An apology... • Hacker News Board

Re: An apology...

#181

Post by anigbrowl » Tue, Apr 20, 2010, 10:24 PM UTC

tghw wrote: post #170

anigbrowl wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is (IMO, IANAL) illegal to pay money, record or share details of, or derive commercial gain (via disseminating the story) from something that constitutes a trade secret. http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/usc_sec_18_00001832----... I am not convinced a free speech defense obviates this. While people are clearly interested by their report, that's not the same as it being 'in the public interest'. As far as Apple'…

Other companies get products leaked all the time, and no one blinks an eye. I really think Apple will have a tough time calling the verification of existence of an upcoming product "trade secrets".

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode18/usc_sec_18_0...

[...] (3) the term “trade secret” means all forms and types of financial, business, scientific, technical, economic, or engineering information, including patterns, plans, compilations, program devices, formulas, designs, prototypes, methods, techniques, processes, procedures, programs, or codes, whether tangible or intangible, and whether or how stored, compiled, or memorialized physically, electronically, graphically, photographically, or in writing if— (A) the owner thereof has taken reasonable measures to keep such information secret;[...]

You could argue over subclause (a) but I think that the concealment inside a existing iPhone case would count. Certainly when Gizmodo obtained it they knew what they were buying.

Re: An apology...

#182

Post by eventhough » Tue, Apr 20, 2010, 10:26 PM UTC

bad_user wrote: post #109

TomOfTTB wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a difference between what is valuable to me and what is valuable to someone else (like my company). Yes I've misplaced things that are valuable to me but when I did I only hurt myself. I did not have an obligation to someone else that I did not fulfill. This engineer had an obligation to his company that he disregarded and his only excuse is "I was drunk and thoughtless" (which really isn't an excuse at all).…

> Yes I've misplaced things that are valuable to me but when I did I only hurt myself. What a responsible human being you are. You probably don't have kids though :) People lose their kids in places like supermarkets all the time ... I haven't (yet) but it's a possibility (because kids by definition don't stay put) and I'd appreciate that if you found my child instead of stealing it from me to sell it to the highest…

> People lose their kids in places like supermarkets all the time ... I haven't (yet) but it's a possibility (because kids by definition don't stay put) and I'd appreciate that if you found my child instead of stealing it from me to sell it to the highest bidder, you'd return it to me, because otherwise I might just burn down your house with you in it :)

Please, let's not compare our children with iPhones. Maybe choose a better analogy?

> Yeah, it's a bad analogy because for most people a phone is not equal to a child, but for passionate engineers the line is kind of blurry, isn't it?

Yes, it is a bad analogy, so why did you use it? If you are going to claim that passionate engineers equate products to living humans, at least qualify that by saying "a small proportion".

> No, the attitude is that it's not OK to steal property, even if that person you're stealing from is drunk ... and to make matters worse the buyer also made the story public, for no public good whatsoever.

The guy who had the phone tried to return it. He did more than most people would. On top of that, he was unable to get any contact information off the phone because they wiped it.

Yes he could have returned it to the bar but who knows how trustworthy those bar owners are?

Re: An apology...

#183

Post by anigbrowl » Tue, Apr 20, 2010, 10:31 PM UTC

mattmaroon wrote: post #171

ubernostrum wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're journalists (however loosely) If by "loosely" you mean "not at all", then I'd agree. and a journalist's job is to report the W's, including the who. It's a relevant fact, and one of great interest, how an iPhone prototype wound up lost at a bar. It's a relevant fact that it was lost at a bar. Publicly shaming the individual, though? Doesn't add a damn thing to the story. In fact I'd say they were overly gener…

Gizmodo is much closer to journalism than anything else in the Gawker network, though that's obviously a "skinniest kid at fat camp" compliment. I won't say I'm a fan, but they do some good work on occasion. Sometimes solid reporting causes shaming, such as when someone does something wrong. It's unavoidable, if occasionally regrettable. Shaming is not unethical in that respect, it's simply exposition of facts. It's…

It's also standard operating procedure in journalism to name who.

...unless he just sold you something that should have been handed in to the police or Apple, apparently.

Re: An apology...

#184

Post by eventhough » Tue, Apr 20, 2010, 10:33 PM UTC

junelin wrote: post #5

Press does what press does. It was his fault for being irresponsible.

I am voting you up because I agree with your comment.

Re: An apology...

#185

Post by 9oliYQjP » Tue, Apr 20, 2010, 10:54 PM UTC

qeorge wrote: post #153

nearestneighbor wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The engineer in question is a good friend of several of us here at HN. Do you mean that literally, or similar to "Ich bin ein Berliner"? If the former, that's a rather incredible coincidence, wouldn't you say?

Yes, I mean it literally. And no, not really a coincidence - he's got a lot of friends.

I honestly think Steve Jobs should make light of the situation and have your friend walk the production version of the new iPhone onto the stage at June's keynote. It was the plastering of this guy's poor face and name across their site that pushed me over the edge into boycotting Gizmodo. Didn't they run around at Comdex a few years back randomly turning off displays with one of those IR tv blasters? We are talking about a bunch of immature douchebags here.

Re: An apology...

#186

Post by mattmaroon » Tue, Apr 20, 2010, 11:00 PM UTC

ubernostrum wrote: post #176

mattmaroon wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gizmodo is much closer to journalism than anything else in the Gawker network, though that's obviously a "skinniest kid at fat camp" compliment. I won't say I'm a fan, but they do some good work on occasion. Sometimes solid reporting causes shaming, such as when someone does something wrong. It's unavoidable, if occasionally regrettable. Shaming is not unethical in that respect, it's simply exposition of facts. It's…

Sometimes solid reporting causes shaming, such as when someone does something wrong. It's unavoidable, if occasionally regrettable. Shaming is not unethical in that respect, it's simply exposition of facts. It's no less relevant who dropped the iPhone than who leaked Valerie Plame's name. The story in this case was that an iPhone prototype was found after being lost. The key thing here was the prototype itself, not t…

Yeah, clearly we don't agree. I take the "no stones unturned" approach to journalism. You report every fact that might be relevant and figure out (or let readers determine for themselves) what's relevant and what's not.

The story to me isn't that it was found, it's how, a big part of which is who. I'm way less interested in whether or not the next unit has a front-facing camera or micro-sim card than how Apple (a company with better IP security than anyone) had one of their prototypes end up abandoned on a bar floor.

As someone who may one day be in a position where I'm developing a product that requires secrecy, I want to know this stuff. All of it. I want to know how Apple keeps their secrets so closely guarded, and especially want to know points of failure.

It's clearly not as important as government intelligence leaks, but who leaked is no less relevant to it's own story. I want to know who dropped the iPhone, because who the hell has the next gen iPhone? And who would be careless enough with such a thing to get drunk at a bar and leave it there?

It's very interesting that he's in his mid 20's for instance. That tells me more about their organization than I previously knew, including that people way lower on the totem pole than I would have guessed are walking around with prototypes. (Or were anyway, that may have changed.)

Also I meant they didn't do anything wrong by naming him. They may have done other things wrong (buying the phone perhaps). I'm not an attorney by any means, and I'd guess neither are most if not all of the people here speculating about legalities. I'm not particularly interested in that, though I can see why some would be.

And as far as the birthday thing, that's why I said "loosely". It's moderately amusing that the guy lost it on his b-day, but by far the least interesting part. That's just good old Gawker flogging a dead horse and milking page views.

Re: An apology...

#187

Post by ubernostrum » Wed, Apr 21, 2010, 12:36 AM UTC

mattmaroon wrote: post #186

ubernostrum wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes solid reporting causes shaming, such as when someone does something wrong. It's unavoidable, if occasionally regrettable. Shaming is not unethical in that respect, it's simply exposition of facts. It's no less relevant who dropped the iPhone than who leaked Valerie Plame's name. The story in this case was that an iPhone prototype was found after being lost. The key thing here was the prototype itself, not t…

Yeah, clearly we don't agree. I take the "no stones unturned" approach to journalism. You report every fact that might be relevant and figure out (or let readers determine for themselves) what's relevant and what's not. The story to me isn't that it was found, it's how, a big part of which is who. I'm way less interested in whether or not the next unit has a front-facing camera or micro-sim card than how Apple (a com…

Yeah, clearly we don't agree. I take the "no stones unturned" approach to journalism.

Well, here's the thing. I work at a ("traditional"; been publishing papers since the 19th century) news organization and I actually have the word "journalist" in my job title (how that replaced "developer" is a story for another thread). I spend as much time working with reporters and editors these days as I spend working with coders (unfortunately, much of it in meetings, but such is life). So I've ended up with a lot of exposure to a a particular, I guess somewhat conservative, perspective on journalism, and that's what I'm applying when I think about how this story should be handled.

So. Find out who it was and publish some information to give context? Sure, that's useful. Ruin the guy's future as well as current career by making sure his name's permanently associated with this? No; it doesn't help the story in any way to do that. But then, Gizmodo's obviously operating on a very different definition of "journalism" (more akin to the supermarket-checkout tabloids), and it's not one that I really approve of because it ends up putting the focus on the least relevant information in order to drive up the sensationalism and the pageviews.

Re: An apology...

#188

Post by mahmud » Wed, Apr 21, 2010, 12:54 AM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #103

pg wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason the frontpage has the stories it does is because they're the ones users have voted for. If you want different stories, the solution starts with you: try voting for some. You haven't voted on any of the stories currently on the frontpage.

> You haven't voted on any of the stories currently on the frontpage. You do realize you're effective saying here that you monitor the personal voting record of users, and that you're willing to disclose that record without their permission? Also, his whole point was that he didn't vote for those stories. There may be others that he did vote for but that didn't make it to the front page because of all the apple drama…

I didn't read any negative intent to it, jacques.

Re: An apology...

#189

Post by mattmaroon » Wed, Apr 21, 2010, 1:04 AM UTC

ubernostrum wrote: post #187

mattmaroon wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, clearly we don't agree. I take the "no stones unturned" approach to journalism. You report every fact that might be relevant and figure out (or let readers determine for themselves) what's relevant and what's not. The story to me isn't that it was found, it's how, a big part of which is who. I'm way less interested in whether or not the next unit has a front-facing camera or micro-sim card than how Apple (a com…

Yeah, clearly we don't agree. I take the "no stones unturned" approach to journalism. Well, here's the thing. I work at a ("traditional"; been publishing papers since the 19th century) news organization and I actually have the word "journalist" in my job title (how that replaced "developer" is a story for another thread). I spend as much time working with reporters and editors these days as I spend working with coder…

Well, Apple undoubtedly knows who lost the phone, so his current career isn't any more ruined than it would otherwise have been. They bricked it wirelessly so it's clear they knew what happened very quickly. My guess is he received whatever disciplinary action they were going to mete out a long time ago.

One reason his name is worth publishing: to verify that this isn't a hoax, and there've been tons of hoax iPhone leaks. This all allegedly happened sometime around April first. When you say "an Apple engineer lost a phone" it's a lot less convincing than "an Apple Engineer named X" because the latter can be positively verified. In fact it sounds like people here know him (or of him at least).

Re: An apology...

#190

Post by cosmicray » Wed, Apr 21, 2010, 1:38 AM UTC

qeorge wrote: post #33

The engineer in question is a good friend of several of us here at HN. We sincerely appreciate the support he's being shown here and elsewhere around the internet. So there is no doubt: Gray is one of the smartest engineers I've ever had the pleasure of knowing, and I'm sure he feels terrible about this. Although I'm sure this is going to be one of the worst weeks of his life, he will land on his feet, wherever that…

imho, Apple should find a way to work Gray into the 4G iPhone announcement event. Maybe have him appear with the phone for Steve, that Steve 'misplaced'. Consider it a silent finger to gawker.