I thought this excerpt was indicative of why the case is interesting beyond the secretive seal:
> The case arises from a subpoena served by the United States on the employer-rating site Glassdoor,
originally demanding identifying information about the owners of more than one hundred pseudonymous accounts
that had, it appears, been used to post reviews of a particular employer whose contracting practices were subject to a federal criminal investigation.
In an effort to compromise, the government limited its production demand to eight specified reviewers.
Glassdoor responded to that offer by proposing that it notify the users of the subpoena and provide identifying information for such of its users who were willing to be identified to the prosecutors.
After the government rejected this offer, Glassdoor moved to quash the subpoena, invoking its users’ First Amendment right to speak anonymously
but looking at just one of their projects is antithetical to harc
from Götz' writeup:
> Simply building prototypes with prototypes would not be a smart recipe for radical engineering: once in use, prototypes tend to break; thus, a toolset of prototypes would not be a very useful toolset for developing further prototypes. Bootstrapping as a process can thus only work if we assume that it is a larger process in which “tools and techniques” are developing with social structures and local knowledge over longer periods of time.
a lot of the ideas, or prototypes, in harc are half finished and or completely abandoned
sometimes an implementation's best contribution is the ancillary knowledge gained by attempting or developing
also, i think kay's presence is less 'hero worship' and more a reminder of shared goals(o) as well as a default standin
Götz's first contribution to a project in the space was to create an animation using cutouts from multiple copies of a picture of kay that were lying around
i got to know Götz and spoke to him about his time 'in the field' at HARC
you can look at your complaint from at least two perspectives
first, he is german and english is a second, or possibly third or fourth, language
as the saying goes 'there's a perfect german word for that', but in this case Götz was able to find the perfect word in a second language
second, one of his favourite revelations from his time at HARC was the inhabitants', and i argued many 'creators', nearly obsessive, nearly detrimental, preoccupation with 'naming things'
every new idea, every new prototype, every new function, every new variable needs a name and Götz would watch as the team labored over 'what to call it'
a practice that fascinated Götz and when he recalled it to the room and those of us who had been there confirmed the same preoccupations he erupted in glee
so to call out Götz for naming something exactly as it was meant to be conveyed i think would engender in him a pride of assimilating this ritual
I thought this excerpt was indicative of why the case is interesting beyond the secretive seal:
> The case arises from a subpoena served by the United States on the employer-rating site Glassdoor,
originally demanding identifying information about the owners of more than one hundred pseudonymous accounts
that had, it appears, been used to post reviews of a particular employer whose contracting practices were subject to a federal criminal investigation.
In an effort to compromise, the government limited its production demand to eight specified reviewers.
Glassdoor responded to that offer by proposing that it notify the users of the subpoena and provide identifying information for such of its users who were willing to be identified to the prosecutors.
After the government rejected this offer, Glassdoor moved to quash the subpoena, invoking its users’ First Amendment right to speak anonymously