skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Please. I know the standard set of MRA talking points well, having spent way too much time as a teenager in the meta/drama internet cultures. This manifesto [0] hits most of the main ones.

> Note, the same forces that lead men into high pay/high stress jobs in tech and leadership cause men to take undesirable and dangerous jobs like coal mining, garbage collection, and firefighting, and suffer 93% of work-related deaths.

> Feminism has made great progress in freeing women from the female gender role, but men are still very much tied to the male gender role.

> Programs, mentoring, and classes only for people with a certain gender or race

> Unfortunately, the overwhelming majority of humanities and social scientists learn left (about 95%), which creates enormous confirmation bias, changes what’s being studied, and maintains myths like social constructionism and the gender wage gap.

> males are biologically disposable

> We have extensive government and Google programs, fields of study, and legal and social norms to protect women, but when a man complains about a gender issue issue [sic] affecting men, he’s labelled as a misogynist and whiner. Nearly every difference between men and women is interpreted as a form of women’s oppression.

> political correctness, which constrains discourse and is complacent to the extremely sensitive PC-authoritarians that use violence and shaming to advance their cause

Copy/paste any of those into an r/MensRights thread and you'll fit right in.

[0] https://gizmodo.com/exclusive-heres-the-full-10-page-anti-di...
Imagine Google required candidates to bench press 200 lbs as well as solve brain teasers. That means they turned away a lot of qualified devs for no good reason, but it does not mean they hired anyone unqualified, because lifting does not make you stupid.
> While it is true that keeping a hash of a chunk of data will tell you if that data is damaged or not, the filesystem CRCs are an unnecessary and redundant waste of space ...

A few years ago I, when I was on a game console team, a hardware engineer came to my desk and said, "Can you find out what's wrong with this disk drive?" It had come from a customer whose complaint was that games sometimes failed to download and game saves became unreadable.

I spent a fun afternoon tracking down what turned out to be a stuck-at-zero bit on that drive's cache. Just above the drive's ECC-it-to-death block storage was this flaky bit of RAM that was going totally unchecked. The console had a Merkle-tree based file system and easily detected the failure, but without that addition checking the corruption would have been very subtle, most of the time.

Okay, so that's just one system out of millions, right? What are the chances? Well, at the scale of millions, pretty much any hole in data integrity is going to be found out and affect real, live customers at some not insignificant rate. You really shouldn't be amazed at the number of single-bit memory errors happening on consumer hardware (from consoles to PCs -- and I assume phones). You should expect these failures and determine in advance if they are important to you and your customers.

Just asserting "CRCs are useless" is putting a lot of trust on stuff that has real-world failure modes.
This gave me a really good laugh. By that logic, a completely hairless person would be the most disciplined :)
I think you've interpreted that quote exactly the opposite of the way it was intended. Here is slightly more context, which makes it clear that Soh is arguing it is the opponents of this memo who misinterpret any reference to sex differences and "subsequently deny the science around them."

> As a woman who’s worked in academia and within STEM, I didn’t find the memo offensive or sexist in the least. I found it to be a well thought out document, asking for greater tolerance for differences in opinion, and treating people as individuals instead of based on group membership.

> Within the field of neuroscience, sex differences between women and men—when it comes to brain structure and function and associated differences in personality and occupational preferences—are understood to be true, because the evidence for them (thousands of studies) is strong. This is not information that’s considered controversial or up for debate; if you tried to argue otherwise, or for purely social influences, you’d be laughed at.

> Sex researchers recognize that these differences are not inherently supportive of sexism or stratifying opportunities based on sex. It is only because a group of individuals have chosen to interpret them that way, and to subsequently deny the science around them, that we have to have this conversation at a public level.
Affirmative action programs are controversial because people who have privilege generally don’t like other people getting that privilege (because then they are no longer special).

As an analogous situation, men often claim that women talk too much. There’s fairly strong evidence that the claim is merely sexist nonsense[1].

So forgive me if I’m unwilling to give a crap about whether people who look like me (white men) feel like they’re getting the short end of the stick because there are people like me working to end the special privileges that they have gotten literally for decades. Especially since so many of them really aren’t all that. The London School of Economics makes it clear that gender quotas actually improve meritocracy by squeezing out mediocre men[2].

Your rephrasing is mostly correct, but I would go so far as to say that if you don’t know how to see your own biases, you cannot design a meritocratic interview process that doesn’t inherently have bias against women and/or minorities. As this entire discussion on the firing of the author of the screed shows…there’s a lot of people who can’t see that they have biases.

(And yes, I have biases. I have to work very hard to prevent those biases from causing me to discriminate. This is largely why I involve my team in hiring and constantly discuss the problems with bias blindness with them, too.)

[1] http://thejunglenook.tumblr.com/post/75517868909/do-women-ta... … but also see [3] as an extension because it actually gets to the heart of just why the (now-ex) Googler at the top of this was just so wrong.

[2] http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/businessreview/2017/03/13/gender-quot...

[3] http://allthingslinguistic.com/post/145374253955/do-women-ta...
> The issue is that the left equates denying preferential treatment as 'denying people civil rights'. That makes it close to impossible for liberal-minded and conservative-minded folks to debate many topics.

Please, remind me how "being able to have visitation rights to the person you love" or "being able to vote while black" are "special privileges"?

> Right to exist? Is someone saying they should all be rounded up and persecuted?

Yes, let me introduce you to the Republican Party:

- http://www.washingtonblade.com/2017/04/05/va-gop-gubernatori...

- http://www.hrc.org/blog/republican-national-convention-2016-...

- https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-07-27/republica...

> And...'sanctioning violence' against women? What does that even mean? Who is doing this?

Let me guess: you'd feel pretty upset if all the people in HN today that you are persona non-grata and that they'll make sure not a single person they know hires you. Would you say that removing your ability to make a living doing what you love is violence? Violence doesn't need to mean "punching in the face."

> punish anyone who isn't a straight white male.

And yet, straight white males are the only ones whose rights are never in question. When was the last time you heard of an anti-white male legislation passing in the Deep South? And yet here they are, full internet forums complaining about their waning rights in the hands of females/blacks/LGBT/immigrants. Makes you wonder, huh?
Not that much:

https://www.diffchecker.com/rp3W4Gpp
Is that our guy? He is talking about him in the 3rd person later on down the line. How is one reddit comment even relevant to this right now?
"The "treat people as individuals, not as just another member of their group" sentiment of the author is fine except that we have hundreds of years of doing just this in order to oppress and disenfranchise groups of people."

Just the opposite as far as I can tell. Every great evil in history came from grouping people and punishing based on collective guilt (whether the guilt was real or imagined). This includes the crimes of the left and the right.

How is it even logically possible to disenfranchise a group of people by ignoring their group characteristics?
I've never seen that specific test (that'd be a useless test), but I get your point. "Here's a thing to do, do it."

But there's a billion ways to write that code. Which ones will the evaluator prefer and/or reject? That's where subjective opinion comes in.
No, I pay the full price myself out of pocket (and write it off on my taxes).
Did you read the memo? He got all the biology research wrong? Please come with some examples of errors in the empirical claims he made.

And he is not saying that you are a "freak" or "biological anomaly", he is talking about aggregated, statistical differences.
Here's the minority's perspective:
1) Why is it required that there can be no more than 20% women in a tech company?
2) Why is it required to have a minimally diverse company?

If you look at these two questions and just say "hah! that's not the same thing at all!", then that's why.
I believe that by definition women are the ones who get pregnant
It is no measure of health to be adjusted to a profoundly sick society... but of course, you'll read that quote then give yourself a pat on the back, sadly.
>You have probably heard about the manifesto a Googler (not someone senior) published internally about, essentially, how women and men are intrinsically different and we should stop trying to make it possible for women to be engineers, it’s just not worth it.

I stopped reading after the first paragraph. Totally not what the memo was saying.
I see what you're saying about the bias-awareness intervention.

For your last sentence, I did not write, and did not mean to imply anything about the number of false-positive (FP) 'diversity' candidates vs FP non-'diversity' candidates. It's true that the author hints at this comparison.

I meant to convey that, per the author's statement about 'lowering the bar', Google's practices increase the FP rate in 'diversity' candidates as compared to what would have happened without the practices.

From this perspective, the author is stating that the 'diversity' hires have a higher FP rate than might have occurred otherwise. I think this conclusion - I think it's a fair one, though we may disagree - is what people find somewhat problematic.
I've seen it a lot coming from the right-wing fringe. I'd imagine it's a Breitbart/Limbaugh/Hannity thing.
So can another 100 employees publish the same letter and get fired and line up for their million dollar payouts too?

I don't know about the discovery argument. If he was an HR insider and acting as a whistleblower to disclose an illegal practice, sure. But a regular employee can't voice opinions about something that's common knowledge and force the company to disclose a bunch of confidential information.
I think one of the universal truths in tech is that, those for it, and those annoyed by it both kind of miss the point.
A few years ago I had a drive at home that was flipping bits, randomly corrupting my files. It inspired me to build a ZFS disk server and introduce redundancy in my home setup.

A bunch of this article reads as if this scenario, which I in fact hit, won't happen, drives do it better, etc. But it happens. It happened to me. The drive did not "magically fix itself", and instead got worse over time. With ZFS, if it happens again, I can be told where it happened, exactly what files are affected, etc., and that's already better than what I got with that other disk which didn't have ZFS.

Plus the ZFS tools like snapshotting, send/receive, scrub being able to check integrity while the system is running... Those are great features.
I agree and that's why I didn't respond to this with a downvote - I just think you need to try to pick an analogy that isn't one of taste/choice and is instead one of some less controversial assigned trait. Not really sure what you'd pick, though.
You should look up the doctrine of fighting words.
This right here is actually the source of the problem. The current societal environment tells you "here are topics that you have to discuss with utmost sensitivity, even if you are completely confident you are right, and have all the evidence."

Your (and presumably, the google employee that got fired) response?

"Nah, I am right, so fuck your rules"

It doesn't work that way.
So you're issue is that math is more "things" oriented too, so why would women make up 45% of undergraduate mathematics if the things/people brain differences were real? I think it's an interesting point.

It's purely anecdotal, but the two women math majors I personally know are high school math teachers, which would be more "people". Are math teachers enough to account for a 20% (engineering) to 45% (math) difference? Probably not, but I think it is more open ended in terms of what math majors end up doing vs engineering or computer science.

I find Scott's arguments persuasive though, and could easily be fitting my memory/interpretation/facts etc to work within other beliefs. Post hoc rationalizations like this are always tricky.
For an article with that tone, you would think the author would have more experience. It's literally filled with flawed and uninformed or inexperienced thinking.

From the idea that SMART reliably detects hard drive failures.. to dismissing data protection for no reason other than it sounds unlikely to the author (which in several cases I know personally to be false... because I've experienced those failures).

ZFS is a very well designed filesystem. Things weren't added haphazardly or because they sounded cool. The author would do well to try to understand why those protections were added.
Golang Color Package for support HEX, uint38 and xterm-colors
Expand the pool of applicants until selecting the top 5% produces a male/female balance closer to that of the general population. Smaller companies don't necessarily have the ability to do this, but Google has the resources to do it.

Expanding the applicant pool will never reduce fairness, and it gives you more opportunities to hire the best of the best, assuming your hiring pipeline can actually select them.
>Various networks offer anybody the opportunity to go on many first dates with many people.

Not if those people refuse to go on dates with the person.

>why is that?

No idea. I'm supposedly really attractive. If there's an answer I don't have a way of finding it out.

>it's a life journey that most certainly includes working on yourself.

Well I can't get in much better shape than I already am, I could make more money but I'm already making enough that that shouldn't be holding me back any. On paper there's basically nothing wrong with me.
And even the founding philosophers of the freedom of speech concept said there were limits to the concept - i.e. JSM said that there is a harm principle, where if the expression causes harm then the liberty to express it should rightfully and forcefully be admonished.
The document itself makes the claim that conservatives and classical liberals are discriminated against and actively silenced at Google. While I don't necessarily agree with this claim as per the the article he's set himself up into a position for being fired for commenting on his political beliefs. It's quite possible all he really needs to make a case is examples of political belief being shared and accepted without consequence in the same venue since it's pretty easy to find mainstream republicans who share these positions. Not saying the case is a winner, but it's pretty hard to not survive summary judgement when you can allege a reasonable basis for political discrimination. At that point I'd bet settling would be favourable to going through discovery.
Your denial of reality is noted. Systemic discrimination against women in hiring has been exhaustively documented and studied, including in the tech industry.
I did not assume nor imply it's tiny in any "absolute" sense.
If we're not considering qualifications of applicants vs ignorance of those qualifications by employers, then we're only fighting discrimination with discrimination. In none of the articles I've read have the reporters shown stats on applications weighing qualifications against hiring favoring race, sex, or religion. They simply state hired demographics and ignore factors that may have contributed to those demographics including education, opportunity, and typical interest by demographic.
I'm talking about the online sub-culture that has sprung up in the last 5 years. The ideas they promote are a distillation of various crit theory stuff, like safe spaces, trigger warnings, micro-aggressions, etc. They are the reason why the term "white privilege" is now virtually a household term even though it's been around since the 1980's. Not sure what your purpose is in arguing this very simple definition, but if you don't agree then have a good day I guess, not worth any more of my time.
He asked about your opinion on a principle, because many people prefer reasoned, principled policy over internet-fueled, hysterical mob rule.

Dodging the question by saying you don't find the principle "interesting" when applied on the other end of the argument is effectively admitting that you know the principle is flawed.
I have lived the 4 hour work week for the last 2 years. I created a course online and earned half a million dollars from it in the first year alone, after spending 3 months creating it (I was 29 when I created it). Many of the ideas from that book (4hww) were ideas that came naturally to me prior to reading that book. I think anyone who considers themselves resourceful (particularly with utilizing Google search) would say the same thing. Most of the world's information is on the web, so if you want to create a lifestyle that optimizes for high earnings and low work hours, you should start by searching Google.

It's striking to me how people seem so baffled about anything anymore these days. Is there a God? The best framework humans have discovered for figuring things out is the scientific method, and according to that, the answer is: not as far as we can tell. Why is this even a question anymore and why do religions still exist, 20+ years after the internet has been around for the public? Again, the answer to that is on the web as well (the answer probably has to do with how longstanding institutions take a long time to die without meteoric disruption - and physics research/the discovery of the Higgs boson clearly wasn't enough to disrupt religion, nor was the recent rise in popularity of Nick Bostrom's simulation theory which happens to be my favorite theory about what this universe is, etc.).

Anyway, I digress...the point is that nearly anything can be figured out via Google. Want to become a rocket scientist? Google it. Read the best books out there. Don't sell yourself short. Want to be an engineer? Google it. And then do it. You can also learn almost anything with very low cost, thanks to the Internet.

I just gave you the secret to the 4 hour work week. Google + determination.

If you're struggling with accepting this answer - start with getting better at searching Google. You can get good at it like any other skill.
Someone who I cannot remember the name of once said conservative/right-side politics trends towards Authoritarianism while liberal/left-side politics trends towards Totalitarianism. Pick your poison.
Can we please stop using 'freedom of speech' in this context. Freedom of Speech in itself is from persecution from the Government. It does not apply here.
It's definitely a hypothesis, seems testable too. Not a ton of vet or linguistic or biology shows though.
I discovered a few weeks back that my Android build has dnsmasq installed in the system directories. Apparently stock.

It's not running. But ... you could have fun with that.
Nor I, TBH, but I've not been thinking about it very hard or very long. It just surprised me that we're no longer talking about months or years, where things are more obviously impractical for just about everything.
I'm just trying to be neutral in all of this. If you look through that thread, the internet at large seems to be taking this as an opportunity to flex men's rights issues pretty heavily. The reason they're doing this seems to be because of the content of his writings rather than the fact that he got fired.

EDIT: Actually, it's unfair to say "the internet at large." HN, reddit, and twitter all seem to be taking the news in unique ways.
I'm not sure about math[1] but chemical engineering can (though not always) have a lot of overlap with bio-eng and med-eng, which parallels his argument somewhat. I'd be curious to see the degree to which a more detailed breakdown of gender differences both in engineering disciplines and scientific disciplines matches his thesis for sure. If his argument holds maybe physics would be more male, biology more female, and chemistry somewhere in the middle-ish?

[1]: Anecdotally, foreign students have made up a larger percentage of the female mathematics (and physics) graduate students I've known than of the male math (and physics) graduate students I've known, though I have no idea if my experience normal, sample size is very small and biased, etc.
The other one they ceded, and the one that lost the election probably, was the traditionally leftist ideas such as anti-globalization and concerns for the workers. Chomsky and even Sanders not that long ago were railing against NAFTA and Open Borders. But then the current president picked and ran with those ideas and the Left was well left (pun intended) with a few issues such as identity politics, Wall Street donors, but also strangely enough Occupy Wall Street supporters... so they they lost. It should have been a slam dunk against a TV personality.

There was perhaps a glimmer of hope, thinking "Ok, now the left will rethink its position, will turn the DNC upside down and a new and vibrant left will appear in the American politics, possibly running with many of the idea that Sanders ran" and then nothing much happened.

The main political message so far is being "anti - whatever the president is or does". They botched a nice PR initiative about Russia, it was going so well, until they went to far and now they have nothing left. At last someone there raised the alarm and so they limply came up with the new slogan "Better Deal: Better Jobs, Better Wages, Better Future" "https://www.vox.com/2017/7/23/16016676/chuck-schumer-democra... but I think it is too little, too late. It's doing to be an uphill battle. I just expected more, not sure why.. Instead I got a stream of nonsense about Russia, a bunch of anti Trump rallies, how many scoops of ice creams he had and so on.
or ".lan"
Pieces of psychology can have reproducability problems, without the complete & total entirety of the field having reproducability problems.
Holding a view that inherently biases them against a whole gender does make them a work liability. How can you trust this person to be fair when - god forbid - they manage people and have to decide who performed better in their mixed-gender group?

If anything, by firing him Google might be saving money in future gender-based discrimination lawsuits. On that alone, the "laissez faire capitalists" should stop moaning about this.
As someone who has lost some files to a silently malfunctioning hard disk in the past, I think I'll stick with ZFS. Checksumming, RAID-Z, and periodic scrubbing would have saved my files. Even having backups did not -- after all, what good is a bit-for-bit copy of a corrupted file?

(On a side note, ZFS -- at least OpenZFS -- doesn't support any CRC algorithms for use as its checksum.)
Your knowledge of something can't change or determine whether it is deterministic or not.