Vula_Design

This article is the worst kind of inflammatory journalism. I would never attempt to deny that there is a systemic patriarchy in place, or that white privilege exists, but tying every perceived injustice in the world to these braoder issues undermines the real issues that affect millions of people on a daily basis. As has been pointed out here by many other commentors, the behaviour of Hank and his friend was clearly outside conference guidelines and their being reprimanded for it is absolutely correct. Attempting to tie that to some sense of white (no race element to this story at all), male enitlement is absurd and frankly does a disservice to both the civil rights and feminist movements. When humour is made at the expense of a person in a position of relative weakness it is wrong. When she overheard someone else's (admittedly unfunny but by no means directly offensive to any race/gender/sexual orientation)joke and took offense then that was her personal reaction. Making her displeasure known to conference organisers was absolutely within her remit but turning herself into some sort of 'crusader' for a vague idea of 'rights and justice' in a public forum is problematic for me. Your article has done exactly that, by 'casually' mentioning the use of smart phones in the Ferguson case you are obviously attempting to equate what was, let's be honest, a minor case of a clash of senses of humour to the killing of a young man by the police. That is despicable. You then go on to mention the race of Lindsey Stone, despite the fact that it has no relevance to the case which she became known for. This sort of linking of every case of offensive public behaviour with what are real, and long running, issues of race and gender equality serve only to perpetuate a mentality of 'us and them' and undermine real cases of racism and sexism that still occur around the world on a regular basis.

Indeed. I would say this makes the issue even more difficult to deal with. As you say, people who weren't even reporting directly to her maintained the code of silence over breaching email account rules. If memebers of the government themselves aren't going to be whistleblowers then how can the use of personal accounts be monitored?

Yes, but that is self regulation. I think the point here is that, short of having convenient Romanian hackers break into the personal accounts of high ranking officials from time to time to update us, the state and the public have no way of knowing if they are using personal accounts for some of their communication. The only way to get around this would be to actively monitor all web activity by these officials to ensure that the National Archives are fully aware of all pertinent communication through any channel. Obviously this poses serious questions about privacy for public officials, but if they take a position of public office and have been shown to be deliberately subverting the system in place to keep them accountable, then perhaps that is what's necessary?

I agree, but in this context I think that it's a valid criticism as their business model is a sort of 'all things under one roof' delivery system that should be prepared to offer a simple delivery like this one ate a competetive price/timeframe. I'm definitely not saying that people starting a business, particularly one in a service capacity, shouldn't expect to have to adapt with growth. I suppose the main point I was making is that prior to launching you should ensure that you are fulfilling your core functionality to at least a market-comparable level.

Obviously preaching to the choir here, but it's good to see big companies, that could 'benefit' (when taking a very narrow view) from shaped net distribution, coming out in support of hardline net neutrality.

I couldn't agree more. As the co-founder of an app development company curently working on our flagship I have had a very similar experience. Although I wouldn't call myself an expert in the field it will impact (and I think some app/product/innovation ideas are going to potentially affect a field that you couldn't be an expert in without dedicating your life to it) I was surrounded by people involved in the field. I think the most important part of your article for me is being open to the idea that, with the current tools, a problem might not be fully solvable. Setting out to create something to fill a gap will just result in you imagining that a gap exists where it doesn't. Good product ideas come from the organic realisation that there is something missing from the market, and the best way to do that is to be open to the idea that apparent limitations could be the bounding box of what defines your product/app.

Fascinating idea, I would definitely read it. I think that design is often a term that is too readily equated with 'graphic' or 'product' design and dismissed as aesthetics. The reality is that we live in a human-designed world, and the idea that design doesn't have further-reaching implications than which phone you decide to buy is a great one to question. I look forward to reading it.

Indeed. If I were a prospective employer who was intereseted in your presence on Hacker News as a way to separate you from the crowd, this would not be the article that did it.

Despite the humour and, on the surface, being a story about ordering a burrito, I think this is actually a very useful 'what not to do' cautionary tale for startups. They've clearly got a concept which, on paper, sounds like a good idea. They've then rushed development and gone to market without actually testing enough to know that they can deliver (literally) what the customer wants. That kind of early0stages growing needs to hapen before the company can gain a public reputation.

I don't write code myself but my startup partner is a programmer in London who has been struggling to make ends meet for a while now. There are certainly jobs to be had, most of which pay fairly equivalent wages to most starting salaries for graduates from what I can tell. However, what he tells me is that increasingly the core programming staff of a company will often be much smaller, with most of their gruntwork done by outsourced code writers in China/India. In this sense then, not only have programmers slipped into the working class, but their jobs have been outsourced with the rest of the manufacturing industry to South East Asia in the name of globalised capitalism. I think if you are looking into the shift of gruntwork programming down the career ladder as it has become such an integral part of the global production economy, then you must look into the growth of outsourced programming.

The mind boggles at how much of a disjuncture there can be between executive management and their development teams within a development-driven sector! When will the marketing graduates realise that the web is not a magical dream-realisation machine that takes marketing speak and turns it into money?