skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm honestly curious...if diversity is such an important issue to so many people, why do large sports organizations such as the NFL, NBA, etc, still separate women into their own leagues and not allow them into the "men's league"? And probably in the range of billions of people support such organizations.

I personally feel are humans are equal regardless of race sex origin or any other factor. If you are a human, you have every right that any other human has and there is no place for discrimination of any kind.
Yeah, and swathes of the conservative / alt-right movement currently running things want to get rid of the (Federal) Department of Education altogether, so I read. I've even seen people on Twitter claiming America would be better without any college system at all.
Weird that a group of people who spend their youth being told that they're naturally bad at math and critical reasoning have hangups when given these tests. Only explanation is that their doubters were right.
“Separation of concerns” is a straw man (regarding HTML and CSS)
Have you read the memo? It's coherent. People just don't like what it says. Please read this article which includes responses to the memo from four scientists who study the subject matter: http://archive.is/z6xxP

> The author of the Google essay on issues related to diversity gets nearly all of the science and its implications exactly right. [...] This essay may not get everything 100% right, but it is certainly not a rant. And it stands in sharp contrast to most of the comments, which are little more than snarky modern slurs. The arrogance of most of the comments reflects exactly the type of smug self-appointed superiority that has led to widespread resentment of the left among reasonable people. To the extent that such views correspond to those at Google, they vindicate the essayist’s claims about the authoritarian and repressive atmosphere there. Even the response by Google’s new VP in charge of diversity simply ignores all of the author’s arguments, and vacuously affirms Google’s commitment to diversity. The essay is vastly more thoughtful, linked to the science, and well-reasoned than nearly all of the comments. (Lee Jussim, professor of social psychology at Rutgers University)

> For what it’s worth, I think that almost all of the Google memo’s empirical claims are scientifically accurate. Moreover, they are stated quite carefully and dispassionately. Its key claims about sex differences are especially well-supported by large volumes of research across species, cultures, and history. I know a little about sex differences research. On the topic of evolution and human sexuality, I’ve taught for 28 years, written 4 books and over 100 academic publications, given 190 talks, reviewed papers for over 50 journals, and mentored 11 Ph.D. students. Whoever the memo’s author is, he has obviously read a fair amount about these topics. Graded fairly, his memo would get at least an A- in any masters’ level psychology course. It is consistent with the scientific state of the art on sex differences. (Blank slate gender feminism is advocacy rather than science: no gender feminist I’ve met has ever been able to give a coherent answer to the question ‘What empirical findings would convince you that psychological sex differences evolved?’) (Geoffrey Miller, evolutionary psychology professor at University of New Mexico)

If you have read the memo and found it incoherent, then please explain what part of it is incoherent. Here are some of the points made in its summary:

> [S]ilencing [people who disagree] has created an ideological echo chamber where some ideas are too sacred to be honestly discussed.

> Differences in distributions of traits between men and women may in part explain why we don’t have 50% representation of women in tech and leadership. Discrimination to reach equal representation is unfair, divisive, and bad for business.

Do you find those points incoherent? I find them to be clear. ("incoherent: expressed in an incomprehensible or confusing way; unclear.")
Thank you. Its comments like yours that make me wish we had a FAQ/info box per 1000+ comments threads so that we can read first hand and get a personal interpretation first before digging through the comments, including the commentary in the article.
Reminds me of a Belgian guy who was in the papers a few years ago, who had to pass an 'integration test' before he could get Dutch citizenship. Part of that test is a language test (people from the north of Belgium, i.e. Flanders, speak Dutch - it's the same language as the one spoken in the Netherlands. So, like the woman in the OP, he had to take an exam on his mother tongue, and with much less of an accent than an Irish accent is as compared to the Queen's English). If you have a degree (even just a high school degree) from a Dutch language school, you're exempt, but this guy didn't so he wasn't (this exemption was put in to basically avoid situations like this, under the assumption that the vast majority of people would have a high school degree).

Either way, he failed the test a few times; reason being that this 'integration test' doesn't just cover language skills, but also things like 'knowledge of Dutch society'. For example, you get 3 pictures of a front yard of a house, with varying degrees of clutter on them (like a children's bike and a garbage bin with the lid open). Question being: how are you supposed to maintain your yard, like in picture A, B or C? Most (Dutch) people I've given the test failed it because the questions are so ridiculous. It's quite lulzy actually. Well not for that Belgian guy I presume.
Paul Graham: Do Things That Don’t Scale
This thread feels like a Breitbart comment section.
Good thing the original memo author has a PhD in biology then.

That post is a cowardly and smarmy non answer, and it contradicts itself in several ways. Aside from the one already mentioned, it claims making people feel bad at their job is inappropriate (even though the memo did no such thing) and then goes on to actually mock the author by claiming he sounds like he's bad at his job.

Rules for thee but not for me. Utterly pathetic how people think this is in any way a rebuttal.
And what additional efforts should we take to reduce the validity of any Birther's claims that Obama was actually born in Kenya? Obama releasing his birth certificate made as much difference as the National Climate Assessment leaking this report. What more evidence will they demand before graciously changing their minds to fit the facts? Don't those people's unfounded politically motivated conspiracy theories deserve just as much respect as the claims of climate change deniers, too? /s
Counterpoint: during the occupation of France by the Nazis, a disproportionate amount of the French resistance were immigrants[1]. In fact the second (after Jean Moulin) most famous group that was caught was the "Manouchian network", whose members were almost all immigrants.

Likewise the Free French Forces (i.e. French military who refused to surrender in 1940) operating under British command were at least two-third colonials and/or immigrants.

[1] http://www.thedailybeast.com/the-real-story-of-the-french-re...
Try this then:

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/evzjww/here-are-t...
Do some research on the nordic gender paradox. It seems that (simplified) if you forcefully "level the playing field" that intrinsic biological differences are stronger, not weaker.
> based on nonexistent science and personal feelings

But his memo had extensive sourcing, including many scientific studies. Are you saying that those studies are nonsense?

> It is not "political correctness" that gets someone fired for failing to test a change before deploying it in production and breaking the site; it is a lack of critical thinking skills.

This is opposite the blameless culture laid out as best practices by the leaders in tech, so I don't know why you would assert it as a good reason to fire someone.

I too, like you, think words matter and think we should be able to take people's beliefs into account when choosing to associate with them. I'd like to note that our opinion is pretty controversial - it's actually illegal to do this for several wide ranges of people's beliefs, when it comes to employment! So perhaps there is a middle ground between "words don't matter" and "we must support all opinions", and in watering down the argument to these two simplistic extremes we're ignoring the complex reality evident before us.
Yeah, I forgot the physicality of coal mining's just like programming and leadership.
> There is systemic discrimination in favour of white men in software engineering

Asian/Indian males and females who can barely speak english says otherwise. You can't just drop this controversial statement without any proof
He covers one angle: why this is toxic and why Google has no choice but to terminate his employment

For the rest, I'd go here:

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/evzjww/here-are-t...
Relying on technology to communicate through audio and video will force people not to learn to read and write. I can't see how this will end well over time.
> But some students are 5ft away and others are 30ft away. Suddenly not so fair.

Employers don't know who came from privileged backgrounds and who didn't. Legally, they shouldn't even be asking about it.

The concern isn't about whether employers should help people out. The concern is that the current rubric is too inexact. And that questioning the rubric is considered hateful.
Petition to Restore James Damore Position at Google
I thought it was clear (since I quoted it) that I was responding to the claim that there are no English language proficiency tests as part of the UK Citizenship tests as not being correct. In some circumstances there are (e.g. Your degree is not in English and you are not from a recognized English speaking country). Not sure what is contentious about that statement of fact?
I think he knew very well what he was doing.

>As a child, Damore was a chess champion, earning the FIDE Master title, putting him in the >99th percentile, according to his CV.

and

> Damore plans to sue Google; he had previously complained to NLRB and wants to argue that his dismissal was a revenge which would be illegal. See a Damore's defiant answer to Reuters.

Should explain it well. He knew very well what result will be, thats why he put his name on memo. He knew that SJWs at google will pressure HR to fire him. Apparently he prepared the ground with NLRB complains. And if you have read full non redacted memo with sources and pictures you can see he was very careful with wording and he pointed out that controversial things are not his opinions but he provided other sources for them. There is nothing Google can use on real court (they have enough to convict him according to SJW norms in echo chamber court though) to prove that he was misogynistic.

Also he is getting a lot of support from right leaning and centrist media. I would say that way more people support him than support Google firing him.

Timing is also in his advantage. Recently google disabled youtube and gmail account of Jordan Peterson, youtube announced thy plan to isolate videos with controversial views despite not braking ToS, and accusation that google manipulates search results to favor left talking points are around for long time. There are a lot of articles, blogs and videos about those topics currently and this is quite effective smearing campaign against google that pushes users to think about alternatives to google products.
Perhaps a difference of expectations? In the UK we have overtly opinionated print press and "neutral" TV while I believe in the US it is generally the other way round?
I see, but are all valid?

I have the feeling my hand/arm works like this and always does it the same, probably so the least work is required?
This place in Oklahoma has there prices listed: https://surgerycenterok.com/pricing/.

I'm sure there could always be complications but there are supposed to be laws in place to stop hospitals from price gouging.
You cannot pose as a parangon of free speech when your company just fired a dissenting voice.

For all intents and purposes the content of the memo was balanced, polite, and restricted to the Google audience. The adult reaction should have been to punish the leaker (which I believe should be an actual breach of the code of conduct) and organize internal debates to allow multiple viewpoints to confront.

Rallying with the hysterical mass and shutting down the minority voice is certainly not about supporting debates and free speech. It's about throwing red meat to the wolves so the company can quietly solve its all too real gender pay gap issues without making too much PR waves.
Speech is action and just as capable of breaking any rule or code as physical action. Free speech is also not really relevant here as it has to do with the government's inability to restrict speech.

I think it is certainly a very fine line to walk and people (including Google employees) will definitely see it in a lot of different ways. But, reading this as an outsider, the note appears to me to address the situation very directly and conveys a real sense of urgency (more so than I have ever seen from any of my employers, at least).
Google is trying to differentiate itself from the rest of the system.

The system, on context, clearly refers to the world of education and technology as a whole.

In fact, there doesn't need to be an explicit bad actor to have detrimental systemic effects. Just a long slow build up of bias. Like the idea, worked into our heads from a young age, that boys are better at science.
Firstly reservations exist beyond SCs and STs. There are a whole variety of people who get reservations. So that number is way higher.

We are talking of problems General Merit people face here.

Secondly, you are making the same mistake, we generally do in India while comparing these things. Comparing human ingenuity one-one. A good merit performer can contribute way more disproportionately compared to a bad performer.

Lastly you don't mention the problem of filling up mandatory quotas. Where you can't allocate seats to general merit folks until all reservation quotas are exhausted. In Karnataka this problem was so serious back in the day, the general merit seat counseling used to happen at very last after each reserved category exhausted their picks.

The resultant situation was so bizarre. It was literally the best students in the entire state had to pick up leftovers, while people who had performed way worse took plum picks.

I remember during our first Math lecture in the first semester, some of us used to solve problems way ahead of the remaining class. Our professor used to remark the general merit candidates in the class were basically the top ranking students who had missed out on top colleges and the performance difference in the peer group was already showing, and will continue to show in the future.
What is their performance?
For the curious:

Comedic bit about voice activated elevators.
In Scotland
All physical machines have limited memory and therefore limited stack and heap sizes. Getting a stackoverflow or running out of memory are the same thing. So going from the stack to the heap doesn't mean you don't have to formally verify it.
Perhaps get a little feedback from somebody likely to be affected by it, or HR, before blasting it to the whole company? That's a better way. Separating out the legitimate issues from the speculation about potential reasons (which to me is where most of the nonsense lies) would have been a better way. And unless the internal memo system is the only way to communicate within Google, he probably had other options to pilot this piece without burning bridges. Like to his supervisor say "hey, I want to send out this memo, do you think I'll catch some flak or is it fine?" I'm not, by the way, actually saying I know the best way. Just that, to me, there seem to be many obvious better ways.
If something is a “major” algorithm, isn’t this just like a “Design Pattern”, in that it really is something which should be built into the language, and ideally isn’t something you should implement yourself?

In fact, all of these seem to be ones that are actually built into Python already.
Yeah, very much agree. I read it quite a bit, but I do occasionally shake my head in disbelief while doing so!
Twitter should continue to respect free speech, as long as it doesn't involve directly threatening tweets. Without it, Twitter wouldn't be as popular as it is.

People respect being able to directly confront prominent people in the world on an equal footing, without instantly being shut down if their comment is deemed too controversial.

Censoring these ideas doesn't make them go away. Leaving them up and allowing the community to debate might even change a person's mind for the better.
That's old leftist position. New left is identity-based, not class-based.
Hacking a Cello to fit in a carry-on bag
I'm not saying that you are wrong (and I really hope you are right), but the European elites had exactly the same perception before the outbreak of World War I. Google "first globalization".
'Hairdresser' is also considered to be in short supply. Here's a list of all occupations (in case you didn't know): https://www.nwivisas.com/nwi-blog/australia/australian-skill... . This list had a bunch of occupations removed earlier this year; bad news for everybody looking to emigrate to Oz to take up a lucrative career in picture framing, because "Picture Framer" is no longer eligible for a 457 visa.

I realize that your actual remark is to the 'why' of some professions being on this list, I'm just pointing the above out for non-Australians like myself who might be amused by these things when seeing them for the first time, like I was.
The people around me might be pondering all sorts of strange things - if they're not disrupting my life as they work through those thoughts then that is OK with me.

I can mind my own business. I'm not really into the 'dig through someone's life history to find the one objectionable thing and then destroy their lives for it' trope.
I haven't read the code of conduct, and I'm disappointed the person was fired, but I presume there's a clause about saying bigoted things. And people consider parts of what he said bigoted.
No, the leftist position would be writing a well thought out and mild toned argument that the company has pro white male bias in interviewing (which implies that the hiring bar is lowered for white males and that some white males don't belong in the company) and that the company should create initiatives to end this bias.
Fratboy culture is just the latest manifestation of racism/sexism. Last I checked Europe had its fair share of issues there.
For me it seems like a conspiracy of immigration (in different countries) where whatever rules are passed down to them, they'll going to bend them to let as much ineligible people as possible while taking pride in rejecting obvious good fits. And then you would wonder why citizens distrust immigration to provide healthy addition to their society.

Not unlike some professors who take an easy pass on dullards while throwing all their wrath at students with signs of self-learning. Those people are actively sabotaging the system they're part of.
Sure. I even thought to myself for quite a long time how it would have been nice to hold onto it until it was worth $1100-1200 a few years ago. But then I would have started wishing I'd held out for the $3k price. And surely, I would have wished that I'd held out for the $5k, $10k, $50k, or more. And truly, that's why I'm still holding a fairly substantial amount. But the most important thing is that I am not frustrated or disappointed in how I've handled this frankly unexpected and astonishing source of wealth ("wealth" perhaps is a strong word here). Because of other circumstances in my life, I feel lucky to be alive. I do not have any regrets about exiting most of my Bitcoin position when it was worth $12. It helped me to provide for my wife and myself, and that's more than some people get in life, so I'm really happy with how it worked out.
Light and Shade
Jordan Peterson has a great take on the attitude this author (and many others like her) have about America, and the West in general: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cf2nqmQIfxc&t=1s

The modern Left is dripping with hatred for the West - quite ironic given that we live in one the most free, prosperous societies ever created in human history. They are driven almost entirely by resentment, and lack even a shred of gratitude for the vast wealth, comfort and freedom they've been born into.
SV has had major problems sheltering people in leadership who have used their positions to sexually exploit their female subordinates. Yet a mid level engineer publicly questions some of the company's diversity policies and gets fired. Many of publicly stated reasons about women leaving tech is predatory behavior by people in leadership. How about initiatives about getting rid of individuals like that.
I don't have a citation or link handy at the moment, and I don't have the ability to find one right now, and I'm going by memory so I will preface this by saying it's entirely possible that I am wrong here, but I believe in the case of the US the military, both the officer and enlisted ranks, have been increasingly coming from fewer families and increasingly wealthier families. This isn't to say they have been coming from the top income brackets, although this may be true for the officer ranks, but instead solidly middle class backgrounds.
That may be a con for a data center or battery-powered device, but not so much for a workstation.
Please. "No true Scotsman" is not even worth the time.

It is a current left wing argument in the United States for "diversity".
Not proof. Sorry but unless you are a social scientist working in the field, what you said here is just hearsay, not proof.
This makes it a complex problem and a balancing act, but it doesn't mean we just throw our hands up in the air and give up. For example, California's Labor Code contains this piece of legislation protecting freedom of speech against retaliation in very specific circumstances: http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection...

The "chilling speech" effect is one of many reasons why anti-SLAPP statutes exist, a way to explicitly protect freedom of speech from specious attacks.

We certainly couldn't expect people to have no reaction to speech, in fact, no reaction to speech would mean the speech is worthless! But there are cases where we can decide that a certain retaliation to speech is explicitly prohibited, and this is uncontroversial enough to find many examples of laws and statutes doing just that.
It's not unqualified, we know that's the cause.

It's like claiming climate change isn't real.
You must not have looked at linked list. Besides being non-pythonic and having get and set functions, they don't even consistently use them.

Then there's the bug that you can't delete the first node in a list.

And then there's the fact that double linked list doesn't have a tail pointer.

And then there's the fact that they use the same node class in double linked as single, but the previous member is set by the list, but isn't always set so you might get an exception some times.

Then there's the fact that search is only implemented for single linked .. Oh and its RECURSIVE!

It'd be one thing if this was just them showing how they learned something in a blog post... But this was meant for teaching.... And yet there's no description and clearly obvious bugs.
In your opinion, are these policies bald attempts at keeping migrants from Asia-Pacific countries out of Australia or is there a deeper-seated historic animosity at play?

Culturally, are the psychological scars of Australia's previous status as a British penal colony still manifested in public policy?

I don't ask to be incendiary, but because I'm interested in the Second-Order Effects that stick with cultures over time, often in seemingly unrelated ways.