6 ms·

The author of this has been on a crusade against Apple for years, stemming from an incident that was probably hypochondria. They've outright lied about multiple

The author of this has been on a crusade against Apple for years, stemming from an incident that was probably hypochondria. They've outright lied about multiple incidents (see https://twitter.com/shantinix/status/1433297575914971136 https://twitter.com/shantinix/status/1433297575914971136), and I would very strongly doubt any new claims made. For example, a spot check of one of the claims has them currently saying "Still, Gjovik’s limited testing returned results showing a number of the chemicals in use by Apple at ARIA including Acetone, Acetonitrile, Acetaldehyde, Benzene, 1,2-Dichloroethane, Ethanol, Ethylbenzene, Hexane, Isopropanol, Isopropyl toluene, Methylene Chloride, Toluene, and Xylene." But, in 2021 (at https://sfbayview.com/2021/03/i-thought-i-was-dying-my-apartment-was-built-on-toxic-waste/ https://sfbayview.com/2021/03/i-thought-i-was-dying-my-apart...), "I wanted to get some formal data in the brief time before I moved out, so I hired an industrial hygienist to sample the indoor air and some of the topsoil. Despite the $1,555 I had to pay for it, the results were inconclusive."

Afforess 2y ago
[flagged]
- dang 2y ago
  Posting like this will get you banned here. No more of this, please. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: your account has unfortunately been repeatedly posting comments with swipes in them. Examples: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40229264 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40229264 (May 2024) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40224510 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40224510 (May 2024) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38495066 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38495066 (Dec 2023) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35970720 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35970720 (May 2023) That's one of the things the site guidelines specifically ask you not to do, so if you'd please not do any more of that, we'd appreciate it. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit more to heart, we'd be grateful. Note that this also includes "Don't be snarky.".
chx 2y ago
Your slander doesn't mesh with the EPA report.
- murderfs 2y ago
  My "slander" is a quote from the author.
  - viraptor 2y ago
    You haven't shown the lie you claim exists. Those could be references to completely different tests. (Or not, but from the limited information we can't say either way)
    - murderfs 2y ago
      The surrounding context makes it clear that isn't the case. From the linked post: "In September 2020, Gjovik hired an industrial hygienist to test the indoor air at her apartment. She purchased an inspection, soil testing, and a two-hour sorbent tube-based TO-17 air panel. Only half the total contaminants were accounted for in the test and the California EPA informed her that testing with Summa canisters for 24 hours is superior and would have yielded better results. Still, Gjovik’s limited testing returned results showing a number of the chemicals in use by Apple at ARIA including Acetone, Acetonitrile, Acetaldehyde, Benzene, 1,2-Dichloroethane, Ethanol, Ethylbenzene, Hexane, Isopropanol, Isopropyl toluene, Methylene Chloride, Toluene, and Xylene." From the 2021 SF Bay View article: "I did try to do my own testing, but it was incredibly expensive and turned out to be insufficient. I wanted to get some formal data in the brief time before I moved out, so I hired an industrial hygienist to sample the indoor air and some of the topsoil. Despite the $1,555 I had to pay for it, the results were inconclusive. Apparently a different test – a “summa canister” – over a longer period of time would have been better. "
      - proxyon 2y ago
        This doesn't prove that she's lying. It proves that at a particular moment in time (day:hour:minute:second) she tested the air and had to spend $1500 to do it and it came up inconclusive. That doesn't align with how industrial air pollution works.
cjk2 2y ago
This is in line of when I worked in a semiconductor lab in suburban UK in the 90s. We had a couple of local residents report problems immediately even though we hadn't even started fabrication at that point. They eventually sent out a press release saying that we had moved manufacturing to Scotland. The complaints stopped instantly. The lab was running until at least 2017 with no complaints and regular inspections from local authorities. YMMV but some people are crazy. The EPA is however not. But what the EPA say and what the woman claims are disparate. Edit: to be clear I'd expect the EPA to install independently maintained monitoring equipment which is not subject to the bias of Apple or the reporter. Then collect more data!
- vineyardmike 2y ago
  > YMMV but some people are crazy. The EPA is however not. But what the EPA say and what the woman claims are disparate. To complicate it further, this woman did in fact live on top of an industrially-zone area which had industrial contamination on site. The apartments are very new (finished construction in ~2019) and they had to agree to a ton of cleanup to get permits to build. There are so many confounding factors that mean she could still have been poisoned by toxic industrial byproducts and the factor next door could still be innocent.
  - cjk2 2y ago
    Well it would require more data which is the problem, and something I outlined elsewhere. Is she the only person complaining? The case is put forward as if that is the case. If that is the case then there is little evidence to discard the null hypothesis that there's nothing wrong and either alternate hypothesis that it's the Apple facility or the previously contaminated site seem very unlikely.
    - synctext 2y ago
      > many confounding factors Indeed. May 2022 TechCruch [0] about sexism at workplace: "Privacy watchdogs in Europe are considering a complaint against Apple made by a former employee, Ashley Gjøvik, who alleges the company fired her after she raised a number of concerns, internally and publicly, including over the safety of the workplace." "At the time, Gjøvik had been placed on administrative leave by Apple after raising concerns about sexism in the workplace, and a hostile and unsafe working environment which it had said it was investigating." [0] https://techcrunch.com/2022/04/11/gobbler-complaint-europe/?guccounter=1 https://techcrunch.com/2022/04/11/gobbler-complaint-europe/?...
reaperman 2y ago
It's really hard to "catch" these things in the moment. I work in chemical plants and there are tons of huge releases of extremely toxic gases all the time, which I can often smell from my apartment. I know what they are by smell because I manufacture them myself. Proper continuous monitoring for a broad range of chemicals would cost about $1 million per monitoring station and we'd need to build them along the perimeters of each plant so that leaks can be assigned to the offending companies, and they need to be built near housing so that we know how families are being affected. That sounds expensive, but really isn't that much added cost for a $100 million to $10 billion manufacturing site. I live in the western hemisphere's largest integrated industrial complex (Freeport, TX integrated with the eastern edge of Houston as well). Note that Freeport, TX has ZERO state or federal EPA VOC analyzers which can actually detect which chemical is leaking. They can only detect "this amount of something with either {sulfur, N-O bonds, aromatic carbon rings} -- no clue what precisely though!". This is the same capability of the most advanced atmospheric pollution satellites. Completely fucking useless for an area which manufactures something like 15-20% of all USA domestic chemicals. The technology to measure individual chemicals exists, but the government isn't paying for it or installing it. The ENTIRE east side of Houston metropolitan area is dedicated to or "next door" to massive chemical manufacturing. This is an industrial area nearly equal to the area encompassing all of Seattle+Bellevue+Redmond+Renton+Tukwila. That's not including nearby housing - that's just how big the manufacturing facilities themselves are! This massive area has only THREE air quality monitors which test for these kinds of chemicals[0]. During huge major events like the ITC fire[2], they typically show no increased pollution at all, which proves that it's woefully inadequate even during big emergencies that very obviously affect breathing air quality. I lived next to leaks every day and because I worked in the plants I knew the smells - one day acrylates, next day thiols, next day hydrocarbons, etc. But all 3 monitoring sites (over 10 miles from me) showed nothing at all. Here is the one "correct" monitoring station near the chemical plants of Houston: [0]... but several of its analyzers are often offline/broken/pending maintenance. Here's a map of all the other ones: [1] Generally single/dual color dots mark "not-useful" monitoring sites which might measure only PM2.5 or Ozone, for example. The 4+ color dots are generally useful, they measure specific (large) families of chemicals so you can see very roughly what is leaking, even if it doesn't have "soot" in it. The data used by ProPublica[3] is actually far worse than the woefully inadequate data collected by TCEQ/EPA air monitoring stations -- because what ProPublica used was "self-reported" data from the chemical plants. But I know from working in them and living next to them that many leaks are never reported and many leaks are never even known internally! Our government's data collection is a travesty. ProPublica couldn't use the real air quality measurements because having 2-3 points across 1000 mi^2 is completely useless for the wind models they wanted to apply to the problem. We don't actually have any data. The government is failing us. ITC fire which blanketed houston's sky in smoke: [2] : https://tceq.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=ab6f85198bda483a997a6956a8486539 https://tceq.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id... 1: https://tceq.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=ab6f85198bda483a997a6956a8486539 https://tceq.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id... 2: https://abc13.com/deer-park-fire-2019-itc-houston-air-quality-harris-county/10097289/ https://abc13.com/deer-park-fire-2019-itc-houston-air-qualit... 3: https://www.propublica.org/nerds/visualizing-toxic-air https://www.propublica.org/nerds/visualizing-toxic-air
lurking_swe 2y ago
I'm still looking into this and forming my opinion. It's very curious how at the end of her YouTube video she mentions other residents in her building came forward and said they too were sick (numerous ER visits over 2 years), and they DIDN'T KNOW WHY, until they saw her expose in the newspaper. That seems to counter your hypochondria theory, no? see: https://youtu.be/pGK4_sR1CvY?si=KEK9xh0mUEStV76-&t=2680 https://youtu.be/pGK4_sR1CvY?si=KEK9xh0mUEStV76-&t=2680
- BoredPositron 2y ago
  You can’t really use a questionable source to verify the same source.
  - lurking_swe 2y ago
    fair point. i guess i’m just illustrating that it’s not as clear as the parent makes it seem.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
- Angostura 2y ago
  People get strange symptoms all the time. I currently have a chronic scalp condition that doctors haven’t really identified and a really stiff neck. Of course I’m going to go ‘aha!’ If someone gives me a plausible explanation
  - Citizen8396 2y ago
    Psoriasis and computer neck?
    - RCitronsBroker 2y ago
      probably
    - 2y ago
buro9 2y ago
> and I would very strongly doubt any new claims made And I would very strongly doubt the word of a People Team member as the conclusive evidence of any lying. People Team are there to reduce the liability for the company, the company in this case are the very company in question for alleged environmental issues. What actually happens vs what a trained People Team member knows to document are seldom the same thing, and people on the receiving end of the consequences of this seldom have their full wits about them at the time and are almost never lawyered up at that time. If you had other receipts I'm sure people might consider them, but if your main gripe is based on what a People Team / HR person says... yeah, that's not conclusive either. The one party I would trust most here are the EPA, and the author didn't fabricate (pun intended) the reports made by them.
- azinman2 2y ago
  I've seen non-redacted versions of what she's shared on Twitter versus her redacted versions which tell a completely different story, and she puts her own spin on it that is detached from reality. I've seen her lie directly on at least one occasion (and play the victim card about it), and when combined with everything else makes me trust her 0%.
  - noptd 2y ago
    Any sources to link?
    - PROgrammerTHREE 2y ago
      a non-redacted version would only be visible to EPA and Apple
therein 2y ago
[flagged]
- dang 2y ago
  You can't post like this to HN, and we ban accounts that do, so please don't. If someone else is wrong, you are of course welcome to respond with correct information and better arguments. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it. Edit: you crossed into personal attack in at least one other recent comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40643584 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40643584) and we've also had to warn you about breaking the site guidelines in the past (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35105366 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35105366). That's not cool, so please don't do this again.
  - therein 2y ago
    I understand dang but I worked at Apple. There is way more to this than these snarky replies are making you think. They aren't just herp derp we think Apple is despotic. You know the audience of this website. Why does Apple get this response from your highly educated tech audience? Perhaps we have personal experience we cannot speak more openly about due to NDAs but would still like to let out a quip.
    - dang 2y ago
      If your comment is motivated by substantive personal experience, that's great, but then the thing to do is to share some of the information that your view is based on. You know it, but the rest of us don't. A snarky swipe with no information is just as bad a comment whether it's posted by someone with relevant experience or not. If you don't share relevant information, it may as well not exist. If you do share it, you should follow the site guidelines and edit out snark and swipes, so your substantive comment has a better chance of persuading the reader, and a lesser chance of provoking (f)lame responses from others. > Why does Apple get this response from your highly educated tech audience? It gets the entire spectrum of responses. You're noticing and assigning meaning to the responses you dislike, because that's what we all do: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20notice%20dislike&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que.... > Perhaps we have personal experience we cannot speak more openly about due to NDAs but would still like to let out a quip. It looks like you can speak openly enough about it to say more than just "Hello Apple Global Security", which is the run-of-the-mill internet stuff we're trying to avoid on this site. If that's what you mean by letting out a quip, please don't.
spacemule 2y ago
I'm naturally inclined to be suspicious of people claiming pollution is the cause of a disease. It's certainly possible, and it certainly happens, but every individual case is a sample size of one, and the best we can say is it's likely an environmental factor played a part. On top of this, it seems the claimant has either through frustration or with malicious intent exaggerated or fabricated some of the claims. So, I'll agree with you to be highly skeptical. On the other hand, it's entirely reasonable to assume that a large corporation would maximize its profits: it has a duty to. If the expected profits exceed the expected costs of breaking the law, guess what's going to happen. Probably the fairest outcome here is better enforcement mechanisms. Unfortunately, this outcome leaves both parties worse off in exchange for an improvement to society.
RecycledEle 2y ago
The EPA ruling against Apple casts doubt on your ad hominem accusations.
- mynameisvlad 2y ago
  Did you read the report and specifically the areas of concern the EPA had? They seem minor at best. More than half of them are mislabeled containers that are too broad.
- RCitronsBroker 2y ago
  Nothing in the report is actually of gravity. If that’s really the extent of mismanagement, it’s pretty tame for a R&D semiconductor lab.
  - chatmasta 2y ago
    Is it typical for an R&D semiconductor lab to be located in a residential neighborhood?
    - RCitronsBroker 2y ago
      this isn’t a residential neighborhood, this is industrial zoning with ONE apartment building that got an exception. Probably due to the generally horrible housing situation over there. Nonetheless, it’s actually not that uncommon to find semiconductor labs in suburban areas, mostly low vol or R&D of course, but it’s far from unheard of.
      - chatmasta 2y ago
        If there were ever a use for the EPA, surely “stopping megacorps from releasing toxic chemicals into residential neighborhoods and retaliating against whistleblowers” would be it. We’re not talking about some agile startup that rents the nearest place where they can assemble their hardware. This is one of the three most valuable companies in the world, essentially purchasing residential real estate to use as a venue for unsupervised high-tech manufacturing that flouts all environmental regulations they’d otherwise be subject to. And the reason is so that their highly paid employees can have a shorter commute to their R&D lab.
joe_the_user 2y ago
"The Author"? Was this once a different link? The current link seems to be a report by the EPA.
- jmah 2y ago
  This was originally a comment on https://www.ashleygjovik.com/3250scott.html https://www.ashleygjovik.com/3250scott.html via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40773136 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40773136

Afforess 2y ago

[flagged]

dang 2y ago
Posting like this will get you banned here. No more of this, please. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: your account has unfortunately been repeatedly posting comments with swipes in them. Examples: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40229264 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40229264 (May 2024) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40224510 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40224510 (May 2024) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38495066 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38495066 (Dec 2023) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35970720 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35970720 (May 2023) That's one of the things the site guidelines specifically ask you not to do, so if you'd please not do any more of that, we'd appreciate it. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit more to heart, we'd be grateful. Note that this also includes "Don't be snarky.".

chx 2y ago

Your slander doesn't mesh with the EPA report.

murderfs 2y ago
My "slander" is a quote from the author.
- viraptor 2y ago
  You haven't shown the lie you claim exists. Those could be references to completely different tests. (Or not, but from the limited information we can't say either way)
  - murderfs 2y ago
    The surrounding context makes it clear that isn't the case. From the linked post: "In September 2020, Gjovik hired an industrial hygienist to test the indoor air at her apartment. She purchased an inspection, soil testing, and a two-hour sorbent tube-based TO-17 air panel. Only half the total contaminants were accounted for in the test and the California EPA informed her that testing with Summa canisters for 24 hours is superior and would have yielded better results. Still, Gjovik’s limited testing returned results showing a number of the chemicals in use by Apple at ARIA including Acetone, Acetonitrile, Acetaldehyde, Benzene, 1,2-Dichloroethane, Ethanol, Ethylbenzene, Hexane, Isopropanol, Isopropyl toluene, Methylene Chloride, Toluene, and Xylene." From the 2021 SF Bay View article: "I did try to do my own testing, but it was incredibly expensive and turned out to be insufficient. I wanted to get some formal data in the brief time before I moved out, so I hired an industrial hygienist to sample the indoor air and some of the topsoil. Despite the $1,555 I had to pay for it, the results were inconclusive. Apparently a different test – a “summa canister” – over a longer period of time would have been better. "
    - proxyon 2y ago
      This doesn't prove that she's lying. It proves that at a particular moment in time (day:hour:minute:second) she tested the air and had to spend $1500 to do it and it came up inconclusive. That doesn't align with how industrial air pollution works.

cjk2 2y ago

This is in line of when I worked in a semiconductor lab in suburban UK in the 90s. We had a couple of local residents report problems immediately even though we hadn't even started fabrication at that point. They eventually sent out a press release saying that we had moved manufacturing to Scotland. The complaints stopped instantly. The lab was running until at least 2017 with no complaints and regular inspections from local authorities. YMMV but some people are crazy. The EPA is however not. But what the EPA say and what the woman claims are disparate. Edit: to be clear I'd expect the EPA to install independently maintained monitoring equipment which is not subject to the bias of Apple or the reporter. Then collect more data!

vineyardmike 2y ago
> YMMV but some people are crazy. The EPA is however not. But what the EPA say and what the woman claims are disparate. To complicate it further, this woman did in fact live on top of an industrially-zone area which had industrial contamination on site. The apartments are very new (finished construction in ~2019) and they had to agree to a ton of cleanup to get permits to build. There are so many confounding factors that mean she could still have been poisoned by toxic industrial byproducts and the factor next door could still be innocent.
- cjk2 2y ago
  Well it would require more data which is the problem, and something I outlined elsewhere. Is she the only person complaining? The case is put forward as if that is the case. If that is the case then there is little evidence to discard the null hypothesis that there's nothing wrong and either alternate hypothesis that it's the Apple facility or the previously contaminated site seem very unlikely.
  - synctext 2y ago
    > many confounding factors Indeed. May 2022 TechCruch [0] about sexism at workplace: "Privacy watchdogs in Europe are considering a complaint against Apple made by a former employee, Ashley Gjøvik, who alleges the company fired her after she raised a number of concerns, internally and publicly, including over the safety of the workplace." "At the time, Gjøvik had been placed on administrative leave by Apple after raising concerns about sexism in the workplace, and a hostile and unsafe working environment which it had said it was investigating." [0] https://techcrunch.com/2022/04/11/gobbler-complaint-europe/?guccounter=1 https://techcrunch.com/2022/04/11/gobbler-complaint-europe/?...

reaperman 2y ago

It's really hard to "catch" these things in the moment. I work in chemical plants and there are tons of huge releases of extremely toxic gases all the time, which I can often smell from my apartment. I know what they are by smell because I manufacture them myself. Proper continuous monitoring for a broad range of chemicals would cost about $1 million per monitoring station and we'd need to build them along the perimeters of each plant so that leaks can be assigned to the offending companies, and they need to be built near housing so that we know how families are being affected. That sounds expensive, but really isn't that much added cost for a $100 million to $10 billion manufacturing site. I live in the western hemisphere's largest integrated industrial complex (Freeport, TX integrated with the eastern edge of Houston as well). Note that Freeport, TX has ZERO state or federal EPA VOC analyzers which can actually detect which chemical is leaking. They can only detect "this amount of something with either {sulfur, N-O bonds, aromatic carbon rings} -- no clue what precisely though!". This is the same capability of the most advanced atmospheric pollution satellites. Completely fucking useless for an area which manufactures something like 15-20% of all USA domestic chemicals. The technology to measure individual chemicals exists, but the government isn't paying for it or installing it. The ENTIRE east side of Houston metropolitan area is dedicated to or "next door" to massive chemical manufacturing. This is an industrial area nearly equal to the area encompassing all of Seattle+Bellevue+Redmond+Renton+Tukwila. That's not including nearby housing - that's just how big the manufacturing facilities themselves are! This massive area has only THREE air quality monitors which test for these kinds of chemicals[0]. During huge major events like the ITC fire[2], they typically show no increased pollution at all, which proves that it's woefully inadequate even during big emergencies that very obviously affect breathing air quality. I lived next to leaks every day and because I worked in the plants I knew the smells - one day acrylates, next day thiols, next day hydrocarbons, etc. But all 3 monitoring sites (over 10 miles from me) showed nothing at all. Here is the one "correct" monitoring station near the chemical plants of Houston: [0]... but several of its analyzers are often offline/broken/pending maintenance. Here's a map of all the other ones: [1] Generally single/dual color dots mark "not-useful" monitoring sites which might measure only PM2.5 or Ozone, for example. The 4+ color dots are generally useful, they measure specific (large) families of chemicals so you can see very roughly what is leaking, even if it doesn't have "soot" in it. The data used by ProPublica[3] is actually far worse than the woefully inadequate data collected by TCEQ/EPA air monitoring stations -- because what ProPublica used was "self-reported" data from the chemical plants. But I know from working in them and living next to them that many leaks are never reported and many leaks are never even known internally! Our government's data collection is a travesty. ProPublica couldn't use the real air quality measurements because having 2-3 points across 1000 mi^2 is completely useless for the wind models they wanted to apply to the problem. We don't actually have any data. The government is failing us. ITC fire which blanketed houston's sky in smoke: [2] : https://tceq.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=ab6f85198bda483a997a6956a8486539 https://tceq.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id... 1: https://tceq.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=ab6f85198bda483a997a6956a8486539 https://tceq.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id... 2: https://abc13.com/deer-park-fire-2019-itc-houston-air-quality-harris-county/10097289/ https://abc13.com/deer-park-fire-2019-itc-houston-air-qualit... 3: https://www.propublica.org/nerds/visualizing-toxic-air https://www.propublica.org/nerds/visualizing-toxic-air

lurking_swe 2y ago

I'm still looking into this and forming my opinion. It's very curious how at the end of her YouTube video she mentions other residents in her building came forward and said they too were sick (numerous ER visits over 2 years), and they DIDN'T KNOW WHY, until they saw her expose in the newspaper. That seems to counter your hypochondria theory, no? see: https://youtu.be/pGK4_sR1CvY?si=KEK9xh0mUEStV76-&t=2680 https://youtu.be/pGK4_sR1CvY?si=KEK9xh0mUEStV76-&t=2680

BoredPositron 2y ago
You can’t really use a questionable source to verify the same source.
- lurking_swe 2y ago
  fair point. i guess i’m just illustrating that it’s not as clear as the parent makes it seem.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
Angostura 2y ago
People get strange symptoms all the time. I currently have a chronic scalp condition that doctors haven’t really identified and a really stiff neck. Of course I’m going to go ‘aha!’ If someone gives me a plausible explanation
- Citizen8396 2y ago
  Psoriasis and computer neck?
  - RCitronsBroker 2y ago
    probably
  - 2y ago

buro9 2y ago

> and I would very strongly doubt any new claims made And I would very strongly doubt the word of a People Team member as the conclusive evidence of any lying. People Team are there to reduce the liability for the company, the company in this case are the very company in question for alleged environmental issues. What actually happens vs what a trained People Team member knows to document are seldom the same thing, and people on the receiving end of the consequences of this seldom have their full wits about them at the time and are almost never lawyered up at that time. If you had other receipts I'm sure people might consider them, but if your main gripe is based on what a People Team / HR person says... yeah, that's not conclusive either. The one party I would trust most here are the EPA, and the author didn't fabricate (pun intended) the reports made by them.

azinman2 2y ago
I've seen non-redacted versions of what she's shared on Twitter versus her redacted versions which tell a completely different story, and she puts her own spin on it that is detached from reality. I've seen her lie directly on at least one occasion (and play the victim card about it), and when combined with everything else makes me trust her 0%.
- noptd 2y ago
  Any sources to link?
  - PROgrammerTHREE 2y ago
    a non-redacted version would only be visible to EPA and Apple

therein 2y ago

[flagged]

dang 2y ago
You can't post like this to HN, and we ban accounts that do, so please don't. If someone else is wrong, you are of course welcome to respond with correct information and better arguments. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it. Edit: you crossed into personal attack in at least one other recent comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40643584 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40643584) and we've also had to warn you about breaking the site guidelines in the past (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35105366 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35105366). That's not cool, so please don't do this again.
- therein 2y ago
  I understand dang but I worked at Apple. There is way more to this than these snarky replies are making you think. They aren't just herp derp we think Apple is despotic. You know the audience of this website. Why does Apple get this response from your highly educated tech audience? Perhaps we have personal experience we cannot speak more openly about due to NDAs but would still like to let out a quip.
  - dang 2y ago
    If your comment is motivated by substantive personal experience, that's great, but then the thing to do is to share some of the information that your view is based on. You know it, but the rest of us don't. A snarky swipe with no information is just as bad a comment whether it's posted by someone with relevant experience or not. If you don't share relevant information, it may as well not exist. If you do share it, you should follow the site guidelines and edit out snark and swipes, so your substantive comment has a better chance of persuading the reader, and a lesser chance of provoking (f)lame responses from others. > Why does Apple get this response from your highly educated tech audience? It gets the entire spectrum of responses. You're noticing and assigning meaning to the responses you dislike, because that's what we all do: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20notice%20dislike&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que.... > Perhaps we have personal experience we cannot speak more openly about due to NDAs but would still like to let out a quip. It looks like you can speak openly enough about it to say more than just "Hello Apple Global Security", which is the run-of-the-mill internet stuff we're trying to avoid on this site. If that's what you mean by letting out a quip, please don't.

spacemule 2y ago

I'm naturally inclined to be suspicious of people claiming pollution is the cause of a disease. It's certainly possible, and it certainly happens, but every individual case is a sample size of one, and the best we can say is it's likely an environmental factor played a part. On top of this, it seems the claimant has either through frustration or with malicious intent exaggerated or fabricated some of the claims. So, I'll agree with you to be highly skeptical. On the other hand, it's entirely reasonable to assume that a large corporation would maximize its profits: it has a duty to. If the expected profits exceed the expected costs of breaking the law, guess what's going to happen. Probably the fairest outcome here is better enforcement mechanisms. Unfortunately, this outcome leaves both parties worse off in exchange for an improvement to society.

RecycledEle 2y ago

The EPA ruling against Apple casts doubt on your ad hominem accusations.

mynameisvlad 2y ago
Did you read the report and specifically the areas of concern the EPA had? They seem minor at best. More than half of them are mislabeled containers that are too broad.
RCitronsBroker 2y ago
Nothing in the report is actually of gravity. If that’s really the extent of mismanagement, it’s pretty tame for a R&D semiconductor lab.
- chatmasta 2y ago
  Is it typical for an R&D semiconductor lab to be located in a residential neighborhood?
  - RCitronsBroker 2y ago
    this isn’t a residential neighborhood, this is industrial zoning with ONE apartment building that got an exception. Probably due to the generally horrible housing situation over there. Nonetheless, it’s actually not that uncommon to find semiconductor labs in suburban areas, mostly low vol or R&D of course, but it’s far from unheard of.
    - chatmasta 2y ago
      If there were ever a use for the EPA, surely “stopping megacorps from releasing toxic chemicals into residential neighborhoods and retaliating against whistleblowers” would be it. We’re not talking about some agile startup that rents the nearest place where they can assemble their hardware. This is one of the three most valuable companies in the world, essentially purchasing residential real estate to use as a venue for unsupervised high-tech manufacturing that flouts all environmental regulations they’d otherwise be subject to. And the reason is so that their highly paid employees can have a shorter commute to their R&D lab.

joe_the_user 2y ago

"The Author"? Was this once a different link? The current link seems to be a report by the EPA.

jmah 2y ago
This was originally a comment on https://www.ashleygjovik.com/3250scott.html https://www.ashleygjovik.com/3250scott.html via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40773136 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40773136