This was a government worker's union issue that got absurdly bent out of proportion.
The government demanded that government employees get approval for any direct communications with media, etc. This all began when a researcher seriously impacted the salmon industry by releasing extremely preliminary results (that turned out to be wrong), making a name for herself and setting up a PR circuit. The media loves apocalyptic outcomes ("So would you say this means that we're all going to die?"), so of course it made headlines with the most dire of predictions.
This was not an independent researcher. This was not the private sector. This was someone directly employed by the government. It's like a Microsoft employee wrote about vulnerabilities in Windows on their private blog, offering to sell solutions.
So the government put a process in place not unlike much of the Western world, doing nothing to control the science (papers were published, research was released, etc. The scientific world understands that preliminary results are preliminary), but having everything to do with the message relayed to the media. Of course this was met with a conspiratorial narrative that continues to this day: That they were hiding dire greenhouse gas/global warming information, for instance.
But the shackles have come off. Where are all of these dramatic scientific findings that were suppressed?
...crickets...
The single example constantly floated is about a guy who got called by a reporter about a paper he released about ~~slime mold~~ rock snot (the exampled floated in literally hundreds of articles about the muzzling of scientists). This government scientist was outraged that he couldn't get approval within 24 hours, and the reporter lost interest. Apparently rock snot is a real timely issue in media circles.
There was a lot wrong with the prior government. An enormous amount. By this particular story is about some freelancing employees who don't want anyone telling them what to do.
> But the shackles have come off. Where are all of these dramatic scientific findings that were suppressed?
The very article you're responding to mentions 3 specific examples of politically sensitive research that were affected by the policy, including the article's featured example about salmon.
> The single example constantly floated is about a guy who got called by a reporter about a paper he released about slime mold.
Of the 4 examples mentioned in the original article (3 specific examples, 1 shark scientist mentioned in passing), none of them are this "constantly floated" example, it isn't even mentioned in passing. Nor is it mentioned in either of the articles that my sibling comment linked to.
The very article you're responding to mentions 3 specific examples of politically sensitive research
But all three demonstrate nothing being suppressed. It points to two people who claim to have left their jobs (moved elsewhere/retired) because of these restrictions (although unburdened they apparently had no big reveal, or even an anecdote about anything being suppressed. But polar bears or something -- the casual allusion being entirely manipulative and intentional), and a salmon researcher who released all of their science, including publication in Science, but couldn't give soundbites as an official representative of the government of Canada. Exactly as I stated, this is a union/workplace issue, and people having grievances about workplace policies, with shockingly little to say about how it actually impacted science.
including its featured example about salmon.
That was the beginning (it was literally the first example of communications policies interfering in someone's feeling of being a freelancer). The salmon industry was already sensitive, and with great fanfare the PR circus began for a paper in Science. The government was sensitive about the misrepresentation of science, not about the science. Again, the paper was published. The science was documented. The same person was presenting at a Salmon inquiry. But they couldn't provide soundbites without it being considered and controlled.
EDIT: Two hours in, and for the many, many down arrows I've gotten by people showing how strongly they feel about this, it's notable that the combined examples of suppressed science catalogued thus far: ZERO.
It's sad to me that there are actual voters out there that think a democratic government should be carefully PR managed like a secretive corporation. Personally I'd rather hear from the scientists that my tax dollars pay for then from a media-trained PR flak that I wish my tax dollars did not pay for.
The point of having PR-people in this case was not to ensure that the science was communicated in a clear way. It was rather to make sure that scientific findings that conflicted with government policies was never communicated to the press at all.
Modern science reporters have repeatedly shown themselves incapable of recognizing good science from bad science, so why would they start now and be able to recognize good scientific sources from PR-seeking frauds?
Is preventing the media from talking to researchers repressing science? I'd say yes, even if papers are available to read. You've been provided plenty of evidence of this happening.
> The government was sensitive about the misrepresentation of science, not about the science.
What, it was worried that the scientist would misrepresent their own research? That's ridiculous!
In a scientific paper, a theory is hypothesised, an experiment designed, data and observations conducted and a conclusion is formed. That conclusion, based on the observations and data collected by the scientist, is analysis.
What you are saying is that the scientist will misrepresent their own conclusions.
Let's put that another way: you are saying that the scientist will misrepresent science by contradicting their own conclusions.
Another way of putting it, just to be clear: the scientist will publish their conclusions in a paper, then tell the media the exact opposite of their conclusions. Either by mistake or because they are lying.
You seem to be surprised by the incredulity your post is generating. There's why!
To suggest that scientists would never misrepresent their work because "science!" is naive at best.
Scientists are human. They are not above human motivations - both good and bad - related to their work, their stature, and their jobs. Funding can be based on certain results. Getting published can be based on certain results.
This is why making experiments and studies that are reproducible is so important.
Reproducibility is important, but not to check that what a scientist says about their own work is accurate. To verify the accuracy of what a scientist says about their own work you merely have to read their work.
That said, however, I am actually saying that it's unlikely that a scientist would misrepresent their own published findings. Perhaps it may occur - but if that happened then the government of the day could discipline the scientist who misrepresented their work. They would have to prove it.
What I find more naive is that a media relations person, employed by the government to portray them in the best light, would not misrepresent the work of the scientist.
Who would you want the reporter to speak to: the person employed to protect the reputation of the government of the day, or the scientist who did the actual work?
Let's say you're worried that a scientist might misrepresent their work. So you force them to communicate through a PR staff person. Now you have 2 people who might misrepresent the work.
>What, it was worried that the scientist would misrepresent their own research? That's ridiculous!
Why? Just look at that study about sexism on github that came out a couple of months ago, the authors were lying through their teeth. They (correctly) surmised that reporters wouldn't bother looking at the actual results, and so managed to generate tons of media coverage.
Is it the government's job to prevent mis-reporting of science?
If so, why not just manage the reporters directly? Every science news story could be reviewed by a central government office prior to publication, to make sure it's accurate. Of course, the reviews would be done by political appointees and their staff, not the scientists themselves since they have a conflict of interest, it being their research and all.
This would never fly, of course. Canada has at least some semblance of freedom of the press. But for some reason the exact same system, applied to the scientists themselves, was OK?
> Is it the government's job to prevent mis-reporting of science?
I would say it is certainly part of the government's job to see to it that the public (including the media, who are simply members of the public who happen to exercise the freedom of the press) receives, when receiving information directly from the government, accurate information about things that the government does, including science.
> If so, why not just manage the reporters directly?
Because while it is the government's obligation to insure that the information it (through its officers and employees) provides to the public (including the media) is accurate and presented appropriately considering the direct audience, it has a different role with regard to information shared about government by members of the public, including the media.
I agree that the government should try to provide accurate information. Who better to do that than the scientist who actually conducted the research? That's what made this muzzle rule so egregious: it so obviously broke the process that would provide the most accurate information.
Actually it can, because if the media officer becomes the gateway then the reporters are forced into an iterated game with someone who knows them compared to ranging the herd of scientists looking for PR and hoping to pick off the weak and inexperienced.
It's not really that simple. Even if you do have a problem with premature disclosure and bad quality journalism, you really can't ethically run this through the PR branch of a sitting government.
The purpose of federally funded scientific research is not and cannot be to support the policy objectives of the currently sitting government.
So a real answer to the putative problem might be to have an arms length communications office review communication for accuracy, but one that does not directly answer to the PMs office or federal PR. What Harper did was far more draconian than that. At the same time he initiated other damaging actions to federal science, so you can hardly fault people for not trusting the motives. He could have solved this easily by making things arms length, and chose not to, as well as choosing to be very opaque about the whole process. If for no other reason than that, his government deserves all the criticism it has had on this account.
I don't disagree with this at all. The implementation was imperfect. It had the signature of political meddling (of the "we know better" type). It seemed poorly defined and inconsistent.
It should have been done in a very different way. It should have been more cooperative (e.g. "clarity officers" who have a masters in English or French, and who pour over statements and responses to ensure that it cannot be misinterpreted or misrepresented, without changing the core meaning).
The purpose of federally funded scientific research is not and cannot be to support the policy objectives of the currently sitting government.
There hasn't been a single example that had anything to do with the sitting government's policies or agenda. The government had no particular agenda regarding factory farming salmon or rock snot. Though from an overall government perspective for the health of an industry such as salmon (a cross-party industry), they want the message coherent.
The last thing they had was clarity of message though.
This would have been easily achieved by transparency in the process.
They were also, rightly or wrongly, seen as actively de-funding work that could be seen to challenge policy objectives. They had ample opportunities to resolve such impressions but chose instead to present an arrogant face. I can't have a lot of sympathy for that.
Even if you aren't actually meddling, if you have the perception that you are, you have a problem.
You've clearly established that you're a troll. While I applaud your desperate fishing for partisan upvotes, hang your nonsensical queries and comments off of other people's posts. Thanks.
> The government demanded that government employees get approval for any direct communications with media, etc.
FUCK that.
If my tax money is going to pay for your research work, and you want to speak to the public, I'm part of the public and I have a right to hear it. I will be the judge of whether your work is my money well spent, and I will be the judge of whether your public communications are time well spent, not some dipshit party hack.
I think it's debatable whether the government actually needs to classify everything it classifies in the name of national security. See this story for example:
That said, most folks would agree that there is some national security information that should remain classified.
But this science was not classified at all! It was just being forced through a political PR filter. It was public science done on the public's dime, which is just not analogous to nuclear weapons.
No, I don't. But I feel very strongly that when my tax money goes to scientists to get them to do science, their results should be presented to the public regardless of whether they support the platform of the party in charge, and that no policy be put in place that might hinder that.
If some government egghead is working to asses whether there's lead in the water in Flint, for example, I don't want a GOP party hack to have a yea or nay on whether he talks to the press.
> It's like a Microsoft employee wrote about vulnerabilities in Windows on their private blog, offering to sell solutions.
A company controlling its employees' contact with the media in order to serve its business interests is not the same as publicly-funded government employees being gagged to serve some specific political party's interest and disserve the public interest.
Except the entire point of the OP was that in fact after nine years it turns out that there was no suppression and no shadowy cabal subverting the public interest.
I remember speaking to my partner's cousin about this, a phd working in Ottawa for the federal government. No love lost between her and our previous federal government, so I figured I'd hear a great rant.
However, she figured it was turned into an issue by the media, and roughly supported the ban; her opinion - adjusted for brevity - being that scientists without media training shouldn't necessarily have carte blanche to speak to press.
Media training is a specific thing that thousands of people go through every year--business leaders, nonprofit leaders, lawyers, activists, etc. Usually, following the training, those people then go talk directly to reporters.
If the Canadian rule had been shaped like that, probably no one would have objected much. Media training costs a bit of money and takes a day or two, usually--no big deal. But that's not what the rule was.
There is another post in this thread arguing that I'm speaking "partisan propaganda" (another a "mouthpiece of evil". How very theatrical) for my position. Which is a bit incredible given that I despised the Harper government, and personally lean to being a libertarian.
But at the same time I've considered the actual facts, coupled with the reality that mainstream media, when generalizing science, tends to do a really, really horrible job. The notion that the government wants to ensure the message is clear and coherent -- especially when it's given the weight of the government behind it -- given a free range of employees with their own quirks and communications issues, seems entirely rational.
Scientists paid by tax money need to be co-conspirators in formulating political messages by either self-censoring or being censored?
What other categories of people working for the government should lose their speech rights (I do realize this is Canada)? If a tax collector disagrees with $politician_of_the_month about tax policy, does that count? What about a park ranger on tax policy? Can a trash collector talk to the press about anything without asking Daddy Censor first?
In a different direction,
> The notion that the government wants to ensure the message is clear and coherent [...] seems entirely rational.
Sure, to someone whose goal is presenting a "governmental viewpoint". Which is going to inherently be a political message. In democratic places, we assume an electorate capable of deciding between competing explanations of reality. And given the weight of decisions about things like climate change, don't we want to hear from more, rather than fewer experts? Especially ones paid for by the electorate's taxes?
Just my opinion, but I don't care what the government party line is. Politicizing science is wrong, and governments that attempt to manipulate our knowledge of the world is wrong. I mean both of those in the moral sense. In the practical sense, arguing with reality is not a long term strategy, and is bad for both governments and parties. (There's a certain party to Canada's south that seems to be learning that lesson as I type this.)
I would think that someone leaning libertarian would think something similar.
you have a very strange format to your communication.
many times you stick the tail end of one sentence into parenthesis, only to close them after entering another sentence.
where did you learn this?
It is quite intriguing ( and a unique thing. But really not ) for people who notice such things.
It's a weird argument anyway. He is arguing that the mainstream media do a terrible job of reporting science and this occurs when a scientist is allowed to freely speak to the media about their own work - ergo only a media officer should be able to give information to the media.
What I'd like is for you to provide some links that support your position.
Right now I'm literally seeing nothing via Googling that supports your idea that the science consultation was merely a response to a rogue salmon researcher and other hype PR and the like.
In addition to the Nature article, on the other hand, plenty of other articles tend to support the position that most of the "muzzling" was political, in key industries that were either afoul of political ideology, or ran contrary to business policy, or both. Here's the first page of Googling on the Harper science issue.
That's a large amount of links that are saying this.
I will note that only a few specific examples of suppression came up repeatedly, so there could be some "political inflation" going on. But showing up with zero counterpoint links isn't doing anyone any favors. At this point, I'd have to think the other side is more correct.
Instinctively I personally think that it is naive to think that "government ensuring the message is clear and coherent" will actually produce better results than a free independent press generalizing science. Bias is natural, but a free and independent press often consists of many biases, not just one, with less power to manipulate public opinion in most cases. (In other words, so what if some mainstream media reports science wrong? After all, some might report it right. Either is a much better situation than science not being reported at all.)
>The government demanded that government employees get approval for any direct communications with media, etc. This all began when a researcher seriously impacted the salmon industry by releasing extremely preliminary results (that turned out to be wrong), on her own accord, making a name for herself. The media loves apocalyptic outcomes ("So would you say this means that we're all going to die?"), so of course it made headlines with the most dire of predictions.
Why should "the government" have any control over what "employees" say?
Everyone has the right to speak their mind and governments, in particular, should be defending that right, not attempting to suppress it.
You mention the media hyping what a particular person said, but that is a failure of that media and their readers to not jump to unsubstantiated conclusions. The real work that needs to be done is in the understanding of media, not in preventing the production of media.
"In 2010, three years after Harper first introduced the new communications policy, Environment Canada reported that media coverage of climate change had dropped by more than 80 percent. Meanwhile, the Canadian government’s continued to wage war on science, often at the expense of the environment. In 2013, when NSIDC again reported that summer sea ice was melting, Leona Aglukkaq, Harper’s environment minister, downplayed the findings, explaining in a follow-up conversation that it was “debatable” whether the Arctic was warming. Without free access to the facts, one could argue, that’s a pretty difficult debate to have."
"Yet research done by ELC student Clayton Greenwood demonstrates that the federal government is preventing the media and the Canadian public from speaking to government scientists for news stories especially when the scientists’ research or point of view runs counter to current Government policies on matters such as environmental protection, oil sands development, and climate change. In sharp contrast to past Canadian practice and current US government practice, the federal government has recently made concerted efforts to prevent the media and through them, the general public from speaking to government scientists, and this, in turn, impoverishes the public debate on issues of significant national concern. "
I did some googling and couldn't find a slime mold story, but surely you have a link handy?
EDIT: It is outrageous that it is impossible to discuss the facts of this without everyone immediately veering to their partisan sides.
Sorry, it was "rock snot".
I don't cite an article because this is really about the absence of something, not the existence of something. What is there to cite? Supposedly during the period in question the scientific world was suppressed. They've now had more than 6 months to drop all of the science bombs that were pent up. Literally nothing. Nothing was suppressed.
>media coverage of climate change had dropped by more than 80 percent
This is an utterly outrageous claim, as if climate science is dependent upon media access to government scientists (particularly Canadian government scientists). There is an enormous non-government group of scientists in Canada, any of whom will freely talk (within the confines and agenda of their own employer, of course). And indeed, the science was as unrestricted as it always was, so they have all of the data and findings to talk to. This is the sort of "find the agenda" noise that just perverts the discussion -- remarkably the media still barely ever talks about global warming, nor do they reference government scientists. It just turns out that the story no longer brought the clicks and the viewers.
Your other link, "research" from a student at the Environment Law Center, begins by saying - "There are few issues more fundamental to democracy than the ability of the public to access scientific information produced by government scientists". But again, absolutely nothing changed about the science that government scientists produced, or its accessibility. The single and only change that happened was media access to government employees, which generally meant "try to get a soundbite that can be presented as we're all gonna die!".
Private sector employees are not the same as public servants. The very nature of parliamentary democracies and republics requires a level of transparency from those in power that does not apply to private organizations, which can only operate with security, stability, and privacy because of the nature of the modern state. Governments require some level of secrecy in order to protect economic competitiveness, defend their borders, and conduct intelligence activities but that is not what we're talking about here. Not only is the published science a public service, but the scientists are public servants whose purpose is to inform the public and policy makers. Unless you expect the public to read and understand every scientific paper, reporters' access to the scientists is absolutely necessary for the public to understand the consequences and potential of the resarch. Making scientific papers available to the public is not sufficient without allowing experts unfettered ability to provide nuance and explanation to that research.
You argue that there haven't been any bombshells after the restrictions were lifed but TFA literally talks about how reporters lost interest within twenty four hours because of administrative delays. Do you really expect a sensationalist, profit-driven media to go over years of backlogged information, to talk to thousands of people, when a few days delay was enough to have a massive chilling effect?
Everything you describe is a problem with the Canadian media, not government scientists. Would you support a law that requires journalists to submit all of their articles to majority coalition PR flacks for editing or do they get a special pass because they're "private"? (Which due to the weird nature of the CBC, they're not)
> This was not an independent researcher. This was not the private sector. This was someone directly employed by the government. It's like a Microsoft employee wrote about vulnerabilities in Windows on their private blog, offering to sell solutions.
Bad analogy, IMO. Microsoft is a private corporation. The government is a public entity, responsive directly to the people. A democratic government is supposed to be, IMO must be, transparent to be effective.
As to whether this impacted science, you only need to ask the scientists themselves. They say "yes."
But maybe you don't believe the scientists? If so, that would explain why you don't seem to have a problem with censoring them.
The interesting thing about the didymo ("rock snot") paper isn't just that the government refused to allow the researcher to speak to the press, it's the massive amount of effort the government expended on what you -- quite rightly -- describe as a relatively trivial issue: "What [the interview request] did produce was 110 pages of emails to and from 16 different federal government communications operatives, according to documents obtained using access to information legislation."
When sixteen political minders exchange dozens or even hundreds of emails over a single media request, it tells me more about the political system than the scientific research.
That sounds like utter garbage. The article itself gives plenty of examples of the convoluted processes and restrictions that were applied on scientists.
Kristi Miller-Saunders, who was the principle author of the paper on Salmon death, wasn't allowed to speak to the media, but her non-government co-authors were.
And there is the giant hole in your argument. It's so large I could fly a jumbo jet through it. Scientists in universities are free to speak to the media! These scientists are employees of the university. They are not controlled by media departments. That is truly gagging debate!
It's funny how the government was happy for political media officers to control the message, officers who didn't understand the research as well as the lead author or researchers if scientific studies. Yet that is what you consider unbiased? I mean, your entire argument is that the government must protect the general public from misinformation yet it is the government who is deciding what the scientists can and cannot say... If they stop a scientist from speaking because they believe they are inaccurately explaining their own work, well that's absurd.
If the government is concerned that scientists can't communicate to the media, then I wonder when they might decide that scientists published papers might be potentially misleading and require a media officer to vet them. Peer review by public relations, if you will.
As for the slime mild story, could you tell us more? I don't see any mention of that in the story.
"That sounds like utter garbage" - this will surely be a rational discourse...
"These scientists are employees of the university." - Ignoring that the relationship of university professors and so on are the result of a long process of give and take, that sample is irrelevant.
The government's concern are media reports quoting Government of Canada scientists. These tend to have more authority. And indeed the media was free to contact any other author of the Science research, and they could talk to industry scientists, and university professors. Exactly as I said (not sure how you think what I said is a "hole" in my own argument). But they didn't want anyone representing the government, with the weight of the government, being misrepresented.
"Some guy at some university says we're all going to die!" is decidedly less convincing, to most, than "Government of Canada environmental scientist says we're all going to die!".
And to your other comment, no one is saying the scientist will misrepresent their own work. But, and this may surprise you if you have utterly no knowledge of how media works, the media will if you aren't extremely careful with your statements and responses. The mainstream media has a surprising ability to misrepresent findings and research, and they just love to attach an authoritative name to it.
This whole discussion is exactly why it's impossible to touch anything remotely "political" on HN. No one has offered a single fact or counterpoint, but instead I've been attacked repeatedly, every benign comment is rapidly moderated down. Get a grip, partisans, and if you find it impossible to discuss something on your partisan talking radar without emotionally gravitating to a side, grow up.
The problem is that your comments have become increasingly uncivil. We ban accounts that do this, so please don't do it. Instead, please reread the HN guidelines and either keep your comments civil and substantive, or don't post any.
My comments are uncivil to uncivil discourse. I assume you've also measured this out to chris_wot, who has even stalked ancient posts of mine to drop their trolls.
Ok, we've banned this account. If you don't want it to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com. We're happy to unban people when there's reason to believe that they'll only post civil, substantive comments in the future.
Well that makes no sense. To stop
the media from misrepresenting science, government scientists should not be allowed to speak to the media directly but scientists they collaborate with outside of government - perfectly fine to speak with them directly.
And the reason that a scientist cannot speak directly to the media is because the media will always misreport their science. Thats not true. Unfortunately, reporters often misreport science. It is often the case that they do so because the read the abstract of a paper and misunderstand it. Or they may have an agenda. So it's great when they follow up with the scientist directly.
What you are then saying is that all scientists don't know how to communicate clearly with the media. Only someone skilled in the media should do so. What, pray tell, makes a media officer more qualified than the scientist to talk about the complex scientific work that the scientist has been doing?
Now an aside. Firstly, I don't know you. You assume that you know how the media truly works and I do not. You may well have inside information on this. But it seems unlikely.
Secondly, when I say that something sounds like garbage, I'm arguing forcefully that your substantial points are dubious. I probably should have said that, but in your case they really are so ridiculous that I used the word "garbage" because I actually do think what you are arguing has no redeeming qualities. However, I am not trying to censor you, and in fact I am only directly responding to your specific points. I make absolutely no assumptions about your person whatsoever. There is not one comment I have made about your political stance or your view on anything other than what you have said in your post.
You, on the other hand, have now stated that all those who have responded to you are partisan commentators who have "not offered a single fact or counterpoint", "find it impossible to discuss something on [their] partisan talking radar without emotionally gravitating to a side", and who should "grow up".
So no facts or counterpoint, then? And you continue to fail to grasp even the basics of my original comment, yet are scatter-commenting throughout this thread, seemingly boastful about your own misunderstandings.
The Census had been abused in the past with Japanese Internment camps. Why should I be forced to disclose very personal information like my religion under penalty of law?
I agree the stated reasoning for cancelling the census is because of privacy-related complaints. Of course, out of approximately 12 million forms only 166 complaints were known to be received directly or indirectly.
I'm not sure this is best forum for political conversations (or really anywhere online) and, at best, we can only make assumptions about motivations and reasoning beyond what we are told. My assumption is that is that census data makes it more difficult to govern based on opinion and therefore was less desirable to the Conservative government. But that is a pretty inflammatory opinion. However the reality is that the lack of census data over this period has caused significant damage to understanding of the country[1]. And cancelling it has gives very little benefit in comparison.
You're not required to disclose your religion on the census. You can leave the field blank if you get the long form, and it isn't asked on the short form.
People seem to have a hard time distinguishing between "I disagree" and "is wrong".
Politics, by their very nature, are partisan. I disagreed with many of the previous policies (and agreed with others), but it's hard to point to things that were out and out wrong.
The semantic difference lies in whether one has doubts or qualifications on ones opinions, at the very least. Equating "I disagree" with "is wrong" presupposes that you are not mistaken and cannot possibly be mistaken, therefore if you disagree with something the problem must be with the something, not with your opinion.
Along similar lines, consider the difference between "I don't want to do X" (or even "I won't do X") and "I don't think anyone should do X".
Or the difference between "I don't think anyone should do X" and "X should be illegal".
From my point of view, all three situations are analogous and the difference in each case is not just a matter of tone.
Why is this at the top? Why would you ever need or want to suppress scientific evidence, to suppress the truth, unless you had an agenda? This comment feels like astroturfing.
If you exclude the cash horde (edit - the zombies hired to protect the vault full of cash), Apple's P/E ratio is running at around 5 right now. IBM is 10. Microsoft is about 35 if excluding their much smaller cash pile.
Apple is ridiculously "undervalued" compared to any peer in the industry. It is a money printing colossus.
Having said that, the market seems to get shivers around $600B, and that psychological barrier imposes a friction that makes the rules of the game change. No one can stay above that for long, and in the case of Apple its profoundly out of scale numbers makes everyone simply put it in a different universe of valuation.
That is an interesting article, but the meat of it contradicts, in a common sense, the title.
For instance, no one thinks that Apple has a big vault with hundreds of billions in it. Like all rational players, they hold most of their negotiables in short term securities. For tax reasons they also have been taking on debt in some areas rather than liberate cash from elsewhere.
But they have an enormous, enormous amount of wealth sitting virtually at a standstill. They have announced that they're going to spend a lot of it to buy back shares (boosting the value of the remaining shares), but they've been doing this so slowly they're adding to their pile quicker than they're spending it.
While C (and its love-child C++) bizarrely appears high in most synthetic programming popularity rankings, I personally doubt more than 5% of developers (if that) ply their days in it, or have more than a passing competency in it.
Everyone is programming in Java, C#, JavaScript, and so on. Aside from myself, I haven't a single professional peer who develops on C (anecdotal, of course, but this is a pretty big net crossing multiple cities and industries) in any real way.
It just happens to be that much of the most important software is written in it. Maybe there's something in that.
I wouldn't minimize the amount of C(++), or the amount of mis-counting for jobs where C(++) is a desired skill, but not primary in the job role. There are a lot of jobs out there working on embedded systems where C/C+ are king. Though I do hope that Rust gains more traction in that space to avoid certain classes of bugs.
I would guess that most development involves JS, as I would say that most development is directed in web applications of some kind. Though there are backend languages as well. For the types of development jobs I'm used to looking for, I see a lot more C# and Java, with some uptick in Node and Python. Excluding PHP (because shiver).
I have several friends who work in the embedded space, and that is not small by any means.
I developed most of my hobby projects in C until recently. It's not as rare as you think. C is a good language to think in.
Lately I've been switching to Ada, which I actually quite recommend if you like C. Shame it never really caught on, but using C libraries from Ada is trivial so there's not much of a library issue in spite of lack of popularity.
~5% of developers, while small compared to the whole, still encompasses about a million of the estimated 20 million developers worldwide.
The other poster rightly mentioned the embedded space, and that is absolutely true (and indeed it is where I gained my affinity for C and C++), however there are easily 20 middleware / web / mobile developers for every embedded developer.
No one is getting upset about it and smashing keyboards. You do a disservice to your argument when that sort of caricature has to be the only alternative to your arguably gullible "prove a negative" attitude towards this.
Nic doesn't know despite many words to convince you otherwise
While you claim that you have no stake or position in this, your other post borders on the bizarre, with you seemingly completely misunderstanding the arguments made and then, having carefully constructed an absurd strawman, you confidently knock it down.
Anyone can be tricked by a con man with no shame. This includes very smart people. Anyone who controls the hardware and the network can render virtually any proof useless without moving outside of their control (which is extremely easy to do), and it can be a fun parlour trick. In this case we have someone with a long history of casual trickery (if not fraud) who, while under an impending cloud of peril, and with months to contrive a magic trick, convinced a single person.
I'm unconvinced you read my comment and are instead painting me with a "disagrees with the Bitcoin community's consensus and is therefore bizarre" brush
You've plied this valiant contrarian noise in virtually all of your comments on this. I'm personally a critic of Bitcoin. I most certainly am not in the "community". Yet the evidence that we have leans overwhelmingly towards "con man". I honestly believe someone would have to have a serious bias to ignore the overwhelming evidence that they are being had.
Your claim that anyone thinks he's "subverting cryptography" immediately cast your comment as hysterical. No one has seriously argued this.
You mean convinced at least five people and three editors
He convinced one or two people. Editors and journalists will run with the weakest of evidence because it's salacious and draws viewers. Do you really think they provide evidence of anything?
I'm sitting here with a complete lack of ability to care
Your rhetoric betrays that you actually do care. Very much. And each time you claim that it's some heroic stand that is only be squelched by the bitcoin insiders, it makes you look a little more foolish.
To your substantial edits: you're trying entirely too much to tell everyone how little you care. To quote Shakespeare, the lady (or man) doth protest too much.
I don't see the sort of vetting you claim has happened. Wright's proof is fraudulent (https://dankaminsky.com/2016/05/02/validating-satoshi-or-not...), people proved this in less than a day. Your journalist friends were either deceived, or ran the story in hope of getting pageviews..
What does Unity have to do with Xamarin? Are you referring to the fact that Unity uses an old version of Mono, because that hardly is relevant to greenspot's comment.
To their actual comment, it is extraordinarily difficult to make a quality product with Xamarin. As they said, there are shockingly few wins built with it. There are loads and loads of teams using it, all sure that it's the short cut that will build for everything with one code base, but so few wins.
I'm genuinely curious as to where you are getting your information from - ? Are you referring to Xamarin Forms in particular? One isn't forced to use Forms, it's possible to utilise Xamarin iOS and Android, but still have (for example) a PCL that contains everything except for the visual side of things.
This is based upon attempting to use the products to build some solutions. The Xamarin advantage is in the cross-platform tooling (if I'm making separate code for each, why would I bother with a layer of abstraction?), but when used it generates a compromised result.
It is perfectly fine for some relatively simple things. Basic information apps, etc. But it isn't long in complex apps before the abstraction is leaking all over the place, and you find yourself fighting the tooling rather than leveraging the tooling. Which has been the case for virtually every similar "all platforms one tool" type solutions.
"Compromised" how? "Leaky abstraction"? What is the abstraction and can you please provide specific examples of the leak?
It worked between Mac and Windows on very complicated apps. It bridged Linux and Windows for tweaky MVC stacks a decade ago (then they wisely sharpened their focus.) It got the job done pumping data through hardcore game engines. The network stack is proven robust. You're talking about it like it's some stupid ORM wrapper or wonky Widget UI library. It is not.
The context is the cross-platform app creation toolset. It generates extremely poor quality code, usually at a significantly increased development time (quite contrary to the promise). This is the case found by almost everyone who uses it, which is exactly why most teams have an Android project, fully using the tools of the platform, and an iOS project, fully using the tools of the platform. If Xamarin were heavily used, Windows Phone wouldn't be so generally unsupported.
This post links to a different page. It shows three big boxes: One for iOS, watchOS, tvOS and MacOS X. One for Android. And a third one which provides a forms package providing native UI on iOS, Android and Windows. Which just received huge updates AND went open source.
There is a language: C#. There are bindings to native toolkits. There's yet another imperfect Forms package. And there's a slightly wonky IDE. I'm not sure what you're expecting but I think the "lossy abstraction" here is mostly your expectations. I also think you are applying your narrow experience (which obviously was not a great one) and trying to amplify it by using unsubstantiated statements like "most teams" and "few wins."
Xamarin (not Mono) is a solution that seems like all win: Why bother with completely separate solutions on iOS and Android...and maybe even Blackberry and Windows Phone and...
...when there's a magic solution that covers them all. Surely such a solution would completely take over the industry, right?
Crickets.
Extremely few successful solutions are built in Xamarin. Their case studies are limited, and are generally close to trivial apps. And when you point this out, Xamarin advocates tell you not to use most of the cross platform stuff, but instead use platform specific code that is layered on abstractions from the underlying tech, always a step behind and a mile too far.
I'm not amplifying anything: The market demonstrates every statement. Xamarin is something that floundering teams buy hoping it gives them a big heads up, and then some time down the path they just end up starting separate projects for each platform.
You obviously are heavily biased, and strangely confrontational, towards Xamarin. But this open sourcing has been met with a universal yawn.
Xamarin is a company, not a product. Mono is a Microsoft-sponsored project. If you can't be bothered to get that right it makes it even harder to accept you speaking on behalf of the entire industry.
> "this open sourcing has been met with a universal yawn"
It happened 18 hours ago! Do you think the kinds of companies that code in C# even noticed yet?
At this point I have to assume you're trolling. No one is this obtuse.
Xamarin is a company, not a product
Xamarin the company has a primary anchor product that is a tooling and SDK to build cross platform apps (indeed, on Xamarin.com it is literally the only non-service product. There is zero ambiguity). To anyone not autistic, that is clearly the focus on this entire discussion. Your bizarre incantation of Unity using a very old version of Mono as a citation in support of Xamarin set the bar pretty low for this conversation.
It happened 18 hours ago!
Microsoft made it completely free. Yawn.. Microsoft open sources the entire SDK. Yawn.
Clearly you work either for Microsoft, or you hitched your wagon entirely to Xamarin or Microsoft. Your emotions on this are bizarre and completely out of touch with the reality.
> "All products" list four items, one of which is a product
The Products menu has a fifth menu item, All Products. It will show you additional products.
Apparently you are not familiar with the (bumpy!) history of Xamarin's technology. Now that it's open source, you can actually trace lines of code from Xamarin Platform and Xamarin Forms and the Xamarin Profiler back to the early Mono and Unity days. They were a small team that bit off way more than they can chew, delivered more than seems possible even today, and gradually tightened their focus to mobile.
Now they are open source and have Microsoft fully behind them. I wasted a ton of time and money and performance running under Mono on Linux when I should've just used Windows server. But I got it back using Xamarin Platform on two recent large-scale mobile development efforts.
You win some, you lose some, and eventually you develop the maturity not to claim an entire industry had the same exact failures you did to make yourself feel better. Good luck.
You don't seem to understand how Xamarin works at all. The entire point is that you have the ability to share code, but also to drop to platform specific code at any time. The absolute worst case should be that you build totally different UI code for each platform while most of your business logic can sit in shared code. If you do target their cross platform UI framework (Xamarin.Forms) then all or large chunks of of your UI are in shared code, but even then you can write things like platform specific renderers to tweak your controls to the platform.
You just described exactly what I described in various other posts. How you came to the conclusion that I "don't seem to understand" can only possibly be due to some sort of zealot blindness that makes you a defender.
Best case -- terrible abstraction.
Worst case -- you're rewriting much of your code for each platform, working on a 3rd party incomplete abstraction that is always behind and full of unnecessary layered surprises.
What a win!
And for the next bizarre Xamarin sponsor that decides to wallow in and throw up this -- I worked on a large scale solution with Xamarin. We threw it out and just went with separate projects for each platform, sharing code with C++. Works wonders. Way better than Xamarin.
I was specifically referring to your comment "There are loads and loads of teams using it, all sure that it's the short cut that will build for everything with one code base, but so few wins." that implied knowledge above one's own experience.
BTW Xamarin Forms has or is about to receive a bunch of updates, perhaps it's worthwhile checking them out in case things have improved for you?
People are mixing "Xamarin the company" with "Xamarin technologies" here and I'm not sure how to sort it out. Obviously the tech stack works. Obviously the stack ain't going away, especially now. As for "hard to build a quality product" and "so few wins" well that describes mobile in general now, doesn't it?
"Its a well known fact that Google bought Motorola only for the patents. Google has also managed to use the patents to sue other companies including Microsoft."
Really? Which suits were that?
Google has never sued another company over patents. They've made counterclaims when themselves sued, but claiming otherwise is just a fiction.
And they bought Motorola because Motorola was threatening to start suing all of the other Android makers, causing infighting that Google didn't want. So Google bought Motorola....to stop those patents from being used to sue, further diminishing your point.
On the whole, Google is very much the good guys, and Microsoft are very much the bad guys.
However I will say it is naive to assume this will continue forever. There was a period where Microsoft seldom threatened anyone, and we all held quaint notions about all of their "defensive" patents. Situations and markets change, and suddenly desperation takes foot and the company that was hugs and kisses becomes claws and kicks, so I would never assume that Google will always be a fairly good citizen. It could change.
I'm from an Eastern Europe and my family never was rich, I had to put in a tremendous effort to even get into the industry.
I grew up in a small, very blue collar town (the sort that most people never escape). We lived on social assistance, at least until my mother killed herself and I went to live in foster homes. Eventually my father -- who later died from asbestos related cancer from his job -- let me move into a spare bedroom at his girlfriend's house.
"White male privilege".
I "made it", so to speak, purely on the backs of a couple of teachers who tried really hard, and the luck of having interests and aptitudes perfect for the time in a burgeoning, lucrative industry. But I certainly did not have a privileged upbringing.
Do you think that no women or minorities grew up in a small blue collar town, lived on social assistance, lost their parents, lived in a foster home?
The concept of privilege does not mean "you did not earn what you have." It means "other people with circumstances like yours were prevented from earning what you have, because of their gender or ethnicity."
It's not about tearing anyone down. It's about recognizing that people with success can help those who are being denied success, unfairly.
that's the thing here - who the fk is denied success in IT, which all this about? I am from east Europe too, currently living in Western Europe, and the only discrimination I ever saw in university and professional job was positive discrimination against women.
At school, that 1 girl we had in whole class out of 100 students was pampered with so much attention and had it so easy on verbal exams (written of course were equal as far as I can say). Everybody would love to have more girls, from teachers to students, but they couldn't care less. Economic studies were far more sexi rather than geeky IT guys.
Same when working - when hiring, female devs were so rare that there was very strong preference in female candidates (ie all that showed up were hired, but it's fair to say they were good... just not better than competing guys).
Right now, I am sitting in front of a consulting girl from Azerbaijan and a guy from Morocco. Both well performing and highly regarded in our company. This IS fair world, as much as we can do it. Not 100%, but damn good and far better than ever before. So stop whining and rather contribute.
I have not assumed anyone else's privilege, or lack of privilege. I haven't made assumptions, demanding group guilt or deference, based upon a simplistic caricature or stereotype.
It's not about tearing anyone down.
I read a statement telling me to remember all of the privilege I have enjoyed since birth. My experience differs, and these sorts of simplified claims fail (the same sort of simplification/see what you want that is the root of racism).
Countering sexism or racism or inequality by attempting to force feed sexism, racism and inequality will never move the conversation forward. It is never useful.
> I haven't made assumptions, demanding group guilt or deference, based upon a simplistic caricature or stereotype.
Ok, the reason privilege is taboo in this society is because it often gets mixed up with prejudice and injustice. Privilege is both real and collective, prejudice tends to be collective but may be overriden individually, and injustice is always individual.
If we consider privilege to come from the unthinking assumptions of people in general (aka. their prejudices) you cannot do anything about it. It is there. You can choose to keep your unthinking assumptions in check, but cannot force the others to do so. You just enjoy when those assumptions work in your favor, and workaround/overcome them when they get in your way.
On the other hand, injustices do happen when individuals choose to manipulate those unthinking assumptions (either in themselves or in others) to gain unfair advantage. So, the "group guilt" you talk about is guilt by association; e.g. a logical fallacy.
By example, there are such things as beaten wives. The reason for this is that their husbands are violent jerks. IF male privilege would not make women a convenient target, the same jerks would go out and look for someone else to beat. So, if you are a decent male, you have the right to refuse taking any blame for wife-beating, while still acknoledging that this is a real problem caused (at least parcially) by male privilege.
And if people wants to still blame you after exposing your case in such a way, it means they are themselves looking for someone to hate. Don't let them bring you to their silly games.
People ask white guys to remember the privilege they experience because it is invisible to them.
No one walks around every day thinking, "My whole life, I've never been attacked by a tiger. Thank god." But people who have been attacked by a tiger certainly remember it!
That's an extreme example to illustrate what privilege means in this context. It's the absence of challenges that other people face. In that respect it is indeed an assumption, in that it is an unexamined filter through which white guys perceive the world.
It doesn't mean white guys don't face challenges too. You've had your own tiger attacks, plenty of them it sounds like. So imagine sitting in a room with a guy the same age as you--but he was raised by healthy, wealthy, devoted parents, went to the best private schools, raised his first seed round from his dad's friends. "God, I've worked so hard to get where I am," he says. "I can't stand it when people say I haven't earned everything I've got."
Wouldn't you feel a bit resentful toward that person? Give me a break, right? He was born on 3rd base and thinks he hit a triple. That's a form of privilege, really the original form of privilege, the one that defined the word.
What we are coming to understand now is that there are other forms of privilege. Just like that guy didn't choose to be born to rich parents, he also didn't choose to born a white guy. Neither did I. But there is ample evidence that being a white guy is an advantage, at least in U.S. society, and certainly in the tech field today. Call it: being born a little ways down the first base line. I've had an easier time beating the throw to first than someone born closer to home base--even if I don't realize it, even if I still ran as fast as I can. (extended metaphor alert)
What would you want from that rich guy? Some awareness--a willingness to listen to other perspectives and life stories. Some introspection--a willingness to compare and integrate them with his own personal experiences. Some empathy--appreciation for others. And fairness--a willingness to consider people for partnerships, collaboration, work, ideas, even if they didn't go to the same fancy schools, or wear expensive dress shirts every day. Even if they have a totally different life story. Even if they look different, talk different. And ideally advocacy--telling his rich buddies to think about these things, to not be so quick to hire folks who mostly look and talk just like themselves, to give people a chance and actively work on inclusiveness.
So I don't think it's an issue of trying to force feed anything. I'm asking you to consider that there is more to the situation than you might have experienced or thought about. If you're in a position to deliver the things I list above, then some other person who is working hard might really appreciate it.
>People ask white guys to remember the privilege they experience because it is invisible to them
So for everyone its different. And apparently, invisible. How are people supposed to remember things that they never perceived in any way, shape or form?
And how does one accurately assess and analyze the "privilege" retroactively? At what point does the privilege begin and end?
Where does the hard work, pure luck, and skill take place?
To extend the metaphor a bit more, that guy born on third base very often expects the ones born in the dugout to hit a sacrifice fly the very first time they step up to the plate, so that he can score the run.
In the context of baseball, that is absolutely the correct play.
In the context of life, screw that asshole. Hit a bunt right to the third baseman and try to beat the double play.
Privilege is multifactorial. There are such things as white privilege, and male privilege; but those are not the only (nor arguably, the most significant) privileges there are.
Being "blue collar" and "from a small town" probably set you back in at least 3 or 4 different kinds of priviledges (as in economic, well learned, and urban/cosmopolitan). So, if you compare yourself to black women that had all advantages, yes, your life more often than not will turn to have been harder.
If, on the other hand, you genuinely want to understand what "white male privilege" is all about, you should look at how women of racial minorities fared in your home town, or other similar towns. And even greater insight can be gained by observing how people treats other white men from the same town who are otherwise disadvantaged: guys with physical or cognitive disabilities, gay men, men with "foreign" accents (specially if their speech ressembles that from a not-so-far rival town), or for the matter old folks. Even if they are treated "fairly", the small indignities they have to endure on a daily basis may build up to something significant.
>>Privilege is multifactorial. There are such things as white privilege, and male privilege; but those are not the only (nor arguably, the most significant) privileges there are.<<
Well, that's exactly the problem with the "white male privilege" verbage: it's just one single angle of the global problem regarding social / ethnic class issues.
Even from an Euro-American perspective... When it comes down to it, who has more "privilege" or social status? A college educated Asian-American woman from an urban, wealthy family? Or a poor, rural uneducated white male from, say, Appalachia or the Deep South?
Yes, there are obviously people with lower "social standing" than the poor, rural, uneducated white male -- and color or sex does play a part. But the point is, sex and race are not the only factors that make up social status, even from a Euro-American angle.
If you factor class issues in the entire world, it gets even more complicated. Each area has their own quirks and social structure.
Unfortunately I find that many people who advance the "check your privilege" arguments are not very nuanced. Social status is complicated. So I think it does a disservice in the end. Again, let's take that a poor, rural, uneducated white male in Appalachia, no job since the coal mines shut down, on benefits, etc. They come across an article written by a college educated woman, in an urban area, probably making quite a bit more than he is. And this person is telling all white males to "check their white male privilege".
So then, even among all the other "privileges" there are those for looking good, and bad, smelling bad, looking like someone that someone hates, having a weird voice, bad teeth, an accent, dressing inappropriately or strangely, weird hobbies, mental problems/physical/emotional abuse, anything at all by which anyone can judge....these are infinite and subjective, and dependent on context.
Who are you to judge someone, and tell them to "remember/check their privilege" without knowing all these intimate details of struggles throughout their life, all these factors, regardless that you seemingly know just one of these infinite characteristics?
This is a hopeless topic to discuss without a way to measure these factors.
The way it is discussed here, the privilege theory is unfalsifiable. You can always trot out more (unmeasured) privilege categories to explain any empirical data.
Like the saying goes, "He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense".
While I'm microranting, I'd also love to hear how big a factor privilege is compared to other factors for people's success in life.
Something like: Privilege: 40%, Effort: 30%, Luck: 30%, with a breakdown of each kind of privilege, and explanation of how it's measured. Give me that, and I'll start taking it seriously as a way to understand the world.
If, on the other hand, you genuinely want to understand what "white male privilege" is all about, you should look at how women of racial minorities fared in your home town, or other similar towns.
Such an analysis would not yield the results I believe you expect. Most of the minority families from my town have been very successful -- they put high demands and expectations on their children, worked hard, etc. The world didn't expect them to fail, as it does with "white trash" males, and their potential was theirs to make. In no universe am I saying they excelled because of affirmative action or anything of the sort -- they worked for everything they got, and earned it -- but society isn't predetermined to expect failure from them.
I grew up a poor white male in unfortunate circumstances. Nothing was expected of me (I often joked about wishing I was Jewish, because then I'd have expectations), and every door was shut. There were no advantages. I remember one particular malignant teacher saying to another, after I had left a room, "water flows to its own level". And of the white males who I grew up around, most did menial jobs and cycled in and out of unemployment, some went to jail, etc. 90%+, roughly, still live in that small town.
The whole white male privilege thing seems to be a classic divergence between the median, and the mean. A small percentage of spectacularly successful white males pull the mean up, while the median lies in the masses of people living miserable lives. But the masses have to suffer and acknowledge their privilege because of the mean.
Or maybe we should simply discard with the whole premise of trying to simplify large groups on traits.
Assuming that Valve just hasn't gotten around to closing this loophole seems remarkably charitable, if not naive.
Valve is making untold millions on people gambling for items in the game itself. They're looking the other way as secondary markets allow for monetization. I respect Valve as a game maker, but I have no respect for this extremely dubious, gray-market gambling. Claiming that the article is "dishonest" when Valve is one of the largest beneficiaries of this seems dubious.
It's also worth noting that this is very real money. I can put $70 on my Steam account and buy a new triple-A game....or in the land of Valve I can sell some skins and buy the game. It is trading things in CS:GO for real world value, so comparisons to closed-systems (throughout this thread) seems deeply suspect. I can also use that CS:GO loot to "gift" a new game to a friend who then pays me in the real world. And so on.
For the past decade plus, Intel has been their own biggest competitor. Atom processors aren't weak and built on an old process because Intel can't make them better, but rather because Intel's greatest fear is undercutting their more lucrative markets. Their very high profit markets.
So if you go back ten years and say "what if Intel did this" (which in that case was making a processor for Apple that Apple was paying maybe $20 each for, estimating on the very high side), it is over simplified to just imagine that it's additive. Intel has been rolling on profit margins that the hyper-competitive ARM market can only dream about. It may be time for them to adapt (and arguably they have been), but those 12,000 didn't lose their job because Intel didn't do something different ten years ago. They, and thousands others, might never have had an Intel job in the first place if Intel made different choices.
https://trac.nginx.org/nginx/ticket/488#comment:4
(yes I realize this will be dead)