Google staff walk out over women's treatment - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-46054202 <comment><USER3> All of their demands seem pretty reasonable. It looks like the big gripe is that basically there's no real process in place for situations of misconduct in the office. To draw an analogy, this would be like Google not having a process to investigate and resolve site outages - it would be unthinkable, so why aren't they treating their organisation with the same rigor they treat their website.

<comment><USER4> > there's no real process in place for situations of misconduct in the office.

There shouldn't be a "process" set by Google when it comes to sexual harassment, employees should be able to sue, that's the process,sexual harassment is a crime, they can't sue because Google force them into arbitration, which should be illegal for an employer to do that to an employee IMHO. this is a denial of justice.

<comment><USER5> Prosecution is one method of deterring thieves from robbing my store blind. I have also tried locked doors, security cameras and not leaving the store unattended.

I like your argument that it is cheaper to just let people rob me blind and then burn time and energy catching them, prosecuting time, and hoping for a conviction as a deterrent.

With any luck using your system crime will magically disappear on it's own.

I am going to put my fingers in my ears now and make noises and ignore the worlds problems. It is certainly easier to not take responsibility. Good advice.

<comment><USER6> Comparing sexual assault to a store robbery in a tone of sarcasm is at best a poor judgement call.

I agree that assaulters need to take responsibility for their actions. However, when they don't, the law needs to be there to protect the victims.

<comment><USER5> I think it is poor judgment to create an organization that does nothing to secure its people from sexual harassment. Not sure why you would disagree but if that is what you intended I do not want to work for you.

<comment><USER6> Youre being incredibly unfair: That's not at all what I said, and your post I responded to also made no claim along these lines. You're misrepresenting my and your past statements.

What we were talking about is ending forced arbitration (the "process" referred to by the person you responded to) so that the law can be used to protect victims. That doesn't mean protections at work suddenly go away. It also doesn't mean suddenly employers will let sexual harassment run rampant either. It's not a binary either-or choice at all. So why not _all_ protections.

<comment><USER5> The post I replied to implied that the criminal justice system is the only solution to these problems:

"employees should be able to sue, that's the process,sexual harassment is a crime, they can't sue because Google force them into arbitration,"

Notwithstanding the unbelievable confusion of law in that post is a whole other conversation.

I argued that companies should also have a plan in place to prevent sexual harassment at work by using an analogy to robbery, also a crime, that we use preventative measures to stop despite there being a criminal system punishing robbery.

Your response was claiming I was expressing poor judgment for arguing that companies are responsible for not creating environments rife for sexual harassment.

"Comparing sexual assault to a store robbery in a tone of sarcasm is at best a poor judgement call."

I don't agree. I think it's a reasonable demonstration of the absurdity of the position I'm replying to.

I don't know what else you wrote, but that's what I replied to.

<comment><USER6> Re-read his post: _people should be able to sue in lieu of forced arbitration_ , they're never advocating for "create an environment _for_ sexual assaults". Nowhere and no one is arguing for creating an environment _for_ sexual assaults in this thread. The reason it seems like an absurdity is because you're setting it up to be one when no one is advocating it, which is the definition of a strawman.

Sorry, but if you're still going to stick on this point then this'll be the last thing I say on the matter.

<comment><USER5> This is a frustrating thread. Everyone is trying to outdo themselves. Feels like the Peoples front of Judea

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "A clear, uniform, globally inclusive process for reporting sexual misconduct safely and _anonymously_ "

Can anyone help me understand the rationale behind the anonymous part, with respect to due process and how the framework for anonymous accusations can be abused by bad actors?

 _Edit_ \- I have a question about the anonymous nature of reporting to HR, with respect to due process for the accuser and accused, maybe some of you can shed light on how you've seen it work in your experiences.

I've heard stories in the past, with details I'm not privy to, where coworkers were let go based on anonymous HR sexual misconduct allegations. I really hope that due process is involved for the accused and not just a "guilty until proven innocent" situation. What I mean is that evidence by the accuser is judged along the lines of probable cause that our police force uses to arrest or judges use to prosecute e.g. inappropriate advances caught on tape, unwanted email/text/chat messages in line with allegations, eye witness statements corroborated by fellow co-worker, etc.

There are a lot of introverted, socially awkward personality types in technical roles (on the spectrum?) with traits that can be perceived incorrectly, even negatively by neurotypical individuals and I fear the power of anonymous, "guilty until proven innocent" allegations standard that HR might start using to police the accused and trample on their right to due process since employment is at-will and you can be terminated for any reason, at any time, but in this situation you are ineligible for unemployment if it's recorded as misconduct.

<comment> gingerbread-man Maybe they're referencing something like Callisto (YC Nonprofit W18):

"Founders will be able to use Callisto to securely store the identities of perpetrators of sexual coercion and assault. These identities will be encrypted in a way that not even the Callisto team can view. If multiple founders name the same perpetrator, they will be referred to an attorney who can then decrypt the founder's contact info and reach out to provide them with free advice on their options for coming forward, including the option to share information with other victims of the same perpetrator." Source: [https://blog.ycombinator.com/survey-of-yc-female-founders- on...](https://blog.ycombinator.com/survey-of-yc-female-founders-on-sexual- harassment-and-coercion-by-angel-and-vc-investors/)

<comment><USER8> It's hard to imagine something more illegal than this when it comes to personal data protection.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> So the first demand is "A commitment to end pay and opportunity inequality"

I'd like to see the actual data behind this constant inequality claim. I would be genuinely interested to see what kind of difference there is between the sexes when comparing like-for-like jobs.

I've heard speculation that women don't argue for higher salaries as much as men, I've also heard that the data is never accurate because it doesn't compare the same jobs. I want to see some actual numbers so people can figure out where the issue actually lies.

<comment><USER10> Time magazine, which doesn't exactly seem to be a bastion of conservatism, had an article about this [http://time.com/3222543/wage-pay-gap-myth- feminism/](http://time.com/3222543/wage-pay-gap-myth-feminism/) , which had more hard-facts than anyone else I've seen, but the conclusion was that most of the claims made by the wage gap supporters are cherrypicked and false. Although, if Google specifically has a problem with it, I'd definitely be willing to listen. If they are protecting people like Rubin, it does seem plausible that other things could be going on.

<comment><USER11> > Time magazine, which doesn't exactly seem to be a bastion of conservatism

Although Christina Hoff Sommers does have a noticeable bias/axe to grind since she's pretty anti-feminism and considers there to be a "war against boys". Also she works for the AEI which _is_ a conservative think tank.

<comment><USER12> Agree. When you perform an online search for articles on the "wage gap myth," the majority of the articles seem traceable back to her.

<comment><USER13> It's because even though there is no data to support the wage gap, it's very unpopular to question it. Christina Hoff Summers is a pioneer in the field of gender equality and has paid a huge price by actually investigating these issues. It's a risky position to take in today's political climate so not many have followed her footsteps.

<comment><USER14> >there is no data to support the wage gap

This is false.

[https://www.epi.org/publication/what-is-the-gender-pay- gap-a...](https://www.epi.org/publication/what-is-the-gender-pay-gap-and-is- it-real/)

>it's very unpopular to question it.

Also false, it's very popular (and almost cliché) to dismiss it.

>Christina Hoff Summers... has paid a huge price by actually investigating these issues.

And what price would that be? She seems extremely successful.

[http://www.aei.org/scholar/christina-hoff- sommers/](http://www.aei.org/scholar/christina-hoff-sommers/)

<comment><USER13> From your link:

" _$3.27 less per hour than men. The median hourly wage is $15.67 for women and $18.94 for men.

The gender wage gap is a measure of what women are paid relative to men. It is commonly calculated by dividing women's wages by men's wages, and this ratio is often expressed as a percent, or in dollar terms. This tells us how much a woman is paid for each dollar paid to a man. This gender pay ratio is often measured for year-round, full-time workers and compares the annual wages (of hourly wage and salaried workers) of the median ("typical") man with that of the median ("typical") woman; measured this way, the current gender pay ratio is 0.796, or, expressed as a percent, it is 79.6 percent (U.S. Census Bureau 2016). In other words, for every dollar a man makes, a woman makes about 80 cents._"

It's meaningless to compare different positions pay to each other. "Typical" men vs "typical" women doesn't tell us anything about potential discrimination.

<comment><USER14> Oh, FFS, c'mon.

There's over 12,800 words in the article and 67 citations. It includes sections such as "How do work experience, schedules, and motherhood affect the gender wage gap?", "How do education and job and occupational characteristics affect the gender wage gap?", "Does a woman's race, age, or pay level affect the gender gap she experiences?", and "What role do 'unobservables' like discrimination and productivity play in the wage gap?" yet you choose to ignore all of it and argue against something from the introduction that's expanded upon further down.

You're arguing on bad faith here.

<comment><USER13> It's an argument against adjusted wage gap calculations or comparing salaries in the same roles. I fundamentally object to the very premise.

> _You 're arguing on bad faith here._

No, I just disagree with you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Something Ive never understood (not in the sense of I dont agree. What I really mean is I'm uneducated on the topic and would like to find out more, but my searches returned little, since it's a pretty heated topic), is why the company should be the primary responsible entity for this. Maybe for light cases where someone just need a stern talking to, but a lot of the cases are downright criminal acts. Having a private entity that has a vested interest in the events seem...unwise.

Shouldn't it be better to have law enforcement handle it, and have companies forced to cooperate instead?

Like, if it's someone who said something slightly inappropriate/gray area to another and just needs a stern talking to, sure. Have a process/HR deal with it. But so many occurrences are so much worse than that...

Not the same situation at all, but similar reasoning: I once had a colleague corner me in the office because of a disagreement in a meeting earlier in the day, where they threatened to "meet me outside to settle things". I mentioned it to my boss/HR/etc, and sure enough, they told me to just talk it out with them and were generally useless. I ended up having to quit. In hindsight, it wasn't my boss I needed to talk to, it was the freagin cops. (Not, of course, cops are frequently useless too, and that's a separate problem...but if we have to change the world somewhere, maybe pushing it all on private entities isn't the best thing to do in this case).

<comment><USER16> The police are not primarily there to solve civil disputes and disagreements. There is a pretty wide area where things are not illegal and possible to convict, but you would probably want to do something.

The police's mindset (at least the ones I've interacted with) is one of three things:

1\. Deterrance from crimes to be committed (doesn't apply here)

2\. Achieve convictions for crimes (would also not apply in your situation)

3\. Deploy force to break up ongoing altercations (also doesn't apply)

2 is interesting. Talk about a specific alleged crime with a police officer and they will not be discussing whether it was a crime or not much, nor if the person committed it, they will be discussing whether it can be proven in a court of law or not that a criminal act was committed by a specific person, beyond reasonable doubt. It is a purely pragmatic operation of "how can I provide proof that something occurred that is against this list of rules".

The police are in no way useless, most people just misunderstand what their job is. Their job is not to dispense justice, or make sure you get your revenge.

In your specific situation it sucked, but from a police point of view what would they do? Is there a crime? Maybe. Would they be able to present a chain of evidence proving beyond reasonable doubt that a crime occurred - <USER2> assuredly not. Would a conviction, however unlikely, achieve something meaningful? Nope, the guy would get a fine at most, but would still be working with you.

On the other hand, an employer is fully within their right to fire someone for a situation like that. They do not have the same burden of proof, they can refer to previous records of incidents, and the consequences would better match what you'd want (removal of the hostile environment).

<comment><USER17> _> Their job is not to dispense justice, or make sure you get your revenge._

This shouldn't be the job of HR either.

What you describe is what civil courts are for. From societal perspective, it is their _exact_ purpose: to dispense justice and _prevent_ revenge. If they don't work, they need to be made to work, instead of relegating this function to random people with random training and random incentives following random policies that are ultimately designed to safeguard companies, not employees.

<comment><USER18> Going through the civil courts is very time-consuming and expensive for all parties involved.

Focusing specifically on the company's perspective, it's also a terrible option from a risk management perspective. It leaves them exposed to the possibility of a very expensive judgment. (Especially if it's a big well-known company that the courts might want to make an example of.) If they can resolve the dispute internally in a quick and satisfactory manner, then that is very much in the company's interest.

Which is exactly why it typically ends up being HR's job. And why it _should_ officially be someone's job.

Framing it this way, I guess the company's internal culture being less dysfunctional because these sorts of problems are more likely to be addressed instead of being allowed to fester is just a happy side effect, but it bears mentioning, all the same.

<comment><USER16> I mean, Id argue that is exactly the way the system is designed, and it mostly does the job it is designed to do, not just a side effect.

Defining what makes a non-hostile workplace is hard, enforcing it on individuals is harder, so instead delegate that responsibility to each individual company and take action on the company if it does not do that.

In no way is it a perfect system (cue tons of excessively formalized training etc), but it is the best system I know of.

Allowing companies to remove the external force of "If you do not do this, you may face civil action" breaks the model though, so I completely understand why Googlers would like to remove forced arbitration. The risk of that is a contributing factor towards compliance.

<comment><USER18> Yeah, 100% agreed. Sorry - I was responding specifically to the question of whether HR should be in the loop, and didn't intend to suggest that the civil courts shouldn't also be part of it.

I wouldn't shed a tear if forced arbitration were banned. I can't really see it as not being at least partially an attempt to wiggle out from under the rule of law.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This entire protest would have generally been a non-event if the company hadn't sent out a memo telling managers to accommodate people who want to participate, ensure there is no retaliation or penalty, be flexible with schedules, etc., effectively advertising the event to everyone in the process. So then it looks like employees are being unsupportive of their co-workers if they don't participate. Which sort of shuffles the understanding of a "walk out" to be a far cry from the sort of thing that happened in the union days, and puts this firmly in the Just Google Things category, where even protesting the company becomes an activity that the company officially supports.

<comment><USER20> One view is that management knows that and did it anyway.

Perhaps they felt it was worth letting it be a bigger event and taking a PR hit if in return what they get is that the employees feel that the company supports them.

<comment><USER21> Good Machiavellian way to oust competing managers as well. Personally, that would be a horrible thing to do to another person, but then again, we know at least some of these managers kept silent during this whole fiasco; we're not talking about saints here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Very disappointed with mainstream media coverage here.

The walkout is being headlined as a complaint against harassment. It's not. It's a complaint against the company (rightly so) valuing its corporate reputation in _the world in which we live_ vs standing behind the victims as if they were family, and going medieval (eg excommunication) on the harassers.

Certainly there's a balance and perhaps google is on the wrong side of it, but don't kid yourself, google isn't going to take your insignificant side of it when the other side is a $100MM liability to an executive.

That a walkout like this only happens at Google and not, say, microsoft, where surely sexual harassment also occurs and is also brushed aside, is telling about the employee culture at Google. It's sad that the media coverage is so trivial and can't look deeper.

And to the organizers: you should have recruited tech workers at all FAANG to support this walkout. You missed a moment.

<comment><USER23> > _That a walkout like this only happens at Google and not, say, microsoft, > where surely sexual harassment also occurs and is also brushed aside, is > telling about the employee culture at Google._

There's a much simpler explanation than you are implying. The trigger for Googlers is the story from last week in the NYT about a former Google exec.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/25/technology/google- sexual-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/25/technology/google-sexual- harassment-andy-rubin.html)

<comment><USER22> Yes of course. I recognize that, but I don't understand your argument. Are you saying that from the cause of mainstream media (NYT) exposure of this payment, to the effect of a walkout, there is no aspect of Google-specific culture that makes this a unique Google occurrence? This was primed by previous walkouts such as the protest against the Trump immigrant travel ban nearly 2 years ago, and previous Google-internal petitions against things such as G+ real names (which people actually quit over) and the now infamous Damore memo.

Your comment seemingly argues that the story is just a simple one and I'm a fool (rhetorically) for thinking there's anything deeper.

I submit, again, that there is a deep story here that was missed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> How is this handled at other biggies in the valley - Apple, Microsoft etc? Do they also have the arbitration thing?

There was an awesome site on the front page yesterday, that compared career levels in the companies. Someone should make one comparing these companies on things like - treatment of women/minorities, age discrimination, side project policies, access to upper management etc

<comment><USER25> I have never understood why employees accept the restrictive clauses which assign ownership for any side projects to the employer. I am not a lawyer, but this has always struck me as amounting to a type of serfdom. If you are seen as a 24/7 unit of the company, and anything at all that you creatively produce can be claimed by the company, then your working capacity and creative capacity is essentially owned entirely by the company while you are employed there. You are not being paid just for your time and the work product you produce during that time. Rather you are literally selling an aspect of yourself. Does that sound reasonable at all? (of course, California has some protections against this. but that's just one state)

I would really like to see people rallying against many more things like this.

<comment><USER26> They tolerate it because it's largely unenforceable.

<comment><USER24> That is one reason.

Many people aren't even aware of such draconian policies they are signing up for. And companies are probably counting on it too.

It is also possible that even the owners of the company (especially small, family owned companies) aren't aware of these dumb policies. They just trust their lawyers to write up the contracts. There was a comment recently on HN - employee reads up the contract, goes to the owner to ask about some clause, and the owner himself is surprised and calls the lawyer to sort it out.

Big companies that spend shit ton of money on lawyers have no excuse - they're likely doing all this intentionally.

<comment><USER26> It's like they select a box for "maximum liability protection" not realizing some of it provides no protection at all

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> There is no will from upper management to handle these issues appropriately, which is part of why Google as an organization is in its current state. Google has been able to paper over issues with copious amounts of money thus far, but that is breaking down as time goes on.

<comment><USER28> I think it is more than that: there is a will from upper management to actively prevent such issues from being handled appropriately.

> _Larry and Sergey had like this gaggle of girls who were hot, and all become > like their little harem of admins, I call them the L &S Harem, yes. All > those girls are now different heads of departments in that company, years > later._

> _Sergey's the Google playboy. He was known for getting his fingers caught in > the cookie jar with employees that worked for the company in the masseuse > room. He got around._

> _H.R. told me that Sergey's response to it was, "Why not? They're my > employees." But you don't have employees for fucking! That's not what the > job is._

[https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/07/valley-of-genius- exc...](https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/07/valley-of-genius-excerpt- google)

<comment><USER29> holy shit. i hadn't seen that before. HR seems to have been completely captured by the forces it was supposed to resist.

<comment><USER30> HR is never there for the employee. They exist to protect the Company. They give lip service to protecting and nurturing the employees and our people are our most precious asset BS. The only time HR will go after any of the big boys is when they are on the outs with the board. Example: Mark Hurd when he was forced out at HP.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Another article:

 _We're the Organizers of the Google Walkout. Here Are Our Demands_

[https://www.thecut.com/2018/11/google-walkout-organizers- exp...](https://www.thecut.com/2018/11/google-walkout-organizers-explain- demands.html)

</comment><comment><USER32> I'd wager that the walkout was over the $2,000,000 a month paid to Rubin.

Also, people claimed that the payment was to keep Rubin from working with competitors... But some others say that it was to buy his silence over what others might have been doing...

</comment><comment><USER33> To clarify I'm not disagreeing with the walk out.

I do wonder if any reporting process at a company can ever really be trusted to have the employee's interests in mind. HR, legal, and etc all are there to protect the company. They're not there for your standard employee.

Again, not disagreeing with having a process, I just wonder if a process handled by the typical parties really can be trusted. I've never felt that HR, legal, or any of those departments are there FOR me. Rather they are there to prevent any problems the company may have, and that is not likely to be in my interests if I were to make a complaint about something.

<comment><USER34> They aren't there for you but for the company. They are really only there for you in any way that protects the company. Having a neutral third party would be one idea. It would have to be funded by employee and employer contributions though. Outside of that you have the EEOC in the US that has some authority.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I don't understand this at all.

 _Google chief executive Sundar Pichai has told staff he supports their right to take the action.

"I understand the anger and disappointment that many of you feel," he said in an all-staff email. "I feel it as well, and I am fully committed to making progress on an issue that has persisted for far too long in our society… and, yes, here at Google, too."_

If someone at the top is sincerely interested in resolving this satisfactorily, why the walk-out? I don't get it.

Are they saying they don't really believe him?

<comment><USER36> Words are cheap.

<comment><USER35> So is grandstanding by people with well paid, cushy as hell jobs who are happy to point fingers.

My mother always told me "When you point a finger at others, you have three fingers pointing back at you." What are these people personally doing to ensure that they are respecting women, creating the right kind of social climate at work, etc?

Because all the policy in the world can't per se fix a shitty culture. Shitty culture is as shitty culture does and it is perpetuated by every single individual in the organization and their individual choices.

I'm not impressed with people who point fingers. They are usually people wanting someone else to fix a problem so they don't have to actually change.

<comment><USER37> > What are these people personally doing to ensure that they are respecting > women, creating the right kind of social climate at work, etc?

Part of the reason to go to the walkout was to find out what to do. People didn't just stand there doing nothing. They listened to women speak about their experiences and ask for specific, concrete actions from attendees that would lead to less sexual harassment, bias, and associated garbage.

<comment><USER35> Okay, cool. Is there some reason this piece couldn't be done after hours? (Or, alternately) Is there some reason this couldn't be framed as "We are taking time off to discuss this amongst ourselves and better understand the problem space" without it being framed as a _walk-out_ with a flyer left on the desk filled with their opinion?

Do these things have to go hand in hand?

<comment><USER38> The company created a problem. It makes sense that their employees are using company time to work on fixing it.

<comment><USER35> Yes, and the comment you are replying to allows for that as a possibility without it being framed as "a walk-out."

I'm not suggesting they shouldn't take company time. I'm wondering why this can't be done differently. And so far the replies I'm getting don't actually address such inquiries.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Sounds like pre-unionizing to me. Wonder where this will lead to...

<comment><USER40> This is the most under rated comment in this thread.

Don't know what the Google management is thinking at this point in time. But I'm damn sure, unless you are making it rain hundreds of millions in dollars, and you are a part of these pre-unionizing exercises- You are very likely getting marked up as a trouble maker, and may be already a part of purge lists.

This is also a small industry. You don't want your name to smeared as a person who comes with a high trouble/contribution ratio. Nobody wants to hire people to do their jobs, and get employees running their part time political projects with their fellow colleagues in paid office time, on office issues.

There are also a huge range legal landmines you are likely to step over even without active knowledge that you are.

<comment><USER41> _> This is also a small industry. You don't want your name to smeared as a person who comes with a high trouble/contribution ratio._

What you are suggesting is called "blacklisting." You may be interested to learn that in many states it is illegal behavior itself. See [https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/free- books/employee-...](https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/free- books/employee-rights-book/chapter10-9.html).

 _> Nobody wants to hire people to do their jobs, and get employees running their part time political projects with their fellow colleagues in paid office time, on office issues._

Union organizing is not a "part time political project," it is a legally protected right. See [https://www.nlrb.gov/rights-we-protect/whats- law/employees/i...](https://www.nlrb.gov/rights-we-protect/whats- law/employees/i-am-not-represented-union/your-rights-during-union-organizing).

<comment><USER40> Nobody ever gets interview feedbacks in this industry.

What you are saying is true, but its always impossible to establish intentions. And either way you have to sue. All the best ever getting a job if you are known to do legal fights against prospective employers.

>>Union organizing is not a "part time political project," it is a legally protected right.

One believes in these things only until they become managers themselves. And every one aspires to be one in this industry.

<comment><USER41> _> One believes in these things only until they become managers themselves._

The law isn't Tinker Bell, it doesn't require you to believe in it to exist.

 _> And every one aspires to be one in this industry._

It's difficult to think of anything sadder than a person who assents to his own exploitation in the hopes that _maybe, someday,_ he will get to exploit someone else.

<comment><USER42> so all managers are exploiters?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> The DeVaul guy from Division X actually made _sexual advances_ towards someone being _interviewed_ for a job where he'd have been the manager. Has called it "an error in judgement".

I'm sorry, DeVaul, but that's not "an error in judgement", that is pure harassment, and I'd pay $2000 to watch you try your "moves" on someone who'd knock your teeth in for that.

</comment><comment><USER44> [https://twitter.com/GoogleWalkout/status/1057804203895283712](https://twitter.com/GoogleWalkout/status/1057804203895283712)

^ Might be a better source article.

</comment><comment><USER45> this is why we are all going to be replaced by machines.

</comment><comment><USER46> Interesting to contrast this story with Damore's claims of left-wing bias and overemphasis on diversity and inclusion. It's uncomfortable exercise to put myself in the shoes of a young woman considering applying to Google; the prospect of unwanted advances from higher-ups and suspicions from the occasional peer of being hired for my gender might be enough to put me off completely.

<comment><USER10> The interesting thing is that the #MeToo movement naturally targeted a lot of liberals, because almost everyone in Hollywood is liberal. The right also has some issues with harassment, etc. but the left is far from immune to having it and in some ways has more trouble. I'm not sure why that is, but the "free love" and unrestrained sexual expression type culture of the left might have something to do with it.

<comment><USER47> It's called white knighting, you see it a lot with feminist men who are often the abusers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> "A commitment to end pay and opportunity inequity"?

I'm confused here. Are they demanding that preferential hiring and advancement practices and programs for women and certain minorities be stopped?

<comment><USER49> As you can see, the divide is becoming greater between ones who "believe" and ones who "don't", and the audience is massively imposing a bias here in this thread. We've lost our ability to listen to each other, and it's sad that it happened on a topic which is still very easy to judge using science.

<comment><USER50> Most reasonable people on HN stay out of these threads. You're not going to change anyone's mind at this point.

<comment><USER51> I think it is true that you wont change most people's minds. (When I discovered the psychological concept of schema, I was literally horrified)

But some of us are discovering that what we thought of as "normal" (and thus forms the basis of many of of our value judgements) is quite narrow, so we have to adjust our expectations and that changes a lot of things... getting perspectives from others is a necessary and tedious process.

Im in my early 40s and despite thinking I was pretty liberal on most social issues I've spent the last 10 years discovering I've been wrong, poorly informed, and/or ignorant on a lot of details. At this rate, I dont expect to be done with these self-updates anytime soon, and reasoned arguments and shared experiences, fears, concerns, and hopes are essential for me to re- determine where I now stand, each and every day.

Just as an example, another comment made an argument about why the market would theoretically prefer underpaid staff. (Which would then not make them underpaid). A good point, but irreconciable with pay gap data...how do I resolve that? Ah, someone replied with a decent response about the issue BEING perceived value. Armed with these positions I can now spend a few minutes of much more effective research, and have better chances of noticing details in my day-to-day life.

For people who are tired of rehashing the same old arguments with data and answers that are out there for anyone serious to find...it's actually quite hard to find if you dont really know the question, and as unfair as it is, there is a limit to how much time and effort will people will spend grasping at straws about how they themselves might be reinforcing terrible systems. Implicit bias is IMPLICIT and thus it is hard to find out what your biased thoughts are. Effective arguments dramatically reduce that time and effort, and even if most wont take them for that final step, some of us are trying, and are grateful to those that are willing to once again rehash the "obvious" with those that are unlikely to change their minds.

<comment><USER13> > _A good point, but irreconciable with pay gap data_

> _For people who are tired of rehashing the same old arguments with data and > answers that are out there for anyone serious to find..._

It's funny that you say that since there is no data supporting the pay gap. In fact there are people posting data in this thread contradicting the pay gap.

If you say data is available to support your argument, you should link to it.

<comment><USER51> > It's funny that you say that

I think you misunderstood my point in the "answers that are out there for anyone serious to find" \- I'm saying it's worth restating your arguments even if you think people "should" know the "obvious" and "proven". Nothing in that position makes it ironic that I also stated my understanding of things (Be that understanding right or wrong).

> If you say data is available to support your argument, you should link to > it.

I've chased this rabbit hole before - assuming you are sincere, I'll point to Wikipedia and let you follow their citations, but there's lots out there:

> In the US the average woman's unadjusted annual salary has been cited as 78% > to 82% of that of the average man's. However, after adjusting for choices > made by male and female workers in college major, occupation, working hours, > and parental leave, multiple studies find that pay rates between males and > females varied by 5–6.6% or, females earning 94 cents to every dollar earned > by their male counterparts. The remaining 6% of the gap has been speculated > to originate from gender discrimination and a difference in ability and/or > willingness to negotiate salaries.

I'll be conservative and take the lowest difference and assume that college major, occupation, working hours, and parental leave are 100% by un-pressured choice: 95 cents to the dollar doesn't sound like a lot, until you ask yourself if a 5% raise is significant, particularly since the amount of money in question takes effect every single year. My anecdotal experience suggests the conservative assumptions for that are not reasonable, but YMMV.

<comment><USER13> Even the wikipedia article says there's no citation given to backup the claims (see first paragraph).

> _The remaining 6% of the gap has been speculated to originate from gender > discrimination and a difference in ability and /or willingness to negotiate > salaries._

So according to wikipedia, men _may_ have higher ability or be better negotiators? I don't see a gender pay gap here.

Here's a good article on the subject:

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/karinagness/2016/04/12/dont- buy...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/karinagness/2016/04/12/dont-buy-into-the- gender-pay-gap-myth/#31a03bbd2596)

<comment><USER51> > Here's a good article on the subject:

How so? The article rants about the 78% claim, without addressing that (a) even correcting for the concerns they state a pay gap exists, and (b) those "choices" men and women make aren't always free choices (witness who takes parental leave in the US vs in more egalitarian countries.

> men may have higher ability or be better negotiators? I don't see a gender > pay gap here.

I fail to see how not knowing the source of a gap disproves the gap.

And men having more frequent and successful negotiations is a pretty tested topic itself. When perceived aggression garners one gender respect and another disdain, it's an inevitable result.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> How do these protestors know the facts of the matter better than the people who investigated?

<comment><USER53> The facts are not in dispute by the people who investigated. They found the allegation credible.

<comment><USER54> > The facts are not in dispute by the people who investigated

That is not established.

> They found the allegation credible.

"Credible" is not "true"; it is quite possible to find both a claim and it's negation to be credible.

<comment><USER53> Yes, but even if the specic allegation was not true, his whole relationship with someone he had power over was highly inappropriate. Unfortunately though, given that the senior leadership had a history of engaging in such inappropriate relationships, Google's action here is to be expected.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Should they ask for the immediate termination of all past abusers and how high they should they go in the company?

</comment><comment><USER56> Wouldn't it be easier to create an algorithm for compensation which clearly didn't involve gender (i.e. no deep learning stuff). Something which boils down to base salary + experience factor + google service factor.

Honestly, I can imagine that being less troublesome even outside of attempting to be fair an equitable regardless of race / gender / sexual orientation.

<comment><USER57> Blind hiring can have the exact opposite effect:

[https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-30/bilnd-recruitment- tri...](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-30/bilnd-recruitment-trial-to- improve-gender-equality-failing-study/8664888)

My point is - there's zero guarantee that a "logical" algorithm would be "fair". Just like if you trained an ML algorithm on the database of people currently in American prisons it would most likely conclude that black=more likely to be a criminal, which is obviously an unfair assumption to make.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> Write a contrarian opinion - get publicly fired zero tolerance style, coerce for sex using the force of your position - get quietly paid $90M.

Looks like Google thinks that the former is much worse than the latter. Either that, or they apply different sexual harassment policies for rank-and-file employees and executives.

<comment><USER23> The first (Damore) was an engineer. The second (Rubin) was an executive.

To Google, executive >> engineer hence the outrage by rank and file.

<comment><USER59> Don't act like most of those rank and file support Damore in any way. There was a mob abrewing within that very group right before he was fired.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> Google needs to stand firm against these policies. Making the "chief diversity officer" answer directly to the CEO and make recommendations to the board of directors is an absurd demand. They would open themselves up to huge amounts of foreign manipulation and political sabotage.

<comment><USER61> > They would open themselves up to huge amounts of foreign manipulation and > political sabotage.

I'd like to know how you envision this happening. Like, China calls Google's CDO and says "We'd love to see more Chinese hires, we might consider sending you a welcome-back invitation"?

<comment><USER62> >I'd like to know how you envision this happening

Botnets of fake social media accounts for starters. You think if they are currently manipulating political elections they won't ever try and use similar tactics to tank a company?

China: "Google give us user data!"

Google: "No way!"

China: "PLA Unit 61398, hurt the Google! Make accusations! Lots of accusations! Many many many accusations!"

\----

China: "State media, run articles about how the evil uncivilized Google makes a hostile environment for female/gay/green cardigan wearing employees!"

\---

China: "Movie studios, make this romantic comedy but be sure to vilify a company identical to Google!"

\---

China: "People's Worker, scour the internet for any controversial quote from any corporate member of Google, great, yes, that! PLA Unit 61398, have an account 'discover' this quote and use the botnet to get it trending!"

<comment><USER61> ... but some of these examples happen already. How is a CDO reporting to the CEO going to amplify any already magnified negative PR and force action?

<comment><USER62> >How is a CDO

By existing. If you make a 'chief diversity officer' then you make an ideal candidate to compromise access to their accounts. Any policy discussion, any reports, any internal discussion of incidents become excellent ammunition for a campaign.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> I support this but I also wish other companies would be under the same scrutiny as Google. I've been at companies where women not only were paid much much less but also more or less objects that were openly treated as such.

There would be management meetings about rating the sexiest coworkers and who could lay down the most (obviously not a single woman in whole of management and they had no chance of moving even close to it in their career). All sanctioned from the highest level and not a single person would dare to question it. I was not actively participating but also part of the problem since I didn't say anything.

This was not even done in secret and more or less public knowledge. The communication from management had a lot of sexist jokes and pictures and anyone questioning it "had no humor".

Mind you, this was not a tech company per say and I believe the further you get from tech the worse it gets. I think it's sad that the huge problem affecting 99% of women gets reduced to a single company which probably is one of the few in the world that even has a code of conduct against this stuff.

</comment><comment><USER64> "there's no real process in place for situations of misconduct in the office. ...why aren't they treating their organisation with the same rigor they treat their website."

there is an interesting tendency that many psychologists pointed out: in many professions for some reason psychopaths tend to get to the top an stay there. Specifically CEOs tend to be people with most psychopathic traits:

[https://www.businessinsider.com/professions-with-the-most- ps...](https://www.businessinsider.com/professions-with-the-most- psychopaths-2018-5)

[https://www.amazon.co.uk/Wisdom-Psychopaths-Saints- Killers-S...](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Wisdom-Psychopaths-Saints-Killers- Success-ebook/dp/B007NKN9U8?tag=skim0x70967-21)

Now consider for a second, if you have psychopaths with money running the companies - why would they be interested in well being of their employees?

I am not saying every CEO is a psycho, but many are (as research shows):

[https://hbr.org/2004/10/executive- psychopaths](https://hbr.org/2004/10/executive-psychopaths)

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

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/victorlipman/2013/04/25/the- dis...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/victorlipman/2013/04/25/the-disturbing- link-between-psychopathy-and-leadership/#2e2a21734104)</comment>


CascadiaJS 2013 talks have been posted online - <AUTHOR> http://2013.cascadiajs.com/videos

<comment><USER2> Fantastic conference and gave me a lot of hope for the future of javascript. :)</comment>


Getting started with NodeGUI, a Qt-based library for desktop applications - <AUTHOR> https://hibbard.eu/node-gui/ <comment><USER2> > NodeGUI is a young project and unfortunately cross-platform support is not > quite there yet. That is to say, if you need cross-platform builds, you have > to run the packer in each of the different OS environments.

Don't all great projects start young and gain interested folks to make it widely used? Also Qt (Which is a source-level cross-platform SDK) requires you to be running the target you are compiling for each platform and that is no different for compiling 'electron executables' targeting Windows, Mac and Linux, but the source code itself is cross-platform. So I think NodeGUI does qualify as an alternative.

Perhaps he is looking some form of compiled 'bytecode' bundle that can be loaded into the VM and can call the Qt GUI shims no matter the platform? Maybe WASI can do such a thing in the future for this project but for now, that sounds a lot like the 'cross-platform Java' way which would be indeed truly cross-platform.

<comment><USER3> >Don't all great projects start young and gain interested folks to make it widely used?

The counterpoint to this is that making a robust cross-platform GUI library is a massive endeavor and there is a veritable mountain of cross-platform gui projects out there and overwhelmingly they end up as never-finished abandoned projects. The exceptions like Qt and electron that actually succeeded tend to have large organizations behind them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hard to read the article after baseless FUD/BS privacy concerns about Electron or anything from Google, and then jumps right into using node. WAT.

<comment><USER5> In my opinion, there is nothing FUD or BS about the statements made about privacy concerns related to Google and Chromium.

He didn't say he absolutely knows that Chromium is phoning home "in some way shape or form". He just said that he doesn't believe it can be trusted not to. It's a legitimate concern that many people have, given Google's size and scope of influence. You may not share his concern, but that doesn't make his illegitimate.

If your objection is based on the fact that the project is using node, and there are also plenty of "phoning home" opportunities there, well I can see that too (npm/yarn being as they are), and I think it is something developers need to consider also. npm, Inc has perhaps a lot more power to abuse than many developers ever think about, but it is not near the scope of Google's. Facebook develop's yarn, which comes with its own set of concerns, as well, but you would not have to use yarn with NodeGUI (assuming you can, I haven't looked).

Assuming your objections were based on node having it's own privacy concerns, I guess rather than labeling the discussion of Google/Chromium privacy concerns as "FUD/BS privacy concerns about Electron or anything from Google", I would have just pointed out the concerns with node.

EDIT: oh, and of course, since V8 is Chromium's javascript engine, and that's what node uses, well maybe NodeGUI dev just didn't think about that. :-D

<comment><USER6> Google Chrome? Yes, it is definitely a privacy concern but Chromium is open source. Debian includes Chromium packages and if there were legitimate concerns about Chromium it would have never been distributed in the official Debian repositories. If the author knows there's something sketchy going on with Chromium they should present their findings, otherwise it's just unsupported conjecture.

<comment><USER7> You think relying on Debian as proof there isn't lies outside the bounds of conjecture?

"Pot, I'd like to introduce you to kettle."

<comment><USER6> The author provided no evidence and it passed the Debian project auditing process, among several other distribution audits. I specifically mentioned Debian because their standards for privacy and open-source purism are just _sightly_ below Richard Stallman level. Believe me, someone would have complained about it by now.

<comment><USER8> > Believe me, someone would have complained about it by now.

People have been complaining for a fair amount of time.

[https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/directory- discuss/2017-12...](https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/directory- discuss/2017-12/msg00008.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This just seems like it's a well designed library for using Qt from Node. If you're going to not using HTML for your UI, not sure it makes sense to market this as an alternative for Electron.

<comment><USER5> That's not entirely true. Electron's target is desktop apps written in Javascript. While it is true that the GUI is not written in HTML, you are still writing the logic of the application in Javascript, so there is still a large amount of overlap.

And if the application uses a _lot_ less RAM and performs way better (as I suspect it may), then a lot of people would be willing to give up using HTML for the GUI, so the app doesn't run like a dog and/or drain your battery. I don't know how Node-GUI performs or how much RAM it uses, but being that Qt is the GUI layer it is using, I suspect it will be a sizeable improvement over Electron.

I understand where you are coming from. A lot of the selling point of Electron is reusing GUI components from web applications (and also just using the same tools to create GUIs that you use for web development). This tool obviously won't give you that.

But I could see people using it as an alternative for Javascript apps on the desktop (especially if they prove to be much less piggish than a lot of Electron apps tend to be).

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Given that Qt already supports declarative JS like UI development with QML which I think is literally a stripped down JS and Python/C++ on the backend I honestly don't really see the point of this.

<comment><USER11> With QML/QtQuick, can you do all things you can do with C++ and Qt widgets?

<comment><USER12> I'd say they have different use cases.

If you want to develop native-looking or information-dense UIs, Qt Widgets is the way to go. If you want to create a more Electron-like UI or develop something for mobile devices, I'd go with Qt Quick. It's also possible to combine both by embedding a QQuickWidget[0] inside a Qt Widgets application.

If you want to get an idea about what both solutions provide, take a look at the examples for Qt Quick[1] and Qt Widgets[2]. Especially Qt Quick Controls[3] are useful to see what UI controls are available in Qt Quick.

I'm working on a desktop app in Qt Quick using QML and C++. Happy to elaborate if there's interest.

[0] [https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qquickwidget.html](https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qquickwidget.html) [1] [https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qtquick- codesamples.html](https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qtquick-codesamples.html) [2] [https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qtquickcontrols2-examples.html](https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qtquickcontrols2-examples.html) [3] [https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/examples- widgets.html](https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/examples-widgets.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Next step - get rid of Node/JS and use plain old Qt natively, e.g. with C++.

<comment><USER14> Next step - just go use windows forms. Ammirite guys?!?!?!

Who doesn't love outdated frameworks that artificially limit my options and dev resources!

<comment><USER15> Oh how I wish some frameworks would be half as capable as Windows Forms and the third party vendors eco-system.

To talk about outdated frameworks, first provide tooling at the same feature level.

<comment><USER7> MSFT did get their tooling right. That's what developers liked early on and became somewhat dependent on was their tools.

<comment><USER15> I rather be dependent on vendors' tooling and enjoy productivity than dealing with lower grade tooling for the greater good or whatever.

Be it Borland, Microsoft, Google, Apple, Oracle, OutSystems, Adobe, Qt, ...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> If you want to use Qt and really need to use Javascript maybe Cutee would be an option too. Disclaimer: I've never used it. [https://cutetee.it/](https://cutetee.it/)

</comment><comment><USER17> Why not QML then?!

<comment><USER18> Just one possible answer: Because Qt QML and Qt Widgets are not equally good at different things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> > Google has become unbelievably data hungry in the past few years, and in my > opinion Chromium cannot be trusted to not phone home in some way shape or > form.

This is not a particularly Google-free solution as upstream Node.JS depends on V8.

(Disclaimer: I am an employee of Google. I do not work on Chromium or V8. All opinions expressed are my own and not those of my employer.)

</comment><comment><USER20> A small recent thread: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20706163](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20706163)

</comment><comment><USER21> Reminds me a bit of React-Native-Desktop, which also uses Qt.

<comment><USER22> Was also thinking of Proton-Native. Was hacking with proton recently and it was not working correctly on a few fronts.

Have you had any experience with react-native-desktop?

<comment><USER21> Sorry, no. Just React-Native on mobile/web.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is an interesting project, that I could see being useful, but it's not an alternative to Electron if it can't cross compile.

</comment><comment><USER24> Enough with ducktape. Just use a fucking Smalltalk already. Cuis, Squak, Pharo. If you want to ship a runtime environment with your apps you might as well ship a good one. They have good UI development tools, fast VM and have (from my experience) much better cold startup time than anything based on Electron or Java.

<comment><USER25> I would like to do this for my next project, but unfortunately appearance matters to clients. It is far easier to make something that looks "modern" using something like Electron than it is any of the open source Smalltalk systems.

The Pharo team are doing excellent work to try to change this. In particular, Spec2 promises to deliver multiple backends including GTK. I think that can really change things for Smalltalk users. But for now it's just not there. I wish appearances didn't matter. But they do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> interesting project. I found and had a play with pyqt just recently and quite liked it. [https://github.com/pyqt/examples](https://github.com/pyqt/examples)

</comment><comment> d--b Er. The whole point of electron is to use the same code as your website to generate a desktop app.

Honestly, this doesn't make sense to me at all.

<comment><USER27> My screaming 4GB of RAM laptop would like to have a word with you.

I would rather have any native alternative to electron than any electron app any day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> This is kind of the reverse of what I would want.

I want to use html/css/js to create my front-end, Although it is more resource intensive then Qt, it is simply more flexible and has a much richer eco-system to rely on.

Meanwhile the usage of chrome as a run-time is one of the worst parts of electron as every app consumes a lot more memory than a "native" application would need. These days Chrome is so highly sophisticated by now you could easily call it an OS. It comes with a lot of baggage from a Driverstack for Sound, Joysticks and Accelerometers to a whole suite of debugging tools.

Don't get me wrong. Electron is good for what it is: a way to easily write portable apps which can share codebase with a SaaS-Platforms. I would just wish developers would have just taken a different approach e.g. using a more striped down version of chrome or maybe even use Firefox/Servo.

<comment><USER29> Node and Chrome are both built on V8, so the synergy between the two is significant. I agree though, it would be interesting to see a Servo-based app framework, but I suppose Electron already has first-mover advantage at this point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> There is also qt/qml for javascript.</comment>


Blockchains can't stop counterfeits - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@vr6/blockchains-cant-stop-counterfeits-7f092ee9475 <comment><AUTHOR> The problem is, blockchain has little role to play in connecting the physical world to digital world in a full-proof way. Attaching a digital identity to a physical object and verifying it, is still a huge problem.</comment>


Cryptocare- Platform for easy crypto circulation - <AUTHOR> https://cryptocare.in/ <comment><AUTHOR> I want people to subscribe here for early access. And I'm seeking feedback on the platform as we are in the initial phase of development.</comment>


Ruby Block Styling (Homoiconic/Reg Braithewaite) - <AUTHOR> http://github.com/raganwald/homoiconic/blob/master/2009-12-09/block_styling.markdown#readme

<comment><USER2> Ok, I was surprised to see this submitted to HN. In an effort to drag it into something that gratifies my intellectual curiosity, forget what does or doesn't work in Ruby for a moment and ask a question:

 _Why doesn't this work in every language?_

In other words, if you have a construct for sequencing multiple statements (line breaks and semicolons in Ruby), and another construct for altering the order of evaluation (parentheses in Ruby and most languages), why don't they work together seamlessly? The surprising thing here is not that Ruby allows it, but that many other popular languages don't.

<comment><USER3> You can do it in C:

        #include <stdio.h>
        int main(void) {
            int a, b, c;
            int d = (a = 1, b = 2, c = 3, a + b + c);
            int e = (({int f = 1; e = f;}), e += 1);

            printf("d is %d \n", d);
            printf("e is %d \n", e);

            return 0;
        }

Edit: I just realized how strange the line e = ... is. I wonder if it yields different results with different compilers.</comment></comment>


OpenSUSE Linux 12.1 Released - <AUTHOR> http://news.opensuse.org/2011/11/16/opensuse-12-1-all-green/

<comment><USER2> nice, another successful release! can't wait to get it running</comment>


Former spy chief overheard giving off-the-record interview from Acela train - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/24/former-spy-chief-overheard-acela-twitter

<comment><USER2> Here are a few other submissions of this story:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6608480](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6608480) (washingtonpost.com)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6608651](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6608651) (washingtonpost.com)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6608690](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6608690) (yahoo.com)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6609053](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6609053) (onthemedia.org)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6609197](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6609197) (washingtonpost.com)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6610863](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6610863) (indiatimes.com)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6613137](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6613137) (securityweek.com)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6614293](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6614293) (today.com)

So far none have any significant discussion - perhaps this will be the first.</comment>


Show HN: My 1st project - Clearli Weather - <AUTHOR> http://clearli.herokuapp.com/ Over the last couple of months I've been teaching myself Ruby and finally decided this week that I was going to put my mind to something and try to ship some sort of a product. Like I said this is the first thing I've ever built so I'm sure it's full of errors problems but I just wanted to put it out there!<p>Cheers <comment><USER2> Holy crap, that background image is huge. Why not use @media to change the size of the image downloaded from the server?

Currently, it's heavy rain, but the image is of golden beams of sunlight in a forest. It's deceiving, but I don't mind it now that I know it's not consistent.

I like your use of the rain icon.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll look into that for sure, like I said I'm still in the infancy of learning to program, thanks for the heads up!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> link to reddit [http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1c0xw4/my_first_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1c0xw4/my_first_coding_project_clearli/)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Any feedback is most appreciated!</comment>


Ask HN: Remote Embedded Software Developer - <AUTHOR> I've got experience as an on-site embedded software developer, but I would like to try working remotely maybe as a freelancer. Does anyone have experience with working this way, is it even possible ? When developing software for hardware platforms it is often necessary to have hardware on desk to debug it for example with oscilloscope or just to hook up wires to program it. This is rather troublesome when working remotely. Are there any companies that are willing to hire embedded software developers remotely and e.g. send them target hardware to work on ? <comment><USER2> So I started at a startup 3.5 years ago as an embedded developer and I was on the opposite coast from them in the U.S. So yes, companies do hire that way. I have what I feel is a key advantage for that scenario however, in that I have a full hardware debugging setup which helps to eliminate a lot of objections or concerns. e.g. I have an oscilloscope, lots of misc programmers (JTAG etc), desktop variable power supplies, power load testers, soldering workstation, a microscope etc. I even have a small reflow oven. So essentially the only thing I needed was their specific hardware and schematics so I could be productive.

I am not saying you need all that to get a remote embedded job, but it just removes a lot of objections if you don't need them to fully set you up. And as a freelancer it becomes kinda important that you are self sufficient. I also don't think all that is necessary just for a firmware job either of course, but it never hurts. If you want to freelance, I feel your tooling is your responsibility and they should be getting target hardware to you and that's it.

One other aspect to it, I sold them a little on it back then but I truly believe in it. If we can work remotely on hardware and make it right then we have solved a lot of the remote debugging/support issues that usually pop up when you start shipping hardware. So we lived in an environment where we had to learn how to solve problems even if I wasn't right there next to the hardware exhibiting the problem. This I think has made us a better more technically competent company, hands down. And it made me focus on the firmware in ways for reliability that maybe if I was sitting in the office I wouldn't have started with to be honest, they would've been on things to do but may have been down on that list.

<comment><USER3> I think having all your own basic lab equipment is key. In most cases one can't do effective embedded development without such gear.

I think for small companies with short term embedded needs, you can actually be extra valuable, they don't need to invest in all the gear and know how for a one off a project.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> We have one such person right now. He's contract rather than permanent, but we've done it.

We have fairly inexpensive hardware, and the hardware is not in flux, so we have been able to send him one unit and be done with it. (I think we maybe had to send him a replacement once, but no more than that.) If the hardware was changing rapidly, this could get really tedious.</comment>


Goldman says client data leaked, wants Google to delete email - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/07/02/us-google-goldman-leak-idUSKBN0F729I20140702 <comment><USER2> Pro tip: If you're using GMail, install the Undo Send plugin, going strong since 2009.

[http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2009/03/new-in-labs-undo- send....](http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2009/03/new-in-labs-undo-send.html)

(I realise in this case it was the receiver, not the sender, using GMail, but I'm sure a lot of people here send from GMail.)

</comment><comment><USER3> To me the point here should be that Goldman can't control their data and a simple typo can lead to a "massive" breach of "highly confidential" information.

<comment><USER4> How would you fix this problem? Because something similar happened to me.

Someone pasted in a bunch of confidential info into an email that was for discussion, with a few replies back and forth. After a hallway discussion with another colleague, I sat down to forward the latest email to him, but Outlook autocompleted the email address to an external vendor. Before I knew it, the email was away. I quickly sent the vendor rep asking him to delete the email I just sent, and he agreed. I assume he was professional about it.

What can be done? Confidential discussions via email is a must. Trying to get the entire company into a secure web/app-based platform only is a non-starter. You can't take away the ability to send email out. A custom "Internal Distribution Only" flag in Exchange might work, but I can already hear the complaints already of having to set/unset it with every email.

<comment><USER5> Most major companies with sensitive data to protect have multiple safeguards in place to ensure said data does not leave their control. It's common/standard practice for email filters to auto-encrypt all email attachments, or just downright forbid them from going out. Some appliances will even read text of emails for sensitive data being discussed with unauthorized individuals.

See SEJeff's comment below for more details and links.

<comment><USER6> What if it was just a copy-paste of the data and not sent as an attachment?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Putting aside the issue of whether there is any legal basis for ordering Google to delete something that was accidentally disclosed, I also take issue with their claim that the request is in itself reasonable.

They are not only requesting Google to delete this email, but also provide information to Goldman Sachs about who accessed that information. This violates the privacy of the person who received the email. What right does a company have to know how you accessed your own email, or who you shared it with, just because they accidentally sent you an email?

<comment><USER8> I agree. If said person does disseminate private information, and it's illegal, that's on the receiver.

In any case, I don't trust Goldman Sachs. They lie [1] with no hint of limit or shame. Did they leak client information, or incriminating evidence?

Sure, it's conjecture, but the last thing I'd do is violate someone's privacy or hand over personal information on Goldman's word.

[1] [http://m.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-people-vs- goldma...](http://m.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-people-vs-goldman- sachs-20110511?page=1)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It makes me sad that asking Google to fix their problem is the best solution Goldman Sachs can come up with. A few other options off the top of my head:

* DDoS the gmail account in question with spam, particularly spam that looks like it contains confidential information.

* Create a clever job ad on reddit, advertising a GS position in IT Security division by tracking down an email user supposedly played by a GS confederate, and then provide the gmail account in the ad

* Blackmail the unintended recipient, perhaps by sending the sort of data it's illegal in the U.S. to even own

* Mock the "From" header for thousand of typical spam messages with the gmail account address, send them to destinations that are sure to pass through Spamhaus & co.'s filters

* Fill the user's inbox to capacity; e.g., sign up for Quora with the gmail address in question

Certainly on the gray hat side of things, but asking Google to delete an email isn't exactly kosher to begin with.

<comment><USER10> How on earth are any of the things you listed "gray hat"? Asking Gmail to delete an email you have sent by mistake may be a little unethical, but entirely legal. ALL of the ideas you have posted are blatantly illegal.

<comment><USER5> Bigger picture... this happened in any capacity. GS should be in serious hot water with somebody... perhaps even a government regulatory body.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I am surprised that the information got out. In my company any email attachments to addresses outside the company domain were automatically zipped and passworded at the mail-server.

We would then receive an email with the password which we have to then inform to the original recipient (usually by forwarding the email... MITM? What does that mean).

And this is for a company that is nowhere near as regulated. How did GS let this happen?

<comment><USER12> Clearly someone in their infosec department just got fired. In the financial industry (I work in tech for finance), the "DLP" aka Data Loss Protection segment is very busy.

A few ideas: [https://www.verdasys.com/solutions/eip.html](https://www.verdasys.com/solutions/eip.html)

[http://www.symantec.com/data-loss-prevention](http://www.symantec.com/data- loss-prevention)

[http://interguardsoftware.com/sp_dlp_lnd_v6.html](http://interguardsoftware.com/sp_dlp_lnd_v6.html)

[http://technet.microsoft.com/en- us/library/jj150527(v=exchg....](http://technet.microsoft.com/en- us/library/jj150527\(v=exchg.150\).aspx)

DLP software is what keeps sensitive software inside the confines of where it is supposed to stay. Funnily enough, DLP software like exactly the stuff in those links is what was not installed in the base Edward Snowden was at in Hawaii because it used too much bandwith.

The Federal Reserve uses Verdasys to prevent digital copies of the plates that print money from making it out (I know a guy who works in their tech department). It is scary to work at a place where they don't always trust even their administrators who have root/Administrator privs.

<comment><USER13> Is such a setup able to figure out if I base64 or uuencode a file and include it as text inside of a plain text e-mail? I would think there'd always be a way around this somehow.

<comment><USER12> Yes. The software we use will actually log when you perform any sort of read on files matching certain strings (ie sensitive source codes).

One of our infosec guys encoded some sensitive source code and played it through the speaker to his phone and reconstructed it. The DLP software detected that and it was in a dashboard buried amongst other things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> There are multiple problems with this, from both a regulatory and internal control perspective:

* Regarding testing internal changes - banks maintain vast test databases (admittedly full of customers called Ronald McDonald) covering almost every scenario. Testing goes far beyond unit testing and smoke testing, but dedicated teams of system integration and user acceptance testers. This 'test' was not a 'test' by any measure of internal policy.

* Contractors should not ordinarily have access to customer data. Regulators across jurisdictions make this clear. They can, but an excruciating approval process is necessary.

* Contractors having external email access to anything but whitelisted domains is unusual, and worth raising an eyebrow at.

* Why is the email address being typed in? I've never worked at Goldman but expect like almost every other bank in the world they use Exchange, which typically allows typing in [Lastname], [Firstname} with a list of people to then select (Jones, David1; Jones, David2; Jones, David3; etc).

* Why aren't attachments required to be encrypted, especially to external domains? This is an automated feature in Exchange.

I'm pretty familiar with all the duck tape that gets used in daily banking. So are regulators, who take a dim view of VBA being used as glue to tie together 1000s of internal systems, but often turn a blind eye. But this is not a case of duck tape, it is institutionalised failings at several levels. So the response is not surprising, Goldman have to show they take this seriously, despite so many internal failings, and shirk a bit off on 'external contractors' too.

</comment><comment><USER15> It's funny how companies run by psychopaths -- such as Goldman -- seem to think they can play by a different set of rules than anyone else.

Google should tell them to go get fucked and take some damned responsibility for their mistakes for once.

<comment><USER16> That's the funny thing. Didn't it technically become a "needless and massive privacy breach" the instant the email was dispatched from their servers? Who knows who might've intercepted, read, or otherwise had access to it.

They _definitely_ need to take responsibility at this point and contact all affected parties since there's no guarantee the data went unread.

<comment><USER17> Yeah, they will only suffer reputation loss if that email gets out further, you see!

<comment><USER16> The sad thing is, it seems your tongue-in-cheek comment is _exactly_ their mode of thought.

Mind boggling, isn't it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is interesting from the context of a whistleblower. What if the contractor intentionally emailed the file to an external address because they had found out some kind of management impropriety.

</comment><comment><USER19> _" Emergency relief is necessary to avoid the risk of inflicting a needless and massive privacy violation upon Goldman Sachs' clients, and to avoid the risk of unnecessary reputational damage to Goldman Sachs," the bank said.

"By contrast, Google faces little more than the minor inconvenience of intercepting a single email - an email that was indisputably sent in error," it added. _

_" Emergency relief is necessary"_

"We are a big powerful bank, we are going to ask you nicely to do us a favor. Our employees fucked up. Please help us hide the fact that our employees fucked up, so we don't get a reputation for having employees that fuck up." the bank said.

"What we are asking them to do is technically speaking very simple. Whether or not it would open them up to many more such requests, we don't really care(unless one of our employees fucks up again,) fuck you we're goldman sachs." it added.

<comment><USER5> I see we came to the same translation ;-P

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The question is: \- if the email can cause "needless and massive" damage,

Then A) why is that information on someone's laptop and B) how can their email systems not be protected about it C) particularly when a contractor can have the data

The email attachment has probably already been saved.

</comment><comment><USER21> This story seems plausible, and the relief seems reasonable. I guess I don't feel the outrage.

<comment><USER22> I don't think there's any particular outrage. Unless it's along the lines of not having the systems in place so that this doesn't occur. Whether this is outrageous (others in the thread have pointed out solutions) it's definitely a reason to be news worthy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> On a side note, this is why it's so important for these large companies to STOP sending attachments and instead used shared links to files (like via Dropbox or equivalent). One way to do this would be to have a corporate wide email gateway that scans all emails, strips attachments, and converts them to hosted files. The gateway would replace the attachments with links to the same. This way, if something like this happens again, they can simply remove the hosted file or unshare it, no harm done.

<comment><USER23> > used shared links to files (like via Dropbox or equivalent)

Wait, wouldn't that be sharing their data with Dropbox? If data is so sensitive, I don't see why is Dropbox necessarily more trustworthy than a random stranger with a gmail account.

I if got a random email from GS with some brokerage account mumbo jumbo I would assume it is span and delete it. So would my mom and most friend and most people out there probably.

Presumably if this "stranger" is random, one can make an argument that data would be safer with them then with a big cloud data aggregator (as that would be a single targeted point of attack).

Ideally they should probably set up their own file sharing service with the ability to explicitly share some files externally (taking all the necessary security measures).

<comment><USER24> You can revoke access to a shared dropbox file. You can also disable the shared links.

<comment><USER23> You can but not to dropbox. Dropbox still has access. That is the problem, isn't it?

<comment><USER10> I assure you, I only used Dropbox as an example. Clearly a system like this should be implemented by the company it self. If it's important, you should store it on your own servers, and make sure that those servers are safe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Goldman has no process around sensitive emails so google should be responsible? Goldman should have to tell their customers and own up to their error.

<comment><USER26> Also, they propose violating constitutional rights to privacy to enter into and modify one person's email for a civil (commercial) matter.

<comment><USER27> No.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> This actually seems kind of reasonable, extremely limited in scope, very narrow, and it's going through proper channels.

</comment><comment><USER29> Is there any case law on the books involving a similar situation but with postal mail?

<comment><USER30> There very well might be, but my understanding is that courts are not likely to draw decisions on email-related cases based on precedent set on mail- related cases (although like all things, that interruption is likely to vary country to country). Namely, since email is not sent through a government postal service, and is much more akin to a private courier.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> How can anyone even think about justifying the failure to encrypt the data before sending it? It wouldn't make the WSJ but would be just as bad if the data moved as a cleartext email to its intended recipient.

</comment><comment><USER30> I'm more interested in knowing what repercussions are for the recipient of the email if they were then to forward it on or make it public in some way.

Just since someone emails you something, does not mean they have granted you ownership over that information or permission to share it publicly. But that said, show me a corporate mail server which doesn't add 40 lines of disclaimer at the end of the email anyway.

<comment><USER26> They should wikileak it.</comment></comment>


MacHeist is giving away my Mac app ShoveBox and $154 of other apps - <AUTHOR> http://www.macheist.com/nano

<comment><USER2> I love the stupid simplicity of ShoveBox (that's a complement, btw). If I wasn't already hooked on Yojimbo, I'd probably switch. Sometimes Yojimbo feels just a tad too complicated for my needs and I find myself just saving a link as a (temporary) bookmark in Safari instead of creating a Yojimbo note, but by and large, Yojimbo does the trick for me.

As the only things I write are technical papers, I don't have much use for either Mariner or WriteRoom (this is where LaTeX and Microsoft Word with its automated bibliography and table of contents shine).. But 'Hordes of Orcs' seems pretty cool. I previously trialed Twitterific but didn't like it much - TweetDeck is so much better.

I don't know whether or not TinyGrab will come in handy; I think it's one of those apps you've got to live to truly appreciate it.

At any rate, nice bundle. Thanks :)

<comment><USER3> I was thinking the same thing, except with Evernote - I started using it a few weeks ago and have already built up a sizable switching cost. Maybe it'd help to hear more about import options as well as competitive differences?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Dangrover, I just wanted to let you know that I think ShoveBox is a great application. I have been on the verge of buying it for a year now because I enjoy its use and find it so elegant, but I never have done because I haven't been able to find a superior placement for it in my workflow. I don't think this giveaway will change that state of affairs, but even as I don't find it personally necessary I think Shovebox is just very well designed indeed.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks so much!

I'm hoping to return the app a little to its roots and make it something more hackers will want to use in version 2.0, while keeping the existing functionality/marketing approach.

For instance, there's a feature called Targets that replaces Rules and makes it so you can define targets in addition to the existing ways to get info into the app (e.g. add your own menu items, bookmarklets, floating blob/tab thingies). And I really want to have bindings for everything in the app in _some_ language -- I'm thinking Lua. AppleScript is kind of a pain.

<comment><USER5> Dan,

Captain Kangaroo was a very nice man. He (Bob Keeshan) and Hugh Brannum used to come into a restaurant where my Mom worked and make me origami. They also gave me a stuffed toy frog once. He shouldn't be on your list. On a more serious note, Shovebox looks really cool...can you also organize files with tags?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hah. My dad (a nurse) actually took care of Captain Kangaroo in a hospital once.

Tags are coming in v2.

I should note it's not really meant as a file organizer -- it just-so-happens to import certain types of files, but that's not the primary use case it's designed for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wow, great job on ShoveBox. I've been searching for something like this for a while. I'm going to use it for a week or so, and I'll probably end up purchasing it anyway to support you. Thanks for creating it!

</comment><comment><USER7> I wish MacHeist provided a box to explain why you would pay the amount you specified.

When they are collecting this data, how are they going to know why someone would be willing to put out $20, $25 and so on for the bundle?

Just an observation. For me, I really need to give this ShoveBox a try. Wish I knew it was out there a long time ago. I've constantly complained about my Safari bookmark management and that there has to be a better way. Is ShoveBox it?

<comment><USER8> That is what I don't like (see my other comment). It is just the same marketing trick every other vendor in the world uses. You know when you shop for clothes and you peel off the "reduced price: 50$" sticker, and underneath you see that the original price was in fact just 40$...

Looking at MacHeist, if you haven't bought those apps before, then they have not been worth 20$ for you - so you don't save a thing. Instead, you spend money on stuff you wouldn't have bought otherwise. Yet many users fall for it, somehow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Dam I love it! Finally I can get rid of that clutter Evernote... Love the drag function too awesome app guys!

Edit: I'd love to have a web interface with this but.. can't have everything right? lol Definitely getting the iPhone version to sync up

Edit 2: If you guys could add uploading as well to share on twitter for eg. Well gosh darn that would be something special right there ;)

</comment><comment><USER10> Sign up system is pretty awful. Tried 4 different user names, they were all taken. Had to unhide the hidden reg form every time. Had to re-enter my password twice, every time.

</comment><comment><USER11> Not sure about the apps, but that is one beautifully designed site.

</comment><comment><USER7> Obviously I'm the only one who can't get the serial numbers generated? How long did it take for serial numbers to generate for you? I'm using Firefox 3.5.4 on Mac OS 10.6

<comment><USER9> I haven't gotten mine as yet though :( I'm pretty sure they'll come in at some point

<comment><USER7> Ha, I'm going on almost a half hour now, you?

<comment><USER9> I think I'm about the same lol, race ya?

<comment><USER7> I'm going to send the server processing the request some left-over candy from Halloween, so expect to lose.

EDIT: According to @oscardelben above it took him almost two hours. He didn't use candy.

<comment><USER9> Just got mine no candy :P

<comment><USER7> you beat me :(

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Downloaded it earlier this evening. WriteRoom and Shovebox are the only two apps I was really looking forward to getting. Can't wait to try it out over the next few days

<comment><AUTHOR> I played Hordes of Orcs while waiting for Slicehost to resize my slice due to the brutal pounding from MacHeist users. :)

<comment><USER13> just installed. registration code doesn't work. also, there's no way to close the registration window once you run the app. any ideas?

<comment><AUTHOR> Make sure you didn't move the app while you were running it.

<comment><USER13> if you mean move the app's directory location, then no. i ran the app, but there doesn't seem to be a way to close the registration window after i've exited the game. i can't even force quit.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh. I have nothing to do with Hordes of Orcs. I thought you were talking about my own app. I had the same issue with that game. You can still close it by clicking "later" or whatever, it just doesn't seem to be attached to anything with a dock icon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The nano bundle was disappointing. Only TinyGrab seems like a nice app. The rest is poorly written or just low grade. Not the usual MacHeist quality.

<comment><USER7> That seems to be my impression of this years offering. But still willing to give it a shot and I really want to try ShoveBox.

Maybe the big values (like in MacHeist past) will come in later?

<comment><USER15> Also, writeroom is a very popular app among bloggers

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Isn't MacHeist just a clever way to make Apple fans buy stuff? Nothing against the apps in question, but I hate to see this marketing scheme on HN.

<comment><USER16> Yeah? And Paul Graham made Hacker News as a clever way of sucking people into YCombinator, and lots of people here comment as a clever way of getting their product name out. There is nothing inherently wrong with marketing whatsoever.

In this case, a supposed $150 value is being offered for free. That's news worth posting.

<comment><USER8> "There is nothing inherently wrong with marketing whatsoever."

So can I sell your email address to all the spammers?

<comment><USER16> That's your best response? To conflate all marketing with spam? Grow up.

Know how you found the computer you're using? It was marketed to you. The books you read, the movies you watch, all marketed. Do you read content online? It's paid for by advertisers who're marketing their products. If you've seen a movie in the last decade you've seen things paid for by product placement. Every article of clothing you wore was marketed to you, either in a catalogue or just positioned in the store in a way to catch your eye.

Marketing is an incredibly subtle trade. I should know: It's what I'm learning. Practically everything counts as marketing. When I make my headline big on a web site, that's to market the title to you. When I make my fonts attractive, I'm marketing a certain attitude as a designer, which is why a site that uses certain fonts looks and feels different than other fonts. It's all manipulation, which isn't to say it's bad. Manipulation is a natural part of life, and it helps us find things we wouldn't see otherwise.

Because I'm learning this, and spending quite a lot of effort to comprehend it all, it rather bothers me when you, Anonymous Internet Person, denounce it while simultaneously showing you don't know what marketing is. I follow politics, too, does that mean I approve of Naziss? And I really do like technological advances, which means I definitely support nuclear weaponry. Of course I don't like spam. But this isn't spam. It's marketing.

<comment><USER8> First off, I am not anonymous. My HN profile is public and contains links and my email address.

Second, yeah, my response was a bit short, as I did not have enough time.

Third, I hope as you study more, you'll abandon your tunnel vision with respect to marketing. At the moment "to a person with a hammer, every problem looks like a nail" comes to mind.

I have nothing against people writing interesting articles for marketing, that is, marketing essentially paying for those articles. That doesn't imply I have to like EVERYTHING that is done in the name of marketing. For Hacker News there is a certain expectation. I don't think "save 20$ on groceries with this cool voucher" would be welcome here, for example. The expectation is that the articles posted have some relation to "hacking" (in a certain wider sense), that is, enables me to learn stuff.

That is why I mentioned spam, because if you pour marketing content into a channel where it isn't welcome, it is spam - that is the analogy I saw, even though it is a grey area. I just wanted to refute your argument that marketing is always OK. Some people might subscribe to a "the best free offers" list, and they would welcome news about vouchers.

Since this MacHeist stuff got a lot of upvotes, obviously opinions in this community also differ. I am just surprised, that is all - I think it is an Apple effect... Because I don't see the big difference to a groceries voucher.

Perhaps one could argue that the MacHeist way of selling stuff is in itself an interesting hack (a marketing hack). They sold a frigging 4 millions pieces of software people wouldn't probably have bought otherwise. I would be interested in discussion on how they pulled it off...

Edit: to make it clear, if the news had been something like "new version of ShoveBox is out", I would have felt differently. It would have been new technology that is available. "ShoveBox now costs 20$ less" is just a voucher.

<comment><USER16> Fair enough. I thought you referred to marketing in general and not in the context of Hacker News.

I was fine with the submission, because it let me get six applications for free. That's a good alert to send out.

As for anonymity: I consider everybody I don't have a personal relationship with to be anonymous. Knowing who you are doesn't make you any less of an Internet Person to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Thank you for posting this. I think I'll use Shovebox and maybe Writeroom.

</comment><comment><USER18> i think it's fixed now. I couldn't signup it yesterday, but no probs earlier today

</comment><comment><USER19> Just reading the headline I couldn't tell if the poster was proud of having been included, or annoyed at piracy of his app. The name _MacHeist_ actually suggests the latter, and their website only says they supply licenses -- not saying what they are doing is legal.

Now that the comments indicate everything is above board, I wonder if MacHeist plans on having an "Android Annex", or will leave that to another company...

<comment><USER7> It's not piracy, lol. MacHeist has been around for quite a few years now and developers opt-in to the program. Although, I don't remember a year that they offered the bundle free, or am I forgetting?

<comment><USER15> No it's the first (and probably last) time they are giving away for free.</comment></comment></comment>


Nanopillars that Trap More Light - New cheap solar cell design - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/25817/

<comment><USER2> I keep reading about amazing new designs for solar cells every month. I want to see something I can buy. Where are my actual panels?

<comment><USER3> There are some supply and demand issues with solar cells right now. The technology is evolving rapidly so large scale production is often significantly behind the times, and the new technology is sold at the same price per watt (with the maker pocketing the difference).

Edit for example: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanosolar> 500 billion in investments and they still can't keep up with demand.</comment></comment>