[jhou2]

1. Reddit. Seriously. Pictures of cats get upvoted way beyond their "technical merit".

2. A pair of shoes with storage sounds like a great idea. I believe she described how hard it is for women to find storage space when they dress up. Men's clothing have pockets everywhere, but women's clothing often don't. I don't think it's easy to find shoes with storage.

3. What's wrong with her wearing a small dress? Feminism means women can wear whatever they want. She goes into this issue in depth on her blog. She makes a fair point that the response to it is social/cultural. In China, she doesn't get the same sexually-related responses. Puritanism doesn't quite run the same over there.

4. Her perspective on the maker movement is fair and diverse. White, balding middle-aged males aren't going to have the same problems or concerns as an attractive, young asian female. What's wrong with bringing her perspective into the milieu?

[steveklabnik]

Incidentally, it was actually broader than "shoes with storage", she specifically did the project as a pentesting exercise. "If I was trying to hack a big company, how would I do it?" She made the connection between these styles of shoes and a specific outfit, and that the whole "sexy" thing would be a distraction, enabling her to sneak USB drives out of the shoes. They contained wifi-enabled equipment inside the shoes, with power, to automatically probe wireless networks around her. Etc.

So it's actually even more deeply technical than that summary lets on. You can find the exact description on her website if you're interested.

[sorenjan]

> 1. Reddit. Seriously. Pictures of cats get upvoted way beyond their "technical merit".

Not on r/DIY or r/hacking.

> A pair of shoes with storage sounds like a great idea.

Yes, it probably is. Is it hacking? The fact that she put a battery powered router and a set of lockpicks in the storage doesn't make it hacking.

> 3. What's wrong with her wearing a small dress?

Nothing. But is it necessary with several images of it in an album on r/DIY? Is the post upvoted merely because of the 3D printed shoes? Does a post about a 3D printed Raspberry Pi case with makeup and a mirror need 11 pictures of her holding it first? [0]

> 4. Her perspective on the maker movement is fair and diverse. White, balding middle-aged males aren't going to have the same problems or concerns as an attractive, young asian female. What's wrong with bringing her perspective into the milieu?

I never claimed there was anything wrong with her bringing her perspective. I specifically said "I don't have anything against her". My problem isn't with her, it's that people see a skinny young woman with large breasts doing technical stuff and automatically think that because she breaks the mold her work is more interesting that it actually is. It's a little insulting to women that doesn't use the same gimmicks.

[0] https://imgur.com/a/4aAPS?grid

[romwell]

>Yes, it probably is. Is it hacking?

Yes, it's hacking. It utilizing something (shoe heels) in a way that was not intended by the people who designed it to solve a problem.

Putting a router into a shoe that has storage isn't hacking. Changing the shoe to make it possible is.

>My problem is that people [...] think her work is more interesting that it actually is.

Ah, my apologies then. Of course, there is an objective, intrinsic metric that measures how interesting something is, and you clearly are someone with the ability to compute it, unlike the unwashed masses, who are all wrong, and are definitely guilty of the sin of finding something more interesting than you do.

It is especially daunting since never in the history of humanity, and especially on Hackernews, has interest in something been connected to the person who made it in any way.

[sorenjan]

Nice use of [...] to cut away my point there. I make no claim of representing any objective truth, only my own opinions, as I assume you do too. And one of my opinions is that I prefer more silicon than silicone in my technical articles.

> Putting a router into a shoe that has storage isn't hacking. Changing the shoe to make it possible is.

She didn't change any shoes, she 3D printed them. And she called them "3D printed platform heels for hackers", and claimed that she made them to be used for pentesting. Here you go, the first image from her pentesting gallery posted to r/diy, r/hacking, and r/lockpicking: https://i.imgur.com/7aiOCYR.jpg Out of 37 images there are 5 that shows the build process.

I'm not trying to put down the shoes themselves, she has a whole backstory constructed for how they could be used and the reasoning behind them. I still think a lot of people find some parts of the gallery more interesting than the actual work being displayed, and she knows that. How many would find a gallery of a pair of 3D printed shoes as interesting if it only had pictures of said shoes?

I find that most times interest on Hackernews is centered on a person it's because of that persons previous achievements or demonstrated technical ability, not their appearance. Her work isn't particularly interesting in isolation (maybe I should add IMO for much needed clarity), yet here we are with a big Hackernews discussion thread about a post made by Bunnie Huang about a post by the CEO of Maker Media, all centered on her.