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 may be.
If he becomes available for hire, I highly recommend him to any startup in the SF area. Its rare to find such a combination of raw talent and work ethic in one engineer.
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 themselves on that basis. But they haven't looked ahead.
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 do exactly nothing about this, unless the prototype iphone was taken off their facility without their permission. If it was then the risk is theirs. Every day there must be thousands of phones that are lost, and it's not like it's a big deal anyway. Just another incremental upgrade to a consumer device, who cares.
> 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'.
It looked different. iPhones only come in a couple designs, it's not hard to tell when it's different.
It was wearing a case that made it look like a 3GS (in a case), though. You'd have to pick it up and stare at it to realize it had an extra camera cutout, etc. You'd have to be planning to do something with the phone already (steal it, or just return it to its owner) to take that long/hard a look.
> 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.
Is the "slight upside" good enough? Apple might be less likely to let him go because of media coverage. Or maybe more likely to let him go because of media coverage.
In either case, this article is going to be the #1 Google hit for his name for years or decades. A smart manager would realise that this was a honest mistake, and he admitted to it and got Apple to remotely wipe the phone the next day, but I would not hope that most HR employees are as understanding.
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.
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.
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 Apple's biggest suppliers, committed suicide after being accused of stealing a prototype for the iPhone.
Sun Danyong, 25, was a university graduate working in the logistics department when the prototype went missing. An investigation revealed that the factory's security staff had beaten him, and he subsequently jumped to his death from the 12th floor of his apartment building."
If you want to talk about the legality and morality of Apple trying its damnedest to keep trade secrets, then what is your opinion of Apple using a supplier which beats an employee suspected of theft/loss and pushes him to suicide?
Because, (morally speaking) that is far more reprehensible than a journalist getting a scoop by acquiring a trade secret through theft.
As to the way Gizmodo treated Gary, well, it sucks that he lost it but that's life, Apple should accept that in-field testing will lead to some losses. Gizmodo couldn't have hidden his identity since presumably only one iPhone 4G has been lost.
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.
Report stuff about Apple, not about Apple engineers. I can understand if you think it's ok for Gizmodo to buy the lost/stolen iPhone (I don't agree), I absoluly can't understand how you can think it is ok for Gizmodo to drag Gray into the public.
Seeing the name-drop of the Apple engineer on Gizmodo made my jaw drop. I couldn't believe that they would do such a thing. This no doubt casts a shadow on his career and life. It's a reckless attempt by what appears to be a subpar site to make itself somewhat legitimate. In this respect, they've failed miserably.
It may have saved his job since it sounds like it really was an honest mistake and now if he's fired everyone will be on his side. There's no way Steve can fire him without looking like a heartless bastard. Google would hire him in a second and get a huge PR win.
> This no doubt casts a shadow on his career and life.
It's no doubt going to suck for him until this blows over, but it will blow over, and I doubt that his career and life will suffer too much in the long run if he just rides it out. Any rational person looking at this will think it an honest mistake that they could easily have made, as Gizmodo points out tirelessly. Apple would be crazy to fire him.
This no doubt casts a shadow on his career and life.
I think you're overestimating the impact this has. People generally don't remember a name in an article they read at some website some time ago. Secondly, the number of people actually reading this is quite small. For instance, suppose someone lost a Nokia prototype in the same way and the engineer later applied to Apple. How large is the chance that the responsible guy at Apple HR would have heard the story and remembered the name?
Sorry, but you're completely wrong about this. Anyone searching his name for the next 50 years will find this amongst the top 10 unless he ends up with the web presence of someone like Leo Laporte or Joel Spolsky (or someone with the same name does).
The question is not whether hiring managers will find out about this - they will - it's whether they'll care.
All the chap did was accidentally leave his phone in a bar. Presumably he had it out for dog-fooding style testing. Gray Whoever (I've forgotten already) is hardly a name that will live in infamy.
Unless the next time we see him is in a grainy beheading video featuring Steve Jobs wielding a large machete.
All this 'OMG STOLEN' drama is totally over the top - I think some people are just looking for an angle at which to get outraged at a newsworthy product leak.
All this 'OMG STOLEN' drama is totally over the top
+1 for that.
I haven't even looked at the Gizmodo page in question. That's not for any moral outrage, but because I just don't care. A new Apple product is not going to change my life by one iota. Hearing about an Apple product under development makes even less difference to me.
I have to say: Apple's marketing -- and this is part of it, make no mistake, even if it was precipitated by accident -- are the masters. That they can get the press into such a tizzy, and have such a legion of fanboys, for nothing but a handful of tech products, is what's truly remarkable -- and makes me kind of sad.
Not for a high tech company on the cutting edge who would test their machines in public. If he worked for someone else and was now applying at Apple, would he be hired?
Not entirely true. I ask EVERYONE I interview what their biggest screw up has been career wise. If they don't have anything interesting to share, I don't want them working for me. This guy has a great story to tell and a real lesson learned.
As much as I hate to defend Gawker I don't think you can blame them for the negative impact on his career. Say what you will he is guilty of what they claim he did. I would hope future employers would be willing to look past it and realize it was an innocent mistake but they have a right to know. In the end this incident is relevant to how much you trust him with prototypes in the future.
Beyond that Gawker is a news source. It's their job to report on stories. So while it was dishonest to buy the stolen prototype this post is just reporting the story and I'm not sure it's out of the bounds of what a news organization should do.
Showing the guy's name, photo, and facebook page is gratuitous and wrong. Dude's already having the worst week of his life, and now they're splaying "this guy was the idiot who lost an iPhone prototype" all over the web? I buy that celebrities should get that treatment because they signed up for it going in[1], but this is just some average guy in a normal profession who was just trying to keep his head down.
[1] - unless your film or music career literally pre-dates Charlie Chaplin, you knew what you were getting into.
Guilty? As in, culpable? I am baffled by your willingness to burn someone at the stake for an honest mistake. Have you never misplaced anything valuable, left something behind by accident?
Also, Gawker could have easily reported on this story and kept the engineer's name private. For example, read the NY Times article re-reporting the story, you won't see the engineer's name. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/20/technology/companies/20app...
No. I've never misplaced something that could cost my company thousands of dollars and I'd like to believe I wouldn't be foolish enough to even bring something like that into a bar with me.
I did not ask if you ever misplaced a top secret prototype device, and quite honestly I'm a little appalled that you feel you would be above making "foolish" mistakes.
I asked if you ever misplaced anything valuable or anything that mattered to you. A wallet could be something valuable, or your keys. Most valuable, however, would be your sense of compassion, which right now you have clearly misplaced.
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).
Again, I'm not advocating he be fired because I think people should have the right to make mistakes but I find it appalling that the attitude in this comment thread has been that being drunk makes it ok to be derelict in your duties.
> 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 bidder, you'd return it to me, because otherwise I might just burn down your house with you in it :)
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?
> the attitude in this comment thread has been that being drunk makes it ok to be derelict in your duties
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.
> 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?
There is a vast difference between believing that the guy did nothing wrong and believing that he didn't deserve to get his identity made public even though he made a serious mistake. I think most people responding here would understand if Apple decided to fire the guy, as he was clearly negligent. What many of us are upset with is Gizmodo's revealing of his name which will cause the guy harm that's far in excess of the severity of his mistake.
I agree. They had their story. At worst but acceptable they could have said that it was an Apple employee. They completely went over the line by naming said employee.
The question they should have asked themselves first was: "Does naming this person CONTRIBUTE to the story?" This is clear Journalism 101. The answer was and is clearly "no." The best line of defense for them is they have none.
Sometimes I hate the internet and its cache. This is one of those times. Anyone can ruin anyone. The really good news is that it appears he has many people on his side.
There's a big difference between making a mistake, and having that mistake sprayed across the internet for all to see.
Less and less difference. This is an outlier at the moment, but having your entire life, mistakes and all, laid out for anyone to view... that's just going to be normal.
Simply put once a news source starts omitting facts based on what they think is relevant that's the beginning of the end. News sources should report the facts in as complete a fashion as they are capable of doing. To do otherwise is to open the door to abuse. What's to stop a reporter from leaving a friend out of a story while reporting his coworkers were involved in some malfeasance? In that case the coworkers then look more guilty in comparison to their unmentioned friend who appears innocent because he wasn't reported in the story. That's just one example of how omitting facts can lead to dishonesty in reporting
Omitting irrelevant facts is the whole point of news publishers in the informaton age. You don't pay them to find information, you pay them to filter information.
The mistake you make is in assuming your judgement of what is irrelevant is sacrosanct. Again I give an example...
Let's say a Conservative reporter is in Iraq and for whatever reason he's the only reporter allowed there. Let's say he finds out that there were no WMD but says to himself "That's irrelevant because President Bush thought there were WMD so there's no reason for me to report on that". Would that be right?
Of course not. But the reason we have rules against reporters using their judgement to omit details is because it leads to situations like the above.
Now back to this situation. I'm not saying this is true I'm just putting forth a possibility. That said what if this is a person who serially does things like this? What if he could be linked to several leaks over the past few years? Wouldn't his name be relevant then? But how could you know if that was the case if reporters decided to omit his name every time he was involved? That's just one example of how this one fact that you think is irrelevant could in fact be very relevant
There are many journalists in Iraq. And you know why that is? Because if there were only one of them, he might make wrong judgments. Yeah, there might be wrong judgments when humans are involved, no one could disagree with that. The way out, however, is not to force journalists to report everything, the way out is to make sure there are always a good many journalists writing about the same stuff.
Journalists have to make judgments all the time, they have to decide which parts of a story are important and which parts are irrelevant. If they didn’t do that – if they weren’t allowed to do that – they wouldn’t do their job. Reporting whatever you hear and see is not what being a journalist means.
You can have nice arguments about which judgments are the right ones, which are the wrong ones. Saying that Gizmodo should just report whatever they know is not such a argument.
(You actually start to make the right kind of argument in your last paragraph which is nice but I don’t see how there is any evidence at all that hints at the scenario you are describing. There are always many things which are possible but that’s hardly a convincing argument. Evidence is what’s needed.)
Note please, that the New York Times [1] doesn’t mention the name. Apple engineer is all they write.
The question is whether naming the guy contributed anything to the story and was in the public interest, or whether it was a purely vindictive action by Gizmodo. Considering the fact that the main story is the existence of the prototype and that it's authenticity has already been confirmed by Apple's response, I'd say it was the latter. Revealing the guy's identity added nothing to the story, unlike in your example where the lack of WMDs would be the story.
Gizmodo have chosen to not only imperil this guy's current job with Apple but also his future career prospects. First by providing a market for stolen Apple secrets and being a willing buyer and publisher of the prototype and its details and second by splashing his name all over the internet. Count me amongst those who will boycott Gizmodo and all other Gawker sites from now on.
I believe the press has the freedom to print whatever they want so long as they are following first amendment rights. I feel neutral to the entire situation. Of course it's crappy that the guy's identity was outed but at the same time it was completely within Gizmodo's rights to do so. For that I am voting you backup.
There are laws against reporting those names for that very reason. Because there is an ethical obligation by reporters to report all the facts and we as society have decided reporting those details isn't acceptable so we restrict them from reporting those details. Just as we do with the names of children.
But the very existence of those laws proves the point I was making which is that reporters should be bound to report all details. Not the other way around
So we've established that there is a continuum between reporting all the facts and reporting none of them. As we've said, legally reporters are bound to stand at one point on this continuum (report most facts, but no names of abuse victims, no names of children in the police blotter, etc). It is a reasonable belief that ethically reporters are bound to stand at another point closer to reporting less facts, including omitting the name of someone who lost company property.
There's no proving or disproving points here, as you seem to think. It is a valid belief that ethically the name of the engineer should not have been reported. You might not share this belief, but it is a valid belief to have and it cannot be disproved. Your ethics are simply different.
I don't buy this. His name is not news. It is not important. If they just said "young Apple engineer" the news value of the whole thing would be exactly the same. If somebody that the public cares about loses an iPhone, the name is news. If it is just a random person, well the news value of the actual name is almost none.
Actual responsible journalists often withhold names of ordinary people that get into news stories if disclosure would be embarrassing or damaging for those people. For example, the names of people that are accused of crimes are usually not disclosed by journalists until these people have been charged. The names of people that are killed or injured in a newsworthy event are also usually not disclosed. The names of victims of sensitive crimes like rape or sexual harassment are usually not disclosed.
Of course Apple know he is the one who lost it, but now every future potential employer will also know. And again there was no reason at all for his name to have been made public.
Jeez, talk about the pot and the kettle. From a five second skim, the harm minimisation part seems pretty appropriate:
Harm limitation principle
...This principle of limitation means that some weight needs to be given to the negative consequences of full disclosure, creating a practical and ethical dilemma. The Society of Professional Journalists' code of ethics offers the following advice, which is representative of the practical ideals of most professional journalists. Quoting directly:[17]
* Show compassion for those who may be affected adversely by news coverage.
* Be sensitive when seeking or using interviews or photographs of those affected by tragedy or grief.
* Recognize that gathering and reporting information may cause harm or discomfort. Pursuit of the news is not a license for arrogance.
* Recognize that private people have a greater right to control information about themselves than do public officials and others who seek power, influence or attention. Only an overriding public need can justify intrusion into anyone's privacy.
* Show good taste. Avoid pandering to lurid curiosity.
Show compassion does not mean omit facts. In fact, the article you quote says just the opposite.
Beyond that this is not a tragedy. This is someone dealing with the consequences of their actions.
Finally publishing photos off someone's social networking site is not invading their privacy.
Again I point out that you didn't read the whole article you quoted. You zeroed in on the points that you think support your argument and ignored the rest. Maybe you should take more than five seconds and read the whole article
I think we've already established your level of reading comprehension, so I won't argue any of your points, except to say that publishing photos from someone's stolen iphone is absolutely an invasion of privacy, and how you can think otherwise beggars belief.
What reason did gizmodo have to release the identity of the engineer that lost the phone? To "prove" that their story was more real? Did they even consider what's going to happen to that guy?
Every gawker website feels like it is just barely a half step above a tabloid, and in some cases, less than that (cf, Valleywag). Behaving this petulantly is not a very good way to discourage the popular perception of bloggers, it only solidifies it.
Apple knew whose phone it was, this story doesn't harm him there at all.
It may even help prevent him from being fired or retaliated against, now that his name is public.
It could help or hurt with future employers, but I'd guess on balance it helps. Probably won't be trusted with prototypes again, but that was going to be the case either way.
Not to defend gizmodo, they seem pretty borderline in the whole thing.
Just because they added a few sympathetic lines to their post doesn't mean they actually give a shit about what happens to the guy. They had no altruistic motivations in releasing his name. They did it for page views (i.e. money).
I don't see how this helps keep him from getting fired at all. Apple knew it was missing. They knew who lost it. They knew all this at least a week ago since Gizmodo claimed to have had it that long. If they were going to fire him, they already would have. (Maybe they already did?)
Gizmodo isn't the reason that the owner of the phone will be caught. First of all, he lost it, so it's originally his fault. Second of all, it was remotely wiped, which implies that Apple knew what had happened to the device and they knew exactly which device it was so that they could wipe it. Third of all, there were clear shots of the backside of the phone which had several serial numbers, most likely linking it to its owner for Apple's purposes.
Came here to say this. If Gizmodo truly burned this guy then yes, they are way out of line, but in this case it seems pretty obvious to me that Apple knew who lost their phone a week ago when this all started.
The proof is in the first paragraph of almost every article on every site covering this story. The phone was remote wiped the next morning.
You can all put down your pitchforks now. Let's wait and see what actually happens before nailing someone to a cross.
Gizmodo could have written nearly the same exact article without mentioning his name and without showing his photo. It would have gotten nearly the same amount of pageviews. It was very, very cruel of them to do such a thing when they gained so little by doing so.
Gizmodo's attitude is making me sick. All of these articles have such a "haha, gotcha!" attitude towards Apple (and especially Gray) for no reason at all. Apple is secretive about their products, so what? You got the prototype. Take the photos and report on it. There's no reason to divulge all this information about Gray. Apple knew who lost the phone already, since they were able to wipe it remotely. Their snide remarks and attitude in both http://gizmodo.com/5520479/a-letter-apple-wants-its-secret-i... and http://gizmodo.com/5520438/how-apple-lost-the-next-iphone make me feel as if the Gizmodo writing staff consists entirely of 8th graders.
They very possibly did the guy a favor exposing his identity not only to insulate him from hasher retribution but also as pretty clear evidence it was an innocent mistake. No one would leave their identity on the device if they had personally conspired to sell it on the black market. I don't think it's that big of a deal. If the device was being field tested Apple was accepting the risk of theft/loss. If it had been an iPad 2 months before it's announcement maybe but it's just an expected refresh of an established product. Not the end of the world. Apple's software folks leaked the existence of the front facing camera in the SDK months ago. Apple's competitors won't gain anything with a 2 month advance knowledge of the 4th generation design.
Back here in reality, I would just like to take the opportunity to shout out, _BIG FUCKING DEAL_. They're working on a new version of the arguably most successful consumer electronic in history. WHO KNEW? It uses all the latest technology. WOW! It looks... SLIGHTLY DIFFERENT! Stop the presses and notify the President!!
I am tired of Apple acting treating it's product pipeline like it's the fucking Iranian nuclear program, of the blogs and MSM gobbling it up by the fistful, of these fools who buy into this idiocy and waste minutes, hours, days sitting in line for the newest iProduct. Really? You're going to post a 5 minute video of you unboxing an iPad? Certainly there are more pressing issues confronting mankind.
How much money in PR do you have to spend to make up for the "disappointing" events because everyone already saw the phone. This is not some little matter of secrecy, this is big money. It also affects the media that covers Apple events. They lose money because they don't get the page views.
No one is going to care in 3 months when this is released. Apply fanbois will still be wetting their pants to be the first on line when it comes out. In the meantime, the media that are going to "lose money" are actually getting an advance.
Ayway, since when is it everyone else's responsibility to keep Apple's secrets secret so the media can get more page views?
I think it's probably a big deal to their competitors, too - although the coverage was thing on technical details, there are some internal pictures with part numbers on a few components too. If we were competing to sell almost identical products, you would probably prefer me not to get my hands on the debug version.
The iPhone 3G design leaked more than 2 months before it's launch also although there was no concrete proof it was real. I know Apple stokes the hype to its maximum value but hopefully they're also realistic and don't punish this guy too harshly. It's the 4th generation of a product. No real surprises here.
If Apple would fire him over this, they probably would (or did?) fire him a week or so ago when it first went missing and got remote-wiped. The fact that it was later found and he was publicly humiliated shouldn't change anything in this case - they already knew it was lost and they knew this situation was a real possibility. If they hadn't fired him yet, I don't see how it makes sense to fire him now that someone found and published it. It's not like he could control who happened to find it.
If they fire him now, it's CYA. "A prototype has gone missing" might get Steve Jobs or Jon Ive or whoever fretting, but "the fourth generation iPhone is sitting in Gizmodo's office" has to be resulting in legendary anger from the top floor, and I can totally see the manager saying "we canned the guy and we tightened our testing restrictions" to placate upper-level anger.
I don't see how this does either of those things. On insulating him, it's not like Apple ever cared what public opinion was. They just spent the last week basically pushing back against their own developers. So if they want to fire him they'll do it public opinion be damned.
As for proving it was an innocent mistake. I don't think it does that either. If I were an Apple engineer and I just sold the newest iPhone prototype I'd ask the news site that broke the story to claim it was someone else too. Plus, it's gawker media so most believe they would be dishonest enough to lie about their source.
I'm not saying that's what he did but if I was already suspicious of him that story wouldn't make any difference.
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.
More accurately, he's effectively saying he's willing to look up the personal voting record of users who complain about the output of the voting algorithm.
Sounds like a perfectly hackerish thing to do. PG looked into whether the problem was with his algorithm or with the user. Turns out, PEBKAC.
There's a big difference between 'monitoring' the personal voting record of users and being able to look it up in the server logs to back up a claim. I doubt that pg would carelessly disclose the voting records of users without their permission (or even with it).
Actually I think it would be fascinating to view the voting records of everybody. Maybe in a log file and then numerous people could analyse the data. I'm sure some interesting patterns would emerge. Nice to go over it in 5 or 10 years time when some of the factual disagreements have been settled.
I think a lot of people don't realize how few users are needed to get a story to the front page. A story often only needs 3-5 votes to do so, giving your one vote a large amount of power. Voting a story from 100 to 101 doesn't really matter, but voting from 3 to 4 is often the difference between the story dying and staying on the front page for several hours.
The 'new' pages are a pretty dire sight (yes, I occasionally submit stuff, and even go there without submitting). One gets that Augean stables feel, but the guy who cleaned them up was a demigod.
I actually signed up here, after just reading for a few years, because I thought the site was good and I could help a bit, instead of leaving quietly when it soured.
I have two suggestions:
- Put up a minimum threshold for submitting and voting.
- Charge a fraction of a point for votes; perhaps with a daily maximum. Erode karma stashes.
Thanks for the site, and best wishes any way you play it.
A possible idea for improving that: Maybe it might make sense to allow users above a certain reputation threshold to vote stories down? Or even just limit story voting to people above a certain threshold.
What good newspapers, periodicals, etc have in common is very good editors that set the overall tone. The crowd, on the other hand tends to go for the sensational, populist and mediocre consensus. I appreciate all your efforts to evolve HN to try and avoid that though.
I've thought of making a Greasemonkey script to accomplish just that. I spend much less time here since it's turned into a Digg-like extension of their PR machine.
I completely feel for the guy. I've been trusted with a few prototype phones in my life, in most cases prototypes from companies I didn't directly work for. I once left one behind in a bar in Idaho Springs Colorado (a Sony Ericsson P910 I think)... this at a time that a phone like that was an absolute marvel (particularly in the U.S.).
Thankfully in my case whoever found it was a saint. I called, the bar had it and I picked it up. End of story. I'm a pretty responsible guy, I just screwed up that one time.
I wish this had all ended the same way for this guy.
Aside from whether Gawker was right or not to name Gray, it's reasons like this why I will never work in such a secretive environment like Apple.
It's not that I can't keep a secret, of course I can. But I think it is asking a lot of someone to take a development/unreleased phone into the wild that could be worth $millions to Apple and make sure it doesn't get lost.
Before someone says "Well he didn't have to take it to the bar" - well hold on. As a product manager myself, I know first hand how important it is to spend a large amount of time test-driving your product and eating your own dog food.
To get really good ideas and feedback on a device like an iPhone, it probably is required to take it outside of the office and actually use it "in the wild".
I just don't think I would want to shoulder such responsibility, esp as we can now see the public fallout from loosing it. You can imagine the private fallout that is also occurring right now for Gray.
Some jobs are just not worth having, and maybe this is Apple asking too much of its engineers and product people.
There are two big problems with all this fretting over Gray:
1) Um, he was allowed to leave the Infinite Loop campus (or wherever he works) with the phone -- indeed, was presumably supposed to. The risks of accidental lossage are a calculated risk that Apple took a long time ago.
2) Is there any indication whatsoever that his mojo at Apple has been harmed? If it has, that speaks far worse of Apple than it does of him.
I'm not sure Mr. Powell is paying attention to the continued coverage. If he is, I'd like to offer a couple of words of encouragement.
I think Mr. Powell is the only one in this story who stands on firm moral ground. He made a simple, honest mistake. All indicators point that he behaved courageously, presumably coming forward and admitting the device is missing since Apple shut it down remotely the next day. Yes, Apple management will be upset and may decide to let Mr. Powell go, but he has fulfilled his professional obligations to Apple and shown considerable courage in doing so. Future employers hiring intelligently should realize that their employers will make costly mistakes and someone who has demonstrated he openly takes responsibility and is willing to work to fix the damage they've done should be a valuable asset.
The actions of the person who found the phone are morally dubious. I don't see how you could possibly justify "playing around" with a phone you have just found while presumably waiting to return it to its owner. If this person is interested in defending their actions I'd like some proof that they did not shy away from contact with Mr. Powell (I assume he tried calling his own phone when he found out it was missing) and that they did in fact call Apple trying to get through to someone. I would also like an argument justifying their disclosure of Mr. Powell's personal details to Gizmodo when handing over the device. Something in the whole story seems a little fishy.
Gizmodo has clearly overstepped their bounds by publishing personal details about Mr. Powell. It is clear they are getting traffic and therefore benefitting from doing so at the expense of Mr. Powell. It is also clear that this is mere gossip and therefore of no journalistic value.
Apple is a large, public technology company. Applying moral or ethical principles in their case is nonsensical. What I can say for sure is that the leaked content may not have as huge of an adverse effect as perhaps anticipated. I already know a number of people who are committed to buying the new device when it comes out. I know, Steve Jobs doesn't get to announce it and blow everyone's minds at the keynote, but apart from that there may not be much harm.
Last thing. Let's have a little bit of perspective here. We're talking about a phone. And yet we have a person possibly stealing personal property, violating someone's privacy by looking at content on the phone, selling the device and the personal information to a media outlet, who then publishes both publicly, undermining Mr. Powell's career. All of this so that we get to find out about a new phone a little bit earlier. I haven't fleshed out a lot of the ethical details in my head yet, but this seems like a lot of tech geek douchebaggery.
I never claimed they broke the law. I claimed they overstepped ethical bounds accepted in professional journalism. Arguments about why they did can be found elsewhere in the thread.
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.
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's interest goes, their stock skidded 1% this morning on opening, although it'll probably bounce back up when they release their earnings statement later today.
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".
[...] (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.
I actually did the same. I rarely get disgusted enough to resort to censorship, but Denton's craven, smug pageview whoring is just begging for the ban hammer.
Also, putting comments down for the day reminded me that Gawker Media is nothing without comments.
If you say to your enemy, "I won't help you say nasty things about me, and I won't permit you to say them on my property", that is completely within your rights. That is not censorship.
It's only censorship if the government is doing it, and that's something we cannot allow - it's a violation of individual rights if the government prevents you from speaking your mind to a friend or using your property to communicate with many people.
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.
I hadn't heard about this incident until I read this link, and had to google Gray Powell. This, at least in my case, caused some more attention to Gizmodo, rather than less.
This is absurd. Gizmodo owes no apology. They're journalists (however loosely) 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.
They've been pretty clear the whole time that it was an honest mistake on the guy's part. Could happen to anyone. They most certainly did not smear the guy at all. I don't think they were rude about it at all, they were reporting the facts.
In fact I'd say they were overly generous. Why the hell was he carrying a top secret iPhone prototype to a place that exists solely to get you drunk? He was careless, and it was his fault. If I were Apple, I wouldn't fire him, as I'm sure he won't do that again, and I generally don't believe in firing people for making mistakes. That's how you learn, and we all do it. But he'd not be taking any prototypes off-campus for a long time.
I mean, the guy left an iPhone prototype at a bar. That's like a CIA agent leaving a map to Osama Bin Laden's hideout at a McDonalds. A large part of his job is to not lose the prototype iPhone, and he failed. To blame it on a bar-goer is absolutely ridiculous.
The guy who found the thing allegedly tried to give it back. He's a better guy than me, I would have called up Microsoft, Engadget, and PC Magazine and had an auction.
Apple's institutionalized dickishness (further proof that corporate culture comes directly from it's leaders' personalities) actually prevented him from being honest. They deserved what they got on this one.
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 generous.
I'd say they ought to be reading up on laws governing receipt of stolen property.
They deserved what they got on this one.
Yes, as we all know: two wrongs will always make a right.
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 no less relevant who dropped the iPhone than who leaked Valerie Plame's name.
They didn't go out of their way to shame him. They didn't say "he check out what this donkey did, I sure hope he gets fired for it". They in fact mentioned many times that it could happen to anyone.
It's quite relevant who did it because it gives you a picture of how it happened. It's also a great look into Apple's closely-guarded secrecy. Who would have suspected that engineers are taking next-gen phones to bars?
It's also standard operating procedure in journalism to name who.
The reaction against this is nothing more than "there but for the grace of God go I" which is not a valid reason to call for an apology. It's not that Gizmodo did anything wrong, which they clearly didn't, at least not in naming him. (Perhaps buying the phone crossed a legal or ethical line, but that was clearly not OP's problem.)
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 the person who lost it. Contrast with the Plame case, where the central question was who leaked the information and why; your assertion simply doesn't hold up.
They in fact mentioned many times that it could happen to anyone.
Which supports the thesis that the identity of the specific person it happened to is irrelevant to the story.
It's also standard operating procedure in journalism to name who.
When it's relevant or adds to the understanding of the story, yes. You've not explained how it meets either of those criteria, though.
So I'll lay out the question clearly: what do we gain, in terms of understanding this story, from having the guy's name repeatedly tossed out for ridicule, that we wouldn't have without it?
It's not that Gizmodo did anything wrong, which they clearly didn't, at least not in naming him.
It's quite clear that they did several things wrong. This wasn't good journalism; it wasn't ethical; parts of it quite probably weren't legal. If you can't see the problems here, I'm not sure how much more clearly I can explain.
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.
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.
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).
Did they change their article? I only saw it a couple of hours ago and it seemed pretty soft towards him.. going as far as to say it wasn't really an onerous fault and that he shouldn't be fired for making a simple mistake. It certainly didn't seem negative enough to create the shitstorm currently going on here and on Twitter..
Duh! Thank you for wasting your time to answer me. I have no idea why that didn't register. So now anything on his network will fail to load those URL's; rather I was thinking there was something larger at play that was going to be disruptive beyond his local. Don't ask why I was assuming this.
I bet that the guy that lost the wallet, the stranger that found it and the guy that put the picture of said girlfriend up on the interwebs, are now having beers in that very same bar payed for by the girlfriend.
The Gawker network (which includes Gizmodo) is run by well known scumbag Nick Denton. He's a leech and a bottom feeder. Don't hold your breath waiting for anything positive out of him.
Describing actions that Nick Denton did that you didn't like would advance this discussion, but I don't see any value in name-calling. I really don't like these sorts of comments on Hacker News.
Those quotation marks don't mean what you think they do. I wrote that he was a "well known scumbag" and (separately) "a leech and bottom feeder". Listing his primary attributes like you did would be totally out of line.
Anyway, my comments would stand up in court. Truth is an absolute defense. Nick Denton is infamous. Google him. He runs such gems as Valleywag, Gawker, and Defamer. Self identifies as a "gossip merchant" and the title of his own web site is "Nick Denton: The long and illustrious history of bile", which is entirely accurate.
Ok, i agree that the name shouldn't have been mentioned.
But that's a lot fuzz. It's not like Apple doesn't know he lost his phone. So, if he is to face consequences, than it's with or without the article.
Seeing that Gizmodo called him, they probably even asked for the permission?
I can even imagine that companies are contacting him now, in case he loses his job (who doesn't want to hire an engineer who works on the next gen iphone).
Much as it's not cool of Gizmodo to drag this guys name on to the front pages I think everyone engaged in the Apple rumour mill is culpable in this, especially Apple themselves.
Gruber over at Daring Fireball basically called Gizomodo out by implying the phone was stolen. Apple love taunting the fan boys with the secrecy and ratcheting up the tension - this is the result.
Might be better to use an ip address that won't actually point to a machine. Pointing arbitrary names to localhost is probably 99.999 percent safe... but better fully safe than sorry. rfc3330 mentions example ip addresses that are reserved for documentation purposes. Might be able to use those.
if gizmodo had not outed him, it could have been successfully sued for theft. Apple considers the phone stolen - an excuse given by powell to obviously save his ass - and had giz not explained the events as to how they got the phone - they would have got screwed. So yeah, everyone makes mistakes - but you've got to learn from them :)
So you're saying that because Gizmodo published some text on a blog that their version of the story is now more true than Gary's may have been? You're assuming Gary didn't simply tell Apple the truth when he lost it. Why?
All else aside, calling the person who turned the phone over to Gizmodo a thief might amount to slander, so Craig should be careful. This would be something for a court to decide: e.g. http://data.opi.mt.gov/bills/mca/45/6/45-6-302.htm . Note "permanently".
It's not a secret that when you find lost property you either leave it with the establishment in case the owner comes back looking for it, contact the owner directly or, failing that, take it to the police. Instead of doing that, he took it home, took it apart and sold it to gizmodo.
You must be new to the internet, the phone leaked, the story of how it happened leaked, it was only a matter of time before the name of the guy leaked, gizmodo or not, it's obvious that many people knew who it was.
No, it's not obvious. Who knew? Do you know the guy that sold them the phone for $10K? It's Gizmodo that we hate — they are suppose to be journalists of some sorts, not bunch of kids on 4chan to which the poor standards you described indeed apply.
Apple has been known to do planned leaks when it suited them. (The iPad leak during CES is an excellent example) but its usually just letting a friendly reporter know a few details from the specs, not 'accidentally' leaving a phone at a bar or anything like that.
But they don't release the names of people like this. I took a journalism ethics class taught by the news manager of a local ABC affiliate, they would never run a story like this. This is beyond disgusting.
Most TV news programs are also not serious journalism organizations, unfortunately. Also worth noting that when they do checkbook journalism, they're usually quite sneak about it. For example, paying someone under the pretense of buying rights to their photographs or paying their travel expenses. That's because even they know it's wrong to pay sources/subjects outright.
I can't believe how many of you are so wrong about this. Gizmodo is in business to make money. They just made a lot of it and their article revealing the hardware, which i'm waiting for, will make more.
The engineer is newsworthy. He contributes to the facts of the story. If you want to be angry with someone how about the person who found the phone?
The person who knew the name of the owner and still sold the phone to the tabloid. The person who had to click two virtual buttons to be talking to someone who knew the owner and and could get the phone back to him. The person who could have Facebook messaged the owner and returned the phone. But he didn't. He sold a piece of obviously lost property to a tabloid.
He probably could have gotten a much nicer reward from apple anyway considering their market cap these days.
This outrage is misplaced and the example he uses comparing the iPhone to a naked picture is ludicrous.
Of all the attacks we have against people's personal character by blogs and the old and new media, attaching this guy's name to the phone he lost is practically nothing.
It's just business, not some attack on his character. As an employee of Apple, Gray Powell represents Apple. His name is part of the story. Due to a mistake of his Gizmodo scored a huge coup and got their hands on an unreleased iPhone and a big story. Good for them.
Gizmodo not only ruined it for Apple and the engineer, it also ruined the fun for Apple fans like myself anxiously looking forward to the rumored-filled days just before the next device unveiling in June. :-/
All the discussion, rumoring, and conjecturing make the platform fun. A few guys take it seriously, but I think most of us just like to play in it for fun.
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 may be.
If he becomes available for hire, I highly recommend him to any startup in the SF area. Its rare to find such a combination of raw talent and work ethic in one engineer.