An apology... • Hacker News Board

Re: An apology...

#191

Post by rbanffy » Wed, Apr 21, 2010, 2:20 AM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #117

wisty wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a slight upside - Apple might not let him go because they don't want to wear any flack from the media. Still, that would put him in a pretty difficult position. Having the perception that you were kept on just to avoid PR problems isn't an ideal situation. I'd rather be sacked quietly and look for a job elsewhere, or be quietly kept on; whatever the boss though best. I'm sure that the reporters justify it to…

If Apple lets their prototypes out of the house in conditions that are 'real life' then they have to live with the fact that in 'real life' phones get lost and get stolen. What bugs me is that I can't imagine that every phone that is lost or stolen makes it's way to gizmodo, so how on earth did they find out that that phone was a prototype? Or did they really have a bunch of 'misses' before this 'hit'. Apple should d…

> I can't imagine that every phone that is lost or stolen makes it's way to gizmodo

It's not any phone. If it were a Nokia, one would have to be an expert to be sure at a quick glance it's not one of their 300+ phones currently being manufactured and it's, instead, a secret prototype.

Besides, not many people would care for a weird Nokia, Samsung, Motorola or HTC on a bar. We would, but, then, we are all nerds anyway.

Re: An apology...

#192

Post by jacquesm » Wed, Apr 21, 2010, 7:42 AM UTC

derwiki wrote: post #175

jacquesm wrote: post #99

Suggestion: add gizmodo to the HN banned domains list.

This seems sort of absurd -- I don't think HN should ban any domains. If people want to read something, it gets voted up. If they don't, it gets flagged or not upvoted. Why should the subset of users who care about this thread (I almost missed it) censor an entire domain for everyone else? If it really bothers you, write a Greasemonkey script to mask certain domains.

There is an extensive list of domains banned on HN. For the most part they're for different reasons though, but it's not like HN does not ban certain domains.

In fact, pg explicitly banned the blog of vaksel for naming someone (and that someone had in fact done something illegal). So if that was a reason for banning a domain then this should be too imo.

Re: An apology...

#193

Post by maxharris » Sun, Apr 25, 2010, 5:55 PM UTC

Robin_Message wrote: post #142

maxharris wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When their "job" comes into conflict with state laws concerning theft, moral outrage is appropriate. Gizmodo traded in property they knew was stolen (according to California state law), and that alone is enough for anyone to be angry with them. The way they treated Gray is awful and immoral (if not illegal). I won't visit their site again, and I don't think anyone else should, either (morally speaking).

I have to disagree with this conflation of laws and morals. Journalists certainly break laws; and this may have happened in this case; but I don't see how that makes them immoral. For example, the theft and sale to a newspaper of UK MPs expenses details was illegal but not widely considered immoral. I'd like to quote from [1] before continuing: "Last year, an employee at Foxconn, the Taiwanese company that is one of…

I do not conflate law with morality; they are distinct and have a definite relationship. The moral for any individual is what is in that person's long-term rational self-interest. Law is a subset - it should only extract justice in the defense of individual rights.

So correct, objective laws (good for people) must be moral. Although correct laws necessarily cannot enforce morality (instead, they must be limited to the protection of individual rights), they are limited by morality - they must not criminalize moral actions.

--

If someone came to your house and robbed you, would you just say, "Hey, that's life. People are going to rob me, so I just have to accept some losses. I'm not going to defend myself or go to the police"?

--

On to Foxconn: Yes, Apple should take responsibility for the Foxconn suicide, along with Dell and Sony, all of whom use the same factory in Shenzhen, where four more employees have since committed suicide. What does taking responsibility entail? Getting more control over Foxconn's security procedures, demanding prosecution of the particular managers that actually forced the suicides, all under threat of halting production and using a different supplier, or manufacturing in a different country if necessary.

If that doesn't work, Apple should spend some bucks and literally advertise the problem to Americans - take the moral high ground and say "we took the lead in quitting these guys, and our competitors - Dell and Sony - did not."

If they don't do this, and the people making the devices keep getting murdered (forced suicide), they lose legitimacy morally. Morality is essential in business, because without it, long-term profitability cannot be achieved.

Re: An apology...

#194

Post by nearestneighbor » Tue, May 18, 2010, 1:05 AM UTC

pg wrote: post #61

mahmud wrote: post #40

I will celebrate the day when HN front-page is not filled with Apple drama and gossip.

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.

He doesn't like any of the stories on the front page, so why is this a surprise?