skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Incredibly competent is a very high bar to place on a group of people that already has trouble breaking in. That seems like a very good way to keep that group out. I think we already have this problem: it sometimes seems like nobody really wants women unless they are insanely competent.

I'm sorry, that's not how it works. You don't get to keep a giant population down and then just extract the occasional diamonds and ignore the rest. You need to pull the entire thing if you want those diamonds to be created.

> they shouldn't simply be put into these positions by virtue of the "minority" (quoted for lack of a better word) traits ALONE

Why do people always state this as if it's the only possible reality? You go from "on minority basis ALONE" to "incredibly competent" in one fell swoop.

I seriously hope you don't have people in your organization that are so incompetent that the only reason you could think of promoting them is because they're in an underprivileged group. Because otherwise, your statement doesn't make any sense. It's like you are already signing up for a reality where members of underprivileged group cannot possibly be the kinds of members you'd very much want to have.

That's not what we're saying. What we're saying is that among the group of cool people that you have in your organization, maybe notice the women sometimes. And don't expect them to be "incredibly competent". Just competent enough. The same way you treat everyone else.
Yes, this is a paradox that applies in business.

A VC may very well believe that you are brilliant, and doing great work, and can make all the right decisions.

But it matters to his investment that he believes that others will buy into your agenda.

Investors are incentivized to prefer a 'fast talker' over someone who is not, if only because they believe that the 'fast talk' will benefit their future investment.
The first result when I googled "gender gap in nursing"[1] talks about how men in nursing earn more money and tend to move up the career ladder faster than women. If women in tech were consistently paid more and promoted faster than their male counterparts, I don't think we would see the same hand-wringing about diversity in our field either.

[1] https://www.nurse.com/blog/2015/08/10/nurses-speak-out-about...
Don't get me wrong: I know what you wanted to say but your counter argument was wrong
Most of the people I've worked with who have been given promotions have been given promotions "just because," i.e., they've been there for a while, they seem to do good work, and more work needs to be done.

See also McKinsey's finding: "Several diversity officers
and experts told us that despite their best efforts, women are often evaluated for promotions primarily
on performance, while men are often promoted on potential." https://www.mckinsey.com/womenineconomy (PDF)
The exodus of women from computing began in the 80s due to the rise of the personal computer. It wasn't because people weren't listening to women.

Trivialization of women's issues is a different monster.
Here's an exception to the rule: When the code obviously does not work, would never have worked and there's no good excuse for it having been committed.

Example: Suppose you have a requirement to display times in a zone different than the system time. Simply appending the new time zone offset at the end of the existing time stamp should prompt obviously would not accomplish that. It should merit at least a private invoking of "Who Wrote This Awful Code?" if someone comes upon it in the code base, followed perhaps by "Why am I the first person to notice this?"

The first question might answer why something that silly came into being. The second question can help you decide between fixing it or just cutting it if nobody noticed it was broken that long.
Sure, there can be qualitative and quantitative commentary. I don't agree that generalizations of groups of people are worthwhile qualititive commentary. One final question: is 'lcw's initial comment improved by the inclusion of the statement regarding HN?
The definition of terrorism - is what attorney general define it as on a whim.

Just like in USSR - where the dictionary definition of communism and 20 other *isms was changed and amended every year
>proponents of affirmative-action policies argue that the handicap offsets disabilities from the glass ceiling, discrimination / stereotype threat in the workplace/education pipeline.

How do you know that the disparity in women in the general population versus women in computer science is caused by the things you mentioned? How do you know that they have an equal interest and potential in this field than demographics who do not need special treatment? Will the value that these people provide be greater than what is expended to advantage them over other demographics who do not need special treatment? These are very serious and important questions you should be asking yourself when you decide to advantage certain people over others. I don't believe they have been answered.
Doesn't agriculture, specifically cereal grains, require a lot of arable land?
Mark Cuban says: “Artificial Intelligence, deep learning, machine learning — whatever you’re doing if you don’t understand it — learn it. Because otherwise you’re going to be a dinosaur within 3 years.”
As anecdata, one daughter felt that pursuing computing wasn't socially acceptable ( she was a cheerleader and all ) and another felt the first instructor was an abject misogynist.

Perhaps women find better things to do :) I'm starting to think there is something wrong with those of us who pursue this.
Very interesting, though as an officer I'm not sure if he's allowed to make specific numerical misstatements like that. :)
Good point, to enforce in-group, out-group.

There is the evolutionary psychology notion that food preferences are initially wide open: children initially eat everything they're given, basically trusting their parents, but then later those preferences solidify (German proverb: "Was der Bauer nicht kennt, frisst er nicht", i.e. what the farmer doesn't know, he doesn't eat).

So, that would make dietary rules particularly suited as such a tribal shibboleth (easy to create, relatively easy to abide by, hard to fake).

I seem to recall that after the Spanish reconquista, muslims faced conversion or expulsion, and if they chose conversion, they were forced to eat pork to "prove" it...

[Edit: eco-psych -> evolutionary psychology)
Agreed. Some of the tech-oriented business conferences have talks I've found fairly helpful. E.g. talks on sales can be helpful, even if all they do is help you communicate better with other groups.

Some examples:
https://www.findlectures.com/?p=1&type1=Conference&talk_type...
Cancer World: The making of a modern disease (2010)
I tossed up a quick lookup tool for people at https://bleed.cloud/index.html to do lookups

There's a deeper tool if you have python which will safely search your gmail locally to find compromised sites with accounts.
Hey 400 lbs man, please please for the love of god, get off this side and go the gym. You are wasting everyone valuable timing from your pussified comments and white-knighting. You will do us a big favor by going to the gym and not having us pay through your medical bill through medicare when you stop working.
>I find the idea that we should "push them into positions of influence" abhorrent. These are zero sum games, to give them a special advantage over any other demographic is to disadvantage another.

You're assuming women aren't currently at a disadvantage in that selection process. Which, evidence indicates they are. So...leveling the playing field is not disadvantaging others at the expense of women. It is recognizing that our current culture has biases that need to be corrected for.

Your argument is essentially that there are almost no women talented enough to be in leadership roles in tech, if they were chosen fairly; because that's the situation we are currently in. I'm not suggesting quotas here, and I don't think Pike is either, but there's clearly a bunch of broken segments in the path to advancement for women in tech. We're chasing off talented people because they're women (and minorities), whether we mean to or not. Acknowledging that deficit (on our part, as members of the tech community who aren't subject to those biases) is not unfair or a zero sum game.
Do you believe the vast physical differences between men and women end at the brainstem? Do you believe the flood of sex hormones during puberty don't result in different mental tendencies, including tolerances to rejection? Do you believe the different ratios of neurotransmitters between men and women across all cultures and haplogroups are a result of culture?

Before we explicitly institutionalize discrimination against men and boys to correct nebulous discrimination against women and girls, we must really make sure:

1. We aren't ignoring potential opportunity costs

2. We are okay with the fact that our policies will hurt disadvantaged men and boys the most
By "take into account" I meant it should be possible to statistically distinguish the factors of being male and being male+immigrant. So that it can be seen if being male is really the only factor driving increase of crime.

As for male criminal citizens, they should be sent to jail. In any case, as I mentioned before, they are already citizens, so the state has a special obligation towards them.

The point is also not to consider every immigrant a criminal just because some of them are, but to deal with life in one's country. If for example you could devise a test that would tell with 100% certainty if an immigrant will become a good, law-abiding citizen, a lot of immigration discussions would become a lot easier.

Btw suppose your suggestion would be followed, and male citizens would be deported because they are such a high risk for crime. Who would do the deporting? The world feminist army? Or should men just pack up and leave by themselves, admitting their own tendency to become criminals?
EA9/JA0JHQ Melilla
> they don't find it to be an interesting or fulfilling career.

Even if true, the reasons for it might be interesting.
Although the tax loopholes could increase their income by about 15%, it doesn't explain all of it. Being able to increase their leverage from 1:2 to 1:20 could account for it, but it would require covering loses.

If that's really all they did, it's basically a Ponzi scheme, because they would sometimes lose money.
Yes, and the question 'what is justice' is going to get a workout I suspect.

If he loses, I don't think he will be as easily re-employable as you do. Sure he is clearly a talented engineer but he will be on the record as having cost two companies in this space millions of dollars, primarily due to his own actions. I don't know of any hiring manager who will sign off on that level of risk to the company.

Oddly, if he wins, I think it will result in still greater restrictions, surveillance, and lock downs on employees at Google so in some way it may effect way more people than just the self driving car crowd.

That said, I think the risk of setting the technology back will be Google aggressively pursuing infringement claims against anyone trying to develop self driving cars in an effort to 'not lose' the investment they made. Worst case scenario is a 'digital cash' type disaster[1] but even just suppressing a lot of research will be an impact. Again, if Google wins there will be a lot concern about hiring ex-Google engineers fearing taint.

[1] David Chaum developed some early digital cash patents and aggressively sued anyone trying to develop micropayments or e-cash in the late '90s while simultaneous producing no useful technology of his own, pushing out the possibility of useful e-cash until as least 2018.
Let them run 5 km.
Do you often talk to nurses or folk in the nursing field? It's actually a significant issue with several scholarships and organizations pushing for more diversity in nursing and making up for the gender gap.
I'd say most of the reading and writing of blog posts are in the "long tail" of people attempting to solve a niche problem in a technology they don't know intimately. Of course most of those are trivial if you already know enough to solve it, but that doesn't mean they're not useful. Extra points for including the conceptual explanation of why it is in fact trivial rather than just the practicalities.
Heroku free tier Database went to heaven
This is funny to me, because while I used Twitter, I mostly did it to broadcast mundane things to my friends, and never really participated in the "Twitter community", whatever that actually means to people. Facebook cloned one of Twitter's core features with the 'Status' prompt that served as an effective replacement for real-life friends, while Tumblr was a better place where you could pseudonymously post long-form content with many of the same pressures and rewards of virality, but its many different communities that had a lower propensity to devolve into flaming and trolling.

By the time professionals' "I'm leaving Twitter" posts became unremarkable and trite, the mass exodus was well on its way: to Facebook for its more granual privacy/audience controls, Medium for its analytics, social features, and perceived professionalism, or to the social black hole, having been disenchanted with an overtly social, always public presence altogether.

It's always bittersweet (though mostly bitter) when communities falter and fall apart, but to me Twitter was never a good place to build a community anyway. Most of its advantages came from media and commentators fuming over having missed the boat on Facebook, so there was a concentrated effort to never make that mistake again: hashtags and Tweets were everywhere more so than AOL keywords ever were, which quickly made Twitter mandatory for people who wanted to feel like they could be "influencers", or hang out in their company. In this social and reputational gold rush, only a few came out ahead, which should not be a surprise to anyone, as much as it frustrates those who tried.
Successful insomnia treatment may require nothing more than a placebo
Fatass, learn to read. How much brain damage do you have to not comprehend simple text?
> Apart from the last line, that site design sounds like a lot of fun

"Other than that, how did you enjoy the play, Mrs. Lincoln?" :)

Nah the code is gone. Wrote it in <24 hours, and it wasn't really worth keeping.
"The hesitant feeling goes away in first year anatomy. "

Surely 'first year anatomy' is not the same thing as a bloody mess on the table, alarms going off, a frantic staff, and someone about to die in front of you unless you do something that happens to be fairly close to the right thing.

I didn't study medicine, but I was in the Army, and I confess that a degree of slightly irrational hubris is necessary in some situations.

Surely, we would all prefer our surgeons to be calm, team-oriented and thoughtful in front of us, but I think the situational dynamics just don't apply well to that. Also, people can be all of those things and 'bold'.

Admittedly, 'bold' may not be the right word.

If there is a word for someone who can be called upon to think clearly and 'do what is necessary' in a complex, high-stress scenario ... well than that.
> accept the idea that it's very unlikely that computer technology is unique among the professions in being suited to men

To be fair, the gender gap is present in many engineering professions, computer science is in no way unique here.
This is antithetical to everything most people believe about fairness and equality

If you're going to make a wide-reaching claim like that, please back it up. Or narrow the claim by making it anecdotal. My experience is quite the opposite. I, my friends, and most of my co-workers can see the very clear disenfranchisement suffered by women and believe work must be done to counter it.

These are zero sum games

That's not clear at all. Let's take a small example. Imagine the Go community lacks influential thought leaders of the female gender (I have no clue if this is the case). Now imagine they seek to address this by urging respected but below-the-surface women to write more blog posts, attend more meetings. Who exactly suffers? You don't think we can find more chairs in the meeting room? Is the blog going to fill up?

None of this is even mentioning the basic question of, what do we even get out of trying to "correct" disparities in employment demographics

He was pretty clear about that actually. He started with it. He said he felt, but could not prove, the high quality of his experience had to do with the diversity of the members of that community. It's fine to challenge that idea, but don't pretend like it wasn't discussed.

what of the girls who learn that their role models have been given a handicap

When I tell my kids to go out of their way to be friends with a kid who seems lonely, they fundamentally get why. They don't have these delusions that everyone starts at an equal footing and that the status quo reflects everyone getting what they deserve.
As I understand it, CAs have mitigated the collision attacks by forcing a random serial number they generate into the certificates. Since that's part of the hash, collision attacks are no longer practical.

Doing x509 still means having to parse ASN.1 though, and nobody seems to actually like it.
>Rob is right that role models are important.

I've heard this thought expressed a lot, but I have to ask a genuine question: Does anyone here really have any role models that were influential to their interest in the field?

I'm a man, so maybe it is different for women. But I never really had any role models in programming that I looked up to/wanted to emulate. Personally, I was always interested in computers, software, technology for its own sake, and never really paid too much attention to the people behind the scenes. I don't recall any particular person who I saw in programming and thought "I want to be like them", or thought of as a role model.

I suppose this could have happened on a subconscious level, when I was unaware of it. But at least on a conscious level I can't point out any particular individual who I viewed as a role model and inspired me to continue in the field.

Is there anyone else who never had a role-model type relationship with someone? And for those who have experienced it, would you mind sharing a story about a significant role model in programming from your life?
I've made no claim that Cloudflare did anything wrong with that blog post.

I can however see how Dyn themselves might not have liked it all that much. And in saying so, I think both the content and medium that Dyn chose in r1ch's post might be further contextualised.
Presumably consciousness requires a model of the self, so a neuron that can sample from all parts of the brain would be well placed to build such a model. That's my theory at least.
Linus on Git and SHA-1
The problem isn't gender per se; the problem is how we define success and how leadership works. We're up to our neck in all sort of hubris sprung from the cultural emphasis on ambition at any cost. As Charlie Sheen might say, "Winning."[1]

[1] if you don't see his story as a parody, intentional or otherwise, look again...

But if diversity is your yardstick, then it's surprising how much better the military services are at it than tech. Indeed, if I were an ambitious woman, I am not sure that's not the path to take for tech.
What concerns me is that we are going to see more and more of this in the coming years - corporations concerned over ex-employees taking their knowledge with them and taking legal recourse. In this case, they complain about access of 14k proprietary files - which is pretty damning, but I could see similar damning evidence over accessing a couple of critically important design docs relatively near the end of employment. How do you distinguish between files being accessed merely for the purpose out your work vs theft? How can you ascertain what was in their minds and hearts for accessing for those files - and worse, how little would it take to sway a judge or jury that accessing of such files were deliberate (ie part of the bigger picture)? Courts have been wrong before. Previous generations this didn't come up because they stayed in 1 or 2 jobs their entire lives, at least in this aspect, today's environment is completely different.
There are alternate Minecraft servers, some make better use of cores than others. Perhaps your parent commenter is using one of those.
The politically motivated down-votes here make me sad..
I see where you're coming from, and I think we reach different conclusions because you see merit as a much more readily judged quantity than I do.

I wholeheartedly agree, elevating people above the level of responsibility/work they can handle is a bad idea, as is taking away responsibility from more qualified people.

Where you run into trouble is the people judging qualifications. Human judgment is an insanely noisy tool that heavily weights a bunch of stuff with no actual effect. For a stupid example, look at the earning difference between tall men and taller men -- it's about $800/yr/inch [1]. The effects of gender, race, and apparent country of origin (eg "foreign sounding" names) are all larger and equally useless in actually predicting job performance.

I'm not saying hire dim women over bright men. As I see it, the claim is that there are often many candidates who are equally "qualified" within our margin of error, and in those situations it's wise to pick the disadvantaged candidate because A) your flawed human judgement's probably lying to you ie they're more qualified than you think and B) if they are truly equal, elevating them will help encourage the next generation of candidates with their background, as TFA suggests. We can argue whether such a strategy will discourage the advantaged group's next generation in an equal and opposite manner, but I suspect the effect is strongly net positive on the size / quality of the labor pool.

Lastly, I realize I've made this comment quite narrowly focused on a hypothetical "hiring" scenario with a single human arbiter, but I hope HN can extrapolate the ideas to other choices we make as a society.

1: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/05/the-fin...
Perhaps because that is a different discussion for another forum and this forum is a better fit for discussing Rob's article.
Like AA, first you have to admit you have a problem. (Not you personally, but there are plenty of people who claim it's just the natural order of things.)

The profession does not conduct exit interviews, but fortunately every few weeks someone will write a blog post on why they (a women) left computer science. These articles may be posted to HN, where they often get a skeptical to hostile reception.

Harrasment is the big one in the news (Uber passim), but there are all sorts of lessor problems which result in women's contributions being ignored or misattributed to men who are louder.

(Astronomy is not immune to this problem, even if it might be better: http://www.nature.com/news/astronomy-roiled-again-by-sexual-... )
Respectfully, for the link, you're attacking ZH and not the substance of ZH's positions.
Question: What does git use to hash blobs? Is it SHA-1?

Would that be a problem? Ramifications are unclear to me.
This is a good point, under the rubric "institutions girdling trust".

Quite relevant as a set of innovations in the time when people started having to do business with strangers, particularly ones with different ecological positions. You can imagine having lived in agricultural societies there would be a big question of how exactly you're going to have a business relationship with say a factory owner or delivery company.

JSC, exchanges, (perhaps central banking as well) and various encounters with credit issues worked out a certain way in the UK, and innovations were copied across many other societies.
If this is your own project and it meets the guidelines, this likely should be a "Show HN":

https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html