[HN Gopher] Ed Catmull and Pat Hanrahan Win Turing Award
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Ed Catmull and Pat Hanrahan Win Turing Award
Author : oscarwao
Score : 338 points
Date : 2020-03-18 11:12 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| Keyframe wrote:
| Hanrahan absolute beast of a mind. Work at Stanford, RSL, and
| tableau. Absolutely deserves it. Catmull escaped prison I guess?
| Great work though.
| corysama wrote:
| lol. I came here to type "Hanrahan is a beast." He has been
| involved with so much impressive work for so many years. I
| don't know how he does it.
| lostinroutine wrote:
| For those troubled by the paywall: it doesn't appear if you
| disable javascript. I used my uBlock origin to do so.
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| Has Catmull changed his opinion on his participation in illegally
| colluding with Google, Apple, etc to keep employee wages low?
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-11-19/apple-goo...
| tayistay wrote:
| Having worked at Pixar, I think Catmull's wage-fixing involvement
| should absolutely disqualify him from receiving the Turing Award.
|
| And really, Catmull-Clark subdivision surfaces aren't that
| amazing. Z-buffering is obvious. Those were the days of low
| hanging fruit in graphics.
| micmil wrote:
| It's rather interesting that his Wikipedia page no mention of
| this, nor does the one for Pixar.
| peapicker wrote:
| Can we link to the ACM award site and its article instead of the
| NYT paywall?
|
| https://amturing.acm.org/
| dang wrote:
| The NYT article has some additional context, including quotes
| from interviews. Generally we prefer an article like that to
| press releases, unless it's an unusually interesting press
| release.
|
| Paywalls suck, of course, but HN's rule is that it's ok as long
| as there's a workaround. Users usually post workarounds in the
| threads, including in this thread.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.md/mAhJd
| mdre wrote:
| Cool, maybe Ed could split his part between all the workers he
| exploited.
| [deleted]
| tomashubelbauer wrote:
| I didn't know about this so I looked it up:
|
| > The plaintiffs in the lawsuit presented substantial evidence
| that implicated Walt Disney and Pixar Animation Studios
| president Ed Catmull as a ringleader of the illegal wage-fixing
| scheme. The Walt Disney Company has done nothing to reprimand
| or punish Catmull for his questionable actions, and he
| continues to serve as the leader for both Disney and Pixar
| animation studios.
|
| https://www.cartoonbrew.com/artist-rights/animation-workers-...
|
| Pretty damning if true. Anyone got a better/additional source?
| mdre wrote:
| What's really funny is that this guy had the balls to publish
| a book named "Creativity inc." which talked about the
| "culture of candor", the egalitarian culture of Pixar... much
| of this talk was later challenged by numerous women who
| opened up about the sexism and misogyny they'd faced there.
| And of course the other guy that founded Pixar, John
| Lasseter, turned out to be a molester and so was laid off.
| Great company!
| toyg wrote:
| The two things need not be exclusive: you can have a
| company that is egalitarian and candid _in matters related
| to the actual creative work_ and definitely _superior to
| other companies at the time_ , and still have issues at the
| interpersonal level. I can think a person is unlikeable and
| stay as away as possible from them, and then have a
| productive conversation with them in an open meeting that
| advances the company output. Even the Beatles didn't like
| each other that much, and I'm sure the production of
| Casablanca was plagued by "couches", but they still made
| masterpieces that were superior to anything seen before.
| therealcamino wrote:
| Well, they don't need to be exclusive as long as you're
| in the group that's not being excluded or treated badly.
| If you are, then you don't have the luxury of ignoring it
| and separating those issues so cleanly.
| toyg wrote:
| I agree, but those groups have _always_ had that problem,
| and progress on that front is orthogonal to other issues.
| itronitron wrote:
| I very much doubt that he wrote most of that book.
| tayistay wrote:
| I was at Pixar 2006-2011. On several occasions, I would see
| Lasseter hugging various people in his entourage. Hugs so
| long, I initially wondered if someone had died. It was a
| bit strange. At a company meeting, in front of the entire
| staff, he made a comment about how attractive the women at
| some film festival were. I looked around at people standing
| next to me thinking I just had misheard. Nobody seemed
| particularly phased.
|
| So the creepyness was apparent even to this lowly software
| engineer. Of course it was the tip of the iceberg with
| Lasseter.
|
| There was this other guy who was an art director or
| something like that, and we used to call him a walking HR
| violation. Once he cornered me in the locker room and told
| me how all his friends are out of shape and have lousy sex.
| I shrugged it off as just one of the eccentric characters
| you encounter at the cartoon factory. He was extremely
| macho, and a fan of Putin, which actually made him somewhat
| interesting to me politically, though I disagreed with him
| about practically everything. Then came the 2016 election
| and his sexism got way out of hand and I couldn't stand him
| any more. I found it strange that someone with two
| daughters would be such a misogynist.
|
| Turns out he had been saying creepy things to one of the
| same women that HR was trying to keep away from Lasseter,
| limiting her career. She wrote an article about her whole
| experience: https://byrslf.co/pixars-sexist-boys-
| club-9d621567fdc9
| vlunkr wrote:
| Of all the people in Hollywood who we've found out are
| creeps, Lasseter is the most depressing. He seemed like
| such a wholesome guy.
| mprovost wrote:
| Doesn't mention Catmull specifically but here are the DOJ
| settlements:
|
| https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-
| requires-s...
|
| https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-
| requires-l...
| bleair wrote:
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-11-19/apple-
| goo...
|
| ""Like somehow we're hurting some employees? We're not,"
| Catmull said. "While I have responsibility for the payroll, I
| have responsibility for the long term also," Catmull said. "I
| don't apologize for this."
| slavik81 wrote:
| Some previous discussions on this topic:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8023005
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12257152
| chadcmulligan wrote:
| Disney has a long history of exploiting their workers
| financially, conversely the workers have a long history of
| loving working for Disney. It's a strange symbiotic
| relationship.
| lallysingh wrote:
| It's called Stockholm Syndrome.
| pixelpoet wrote:
| Sounds a lot like Apple, that other Steve Jobs company.
| RodgerTheGreat wrote:
| Working at one's "dream job" is an easy way to be taken
| advantage of, sadly.
| chadcmulligan wrote:
| indeed, I know one guy in particular that really stands
| out for me - he's working as an editor and hasn't been
| paid in years, they keep saying 'they're getting
| investors' then they'll pay him, his parents are giving
| him money. One of the many reasons I'm not in the vfx
| industry - how do you compete with people that are
| willing to work for free.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| It almost makes one question the definition of
| "exploitation."
|
| "Hey, your employer is extracting far more value from you
| than they're paying you for. You should be paid more."
|
| "Yes, but I don't really need to be."
|
| Is that "exploitation?"
| ehnto wrote:
| But where else would they get paid for their work? They
| can't leave to "The other blockbuster animation studio"
| because there is only a handful, and they've all agreed
| to fix wages at a certain rate so they don't get into a
| wage-war. If demand for their talent drove their wages,
| their wages would be much higher. Small studios don't
| make enough money to pay higher, so big studios hold all
| the cards and exploit that fact to draw down wages.
|
| It's the same issue airline pilots have. If they had the
| choice to move to a different airline paying higher, they
| would, but they accept the conditions they're given
| because the whole industry pays similar rates, and their
| skills aren't transferable to any other industry.
| Essentially they're trapped, lest they choose an entirely
| new career.
| coliveira wrote:
| That's why airline pilots form unions to defend their
| interests.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Right. The answer in the large is "They'd decide
| animation is a sucker's game and do something else
| entirely." Which they could do, and that's the natural
| back-pressure on wage-fixing cartels driving prices to
| zero (as opposed to the "unnatural" back-pressure of laws
| that say "companies aren't allowed to collude on fixing
| wages", which almost universally translates to "... in
| ways we can see," because every major industry with a few
| players and a non-union staff does it somehow. To be
| clear, I think those laws are wise, but they're a sub-
| optimal solution because they're very easily gamed and
| the ROI for gaming them is very, very high).
|
| There were not many Google engineers who felt actually
| slighted by Google when the company was fined for price-
| fixing along with Apple, Pixar, eBay, &c. At least, if
| they did feel slighted, they sure didn't demonstrate
| their frustration by unionizing, leaving, or actually
| taking more action than accepting their one-time payoff
| from the class-action settlement. And why would they?
| They're already paid far above average wages for
| employees countries Google operates in (and significantly
| above most of the tech sector in the US).
| telotortium wrote:
| In the case of the Google wage-fixing cartel, it was
| partially broken even before the lawsuit by Facebook,
| which was not part of the cartel and hired away enough
| Google engineers that Google had to raise wages for the
| entire company in 2011.
| skrtskrt wrote:
| Yes, someone doesn't have to know, understand, or feel
| that they're being exploited for it to be exploitation.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| That implies exploitation is not defined in the
| transaction between the individuals directly affected,
| but via a third party acting as a higher power.
|
| I agree, but it "smells" weird that we've included "feel"
| in that set in this specific context. If neither party
| feels they're exploiting or being exploited in an
| employment agreement paying well above minimum wage, then
| by what standard is a third party judging their
| transaction that we can conclude they "feel" wrongly?
|
| We start to go down a pretty dark path when we take
| "mutual consent" off the table as the gold standard for
| two-party interactions. There are _absolutely_ criteria
| of things in society for which we do that, but we hold
| them to a very high standard of scrutiny, and I 'm not
| convinced "That employer is underpaying their employee
| with too low a six-figure salary" meets that high
| standard of scrutiny.
| mindcrime wrote:
| Given the parameters as you laid it out there, I'd say
| "no" or at least "not necessarily" because not all value
| is monetary.
|
| That is, the value you get from your job may be more than
| just your paycheck. This won't necessarily apply to
| everybody, but I'm pretty sure some people receive value
| simply from the work itself and the sense of
| accomplishment they get from doing what they do.
| greggman3 wrote:
| As someone that once ran a company I could have easily and
| without malice been accused of something like wage fixing had I
| not had a partner more wise than me. Recruiter called, told me
| he wanted to recruit my employees. I asked my partner. My
| partner said it was up to the employee to decide, not us.
|
| My gut would have been different. I would have considered that
| losing some of those employees could have killed the company
| and then all the other employees would be out of a job. I don't
| know that's the decision I would have made but the thought
| would have crossed my mind and it's possible I'd have made the
| wrong decision not knowing it was illegal.
|
| The point I'm trying to make is it's possible Mr. Cathmull had
| no malicious intent and thought he was doing the right thing at
| the time to protect a 400 person company. If true that doesn't
| excuse the actual crime but it does mean he might not be the
| monster he's being painted to be here.
|
| Half of HN seems to worship Steve Jobs who was also caught wage
| fixing. No excuse for him either.
| awal2 wrote:
| I can buy this argument for a new leader of a small company,
| but at the time these things took place, Ed was a senior
| leader at a very high level for ~ten years. Also, at the time
| that the lawsuit covers, it was definitely not 400, but
| probably closer to a thousand employees, and more importantly
| for at least most of that period Pixar was a wholly owned
| component of one of the largest entertainment companies in
| the world (Disney). So Ed either should have known, or he
| shouldn't have been in a position to make those kinds of
| decisions. Furthermore, at the time of the lawsuit, this was
| not some small mom-and-pop shop trying to eke out an honest
| living, but was the most successful animation studio in the
| world for a decade, whose films were producing hundreds of
| millions in profits every twelve to eighteen months, so it's
| not like they were in some tight pinch and couldn't afford to
| compete on wages, they just didn't want to. As one of the
| principle people behind Pixar, Ed also benefited enormously
| from the studio's success, so to see him trying to suppress
| the wages of others is disappointing. In light of all this,
| the "oopsie, didn't mean to" line doesn't really hold up to
| scrutiny.
|
| With that said, he's done a lot of cool things, and deserves
| recognition and credit for a lot of important pieces of
| technology. This award is deserved.
|
| For reference, I was involved in the class-action lawsuit as
| an employee of one of the other studios involved in the price
| fixing ring.
| tayistay wrote:
| You're missing important details. The wage fixing scheme
| lasted well into my time at Pixar, in which the company was
| over a thousand people (I received money in the settlement).
| Multiple executives at different companies were involved. It
| seems unlikely that an executive would not either know about
| the law, or have counsel advising on it. Let alone multiple
| executives at different companies.
|
| After all, in your case, it took just two people, presumably
| neither lawyers, to know what not to do.
|
| Pixar was paying software people significantly less than
| other companies. And they would try low-balling you, which
| sadly many of my colleagues fell for, all starry eyed about
| making movies, for whatever reason. That's just par for the
| course I suppose, but the wage fixing on top of that was a
| bit gross.
| taneq wrote:
| Back when I was a wee young graphics programmer I taught myself
| to use Catmull-Rom splines to interpolate between camera
| positions (among many other things) for some stuff I was doing.
| Great to see one of the inventors getting recognition of all the
| cool stuff he's done!
| DubiousPusher wrote:
| I thought for years they were invented by three people, Cat,
| Mull and Rom.
| hinkley wrote:
| I think I might have wondered who Cat Mullrom is and whether
| her mother insists on calling her Catherine...
| scabarott wrote:
| Hence why we should always all be using CamelCase
| phtrivier wrote:
| So now, Disney also wins Turing Award. Can't wait for anything
| that's not an excuse for showing ads to earn recognition.
| caleb-allen wrote:
| Disney didn't win anything. Catmull and Hanrahan have had an
| incredibly large impact on computer graphics.
| phtrivier wrote:
| Of course.
|
| Sometimes you don't sleep enough, write stupid comments, and
| wonder why HN does not _always_ show a 'delete' button.
| mentos wrote:
| I recommend Ed Catmull's book Creativity Inc about the founding
| of Pixar.
| locallost wrote:
| Recently read it. The first part of how Pixar came to be was
| really really interesting. From his days in research to Lucas
| Arts/Film to Jobs. The rest was also a good read. I also
| recommend it.
|
| edit: and then a couple posts later I read, of course, things
| are never as they seem. Depressing.
| greggman3 wrote:
| What I got from the book is how much luck was involved (which
| Mr. Catmull acknowledges). If Lucas had not sold them. If
| Lucas had sold them to someone other than Steve Jobs. If
| Steve Jobs had not been willing to blow 70 million on them as
| a computer company. If Steve Jobs had not allowed them to
| pivot to animation after blowing 70 million on them as a
| computer company. If any one of those things had not happened
| Pixar would likely not exist and Mr. Catmull would likely
| just be another employee of some other company.
| albertkoz wrote:
| Same for me... I just have finished the book and found it
| very very inspiring until I saw the posts here.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| Great book. If the history lessons don't get you, the
| leadership/management insights will. It should be required
| reading for anyone with aspiration in tech / creative fields.
| micmil wrote:
| Did it include anything about him screwing hundreds of people
| out of work and money by forging an illegal deal with other VFX
| houses to blacklist people that wanted to change jobs for
| better pay and treatment?
| [deleted]
| lincpa wrote:
| I think "The Pure Function Pipeline Data Flow v3.0 with
| Warehouse/Workshop Model" should win the "Turing Award".
|
| 1. Perfectly defeat other messy and complex software engineering
| methodologies in a simple and unified way.
|
| 2. Realize the unification of software and hardware on the
| logical model.
|
| 3. Achieve a leap in software production theory from the era of
| manual workshops to the era of standardized production in large
| industries.
|
| 4. The basics and the only way to `Software Design and Develop
| Automation (SDDA)`, SDDA is an innovative and revolutionary
| approach to develop large-scale software, just like `Electronic
| Design Automation (EDA)`.
|
| https://github.com/linpengcheng/PurefunctionPipelineDataflow
| [deleted]
| ihaveajob wrote:
| Nice to see computer graphics pioneers being recognized. Reading
| Ed Catmull's name always brings fond memories of learning mesh
| processing techniques they first thought of, like the Catmull-
| Clark subdivision (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catmull%E2%80%93
| Clark_subdivis...). Elegant stuff.
| pixelpoet wrote:
| I think the later development of mixed triangle/quad
| subdivision by Warren and Schaefer is even more elegant,
| besides being more general:
| http://faculty.cs.tamu.edu/schaefer/research/tutorial.pdf
| ihaveajob wrote:
| Ah, the Stanford bunny. It's been a decade since I last
| worked with it in grad school, but I can't help feeling fond
| for the little guy. We spent hours and hours of frustration
| together.
| ur-whale wrote:
| Catmull reminds me of Fritz Haber [1] in that he both invented
| amazingly useful tech. while being an absolutely horrible human
| being.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_Haber
| medecau wrote:
| Are you comparing chemical-warfare to wage-fixing?
| aspaceman wrote:
| Probably the systematic sexual harassment he enabled at Pixar
| is the thing being compared to.
|
| Dude's a shithead in more ways than one.
| jansan wrote:
| Fritz Haber is such a tragic character. Saved the world from
| hunger by inventing the process for ammonium fertilizer, helped
| to kill thousands by being a central figure in building up
| German chemical weapons for WWI, tried to extract gold from
| seawater to pay Germany's WWI debt but of course failed. He was
| a huge patriot, but being a Jew, he had to go on exile to
| England, where he died.
| drallison wrote:
| Pat Hanrahan is a friend and colleague at Stanford. For years, he
| occupied the office next door in the Gates Building. He's smart
| and insightful, gracious, thoughtful, well spoken, and open--
| social virtues which amplify intellectual skills. While the
| Turing Award cites his work in computer graphics, he has made
| significant contributions is other areas.
| denzil_correa wrote:
| > In the early 1970s, Dr. Catmull was a Ph.D. student at the
| University of Utah under one of the founding fathers of computer
| graphics, Ivan Sutherland.
|
| Off topic - I had an opportunity to meet and spend time with Ivan
| Sutherland, also a Turing award winner [0]. Ivan was one of the
| most "fun" scientists I have met and spoken with. His
| conversations were full with humor and humility.
|
| I was walking past the street where Ivan (he insisted to call me
| that) was having a coffee. He asked me if I'd like to join him
| for one - pleasantly surprised, I said yes. The next 45m was Ivan
| telling me about a research problem he was working on and asking
| "tips" on how I would solve it. Initially, I was hesitant but he
| insisted and took me along a journey inside his wonderful mind.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Sutherland
| m12k wrote:
| Does that mean we can conclusively say they are human?
| chrisseaton wrote:
| That's the Turing Test. This is the Turing Award - it's an
| academic achievement award. They're just named after the same
| person - they're not related otherwise.
| DubiousPusher wrote:
| I think the OP knows this already.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| You just failed both! :).
| chrisseaton wrote:
| The Turing Award isn't a test - you can't fail it any more
| than you fail to win a Nobel Prize.
| pvg wrote:
| It's a prize Turing got for inventing a machine that lets
| you compute anything using only toilet paper.
| NikolaeVarius wrote:
| Obviously have never had Asian parents
| denzil_correa wrote:
| It's most likely a cheeky dig.
| logicchains wrote:
| No, we can say they're human or an artificial general
| intelligence.
| ohazi wrote:
| I had the good fortune of taking Hanrahan's introductory computer
| graphics class at Stanford several years ago.
|
| He's a great teacher and the class was a lot of fun. Seemed like
| a genuinely nice guy as well. Congratulations!
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