skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> The problem is that he posted his diatribe on a company forum. Legally, he forced the company to fire him and refute his words or else be treated as adopting his words as their own. (And yes, that is how workplace harassment laws work in the US. If you have a problem with that, take it up with Congress, not Google.)

So, correct me if I'm wrong: You're saying that any comments, writings, or ideas Google leaves up on their internal message boards is them providing implicit support or endorsement of said writings? Because it seems like if that's the case, obtaining the contents of those forums or message boards would provide ample work for a stable of employment lawyers for years.

Take note Google employees who are currently feeling fearful and "non-compliant" with Google's corporate stance. Maybe its time to sit down with an employment attorney who works on contingency while rolling through online forum posts.
> which, according to several scientists, they are not

Good thing that's enough for a quorum. /s

There is absolutely no evidence that there is a biological imperative that prevents women from being as effective as men at software development. None. Zero. Zilch. Just about every disparity you can imagine can be categorically dismissed by upbringing and cultural side effects.

It doesn't even pass the sniff test: do you really think there's something inherent to the Y chromosome that allows better rote analysis?
Spoken like a dude who hasn't listened to a single response from women.
Firefox has a similar annoyance but at least it's not behind a paywall. I wrote a plug-in I intended to be for personal use but I had to register and publish it on their site because it was removed on close. I'm not sure why they want to encourage a bunch of crap in their add-ons store but what infuriates me to no end is that they think they know better than me what I want to allow to run on my machine.
In the same way that Snowden is a moron for not seeing exile coming then ?
If I'll write some kind of malware and comine it with technology that helps me to protect digital rights, would antivirus violate DMCA?
What would be the fault in what he wrote? Can you provide some examples?
First Significant U.S. Snowfall of the Season Possible This Weekend
"To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize." -- Voltaire
Pick a topic that's really, really important to you. Let's say it's fishing.

You're known as someone who fishes a lot in your small circle on Twitter. Suddenly someone steps in and says "Fishing is stupid. Screw you, fishing people!". Maybe one of your followers explicitly tags you in it to bring it to your attention.

Ignoring it is the right thing to do but could you? You probably could since my example is extremely contrived but in general I gotta admit sometimes it's difficult to ignore something that's right in front of me that I staunchly disagree with. I try but I'm human and I fail at it sometimes. Other times if I don't respond others feel like I'm letting them down.

I hate Twitter. I also enjoy it at times, too, which keeps me on it but I really do hate it the majority of the time.
I don't think that's true. Plenty of women spoke up against Uber, and they weren't called attention whores, they were lauded (rightly).

Of course, you can find instances of James being lauded and of Susan Fowler being called an "attention whore," if you really go searching for them. But neither are the majority, by far.
If Amazon refuses to tell you, you can make a request under EU law that they have to honor. For example, in Germany this is implemented in Bundesdatenschutzgesetz §34:

You have, once every 12 months, the right to demand (and receive, for free) from any entity that stores any data about you, all data that they have stored about you, and all probabilistic models derived from it.

So, you'd make a request under BDSG §34, and Amazon would have to transmit all data, including any accounts they consider connected, any and all data they based their account closure on, a list of all third parties they gave your data to, and what, and the weight factors of all probabilistic models based on you (for example, risk and credit rating models, etc).
And if we really try hard enough as the cable newscaster says[1], maybe one day we too can spend a few moments in this world

[1] http://fair.org/home/medias-grim-addiction-to-perseverance-p...
Are you saying that the entire concept of shame should be disregarded? On the other hand, might he be guilty of something? Of creating a hostile workplace, of destroying his own credibility with regard to performance reviews and interviewing, or at least, at Google, supporting his reasoning with bad science? Even outside of his employment environment, there's something to be said about his skills as a scientist as they are illustrated by the essay, about whether he was a false positive that slipped through GOOG's hiring filters.
I have the same background as the author, but a few years older.

Stanford undergrads and grads alike can teach a course as long as they have (1) the necessary background, (2) passion and proficiency in the tech, and (3) motivation to teach and manage course overhead.

Being a "super genius" doesn't correlate with being informative and having intrinsic instructional value.
Tested and it works, as long as you haven't finished downloading and applying the updates.
Yes, it will be trivial to detect - once double-checking the address becomes part of the procedure for verifying package delivery. If checking the address isn't part of the procedure, then the procedure needs to be modified. Low-paid support people are expected to follow the procedure exactly, so that the company can obtain consistent results.
Stable in your eyes doesn't mean there's no underlying security issues that need fixing.
LGBTQ is a status, not a political stance. There are LGBTQ people of all political stripes
> "...that is the new truth, now deal with it."

I'd want my employer to have a spine and defend me, not kowtow to the flash-in-the-pan media opinions...
Corporations aren't all-knowing entities. Sometimes it takes time for them to learn what their own employees are doing.
> There is absolutely no evidence that there is a biological imperative that prevents women from being as effective as men at software development.

The memo doesn't make this claim.
Eh, the problem is self-correcting. The more firms act collusively and cooperatively against the interests of consumers, the greater the potential returns for an entrepreneur willing to defect from that consensus and her backers. Then there's a massive wealth transfer from the collective shareholders of the old cartel into the new business.

...you could argue that there's evidence this is happening now. The economy seems to have bifurcated into large mutual fund ownership of public companies, and narrow private ownership of new startups that are aggressively disrupting those public companies. All that's needed are more arrogant assholes who believe they can up-end whole industries.
Certainement qui est en droit de vous rendre absurde est en droit de vous rendre injuste.
Study shows you can learn in your sleep – certain things
Except, as has been pretty well documented elsewhere, it was not intelligent discourse. Whatever productive content may have been present, it was overwhelmed by the senseless repetition of long-debunked stereotypical nonsense.

Endlessly, emphatically parroting what is ultimately discriminatory nonsense is an aggressive action against others, not "just an opinion". E.g. [1], and numerous other examples. My favorite, which I'm having trouble digging up the citation for, is a recent-ish study that compared test performance of various minority/gender groups based on social anxiety measures (e.g. "girls aren't good at math")... and found that it was literally possible to turn this difference on and off like a switch based on triggering vs disarming these anxieties as part of the test setup. This literally flies the in face of the schoolyard "sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me" mantra so ingrained in US culture. It turns out, we have increasingly good scientific evidence that humans just don't work that way.

Let's be clear about that: being a toxic jerk to {insert out-group here} actively harms those people, and can directly harm their performance orthogonally to their actual potential capabilities. "Yeah, I'm meritocratic in footraces, but only when I can stick thorns in my competitors' shoes."

[1] https://psychcentral.com/news/2010/03/19/negative-effects-of...
I would like the extension of IPv4 to be that you have the option to specify the internal IP you are trying to reach too... so x.x.x.x:192.169.0.100 for example? That would be backwards compatible and give 8 bytes which is more than enough for all futures.
>Adam Smith's "Invisible Hand"--there's no need to worry about economy because it will "regulate itself" because it is predicated on trade a "natural phenomena"

The great part about this is that Smith himself, never mind his contemporaries and critics of his political economy (Marx and Engels) was concerned:

"Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defence of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all." (From Smith's The Wealth of Nations)

Great misconceptions you mentioned indeed exist - this idea that capitalism is "people buying and selling", that capitalism is "natural", and that because it is "natural" it is therefore desirable or good.

This view generally depends on ignorance of various historical developments (such as enclosure in Western Europe) and what distinguishes capitalism from other earlier modes of production.

I've thought it strange that one might compare Smith's "invisible hand" to Hegel's "world spirit/geist", and lead to very different conclusions even by considering a force figured to be supernatural but effected through the agency of humans.
That's distorting the numbers and a ridiculous question because the choice isn't based on the statistic, unless you are planning an economy.
Is LIBOR, Benchmark for Trillions of Dollars in Transactions, a Lie?
> It's funny that he refuses to admit any fault in what he said

Fault as in he regrets it?, or would have done it differently another time? If his goal was to get people to discuss this topic, how could he have done much better?

> ideological rigidity and refusing to entertain other people's ideas in good faith is exactly what he's complaining about

I don't think you can fault him for the rigidity or not entertain other people's ideas. It wasn't perfect or even great in either direction, but it surely made more effort than the many internet discussions, which we don't find fault with.
Well, the government already said you can be fired for being queer: https://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2017/08/f.... I feel like outrage from the right for firing someone for something they can actually choose (political ideology) would be intensely hypocritical.
I guess a boycott could happen, or employees might get emboldened to quit or sue. Google would get lumped in with Uber and others accused of being brogrammer haven.
I made a Safari extension that simulates favicons by prefixing tab titles with emoji. It's not a perfect substitute, but it's made it a lot easier for me to distinguish between tabs.

https://github.com/logandaniels/emoji-tab-icons
The claim is about copyrighted material thus DMCA, right? the only reason that string appears is for matching. The intent is for identification, not stealing someone else's copyrighted material. If there's a better way to match than comparing to a literal copy then we should do that. Ideally, one regex that matches all offending domains and no others.
Hi. I'm not sure you actually bothered to understand my comment, because it's making 2 main points, which you have glossed over.

1st: The importance of concrete examples in illustrating your point. Sure, we can all think of and agree on extreme examples of short-functions or long-functions which are bad, but what about more realistic examples. In Clean Code, Robert Martin presents many realistic and reasonable code snippets, featuring long-functions, which he then refactors into a form (ie, short-functions) which he claims is more readable and maintainable. For those specific examples, do you agree or disagree that his changes are an improvement? If you happen to agree, can you present other realistic examples of your own to illustrate your point? Doing so would allow us to have a more grounded discussion, comparing and contrasting two realistic alternatives. It would also allow us to better understand where you draw the line between too short and just-right.

2nd: Yes, too-short-functions and too-long-functions are both bad, but I disagree with your false equivalence between them. In my experience, the latter is a bigger problem than the former. I say this because this is the mistake that most mediocre programmers make. In my intro CS classes, I invariably see most people default towards writing their entire code in a single main function, with lots of code duplication, and this tendency tends to stick even afterwards. At my recent companies, I've even seen senior developers, people with fancy degrees and 200k+ salaries, write code that's horrendously hard to understand and maintain, because it's endlessly duplicated and squashed into a single long function. I don't doubt that there are those who take short-functions to an extreme as well, but in my experience, long-duplicated-functions are a much more prevalent problem, with greater downsides as well. Hence my point that short-functions and DRY works as a much better guideline than the converse.

Granted, my 2nd point above is my subjective opinion, and I agree with you that it's better to aim for the ideal, than to settle for erring on either side. So if you don't want to go down that rabbithole, I understand. However, I do think that presenting concrete realistic examples will go a long way towards enhancing this discussion. Looking forward to your follow-up blog post.
We should cut him some slack. Let the dust settle and he might reconsider the situation. Right now he's probably in defensive mode due to the backlash this whole situation created.
I still use Amazon because of the convenience and because the vast majority of the time I never have to deal with their customer service, but in the rare instances I do I've noticed that over the past few years Amazon has become very Google-like in terms of putting everything behind systems that are either automated or may as well be (strict script-following offshore customer service).

There used to be useful links ("Where's My Stuff?") directly attached to your order for inquiring about status if things are late, etc, with just a click or two... this all kinda still exists but has been buried so far up into the user interface that there's no way it isn't intentional obfuscation to try to limit any kind of meaningful interaction between the customer and anyone alive within Amazon, with a further barrier between the front-line alive people who are clearly all offshored and anyone in the US.
The real damage to Amazon from this behavior is that it's no longer reflexive to buy things on Amazon.

The problems with fraudsters makes it enough of a cognitive burden to buy small items at a reasonable price -- which often are cheap knockoffs requiring careful vetting or overpriced resellers -- that I routinely find myself thinking "Eh, maybe I'll just stop by the store on my way home."

It's not that I'll stop buying things at all from Amazon, it's that other sellers now have a chance to make their case for my dollars because Amazon isn't a clear win in terms of effort involved, satisfaction with purchase, etc and that I no longer feel comfortable making impulse buys -- I have to second guess the quality of the product, which often means I just won't buy it.

My Amazon bill is down ~25% YoY because of that.
What should he apologize for?

"I'm sorry for telling the truth."?
> I hope they're willing to fire LGBTQ workers

This isn't about firing people with specific attributes, it's about firing people that have become associated with a particular cause publicly and drawn the company into that same discussion, whether purposefully or on accident. If enough of their workforce and enough of the public shared the opinion that LGBTQ workers should not be hired, and the company policy followed that, and someone became prominent in that discussion, I expect they would do the same.

I'm not saying I think this is how the world should work and it's the best situation, I'm saying our current mix social, political and economic systems make this the likely (but not required) outcome. It often takes a martyr to change that. We venerate those who make that sacrifice, but let's not pretend it's easy for them, or that everyone should make that choice all the time (depending on how egregious the offense being protested is).

> if they're not a martyr and simply a business with no moral compass.

There's a difference between no moral compass and picking your battles. Winning a war doesn't always require rushing the enemy with whatever is in hand immediately when sighted. You can call a strategic retreat cowardly all you want, but if it's part of a larger strategy it may not be indicative of the competency of the people involved or the future (not that Google's actions necessarily should be viewed in that light, I'm just pointing out that this is but one action and should not define them entirely).
I often forget how broken the web is for the rest of the world.

I flip out if a Youtube video isn't "available in my country", I can't imagine seeing that frequently. My sympathies.
>Women, on average, have more:

>Openness directed towards feelings and aesthetics rather than ideas. Women generally also have a stronger interest in people rather than things, relative to men (also interpreted as empathizing vs. systemizing).

>These two differences in part explain why women relatively prefer jobs in social or artistic areas. More men may like coding because it requires systemizing and even within SWEs, comparatively more women work on front end, which deals with both people and aesthetics.

...

>Women on average are more prone to anxiety. Make tech and leadership less stressful. Google already partly does this with its many stress reduction courses and benefits."

I don't know how you can come away from reading his memo and not arrive at the conclusion he thinks men and women are different and those differences make them less suited to the Google workplace. His solution is that diversity efforts need to focus not just on evolving recruiting/training but the way work is structured and you can absolutely argue that's not a super-evil-misogynistic thing to say. But that's very different than pretending he didn't say women, on average, aren't well suited to the current environment.
> Please contact your local FBI office or submit a tip electronically if you have information about: [...] Financial crimes that involve fraud, especially corporate fraud, mortgage fraud, or other investment fraud schemes where significant dollar losses have occurred, including those impacting you or your place of work

https://www.fbi.gov/contact-us

I've heard that the FBI will definitely get involved if it falls into their investigation categories. Also, it can never hurt to call and ask anyway.

Edit: Mail fraud is specifically listed on this page relating to organized crime: https://www.fbi.gov/investigate/organized-crime
> not a political stance

Let the identification and firing of radical progressives (or even moderate progressives!) begin. Things must get worse before they will get better; otherwise, everyone will continue to seek out ways to forward their agenda in legal yet immoral ways.

If proponents of the firing encourage the use of at-will employment for the firing, I'll support its use against other activists with opposite leanings. Otherwise, this silicon valley witch hunt routine will never end.
He doesn't, but he made a prediction and was proved correct and thus was fired as a result of the nature and dynamics of altruistic punishment. I claim that his observations and claims about the diversity policy were merely a footnote in a much more pointed argument. That is to say, the diversity policy was not really what he intended to gain from this controversy but rather make it a point to focus on politics, which is toxic enough in this society. We don't need another talking head (left or right)
>I think the inconsistency I see, is that those who wrote letters of complaint about him did so out of a political agenda.

You mean those outside of the company like on twitter and stuff? Sure I agree, but they're not bringing it up at their workplace. The people working at google who have complained I think is actually reasonable. Damore brought this issue into the workplace. When somebody brings an issue like that in, your solution is that everybody should ignore it? It has to be addressed at that point. Really I'd say if you go to your job and you bring outside political issues into your workplace you're creating a messy problem because you're piercing the work-veil so to speak.
Author of the article here.

Nope, the article doesn't conflate DRY and small functions. But the quest for DRY can lead to an explosion of small functions, which isn't necessarily a good thing.

The vice versa is true as well - many programmers, in their quest to make functions as small as possible, end up DRYing it up to the fullest extent as well.

There's a relationship between the two, but DRY and small functions aren't synonymous themselves, and neither does the article suggest that anywhere.
Here's a direct quote from the "Personality Differences" section of the screed:

"Neuroticism (higher anxiety, lower stress tolerance).This may contribute to the higher levels of anxiety women report on Googlegeist and to the lower number of women in high stress jobs."

So yeah, it was referenced, specifically, explicitly, and used in direct support of the central argument that the preponderance of men in Google's ranks was biologically determined, meaning a number of Google's D&I initiatives were misguided, at odds with scientific consensus, and should be discontinued.
"Uncovering and reusing these old tracks could prove far cheaper than constructing new lanes."

- I guess that seems key to me. Those lanes are nearly 90 years old. How much cheaper would they be vs new ones? And is that savings (10%, 30%?) really the thing that's holding back adding a nationwide biking network?
It's rather disturbing to see this trend of fracturing society in the US along racial lines. People like Spencer are just a symptom of the underlying cause. Extreme wealth and opportunity disparity between "real (rural white) America" and the more diverse, tolerant urban areas has reached a fever pitch, as evidenced by this previous election. The only true solution is compassion and outreach. Maybe we could use these untold billions flowing through VC coffers to promote economic growth and inclusion to these forgotten populations? That would do far more to bring alienated people into the fold of a progressive society than shutting them out for their political views, no matter how satisfying it may be from a sense of "moral justice".
You could just as easily say to those offended "Don't read things you are offended by

This is victim-blaming and poor reasoning that has been used for decades by spammers and their ilk. The problem is that the offense is only discovered by the thing you're suggesting they don't do. This is a Catch 22.

By the same logic, you'd advise a person in the Emergency Room, "don't stand in front a gun next time."
I thought 3M demonstrated this technology over a decade ago. How are these different?
not eu as a whole, but in Germany, "The law allows workers to elect representatives (usually trade union representatives) for almost half of the supervisory board of directors"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codetermination_in_Germany