NY newspaper runs interactive map with names, addresses of gun permit holders - <AUTHOR> http://www.lohud.com/interactive/article/20121223/NEWS01/121221011/Map-Where-gun-permits-your-neighborhood-

<comment><USER2> Despite recent events, the worst year for mass gun shootings was 1929. Looking at the 2011 preliminary data[1] death by Assault (homicide) dropped out of the top 15 causes of death in the USA. It is still more dangerous for parents to own a swimming pool as opposed to a gun. We don't teach actual risks and pay for it daily.

Stunts like this just paint targets on people. Gun owners will be targets for theft of guns. Non-gun owners will be targeted by other types of criminals. Neighbors might learn some things about their neighbors. Overall, the incentive to register anything goes down.

edit: add footnote 1) <http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr61/nvsr61_06.pdf>

<comment><USER3> > Gun owners will be targets for theft of guns. Non-gun owners will be > targeted by other types of criminals.

And let's not forget the corollary of the first one: It's not just that gun owners have their property stolen. It's that criminals (who may be felons ineligible to purchase them from legal channels) come into possession of those firearms.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This will be really helpful for those that want to steal and resell guns on the black market.

Hopefully the newspaper will follow up with a list of the addresses of those with costly jewelry, and narcotic pain medication prescriptions, along with schedules of the times they are at work.

And yes, perfect example of the dangers of registration.

<comment><USER5> This was public information before this interactive map.

<comment><USER6> Sure, but the criminal element isn't exactly known for its high IQ. By making it easily accessible, you are inviting abuse and ultimately, the political will to make that public information private.

On top of everything, the law of unintended consequences is at play here. I wouldn't worry about somebody breaking in to steal your gun ... I would worry about the neighbor who doesn't show up on the map. I can rob him without worrying about being shot.

<comment><USER5> You're basically arguing against the visualization of information.

Just think of how dumb that is.

You might as well argue to publish all government data in Klingon, it will make the life of dumb criminals even harder.

<comment><USER6> > You're basically arguing against the visualization of information.

Not really. The data isn't online. If anything, I'm arguing for keeping it analog?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> In theory there should be nothing wrong with putting already-publicly available data online in a format digestible by the general public. The issue is that we put permit holders on a public list in the first place. These are law abiding citizens who have registered their guns legally. Making the information public, especially in stunts like this, does nothing but dissuade people from registering their firearms to avoid being targeted like criminals by overzealous neighbors and overeager journalists.

<comment><USER8> What's more, this may well provide data for would-be gun thieves to use to acquire illegal weapons.

Now that they have a convenient list, they can stake out these locations, wait for the residents to leave, and break in to begin their search for guns they _know will be inside._

<comment><USER9> Ok, ignoring the fact that this is a map of permits, you do realize that there are different kinds of permits, right? Someone's permit could be for business, which means the handgun,if they even have one, may not even be at the house. Or worse, it's conceal and carry, which means if the owner comes home when the burglar is vainly trying to find the gun, that burglar is in trouble.

I know burglars may be low lifes, but they're also kind of lazy. The time it would take to thoroughly research a gun burglary could be sent going to another state and buying legal guns by the bundle.

<comment><USER8> _Ok, ignoring the fact that this is a map of permits_

Why would you ignore that this is a map? That's the point - the data is now conveniently visualized as a map...

 _Someone's permit could be for business, which means the handgun,if they even have one, may not even be at the house._

True. And your argument would be further strengthened if you pointed out that some of these are 5-year permits and some are lifetime permits. So, many of these individuals may have sold their guns, died, moved out of state, etc.

 _Or worse, it's conceal and carry_

CCW permits are very, very difficult to get in New York.

 _I know burglars may be low lifes, but they're also kind of lazy. The time it would take to thoroughly research a gun burglary could be sent going to another state and buying legal guns by the bundle._

I have no idea how _likely_ it is that criminals would use this data, only that it's now much more _convenient_ for them to do so.

Obviously non-felons have a much easier time getting guns. People who steal guns or buy illegal guns usually aren't allowed to buy them, most likely because they are already felons.

<comment><USER9> \- I said "ignoring the fact that this is a map of permits" because you seemed to be under the impression that this was a map of guns. Or even a map of _gun owners_. It is neither. You can get a license and not own a gun.

\- As you said, CCW is hard to get in NY, and many other states that are not shall-issue. In fact, to get a CCW permit in such a state, you often need political or business connections, which is why an accounting of who gets these favors is sometimes called for.

\- _I have no idea how likely it is that criminals would use this data, only that it's now much more convenient for them to do so._

Hello, you have just used the line of reasoning used by virtually every public information officer concerning virtually every type of public record: _We don't know exactly how criminals will use it or have any empirical evidence showing that they systematically use such information, but just to be safe, we will not release this information_

David Simon, a former cops reporter and creator of The Wire, wrote an excellent piece a few years ago about how the police hiding public records under the guise of safety helped cover-up a police officer's incompetence: [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/article/2009/02...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/article/2009/02/27/AR2009022703591.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is absolutely terrible. This is a perfect example of the persecution gun owners fear when they're asked to register their weapons. We need more gun registration and exposing data like this does nothing but hinder that goal.

<comment><USER11> Not if criminals use the data to avoid these houses. Then people might register in greater numbers. They might buy a gun just to get on the public list.

<comment><USER12> This may be an effect, but while some criminals want to avoid a confrontation with a gun-wielding resident... others want to steal guns. By helping criminals self-sort to the right targets for the risks they prefer, the net effect on crime/safety could be negative, by shifting break-ins to where they are most likely to succeed.

<comment><USER13> Is gun theft ever really that much of a specific goal? Seems guns are easy enough to get on the street that breaking into a house just to steal guns has a much higher risk than is normally necessary.

EDIT: Well that didn't take long to acquire a silent Reddit-style "independent-thought downvote."

<comment><USER14> You'd be suprised: [http://www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/2012/11/thieves_break...](http://www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/2012/11/thieves_break_into_springfield.html)

<comment><USER13> That's one instance with a very large (no?) safe. I was asking about the prevalence of that kind of crime, not whether it had ever happened before in the history of weapons, or theft itself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The gun scare is getting ridiculous.

Things like this make people think that anyone who owns a gun might just walk into a crowded place and start shooting.

<comment><USER16> And makes it easier for criminals to avoid houses with guns, thus putting the non gun population at risk.

<comment><USER17> Is there evidence or any cases of criminals doing informational background searches on their targets?

<comment><USER18> Burglars routinely monitor the obituaries for dates of funerals to break into houses while the funeral is taking place.

For instance:

<http://www.heraldnet.com/article/20120330/NEWS01/703309874>

But there are many more examples of that. For criminals information is a competitive edge, just like for everybody else.

The safe bet is that they exploit that edge to the maximum of their abilities to increase their rewards.

<comment><USER4> This is definitely a huge problem in many areas. I've known around a dozen people whose houses were robbed while they were at a funeral. Last funeral I went to, recently, the funeral director told the family members they needed to arrange for people to housesit during the services. They did and two of them were then faced with burglars trying to break in.

There are organized crime gangs that read obituaries and make it their business to take your stuff.

If you are flying out of state to bury your spouse or parent, the risk is greater. In two cases I know of, a moving truck arrived as soon as they left for the airport and took absolutely everything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> So here's an explanation of why these stories have been done...this is not unheard of open records project and several have been done before...

1\. The accountability angle is that this allows the public to see who is allowed to own guns. In some jurisdictions where regulations are strict, these stories have exposed how gun permits go to those with political favor or to those who aren't legally permitted to have a license.

2\. It's hard to see how this puts the gun owners in extra danger. You really think there's a subset of crooks who desperately need a gun yet have no other legal or illegal means to attain one except to break into an arms household? Is that really the path of least resistance for burglars?

3\. Wouldn't burglars look up county assessor records in order to rob the most wealthy people?

4\. Ok, I'll pose the question: many other types of licenses are public record...such as who is qualified to be practice medicine or deal in real estate. Why doesn't a neighbor have the right to know if their neighbors are allowed to have firearms? (The records are for permit holders, not gun ownership) Gun permits are issued via government action...I have the right to know why police arrested my neighbor...why wouldn't I have e right to know who the police is permitting to own a handgun (especially if I have been denied a permit?)

<comment><USER19> How about a map of compact items with a high street resale value?

That's what this is.

<comment><USER9> Which kind of compact items do you have in mind that are regulated by police bureaucracy?

Also, read the OP. This is a map of permit holders, not of gun owners.

<comment><USER3> >This is a map of permit holders, not of gun owners.

Let's hope for a moment that you have some evidence that some nontrivial portion of the people who pay hundreds of dollars for a permit do so without then subsequently purchasing a firearm, so that we can't just facially dismiss your distinction because of the effective 1:1 correlation between permit holders and gun owners. Perhaps a lot of people hold permits so that they can possess guns they don't actually own, for some reason.

There is still a bit of trouble. It's a permit to possess a gun. Even if the permit holder doesn't _own_ the gun, it would be totally irrational to even get the permit unless they were going to possess one. And the thief is looking to steal it from the person who possesses it, not the person who owns it (when they aren't the same person).

So I guess I don't understand your point.

<comment><USER9> Sorry, but the onus is on you to prove, or at least argue, that burglars use this information to raid houses at a higher rate than they would otherwise do so. This is how the law and public records work. Keep in mind using the "it puts people at risk" argument is basically the stock argument for preventing the disclosure of many, many types of public records.

But since we're talking hypotheticals, my main point is this: you've imagined a savvy burglar who apparently has no easier means of getting firearms than to burglar a home. That being the case, this burglar has to weigh a number of specific factors, including the possibility that said home may not actually have a handgun (nevemrind whether it's easy to find).

At what point does the burglar make his/her burglary decisions based on other factors: such as, how obvious it is that someone is home, and how rich that person is (easily judged by looking at the home or consulting business/assessor records)?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Title should be: "NY newspaper runs interactive map with names, addresses of _handgun_ permit holders"

You do not need to read beyond the first ten words to realize this:

 _"The map indicates the addresses of all pistol permit holders in Westchester and Rockland counties. Each dot represents an individual permit holder licensed to own a handgun — a pistol or revolver"_

In order to have a rational debate on improving gun control we need to use words correctly...

<comment><USER21> Are assault rifles licensed separately?

<comment><USER22> True assault rifles are some of the most difficult things to get your hands on. All automatic (which include burst fire) weapons count as machine guns under the National Firearms Act, and are highly regulated. No machinegun made and registered after 1986 can be legally transferred between civilians. Amongst other difficulties and regulation, that restriction means automatic weapons typically sell for enormous amounts.

The term you're looking for is 'assault weapon' which is a generally poorly defined term. Under the terms of the previous federal assault weapon ban, an assault weapon (rifle) is any weapon that has in addition to detachable magazines (a "clip" in popular culture), has at least two of the following features: a folding or telescoping stock, pistol grip, bayonet mount, flash suppressor, and/or muzzle mounted grenade launcher, as well as AR-15s, TEC-9s, Uzis, and AK-47s - those models being specifically named and banned.

Since we are looking at New York specifically, then the following apply. Rifles and shotguns ("long guns") do not require a state permit for purchase, nor registration, nor a license. Handguns require all three. There are additional restrictions on handguns that will typically limit their licensees to using and carrying them for sport. New York has an assault weapon ban in place, effectively continuing the expired Federal ban.

<comment><USER21> Thank you. Does the NRA not consider the (effective) ban on machine guns a violation of the second amendment?

<comment><USER22> Not really an authority on this issue, but regardless of the feelings of their current members, it's really not a battle worth fighting. The amount of financial and political capital required is staggering.

That said, at the time, the NRA supported the both the laws that effectively ban machine guns. The NRA's stance on gun control, as well as what the NRA itself stands for has changed throughout its history.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is irrelevant. The really dangerous ones are the video-game players.

<comment><USER24> I don't know why you got downvoted, as I found your sarcasm humorous. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Here's the reporter's info; he has a carry permit too:

Dwight R Worley 23006 139 Ave Springfield Gardens, NY 11413 (718) 527-0832

(718) 527-0832

</comment><comment><USER26> This is absolutely sad and pathetic.</comment>


The Mysterious Case of Elisa Lam - <AUTHOR> http://vigilantcitizen.com/vigilantreport/mysterious-case-elisa-lam/

<comment><AUTHOR> My take this is a Crossover Effect: [http://www.realitysandwich.com/batman_shootings_crossover_ef...](http://www.realitysandwich.com/batman_shootings_crossover_effects)</comment>


Prolonged sitting and poor sleep can work together to shorten your life - <AUTHOR> http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1001917 <comment><USER2> Just to clarify, per the report smoking and physical inactivity more strongly correlate with mortality increase.

</comment><comment><USER3> "Conclusions

Adherence to healthy lifestyle behaviors could reduce the risk for death from all causes."

 _Really?_</comment>


Towards an Untrepreneurial Economy? - <AUTHOR> https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3479042&download=yes <comment><AUTHOR> The paper describes the rise of "tech entrepreneurship as a lifestyle" and how more entrepreneurship seems primarily motivated by people wanting to "be entrepreneurs" rather than by those with potentially valuable ideas that are likely to lead to economically gainful, productive activity. The result: fewer high-growth firms because the types of firms entering the market simply aren't capable of attaining success as these types of firms could in the past, the researchers say.

</comment><comment><USER2> Link: [https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3479042](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3479042)

</comment><comment><USER3> Broken link

<comment><AUTHOR> how do I modify the link?

<comment><USER3> Not sure if you can modify it but you can comment with the fixed link</comment></comment></comment>


French Exhibitors Demand Netflix Release Its Cannes Movies in Theaters - <AUTHOR> http://variety.com/2017/film/news/netflix-protest-french-theatrical-exhibitors-1202030960/ <comment><AUTHOR> >SVOD services have to wait 36 months after a film's release in theaters to gain access to films in France.

Good lord.</comment>


YouTube Hiring for Some Positions Excluded White and Asian Males, Lawsuit Says - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/youtube-hiring-for-some-positions-excluded-white-and-asian-males-lawsuit-says-1519948013 <comment><USER2> The thing I hate about actions like this is what it does to talented people who fit some diversity quota checklist, both in the perception they have of themselves and those of other people. If you are a talented melanin-rich woman you are going to face both heightened impostor syndrome and dismissal by others that you only got the job because of some quota. Not good for anyone.

There are no easy solutions, but it would help I think if all effort was concentrated on removing hurdles rather than patching problems downstream with lazy fixes.

<comment><USER3> Tell that to the white and asian males who get rejected on the basis of their race and gender despite having worked their entire lives to be the most qualified and technically adept candidate.

I'm pretty sure impostor syndrome is a problem they would love to have.

Instead they got the entire course of their careers (and lives) stepped on by bigoted racists and sexists.

I know your comment has to be the top one because it turns this whole thing back into more sympathy for women and minorities, but this is literally an article about white and asian males being overtly discriminated against on the basis of race and gender. Can _some_ of the conversation be about that?

<comment><USER4> I am trying to wrap my head around this. The level of black employees at Google is at 2% and actually dropped since 2016. How fair is it to say from a statistical point of view that if you did not get hired, you lost out to a lesser qualified black person and not someone from a white or asian of equal or more qualifications? I pick on the black statistic specifically because at the end of the day the blow back for these perceived diversity programs lands on this group in particular.

<comment><USER5> If you were to accept the current estimates on IQ, where blacks have an average IQ of 85, Hispanics an average IQ of 90, whites an average IQ of 100 and Asians an average IQ of 105 with a standard deviation of 15 by design, and that Youtube only hires people two standard deviations from the mean, then about 2% of employees would be black, 5% Hispanic, 30% white and 63% Asian. I am quite sure that whites are over represented at the expense of Asians.

<comment><USER2> This assumes that there are equal number of people in the hiring pool in each category. There is nothing to suggest that the applicants that apply are drawn at random from the population.

Also the absolute numbers of each groups also matter. On this basis we should expect far few Asian and Black employees just on the basis that there are fewer than whites within the USA [0].

0\. This is assuming the employee pool is drawn from the USA population.

<comment><USER5> Ok. California is 39% Hispanic, 38.8% White, 5.8% Black and 13% Asian. California has 40 Million people. Let's say half have not graduated college yet and are not in the employee pool. That means 8 Million Hispanics, 8 Million whites, 1.16 Million Blacks and 2.6 Million Asians. Taking this new information into account, Asians should be around 37% of the employees, Blacks less than 1%, Hispanics around 9% and Whites 54%. Google's numbers say 61% White, 30% Asian, 2% Black and 3% Hispanic. So, it's both Hispanics and Asians who are under represented.

<comment><USER6> Based on those assumptions, which I'll iterate below first, let's get the numbers:

1) hiring based on IQ, cutoff at 2 standard deviations above the global mean (mu = 100, sigma = 15, by design), 2 sigma above that makes 130. You get hired if you're the candidate with the highest IQ, if you satisfy the minimum of an IQ of 130

2) 8/20 hispanic, 8/20 white, 1.16/20 black, 2.6/20 asians (and let's just pretned that sums to 100%). Or: 40% hispanic, 40% white, 5.8% black, 13% asian

3) let's assume 1000 candidates for each position.

So each round has 1000 candidates: 400 hispanics, IQ taken from N(90, 15) 400 whites, IQ taken from N(100, 15) 58 black, IQ taken from N(85, 15) 130 asians, IQ taken from N(105, 15)

The numbers: 33.42% Asians, 10.85% Hispanic, 0.54% Black, 55.20% White

Odds of getting hired under those criteria: 0.25% Asians, 0.02% Hispanics, 0.01% Black, 0.13% White

And that's why nobody's going to be happy with expected outcomes. Just imagine the (completely "fair") news headline "Asians 25 TIMES more likely to get hired than blacks in the bay area".

      import random

      counts = {'h': 0, 'w': 0, 'b': 0, 'a': 0, None: 0}
      experiments = 10000

      for x in range(experiments):
        candidates = []
        for h in range(400):
          iq = random.normalvariate(90, 15)
          candidates.append((iq, 'h'))
        for w in range(400):
          iq = random.normalvariate(100, 15)
          candidates.append((iq, 'w'))
        for b in range(58):
          iq = random.normalvariate(85, 15)
          candidates.append((iq, 'b'))
        for a in range(130):
          iq = random.normalvariate(105, 15)
          candidates.append((iq, 'a'))

        # filter iq > 130
        candidates = [(iq, typ) for (iq, typ) in candidates if iq > 130]

        if candidates:
          selected = sorted(candidates, key=lambda (x,y):x)[0][1]
        else:
          selected = None

        counts[selected] += 1

      total = sum(counts.values())

      print total
      for k, v in counts.items():
        print "%s %2.2f" % (k, 100.0 * v/total)

      print "odds of hire if hispanic : %2.4f%%" % (100.0*counts['h']/experiments / 400)
      print "odds of hire if white : %2.4f%%" % (100.0*counts['w']/experiments / 400)
      print "odds of hire if black : %2.4f%%" % (100.0*counts['b']/experiments / 58)
      print "odds of hire if asian : %2.4f%%" % (100.0*counts['a']/experiments / 130)
      print "odds of no hire at all: %2.4f%%" % (100.0*counts[None]/experiments)

<comment><USER2> You are going to have trouble fitting all of this into a tweet.

<comment><USER7> It has math and numbers. Nobody interested in that on Twitter anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This sort of discrimination happens at many big companies these days. Having worked at facebook, I have witnessed these policies first hand.

Facebook has explicit policies against hiring (non-latino) white and asian men. Management would occasionally decide that they hired too many people of certain races/ethnicities and tell employees that they are only hiring from other groups until the end of the year.

I'm not sure how they determined race/ethnicity. I'm assuming recruiters had to make guesses based on candidates names and facebook photos. It's weird to imagine recruiters trying to estimate candidates' skin color to determine whether to toss their resume in the trash.

Facebook tried to hide their affirmative action programs and chastised any employee who questioned them. But occasionally, someone from recruiting or management would reveal the existence of their racial profiling. So I'm assuming the discrimination went much further than what was occasionally revealed.

Mark Zuckerburg spent last year touring the country to make photo-ops with "real americans". I'm curious what his new friends would have thought of him if they knew about his support for discriminating against them.

</comment><comment><USER9> Anyone who has worked for a large tech company in SF in the last 3/4 years knows that this has happened everywhere.

In fairness, Google was one of the very last ones among large tech companies to play the quota game. But the problem is that that's a game that once the first company starts playing it, everyone else is forced to play it too.

Company X publishes a report with amazing diversity numbers and brands itself as a great company for certain minorities and diversity in general, along with some unbelievable BS about how they achieved that. At that point, you have to introduce quotas too to get similar numbers or your brand and recruiting will be strongly affected.

<comment><USER10> Then company X gets rightfully trounced by a Chinese firm 5 years from now which does not share our ridiculous racial taboos. Some crimes are self policing.

<comment><USER11> No company ever got trounced because they followed the prevailing political winds. Let's face it: the top tech companies have sufficient applicants, so they can choose whoever they want, and most jobs are drone jobs.

<comment><USER12> _No company ever got trounced because they followed the prevailing political winds._

Many companies have failed due in part to internal politics. Also, weren't many of the companies involved in the financial crisis going along with the prevailing political winds, just before everything changed?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The phrase "historically underrepresented groups" in the US hides the truth that:

historically underrepresented = minorities - Asian-Americans + white women

Imagine if a policy were instituted that benefited minorities, then someone proposed that it should be tweaked so that it didn't help Asian-Americans so much and helped white women instead. They'd be laughed out of the room.

Engineering is one of the few fields Asians in the US have been able to do well in. Consider law, where Asian-Americans make 10% of graduates at top-30 schools but only 6% of federal law clerks and 4% of state law clerks; by comparison, the numbers for white Americans are 58% graduating and then 82% and 80% becoming law clerks. [1]

And now policies like this are in vogue--removing one of the last reliable paths to the middle class for immigrants and the children of immigrants.

The phrase "historically underrepresented" should be a red flag. It neglects context and is virtually a euphemism for discrimination against Asian Americans and for (and it feels so bizarre to be typing this) white women.

[1]: [https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2017/07/31/538299755...](https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2017/07/31/538299755/whats- keeping-asian-american-lawyers-from-ascending-the-legal-ranks)

<comment><USER14> > Imagine if a policy were instituted that benefited minorities, then someone > proposed that it should be tweaked so that it didn't help Asian-Americans so > much and helped white women instead. They'd be laughed out of the room.

That exactly describes the policies many have adopted, either explicitly or implicitly, and they're often deadly serious about it. It's no secret that both Jews and Asians are generally treated as white/majority/whatever for diversity purposes, despite their respective histories or current demographics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I remember back in college when I applied for a job in a multi-national company, I didn't get a math screening quiz that applicants from outside of United States had to take. The quiz was pretty easy middle school math that would take 15 minutes to complete.

It turns out that the reason is that screening for basic math competency could be discrimination, because it reduces the chance of hiring for minorities who do less well at math testing. If the quiz were carried out in US, the company would need to prepare some report stating that math is essential to the job, which would be very cumbersome and costly to do scientifically.

I found it ridiculous as the position clearly needed math and I believe basic arithmatic is a valuable skill to ask for majority of the jobs, even for low- skill positions like cashier at Walmart. While eliminating discrimination is a great cause, all the band-aids to make the issue look less bad is shameful. Instead of improving basic education for minority communities (which costs some money now with high return from enhanced labor productivity and less welfare), our governments/society artificially discriminate in the opposite direction and suppress valid criteria that are statistically unfavorable to minorities.

<comment><USER12> _It turns out that the reason is that screening for basic math competency could be discrimination, because it reduces the chance of hiring for minorities who do less well at math testing._

If it genuinely screens for basic math, then there's nothing racist about it.

 _artificially discriminate in the opposite direction and suppress valid criteria that are statistically unfavorable to minorities._

Eroding meritocracy is ultimately bad for everyone. It's through climbing meritocratic ladders that minority groups throughout history have raised their prospects.

<comment><USER16> > If it genuinely screens for basic math, then there's nothing racist about > it.

Lets say that Google added a test for its engineers, that screened for writing and communication skills. Think, SAT verbal questions or something. And lets say that it just so happens that women are a lot better at SAT verbal questions than men.

Would you call that meritocrat, to ask vocabulary questions to software engineers, given that they know that men will do much worse on them?

<comment><USER17> I don't see a problem with that as long as everyone takes the same test. An individual's skills are not bound by the race and gender to which they belong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> _Last spring, YouTube recruiters were allegedly instructed to cancel interviews with applicants who weren't female, black or Hispanic, and to "purge entirely" the applications of people who didn't fit those categories, the lawsuit claims._

Anyone from Google or YouTube--or people who applied to work at either org in this time frame--have perspectives to add regarding this claim?

<comment> master-litty Towards the end of last year I actually did apply to Google in Mountain View for Software Engineering.

I believe my on-site went excellent technically overall, but I had a hard time meshing with a couple of my interviewers and wasn't surprised about my rejection. Nothing strange about that personally.

However, another Google recruiter reached out to me for two other potential positions, said I would be an excellent fit, and said they would set up the interviews for me.

A couple weeks passed and I pinged, no response. A month passed and I pinged, no response. Still haven't had a response from two separate recruiters to this day.

I don't wish to stir the pot -- Anything could have happened, there are some stories about Google recruiters forgetting their candidates, maybe they think I'm just annoying and not a good candidate, but in light of these specific circumstances this is certainly intriguing news.

<comment><USER19> Apparently all the large technical companies do this. I had this happen after I did 2 phone interviews with one of the big silicon valley tech companies after their recruiters called me for 3 years. They had a position they were interested in me for specifically but were waiting for the manager to get back from leave. Said they'd call when she was back. Didn't hear anything. Months later got a call asking how it went and if I was still interested. Told them I'd never heard anything and was still interested. Never heard back again. I've had friends say Twitter is the worst at this, followed by Google, then Facebook. Amazon, too. It's the nature of using so many different recruiters. My friends have said that the companies all seem to treat potential candidates badly and you only get the job if you pro-actively call back again and again and again.

<comment><USER20> > you only get the job if you pro-actively call back again and again and again

Seems like a way to filter for people with low market value.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I suspect Google, YouTube, YC, and many other Silicon Valley companies have followed a similar pattern:

Step #1 Discriminate against the lower classes through a biased hiring process that favors upper class people over more qualified members of the 99%. A system of "culture" tests, nepotism, and simple favoritism. The "elite" investors fund the "elite" founders which hire "elite" friends.

Step #2 Realize your policy is classist and racist.

Step #3 Disregard the idea of creating a merit-based system.

Step #4 Commit explicit racism in an attempt to balance out your on-going racism.

Step #5 Ignore classism entirely, despite it being the root cause.

<comment><USER14> "Merit" as defined by whom, and measured how? I doubt that many companies disregard the idea of hiring based on merit. They all try to do that, they were trying to do that all along, but that only got them to your step 2. So what do you when even your best effort to create a purely merit-based system has empirically failed to overcome unconscious or structural bias? What's your magic prescription?

<comment><USER22> One way to be more meritocratic is to not allow certain kinds of information to influence the hiring decision. For instance, suppose the ones making the decision are allowed to know what the candidate's skills are and what they've done, but not allowed to know where (or if) they went to school, and they're not allowed to know if their previous experience came from an employer or if it was something they did on their own, or how many years they spent doing those things.

Making the hiring decision would be harder because there's not as much information to go on, and it's not too hard to fake a superficial understanding of some technology. Presumably one would rely more heavily on rigorous aptitude testing (i.e. more of those whiteboard exercises everyone seems to hate and probably have bias problems of their own).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> "The latter suit was filed by plaintiff James Damore, an engineer who was fired from the company last year for distributing a memo that suggested men were better suited to certain tech jobs than women. "

Excuse me. Hold on. __Aaaaararrrrrarrrrgh!!!11!!! __Sorry. Had to get that out of my system.

It is frustrating to read the same misapprehension over and over and over.

Once again: James Damore's memo suggested no such thing.

He said that men and women tend to have different interests; and that engineering jobs at Google, as they are implemented, tend to favor engineers whose personality attributes are those that are typically held by men. He then went on to explain how Google might change the jobs so that it would be more appealing to those whose personality traits typically align with women. There is nothing about how men are more suited.

Something is seriously wrong with society when journalists at WSJ (et. al., et. al., et. al.) do not have enough reading comprehension skills to read, and understand, Damore's memo.

<comment><USER24> When multiple degree educated people who use language as a tool of their job continue to misunderstand what damore said maybe the problem is with his piss- poor communication, and not their understanding.

When very many people who read his document come to the same conclusion maybe, just maybe, that's what he actually said.

<comment><USER25> I'm not a particularly well educated person and I could still clearly see that Damore was talking about preferences not abilities (he explicitly said it in the memo if I remember correctly). Seems more like the degree educated people aren't reading the memo very carefully.

<comment><USER26> He was talking about preferences and abilities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Shouldn't the demographics of new google hires look roughly like the demographics of university graduates? If say 80% of graduates are men, how could google hit gender parity without discriminating?

<comment><USER28> Only if you believe that uni credentials are synonymous with capability.

<comment><USER29> Yes and no – Google is (used to be, at least) particularly stringent about requiring a degree moreso than other tech co's

<comment><USER30> They gave that up at least five years ago. I believe they switched to a system of hiring everyone on earth to stop them from going to Facebook.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Just wait until y'all get over 40. Then you'll see what discrimination feels like too. Ive had interviews where they wont even talk to me once they come in and get a look at me. They instantly say sorry were not looking anymore, sorry to waste your time. But the job stays up.

The problem really might be that no one has a good solution. Discrimination exists, no one has a clue what to do about it. These "affirmative-action" type solutions seem more like attempts to do something rather than nothing.

<comment><USER32> What size were the companies? Did it happen at the big tech companies?

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> The obvious solution is to just lie when applying to jobs. Anything short of a genetic test to determine your racial origin is unsatisfactory and administering such a test for a job applicant is illegal and for good reason. Can you imagine a Gattaca style world where tech companies require your 23andme profile for diversity purposes? There is no situation where somebody in the application process would talk to you about their concerns you don't match some race you claimed to be a part of. Can you imagine some HR person saying "Um, excuse me but I don't really think you are 1/4 black because your skin looks really white to me". Just pretend your grandparent is some other race and claim mixed race on the application, for all you know you very well may be.

It also brings up an interesting question. Without a genetic profile can you truthfully answer what your race is on a job application? Are there legal implications to answering without concrete knowledge? Without such a test I suppose you can only really call yourself "indeterminate race".

<comment><USER34> Since race is a social construct with no scientific basis there's no lieing involved. Anyone can select any race they please with a clear conscience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> This doesn't surprise me. I can't speak to what it's like to be a white man but for some reason Asians especially men are excluded as being part of what contributes to diversity despite being visible persons of colour.

<comment><USER36> And Asians are more successful than white people on average. Strange that there is no "Asian Privilege"

<comment><USER37> I read more than once on diversity related posts or comments that East-Asian are considered privileged or even... white.

That shows the real motive is not the one stated. This diversity stuff is a power game used by some minorities go get some advantages for themselves. They do not care about the minorities that can achieve things by themselves, with education and hard work.

<comment><USER38> By which minorities and to achieve what?

<comment><USER4> The comment is divisive and conspiratorial. The strategy is to create more division among groups and reduce trust.

<comment><USER39> Right, because splitting people up into arbitrary groups based on melanin levels and ancestral migration does a world of good in promoting trust and good will.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> People outside of tech think there's this silent discrimination and hostility against women and minorities, but it's the complete opposite. If you could choose your race and gender going into these interviews, you would be a complete idiot to choose male or white or asian.

It's not just in hiring either. Another thing I've noticed is if you fail as a male engineer, you get fired. If you fail as a female engineer, you get reassigned to product management. These positions seem to be reserved for non- males. Women get reassigned, men get shown the door.

It's getting to the point where all of this is so overt and so undeniable. It's all to avoid lawsuits, but what if they're just exposing themselves to more lawsuits on the other end of that pendulum?

I have to think at some point the race- and gender-based meddling these companies do in people's careers will have to stop.

</comment><comment><USER40> This begs the question, what is Latino and what is white? I was born in a Latin American country to a Latin American mother and a Canadian father, have lived here my entire life but if you saw me you wouldn't even think I spoke Spanish.

Likewise, I've made friends in the US who are of Mexican descent and look very much like it but don't speak a lick of Spanish.

This has led me to feel not at home in either my country of origin or Canada. Since I'm too white to be from here and don't know enough about Canadian lifestyle to relate to anyone there.

<comment><USER41> You are Generation 0 (Zero) like me. Your ancestral roots are anglo, hispanic, and native american by tradition.

<comment><USER36> Latin American does not mean they have Native American roots.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> You can find the brief here: [https://www.scribd.com/document/372751852/Wilberg-v- Google-R...](https://www.scribd.com/document/372751852/Wilberg-v-Google- Recruiter-that-was-fired-for-refusing-to-discriminate)

A screenshot from an email says (p28): "Please continue with L3 candidates in process and only continue with L3 candidates that are from historically underrepresented groups"

</comment><comment><USER43> My understanding is that you can't legally have any sort of explicit quota or scoring system, but that you can sort-of factor in race, ethnicity, or gender to meet diversity goals.

Is this correct? And isn't it kind of inconsistent?

Whatever sort of decision-making process a recruiter goes through, one could imagine a mathematical formulation of it that matches up to some tolerance. Would such a formulation be illegal, since it must assign a weight to race at some point, even if the recruiter's vague sense of "I kind of want more diverse hires" is legal?

In fact, doesn't disallowing any sort of numbers-based approach increase the likelihood of human bias creeping in, which is a lot of what diversity hiring is trying to correct for in the first place?

Why should a practice only be illegal if you put explicit numbers around it?

<comment><USER44> Companies are only required to "avoid discrimination."

So documenting attempts to hire and attract underrepresented people (POC), is a way to avoid discrimination lawsuits and satisfy court judgments for prior bad hiring practices.

Recruiters need to get POC into the pipeline. Then, merit based "scoring" is introduced. There's no guarantee they'll be hired.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> I'm not a lawyer, so I'm curious (and I can't read the article): are quotas legal? Irrespective of their efficacy or morality, they must've held up in court, right? I thought it was fairly obvious that organizations have minority quotas. Then again, I also know that discrimination against ANY gender and ANY skin color (including male and white) is illegal, which was born out recently when Google's decision to fire a rather opinionated individual who regularly derided straight, white men was upheld. Political beliefs are not a protected class, and you can absolutely be fired for them (although I think in this case the person was let go because railing against vast swaths of your coworkers is disruptive and rude, even if they're "cishet white boys").

<comment><USER46> relevant part of the item linked

Employers are allowed to undertake initiatives to promote diversity hiring, employment lawyers say. But under Title VII, the federal antidiscrimination law, employers aren't allowed to make hiring decisions based on race and gender among other protected classes. That means they can't employ practices like hiring quotas based on race or only hiring one type of minority candidate, attorneys say. Such practices would also run afoul of California laws.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> It sounds as though some recruiting leader was told to hit their goals for minority hiring percentages but wasn't given much oversight in how they did it. This sort of thing is often the result of such mismanagement.

<comment><USER48> Aren't the goals like that a mismanagement, to begin?

Either state officially, like "we do racial profiling of candidates", if you in fact do, or, well, don't if you don't.

<comment><USER49> You can try to invite a wider audience to apply. Many firms just hire based on a short list of posh colleges and thus inherit whatever racial statistics apply to them. But it's possible to look for candidates of all kinds, to expand internship programs, to go to job fairs at inner-city colleges, and so on.

That really only applies to junior personnel, though. I'm not sure what you would do for hiring more experienced people.

<comment><USER48> This sure makes sense. Invite a _wider_ audience, go an extra mile to reach those who could meet the requirements but prejudices or other adverse conditions make it hard for them.

This is an opposite to _narrowing_ your audience, because certain people need not apply.

I mean, I think employers should be able to introduce whatever filters they need for the job requirements ("our dance group only accepts ladies with prior dancing experience, older than 18, and no shorter than 6ft".) But I'd like them to be open about these requirements.

<comment><USER29> They do this already at a fairly large scale, for example the BOLD internship and development program where the goal is to "expose historically underrepresented students in this field to career opportunities in the industry." [[https://www.google.com/about/careers/students/bold.html](https://www.google.com/about/careers/students/bold.html)]

These programs are fantastic, and I think a great (albeit no silver bullet) strategy to grant greater OPPORTUNITY to underrepresented groups who may never be exposed to CompSci & Tech industries.

Things that are discussed in this article (if true) are clearly about reaching equal REPRESENTATION more than opportunity – and yeah, that's very disappointing since at the end of the day the only way to do that with immediate gratification is discrimination. (pipeline & societal problems don't get fixed overnight)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> I came back to this thread to say that this issue is very peculiar because if Youtube/Google can be this picky about candidates (junior/low experience candidates in particular) maybe this STEM/Tech shortage is not so real as they often try to make it look.

Maybe all this effort agains an hypotetical STEM/Tech "shortage" is just to drive down tech employees salaries in the long term.

</comment><comment><USER51> Is anyone still surprised by this behaviour from a post-Demore Google?

<comment><USER52> The timeframe for these alleged actions predates the release of Damore's memo.

<comment><USER53> Maybe he was actually onto an unhealthy culture within the company, and trying to help it from the inside.

<comment><USER52> I agree that's possible, but I don't think it's reasonable to read this piece in a "post-Damore Google" context.

<comment><USER12> As far as I can tell, they are still deeply infected by toxic ideologues who will witch-hunt anyone who openly disagrees with their politics. So many of my old classmates did this vehement un-personing of James Damore, even when they had no factual basis for what they were saying. Someday someone should write a play about it. In the meantime, there's "The Drumhead."

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjJN08uqt70](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjJN08uqt70)

<comment><USER54> People lost their shit over him IRL?

<comment><USER12> On Facebook. People who had no connection to him were parroting stuff about how bad a software engineer he was.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Just a note to acknowledge that user IntronExon predicted stories and comments exactly like this being raised in reaction to the stories about endemic sexism that were briefly on the front page today. Now replaced by these tales of unfairness to men. You called, it, Intron.

</comment><comment><USER56> I disagree with this but I do selfishly wish I could get a "diversity" boost when applying. Too bad being LGBT is effectively invisible to recruiters.

<comment><USER57> Do you find that LBGT status is still an obstacle in tech?

<comment><USER58> I find that T status is still an issue.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> Did anyone not see this coming?

The goal posts of equal _outcome_ continue to move, from university enrollment, to employment enrollment. And there are some people who want to see it go further. (What societal engineering scheme does this resemble?) With no apparent regard for what it costs.

Do you want to live in a world where you are judged by the color of your skin, your gender, your "ethnicity"?

Or do you think that, maybe, we should judge people by who they are? The substantive characteristics that define an individual. Not a fantasy, not a PR story, but _who an individual is_.

We should all have the decency to look beyond the superficial traits of a person, to not make assumptions about their character, positive or negative, and to truly try to understand one another.

Blatant discrimination of such superficial features has no place in a healthy society, or one that wishes to become one. This arrogance, assumptions, and short-sighted thinking cost more than we can afford.

<comment><USER53> Note, this lawsuit is being brought by former Google recruiters who say they were ordered to "purge" certain groups from the interview queue.

> YouTube recruiters were allegedly instructed to cancel interviews with > applicants who weren't female, black or Hispanic, and to "purge entirely" > the applications of people who didn't fit those categories, the lawsuit > claims.

I'd like to remind people of what Denise Young Smith, who ran HR at Apple, said, before suddenly stepping down after the outrageous repsonse.

> "There can be 12 white, blue-eyed, blond men in a room and they're going to > be diverse too because they're going to bring a different life experience > and life perspective to the conversation," the inaugural diversity chief > said.

> "Diversity is the human experience," she said, according to Quartz. "I get a > little bit frustrated when diversity or the term diversity is tagged to the > people of color, or the women, or the LGBT."

She's gone now, instantly, after working there for 20 years and rising to senior executive VP. What is going on in our industry?

<comment><USER59> What seems to be going on, I think, is largely a one-sided story. There are many people with bullhorns who speak, for whatever reasons, but who seem to go largely unchallenged. Whether that's due to unawareness, lack of critical thought, laziness, or perceived distance (e.g. "I think things are still fine with me; I can't or don't see how this could affect me."), I can't say for certain, but I imagine many people are affected by some combination of them all.

What I can say we do need more of, however, is well-engaged, open and honest discussion. Having leading voices speak your mind can be very good, but central figures can be fallible. A better solution would be to have input from humans in the "silent majority", whatever that might be.

<comment><USER60> From personal experience after having talked to several colleagues about this in private, all of whom feel this is wrong, the simple reason for why people don't speak or engage in open discourse is fear. And after having seen what happens to the ones that speak up it seems like legitimate fear.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> I grew up in a somewhat cult like church environment. Speaking in tongues, adults laughing uncontrollably on the floor, people falling out after the laying on of hands. Although I respect Christianity and the values it teaches, looking back on my particular church environment, it seemed deep into lunacy territory. What's your point, you might be wondering...

The point is at the time it seemed completely normal. Sometimes when you get away long enough to clear your mind, you get to see the reality of the social hysteria that you had been consumed by. I experienced this a second time after not watching the news for a few years. Silicon valley, Hollywood, MSM, the 'left' in general, has gone so far bonkers their behavior is virtually comedic at this point. If you get a chance, turn off the news, the movies, twitter, facebook etc, and leave your bubble for a year or two. You'll be amazed at the clarity and freedom of thought that you will discover.

<comment><USER59> It's rare for internet denizens to hear a voice from the other side!

And it's a welcome reminder.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> Is this discrimination? Why or why not?

Reminds me of this controversy from not too long ago:

[http://www.nbcnews.com/id/30393117/ns/us_news- life/t/asian-a...](http://www.nbcnews.com/id/30393117/ns/us_news-life/t/asian- americans-blast-uc-admissions-policy/)

<comment><USER63> Discrimination per se isn't necessarily a problem. You're discriminating on some basis no matter how you hire someone. A lot rides on the motivation for discrimination.

As Martin Luther King said: > History unfortunately leaves some people oppressed and some people oppressors.

It's just a fact that some groups end up with advantages in any society and some end up disadvantaged, and those that have advantages will use their power and wealth to retain them.

You don't have to lay blame on people to see that it happens, and how it can be damaging to society if allowed to continue to its natural end— massive political and economic inequality.

So how do you fix it? If you go on a purely quote-unquote merit based system, the people who grew up with educated, wealthy parents, in safe neighborhoods, etc, will naturally fill the educational and recruitment pipelines that train people for high status jobs.

And thus you perpetuate injustice and unfairness from generation to generation, which even if you don't object to morally, you should at least object to out of self interest, because it will leas to instability and civic unrest.

Racial quotas in hiring are a blunt instrument to be sure, and can be grossly unfair to individuals, particularly the less well off members of advantaged groups who get passed over.

I don't know if I think they're a good way to solve the problem over a purely class based approach, but if you look at it and all you see is 'racism', then I would suggest that you look a little bit deeper, because it's a much more complex issue than that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> I don't know what the position was and diversity for PR sake alone is nuts and it's harmful. Also agreed, any discrimination is discrimination and not OK.

That being said, it is YouTube. Sure most programmers are white or Asian males but many YouTube viewers are not. It could be in this case that a broader demographic more representative of end users was desirable for actual practical reasons and it was more than about slinging code fast and a PR quota stunt.

</comment><comment><USER65> [https://outline.com/R9tseg](https://outline.com/R9tseg)

<comment><USER66> [https://archive.fo/OPbpS](https://archive.fo/OPbpS)

outline link seems broken

<comment><USER67> seems fixed

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> NBA is totally underrepresented by non-black Males, let's sue them.

Swim tournament is severely underrepresented by deep skin colors. Meanwhile track and field is the opposite.

Let's mix all colors everywhere based on population percentile, to achieve diversity, equal rights and fairness.

Or do something like Dr.King hoped, that is, don't judge a person by color.

<comment><USER69> >NBA is totally underrepresented by non-black Males, let's sue them.

False equivalency.

How do we encourage short people to grow taller? Or kids to grow up into a tall adult?

Coming to tech, it's possible to encourage people to work in STEM who otherwise may feel unwelcome due to various issues, including gender, age, race, workplace attitudes, glass ceilings etc. That includes trying to have role models that kids may want to emulate.

<comment><USER70> NBA players on average are 2 inches shorter than listed height because that includes shoes. IT is 5 foot 9 and potentially shorter. Half of the best players in the league are point guards with heights ranging from 6 feet to 6'3 again with shoes. Kyrie Irving, Steph Curry, Lillard, Chris Paul, Westbrook all fall under this. Average American Height is 5'10\. 7 foot tall players have mostly struggled last 5 years so you don't have to encourage kids to grow taller to play in the league.

Asians and South Asians are vastly underrepresented in the Music, Entertainment, and Acting industries and Asian and South Asian women are vastly underrepresented in Fashion, Modeling, etc, industries. Sometimes freedom of choice results in outcomes that we shouldn't try to force but it's not white and black. In STEM, gender disparity results in many problems for females, in the other industries I mentioned it's significantly due to connections, glass ceiling, a certain type of "boys club" but also due to choice. I agree with role models, and removing barriers, but I highly highly disagree with excluding individuals based on their race. That is racist and I will oppose that to the core of my being

<comment><USER71> the median height of NBA players has gone from 6'3" to 6'5" to 6'7". The growth in median height of NBA players has outpaced growth in US population median height over the same period.

Yes, its very much a natural advantage to all things being equal, be tall to play basketball. Source: Am tall guy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> I really hope that this marks a turning of the tides, because what has been going on in tech, as well as certain non-tech industries, in the name of "diversity," has been nothing short of abhorrent.

The doublespeak is inescapable. They claim to stand against racism and sexism, but will not hesitate to discriminate based on race or sex to meet some kind of nonsensical demographic parity targets which are absolutely not reflective of the actual qualifications of applicant pools.

Meanwhile, with the other hand, they claim that the existing industry leaders are in the wrong for supposedly doing just that, when merely conflating equality of opportunity with equality of outcome. How the hell do you seriously expect to achieve something like gender parity, for example, through hiring, in a competitive industry when incoming male graduates outnumber female graduates 10 to 1?

How can people be so disconnected from reality and blame biased hiring practices?

<comment><USER73> It is abhorrent to hire one of two very similar people, but prefer the black to overcome the huge bias for white people? In an attempt to redress the 100s of years of imbalance?

But it is not abhorrent to treat black people like shit and disclude them from many roles for many years?

<comment><USER72> Absolutely, but those slights do not justify harming other innocent people. Especially in a business context, where the rationale for hiring is supposed to be about productivity.

And it isn't fair to presume that we benefited from some kind of historic opression based on the color of our skin either - some of us are immigrants, or first or second generation descendants, having faced persecution of our own, pre and post immigration.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> Not sure this has ever happened to me. I'm very pale and male, and always have recruiters coming after me for SRE gigs. Maybe this happens, but I've not see it. It's irrational to hire based on anything other than merit, although I understand diversity is good because I don't prefer to work with only white/asian dudes either. Hire everyone qualified, especially people whom don't look like yourself.

</comment><comment><USER75> Ambulance chasing lawyers seem to have focused their efforts on large tech. Reminds of that joke "Why do robbers go after banks?". "That's where the money is". Wonder what the lawyer vs individual split is in these cases....most of them land up settling any way.

</comment><comment><USER76> I suppose these white and asian men are better off not being employed by a sexist and racist company. Even if they got in the door who's to say that "no raises for white/asian men" isn't the next step (if that policy isn't already in place).

I hope Google gets raked over the coals for this though. Not only are they hurting these men (and their families -- if they have them) but they're also hurting women. What man wants to be an "ally" to the women in tech movement when that movement's goal is to put them out of work? This is just going to create more hostility between people who should be working together, not at war with each other.

</comment><comment><USER28> The article mentions that there was a hiring freeze of white and Asian candidates and shows in a demographic breakdown that 56% of its employees are white.

The US is 76.9% of the US "white alone" according to its Census data. The corresponding figure for California is 72.7%.

It's interesting that YouTube (allegedly) made the decision to freeze hires of a racial group already underrepresented and that the text of the article never touched upon the point. The ethnic group truly overrepresented in US tech companies is Asians.

It's an unfortunate trend of treating people as members of groups rather than individuals to begin with, but it's doubly unfortunate that so many Americans are struggling even to speak openly about the what the current numbers are.

[https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045217](https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045217)

<comment><USER77> "white alone" includes Hispanic. You need to read "white alone, not Hispanic".

Anyway, going by [https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/sanmateocountyc...](https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/sanmateocountycalifornia/PST045217)

San Mateo County is:

40% white alone

29% Asian alone

From that data alone, whites could actually be more over-represented than Asians. (I stress could because you need per-site info to conclude anything)

Regardless, I don't see evidence that whites are underrepresented.

<comment><USER28> San Mateo County is small enough to be distorted by the effects of the very kind of discriminatory hiring the article is about. Based upon the rapid downvoting, I'll work off the premise that I misread the statistics and ask for clarification:

Which group of people does the "76.9% of US population - White alone" statistic refer to?

The San Mateo numbers in the link you shared say:

        24.8% Hispanic or Latino
        39.8% White alone, not Hispanic
        61.4% White alone

Does this mean that the vast majority of Hispanics in the county are also in the "white alone" category?

This would be clearer if race were one category and "household language" were a completely separate one. :/

<comment><USER77> > Which group of people does the "76.9% of US population - White alone" > statistic refer to?

This is defined in the footing - hispanic is not a race

[https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045217#qf...](https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045217#qf- headnote-a)

> Does this mean that the vast majority of Hispanics in the county are also in > the "white alone" category?

Yes

> San Mateo County is small enough to be distorted by the effects of the very > kind of discriminatory hiring the article is about.

Possible, but you'd need more evidence to make this claim. SF and Santa Clara have similar demographics; that's nearly 4M people across these 3 counties.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


You Can't Register Example.com - <AUTHOR> http://example.com

<comment> MatiasPenas-_- Actually you can.

</comment><comment><USER2> Could you clarify the title?

<comment><USER3> It appears that the OP is surprised the domain Example.com can't be registered as the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) have set it as a special use domain[1] alongside several other domains.

[1] <http://www.iana.org/domains/special></comment></comment>


Car and Driver's hilarious pulled review of the Cadillac Escalade EXT - <AUTHOR> http://www.hyundaiperformance.com/forums/off-topic/51471-car-drivers-best-review-ever-caddilac.html

<comment><USER2> First thing I read this week that was lol funny. Oblidged.</comment>


FuzzBuzz and the Art of Programming - <AUTHOR> http://dangerontheranger.blogspot.com/2016/05/fuzzbuzz-and-art-of-programming.html <comment><USER2> Obviously a minor point, but if x: return True else: return False is weirdo- code. Just use return x, maybe cast to bool if you need to.

<comment><USER3> return x is way more pythonic, because it's much clearer and any non-boolean value can be used in boolean contexts as well.

<comment><USER4> You can also "return not not x" which turns the value into its boolean true/false equivalent ("!!x" in a C-like language).

Or "return bool(x)" to make this more explicit.

Those would be handy e.g. if the code that uses your result behaves differently 0 and False.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> His recursive function didn't remove Boolean checks, it just hid it in the runtime system. Better---have a function just print one out of the sequence. A second function to call the first one ten times. Then a third function to call the second one ten times. No loops, no (hidden) Boolean checks, no math, no modulus, no recursion.

</comment><comment><USER6> No itertools.cycle()?</comment>


Microsoft responds to YouTube demands, 'more than happy' to include ads - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2013/5/15/4334956/microsoft-responds-to-youtube-windows-phone-takedown-notice

<comment><USER3> This is a really interesting battle of platform vs proprietary business going on here. Is Youtube a platform? If so, then it should be offered to everyone equally. That's almost the definition of a platform. But is it actually a proprietary business that operates purely in the interests of its owner? In that case it should be offered to whoever makes money for the owner. If you are a content creator, Youtube tries very hard to look like a platform. But if you are a business that wants to make money from showing the content - <USER2> looks like a proprietary business.

Lots of companies are trying to have it both ways these days. Apple, Twitter, Facebook, Microsoft, and Google too - all want to say, "hey, here we have a platform, you can come and develop here and make money without prejudice". But at the same time they all want to say, "we make the rules, we decide who wins, who loses and who's in and who's out and have no obligation to be fair about it".

Once upon a time people screamed murder when a platform company started weaving its own interests directly into its platform. For example, Microsoft would get heavily criticised for using "secret" windows APIs in office. Not that they didn't. But there was a general consensus that it was highly unfair for MS to have access to APIs that others didn't.

These days this resistance has been broken down by companies like Apple and Facebook, offering incredibly attractive "platforms" but without the guarantees that a platform used to have. Would anybody complain now that Apple uses a private API on the iPhone that 3rd party developers don't have access to? These days people virtually insist on it, for security, if nothing else.

So to me this is one more aspect of this long and winding battle between companies that want to have it all - pretend to offer "open" platforms but keep the reigns under their control. And they are all guilty.

<comment><USER4> > Once upon a time people screamed murder when a platform company started > weaving its own interests directly into its platform. For example, Microsoft

When you say "screamed murder", do you mean that people got huffy about it on the Internet? That's still the case. Exhibit A: your comment.

Did you mean "antitrust lawsuits used to be filed about it?" A random sampling of any paragraph in the actual court decision should convince you that the situation is not comparable to today:

> Microsoft possesses a dominant, persistent, and increasing share of the > world- wide market for Intel-compatible PC operating systems. Every year for > the last decade, Microsoft's share of the market for Intel-compatible PC > operating systems has stood above ninety percent. For the last couple of > years the figure has been at least ninety-five percent, and analysts project > that the share will climb even higher over the next few years. - U.S. v. > Microsoft, Findings of Fact

If at some point Apple's share of the phone market, or even of the ARM-based phone market, exceeds 90 percent, over a period of a decade--by all means, let's file a lawsuit about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Sweet mother of god, what a move to pull. Well played. Looks like Microsoft is pulling the same hand, as Google did with EAS some months ago. Also considering MS has been asking for Google's help since 2010. Brilliantly done.

<comment><AUTHOR> I wonder if Bill Gates was involved in this idea. He has the level of cunning needed to pull this off.

Using Google's pretense of "openness" against itself.

<comment><USER5> It actually is very interesting move to pull. The reply is just so elegant, it is beautiful. They were being strangled by Google, there are no Google apps on MS platforms (WP or OS). And on a day of Larry Page's rheotoric about being friendly to each other. This is Oh Snap moment.

<comment><USER6> >there are no Google apps on MS platforms (WP or OS)

Chrome? Play Music Manager? I guess those don't really count.

<comment><USER5> Metro apps. See the new hangouts app? It's not on WP.

<comment><USER5> @cma: No. Metro apps cannot be sideloaded if you are not a Dev. Tell me a store which does not take a cut? Steam, iOS, Nook, Amazon, Play store? Besides, Google's apps on iOS are free.

<comment><USER7> I think AppBrain takes no cut.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've been off all microsoft products for a long time, but I think I might be willing to give their phone a try. I'm not completely sold on android or apple at the moment, and Msoft's design does seem to be taking the lead (flat ui), and presenting a different option . Plus, before the android/ios wars, I always thought Nokia made the most brilliant phones, and i'm kinda glad to see them back in the game.

<comment><USER9> If you want a phone that syncs your data to the cloud without your permission, WP is perfect. Android's also very good at this, but if you have lots of time and some skills you can root it and probably fix the issue.

<comment><USER10> No it's not. I have a Lumia 920 and none of my data is synced to SkyDrive.

<comment><USER9> I see. Are you absolutely sure? Did you do anything special?

The only hack that I know is setting the server to 127.0.0.1 in the people hub so that it doesn't sync. I have seen multiple official statements from MS that this is not supported and the syncing is mandatory.

Could you provide a link or guide on how to disable sync'ing in MS Office and for the contacts? Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Perfect example of stacking the deck in your favour. If Google says no, they look like hypocrites who aren't practising what they preach. Very gutsy move Microsoft, well played.

<comment><USER12> No, it's actually pretty silly of Microsoft. They're blatantly disregarding YouTube's TOS by allowing users to download videos within the app - I'm just shocked this made it past Microsoft legal.

<comment><USER13> I believe the conversation would gone like this:

Microsoft Legal: No way! We may get sued and lose!

Microsoft Strategy: Okay, I see, how much will we lose?

Microsoft Legal: Maybe 2 Billion in damages, maybe 5 Billion with a big B in the worst case.

Microsoft Strategy: Okay, Finance Department how much cash do we have?

Microsoft Finance: 75B billion cash in our bank account.

Microsoft Strategy to Dev Division: Okay, make the YouTube app, oh and by the way stick a download button in there too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Can google selectively pick which partners will get access to their service?

I want to understand the legal answer and the ethical answer.

<comment><USER15> The legal answer is that the Supreme Court has treated anything written by a corporation on a sheet of paper as a holy scripture (Citizen United, Monsanto, the class action suits waivers) so chances are it will be - they can do whatever they want.

The ethical answer is that when a company becomes of a certain size it happens to be a part of the national infrastructure so they should give FRAND access to their services.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Isn't Microsoft released an ad(scroogled) some days ago attacking Google that they track users. So now Microsoft doesn't have any problem if Google track Microsoft users.

What an irony !

</comment><comment><USER17> What a move... now if this only worked on movie companies.

Host a bunch of infringing works, and when the takedown notice come, say that you are "more than happy" to pay license fee. The only thing one need is to get the same access and license deal that netflix got. Anything else would be unfair.

</comment><comment><USER18> It's quite likely that they're only "more than happy" to include advertising if they can also reap some profits from the ads shown to their "mutual customers". (Why else would you word it that way?)

</comment><comment><USER13> From Google's About page:

"Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful."

Last time when Google was intentionally blocking Google maps and then deprecated ActiveSync on Windows Phone someone suggested Google should updated it to the following:(which seems quite true given how much of the world's crowdsourced video content is on YouTube):

"Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful, except on Windows Phone".

Also, I see this post being flagged a lot, stay classy, Google fans on HN.

<comment><USER19> How are people able to see if a post is being flagged a lot? Is there a karma level for that?

<comment><USER20> The ranking in the front page is affected by flagging. Usually, the more points a post has and the more recent it is, the higher it is ranked. But flagging pushes it down. So if you see a 100 point post submitted 10 hours ago above a 150 point post submitted 6 hours ago, it means that the 150 point post got flagged a lot.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Looks like this submission is getting flagged as well. I guess this story really isn't showing Google is good light if Google fans are in such heavy damage control mode. It looks like they have a veto on what appears on the HN front page.

Look, you may not like Microsoft and even its response but why try to bury a legitimate news item? Are there not enough Google I/O posts related stories topping the the front page?

Can anyone who flagged this and the other related stories come out and tell us why they feel the need to abuse their moderator privileges?

From the HN guidelines:

"If you think something is spam or offtopic, flag it by going to its page and clicking on the "flag" link. (Not all users will see this; there is a karma threshold.)"

Looks like PG didn't guess that people with good karma will want to abuse it to bury stories they don't want others to see in such a constant way.

<comment><USER5> What? How is it being flagged? I think the community on here is balanced, and discussions are free of any vitriol.

<comment><USER22> Hacker News removes users' ability to flag articles if they abuse it. Just for shits and giggles I am going to perform an experiment: every time someone shrilly declares that MS articles are being mercilessness flagged by upset Google employees, I am going to flag the article as well.

My money is on my flagging ability not remaining intact for very long.

<comment><USER5> And how will that be a good experiment at all with one data point? Are you trying to find out the criteria of how they decide to remove the ability? I do not think it is limited to MS articles only.

<comment><USER22> Obviously it cannot be a good experiment. It is for shits and giggles.

I never bother to flag anymore, if I manage to have the ability removed by only flagging MS articles over the next few days then I am going to take that as a mild indication that all of the people whining about MS posts being flagged really just have persecution complexes and are not actually onto anything. If I don't have the ability removed, that suggests nothing at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Discussion of Google's takedown notice is here.

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5715168></comment>


Ask HN: What were your best sources of passive income in 2017? - <AUTHOR> Side projects, affiliate revenue, apps, investing, other.
Previous 3 years:
2016 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13150144
2015 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10726489
2014 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7094402 <comment><USER2> Bought BTC in early July, cashed out recently at 600% my initial investment. Some of it's gone towards Christmas presents, and I'm going to put the rest into a side project for (hopefully) a more stable source of semi-passive income.

</comment><comment><USER3> 9 days ago there was a thread for 2017, too [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15869527](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15869527) (didn't start with 'Ask HN')</comment>


Roll your own build of CyanogenMod with some helper Bash scripts - <AUTHOR> http://www.extremetech.com/computing/110949-android-for-dummies-make-your-own-build-of-cyanogenmod

<comment><USER2> This would be really handy if it allowed you to build ICS (Android 4.0) for your device. On the other hand I'm not sure running the risk of bricking my phone is worth it to have ICS a few months early. :/</comment>


How we do coding assignments (hiring engineers) - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@gijsnelissen/how-we-do-coding-assignments-dad420e0573e <comment><USER2> It should probably be pointed out that, even if you are paying them for their time, you must also have some sort of IP agreement for the code that they produce.

<comment><AUTHOR> hmmm good comment. I don't plan on using their code so do we really need an IP agreement ? (don't like paperwork)

<comment><USER2> If there is ever a chance that you might use it (or something similar to it in the future), I would most definitely do the paperwork.

If you don't do the paperwork, then that means that they own the code (laws may vary on this, of course), and can use it in their own product or sell it to someone else.

Of course, IANAL, but IP management has become an important topic lately, and this is one of the issues.</comment></comment></comment>


Still the Best Unofficial Official Google Cardboard I've Used - <AUTHOR> https://www.unofficialcardboard.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> VR is a bit lukewarm but I decided to give it a go. I've come across other products, but I honestly prefer the aptly named unofficial cardboard version because of the stronger magnets, from what I've tried.

Anyway though, always room for improvement. Anyone have news on VR?</comment>


The Turing Test: Transcripts of the best attempts - <AUTHOR> http://loebner.net/Prizef/2009_Contest/loebner-prize-2009.html

<comment><USER2> That is horrid.

After comparing human to human conversation and bot to human I feel like goal of conversing with computer is so far away.

People communicate through such narrow channel. Few words, almost no grammar and they still can stay perfectly in sync. If bot tries to imitate the style it descends in pure nonsense. If it does not it still seems like it's not capable of understanding anything.

I think another approach would be to ditch grammar and just build some kind of word and word combinations associative database fed with extensive memoirs of single person.

If bot spots a question it should respond with closest word combinations found in database. Also it should remember what was said and use it as a context while seeking for answer.

<comment><USER3> That's not really AI since the person generated all the knowledge and the bot just copies it. That's like Deep Blue beating Kasparov using a bunch of lookup tables based on the best chess masters. At that point, Big Blue isn't really playing, Kasparov is just playing against a bunch of chess masters.

<comment><USER2> Right, but it's still winning the game.

If you don't start by copying single human you will always end up with patched up Frankenstein like creature that can be easily discernible from human.

Besides, mind is just big lookup table with simple, not very effective reasoning engine and desire to fill in the gaps in the table.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I was bored so I whipped up a (very hacky) python script to read the log.

<http://gist.github.com/267399>

</comment><comment><USER5> Fail for not having them viewable in an easy format.

</comment><comment><USER6> Rather difficult to read.

<comment><USER7> They have a player that you need to download. I did, ready to be blown away by recent advances in Turing test bots, but seems like we're still decades away from a program that could possibly pass the test.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> you have to install a .exe player to view the transcripts.</comment>


Show HN: Simple Flashcard Application for Mobile and Desktop - <AUTHOR> https://www.buffl.co <comment><USER2> Btw, we are on Producthunt: [https://goo.gl/gmxtQx](https://goo.gl/gmxtQx)

</comment><comment><USER3> What languages / technologies did you use?

<comment><USER2> Hey, we are using:

backend: \- node (express) \- Mongo \- Redis

Frontend: \- Angular (1)

iOs: \- native written in Swift

Infrastructure: \- Cloudfront \- S3 \- Root for Backend</comment></comment>


Introducing Stack Decisions - <AUTHOR> https://stackshare.io/posts/introducing-stack-decisions <comment><USER2> This doesn't seem that good an idea, reading about people's chosen stack is somewhat interesting but they all seem somewhat the same, in some cases you know that the stack explanation boils down to this is our hammer, the problem our nail, and anyway the number of meaningful stack combinations seem much less than the number of meaningful questions one can ask on just about any complex subject matter.

maybe I'm just in a curmudgeonly mood.

<comment><USER3> OP here- I agree that that discussions are more interesting. A question about a stack is actually something we encourage and will encourage more in the comments for Decisions. But there are still a lot of problem/solution combos that can be useful without a discussion attached (these usually come in the form of full blog posts).

Our hope is actually that over time, you'll end up with this repository of discussions around problems/solutions for a wide range of use cases that you can come back to whenever you need help.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've been looking for something in this direction for some time, though I don't think this quite does it. I really want something that helps me make decisions on tools as I enter into new fields of development. For example, I've been mostly a backend engineer the last 5-10 years and web development has changed a lot since I last did it before then. What are the tools, libraries, architectures, testing components, etc. that go into building modern web applications? What about the same for IoT devices?

My take on Stack Share has been that it's trying to just get just enough eyeballs to be a viable recruiting tool. I've rediscovered it a few times and each time I leave disappointing because I don't really find anything helpful.

After the last time I bumped into it, I started considering creating something to address what I'm looking for above, but I'm not sure what would motivate developers to help build this body of knowledge that I wish existed. What do you all think it takes to rally developers around creating something like this?

<comment><USER3> Founder of StackShare here- it's not a recruiting tool and it never has been. Used for recruiting, definitely. Companies link to StackShare all the time in job posts (even in the Who's Hiring thread) to show applicants the stack they'll work with. But we don't have a recruiting product nor market ourselves as one so not sure how we come across as that.

Not finding anything useful could be a fair point, but it depends on what you're looking for. If you've been trying to get a better understanding about a tool that you don't know about, I'd love to see a better resource (I don't know of any). If it's a tool that you already know about then you could certainly make the case if you want to do a full deep dive, consumer-reports style. But again I don't know of a single place to go for that.

Regarding your first point, there's no shortage of online courses and tutorials to help you when you're entering a new area of development which often go into the tools aspect. Curious- why don't those work for you? Here's a good one for React that does cover tools: [https://reactforbeginners.com/](https://reactforbeginners.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Lots of React-related decisions so far - [https://stackshare.io/tool/react/decisions](https://stackshare.io/tool/react/decisions). Beyond the reasons why they chose React, I like seeing the complementary tools like react-mentions.

</comment><comment><USER6> Or you just read HN directly. what they call their feed is just a selection of relevant HN posts.

</comment><comment><USER7> Decisions can be really useful to see not only why other users selected the stack they use, but also what related tools they used. The conversation that come out of that can be really informative to make a long term decision.</comment>


MVC and Purity - <AUTHOR> http://blog.ezyang.com/2010/07/mvc-and-purity/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ezyang+%28Inside+245s%29&utm_content=Google+Reader <comment><USER2> If you have to deliberate on a design pattern on this abstract and dogmatic level, it is unlikely to be making you more productive.

The most useful principle that comes with MVC is also the most straightforward and intuitive: decouple the core logic from the interface (user or otherwise).

The rest, like the enigmatic Controller, obviously has no common and consistent meaning among programmers. I suspect that the original meaning has been lost to reinterpretation over many generations of changing technology. But if the original meaning really matters to you that much, you are probably doing theology and not engineering.

<comment><USER3> When I do software engineering, I use architectural principles to make decisions for me. I don't have to decide where the HTML rendering code will go because the Model-View principle has made it clear. Furthermore, I get annoyed when the architectural principle fails to give a me a decision, but I get the feeling that it should (the example I gave here was input validation, which I now believe soundly should live in the model). In this case, I can either make an ad hoc decision or think more carefully about the architectural principle. Both practices are valuable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interesting article, but I don't buy the conclusion. I think this is partly because the term MVC has been distorted considerably from its original meaning when used in the context of web sites.

The key thing about real MVC is to separate not just the I/O details from the model, but the input details from the output. The view's only purpose is to render data from the model to some output device so the user can see it (or otherwise detect it). No matter how many monads you use to dress this up, it is fundamentally effectful: it updates the screen, plays sounds through speakers, etc.

This is where the confusion with web-based "MVC" comes in. If all your view does is generate some HTML as pure data, it isn't much of a view at all. No- one can see the results. You need a web server sitting on top, to take that HTML and send it back to the browser client using HTTP, and in the traditional sense of MVC that would be part of the view code as well.

This may be a useful distinction, in that it provides separation between the (necessarily impure) outside-facing code and the (potentially pure) rendering operation. A view module can be built up in layers from submodules just like any other part of a software system, and likewise the top layers can be effectful while depending only on pure code below. But the view module as a whole is always effectful, or it serves no purpose.

<comment><USER5> In terms of pure code, the view returns data, which the controller then can route to the appropriate place to show. In this case the view generates an HTML response, but it could also generate an audio response or a video response.

I understand that from an OO stand point it makes a lot of sense for the view to directly control that, but in a functional world it makes more sense for the view to pass back something which the controller then routes to the user, making it more of a formatting layer than a display layer.

So yes, a functional MVC and OO MVC may have very different meanings.

<comment><USER6> Huh? In the world I grew up in, the controller is the middleman sitting between the model (the raw data representation or, at the highest level, the ORM) and the view (the "client", if you will). The controller is where the application logic lives. In a web app, the view is the HTML chain (it requires the web server, the browser and the HTML/JS/CSS to be complete) and the controller is just about everything that sits between the database and the HTML page. Complete separation of the view and controller can only really happen with a templating system (or with a page that essentially self- assembles in the browser using AJAX/AJAJ).

<comment><USER4> This is a fascinating discussion, because I don't think either of the architectures described in the parent and grandparent posts is even close to MVC.

Views returning data that controllers then show? Controllers containing application logic?! To me, it seems these things are almost the opposite of what MVC is supposed to achieve.

Then again, distortion of the term is commonplace in server-side web programming frameworks, as I mentioned before. I did once look at the Wikipedia article on this subject, but it's one of those where people with no understanding of the original concept have taken over so comprehensively that it is beyond hope and needs a complete rewrite... preferably by someone who knows that Smalltalk is a programming language, not to be confused with idle chat at web developer conferences. :-)

<comment><USER6> Hmmm... model as persistent state, controller as state-change manager and view as, well, what you see -- that's pretty much the way Burbeck described it. The model may "know" how to reflect state changes (and that would include things like object-relational mapping where appropriate, maintaining relational integrity and so on), but what to change (the application logic) is and was the responsibility of the controller -- yes, even in Smalltalk 80. Some of us do go back rather a long way, you know.

<comment><USER4> I suppose it depends on what you mean by "state-change manager".

My understanding has always been that a controller's job was to translate user actions into domain-level operations to be carried out. You might start the foobazifier by clicking a toolbar icon, pressing a keyboard shortcut, or selecting a menu item, but they all have the same effect. The controller's job is to interpret those user actions to determine the required effect. The model's job is to understand what that effect _means_ and update things accordingly.

In practice, of course, it has never really been quite that simple. Views tend to have metadata (such as the current cursor position in a document or zoom level) that are also maintained by commands from the controller, so not all data is stored in the model, only the important, domain-related state. Observer patterns get implemented so that the model can remain independent of any particular controller/view pair, but it still has to provide both an API for updates from controllers and a defined set of events that interested modules can observe.

In any case, the model's role is not just to be a thin wrapper around the database/file system/whatever. It is also the guardian of "business logic". I think one danger with the term MVC is that it suggests a system composed of only three modules. In reality, MVC is a high-level architectural pattern, and in non-trivial applications all three of those components are going to need a lot of internal structure as well. Representing domain concepts and persistent state may well be at the core of the model, but just about any code that works entirely in terms of domain concepts probably belongs within the model component somewhere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What is meant by the expression "code purity"?

<comment><USER8> [http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Functional_programming#Pu...](http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Functional_programming#Purity)</comment></comment>


An Interview with Sue Black - <AUTHOR> http://zidilife.com/get-one-life-make/

<comment><USER2> I met Sue Black when I was campaigning for the Turing Apology. I would give her the highest compliment I could give anyone: she's a real person.

<comment><USER3> I find that to be a very strong compliment. It takes a lot to be able to understand a person.

However, as a caveat, having grown up in an inner city and attending inner city schools all my life, I often found that those whose situations were far less fortunate then mine (or a lot of the crowd in the AP and IBO classes) were far more "real" than those from middle and upper class socioeconomic status.

So while I agree it's a very strong compliment, unless you read the article (and in my opinion, experience her hardships vicariously) it might be hard to understand for some of the people who are, dare I say... less real?

I also find hardships tend to very much be involved in the lives of most "real" people. They've had the veneer of society stripped away such as when a vital figure in one's life is stripped away from them, or when they're beaten up on the way home from school at the age of ten, or a police raid violently takes away a friends father in the middle of the day.

Of course, everyone who reads this will of course nod their head and be happy to be in the group of people who are real, and shit... who am I to judge?

<comment><USER2> I don't say that in reference to her background (none of which I was aware of) but in reference to when I interacted with her and saw her in action.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I will translate this article to spanish and post it on my blog. I consider these kind of people should be known worldwide in many languages.

</comment><comment><USER5> FYI, HTTPS Everywhere users might need to disable it to be able to close the popup due to blocked closebox.png or just use dev tools.

[https://i.imgur.com/QKAYg1E.png](https://i.imgur.com/QKAYg1E.png)

<comment><USER6> Also, NoScript users will need to allow zidilife.com to view the article at all (a domain-specific authorization will not enable the popup though).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Lyrics to an eminem song. That aside, it ties in well with the absurdity of life article [http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/01/11/why-life- is-...](http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/01/11/why-life-is- absurd/?_r=0)</comment>