skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> Didn't that guy basically just do that but only about his female and minority colleagues

No, actually quite the opposite.

When a company/university/country enshrines diversity quotas, they are basically telling minorities that they are by default stupider than average.

Also, enforcing these diversity quotas will create a (probably valid) impression that minority members who make it anywhere did not do so on their own merit.

As a minority I would much rather know there are no diversity programs so that I know that where ever I get, it's based on my merit, not some charity. Even if I was the only one in the room from my ethnic origin (which is actually often the case).
(13) Bitcoin live chart
There's a lot to be said about the current trend of privileged (read Western, perhaps wealthy, perhaps white, perhaps male) people to bemoan whatever concessions are made to the minority group but I'll leave that aside.

I believe that everyone should have a fair shot at a good career. I can't even begin to talk about how that is not the case in America - if we disagree here, I'm not sure we'll ever come to agreement.

It's not clear that the workers favored in this alternate pipeline are incompetent (which is really the implication that everyone is making). What is clear is that people with their perspectives are not as prevalent in the technology field.

Perhaps companies are recognizing a) the value of multiple perspectives or b) the structural difficulties that deny some people the same 'fair shot' we all have.

I'll leave you with this. The SAT should be a test of one's aptitude, perhaps readiness for college. If some individuals receive years of tutoring, but others have to go to the library to get test preparation, is our metric for college readiness fair? Maybe you'll say yes, but if we were talking about any other thing (cars, experimental models, you name it) we would clearly recognize these two groups had different pre-test levels of preparedness.
>I had a negative opinion of it because someone out there believed that you could just shout out your controversial beliefs in a group email and expect something positive to come from it.

I'm honestly struggling to understand your perspective. Would you prefer a world where nobody says anything "controversial", everyone just rolls with the status quo, and nothing ever changes? Why is espousing "controversial ideals" offensive to you? I treat ideas that clash with my own internal logical understanding of the world as challenges that can only improve my understanding of the world. If I run these "controversial ideas" through my logic and reasoning faculties, there's really only two possible outcomes:

- I reject the idea and now have arguments against them that I can share with others

- I end up embracing the idea because I realize that my implicit rejection of it lacked a sturdy logical foundation

Either way, I win—I get a better understanding of the world I live in.

Why would you choose to shield yourself from improving yourself mentally?
Doesn't matter all that much. For ingestion, you might have one VM running one Java process and one DB process as a microservice (I like Dropwizard and PostgreSQL for this). The worker itself would be another Java process with a 100 thread max thread pool that either periodically checks for new work, or uses the new NOTIFY semantics new to Postgres 9.6. In this case the "secret sauce" is that the worker has some extra smarts to reorder the queue to avoid resource hogs, which is the cool part.
Apparently not. From "ARM Architecture Reference Manual ARMv8 for ARMv8-A architecture profile",

Apart from Load-Exclusive, Store-Exclusive, Load-Acquire,
and Store-Release, addresses can have any alignment unless
strict alignment checking is enabled....

-- Section C3.2 Loads and Stores, page C3-160.

The Load-Exclusive/Store-Exclusive instructions other than
Load-Exclusive pair and Store-Exclusive pair require natural
alignment, and an unaligned address generates an Alignment
fault. Memory accesses generated by Load-Exclusive pair or
Store-Exclusive pair instructions must be aligned to the
size of the pair, otherwise the access generates an
Alignment fault.

-- Section C3.2.6 Load-Exclusive/Store-Exclusive

The Load-Acquire/Store-Release instructions other than Load
Acquire pair and Store-Release pair require natural
alignment, and an unaligned address generates an Alignment
fault. Memory accesses generated by Load-Acquire pair or
Store-Release pair instructions must be aligned to the size
of the pair, otherwise the access generates an Alignment
fault.

-- Section C3.2.7 Load-Acquire/Store-Release

The LoadLOAcquire/StoreLORelease instructions require
natural alignment, and an unaligned address generates an
Alignment fault.

-- Source C3.2.8 LoadLOAcquire/StoreLORelease

The CAS and CASP instructions require natural alignment, and
an unaligned address generates an Alignment fault.

-- Section 3.2.12 Compare and Swap, page C3-172

The LD<OP> and ST<OP> instructions require natural
alignment, and an unaligned address generates an Alignment
fault.

-- Section C3.2.13 Atomic memory operations, page C3-173.

The SWP instructions require natural alignment, and an
unaligned address generates an Alignment fault.

-- Section C3.2.14 Swap, page C3-175

I've only ever dabbled in assembly programming, but the ability of x86 to do atomic operations across cache lines is, AFAIU, rather unique. That Intel and AMD engineers are able to accomplish it relatively performantly is an incredible achievement. But it's not a handicap anybody else wishes to adopt and then compensate for.
The policies he mentioned only even apply to people that are already in the treehouse, using that metaphor. He's saying we should stop pushing each other around up there and help other people climb up.

Edit: Positive discrimination in hiring policies doesn't do much to make tech more diverse, it can only shift the diversity within individual companies. Once someone is already a software engineer, they're almost certainly going to be hired somewhere if they're any good. Giving them preferential treatment does next to nothing for all of the members of their demographic group who aren't software engineers.
They are adding a bias in their selection process with gender diversity programs, so if two candidates are very similar they will probably select the one who belongs to the minority. As it is a minority, you are more likely to choose less qualified people from the minority.

For example, your pool of candidates is 75 (mayority) / 25 (minority). If you want in your company 50/50 ratio, you must leave out better candidates from the mayority in order to increase your number of people of the minority.

EDIT: as other person replied to me in a comment, my argument fails if the target ratio is close to the pool of candidates. But we don't have any reference what was the goal of the diversity program to make any assumption. I assume the goal was not feasible and that lead to the famous memorandum.
Maybe you should read the Republican platform. I'm going to pull a few at random from https://www.gop.com/the-2016-republican-party-platform/

- A simplified tax code along with tax cuts with the goal of growing the market.

- Fairer trade agreements that put American workers first.

- Ease the process of home ownership.

- Investment in transportation and electric infrastructure.

- Investment in, and promoting education in STEM.

- Fostering growth in start-ups and small business.

- Right to gun ownership.

- Right to free speech.

- Right to privacy.

- Right to life.

- Congressional term limits.

I don't agree with a lot of it but it seems they're far from monsters. They're pretty up front about what they believe and why.
https://stanmed.stanford.edu/2017spring/how-mens-and-womens-...
TBH, that's irrelevant too. The interesting part here (at least for me, YMMV) is the reactions, from the owners, the media, the people... Not sure if we should credit the author with this shift of focus, though.
If you enjoyed this post you should read a few others that have been posted by Scott recently (on the linked website).

If any chance were to be made, the least that I would hope for is that people stop responding to every argument with nothing but hatred. Just pure, unfiltered, hatred. It's very difficult nowadays to find communities, or even individuals, who are good at this.
If he intended to treat people as individuals, then he wouldn't have resorted to gender stereotypes in the first place. The essay was clearly designed to tell women they don't belong at Google. Would you feel comfortable working with someone who wrote an essay at your workplace which detailed incorrect gender stereotypes about men ("Violent", "Incommunicative", "Ego/Status driven") as a way of gently saying maybe we shouldn't hire so many men anymore?

I can already visualize the intense white hot responses over at /r/mensrights and other such places. Where they already freak out, and "virtue signal" as you put it, over much much much milder stuff from feminists. Many people would call for the author's head, and I suspect we wouldn't hear so much about "free speech" from the MRA and other conservative outlets.

Edit: If any of the downvoters doubt my hypothetical, just think about what happened to Anita Sarkeesian. There were no statements about her bravery or defenses of her free speech rights from the conservatives. Just a wall of criticism and boycotts (and worse) in an attempt to get her to shut up. Whole lot of virtue signalling from men on the right, many of whom self-admitted to never watching her videos.
> "If they put 'make america great again' or 'death to white men' posters up on the bulletin boards at work in the break room, yeah, they'll fire them too."

Are you saying that supporting a presidential candidate is tantamount to "death to white men"?
Yes, the candidate in question is abhorrent, but come on. Those statements absolutely don't carry equal weight.
I have little context here, but from a statistics point of view, this statement is... odd:

"...decrease the false negative rate, not increase the false positive rate."

The interaction between type I and type II errors virtually always have an inverse relationship. You cannot decrease one without increasing the other. It is, for example, one of the difficulties in making good medical diagnostic tests.

without dumping in a lot more money or w/e...
That's worse (more complicated).
GoodRX is just a free pharmacy benefit manager. They are relatively up front about it:

How does GoodRx make money?

GoodRx is free for consumers, and we do not require that you create an account to search for prices and receive discounts.

We do not collect your personal information. We make money from advertisements on our site and referral fees.

https://www.goodrx.com/how-goodrx-works

They might offer coupons in addition to that (I don't know), but they primarily negotiate prices for a formulary. So those prices aren't going to be one time coupon type prices, they are going to be the price they have negotiated with the pharmacy in question (which may indeed change as they renegotiate).
Really? For a week? 4 bedrooms potentially sleeps 8 people.
Thanks for all the replies. I went with the QC35.
Well, I think that's what the author concluded too is it not? He has a problem with the underlying principles, the process, and the endstate...not the goal.
How about we focus on retaining the women who are already in tech, and who are dealing with harassment and disparagement like this on a regular basis?
Yes, while the grandparent accuses others of "institutionalized violence", who advocates the use of government force to ensure that the bureaucrat's definition of an ideal sexual and racial distribution is achieved? Who says that people should be jailed for advocating policies with which they disagree? Who leads campaigns to see corporate force exerted against their political opponents, and to hyperbolize benign, even obvious and commonly-believed, statements into threats of genocide?

Suggesting that hires be made based on merit and function rather than the "diversity quota" published by some federal bureaucrat trying to justify their department's existence is so far away from threatening anyone's "right to exist" that they're not even in the same universe.

People holding such distant frames of reference cannot have a reasonable conversation. And that's exactly the point.
Maybe you are right. Couldn't quite gather it from your post.
This feels like the blue and black (white and gold) dress. It boggles my mind that people don't see the fundamental and toxic misogyny in this 'manifesto'. Please have a woman you care about in your life, preferably one in tech, read this and then ask their opinion of the piece.

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. Diversity programs are not about lowering the bar, they are about outreach and working against institutionalized racism and sexism which has created the distribution of wealth and education and work culture that we have today. Given the massive disparity we see in tech it's ridiculous that this individual felt the need to lambast the relatively minimal amount of work being done to foster a more diverse and inclusive culture across the industry.

If one of the things you have to deal with as a woman in tech is seeing 10 page pseudo-intellectual manifestos about your inherent inferiority at performing in technical and leadership roles published at one of the premier tech companies in the world, and then see that piece supported on the most popular tech social sites then it's no wonder we have the gender gap we see today.

When somebody's views are being attacked for being misogynistic and alienating to their female colleagues, it is not suppression of free speech and diverse political opinion it is common decency. Nobody is infringing on your free speech but they will respond. All of these cries of 'authoritarian left-wing thought-police' makes me think We need a manifesto on White Male Persecution Complex Culture in Tech.

[disclaimer: I work at Google, my words are my own and not my employers]
Tolerance is not a moral precept. As a liberal, I tolerate differences in opinion, but I do not falsely equate attempts to deny people fair civil rights (as the modern GOP does routinely, in terms of race, gender, gender identity, and so many other ways) as “opinion” so much as institutionalized violence.

Your view that an opinion can be equated with violence is unethical, but I'm convinced a stronger historical reading would make you blush. It's a terrible and thin rationization. It's so easy to do, here are examples from right and left, with varying degrees of extremeness, quite like yours.

Not your or my opinions, but historical (if abstracted) examples:

- Your opinion that the military in this country should be replaced with an elected government is counter-revolutionary, and your poisonous ideas should be ceased before the imperialist hordes ruin our independence.

- Your opinion that our military intervention was wrong in such and such country is unpatriotic, and therefore illegal.

- Your opinion that God doesn't exist deeply offends religious people and therefore you should not say it, and people like you should be prevented from these deeply offensive opinions.

- Your opinion that drugs should be legalized is illegal because children can view it as a condoning and get hurt.

- Your opinion that this first world war is wrong is sedition, and will lead to prison time. It's harmful to this country and the war.

I hope I illustrated my point. The last was the Sedition Act, the others are more than just one incident.

I've been Left all my life and I'm deeply, deeply ashamed and nervous about the new generation's disregard of free speech and opinions that contrast their own. It's due to a lack of historical knowledge. I am convinced.
I believe the idea behind diversity initiatives is to ensure that the starting pool of 100 people is representative of larger demographics. Women make up ~50% of Carnegie Mellon's undergraduate computer science department (for instance). It's not like there's a dearth of qualified women.
This is the kind of comment that doesn't bar the bar for substantiveness here. Please stop.
Just curious -- what should a program do when an error isn't handled?
Somewhat related to the issue at hand and representative of the current, very charged landscape on social issues, is this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gatn5ameRr8

The speaker makes the case that current social conflicts at many American universities – though probably representative of the general population as well – arise because people are pursuing two, potentially incompatible goals: truth and social justice. I think it's a highly informative video.

Of course, I'd love to watch other videos contradicting or challenging this one, if anyone can provide some links.
Differences Between Men and Women Are Vastly Exaggerated
Doesn't he mention it in the context of an explicit 50/50 men/women goal? Maybe it's achieving that scenario which could lower the bar, without saying anything about the current women working at Google?
He didn't just argue that there was a difference in the distribution but that the underlying cause was biological. Companies like google hire people who excell at certain skills and are therefore at the tail end of the corresponding distribution where the differences in likelihood occurence are largest. If he believes that for engineering there are 10 men for every woman at both tail ends of the distribution then the "natural" gender ratio in engineering teams must be 10:1 or standards are lowered in the name of diversity.

The implications of that worldview are totally toxic.
Yeah that's generally how it works at most of the majors. People at Google are evaluated by an independent panel and the decision to hire or not is independent of other candidates. So you really do get this kind of "good enough" or "not good enough" binary.
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The effects of positive discrimination already do disempower women. His argument is that you should improve the environment for groups of people as an incentive rather than doing anything which can be seen as 'lowering the bar'. The point is to treat people with respect by building an environment where they can be their best (whatever individual skillset they have), instead of insulting them with offers of extra help or illegally discriminating against other groups.
I read it.
The basic premise that we disagree on is do men and women have the same mental ability to do the same engineering task.

It sounds like you agree that there are differences in men and women that mean a non 50/50 split is understandable without being blamed of bias.

Have I understood you correctly?
The problem is that reasonable political opinions motivated by nothing resembling hatred are being targeted as indicative of hateful thought.

A perfect example is the stand one may take that 'Sanctuary Cities' are bad. Voicing opposition to sanctuary cities can get you labelled as a racist, which is ridiculous.
I thought at the very least it was an attempt at a well thought out unpopular opinion that should have at least been met with a productive rebuttal. To fire this guy though, sort of proves his point. You can't speak out against the safe space google is trying to create, without fear. If he's wrong then argue his reasoning. Don't attack his character and silence him.
Where does this phrase "virtue signaling" come from, all of a sudden I see it everywhere. Is there some popular media figure that has introduced it?
Do you think this person will change his beliefs in light of what has happened? I would expect him to be defensive of his views and to even double down on his convictions.

If we truly believe that our own positions are correct and we truly want progress, we must understand how others could become misguided and persuade them away from their errant ways. We get there by reaching out, listening, and understanding.
You're talking about taking programs that work - at least to some degree - and removing them without advocating a replacement. Apply this same logic to any other workplace context and it should be obvious how unproductive it is. How far would you get in your day-to-day work if the only thing all your coworkers did is say "no"?

Should the ACA - or health insurance in general - simply be abolished due to defects that you dislike, without a replacement? If the VP of inclusion isn't doing a good job up to your standards, should they just be fired? When Mr. Damore advocated for the removal of all these programs without providing concrete suggestions on how to replace them with better programs, he committed a similar error. (This is aside from the reasoning he used to try to justify it, which is another set of issues)
I disapprove of what you say,but i defend to the death your right to say it.Do you still remember 'Don't be evil'?SHAME ON YOU,GOOGLE.
>The irony of this post when you will get reported and hellbanned for questioning libertarianism on HN.

When has this happened?

>As for "political correctness" it was a term that was first popularised by the right to attack college activism and shut down people challenging the status quo.

Actually, it was a term first popularized by the socialists, to attack the communists.
> What else is the American mind unfairly closed to?

Unfairly is precisely the point on which your question turns. If you have interesting points to raise in favor of Al Qaeda, you should absolutely be allowed to raise them, and you should not be fired for so doing. I don't think your arguments will have much merit, but if they're cogent, i'm happy to hear them.

The whole point of his manifesto, and the reason why your post misses it, is that he wasn't fired because of the truth or falsehood of what he said. His arguments weren't evaluated on their merits, and presumed to be the wanderings of a mind ill-suited to the tasks at Google's hands. Nobody even bothered to directly address the question of whether he was right, because they were too invested in how it made them feel. That is the problem.

We should be open-minded about everything. Including child labor, ending universal suffrage, and the virtues of Al Qaeda. We should be able to reject bad ideas on their merits, each and every time, because we understand what and why we believe. We should embrace disagreement, because it makes concrete our own worldview. The fact that the VP of Diversity of at Google simply dismissed the arguments of a widely circulated (and therefore, likely, widely agreed with) memo speaks volumes. And it may be that he's wrong. It may be that his arguments are completely empty of substance, maybe the studies he cites are pseudoscience. But if a decent number of Googler's agree with him, as appears to be the case, then his arguments should be addressed directly, on even ground, on their merits - not shamed into silence. If he's wrong, it should be easy to demonstrate it.
This only darkens the landscape surrounding gender issues. Considering Google's flip-flopping from the initial response and their actions after the public backlash- it only seems to confirm that internally there is much division over how this is to be handled on an organizational level. A step backwards for the culture as a whole, if we cannot get the best minds together to tactfully resolve such a sensitive topic.