
        sSave(sPSP,cpm_entry,RealMake(0xDEAD,0xFFFF));

As it turns out, because DOSBox doesn't implement CP/M compatibility, they simply made it jump to DEAD instead, just to make sure that if anyone tried running a CP/M program they would get the picture. And the assembler just happened to put the variable in the right place that the load pulled the DEAD instead of random nonsense.

I can only imagine the problems that can manifest when you're dealing directly with hardware, and don't have access to commented source code.

<comment><USER5> I guess bill & ted refers to [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_&_Ted%27s_Excellent_Advent...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_&_Ted%27s_Excellent_Adventure_%281990_video_game%29)

<comment><USER6> In the sequel they go on a Bogus Journey and encounter death.

<comment><USER7> There are rumors that there will be a 3rd movie. Not sure if they'll be able to find another Rufus - Carlin is irreplaceable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _Allison asks: "What linker debugging strategies do you have?"

Change the linker script randomly (actual thing that has worked)

Change variable attributes from 'private' to 'public' at random (actual other thing that has worked)..._

Changing stuff at random (without having any idea why you're doing it and without keeping track of what you've already done) isn't a very productive debugging strategy - it's more like an act of desperation. At least use the scientific method:

\- Make a hypothesis about what might happen if you change X.

\- Observe and record what actually happens.

\- Think about why this could be, and then think about what experiment you could do next to get another step closer to the answer.

If you have a hard time coming up with a reasonable hypothesis, it might help to learn more about the system. In this case, reading the linker documentation to find out what the various options do could be more productive than just making random changes to the linker script.

<comment><USER9> _In this case, reading the linker documentation to find out what the various options do could be more productive than just making random changes to the linker script._

If you haven't been faced with a mystifying bug where randomly futzing with things in the hope that you would find a change that had a reliable effect was the best hope you had of solving it then you probably haven't been programming long enough.

<comment><USER8> Haven't been programming long enough? If you're the average age on HN, I may have been programming before you were born. :)

And I've dealt with lots of mystifying bugs. But my approach to debugging isn't trying random things, it's gathering more information in deliberate ways: reading the code, tracing code with the debugger, adding logging information if the problem doesn't reproduce under the debugger, running test cases that attempt to narrow down the scope of the bug, etc.

I've even debugged customer problems that I couldn't reproduce locally by looking at the code and deducing what execution path had to have occurred to account for the reported behavior. That's one situation in which you absolutely can't try random things to see if they work.

If I were truly making random changes, it would suggest to me that I had no understanding of how the system worked. If you do understand the system and its potential failure modes, then you can do better than random.

<comment><USER9> In this particular case the kernel binary loader was dropping half the binary on the floor, so code would sometimes work and sometimes not in a way which depended on both the environment and the layout of the compiled binary. I'm not surprised the author ended up randomly futzing with things to see if they could find a reliable cause! (This error could have come straight out of the logout; essay that was linked on HN a week or two ago: "I have no tools because I broke my tools with my tools!") Personally I think the reason she was emphasising that changing these things made a difference was because it was so surprising.

Now in your infinite and sagacious wisdom you've told us all how she should _obviously_ have been able to debug this problem in a trice using your superior methods. Me, I'm happy to cut her some slack, and recognise that systems development can be a complete nightmare!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> There was a bug in the (Windows, 1.3.something) JVM around 2003 where if you had more than 1024 files open (eg initialized the velocity templating engine on each request as a random example) then it would _delete any subsequent files it opened_.

Needless to say that was a bugger to debug. We didn't believe what was happening until we literally saw a jar disappear before our eyes.

Sun fixed the problem pretty quickly!

</comment><comment><USER11> I once made a somewhat similar error. Many years ago, when I was just learning PHP, I attempted to write a function to delete all the contents of a directory, including subdirectories.

I don't remember the exact code, but it was something like:

      function clear_dir($dir) {
        $contents = scandir($dir); // returns array of directory contents

        foreach($dir => $file) {
          if(is_dir($file)) {
            clear_dir($file);
          }
          else {
            unlink($file);
          }
        }
      }

_The function names may not all be correct, been a while since I PHP 'd_

Anyway, so the code looks like it should work. The problem is the scandir function result includes __. __and __.. __

So my little function would see __.. __, recognise it as a directory, and recursively call itself on the parent of the directory I wanted to empty. I lost a fair few files before I realised what was happening. Luckily I had back ups, as this was before I started using SCMs.

</comment><comment><USER12> Is this project typical of what people are working on at Hacker School?

</comment><comment><USER13> Reminds me of one of my favorite work conversations: "Hey Matt, you have any self deleting code?" "I used to."

</comment><comment><USER4> Also, this post jumped from #20 on the front page to somewhere below #360 in the time it took me to write my other comment.

<comment><USER14> Stupid question probably, but how did you guess its ranking came down to #360. Is there a feature of HN I am missing?

<comment><USER15> This site will give you a graph: [http://hnrankings.info/6919666/](http://hnrankings.info/6919666/)</comment></comment></comment>


JetBlue has started using facial recognition instead of boarding passes - <AUTHOR> https://www.iflscience.com/technology/this-conversation-should-terrify-you-viral-thread-about-airport-tech-is-creeping-out-the-internet <comment><USER2> I have to admit my naivety on this, but: What exactly is the problem here?

Both the airlines and the involved law enforcement have a right or even a duty to know who you are when you are boarding the plane. They also have facial recognition data, either from a passport photo or putting a camera in front of the check-in, and arguably they have a right to that.

People walk around with their faces all the time. They post it on social media. Would it be a problem if a security guard lets you through a gate because he recognizes you? Is it more troublesome that all security guards of the airline now can recognize you at the gate?

I think we need to be more precise about what exactly is spooking us and why. Using facial recognition for boarding security is not as big as a problem as facial recognition being used for law enforcement or whatever they do in China now. But that's a topic for legislation and regulation. If companies are prohibited from storing personal data without consent, that should be enough to stop almost any legal infringement.

If such legislation is impossible, because your government is completely unaccountable, or because companies are unaccountable to such laws, then that is a much bigger problem than the potential for violations of privacy...

With regards to privacy I keep coming back to the conclusion that it is more important and effective to improve and enforce regulations than to beat up on particular technologies.

<comment><USER3> > I think we need to be more precise about what exactly is spooking us and > why.

What's spooking _me_ is the normalization of facial recognition technology for identification without adequate public agreement over what the limits of its applications should be.

A machine recognizing me is _a lot different_ than a human recognizing me. If a machine can recognize me, there can be cameras posted at every street corner, and some organization can reconstruct my movements based on where and when my face is pinged by the system.

It's sort of possible for humans with access to surveillance footage to do that, but the amount of human effort required to accomplish it makes it impossible to do at scale. An automated system could do this for everyone, always.

<comment><USER2> So it's still not the problem that a machine can recognize you, but rather that somebody is tracking and storing such recognitions.

Which is an entirely different thing. The former is a technological reality. It's impossible to legislate away devices who can do that.

Tracking and storing personal data on the other hand, is very much within the reach of regulation. The GDPR for example restricts this. Even if somebody has devices who can recognize you is not allowed to store and track data about such recognition incidences without your approval. In this particular case, they don't need your approval because the camera is used in lieu of a boarding pass, and the airline has every right and duty to know you are boarding right now.

In case you are worried that the airline connects your travel patterns with other companies interested in other patterns, well, that works with a boarding pass or even a simple check mark on a pen-on-paper boarding list just fine.

<comment><USER3> Why do you insist that facial recognition technology could not be regulated? It's _possible_ for anyone to go to a garden supply store and find the ingredients to make home made explosives. In principal we can't stop people from doing so, but that doesn't mean we can't make it illegal and impose penalties on anyone who does it. It's a technological reality that I can watch videos on my phone while driving, but we can still make it illegal to do so.

<comment><USER2> Making bombs in your backyards is much less popular and much more consequential than recognizing images.

And image recognition happens completely in silicon. There is no way to know from the outside if a device is recognizing patterns in image data, much less differentiate between recognizing faces or dog breeds.

<comment><USER3> I'm not following your argument. There's also no way of knowing from the outside if a device is storing identifying information to be shared with advertisers or foreign governments. What's special about classifiers which makes them unregulatable?

<comment><USER2> I think you are arguing, to try an analogy, that prohibiting any kind of face recognition would be as worthwhile as prohibiting bomb building, while being about equally difficult. I'm rejecting that premise.

And of course, storage and utilization of personal data is a lot easier to regulate in a way that can be enforced. That's the main premise of the GDPR legislation, by the way. Of course, criminal and negligent businesses can totally abuse your personal data, often without consequences. But they can't do so legitimately and they don't have access to the legal and open economy.

Even Facebook and Google are feeling the pain already. They do violate some laws some of the time and they have a hard time hiding that, because hiding it requires criminal intent itself, and it's really hard for hundreds of people to keep such secrets, regardless how profitable.

<comment><USER3> 1\. No, you have asserted multiple times in this discussion that it's _impossible_ to regulate facial recognition technology. e.g:

> The former is a technological reality. It's impossible to legislate away > devices who can do that[facial recognition].

Please explain that statement, as it seems like total nonsense to me. My point about explosives is that just because something is "a technological reality", or that there's no way to physically prevent people from implementing something, that in no way makes it immune from legislation. We can legislate whatever we want.

Here's a law which would make it impossible for JetBlue to implement this system:

"No organization shall be permitted to use an automated system to identify individuals using an image of their face."

2\. I think you're missing the point with your larger argument. It seems as if you are saying: we should not be concerned about JetBlue's use of this technology because this use-case in particular does not constitute the dystopian Orwellian potential of facial recognition technology. The point is not that this is the use-case which crosses that line, the point is that it is a big step in that direction, and has happened without a public discussion of where exactly the line should be.

3\. You say w.r.t. GDPR:

> Of course, criminal and negligent businesses can totally abuse your personal > data, often without consequences. But they can't do so legitimately and they > don't have access to the legal and open economy.

That's an argument in favor of regulating facial recognition technology itself isn't it? We can allow the technology to be normalized, and just hope everyone is following regulations about not abusing access to our personal data. But given what has been revealed about PRISM and other government spying programs, it's hard to imagine that such data would _not_ be abused if it existed. On the other hand, we could agree not to make facial recognition a part of our daily lives, or to put very careful boundaries around its use, and make it that much harder for it to be abused.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> How much longer will we allow our freedoms to be eroded?

People were flying without any photo ID until just a few years ago (except internationally). We've given up so much freedom & so much of what made air travel fun in exchange for so little.

We need to stop letting people scare us into giving away our freedoms.

<comment><USER5> For many years, I remember needed a piece of photo id with my ticket to get through TSA security checkpoints. What were you able to do instead? Just give a ticket?

<comment><USER6> You didn't even need that, you just walked through some metal detectors and you could hang out near the gate and greet your loved ones coming off the plane. You didn't need a ticket. You didn't need ID. You didn't even need an intent to fly.

<comment><USER7> Most Australian domestic flights/airports are still like this.

Sidenote: entering/exiting both Aus and NZ recently, immigration checkpoints in both countries did appear to make extensive use of facial recognition.

<comment><USER8> Yes, this is also the case in Europe (EU passports go through automated gates very similar to the Australia/NZ ones). Your passport contains biometric information about your facial structure, and the facial recognition is used to verify it.

Given the somewhat-recent studies[1] which show that the vast majority of border guards (unless they happen to be "super-matchers") have a 1/7-or-worse failure rate when trying to check a person's passport photo, I think it's quite understandable to do the facial recognition electronically.

But such a system should only be used for immigration purposes (where identity verification is very important to get right), not for getting onto a plane or just coming into the waiting areas of domestic airports.

[1]: [https://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/4185916.htm](https://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/4185916.htm)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I am guessing that the bigger concern here is that this is an 'enabler' tactic to expand facial recognition in other areas of our lives. And if this is the case, then there definitely needs to be some kind of ratification.

Maybe this is unrelated, but it's starting to feel like every bad accident in this world is affecting us in this very strange way. For example, I was very surprised to find that Sri Lanka cut everyone off from social media "just like that". To think there are people with this kind of power seems a little frightening to say the least.

But, what's even scarier is that these bombings and 'tragic' events tend to steer us in a very controlling direction. _All of a sudden_ the government has an incentive to enforce more control over its citizens and society as a whole.

<comment><USER7> This is not a new thing in American history, and probably predates America's existence: [https://prospect.org/article/when-fear-threatens- freedom](https://prospect.org/article/when-fear-threatens-freedom)

> The pattern of responding to threats by curtailing rights began early in > American history. In 1798, when the future of the country was in doubt, > Congress passed the Alien and Sedition Act, which made it a crime to falsely > criticize the government or government officials—men were sent to prison for > speaking ill of certain individuals and decisions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This sounds pretty insane indeed. How much should we be concerned about that? The gvt already has our image data, and knows our moves anyway right? Even without facial recognition, IDs and passports are asked when you travel, so the documentation of your travels already exists I assume?

<comment><USER11> We should be very concerned, because this is obviously testing the waters before rolling out ubiquitous facial recognition. I honestly and earnestly believe that use of facial recognition technology should be banned in all its forms. The applications are limited and the downsides are massive.

<comment><USER12> Could you please elaborate on the downsides? Gov't has your data since you were born, complete with your photos, IDs, you name it. What makes you think it's any different now?

<comment><USER13> The difference is that ubiquitous facial recognition allows for near seamless tracking of individuals and explicitly without a warrant or their consent. It's an important milestone because it moves us from a "reasonable book keeping" level of tracking to full blown seamless tracking and again importantly, without our consent.

To imagine it a bit more viscerally, imagine instead that the system had no cameras and instead required you to submit your daily movement report at the end of each day. An agent walks from door to door and you hand him your written report of exactly what you did today and that gets entered into the Government Saftey and Oversight Commission Database. What are they going to use all that data for? There are only a handful of good reasons, but a disproportionate list of bad reasons that explicitly limit freedom.

Second to that. Would you be as comfortable going to a strip club or a fringe political gathering or a conference for a controversial topic if you knew you had to put it in your report? It has a chilling effect on freedom of movement and pushes fringe activities that are perfectly safe and legal into the darkness.

<comment><USER14> you people are pretty stupid. ATMs have tracking, point of point of sale has tracking, your phone, internet it's all tracked and linked back to you.

<comment><USER15> I think you're right. Maybe we should skip the facial recognition and install RFID tags behind our eyes, after all, they basically know all of that info already anyways.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Can we not link to "IFLS"? They're a horrible Facebook fad follower site with no real reverence for science. (-_-)

</comment><comment><USER17> A related story that hasn't received much traction on HN:

>US wants to use facial recognition on air travelers leaving the country

[https://qz.com/1598148/us-wants-to-use-facial-recognition- on...](https://qz.com/1598148/us-wants-to-use-facial-recognition-on-air- travelers-leaving-the-country/)

<comment><USER18> wow a 97% success rate ... that means that 3% will be arrested for overstaying their visa on return ....

The US is kind of unique in that it doesn't have immigration officers who stamp your passport when you leave ... so you have no proof that you have left ... it also means that there are no transit lounges in the US, you can't land in SFO from say Australia and get on a plane to London without passing through US customs and spending time and money getting a US visa (even an ESTA takes time and money)

At the moment the US depends on airlines to get it right, it used to be that when you arrived they stapled a green bit of cardboard into your passport, sometimes the airlines would forget to collect it as you left, or lose it and people would end up getting arrested when they come back (a night or two in the cells and thrown on a plane back home). For a while there were kiosks in the departure lounge. Now days it's done electronically, and they still get it wrong occasionally, the error rate however is probably way below 3% at the moment.

The horror stories from people caught this way mean that people from Oz/NZ often prefer to travel to Europe the other way around rather than risking US travel

<comment><USER19> > mean that people from Oz/NZ often prefer to travel to Europe the other way > around rather than risking US travel

I mean, going via the US is 6 hours longer compared to going via Asia.

Sydney > Dubai > London is ~23 hours. Sydney > LA > New York is ~23 hours, and then another 6 to get to London.

<comment><USER18> If you're going to London you would normally fly direct over the pole from LAX/SFO, not stop in NY as well

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I think this is being blown a bit out of proportion. The government definitely has your passport photo in a database. And since this facial recognition is happening only at boarding gates of international flights, it's totally plausible that CBP has an isolated system, where Jetblue operates the device but doesn't get any of the data.

<comment><USER21> But this is a great way to test and refine facial recognition to make it ubiquitous, which has serious implications for the government's ability to track everyone cheaply and with little recourse.

<comment><USER20> I don't think it provides a great way of testing and refining. The pictures are taken at a very controlled environment in this case; it doesn't really generalize to CCTV. I don't disagree with the argument regarding "normalizing" facial recognition in everyday life, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> In the us, we've successfully avoided a gun registry (with the exception of a few states) probably because gun ownership has such a direct connection with the idea of a potential tyrannical government. But these types of systems are going to be the true backbone of a tyrannical government. The gun community has successfully built a lobby organization to maintain these freedoms (I'd argue mostly through peer pressure.) Perhaps there's a model here that privacy advocates can replicate.

</comment><comment><USER23> If a private company says they'll take a picture of me at checkin and then verify that at boarding vs the same picture - then destroy the picture, I'm fine with that. It's a temporary storage of biometric data. I'm especially fine with it if I can opt to go for a paper passport instead.

BUT

If a private company uses some database, especially a centralized/government database, to do the same task - then it's absolutely dystopian.

<comment><USER3> Yes I think there's a ton of potential benefit for facial recognition in terms of streamlining processes which require a lot of ID checks, like air travel, but I would only be OK with it if they implemented it within some parameters which should be enforced with regulation:

\- The identification step should be completely anonymized. I.e. the facial recognition step is completely black-box. When I buy my ticket, I submit a photo, and a token is produced which is shared with the airline, and they can compare this token with one which is produced when I show my face at checkin. Like with password storage, even if the facial recognition dataset were somehow compromised, it should not give attackers a way to link my face with my identity. And it should not be possible to type in my name and get to pictures of my face.

\- The dataset used to identify me should have a finite lifetime (i.e. from when I check in until the plane takes off) and should be verifiably destroyed afterwards.

\- It should be possible to possible to opt-out and identify myself by other means.

<comment><USER23> I don't think the big issue is the identity change between ticket purchase and checkin, but between checkin and boarding. I.e. no photo is needed when buying ticket. At the checkin step you show your face. When boarding you verify it. Otherwise, I agree with what you said.

This type of biometric check of "the person dropping the bag is the person boarding" has been in use for more than a decade e.g. on Scandinavian, and I think it's basically fine if they use temporary and secure data storage.

The biometric verification didn't take place at all if you _didn 't_ check in a bag. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scandinavian_Airlines#Fingerpr...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scandinavian_Airlines#Fingerprint_biometric_identification)

<comment><USER3> Somehow I would trust Scandinavians to handle this better than, say, the US or the UK. Those societies seem to have a better ethic around the public good than others.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Last time I came into SFO through Global Entry there was no passport scan needed, just a quick look in the camera and it printed my receipt to enter the country.

I've often thought that border control has the best time lapse of me aging

<comment><USER25> Interesting, how do you activate that flow? I landed at SFO last night and it prompted for me to insert my passport before it'd scan my face / take finger prints

<comment><USER26> Global Entry is a TSA program you can apply for. The TSA charges a fee of 100 USD and runs an in person interview.

Edit: those under investigation, warrants, or charged with crimes are not elligible. Neither are those with passports from outside major US allies (India Colombia UK Germany Panama Singapore Korea Switzerland Taiwan Mexico Canada)

<comment><USER27> Global Entry is not a TSA program and it normally requires a physical travel document to use the GE kiosks. Curious that there is now a facial recognition- only kiosk.

Edit: looks like this in MIA? [https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/national-media- release/global-e...](https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/national-media- release/global-entry-celebrates-10-years-expediting-international-travel)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> That biometric data is stored by a government is a whole other discussion in my eyes. If they provide a secure API that just let's you query through facial data and return which passenger from the company provided list it is I'm fine as long as the biometric data gets destroyed afterwards (the one provided to the API). But of course how can I know this as a passenger. I like the idea to make a process less painful but yeah it seems to have a lot of pitfalls

<comment><USER29> Just scrap identification and 100% of security legislation from the last 20 years and you could have a perfect and smooth flying experience.

\----

Planes can make you and your whole family burn in a crash. So I guess that makes you cry really hard every time you board a plane, because that is really horrible.

It could also be attacked by terrorists, but that probability is even lower by a few magnitudes. But since you already cried a lot, you just had enough and had to implement a huge dragnet? This makes so much sense!

edit: I wish I could underline words on HN to underline the magnitude of magnitude.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I tried this. It's junk. So much slower than a boarding pass scan.

I've seen good setups for this like at the UK border. This is not the same.

Almost everyone got rejected and got looked at by staff, especially black people who the machine seemed incapable of recognizing. Children? No chance.

I get it, there are privacy concerns which should rank higher, but you don't even need to pull them out here. This is just useless bad tech.

<comment><USER31> >I've seen good setups for this like at the UK border. This is not the same.

I was just going to say I've done this in the UK. You put your passport on a scanner and look into the camera, took a full 5 seconds though, but since there are many more of these than border guards it's still faster.

<comment><USER32> Those don't use facial recognition, it's a bunch of border guards behind a wall manually evaluating if you match the data on the passport.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> So how does this work for international travelers? Presumably the US government does not have the entire world's passport photos? Or do they...? Pretty worrying if so ... time for some GDPR requests maybe ...

I think at Gatwick in the UK they have a similar system where they take a photo of you as you enter security and it is then checked again at the gate. It does not work well if you are wearing glasses.

I wonder if some certain styles of eye wear would make facial recognition significantly ineffective? Highly unsymmetrical with lenses opaque to IR etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> They have the passport photos from all US passports, plus all non-US people who have entered the country through a legal port of entry. That should cover everyone who's flying out of the country, right?

<comment><USER34> Sure. Except for those who entered illegally.

But I'm not sure how far they'd get even now. I'm guessing that checks on do- not-fly etc lists might already flag hem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I'd be as worried about false positives and false negatives as I would be about losing privacy - and I would certainly be worried about that.

Of course, the security of actual boarding passes seems extremely flimsy compared to the rest of airport security. The airlines could just take a picture and do no more verification at all, and wind-up with current security.

<comment><USER36> False positives is not a big deal, if two people check in under the same name it's easy to manually figure it out

<comment><USER37> I imagine the OP meant a nefarious third party using someone else's boarding pass?

<comment><USER36> Is this not currently a problem too?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Why do airlines even need to know your name (much less your gender — remember the press ballyhoo a few months ago when some airlines expanded their list from male and female)?

I can see that they might want to know that each passenger has paid for the seat but that's about it.

</comment><comment><USER39> So, many fears about surveillance infrastructure to be deployed for use cases like this one are already too late to the party. That's already done, the framework over all the apps are being deployed, like looking for faces to tell who's who

</comment><comment><USER40> Presumably the government already has a list of people flying - do they really need your photo to do a scan against a list of warrants for your arrest? And do we not want them scanning that list against folks with a warrant for their arrest?

</comment><comment><USER41> How does Jet Blue know when you have opted out? By scanning your face, seeing you have opted out, and prompt for the actual boarding pass?

</comment><comment><USER42> This is how it works. Airline takes multiple photos of you. Sends those photos along with flight context data. Over secure lines. To Homeland. They match photo to passport and passport info to flight manifest. All outside of the airlines infrastructure. Or at least should be.

<comment><USER42> If not passport could be drivers license. Or state id. Which would make sense because they don't allow certain state IDs to fly anymore. Everybody had to update.

<comment><USER43> These are the CBP "Biometric Exit" kisoks, which are only for international flights. Which means everybody on those flights will have a passport.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> can someone please explain calmly why the fear-mongering, the hysteria and use of the words terrify are justified about this?

<comment><USER44> Read this twitter conversation between a passenger and Jetblue: [https://twitter.com/mackenzief/status/1118509708673998848](https://twitter.com/mackenzief/status/1118509708673998848)

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Ha. Seen your average US airport lately? Most look like a scene from the third world. Underfunded, dilapidated facilities coupled with cheapskate US carriers. Good luck with that.

<comment><USER46> Neither SFO nor JFK airport were as remotely dilapidated as Nairobi airport when I saw them.

<comment><USER3> JFK does seem quite dated when comparing to most European capitals, or large Asian hubs.

There are some high-standard modern terminals in the US too though.

<comment><USER47> By "most European capitals", I presume you're excluding Paris :-)

<comment><USER3> I haven't flown into Paris recently but there are plenty of exceptions: Berlin's not beautiful either (though it's one of my favorite airports).

But still the standard in Europe seems higher in general than North America.

<comment><USER46> I like Berlin Tegel, but Berlin Schönefeld always seemed to me to be its low- budget brother.

<comment><USER3> Yeah I was speaking about Tegel. If you fly out of the main rotunda, it's great because every gate has its own security and bag drop so there's no long waits, even if it's busy. Schonefeld is like any other budget airport.

<comment><USER46> Somehow I manage even month-long trips with just carry-on. With the sole exception of the time I cycled from Hoek van Holland to Zürich and needed to get back to the UK in a hurry, I think I've not had a check-in bag drop since I was a kid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> That is great,</comment>


Clientless, solitary development equals shamelessness - <AUTHOR> http://richardjsimkins.com/2013/03/22/58

<comment><USER2> _Is it because I'm pushing myself to do something I don't really want to do?_

Yes, yes you are. Here's the evidence: faced with a choice of staying in bed or project work, you choose staying in bed. "Your projects are less interesting to you, less motivating, less exciting, than lying in bed doing nothing".

(That doesn't mean "shame yourself until you work on them", it means "pick something else").</comment>


Show HN: SpaceMagic, a real-time node.js framework - <AUTHOR> http://spacemagic.io <comment><USER2> Was this already in progress or made in response to meteor (and firebase)?

I'm sure a lot of us could rip the real-time/live updating/auto-synchronizing (pick your term) engine out of our current web apps and package it up in a tiny framework without much effort.

<comment><USER3> The idea came about a year and a half ago. We seriously started working on it, and committing to a public github repository, about six months ago. Meteor's release just changed our public announcement date from "sometime in the near future" to "Friday."

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> node.js has real-time guarantees?

<comment><USER5> Exactly what I was thinking. This is the third recent post to HN using "real- time" in this fashion. They're hijacking a term which already has widespread use and which, "doesn't mean what they think it does," to hijack a line from Princess Bride.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real-time_computing>

<comment><AUTHOR> I use "real-time" in this fashion because describing it as "soft real-time" seems weird.

<comment><USER4> Didn't we call websites that update without a manual page reload "AJAX" just a few minutes ago? And yes, even if there's no XML present, but at least it's an abuse of a pretty new, web-specific term.

I propose we call all that stuff "FEFYOM" (Fast Enough For You Old Man) from now on.

<comment><USER6> AJAX is where you click on something and then the page updates. Comet is where the page updates without the user having to initiate anything.

<comment><USER7> Fascinating...so wrapping an Ajax call inside a window.setInterval automatically switches it to "Comet"?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Could someone please explain: How does this compare to Meteor?

<comment><USER3> That's fair to ask. We're both trying to solve the same problems in similar ways. Both of us use Node and MongoDB and both of us keep everything automatically synched and up to date between the client and server.

We do things a little differently. We built SpaceMagic while working on a real-time web app of our own and did so with the goal of making our work as easy as possible. Ideally, we want to make developing realtime apps as easy as it is to make non-realtime apps. First, we support semantic HTML templates, allowing developers to turn their mocks into working prototype applications with a bit of javascript. Second, we make developers able to write validation and other important code once and have it run on both the client and the server. Third, SpaceMagic is released as just another npm package that works with your preexisting Node install and packages.

<comment><USER9> Thanks for the great explanation. So it might be more comparable to something like SocketStream + MVC pattern?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> back button an issue for anyone else?

<comment><USER11> Me too, Chrome 18 on OSX Lion - Because of this I have instant dislike of this framework.</comment></comment>


Visitors to Sochi Olympics will be instantly hacked - <AUTHOR> http://sports.yahoo.com/news/visitors-to-sochi-olympics-will-be-instantly-hacked-201318818.html

<comment><USER2> Someone on Reddit seems to be claiming to have contacted the researcher behind this story:

\----

Right technical post/description of how not to use technology coming up.

 _TL; DR_ I guess if you can't operate a box then there isn't much hope of being able to operate a phone or a laptop.

# Phone:

User logs onto public wifi and was asked to run setup program to access internet, setup program was actually malware. Note, this was a "user initiated action" and whilst I realise that many people just download and run anything without even checking the permissions anyone with even a modicum of technical knowledge would not have been caught out by this. Also this would not affect iPhones since they cannot run apps that are not distributed via the app store.

# Do not EVER use public wifi.

* log into reddit and then anyone within wifi range can steal your reddit session (same for all sites that don't enforce https on every page).

Ever seen that message that says "we couldn't verify the certificate for mail.google.com" (or similar) when accessing emails? This is because the people operating the wifi are intercepting secure traffic which means they can intercept any password sent over the network, so if you have mail configured and you click ok when that warning comes up (which 90% of users do unfortunately because it just looks like a normal alert rather than a really serious security warning) then they will have your email password.

# Mac laptop:

I actually don't know how this was done, I've contacted the guy from the video and he said he will write up a technical post on Friday. Out of the box, new macs only run code from the App Store so unless that setting was changed (in which case saying it was hacked is bullshit rather than a simplification) I just don't see how it could have become infected.

Edit: Found out that they downloaded an antivirus software from a dodgy site and followed the instructions to allow it to run. If people are going to follow instructions to disable security on their computer then there really isn't much that can be done to help them.

# Windows Laptop:

They opened an email attachment in office and clicked "allow macros". Again, not something that a clued up user would do. Still something that Microsoft could handle better - make it something that has to be preconfigured rather than just giving the user the option since there really isn't any good reason for most consumers to be running macros.

# In summary:

Nothing new to see here and only one of the pieces of installed malware was of Russian origin so basically this is just a bit of a smear campaign. Sure the free wifi may be more dodgy over there than in the US/UK (yay for Britain) but it is not a problem limited to Russia, I had the same problem in Sri Lanka and public wifi is not secure and should never be used.

\----

u/daniel_chatfield

[http://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/1x2t3j/all_visitors_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/1x2t3j/all_visitors_to_sochi_olympics_hacked_immediately/cf7sbwo)

<comment><USER3> It is a bit offtopic but since you brought up the smear campaign -- the campaign is much broader than just the hacking, it includes the LGBT rhetoric [http://www.blacklistednews.com/The_Olympics_of_Hate_in_a_Nat...](http://www.blacklistednews.com/The_Olympics_of_Hate_in_a_Nation_of_Anti- Gay_Laws%3F_/32494/0/38/38/Y/M.html)

<comment><USER4> Are you suggesting there being a connection there?

<comment><USER5> The gays must be coming to hack your laptop, in order to smear Russia.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So let me get this into perspective: A US journalist is worried that _Russian hackers_ [1] will _hack_ into his computer the _moment_ he turns it on at Sochi.

Of course if the Olympics were held in Washington, he wouldn't be perplexed. He would probably be so sure about it, that it wouldn't even be worth mentioning.

This post is an prominent example of propaganda: No technical details, just pure old FUD for the masses. Why and How did this came up in HN's frontpage (we're supposed to me technically speaking, above average when it comes to computers), is beyond me.

[1] Tall guys, short blond hair, speaking English with as Russian accent as you can get, having obvious temper-control problems and always heavily armed (K-7 and a couple of bombs, just in case) even when sitting on a 11.6" inch laptop. Sorry, I forgot to add that they are probably sitting on a cold basement in Syberia.

<comment><USER7> *Cyberia.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Gotta love American hypocrisy: "Proving yet again what a fabulous idea it was to stage the 2014 Winter Olympics in Russia, NBC has discovered that all the Games' attendees can expect to immediately get hacked as soon as they get to Sochi."

Wouldn't the US do the exact same thing if it was in the US?

<comment><USER9> I'm sure the US is doing the exact same thing at Sochi, though likely with a bit more targeting.

<comment><USER10> FIFY: I'm sure the US did this during the 1996 Atlanta Summer Olympics. A lot of international leaders attended. I'm sure the was lots of targeting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm gonna need to see some better sources for this claim. I mean, it's not unbelievable but it's lacking in technical detail.

<comment><USER12> I agree, this article gives little to any depth and makes broad claims with little substantial info. I think we all could discern that there would likely be a lot of more nefarious online activity surrounding these Olympics, but surmising that everyone will near immediately get their devices hacked is a bit much.

<comment><USER13> I gotta think that the primary concern is WiFi hotspots. It's easy to create a bogus hotspot that spies on your communications.

<comment><USER14> Call it Apple Store and the vast majority of iOS devices will connect to it automatically.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Instantly is a bit a overstatement. Whenever you connect to a public wifi hotspot and don't use some kind of tunnel (ssh/vpn) you run the risk of automatically downloading malware. Which isn't any different then any other place in the world. Whenever I connect to a public wifi hotspot I use a ssh tunnel, I wish them good luch injecting any malware in that stream.

</comment><comment><USER16> You can tell it's going to be an excellent article when a flight to Sochi takes 75 hours.

</comment><comment><USER17> Assume that hotels, regardless of country, are filming, tapping the phone and the internet.

The other bit to realize is that there will be sex, around 100k condoms worth. That's 35 condoms per athlete on _average_. Certainly there's dirty laundry incentive for news and political orgs.

<comment><USER13> I'm pretty sure those athlete sex reports are highly exaggerated. Those numbers are based on a ridiculous calculation where they took the number of condoms shipped to the Olympics and divided it by the number of athletes.

<comment><USER18> You think it's just a few athletes having lots of sex? No wonder they are so fit!

<comment><USER19> I think they are forgetting all the people visiting the city for the olympics that aren't competing in their numbers.

<comment><USER20> Actually these stories are generally talking about the number of condoms available to the athletes in the athletes 'village'. But generally the condoms are branded for the event (like everything else) and hance are souvenired in large numbers distorting any estimates of athlete nookie.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> "Proving yet again what a fabulous idea it was to stage the 2014 Winter Olympics in Russia..."

I should have stopped reading right there :)

</comment><comment><USER22> No detail. How were they 'hacked'? How did they notice?

</comment><comment><USER23> I have judged Marissa Mayer because of this article making into Yahoo Sports. Nothing has changed.</comment>


Show HN: CSSKatas – A better way to sharpen your CSS skills - <AUTHOR> https://yiming.dev/css-katas/ <comment><USER2> You should use raw css for the demo, otherwise only people who know tailwind can do it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your feedback! I've updated the demo to use pure CSS. And the old demo with Tailwind is still an option.

In the final product, people can definitely choose whether to use a CSS framework or not, and which framework to use.

Hope you can check these updates when you have time :)</comment></comment>


Google Wave and the mythical man month - <AUTHOR> http://rethrick.com/#mmm <comment><USER2> I was there when "Walkabout" started being bandied about. It irked me to no end that I could jump through all of the hoops and finally get behind the NDA curtain by being hired and then be told "nope, you can't hear about that". That was a severe jolt to the internal culture of the whole company.

There had been other projects which had been kept under wraps successfully. Chrome and V8 were demoed in Seville long before anyone on the outside heard about it. They said keep it quiet, and we did. Google TV had been knowable for _ages_ before it went anywhere externally. There was no reason to think someone would leak Wave.

Instead, they started playing the "we're special and you are not" card, and that started a sense of resentment growing. Not even the infrastructure teams which were going to provide services to them were let in on what was really going to happen in there.

Then after far too long, demo day of Wave arrived. I only stayed long enough to see them hit backspace and have it echo out to everyone else who was connected. I remember my exact comment at the time: "packets". As in, lots and lots and lots of packets flying around to generate RPCs for all of those deltas. Then those turn into XML or whatever going out to web browser clients, and ... yeah. SO many packets. That right there worried me greatly.

So then I see this thing about it not scaling properly and choking JVMs and suddenly it all makes sense.

Oh well. All of the secret code depots and restricted access areas must have been practice for what is now happening with Plus. Entire floors of buildings you can't open as a full-time employee? Yep. More code depots being locked down? Yep.

<comment><USER3> > All of the secret code depots

DepotS ? So I assume Google finally gave up on making their one Perforce server scale, then?

(Unless Google is crazy enough to actually do multiple depots on a single p4d instance...)

<comment><USER4> > (Unless Google is crazy enough to actually do multiple depots on a single > p4d instance...)

Why is that "crazy"? AFAIK, depots are just an organizing mechanism, they don't have any effect on scalability.

<http://kb.perforce.com/article/684>

<comment><USER3> "Crazy" is probably the wrong word for me to use (I have been known for my hyperbole in speech). What I meant was that, from my point of view, having multiple depots is almost the same as having multiple directories at the root of a single depot. The Perforce Support article you linked to says the same thing.

Hence, I feel that having multiple depots on one Perforce server simply eats up client names and causes confusion among those who haven't learned the distinction between "depot" and "server".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's an interesting post and raises several cogent points but it misses the biggest problem with Wave: it was a solution in search of a problem.

I say this simply as someone who was, at the time, outside looking in. I know little more than that but it had all the hallmarks of what happens when engineers are running the asylum. Here's this communication medium in which basically all other communication media can be implemented (Email, IM, forum posts, Twitter, etc). It's the kind of general solution that engineers come up with it.

I read a post from someone else (can't find it now but I think it was on Quora) who was familiar with the matter and they were saying the risk-reward thing (which this poster mentions in passing) was all messed up. Basically the incentive structure rewarded mediocrity.

I can't speak with any knowledge of those matters but I can believe it. After all, in a startup what happens if the startup fails? You find a new job. There is a strong incentive to make your runway last and get to your next funding round (or, Heaven forbid, profitability). Inside somewhere as cashed up as Google, those incentives (IMHO) disappear.

If the "startup" fails, what happens? You just move to another part of Google. What do you think the odds were that with Wave going away, any extra Wave incentives became worthless (as would happen in a startup)? Basically zero (IMHO).

<comment><USER6> Every time I tell an engineer that I worked on the wave team, I'm greeted with the same response: "Oh, Wave! You know, the _real_ problem with wave was X". And then I stop listening, and tell them this:

I have heard that for all the values of X. Here are the most common:

\- It was too hard to use / I didn't know what to do with it

\- It didn't integrate with email / didn't have email notifications

\- It didn't support IE

\- I started using it, but none of my friends were using it, so I stopped

\- It was too slow

Too late, the team spent a bunch of time talking to actual users and finding out how they were using the product and what their real pain points were. People use wave to communicate in small teams. IIRC the biggest pain point our users cited was that wave didn't support printing. The people who did get over the adoption hurdle ended up using wave _a lot_. (I still wonder if maybe wave might have survived if we had charged for it.)

Wave died because we were too slow to make it good. The code base consists of around 1M lines of java. With 1M lines of code, you need a giant team to get anything done, and a giant team working hard on features tends to add even more code. The wave team burned too much money too fast. And we were still working too slowly to get explosive user growth. It made lots of people sad, but Google was right to kill wave.

If I could go back in time and give advice to the team, I would say:

\- Don't use Java

\- Don't scale past a few engineers. You will have a much longer runway that way, and you'll need it if you want to replace email.

\- The network effect will kill you unless you integrate with email from day 1.

\- You don't know what you're building, so talk to users early. Like, today.

\- Don't optimise for scalability until you know what the product is supposed to be

\- Don't try and reinvent the scrollbar, you idiots. (So much stabbing.)

<comment><USER7> I am truly boggled that Wave contained 1M lines of code given the functionality.. No wonder it was hard to make it good..

Feels like two high-end devs could implement the 80% of it that people actually used in a couple weeks and 10-50k LOC.

Maybe I am missing something, but it sounds like Large Company culture doomed it.

<comment><USER6> It would take more than a couple weeks, but 10-50k LOC sounds about right. Since leaving google, I've rewritten wave's concurrent editing algorithm in coffeescript in just 3k LOC.

[Blatant plug: <http://sharejs.org/> ]

<comment><USER8> Was there any particular reason why it ended up so huge then? Trying to handle each and every possible use/edge-case completely? Why not Java (from your previous answer)?

I _loved_ Wave despite its warts and managed to run several extremely successful small team document writing collaborations through it, completely replacing IM, email, groups and lots of early document drafting in Docs/Word. There was nothing that anybody on the team had experience with that came close to that. We went from hundreds of emails a day and hours of IM'ing to absolutely zero of each within a week of moving to Wave.

My only real complaints were that the web client was dog slow and going from a Wave of draft-edits to a final document was kind of painful.

Never did find a use for lots of the other bells and whistles (embedded widgets things, channel bots, etc.), perhaps that's where a lot of the extra LOC went to...

The entire Wave story would make an amazing case study if Google would ever let the entire story out.

<comment><USER6> I don't think there's any one single reason why the code base is huge. Its written in proper idiomatic java, so a lot of the code is bureaucracy (interfaces, factories, managers, assertions, etc). The code that was opensourced is reasonably representative of the rest, if you're curious:

[http://code.google.com/p/wave- protocol/source/browse/#hg%2Fs...](http://code.google.com/p/wave- protocol/source/browse/#hg%2Fsrc%2Forg%2Fwaveprotocol%2Fwave)

I think we should have spent more time keeping the code clean; but thats always a tough call when you have features to ship. Its easy to point to lots of things and say they were mistakes. But I worry that, had the project been successful, we might point to the very same things and talk about how clever we were.

A huge effort was put into making the client more responsive in the few months just before wave got cancelled. I'm not sure if its still the case, but at one point wave was loading faster than gmail. We were a month or so away from shipping server-side rendering of waves with progressive enhancement for editing. That made waves load in a snap. (The guys finished that piece of work and put it in the opensource wave in a box project.)

You weren't alone in getting a lot of value out of wave. We used it internally for everything. When we had meetings, we shared the agenda in a wave. People edited the wave with meeting items, and during the meeting people collaboratively annotated the agenda with what was decided, turning into the minutes. It was a thing of beauty. I still think there's a need for something like wave - it solves real problems.

When wave was cancelled, there was a series of honest retrospectives internally on different aspects of the project. I hope they get eventually get published eventually too. A lot of people were quite career-sensitive after wave. Most blog posts you see by wave developers are written by people who have left google anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > And this is the essential broader point--as a programmer you must have a > series of wins, every single day. It is the Deus Ex Machina of hacker > success. It is what makes you eager for the next feature, and the next after > that.

I liked the whole article, but this paragraph really stood out to me. It's something I've never thought to put into words, but is so true. Going for days and weeks and not seeing any success in what you're doing is horribly demoralizing. It's happened to me only once, and that was enough to reconsider my appreciation of programming entirely.

It's because the real appeal of programming is, like he said, the incremental gains, the constant moving forward, the iterative process. It's why small side projects are so much fun, because there's nothing getting in the way of your next small accomplishment. It's what draws people (like myself) to programming in the first place. And in its lack, it's the slow killer of large projects.

Thanks for the article.

<comment><USER10> While true, I suspect the reason is that it creates that dopamine release we all find so pleasing and addictive. It's why people also do drugs, have sex, play MMO's, etc. Our built-in carrot.

 _> And in its lack, it's the slow killer of large projects._

It's interesting that one reason for large project failure may be failure to stimulate dopamine release in its programmers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> "Now, I don't mean to imply that Wave did not have some very smart engineers working on the UI, we certainly did. But talent is different from experience. The latter is a guard against 3.5MB of compressed, minified, inlined Javascript. Against 6 minute compiles to see CSS changes in browser. Against giving up on IE support (at the time, over 60% of browser market share) because it was simply too difficult. Against Safari running out of memory as soon as Wave was opened on an iPad."

I wonder how much of the failure was this sort of thing vs just having a product that people didn't understand. (I definitely agree that if the UI had been simple and snappy it would have been better)

On the bright side, I feel pretty confident that some real startup will take the open sourced Wave technology and do something good...

<comment><USER6> > On the bright side, I feel pretty confident that some real startup will take > the open sourced Wave technology and do something good...

I don't share your confidence. Making even trivial changes to the 350k lines of opensourced java takes a lot of time and a lot of skill. There are only ~5 part time developers working on it. I doubt that it will be useful anytime soon.

 _[Disclaimer: Some of that code is mine]_

<comment><USER8> Sounds like it would almost be easier to start from scratch with the protocol spec and build something lighter weight and not Java.

Then in the client only expose a subset of features until they are really good, then another, then another. Keeping the client codebase small as well.

<comment><USER6> I agree, although if I had the chance I would change the protocol spec too.

The client-server protocol uses protobufs encoded over JSON, and the federation protocol uses protobufs encoded over XML, via an XMPP extension. As others have said, there weren't accepted standards for this stuff just a few years ago. Today, you could build whip something together reasonably easily using JSON and socket.io or something.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Fantastically generous post. I wish more engineers were as publicly honest about their own, and their team's failures so that other engineers and engineering teams can learn from the experience.

<comment><USER13> .. will happen only if the society appreciate and give a bit reward to such situation...

These days we have plenty business bullies that sing the song "Win big or go home in shame" or "Second place is the first place loser"...

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> _You need the same mix of experienced talent working in the UI as you do with traditional "serious" stuff. This is where Apple is simply ahead of everyone else._

Not only does Apple not shunt n00bs at the UI, it actively hires extremely brilliant people to do UI invention/R&D.

E.g., consider the CV of the (obviously brilliant, IMO) "Up and Down the Ladders of Abstraction" guy, Bret Victor (1).

That's about two lightyears removed from "UI is boring and easy; make the junior programmers work on it while we do the algorithmically hard stuff on the backend."

(As an aside, Holy Shit is BV impressive and refreshing -- incredible tech chops combined with awesome aesthetic/design sensibilities, all wrapped up in a humanistic focus on usability...just, damn.)

(1) <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3099595>, <http://worrydream.com/#!/cv/bret_victor_resume.pdf>, and <http://worrydream.com/Bio/>

<comment><USER15> Impressive.... but damn, why do i feel like a junkie

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> _UI is hard_

hear hear. ui is harder than back-end stuff in my opinion.

<comment><USER17> UI is hard in the way that art is hard. It's difficult to understand what people really want or will value.

Backend is hard in the way that building a skyscraper is hard. You need a solid design and framework, but you also have to make sure every wire runs in the right place. Managing complexity is really the problem there.

Which is harder? I don't think they're very comparable, in the way that I don't know if creating beautiful art or building a skyscraper is harder.

<comment><USER16> Yes, that's the mistake most people make: back-end is engineering, front-end is art. No wonder we have such shitty front-ends.

Sure, there are a whole slew of "applications" that will suffice with a basic form-driven UI accessing a rails or servlet back-end. And indeed there are applications like twitter where the entire complexity is in the complexity of the back-end. But then there are all the apps that simply aren't web-apps yet, because nobody has figured out how to do complex, rich, and above all Interactive, applications using fucking javascript. We're getting there, but people are writing the code to do it as I type (jquery, backbone, etc).

So this is why UI is hard: its art _and_ its engineering. _And_ nobody thinks about the engineering part. _And_ when they do, they have to find an engineer who can talk to the designer without scaring him/her (very often "her").

<comment><USER18> In a word... UI is architecture (in the original meaning, like "designing buildings where people live/work", not the IT one).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Please stop trying to reinvent the browser scrollbar on your blog. Can't page down with this junk.

<comment><USER2> Worse than that, there's no content if you have Javascript off. Talk about tedious!

<comment><USER20> At some point, people are going to have to admit the web is not as interactive without javascript, and will need to stop complaining when they choose to disable it. Those people are welcome to revive gopher if that is what they are after.

<comment><USER19> Are those people supposed to turn their eyesight back on, through some magical switch, as well?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Great post but I don't follow the connection to the Mythical Man Month which is about having the wisdom to avoid tossing bodies at a late project.

The article seems to be more about making sure you have experience on the GUI.

All this said, i shouldn't complain about the title - rather i should just be happy the author shared hills lessons.

<comment><USER22> One of the deeper messages of the Mythical Man Month is that large teams in software don't work. The author of the post mentions that he should have known the project was doomed when the hiring manager didn't think 26 employees on a "startup" project was too many.

<comment><USER23> Yeah. According to the Mythical Man Month (or was it Peopleware?), when someone gives you 100 software engineers to do a project, what are you supposed to do? Set up 10 teams of 10 people, don't tell them about each other and make them all do the same project.

The argument is that you are going to be better off doing that and picking the best one at the end, than you are running the project with 100 engineers in the first place.

The OP reads totally true to me.

<comment><USER24> I don't remember that from the Mythical Man Month.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I really wish Larry would read this, and the Mythical Man Month in general.

</comment><comment><USER26> The 20% time policy that Google allows for one's own projects has probably served as a nice way to experience those "small wins" he is referring too (though the win may not be in the main line of work). I wish I had a similar policy at the place I work - I feel I could have avoided a burnout phase.

I'd be curious to know if Google revokes that policy for focus teams like the ones that worked on Wave and Google+.

</comment><comment><USER27> Great post. Reminded me of the following for some curious reason :

" If the land mechanism as a whole is good, then every part is good, whether we understand it or not. If the biota, in the course of aeons, has built something we like but do not understand, then who but a fool would discard seemingly useless parts? To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering. " - Aldo Leopold

</comment><comment> johnx123-up

       At the end we were close to 60 engineers

I guess, this is the reason for the failure. Probably 2-7 would be ideal for this kind of experimental projects.

</comment><comment><USER28> I really appreciate this post. I'm going through a very similar experience myself. Was at a startup, which was recently acquired by a larger corporation. Since I've previously worked at both small(and fast growing) and large companies in the past, I thought I possibly had the experience to make the new larger team I would be working with more "agile". But taking months to do what I normally accomplish in a week or two definitely is hurting personal morale. I'll try to achieve some daily small wins though=)

</comment><comment><USER29> With apologies to jwz:

 _Some people, when confronted with a problem, think "I know, I'll hire more engineers." Now they have two problems._

</comment><comment><USER8> Start small, grow organically, don't use Java.

</comment><comment><USER30> One of the lessons: Do not use Java for production applications.

<comment><USER31> Do not use Java for production applications if you don't know how to use Java.

<comment><USER32> You're implying that Wave engineers don't know how to use Java. But Wave engineers are Google engineers. Google engineers are hired somewhere in a high 90th percentile of programming ability and experience.

You've proven the GP's point -- don't use Java because the only people who know how to "use it" are 1% of programming experts that you probably don't have working for you.

<comment><USER33> Only in the bubble of language fashion that is Hacker News, could the failure of Google Wave be attributed to their language choice.

Billions of successful projects run on Java.

<comment><USER30> >Billions of successful projects run on Java.

I will give you billion dollars if you can prove that.

My personal guess (using my personal metrics) is that there are 10^3 to 10^4 successful Java projects and 10^9 failed ones.

<comment><USER33> In any event, the failed ones don't mean anything useful.

Successful ones mean "You can succeed using this". The failed ones mean "This failed, could have been for a ton of reasons".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Like most acquisitions a great concept gets stuck in neutral....not sure why....wave fundamentally is a fantastic idea....but a complex problem to solve....the fact that no one else has solved what wave attempted to solve is in itself a testament....but having said that I don't think it was an issue of programmers coming up with a problem and then trying to solve it....I think virtual communication as we know it is still pretty bad....and this post gives you a good insight into how complex problems cannot be solved by adding more people to the team....that just adds more complexity to an already complex problem.

</comment><comment><USER35> > I don't regret a single moment of being associated with it

This is a human nature. It's very hard to admit you just waisted your time.

</comment><comment><USER36> I wonder if Google Wave inspired creation of Chrome Frame, and if IE9 would had enough HTML5 features to support Google Wave.

<comment><USER6> <ex-wave team engineer>

Early versions of wave ran on IE7. The problem wasn't HTML feature support, it was a lack of engineering time. In the leadup to the IO announcement, the client team dropped IE support in order to get wave ready for the demo. Dropping IE support was supposed to be temporary, but everybody was too busy to fix it. "Just tell people to install Chrome frame" was the regular excuse.

It was being worked on when wave was finally cancelled.</comment></comment>


Getting Girls Into Programming, One Children's Book At A Time - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/02/03/liukas-hello-ruby/ <comment><USER2> > _There are just not enough women in the pipeline starting from as early as > K-12 schools._

This is the statement that loses me. The author seems to state it as if it's a given. But who is deciding there "aren't enough"? What is this supposedly ideal number ("enough") based on? Serious question.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. What about all the other professions where women are under represented. I don't see a lot of Teach Girls Construction or Get Girls Sniping in Afghanistan. And I don't mean that in a snarky way. The Soviets actually found that female snipers were superior due to steady hands, better perception at distance and a significantly lower incidence of colour blindess. They even had a complete female sniper platoon. The inverse of this is interesting too. You don't see anyone saying "There aren't enough men in healthcare" even though it's roughly 80% female. Women are a majority in universities, advertising, human resources and insurance along with a slew of other awesome fields. This imagined lack of opportunity is well intentioned but ultimately like 40 years too late and at this point in time, without merit. If anything needs to be addressed with regards to women's careers, it's that they don't get paid the same as men and that's a real problem. Get worked up about pay parity first. People self select for what THEY WANT to do. Stop blasting your personal definition of equality onto cognizant humans with phrases like "there just aren't enough".

<comment><USER2> The argument you may hear in response is that many don't have an opportunity to self-select because of gender biases which prevent them from being aware that they have the power to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Not a direct article comment:

I'm asking this to anyone who supports the activist approach to the women in tech problem. a) If you had to put a number on it, what would you deem the percentage chance that this school of thought is actually wrong, and b) what are the consequences if it is?

<comment><USER5> While not gender specific: I think this[1] is the worst case possible consequence of focusing on getting 5 - 7 year olds of any gender involved in programing: it turns into the awful system that is math education many countries.

        A musician wakes from a terrible nightmare. In his dream he finds
        himself in a society where music education has been made mandatory.
       "We are helping our students become more competitive in an increasingly
        sound-filled world." Educators, school systems, and the state are put
        in charge of this vital project. Studies are commissioned, committees
        are formed, and decisions are made — all without the advice or
        participation of a single working musician or composer.
        ...

[1][http://www.maa.org/sites/default/files/pdf/devlin/LockhartsL...](http://www.maa.org/sites/default/files/pdf/devlin/LockhartsLament.pdf)</comment></comment>