skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Thanks for your reply. I rarely get a chance to learn from someone who feels so passionately about these issues.

These range of conditions are interesting, we are truly a varied species.

Let us do a thought experiment.

We have 10 humans and 10 monkeys. Now, let’s say 5 humans want to be called monkeys. Now, if I say the word “monkey”, what comes to mind? If the 10 monkey-monkeys AND the 5 human-monkeys does, then that means I no longer have a word to describe what I originally thought was a monkey! The word itself has been destroyed by making it stretch beyond the category which it originally described. Words by their very nature are to form categories, to differentiate is their power, and why we find them useful.

Now, we can both agree that the range of conditions you listed are rather rare, and this is the crux of the matter. If we use the word man to stretch beyond the more stereotypical definition, what does it even mean to be a man anymore? What does it mean to be masculine? That is, what do the WORDS mean?

The word man is, as words work, defined by the average man. The fact that it allows us to speak of a large category of people is what gives it its utility. That is why you can say things like “their bodies and minds [are] feminized”, you must have the words to express such a thought! If you proceeded down the self-identification path, how would you make that sentence? That is why we have words like “Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome”, which describes another idea.

First of all, let me say that I am in no way opposed to men dressing in women’s clothes, or men being effeminate, or women having sex with women, or any other non-conservative human expressions; they are what lend colour to humanity, and we would be much poorer without it, and without letting humans be fully expressed.

Now, what about the rarer cases, what do we do here?

But how should such a person describe oneself?

Just because a man cannot have the confidence to be effeminate and own that identity, does not mean that he needs to redefine the word woman to accommodate himself. I think the problem here is that people want to fit into categories that are traditionally recognised by society. Instead people should just appreciate that everybody is unique, and that they should be comfortable owning their own unique identities. They should not have to derive their own identities from the words that other people call them, worse off by forcing other people to use specific words, in a meaning that they want other people to use them in, because then everything is reduced to just noise.

What do you think?
I can't help but observe that some in this industry still think it's the 50s.
It apparently existed pre-Tolkien [not really surprisingly as it's one of those weird English plural forms that can go multiple ways] and there's at least some evidence that he retconned it as a deliberate choice. e.g. https://jakubmarian.com/dwarves-or-dwarfs-which-spelling-is-...

ADDED from the link:

Tolkien himself admitted that “dwarves” was a misspelling. In a letter to Stanley Unwin, the publisher of The Hobbit, he wrote:

"No reviewer (that I have seen), although all have carefully used the correct dwarfs themselves, has commented on the fact (which I only became conscious of through reviews) that I use throughout the ‘incorrect’ plural dwarves. I am afraid it is just a piece of private bad grammar, rather shocking in a philologist; but I shall have to go on with it."
weren't they suspended? Also i doubt they coded it in their software to break the signal , can't believe you just implied that. It surely was a bug in software and I hope they got fined for it and took steps to fix it. Testing self-driving cars is not trivial, pretty much everyone who is testing them have screwed up here and there. That's the reason the person behind the wheel should be vigilant.
> Pro-tip #3: When addressing your colleagues find people who disagree with you or question you and incorporate their feedback.

Which is why he brought it to the Google Skeptics group.

Edit: and it was they (or someone they shared it with) that leaked the document.
But it's a fact that many companies and colleges lower standards to increase diversity attendance. I think this is a good thing, but it's not a false thing.
Yes, even if they agreed with the echo chamber idea on the whole, they'd still seek to point out flaws and fallacies in his arguments.
So if you argue against Google's diversity policies, you're fine as long as you write on par with one of the greatest writers of his generation¹.

If you argue for it, you can get away with any angry incoherent rant.

Isn't this what leftists call "privilege"?

¹ Scott Alexander
you were opposing "not all ..." as a construct that was hostile and condescending.

I don't think that cherry picking one line out of a 10 page document with significant number of disclaimers, and which was originally presented in a way and desire to evolve and gather opinions represents the overall intent and tone of the document.
Partitioning is not about distribution, it's about carving up the data to improve performance.

For example, let's say you store a table "events", where each event has a timestamp. You could partition this by day, for example. Every day would get its own physical table. If you have a year's worth of data and have a query that only needs data from a single day, it would only need to look at 1/365 of the complete dataset. Both tables and indexes would only need to capture the subset of data for each partition. Row selectivity tends to become problematic for large datasets.

You can of course do this stuff manually — create one table per day, make sure you insert into the right table, always select from the right tables based on which dates you're looking at — and people do this. What partitioning brings to the table is automation; the partitions are still "normal" tables, but Postgres will automate them. You just define the partitioning keys/functions, and Postgres can both handle insertion (you insert into the "parent" table) and the querying (you just include your partitioning column in your query, and it will figure out which tables that need to be accessed).

There are solutions (such as Citus) that allow you to partition across multiple Postgres nodes.
Yeah, I am a good mom and all, but the kids do interact somewhat differently to my husband. I support diversity. It's good to be diverse jsut in general, life is more interesting that way, and it really bugs me how in such a critical period of a person's life, their exposure is so so so not diverse.
With the deep budget cuts and transition to online (vs face to face) services, libraries have become many poor people's only access to their government.

This was widely reported in my area last time our trogs wanted to cut our library budgets (even more).
I was lucky. A public library had a dial-in account with lynx as the shell and the card catalog an inter-library loan systems served as web pages. I just had to hit 'g' and type in any URL, including Gopher, WAIS, Archie, or telnet ones. This left me no great way by itself to get things downloaded locally, but I could telnet into a shell elsewhere, download things to there, and feed them back via zmodem through the telnet and the dialup.

That was before I had a local PPP provider, of course.
I have a hard time believing Google punishes liberal political views, based on my experience with their employees.
> You almost nailed it, until you mentioned Apple users wanting a brand name. I guess that's the stereotype though.

Last year a colleague of mine ordered an Apple laptop, for $2800 (AU). Then he found out about the touchbar, which he didn't want, and cancelled the order. He was asking for other laptops, so I pointed him at an X1 for $2400. His response? "Too expensive". But you just paid $2800 for an Apple laptop? "Yeah, but when you run an apple laptop, people know you're running an apple". This guy was willing to pay a premium just for a brand name.
It's a play on words about the pointy haired boss
If you want to do this yourself, caddy http server [0] works really well and is incredibly easy to use / setup. They even have an example on their home page that shows this for /api and /blog

[0] https://caddyserver.com/
He didn't lie about having a PhD from Harvard.

LinkedIn doesn't allow one to differentiate between being enrolled in a PhD program, or having completed a PhD program

The common practice when enrolled in a PhD program is to list using a future completion date, making clear that you have not yet completed the program.

Google knew he was enrolled in this program when they hired him.
Conservatives often claim to support an idea and then go on to lay out exactly how it's only on their terms (usually completely opposed to the idea) or in ways they approve, for example by providing concrete suggestions based on flawed application or understanding of research (as Damore did).
Why is a debate worse than a discussion? We strive for debate on all other topics? If you actually want to challenge assumptions you must debate and evaluate the merits of someone else's argument. A discussion would just be you think x and I think y. A debate puts warrants behind the claims in those beliefs.
Starting a new project? Begin by interviewing users
Sex, sexual orientation, and gender are different things. By gender spectrum she means that most people's behavior is somewhere along a continuum between completely masculine and completely feminine and that virtually nobody is at one extreme or the other.

I think the point she's making is that while men and women have different interests as groups, there are plenty of women who are interested in what are perceived as masculine things (in this case probably computer programming) and vice versa.
SlateStarCodex and HeteroDox are way better and more impartial.

http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/01/gender-imbalances-are-m...

http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exagger...

https://heterodoxacademy.org/2017/08/10/the-google-memo-what...
> Would you rather hire someone that likes what they do or someone who doesn't?

I wouldn't assume someone's interest level based on their demographics. I would, you know, talk to them.
Don't forget we had Gopher and WAIS before the Web, too.
> in order to use them to discriminate

[citation needed]
This mostly supports a highly biased reading of the memo so it will definitely stay on the front page for hours. There have been at least 3 other considerably more interesting follow ups written by women ("these are not my people" essay, the one by the physicist, and the one yesterday from the google recruiter that was "sick" of it) and all three got flagged to hell and disappeared. Anybody compaining got the stock "you are just another idealogue" admonisminet from moderators.
As a woman I can say "women are less inclined to be engineers" is only a skip and hop away from "women are not suited to be engineers.

I would say don't even bother with the biological argument because as a woman you likely know all too well how it's mainly used. Anyway, its not really the business of a company to argue such abstract matters.

It's one thing to be teased about these things but it's another to have people in authority making an opinion on such abstract things. No matter how tame it was. Woman know they are capable of doing anything so they don't really want anything less than that entering the discussion.
I agree with what you said, but what if the reason they were pissed off was because of external manipulation and manufactured outrage over something the author neither said nor implied?
> Still not sure what idols you're claiming are being worshiped.

You literally are intending to build something that you then consider "higher" or "better". A bunch of circuits and algorithms humans made. Or even just words, like talking about how it's the "logical next step in evolution". That's abstract ideas we're making up, and then pretending that's some sort of reality we have to adapt to. Erich Fromm's quote continues on like this:

> Among the many forms of alienation, the most frequent one is alienation in language. If I express a feeling with a word, let us say, if I say "I love you," the word is meant to be an indication of the reality which exists within myself, the power of my loving. The word "love" is meant to be a symbol of the fact love, but as soon as it is spoken it tends to assume a life of its own, it becomes a reality. I am under the illusion that the saying of the word is the equivalent of the experience, and soon I say the word and feel nothing, except the thought of love which the word expresses. The alienation of language shows the whole complexity of alienation. Language is one of the most precious human achievements; to avoid alienation by not speaking would be foolish -- yet one must be always aware of the danger of the spoken word, that it threatens to substitute itself for the living experience. The same holds true for all other achievements of man; ideas, art, any kind of man-made objects. They are man's creations; they are valuable aids for life, yet each one of them is also a trap, a temptation to confuse life with things, experience with artifacts, feeling with surrender and submission.

It's not so much misplaced mysticism as misplaced self.

> Also I didn't advocate building it in the shadows

No, you said you sadly "have" to.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15002805

> I'm hesitant to write it all out because I expect such a document would just be the source of opposition to implementation. Like putting war plans on the internet. If we make the progress we want I expect heavy opposition. However it's hard to build a movement in the shadows. I'd rather just be building things, and making progress toward the goal like I am now, than doing the politics of creating a movement before we have significant powers.

Okay, a charitable reading of "significant powers" might just mean "a working prototype, something more than nothing". But another way to read it would be to "not declare war until you ensured you have the bigger army".
I think it is a lot of crazy moms that fan the flame, just from my observation. Adn the crazy moms are fanned by the media of creepy dudes. Do you know how frequently on my mommy group will be some dude's photo show up "this guy was taking picture of my kid!!!" ....... all the other moms are like. OMG OMG OMG!! Call the police.. Then there are always a few moms go like, FOR WHAT??!! for being a dude and taking some pictures at a public place.. You know there hasn't been a child missing in this neighborhood since 1995.... Then all the other moms yell at the reasonable mom..etc etc. There is a mix, I don't think it's limited to leftist or conservative moms. If anything, I found the really really rich moms (not conservative per se, but lean that way more) to be a bit more crazy in terms of thinking the world is dangerous and if their kid scrap their knee they need to go to the ER..
I assume you're being sarcastic, given that your description of the memo is so perfectly opposite any reasonable interpretation, but I can't tell.
The health issues are a serious problem. I ended up in the hospital with stress induced gastritis one semester. I was lucky I dropped the course, for a W, before the deadline.

This program is no joke, especially if you don't avoid certain courses. If I had one piece of advice for anyone in the program, you should trust the crowd source student reviews of the courses.
Not only China and India emit much less CO2 per capita, the US has emitted far more CO2 than any other country accumulatively. The US has been industrialized for more than one hundred years and had been the No1 emitter of CO2 for more than a century until very recently. All these CO2 accumulated in the atmosphere has not been cleaned up yet. True we should all use cleaner energy sources. Planting one billion tree is a step towards a greener environment.
I'm not sure I agree. I don't think we read the same memo. Additionally, while this isn't entirely rational, it's hard to take anything seriously that gets started with trying to tie it to a "covert alt-right agenda". Someone who starts off with a variant of the "you're a Nazi" argument does not come across as someone without significant ideological biases.
Nice! You have some great shots on there.

Here's my account: https://www.instagram.com/dronechuk
I was at an all hands meeting at a previous employer when the big boss was introducing new employees. After he introduced a new female employee, he went into a long speech about how diversity was important to the group. That was just super awkward, and whether true or not, made it feel like to everyone the employee he just introduced was a diversity hire.

I think there are definitely a few companies out there who are playing with the hiring bar to improve diversity in an easy but ultimately harmful way. Probably not google, but these bad actors poison the well in these discussions, so to speak.
I'm curious, do you know why you weren't admitted? I've gotten the impression that GT was wanting to make the course relatively available to the public. Is it still selective?
Thank you for this. This is one of the most important comments on this page:

" Let's focus on things we can actually know rather than speculating about Damore's state of mind."

Or, at the very least, present speculation as speculation. It does "show" anything definitive.
Sure! It's solely based on my experience with commenters, who sometimes view statements like that as endorsements or as indicators that personal beliefs align with those who are being quoted or described.

So it's sort of a disclaimer.
Damore is the victim of an aggressive and intolerant mob. I am certainly not victim blaming.
^This is exactly what I was referring to with

> It keeps leading me back to the idea that increased volition allows gender differences to propagate.

And I'm looking hard for data just in Silicon Valley, which the SO link does help with a little. I think looking at East Asians should be enlightening too.
> Google's stance, as stated in the article, is that they divert more energy in to finding minority candidates. That's not the same as a lower bar. Abilities are expected to be distributed equally still.

That has a very pernicious effect across the industry though. Think about what that policy does to other companies.

The other companies won't have as many high quality women because Google scouted and hired them already, but will have just as many low and medium quality women who aren't good enough for Google, and more high quality men who were displaced from Google. Which skews the gender ratio even more and creates the impression that women at those companies are lower quality than the men there or else they would have been hired away by Google -- because it causes that impression to be the truth.

And you can't fix it by having all companies adopt that policy, because it would still transfer high quality women from lower tier companies to higher tier companies, causing problems for all the women who don't get to work for the companies in the highest tier. Even the high quality women who are still in second tier companies.

The lower tier companies are where almost everybody actually works -- small and medium companies employ more people than huge companies because there are so many more of them.

Google is being quite selfish with a policy like that.
If I were Bezos, I would start a vlogging platform and a competitor to Twitter -- one free of concerns of covert partisan censorship. There would be serious synergies for amazon.com and other Amazon products.
That wasn't the point. I think that Americans in particular are too obsessed with their "American dream", their belief that "you can be whoever you want if you work hard enough" that they cannot even accept basic facts from their own biology.

There's a reason why all sports, including non-physical ones, like chess, have separate competition for women - and when there is mixed competition women get places below 100th. Try to explain that with "socio-cultural factors" or other gender pseudo-science.
He does however claim he'd learned of questionable/unethical hiring practices as part of a "secret" diversity hiring meeting he'd been invited to attend, and this is what prompted the memo in the first place.

What I inferred from this, is that he learned that at least in some cases, there's aspects to Google's diversity hiring that they'd rather people not know about.

Now I don't know if this is false, true, or true within a small subset of Google; but his claim of the secret meeting does change the narrative somewhat in his favour.
Is microsoft.com currently not loading for anyone else? I'm getting ERR_SSL_UNRECOGNIZED_NAME_ALERT in Chrome, but I'm not seeing it mentioned anywhere else (e.g. Twitter).
Your comments come off as if you are more bitter about some company you can just choose to ignore than benchamark is about Travis.
> It doesn't really matter what you meant to do if your actions made thousands of women feel diminished in the workplace.

So it's objective and fair? Or it is too fickle but it doesn't matter?

> I think it's pretty clear he knew what he was getting into.

I think he would have hired a publicist and lawyer before publishing the memo if he knew what was coming.
For what it's worth, he did run the document by others at Google and -- based on what I've read -- they were the ones who spread the document, not he. That's not to say he didn't intend to do it at some point, but that it was through his efforts to get said feedback that the fire started.
Yep, many agree with him.

http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/01/gender-imbalances-are-m...

http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exagger...

https://heterodoxacademy.org/2017/08/10/the-google-memo-what...

http://quillette.com/2017/08/07/google-memo-four-scientists-...
This analogy doesn't work at all. 3/3 shots is 100% success rate whereas 3/5 shots is 60% - you're literally describing lowering the bar for the 60% shooter.

Additional rounds of interviews are more like trying to accurately diagnose a condition using multiple different tests because the initial test is known to have poor sensitivity and will produce false negatives. Doing multiple rounds may, of course, increase the chance of false positives (reduce specificity); but the assumption in this case is that when hiring minorities the sensitivity of the interview process is much worse than the specificity.
It's impossible to produce that content because the culture was very different.

For one, it was largely un-monetised. There were no banner ads, no ad trackers, no giant shopping sites, no market-driven content design.

But many ISPs offered free web space, and HTML 1.0 was so simple almost anyone could hack together a basic site with a plain vanilla text editor.

So people did. For fun. Lots and lots of them.

It looked like crap, but it was weird/hilarious/insane/inspiring in equal measures in a way that's impossible to reproduce today.
I also prefer using id instead of user_id or company_id. It does mean you'll have to escape it (in MySQL at least) if you are writing pure SQL.

Take the following example:

SELECT s.`id`,
s.label,
s.`group`,
g.name AS group_name,
s.tags,
s.ssh_username,
s.ssh_port
FROM servers s
LEFT OUTER JOIN groups g
ON s.group = g.`id`
ORDER BY s.label ASC

In an unrelated note, how does everybody else format their SQL? The above format is what I typically use.
I never tried, but mmap and mincore could work (or not, as one of the many special cases in this area). I expect that's not a viable approach for this application, anyway :)
I really enjoyed this interview, finally, some voices of reasons and not blind yelling at men for being sexist pigs just from reading some biased media's twisted headlines.

All these times around this memo, how many people actually cared to ask for female engineer's thoughts on this? All I see is women who don't work in engineering positions or men trying to interpret this memo from their perspective. How many actually cared what are the thoughts and impact on the main subject being discussed in the original article?