Ask HN: My mother has shaky hands – guidance on iPhone accessibility settings? - <AUTHOR> As my mother ages (she's 89) her hands are getting quite shaky, and she's finding it more difficult to use her iPhone. I've been looking through the Touch settings in Settings > Accessibility, such as Touch Accommodations, but I'm a bit confused by the number of variables.
Her hands don't shake so much yet that she triggers Shake To Undo, it's more about things like the screen detecting the start of a swipe when she wants to do a long press. I also think Touch ID can be a bit confused by slightly shaky fingers.
I'd really value guidance from people who've gone through the same process, either with relatives or themselves, whether through age or conditions like Parkinsons, so I can at least have a starting point to work from.
She recently bought one of the new iPhone SEs, but I'm wondering if it wouldn't be better to get an XR with FaceID to avoid issues with TouchID. <comment><USER3> I kind of wonder if this is the kind of stuff that mostly gets developed and tested at a desk or in a lab.

One particularly troublesome problem with the Phone app is that touching just about anything accidentally initiates a call. That was hell for my mom and I'll bet your mom has it worse.

One thing I always wish the Phone app had was a "confirm" dialog when dialing a number (like what you get when you tap on a phone number external to the Phone app)

on a similar note, I know Tesla's UI is probably tested at a desk where everything is visible and stable, but in a moving car doing things like scrolling through a list of music and selecting is almost impossible.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, my mum does get tense about that kind of stuff. Tech support calls to her are regularly interrupted by her saying things like "oh, what's happenened now?!" I was originally pretty down on skeumorphic design in aesthetic terms, but the new iOS design language is really hard to have intuitions about. When talking to mum about clicking on one of those blue "back" links at the top left in settings I really wish I could call it a "button", but it doesn't look like a button, so I just have to say "click X at the top left", whereas if I was able to say "the button that says X at the top left" it narrows down what she's looking for significantly.

I really like the idea of a "confirm" button for significant taps, such as a phone call, which could be enabled in Settings.

<comment><USER4> Have you tried the "button shapes" option in the Display & Text Size section? It's not perfect, but it makes buttons a bit more obvious.

<comment><AUTHOR> I tried that before, but unfortunately rather than showing a "button shape" it just underlines the text. That's works for things like an email address in a contact card, but not so much for the "back" links at the top left. Thanks for the suggestion though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Consider upgrading size to iPad Mini, while on her phone tell it to share cellular calls to her local WiFi devices.

Then on iPad Mini, use max zoomed UI.

A significant degree of shakiness perceived by the device comes from tentative behaviors while she is trying not to miss small targets. With larger targets, she can point and touch with more confidence due to larger margin for error.

<comment><USER6> This is an ancillary point to OP's, but as someone with very mildly shaky hands, you shake more when you're trying not to shake. If I shook as much trying to tap a 2mm x 2mm area as I did while typing, I simply wouldn't be able to type

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, that's a really interesting insight. That must make it really difficult to type on the iOS keyboard in portrait - I'm thinking more and more about getting her to do stuff with voice commands.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Agree, maybe it'd be better one with Face ID.

I'd suggest give Voice Control a try, it can do swipes, clicks, etc:

Intro video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqoXFCCTfm4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqoXFCCTfm4)

Tutorial: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80AyUCjZYZM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80AyUCjZYZM)

<comment><USER8> To chime in, I have a loved one with ALS. He cannot move his hands at all. Apple's Voice Control allows him to do almost everything he could want to do with his iPad and it has really opened up his world again.

Learning to navigate takes a little practice, but is fairly intuitive once you know the available commands.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's really good to hear. I have a feeling my Mum will end up being unable to use a touchscreen, so the advances in voice control (presuming she keeps all her marbles) will be a godsend.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Have you tried Apple's Shortcuts app? I think it used to be called "Workflow" before Apple acquired them. You can create chains of actions that she uses often and trigger them at the press of a button or even by prompting Siri with a phrase of your choice. It's kind of like IFTTT for iPhone.

Unless she's a _very_ savvy 89 year old you'd probably need to set up the different workflows for her but IIRC it will suggest some of your most frequent actions when you launch the app. They also have a gallery of actions you can browse and might find something helpful.

Edit: It looks like they even have an "accessibility" section in the gallery.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, that's an interesting idea to remove steps in repetitive chains. She doesn't do a great deal on her phone (she much prefers using her landline and has her mobile turned off most of the time "because someone might call" her!) but she's going to need to do things like approve online transactions in her banking app soon, hence my wondering about TouchID / FaceID. Most of her use doesn't involve the same chains of actions, but I'll bear this in mind when talking to her.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> What's most interesting to me about this discussion is that most of the participants will, within a few short decades, be needing the UI enhancements we're talking about. It's interesting because until now accessibility is definitely not a mainstream thing, but when all the X'ers and Millennials get to retirement age, it certainly will be.

</comment><comment><USER11> I've been working on some hardware for my grandmother to help make phone calls. She doesn't really understand much english and the most she knows about tech is pressing a button to turn on the tv. I was wondering if anyone else has this problem as well. Would love to create a one button design that can be remotely managed for our loved ones.

<comment><USER12> The "remote management" part would be killer for me - without a twin of the device on hand, it's really hard to give directions over the phone, especially when helping my German in-laws, as I don't know the exact word their device uses for a given menu item (example: fertig/beenden/schließen?)

<comment><USER11> Would you be interested in chatting more about your use case? My e-mail is in my profile.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Unfortunately, UI developers as a group simply don't care about the problems of the old and infirm. My dad, who's perfectly fine on a 70s phone, has to use a cellphone in his facility. It's an utter trainwreck, and a few minutes watching this really drives home how awful current UIs really are.

<comment><AUTHOR> Apple does seem to genuinely care about people with disabilities, but the old, not so much. There are so many assumptions baked into phone OSes that make no sense unless you already know about the conventions. I tried her on Android for a while, which was much worse.

<comment><USER13> It feels like there's a real market here for people that just want a phone that works as well as a 70s phone. _Maybe_ with voicemail, although again, it should work as well as a 70s answering machine.

(Related: At this moment, my wife is trying to video chat with a friend for the first time. Ho-ly crap is it a fail...)

<comment><AUTHOR> If you just want cellular service and SMS, Doro phones are supposed to be good.

It does feel like there's a niche for a super-simple smarphone OS, but it would take someone with very deep pockets to deliver that.

<comment><USER13> Thanks for the ref. That's about what my dad is using, and he struggles with the complexity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Hey. I saw this on youtube a year ago. It's not exactly an available solution yet but something to keep an eye on

[https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/project- emm...](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/project-emma/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks - that does look interesting for sure.

<comment><USER14> Been thinking about this quite a bit and this solution isnt exactly mobile but could work well for home. Its possible to use assistive touch with a mouse (a rollerball mouse would work better than a traditional)

video of joystick mouse on ipad [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvvG5_rLQRk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvvG5_rLQRk)

more [https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210546](https://support.apple.com/en- us/HT210546)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the suggestion, but she's happy with a magic mouse and a MacBook Air plugged into a display. I think the weight of the mouse really helps - <USER2> I said she's not shaking so much that Shake To Undo is triggered, so the intertia that the mouse provides is enough.

It does make me wonder whether a weighted touch "pen" might be useful though. One of the issues is that she has quite big fingers, so it's easy for her to obscure what she's trying to tap on, particularly the keyboard in portrait, and if it's weighted enough that might help to counter the shaking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> You mentioned Shake to Undo is not a problem, but if it becomes one, you can turn it off: [https://9to5mac.com/2019/04/16/shake-to-undo- iphone/](https://9to5mac.com/2019/04/16/shake-to-undo-iphone/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks - that was something I'd noticed, hence my mention of it, but it was clearly a bit too tacit! I think I might get her to turn it off anyway, because she's not used it so far and doesn't do anything on the phone where undo would be useful.

<comment><USER16> iOS also has Touch Accommodations. These settings will essentially require her to either hold still over a UI element before it is recognized as a tap, or you can leave the finger on the screen and lift it to register a tap.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I mentioned those in my initial post. What I'm not sure is quite how intuitive they are. For example, she finds the delay before a click is registered with an increased Hold Duration quite unintuitive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Have you tried speaking to a doctor? You've mentioned age-related conditions but I'm not sure if that's what your mother has?

I have an essential tremor (I'm 34, my mum has the same tremor, and I've had it since I was a child), and it was able to be stopped almost completely with Propranolol, a beta-blocker. I'm not a medical professional, so I'm not sure whether that's a good suggestion for your mother though, so seek professional assistance first.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the thought. She's in regular contact with her doctor about various conditions and medications that come with old age, so I think she's probably talked to him about it, but that's just an assumption so I will ask her to be sure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Has she tried using a stylus? I wonder if grasping something alters her hand stability.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think this plus Siri is going to be the answer. A heavy enough stylus so there's inertia to counteract the shake, plus a few fingers around it to counteract each other's shaking, as well as being thinner so it's easier to see where it's going, should work better than just her fingers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> As a side note: I'm optimistic that there will be more solutions to the symptoms of Parkinson (not sure if this is the case for this post but sharing anyways). For example [https://www.microsoft.com/en- us/research/project/project-emm...](https://www.microsoft.com/en- us/research/project/project-emma/)

</comment><comment><USER20> Would a gimbal/stabilizer be helpful here? Or any other hardware solutions?

Of course it wouldn't solve the problem, as you still have the other hand that has to touch buttons. I ask because I recall seeing a "smart" spoon: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiVQcgmIi08](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiVQcgmIi08)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks - I remember being really struck by that spoon too. I don't think her shakes are bad enough for that currently though, and it feels like the first step is Siri / dictation and a stylus, and we can take it from there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> What I'm about to tell you is of a highly controversial topic, I'll go ahead give you the source first:

Source: 100 and Healthy [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mb-- QxUnEv0&t=1338s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mb--QxUnEv0&t=1338s) The speaker is Dr. Oliverira.

Rosane Oliveira, DVM, PhD, is Founding Director of Integrative Medicine at the University of California Davis School of Medicine with over 20 years of experience as a molecular geneticist and has a special interest in nutritional genetics and genomics

This condition is called Essential Tremors, and it is one of the impacts of increased mTOR and IGF-1 levels that so many of us have from eating too much meat. According to Dr. Oliverirea, as an example, in her presentation she showed that eating 1.5 ounces of chicken per day, increases your chances of getting Essential Tremors by x21!! Wow. Eating meat and diary in excess has consequences and there's a lot of research to back that up.

Unfortunately, it maybe to late for your mother. But, this is for all the other mothers and fathers out there.

</comment><comment><USER22> Have you tried turning on voice control? That allows you to control the entire screen without holding phone ("show numbers", "Tap 5", "Tap 4", "Text I want to enter", "Tap send")

</comment><comment><USER23> How does she get on with Siri and voice dictation?

<comment><AUTHOR> I haven't tried that yet, but it's definitely on my list after these comments. However it does still leave issues like trying to open an app, but the hand shake being interpreted as a desire to swipe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> A perfect example of the XY problem.

The solution is to stop using iPhones and use something that interfaces with her better.

Big physical buttons is a good start.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll give you the fact that I didn't specify exactly what her use cases are, but I hope you don't mind me saying that this feels like a pretty dismissive reply without asking what the context is. Name me a phone with big physical buttons that would allow her to approve online payments through her banking app.

<comment><USER24> Again, Y standing in for X here.

It's probably easier for her to interface with her bank through a desktop computer. Small buttons on handheld devices is not the UI for this job. "Shaky hands" plus "small touchscreen device" is enough context to reach this conclusion.

If you want to make a project out of it, you could set up a browser with a few extensions that limit her ability to expose herself to malware, etc. and make it easy to connect to the services she uses regularly.

<comment><USER12> There's a lot in our world that is starting to assume you have a modern smartphone to hand, such as online banking - not for initiating transactions, but for authorizing them. Also, parking payments. With more and more places going cashless, having change on-hand is becoming a problem.

Just because someone's hands aren't steady enough to use a smartphone like a young person doesn't mean that they're so frail that they have no interest in or need to independently navigate the world we're making.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Can you show her how to use voice commands for emergencies? I don't use them, but they may be something helpful.

</comment><comment><USER26> Doro phones are much better adapted for elderly people.

<comment><AUTHOR> From what I've seen the Android ones aren't much better than standard Android ones, and the simpler ones won't enable her to use things like banking and parking apps.</comment></comment>


Fidor Bank leak - <AUTHOR> Looks like Fidor banks web portal had a bug that leaked random customer data. https://www.fidor.de <comment><AUTHOR> Will upload a video and images if requested.

<comment><USER2> It happened to me as well - I also saved some pages.

<comment><USER3> to us as well! We couldn't access our own bank account but would be able to access random ones. We could download some sensitive user data</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is there any website similar to CodeAcademy? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> bloc.io and appacademy might fit the bill. Or are you justing looking for a website that teaches you to code in Javascript?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not me but yes, interactive approach to learning web development.</comment></comment>


Why We Don't Employ Female Developers - <AUTHOR> https://www.10degrees.uk/blog/why-we-dont-employ-female-developers/ <comment><USER2> _Why We Don't Employ Female Developers_

I will suggest that at least part of why no woman has ever applied is because your messaging sucks. This title is a terrible title that conveys that you choose to exclude women. This may not have been your intention, but that is what it signals. It sounds like you exclude them intentionally and you wrote this piece to justify it.

If you meant "We currently don't have a single female developer and we would like to see this change," well, you should have titled it that way.

People make decisions based as much on subtext, context, etc as on overt messaging. This is a UK company, but it sounds to my ear like it was written by someone who speaks English as a second language and doesn't grasp subtle differences that native speakers should grasp. I have no idea why that is.

But this article is rife with problematic language that suggests you don't want women developers and you feel entitled to exclude them. This is likely (at least part of) the reason not a single female developer has ever applied.

<comment><USER3> The title is meant to be provocative clickbait. Most women I know will have the ability to choose jobs without being put off by "messaging" just as well as anyone else.

<comment><USER4> Why would a woman subject themselves to a potentially hostile workplace when tons of other options abound?

This piece is a complete own-goal.

<comment><USER5> If they have no women employees now, that might be enough to scare away a female candidates in itself. I didn't read anything hostile in the post itself, it seems to be more like "this is bad, how can we do better at this?" not "we are proud we have no women employees".

<comment><USER6> The post have been written by a women, which happens to be employed there.

<comment><USER5> Yes:

> We don't employ any female website developers at 10 Degrees. There's one > very simple reason for that: we've never had any women apply for our > developer vacancies. Not one.

Not everyone who works for a company is necessarily a developer. The author is the company's business manager according to [https://www.10degrees.uk/about/](https://www.10degrees.uk/about/).

I guess I should have qualified as developer instead of employee, sorry about that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > But we are not going to recruit someone just because they are a woman. We > want the best people on our team, regardless of their gender.

Does not follow.

They shouldn't _hire_ someone because of their gender. But they might be missing women from their pipeline because they aren't recruiting where women are looking for jobs.

Particularly, since this is apparently a small company, they might succeed in building a well-balanced team because they only need to find a few qualified women, compared to a larger organization that might need to hire hundreds of women to create an environment where there are enough women to prevent a "locker-room" atmosphere.

More likely, since they only have 3-4 developers on staff, they just don't have enough hiring to get women anyway, so there's not much point to the clickbaity title to an article that isn't actually about their hiring.

<comment><USER8> I think what the author of the article meant to say was "hire" not "recruit". In that case, that line is absolutely valid.

<comment><USER9> Yes. This use of the word 'recruit' is a Britishism. We rarely say 'hire' for jobs, especially permanent ones.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's doubly hard when you are outside the "tech" hotspots. Any competent female is usually snapped up by the larger players often with relocation costs and a salary that is impossible to match. So long as ther is a minority of females in the industry this is going to be an issue.

I must confess in some ways to being jealous of the attention that females get in the industry. It worries me because I would like there to be as many camps and the like aimed at all children including my son and not just girls. Hopefully in time the gender imbalance will be corrected. People will probable hate me for saying that but I have a feeling I'm not alone in feeling like this.

<comment><USER11> You're right, it's not as easy as it seems. If the most qualified person is not the most diverse from your current culture, there can certainly be a tough decision of feeling like you are choosing between a good diverse candidate or a great homogeneous candidate.

Most companies want diversity and performance, but unfortunately that perfect candidate might not always apply for your job.

I can understand both perspectives of wanting to give extra incentive to hiring a diverse candidate to create a diverse culture, but also feeling like being born similar to those already at the company might put you at a disadvantage or make you feel like "one of many" rather than a "unique perspective".

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> (elsewhere in the thread)

Why do people jump to the conclusion that "specifically recruiting women" = "lowering standards". It is actually a logical fallacy.

Suppose you wanted turkeys at least 10kg in weight. Suppose that there are only wild turkeys, either white or gray, with a 90/10 population white/gray.

Well, since you need to find and catch turkeys, it turns out that catching white turkeys is easier just because they are easier to see! So you end up with 10 big fat white turkeys and no gray turkeys at all. Are gray turkeys slimmer on average? Worse? Different distribution? No. They are just harder to find.

After a while, all the big fat white turkeys are gone, because everyone is grabbing them up.

But hey there's whole population of big fat gray turkeys that you _can't even see_.

This is why it is rational to specifically recruit women.

Even from a purely self-interested point of view, it's an untapped market. It'd be stupid not to recruit women. In fact, not hiring women would mean that you eventually have to lower your standards _for men_.

<comment><USER13> You're introducing a logical fallacy here too, by arguing that "all white turkeys are gone," which is absolutely not the case for hiring male developers.

If your hiring pipeline is working, and you're successfully hiring qualified, capable candidates who all happen to be male, there would be absolutely no reason for you to change your practices which may result in you _not_ finding the competent developers you need.

It is lowering standards if you have to transition from a working recruitment process to one which may not work, but ticks a diversity box.

On the other hand, there's the possibility that by trying to recruit women specifically, that their hiring process could improve. But who is going to take such a risk when they've already got a working process, and no solid argument that changing it will bring in better workers.

<comment><USER12> > You're introducing a logical fallacy here too, by arguing that "all white > turkeys are gone," which is absolutely not the case for hiring male > developers.

I'm not arguing that either, but even if I was, it wouldn't be a logical fallacy as much as it would be an empirically testable fact, and if I was wrong it would be a factual error, not a logical fallacy.

> It is lowering standards if you have to transition from a working > recruitment process to one which may not work, but ticks a diversity box.

I don't see how that lowers standards, it might just be ineffective. The salient point being that lowering standards is about standards (i.e. "fatness of turkeys"), not how many people you hire (number of turkeys).

Now if you want to argue about whether specifically recruiting women would be _effective_, that's a different conversation, but my OP stands on logical grounds.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I remember math lectures from my studies. There were ~400 students and <10 females among them. Good luck hiring female engineers, if you find one.

<comment><USER15> That is odd ratio for math where did you study? It sounds even worst then CS gender ratio, which is super odd.

Then again, math is not development and they have little in common. (Speaking as female developer who always liked math.)

<comment><USER14> Electrical engineering in Germany 15 years ago.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I imagine there might be some circular hiring here too where if the founders are if similar cultural backgrounds, they might know people or groups that share a similar identity and reach out there when looking to hire. A homogeneous company is easy to achieve when it's small and growing fast if the initial hires aren't in connection with a diverse group that is signed with their business needs.

Similarly, if I'm evaluating a company and meet a group of ten people that seem like they have a lot in common with each other but less with me, I might see that as an opportunity to be unique or I might see that as isolating which could perpetuate the current homogeneous hiring.

</comment><comment><USER16> Source with visas if need be. The majority of female engineers I've worked with have been from China, India, and Eastern Europe. For whatever reason women from those areas seem to be represented much more in engineering.

<comment><USER17> It seems to be a causal effect, and not just a random coincidence.

[https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the- more...](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-more-gender- equality-the-fewer-women-in-stem/553592/)

 _" In countries that empower women, they are less likely to choose math and science professions.

it could have to do with the fact that women in countries with higher gender inequality are simply seeking the clearest possible path to financial freedom. And often, that path leads through stem professions.

The issue doesn't appear to be girls' aptitude for stem professions. In looking at test scores across 67 countries and regions, Stoet and Geary found that girls performed about as well or better than boys did on science in most countries, and in almost all countries, girls would have been capable of college-level science and math classes if they had enrolled in them.

But when it comes to their relative strengths, in almost all the countries—all except Romania and Lebanon—boys' best subject was science, and girls' was reading. (That is, even if an average girl was as good as an average boy at science, she was still likely to be even better at reading.) Across all countries, 24 percent of girls had science as their best subject, 25 percent of girls' strength was math, and 51 percent excelled in reading. For boys, the percentages were 38 for science, 42 for math, and 20 for reading. And the more gender-equal the country, as measured by the World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap Index, the larger this gap between boys and girls in having science as their best subject."_

<comment><USER15> In Easter Europe, there is much less expectation that women is naturally lazy useless housewife. There is much less tradition of the "women are supposed to be naturally at home and do nothing whole day otherwise there is something wrong with them" I see repeated surprisingly often by Americans. There were no culture wars around women working in 1960. In Easter Europe majority of women (except very small aristocracy) always did useful things and worked whole day (same as men) - the place could not afford half population do nothing.

Importantly, pay gap between genders is bigger then in America. So much for women being attracted to money more due to desperation.

However, jobs are gender segregated a lot, probably much more. Tech is boy thing, clearly and openly. It is mostly that different things get qualified as "boyish tech" \- for instance economics is mostly girly and seen as office administration job. Math is also much less likely to be perceived as "male thing". The attitude that girls don't have what it takes to learn math exists, but is less pronounced. I have heard it first time as adult, although I knew it would be weird for me to do something with physical technology. And I heard it most often from christian circles influenced by Evangelicals, for other people the stereotype was news.

There is a lot of push for boys to go to stem, including to tech occupations that don't earn much.

Edit: it is very odd to put reading and science into opposite. As if you would be interested in one and not in the other. There is not subject "science" in school either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is a clickbait-y headline for the wrong reasons. I applaud their effort for recognizing the problem, but if they are truly interested in hiring female developers then they need to work harder. Either 1) do outbound recruiting and sourcing or 2) open a junior role.

We have a Junior engineer opening at ConvertKit, and have had well over 100 extremely high quality candidates, over half of which are female.

It's not enough to just lay out your "we're hiring" sign and expect your team's diversity to magically increase. Get proactive with outbound or hire a hungry, ambitious Jr engineer.

</comment><comment><USER19> > Girls have the ability to be really good coders, they're choosing not to.

This has got to be a tech hub problem of places like London and silicon valley. Maybe it is a start up problem.

In my years as a corporate developer in Texas women have been about 30-40% of the population at all skill levels. Women certainly haven't been the majority, but that doesn't mean women developers have been mysterious unicorns either.

What I have noticed is that the more experienced (old) the developer population gets in the corporate world, by average team member age, the less sex stratified it becomes.

</comment><comment><USER20> A few years ago I took a Configuring Network Firewall class. The instructor mentioned that he has never once had a female student for the class.

</comment><comment><USER21> Clickbait aside, they say they don't go out of their way to hire female developers. Ie, they don't positively discriminate; make diversity hires.

A couple of comments here have mentioned that perhaps women don't apply to be in a small, all-male team _because_ it's all male. And that by extension, diversity (in gender and race) might have its own value for attracting the very best developers, even if those that you hire to get there aren't the best candidates amongst their interview peers.

(I get that there are _other_ values in diverse teams, that's not what I'm focussing on here though. I'm talking about attracting future hires.)

Part of that makes sense to me. Does anybody know if there's any data backing it up? Do pure diversity hires make for more attractive work environments for future candidates?

</comment><comment><USER22> I read the article and obviously it describes in detail why they have no females developers employed, but... considering how many people don't RTFA these days, they really should have chosen a different headline. At least from a PR perspective.

<comment><USER23> I get the sense they wanted a shocking headline to draw attention. I take it as a shrewd move to hook people with their outrage-instinct and then get them to read 4 pages of non-controversial stuff.

<comment><USER24> That is exactly what it is. I'm really surprised other folks aren't able to sense this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The title of this article is terrible, and gives off the wrong impression right off the bat. However, this could also come down to a regional dialect issue, as people from my region could just as easily read that title and see "why we don't have female developers on staff" rather than "why we don't hire female developers".

<comment><USER13> The title was worded this way deliberately to bring attention to the issue. It's unfortunate that it gets a barrage of downvotes before people even click and read it.

<comment><USER26> It's not unfortunate; click bait has reached a point where it achieves the opposite of its desired effect. It's getting the treatment it deserves.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> What a flamebait title. Sure, don't hire someone just because they're a woman. Consider each candidate based on their merits. Etc, etc. But if you look at your hiring funnel and it's entirely men, something needs to change. Hard to consider the merit of women engineers if you don't have any women whose merit you can consider.

</comment><comment><USER28> > But we are not going to recruit someone just because they are a woman

At least here in the US, it is actually illegal to either prefer females or discriminate against males in the hiring process (or vice versa), unless the sex is part of the role in question (i.e. hiring a person to play a female in a movie).

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Why is this submission flagged? I would have thought an article from a small software shop of their hiring practices would be on-topic?

<comment><USER13> Because facts can upset some people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> > We don't employ any female website developers at 10 Degrees. There's one > very simple reason for that: we've never had any women apply for our > developer vacancies. Not one.

> We know from industry networking that there are many female web developers > out there

Maybe their job adverts are inadvertently radiating "nope" signals?

Just from looking at their site, they don't actually seem to be hiring at all. There's a casual "hey, maybe contact us if you want a job!", but that's only gonna attract the Dunning-Kruger Dudes. (Men are disproportionately conditioned to be over-confident, because boys are rewarded for being noisy and cheeky.)

So I suppose if this is how they do hiring, that would explain why they're only getting men applying for their development jobs.

<comment><USER30> >Just from looking at their site, they don't actually seem to be hiring at all. There's a casual "hey, maybe contact us if you want a job!", but that's only gonna attract the Dunning-Kruger Dudes. (Men are disproportionately conditioned to be over-confident, because boys are rewarded for being noisy and cheeky.)

I think I'm going to have to politely WTF? that, if you don't mind.

<comment><USER29> I'm not sure which part you're WTFing, so I'll try to unpack my comment:

> Just from looking at their site, they don't actually seem to be hiring at > all.

I couldn't see a clear Careers page on their site, which I found slightly surprising.

> There's a casual "hey, maybe contact us if you want a job!",

On the About page there is a message like this. Literally it says "Looking for a new challenge? We are always on the lookout for likeminded individuals to join our growing team. If you've got the talent to help our mission and you share our values, please get in touch."

That's a very general prompt for people who want a job to contact them. You need quite a high bar of self-confidence to apply in response such a general prompt.

> that's only gonna attract the Dunning-Kruger Dudes.

This is my cute nickname for people who believe they're great when in fact they're merely OK, in reference to the Dunning-Kruger effect. These people do have enough self-confidence to reply to the vague prompt. "Dudes" because I believe these people are disproportionately male:

> (Men are disproportionately conditioned to be over-confident, because boys > are rewarded for being noisy and cheeky.)

This is my opinion. In my 2nd-hand experience, young boys are generally encouraged to be boisterous and even naughty, whereas young girls are expected to be quieter and more shy.

Boys are more likely to be confident in their own abilities than girls, even when the two have similar skill levels. This assertion comes from a small- scale experiment in [a TV show]([https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09202jz](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09202jz)), which is not proper science, and it's reasonable to reject this assertion as anecdote.

In any case, this is generalising and there are always counterexamples. But if any of this holds somewhat true, it may explain how the asymmetry arose.

Hopefully that answered your WTF!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> You can't just sit around and wait for candidates to apply, you have to actively source them.

<comment><USER32> Exactly. This is very troubling : "But we are not going to recruit someone just because they are a woman."

How else do you expect to get gender parity? It should be important to specifically source and hire women.

<comment><USER33> "How else do you expect to get gender parity?"

If women aren't interested in the job, you've already got gender parity. Women are moral agents and can make decisions too, you know. This is also why no one is complaining about the lack of gender parity in sanitation services.

<comment><USER34> Be careful, if you suggest all women don't naturally aspire to be Silicon Valley software engineers, you might be mistaken for James Damore. ;)

I personally don't see why software engineering seems to be constantly placed as the hallmark of jobs to work at, to the extent that if people don't want to do it, it's a problem. A lot of software engineering jobs are grueling, long- hour (or all-hour) jobs with questionable benefit to society. 'Hey, we made the ad company's ad tracking code 10% more pervasive! Wooo!' So you get a poor work-life balance in exchange for some slight premium on the pay you could make in a half a dozen related fields.

Meanwhile, the UI designer or business manager probably gets to go home at 5 PM, and nurses and teachers get to directly see and interact with people whose lives they are making noticeably better. Maybe the fact that more women don't want to be software engineers, is because women are running at a higher level than those of us who sign ourselves up for this stuff.

Which is to say, I don't see a problem with someone who wants to do a job doing it, but I don't see any reason we need to push people to do it.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How to talk to conspiracy theorists – and still be kind - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/07/15/1004950/how-to-talk-to-conspiracy-theorists-and-still-be-kind <comment><USER2> This rather condescending article seems to define "conspiracy theory" as something that is always by definition untrue, rather than something that may ultimately be true but is "officially" considered untrue at the current time.

It is of course a simple matter to disapprove the notion that all conspiracy theories have been false. Many prove to be true.

I remember well when the notion that LIBOR looked manipulated was ridiculed as a conspiracy theory. Years later it was front page news.

Are most conspiracy theories false? Probably.

But the notion that "talking to conspiracy theorists" starts with a presumption of superiority of one's own assumptions is to be fundamentally unscientific -- and is often merely an appeal to authority.

Take the death of Jeffrey Epstein: I place myself squarely on the side of the conspiracy theorists. How would you "talk to me"?

<comment><USER3> That is why they should call them "conspiracy myths". Of course there are actual conspiracies. But most real conspiracies are actually pretty simple and don't involve thousands of people around the word shutting up.

I think the article gives some pretty good tips eveb form normal discussions about things we disagree about. So if you think, Jeffrey Epsteins death is a conspiracy, it's something else than believing, G5-towers all arou d the world are spreading Corona. Epstein obviously was part of a consiracy - that is way he was in jail. Harvey Weinstein was part of a consiracy. People knew whta they were doing and they helped them keep doing what they were doing.

That is hiw I would start. And if I wanted to convince you of a different view on Epsteins case, I'd ask you something.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A long time ago I was observing court cases for a school project.

In one of the cases the prosecution was interviewing one of the arresting officers.

The officer stated "While survailing the subject we noticed he became increasingly paranoid that he was being watched, most likely from his heavy cocain use"

The judge had to correct him that because of the fact he was being watched by the officer, it was not parinoia.

All the points in this article are good, I just wish they didn't get so specific about particular theories and then just dismiss them as debunked over and over. Just because you say they have been debunked in the article doesn't make it so or convince anyone who believes in the theory. I find the media, on both left and right tend to do this far too often, far better to lay out the facts and or logic for the argument you're trying to make.

<comment><USER3> This article was not meant to convince believers in conspiracy myths. It's mean for people who discuss with them - they don't have to be convinced.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> In my experience this actually works. Very good tips!</comment>


FBI launches eFOIA System for faster FOIA requests - dan-silver https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2015/november/new-efoia-system <comment><AUTHOR> Glad for the FBI. Getting something like this in place is a massive undertaking.

These organizations are all clamoring to get this sort of thing in place, it's a serious game changer, but it's frankly hard as hell.

I hear a lot of people suggesting these guys are dragging their feet on FOIA requests because they don't want to release their documents. So wrong. Anyone who has worked with large government or private sector document management knows the problems here.

No one (except really young organizations) has the centralized infrastructure in place to make this easy. They're looking at huge amounts of legacy systems, decades worth of warehouses filled with paper records, millions of new e-mails created daily. None of these systems are effectively integrated.

The company I work for has one of only a handful of FOIA systems being shopped to the government right now, and after seeing the hurdles going on here I can tell you first hand that these backlogs aren't because people are dragging their feet. We've been doing ECM stuff for 30 years now, and whenever we come into an organization like this it takes us ages just to help them sort out how to connect this stuff together.

But it's totally worth it. Every organization so far that has managed the move to an electronic FOIA system, despite the slight uptick in requests, has taken a huge bite out of their FOIA backlog just because electronic centralized systems make the FOIA response process so much easier.

Again, congrats to the guys over there. I'm sure this was incredibly hard to put in place.

</comment><comment><USER2> They're trying to spin this as a "good" thing but I believe the reason they're doing this is more selfish: they're trying to stop people from making multiple, slightly different FOIA requests on the same topic and getting back different censored results. On one request, some parts might be censored, but on another that part may be uncensored. By making multiple requests you can open more and more windows on the actual document.

Here is a 2013 article on someone cleverly abusing this tactic [1]. With the new system in place they'll be able to spot and prevent these tactics more easily.

[1] [http://motherjones.com/politics/2013/11/foia-ryan-shapiro- fb...](http://motherjones.com/politics/2013/11/foia-ryan-shapiro-fbi-files- lawsuit)

</comment><comment><USER3> The FBI is surprisingly responsive and "human" for FBI file (e.g. dead people records) requests, at least for the non-controversial ones. For example, MuckRock sent a records request for "Leslie Nielson" with no proof of death and yet the FBI (as far as I can see in the message chain) didn't give them a hard time about it: [https://www.muckrock.com/foi/united-states-of- america-10/fbi...](https://www.muckrock.com/foi/united-states-of- america-10/fbi-file-of-leslie-nelson-278/)

I recently sent in a request for Paul Newman and got nothing back (which was both very disappointing and surprising, given Nixon's well-known hatred of Newman, and Newman being an all-around big name and businessman)...the only hold up was that they required a snail mail address to send things to. I thought they had dropped my request but realized they had sent the "no records found" letter to my mailbox well before the required deadline.

<comment><USER4> My dad put in a FOIA request for my grandfather's FBI file back in April and has gotten nothing but a form letter with a case number so far.

The FOIA law requires agencies to ordinarily respond with twenty business days, thirty business days in "unusual circumstances" and longer than that only in "exceptional circumstances".

However, as bad as the FBI's disrespect for the law is, it doesn't hold a candle to the State Department which has been sitting on a FOIA request of mine since July of 2013. Their attitude seems to be that they don't have to comply with duly enacted laws until and unless compelled to do so by a federal judge.

<comment><USER5> That's exactly how we should think of things too; mechanically. Even if the FBI today were morally ideal and responded to serious requests within the limits of their bureaucratic ability without stonewalling, that's not something we should depend on.

We should depend on levers and mechanisms.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> You can also just email FOIA requests to email@example.com

Emailing also doesn't require uploading a scan of your driver's license or limit you to one request a day, which the new system does.

</comment><comment><USER7> "eFOIA is currently closed. Typically, eFOIA operates Sunday through Saturday, 8am to 10pm Eastern time.

Please try again within those hours."

 _sigh_

<comment><USER8> Eh, you know, I wish more businesses would actually do this with their online activities. This kind of inconvenience, would force people into doing other, perhaps more fulfilling activities and remind them of the physical aspect of life -things begin and stop. I'm not saying a FOIA isn't fulfilling, but if Amazon, Walmart, Facebook, could "close down" for given times zones during a wee hours window, it might not be a bad thing. If nothing else, I'd like to see the outcomes.

Now, of course, no one is going to jeopardize sales and do that... but I'm glad some of the gov't tries to keep it's business hours based on human labor concepts. A kind of skeuochron.

<comment><USER9> Why should _their_ schedule decide?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "If you are requesting information on a deceased individual, you will need to upload proof of death unless the deceased individual is more than 100 years old."

The FBI doesn't know who is dead?

<comment><USER11> They could _easily_ allow you to specify the SSN in the request, and verify it against the Social Security Death Index [1]. They just choose not to make it that easy.

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

Disclaimer: One of my projects TODO is to crowdsource the funding of obtaining the SSDI quarterly from the SSA (its expensive [2]), and then provide it as an open API.

[2] [https://www.ssdmf.com/FolderID/1/SessionID/%7B67E8C06C-025F-...](https://www.ssdmf.com/FolderID/1/SessionID/%7B67E8C06C-025F-4655-B580-317A322A30C3%7D/PageVars/Library/InfoManage/Guide.htm)

<comment><USER10> They don't need to request the person's SSN... they could just choose not to release the data that is tied to a non-dead citizen since they already have their SSN, probably.

<comment><USER11> Their page specifically says if its not a first party request (you requesting information about you), you must submit a copy of the Social Security Death Index showing the person is deceased. Instead of the requestor needing to provide that page, they could simply verify the SSN you're providing, in combination with the person's name, against the Social Security Death Index file internally.

"If you are requesting information on a deceased individual, you will need to upload proof of death unless the deceased individual is more than 100 years old. Acceptable proof of death includes obituaries, death certificates, recognized sources that can be documented, written media, Who's Who in America, an FBI file that indicates a person is deceased, _or a Social Security Death Index page_."

Emphasis mine.

<comment><USER12> Requests for information about living people are covered by Privacy Act (PA) requests, not FOIA requests.

[https://m.fbi.gov/#https://www.fbi.gov/foia/requesting- fbi-r...](https://m.fbi.gov/#https://www.fbi.gov/foia/requesting-fbi-records)

<comment><USER11> The original post I replied to asked:

> "If you are requesting information on a deceased individual, you will need > to upload proof of death unless the deceased individual is more than 100 > years old."

> The FBI doesn't know who is dead?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10660342](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10660342)

I'm simply showing a) they do and b) they could make it much easier for specifying this in your request and verifying it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Only now in 2015 the FBI fullfills FOIA requests electronically? That is incredible backward. I thought the Department of Interior was bad because they couldn't do global email searches on even global searches within a specific Bureau, but Interior is light years ahead of the FBI.

<comment><USER14> If you're the FBI, what motivation do you have to implement the system? No one ever use an FOIA request to get info about something good to praise them. It's always to get info to smear them.

Why would they want to make this easier?

<comment><USER15> Believing in this kind of argument is accepting corruption.

It's kind of like saying "why should the parties in power fix the electoral system if they benefit from it".

<comment><USER16> I don't think the point of the argument is that it's a good state of affairs. The point is the incentives are wrong, so obviously this will happen. Hoping the FBI's heart grows the sizes won't get you anywhere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I don't see the FOIA Machine mentioned anywhere: [https://www.foiamachine.org/](https://www.foiamachine.org/)

Kickstarted and now doing amazing things.

</comment><comment><USER18> How is this different than [http://www.foiaxpress.com/](http://www.foiaxpress.com/) ?</comment>


Picking technologies on the right side of history - <AUTHOR> http://swombat.com/2011/12/7/picking-technologies <comment><USER2> Surely the right thing to do is to write your systems in such a way that you can pull out (say) a file-system explorer written in flex and replace it with one written in JS in as easy a manner as possible.

After all, if you don't provide the good user experience in 2007 (when it might not have been possible to do so in JS) then you won't be around in 2011 to complain about technology having moved on.

Heck, it might require less effort overall to write it once in Flex, and then rewrite it in JS four years later than it would have done to write it in JS in 2007 and then keep it up to date with a changing JS landscape over that time.

And you can't ever be sure that you picked the technology on the right side. So design your systems so that it doesn't matter which side wins, you can adjust to the new reality and keep going.

<comment><USER3> _Heck, it might require less effort overall to write it once in Flex, and then rewrite it in JS four years later than it would have done to write it in JS in 2007 and then keep it up to date with a changing JS landscape over that time._

That's definitely one way to do it, but it depends on the technology and the resource constraints. Ultimately, you have to pick some technologies to rely on. Sure, in theory you can architect your multi-tier app so that you can swap out Java for .NET, or Python for Rails, or Postgres for MySQL, or even HTML/JS for Flex, but those are all difficult and costly swaps to perform. And most startups can't afford to build expensive components twice. They have to make a gamble.

Full-Flex front-end was an accepted model in 2007, with a fair few apps following it. Yes, we could have built just the explorer component in Flex, but that would have had a number of other problems (such as loading times every time you changed a tab, for example). More critically, when we started we had only a vague idea of what this explorer tab might look like. Like many startups, we were discovering our customers' actual needs as we went along, and so it wasn't possible to just declare "the explorer component will look like this and it will be built in Flex", because to be honest, though we suspected the explorer component would be important, and had some ideas about what it should look like, those were completely unchecked assumptions.

 _And you can't ever be sure that you picked the technology on the right side. So design your systems so that it doesn't matter which side wins, you can adjust to the new reality and keep going._

You can't ever be _sure_ that you _did_ pick the right technology to "stand the test of time", but sometimes you can be relatively sure that you didn't. Even in 2007, for anyone with good knowledge of Open Source, it was clear that eventually, Flex would be losing to open technologies. It wasn't clear how long that would take, and whether Adobe might counter that by opening up Flex, but certainly there were strong concerns about Flex (which we were aware of, but didn't really factor in as strongly as we should have). Similarly, anyone building a startup that critically relies on Java (or, more controversially, PHP) today is picking a technology that's waning and will certainly be largely irrelevant in 1, 3-5 (most likely), or 7 years at most.

<comment><USER4> I think this is missing the architectural problem with Flex- it was more than just Flash widgets. If it were just Flash widgets- that would be fine, and you could swap them out. The problem with Flex is that it takes over much more of the application, handling communication with the server. I always felt that Macromedia/Adobe were trying to just a little bit too much for you to create vendor lock-in.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I had a hard time convincing people not to use Flex in 2007 based on my intuitive sense that it was "wrong". It imposes an event model on programming that is "against" the way the web works, so the abstraction tends to be leaky. Someone that understands how the web works tends not to like it, while you could see web novices appreciating how it simplified the programming model for certain kinds of data linked controls.

I had very similar intuitively negative feelings about ExtJS last year. It's not one of those things you can just swap out, you have to write the web application in a particular way to support it.

<comment><USER5> Completely agree about ExtJS. It is quite valuable in that once you learn it there are a lot of things you can easily throw together that would have been a lot more difficult with something else, but the learning curve is so high that its tough getting new developers to the point where they can add to the code base.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm not sure I'm quite on the "flash is dead" bandwagon just yet much as I would love to see it replaced with something more standard. I agree that it will decline but it's death will be a slow and agonizing one.

If I was back in 2007 and had to build a rich GUI interface that would work with IE6 as well as modern browsers I can't really think of any other option but to either use flash/flex or severely restrict your expectations. As it is now there is still a fair few things that cannot be done well (webcams etc) with standard HTML/JS (especially if you are not running a super uptodate browser).

The problem with these technologies is that feasibility is _really_ in the hands of a minority of big corporations (MSFT/Apple etc) who are the gatekeepers and make decisions about the platform, they problem is that they often work in secret.

Let's face it , the biggest reason behind the "death of flash" is that apple announced they would not support it on their newer tablet and phone devices. If this hadn't happened plenty of people would still be merrily writing flex code for the web.

The problem with the secrecy that these corporations work on their products with is that developers literally have no idea what will happen, if Apple had made a friendly warning to web devs saying "hey, trust us you should really stop using flash if you want to work with our devices" a year before they ipad came out there would be less people having problems.

Let's say hypothetically that Microsoft suddenly came out next year and announced that (for example) they were going to trash all support for .NET across all platforms for windows 8 onwards (including server) and had decided that everything should be written in python if it wanted to run on their OS, no exceptions.

Obviously lots of python devs would rejoice with the headstart they had, but firms that had invested significant time and money intro creating large apps with big codebases in .NET etc would be completely screwed. Obviously Microsoft generally don't pull shit like that (quite as much) but Apple would be more likely to do that kind of massive change and they are gaining market share..

</comment><comment><USER7> But you also have to ask the following question: Would it have been more expensive to write it in Javascript in 2007 (with the same or close-to-the- same user experience) than to write it in Flex in 2007 and rewrite it in Javascript now.

My feeling (and I've spent some time thinking about this since we're going through the same thought-process right now for a project) is that the write it in 2007 in Flex and translate it now to JS is actually the cheaper option. The frameworks for large JS projects that we have now just didn't exist in 2007.

This is without including things like comparing the present value vs. future value of money or the risk that the fancy Javascript code you are spending tons of time building (which was _much_ faster to build in Flex in 2007) is going to be useless since no-one actually wants what you are building.

</comment><comment><USER8> End user technologies are less important than API's, which are less important than actual data and the formats used to store it on disk.

If you pick something like Markdown (for basic structured text), JSON (for data structures), or XML (for more complex document-based data), and structure your data first you're going to be better off than jumping into a front end design and working out the back end along the way.

</comment><comment><USER9> This is a rock and hard-place for nearly anyone in this position, as I've been there as well. Most recently, I've seen colleagues have to make choices around NoSql key-value stores (Mongo, Redis, Cassandra, Riak, etc.)

I agree with AndrewDucker to a certain extent: structuring your application architecture to allow one to move from one sub-system to another is ideal. While appropriate in generalities, it's the specifics that matter. Most substantive environments don't interact with these systems through a simple connection that can be hot-swapped. There are dependent processes that are often designed around the fundamentals, quirks and intricacies of a given technology.

The scope of one's implementation definitely affects how much you can hedge your bets if you need to shift to another technology stack.

</comment><comment><USER10> So my question is, is PHP on the right side of history or not?

<comment><USER11> If you have companies like Facebook using it... surely you'd think PHP is on the right path, no?

<comment><USER12> That's not really saying anything. Facebook picked PHP in 2004 and is now stuck with it. They have a huge code base in it.

But there are a lot of indications they are moving away from it in all places they can. They still use it for front end work, but even there they have been one of the biggest innovators coming out with the HipHop PHP compiler.

Behind that they also came up with the Thrift RPC framework specifically so that the rest of their code and logic could be written in many other languages including Java, Python and Erlang.

Facebook is a lot more than PHP and they've pushed PHP innovation a lot too. I find their use of PHP as no clear indication PHP is the right or wrong choice. It's just the choice they made 7 years ago and are living with

<comment><USER13> [http://www.quora.com/Why-hasn-t-Facebook-migrated-away- from-...](http://www.quora.com/Why-hasn-t-Facebook-migrated-away-from-PHP) has some insider insight.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Ever since I've started programming in haXe, it became clear that the language you code in should never be completely tied to a single platform. This article hints at Flex dying and tech needing replacement, yet many parts of an application (lets call it domain model and business logic) should be unique and not rely on a specific platform or data exchange format.

When you write your data model in a language that works on client and server platforms, you save lots of duplication of effort and gain flexibility. The best example of experiencing the opposite I have is a fairly large application I worked on, where the backend developers designed a totally different set of classes around a (pretty much undocumented) XML structure than the frontend guys. Basically all communication happened through XML. Sure "it's an open format!", "it's human readable! (in a sense)", but taking over this project figuring out semantics and what was considered valid became a painful effort.

Your frontend should always use the same domain model as the backend. Designing the fundamental parts of your application without relying on an ORM, XPath, JSON, .NET, Scala case classes, Flash, Javascript, HTML5, Swing, whatever... makes you platform agnostic and shrug at the next internet technology death.

Am I happy Flash is considered dead? No, currently HTML5 lacks many features I rely on today and sanity (isn't it kind of bizar we consider cross-browser issues as normal?). Will my skills and all of my codebase die with it? Absolutely not.

</comment><comment><USER15> There is still no Javascript equivalent of Flex (declarative layout, etc), as far as I know, so I don't know what the author is getting at.</comment>


Free product stock photos for designers - <AUTHOR> http://www.stocka.co

<comment><USER2> Love your tagline!</comment>


Tokyo IT firm looking for Ruby on Rails "Beer Interns" to drink on job - <AUTHOR> http://en.rocketnews24.com/2017/04/07/tokyo-it-firm-is-looking-for-beer-interns-whore-willing-to-drink-while-on-the-job/ <comment><AUTHOR> From the article:

This is a legitimate internship in which you'll be using the Ruby on Rails application framework to complete web development assignments. You'll just be doing it with a beer in one hand, as the program aims to "help clear away tension by having a beer, and let interns experience the working atmosphere at Technomobile and see if they're compatible with it."</comment>


Show HN: Push messaging tool with callouts - <AUTHOR> http://blog.webengage.com/2013/02/07/coming-up-next-notification-layouts/?ref=HN1

<comment><USER2> Avlesh, i know you. but i also know about hellobar. one of the examples looks similar. what is different here?

<comment><USER3> Disclosure: I work for WebEngage.

The same question also applies to "how is WebEngage survey different from Qualaroo?"

Here's how we present our case:

1\. WebEngage products can be "targeted" at certain audience segments based on a lot on in-built criterion like URL patterns, geography, cookies, traffic source etc - <http://webengage.com/survey#targeting>

2\. Very recently, we took targeting to the next level by allowing application specific properties in our rule builder. Here's more - [http://blog.webengage.com/2012/12/08/custom-targeting- launch...](http://blog.webengage.com/2012/12/08/custom-targeting-launched-the- ultimate-solution-to-cart-abandonment-issues/)

3\. WebEngage works via a JS widget code which is a one-time integration. All knobs and controls sit in the WebEngage Dashboard and for any new notifications or surveys that need to be run, customers don't need to change any code on their website.

4\. Our reporting and analytics matches the best BI tools out there - <http://webengage.com/survey#reports>

<comment><USER2> point 3. neat</comment></comment></comment>


EU: "Making hacking tools should be illegal" - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/06/14/making_hacking_tools_should_be_criminal_act_say_eu_ministers/

<comment><USER2> If hacking tools are outlawed, then only outlaws will have hacking tools.

Meaning if you're a software developer or system admin in the EU, you better be on standby 24/7 to combat 0-day exploits.

<comment><USER3> I find myself quite torn by this statement, because while I dont think hacking tools should be illegal, this is the exact same argument pro-gun people make, and i'm quite anti-gun (I'm from UK). Then again, in America drug paraphernalia is illegal but in the UK its not and i personally dont think you should be locked up for having a bong because theoretically you might only use it for tobacco.

Anyway, personally i'm quite adamant in the blanket statement that no software should be illegal.

<comment><USER4> There is a pretty easy philosophical workaround for your unease. Support banning _doing_ things, not _having_ things.

<comment><USER5> Pretty easy, and superficially appealing, but I find that there must surely be exceptions to a rule such as this. Nuclear weapons (and similarly, some chemical weapons) are the obvious special case.

Edit: reminded reading a comment below that child pr0n is another one that the general moral consensus has problems with (I refer to the 'consensus' not because I think it is always correct but simply as it provides cases worth thinking about), and also handling stolen goods (although this can be justified through property rights).

<comment><USER4> Seems kind of like the "Godwin's law" of rule of law. The fact of the matter is that we simply don't encounter these sorts of situations often enough for myself to understand using them as policy setters.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "should be" is actually an "is" in Germany.

The fun thing about it: the german cia equivalent "BND" lets german developers develop hacking tools via ssh or rdp on boxes that sit in other countries to circumvent that law.

I'll provide a link as soon as i find a source other than one of the hackers i know.

</comment><comment><USER7> The linked PDF is ambiguous, "penalisation of the production and making available of tools ... for committing the offences".

If this requires _mens rea_ , i.e. they prove that your intent was for committing an offense, it's not such a big deal.

If it does not, i.e. your software merely could possibly be used to commit an offense, it's a _huge_ deal.

<comment><USER8> Case in point on the latter: [http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/08/new_german_hac...](http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/08/new_german_hack.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Great, now we can have _even more_ "illegal math".

</comment><comment><USER9> Laws with unintended consequences should be illegal.

<comment><USER10> Yes, I can't see any way that could possibly go wrong.

<comment><USER4> And I certainly can't see any way the way we _currently_ do it could possibly go wrong either...

<comment><USER10> I do believe my point was that no law is free of unintended consequences, particularly not your law that outlaws laws with unintended consequences, thus your law outlaws itself.

The outlawing of the law against laws with unintended consequences by the law against laws with unintended consequences would undoubtedly be considered yet another unintended consequence of the law against laws with unintended consequences.

<comment><USER4> Just make the law _"any law with unintended consequences is illegal"_ , then embrace any possible "consequence" of this law (such as perhaps laws you otherwise like being declared illegal), then the law should fail to outlaw itself. Any consequences would be by definition intended.

Anyway, I don't buy the suggestion that no law can be free of unintended consequences. If you construct a sufficiently formal definition of the system of law, and each law itself, then making a law without unintended consequences is simply (lol :P) a matter of proving the law. Quite similar to how programs can in fact be proven correct (contrary to the popularly held opinion that no program can be free of flaws.)

Is this practical? With our current setup, no. Hypothetically? Maybe... certainly at least worth pursuing the idea I would say.

<comment><USER11> Until you find laws that can be formulated in your formal system, but cannot be proven - say hello to Gödel incompleteness theorems :).

(also, I love when discussions go meta :))

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Your hacking tool is my security analysis tool.

</comment><comment><USER13> Wouldn't it be simpler and more efficacious to simply ban sales of Windows in the EU, or mandate that they fix the security issues?

Not that I favor ludicrous bans of this sort, or that I think they will work. Because I manifestly don't. But geez, if you're going to be over-the-top Orwellian, at least do something that has a chance of achieving your stated goals.

<comment><USER14> It seems naive that you assume that banning Windows would decrease the rate of successful malicious attacks on machines. Every piece of software has holes - the largest of which is the user. If everyone in the EU switched off of Windows, you'd just have a large percentage of the population using linux or OSX without understanding how security works on those systems (many of whom would gladly enter their root password to install a spyware program, so long as they can keep playing farmville or whatever it promises to do).

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> What about vulnerability testing software? In principle those can be used as attack tools.

Maybe a line can be drawn... Design kits for viruses come to mind. But even then, it's a fine line, and history has shown once a mechanism is in place to outlaw something it will be extended and abused to apply to things that were not originally targeted.

</comment><comment><USER16> Isn't the loophole for this obvious? Just include in your release:

"This tool is intended for educational use only. The Author is not responsible for any misuse."

</comment><comment><USER17> Yes, it is illegal to financially damage a company, and many crackers do exactly that. This article and most of the comments here argue about the tools. As hackers we find it hard to understand why a hammer could be outlawed because it is good at breaking through the windows of houses.

Why does no one talk about the network that was broken into? Why does the general public believe that crackers are so good at their job it is impossible to secure a computer system? There are two possibilities that I can see here.

1\. Most cracks happen because of a less-than-perfect system administrator. Either some subtle problem with a configuration file opened up a hole for the cracker or nobody bothered securing the network to begin with.

2\. Most cracks happen because crackers have found a reliable method of discovering 0day exploits or our current computing model is fundamentally insecure.

In either case, I find it unjustifiable to declare cracking an act of terrorism without spending ANY effort reflecting back on our own security. If millions of us routinely use the same password (or a easy-to-guess pattern) for all of our accounts who is the terrorist? The people who take advantage of an easy opportunity, or the people who created that opportunity in the first place?

It is well known that users are stupid, and that two-factor authentication is much harder to break than static passwords. Bruce Schneider has been saying so for at least a decade. Why have we not moved on? As a system administrator, it should be an act of terrorism to NOT make two-factor authentication the DEFAULT way of using your service.

</comment><comment><USER18> While I can't really see legitimate uses of some of the "hacking tools" - viruses, botnets, rootkits (yes, you, Sony!), etc. - I can't get rid of the feeling that there is another hand trying to get a grip on the free land of Internet, and I really don't like that.

On a completely tangential matter, I have a feeling this is going to be another one of that laws that cost a lot of money and have little to no effect... at least positive effect.

</comment><comment><USER19> If you leave your wallet on the street in a bad neighborhood and come back, you'll probably never see it again.

The problem with such protection laws is that it doesn't take into account the ignorance or incompetence of service providers. It also holds back innovation and we end up with less security. Even if these vulnerable companies don't have the expertise they can hire a reputable security company to audit their system to plug the gaping holes.

Do we need to pass laws for companies to do security audits? Maybe for listed companies or companies that have services of a certain size, since they'll try to skimp on costs or executives don't understand IT needs.

Trying to criminalize the intent of developers even if they create tools solely for cracking is a slippery slope. While we're at it we should make defense contractors liable for war damages and execute the engineers responsible for creating weapons.

In Japan a closed source p2p software called Winny caused a lot of disorder with viruses and lots of government information and embarrassing private pictures leaked onto the net due to security issues. Unfortunately, the developer was busy fighting a trial based on whether he had intentions of violating copyright with his software (he was finally acquitted on appeal to a higher district court). If he at any point publicly endorsed copyright violations, he'd probably be locked up for a long time even if he didn't violent a single bit of copyrighted content. Needless to say the project is abandoned and full of holes. Good for the anti-virus industry though.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winny>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The full statement is available here[1].

[1] - [http://www.consilium.europa.eu/uedocs/cms_data/docs/pressdat...](http://www.consilium.europa.eu/uedocs/cms_data/docs/pressdata/en/jha/122516.pdf)

<comment><USER20> The actual directive seems to be 14436/10 which is available here - [http://register.consilium.europa.eu/pdf/en/10/st14/st14436.e...](http://register.consilium.europa.eu/pdf/en/10/st14/st14436.en10.pdf)

The relevant portion is Article 7

""" Member States shall take the necessary measure to ensure that the production, sale, procurement for use, import, possession, distribution or otherwise making available of the following is punishable as a criminal offence when committed intentionally and without right for the purpose of committing any of the offences referred to in Articles 3 to 6:

(a) device, including a computer program, designed or adapted primarily for the purpose of committing any of the offences referred to in Articles 3 to 6;

(b) a computer password, access code, or similar data by which the whole or any part of an information system is capable of being accessed. """

Which seems to be saying that, say, nmap isn't illegal, unless you download it with the intent to run it against a machine you're not supposed to, in which case you've broken the law (even if you never actually use it). Kind of like laws against 'burglary tools' in some parts of the US, the crime seems to be based on context/intent.

(Obvious disclaimer about how I'm not a lawyer, European, or a unicorn.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Like locksmiths, many of us have reasons for owning the most unlikely software.

</comment><comment><USER22> There's a sensible reason for implementing a law of this kind - if they catch the guy that wrote Zeus, I'd like them to be able to prosecute him (not that they could, as he's probably not in the EU, but you get the idea). Of course, it does need to be carefully written to avoid collateral damage.

</comment><comment><USER23> knives should be illegal, they may be used to kill people

<comment><USER24> In UK, it's illegal to sell knifes to under-18s in many places. Yet, you'll have to live on your own if you go to school away from home before that age... Another silly rule that doesn't actually stop people from stabbing each other.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is already the case in the Netherlands. Hacking tools are only allowed for private use or research, e.g. for checking the security of your own network. Possession of hacking tools with the intention to harm other peoples' systems is not allowed.

<comment><USER26> There seems to be a big difference between that law and this one in that this would outlaw all posessions of "Hacking tools".

<comment><USER27> Lockpicks in my state in the US are permitted, except for having them with burglorious intent.

Same thing IMO.

<comment><USER28> That just isn't at all the same thing... this suggested law is the equivilent of making it illegal to create lockpicks at all. Regardless of intent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Can anyone think of a situation where lines of code could ever be illegal?

<comment><USER30>
        const char *kiddie_pr0n = { 0xff, 0xd8, 0xff, 0xe0,
                                    0x00, 0x10, 0x4a, 0x46,
                                    0x49, 0x46, 0x00, 0x01, ... };

and undoubtedly many other cases.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> These sorts of laws need to include exceptions for tools that have a non- criminal purpose. Otherwise, a broad reading could include things like NetCat, Curl, and Apache Bench.

<comment><USER32> Which would render the whole shebang useless. All tools used for breaking into computers have legitimate uses for security professionals, not the least of which is penetration testing.

<comment><USER33> "I wasn't trying to hack you, I was giving you guys a free impromptu penetration test!"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> What if I develop all my hacking tools in an SSH session to a box in russia? Is that illegal? What about VNC?

This kind of thing could well be a legal reality soon...

</comment><comment><USER35> He has an IDE - get him!

<comment><USER36> Oh, whew. False alarm. He has the standard "EU-IDE: Certified Developer Edition". Gonna have to write him up for not updating to the latest version, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> hahaha. I spent a summer writing dissectors for ethereal/wireshark. I guess that's a hacking tool as well, eh.

</comment><comment><USER38> This seems more like one of those ideas which end up being a law used to slap people a second time when they are nabbed for something rather than something that would be enforced on its own.

<comment><USER39> ha or used to cluelessly or maliciously persecute any one giving them trouble.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> That's funny. First they talk about cyberwar and now they want to smelt down their weapons?

</comment><comment><USER41> That is a desperate attempt to motivate Europe's lazy youth to actually hack something.</comment>


Why do we require user registration? - <AUTHOR>

So I've recently been driven nuts by having to register for new services. I just cant justify spending the time registering anymore... I know I wont come back but maybe a handful of times.
The app I am writing is a small video editor and I am starting to change my mind about requiring user registration. It seems like the default these days but I cant see any significant gain to the user from an account on my site. Keeping track of a few video clips does not seem like enough justification... not to me anyway. There is no profile to what I'm writing and there are no friends.
Aside from being able to say I have xx number of users why do we require user registration? Would your usage not increase if it's completely open? Thoughts?
Thanks and my apologies if this has been discussed before and I missed it. <comment><USER2> How about automatically created anonymous user accounts and ability to later merge into a regular user account with username and password.

An anonymous account would essentially identify a single browser and enable server side storage required for full application functionality.

Should the user later feel like the registration is worth the trouble after all, he could merge one or multiple anonymous accounts into a single regular account.

One thing to think about in advance could be to prepare for merging data from multiple accounts.

I think Amazon shopping cart did something along these lines?

<comment><USER3> We are using this method on our site. Create temporary user on the fly and let the user overwrite it if they select to save their state and it works great for us. I think just by renaming the registration page to save work page gives you an advantage since the users are sick and tired of having to register in order to get any value.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You can only offer a limited feature set if you lack true user accounts. Photoflock.com for example relies purely on client persistence to manage the user's upload history. It's a simpler solution than requiring accounts -- there's less friction for a user to begin interacting with your site (ie no registration process) -- but doing things like tracking accounts and providing reliable usage stats is pretty difficult.

Additionally, your users will never be able to (easily) sych between computers and to be honest you'll eventually add user accounts anyway. That's not to say that you'll implement a full username/password scheme, but you will need some sort of server-side persistence.

That's where I'm at in my development right now, and I'm looking at a happy middle ground where the user CAN have an account (optionally) to do things like sync between computers but will vary rarely be asked for account information. My advice would be to sketch out a road map and assume that you will eventually add some sort of user account -- and then architect your site so that when you make that transition your users won't lose all of their data (as will be the case for photoflock's history data).

</comment><comment><USER5> If I understand, you're saying people use your site to do a bit of video editing. In this case, I guess the purpose of registration is to save user state, beyond sessions/cookies. Therefore, you could simply have a 'save' button, only asking for name/pw once it has been clicked. This way its up to the user to decide when/if to register.

</comment><comment><USER6> I was actually pondering about this one time. Do we really need user registrations and accounts? The answer I can give you it depends on what app you're building.

I would say yes if you require your user to save some sort of content online. Giving them incentive to come back to your site.

I always thought that user registration adds friction to any app. I guess it all comes down to _how_ it's implemented and how easy it is to get user from point A to B on your app.(e.g. reddit's way of user registration comes mind) Although the implementation of OpenID should ease that restriction a bit.

In short I personally like the idea of not having to register on your app. Why don't you try it? see if users like the system. Besides it's their opinion that matters anyways. Is seems like a novel way of approaching web apps these days. Hope this helps....

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks to everyone for all the great feedback. You all present really good arguments on the topic... I think the "best" solution for my app would be to create the temporary account converted to a registered user upon save. Like some of you mention, I will probably end up registering users at some point but I don't think what I'm offering now justifies a sign up...

I was thinking about making it very basic, no registration, user can create and save but they have to take care of tracking their own edits... bookmarks or taking the embed for a one time use. I realize it would not be all that feature rich but does it need to be?

Light, nothing to commit, like tinyurl with video edits...

</comment><comment><USER7> Here are a few valid reasons, from a user's point of view for registration:

1\. I want to use your site on different machines.

2\. I have no idea when where my cookies go or do, but I know it's good to delete them from time to time.

3\. I have information on your site that I consider semi-private.

4\. I really like you app, and I like being a part of your community (assuming you have one).

5\. I really like the people who use your app. (You've already said this isn't valid in your case)

I wouldn't discount the first three points though.Instead of requiring it, just make it optional and ask why people are signing up during the process. They'll let you know.

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER8> Many blogs require an email address if you want to comment. I've never understood why. I just enter a bogus address

<comment><USER9> If they require you to activate your email address, it's probably to reduce spam. That, I think, is a very good reason to require registration.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Why do we require user registration? Because the value of an application is usually tied to the community it serves. The larger the community, the more value. Without a login, it's more difficult to gauge the community.

Also, personalization of site. You could do that solely with a cookie, but then when I'm on another computer ...</comment>


Show HN: Fractal Flyer – Explore Dynamic 3D Fractals in WebGL - <AUTHOR> http://neverwork.in/static/Interactive-Experiments/Fractal-Flyer/High-Performance/fractal.html

<comment><AUTHOR> If you have a good GPU try out the HQ version [http://neverwork.in/static/Interactive- Experiments/Fractal-F...](http://neverwork.in/static/Interactive- Experiments/Fractal-Flyer/Normal/fractal.html)

</comment><comment><USER2> This is really quite beautiful.</comment>


Gaming's Mom problem: Why do we refuse to feature mothers in games? - <AUTHOR> http://www.polygon.com/2014/11/10/7173757/mothers-in-video-games <comment><USER2> This article could not have picked a weaker argument in The Walking Dead, where:

\- one of your group members is a mother (Kathya) and an important part of the story although mostly in a 'family' context but also by her own merit as a veterinarian

\- one of the main characters (Lily) is ex-Air Force and speaks for her big, tough father in all matters, and is the leader of your group

\- one of the main characters (Christa) is significantly stronger and more capable than her spouse

\- an entire episode of the first season of the game takes place in a farm run by a mother and her sons

\- one of your group members is a small girl (Clementine) who is also the protagonist in the second season of the game

It's probably the _least_ gender, race and age biased game featuring humans.</comment>