skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It doesn't matter how many women there are in the field. If men and women are of equal worth, then why are you looking to get more women in? The men there aren't good enough for you?

Now, I understand that some women avoid working developer jobs because they get mistreated by some men. That is an issue. But it's not an issue limited to developers, and it's not an issue limited to women. If anyone is treating anyone else like shit, then they should be fired. Sex doesn't come into question -- being a decent human being does. If you're afraid to work a job because someone might mistreat you, then you're afraid of working every job.

Even if we eliminate cases like those of Github/Hovarth, it doesn't necessarily mean there will be a 50/50 split. And it doesn't matter. It's not important how many people of a certain gender there are -- what's important is that people are judged on their skills and character alone. If that means there is a gender divide, then so be it.
> Looks like unquantified extrapolation and using anecdotes as evidence.

Yes, along with perpetuating the myth of Asperger's, which has been abandoned as a diagnosis by people who had every reason to defend its continued existence (clinical psychologists), but who realized they could only do so by sacrificing more public credibility.
I think in general, if reversing the comparison makes you feel uneasy, it's probably inappropriate both ways and best left unsaid.

"Men usually get the rough end of this deal [office breakups], too, because women aren't good at handling the inevitable rejection."

You couldn't pay me enough to tweet that.
Most normal people don't really.
You have your home life, your work life, your homearea community life, your online community life, clubs/groups etc

But if your young and perhaps living an unbalanced life (everything is just about work) you might not see that.
> the cost quite high - the user's time

That's a good point. I still don't really "get" Google+, and I find it somewhat counterintuitive.

> tl;dr G+ didn't provide enough value to users to make it worthwhile spending time with the product, ergo it was a bad product that people didn't spend time with.

I was challenging your "few users ==> bad product" line of reasoning in general, not necessarily the statement "Google+ is a bad product". Sorry, I should have been more clear on this.

Still, I stick to my point that there are more factors influencing the market share of a product than its pure quality. Even if I made a better Facebook clone, I wouldn't gain any noteworthy market share.
There's no 1&2 => 3 it's more like 2&3 => 1, where there is a probable casual relationship between 2 and 3 (attributes of a good hacker and of a person diagnosed with Aspergers overlap quite a bit (4)).
What is lacking is 'channel negotiation' between the sender and the receiver. The sender knows what he sends - the receiver knows what he wants to receive - neither of them has the full information and they need to collaborate on defining the channel connecting them.

For example the sender can sort their messages into out-channels (as it is partially implemented in Google+ via circles) and the receiver can chose what out-channels he subscribes to (which is not present in Google+) - this is the classical publish-subscribe design pattern.

What I would like to see is a bit more - I would like the receiver to be able to also apply some additional sorting logic to the subscribed channels, and he could choose the results depending on the mood - or he could some of it also copy directly to his out-channels. In short what I would like to see is a 'social routing' - but that would probably require that the user has full control over his node.
You can share with only a specific circle.. - just set the To to the specific Circle....
Deploying a Node.js app to IBM BlueMix
Berlin: One of the cheapest capitals in Europe, reasonably vibrant IT scene. Apartments inside the city can be had for as little as 300€ if you hunt long enough, although 600-700€ is becoming the new standard. Restaurants are cheap too: 5€ for lunch, 7-9€ for dinner. Lots of space, little traffic, the best public transport network in Europe, tons of lakes and green spaces.
I'm still waiting for the "iCandybar" form factor fad to fade so we can get the modern-day evolution of the N93, with 41 megapixels and real depth of field, etc. I won't stop holding my breath.
Undiscovered Warhol works recovered from old Amiga disks
I'm not aware of drinking being a huge problem in Australia either, but that may be the particular places I happen to have worked. Certainly "goin' out 'n gettin' pissed" is an important part of weekly (even daily) social interactions for a lot of Aussies, though we don't have the wowser/puritan history to muddy the waters like the US does.
I honestly think no drinking, no dating should not be on that list. This sounds like a married 40+ year old who's forgotten what it's like to be 20-30 (and I must admit I'm starting to forget!). It's so easy to forget that's simply not how the world works at that age and this debate is not the place to start proselytizing middle-aged parent morality that you definitely didn't have when you were 25.

You even mention university. Is college sexist then? Do we need to protect women at university from all those drunk, lecherous men? Enforce a no dating rule at university?

Women can't be equals if you refuse to treat them as equals.
This whole Google Reader thing has had me going "back" to Digg actually (I know, it's a new site and all). Digg.com/reader. I don't visit the rest of the site, but the reader is excellent.
Generally this is nice and balanced, but there are a couple of things that I don't agree with:

Do you run a company? Institute a no-dating rule as policy.

I don't really thing that's wise. On a personal level, it's great advice — I'd imagine that's something most people would take into consideration on a personal. We've got a "try not to get into a relationship at work, but if you do, don't be a dick, and make sure we know about it so we can deal with the fallout if required" policy, and that's more than enough. We're adults, not children, after all.

Also, this:

No drinking at work events.

Okay, work events shouldn't be focused around alcohol, and heavy-drinking macho culture is bad. But it's exceptionally difficult to construct an enjoyable and realistic working culture when you're making an effort to exclude an activity that lots of people (a majority, maybe?) partake in and enjoy.

So have some wine and cocktails at company events; don't feel ashamed to go for a couple of drinks with colleagues after work on a Friday. Just make sure that your culture is sensitive enough that you have a diversity of events so that individuals who don't want to drink aren't excluded, and don't focus your events around alcohol (c.f. github's infamous drink-ups).

But I guess what terrifies me most is stuff like this:

I like to refer to the anecdotal story of the Apple Store glass stairs. While visually appealing, there was one unforeseen consequence to their design: the large groups of strange men that spend hours each day standing under them looking up. As a woman, the first time I saw them I thought “thank god I’m not wearing a skirt today.”

I find it really understandable that stuff like this rubs men up the wrong way. It shouldn't, but my immediate reaction to that is "wtf, we shouldn't be compromising things that we want to do because there are people around who would do that kind of thing!" - I guess is naïveté in some ways, because I can't imagine doing that, or being aware of somebody who was doing it without tackling them on the issue.

It's easy to feel like it's a personal or biased attack on "all men," and I think that's probably the biggest barrier to overcome. When someone complains about sexist activity, it's rarely a personal attack, but it can be hard to remember that sometimes.
It would work great together with http://www.rainymood.com/
This topic is radioactive. No matter how kind and understanding you are, many people on many sides will misinterpret your statements and demonize you. The only way to win is not to play.

And yet, because I want to further the discussion, I will play...

I think the most effective way to reduce discrimination in tech is to go underground. Do not think of yourself as a crusader for (insert topic here). Keep your identity small[1] and simply attack bad ideas no matter where they come from[2]. Blind yourself when evaluating candidates. Make sure that you do not know the name of the person applying for a position, since that information highly correlates with their race and gender. Musicians figured this out long ago: all that matters the sound. Likewise, with programmers all that matters is the code. If your code is good, you are good. If it's not good, be glad: you get to learn something new. Appreciate it, because until recently, learning new things was a rare event.

I think this mentality can help us not only with this specific problem, but with similar problems that we will encounter in the future. We owe it to each other and ourselves. We need to advance our field and pursue excellence no matter where it comes from, no matter where it leads to.

1. http://paulgraham.com/identity.html

2. Likewise, endorse good ideas no matter where they come from. If it helps your ego, think of it as taking advantage of your enemies.
I'm sure there's an Autism spectrum upon which Asperger's syndrome lies, and I'm sure that psychology (as distinct from psychiatry) is a scientific discipline, so logic dictates that the weak link is your statement that "it was voted out of existence".
Actually, what happened is that it ended up bundled into high functioning autism in the DSM. That only means that the term "Asperger's" was deprecated in the context of the DSM.
How do you know if your policy of equal opportunity is working, if you refuse to look at the end result?
I thought the same thing. When I first started work a couple of drinks at lunchtime was considered normal. At my first employers (Borland UK) back in the late 80s we would go out as a team every 2-3 weeks and get drunk at the companies expense (slightly unusual but boozy "work" lunches and not going back to the office was still a possibility then).

These days I can't cope with that (my code turns to crap and I want to have a quick nap) but I do like offices were there is a culture of the company paying for a few drinks (Friday afternoons?)
The Nokia fate will be remembered as hostile takeover. Everything worked out in the favor of Microsoft in the end. Though Windows Phone/Tablet have low market share, a lot lower than expected.

* Stephen Elop the former Microsoft employee (head of the Business Division) and later Nokia CEO with his infamous "Burning Platform" memo: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Elop#CEO_of_Nokia

* Some former Nokia employees called it "Elop = hostile takeover of a company for a minimum price through CEO infiltration":
http://gizmodo.com/how-nokia-employees-are-reacting-to-the-m...
On the link I listed.
I wonder who the "5 corporate giants" are. Facebook, Apple, Google. Who are the rest? Amazon? eBay? Yahoo? Microsoft? Intel?
I've heard it argued - convincingly I might add - that the autism male/female skew is actually a lot less than this, but we (as a society) are bad at spotting autism in females.
This book also has some interesting passages on the topic: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Aspergirls-Empowering-Females-Asperg....

I should emphasise that I am in no way qualified to say if this is true or not - but I personally found the arguments presented to be plausible and interesting.
There's an incredibly important climax:

"[T]he real disillusionment isn’t the discovery that you’re unlikely to become a billionaire; it’s the realization that your feeling of autonomy is a fantasy, and that the vast majority of you have been set up to fail by design."

The story is a sober, measured portrait of the purpose of the SF millstone. It's told through the weight of the exhausted angst in two entrepreneurs, but its a message to the masses dreaming of a glamor that masks the new face of corporate R&D. While not novel, the important lessons and insights need to be told more than once, and this is a well-written telling.
Tin foil hat mode ON

Google never needed Google+ to be successful, it was just a means to complete their analytics and ad platforms with more data about the users by awkwardly signing them up.

As Wave, it might also have led to the development of new internal processes (providing a band aid for things like youtube comments) and finally on Google's look and feel rebranding.

Now Google has new ideas on how to feed the analytics and ad platforms with a line of futuristic projects that may or may not improve your daily life.

Taking this with a grain of salt it might make sense. For Google to do what they do they need to know everything about their users and their environment, which closes the circle feeding the products that are giving the company value.
And this was the last Nokia blog post. Quite fitting, really
Which is the real Popcorn Time, http://get-popcorn.com/ or http://www.time4popcorn.eu/?
Or good press, from an investor's perspective.
PastBook for iPhone
Sad times - although I look forward to what's next. More competition is always a good thing.
> Do we need to protect women at university from all those drunk, lecherous men?

Perhaps this is not your point, but the answer to this question is emphatically:

Yes, women (and men) everywhere have a right to personal safety.

I agree that a no-dating rule does not achieve this, but drinking culture at a workplace is just not a good idea. You can drink on your own time, with the money you get paid to make your own decisions with, without dressing that up as a work social event which employees feel obliged to attend.
So hitting on someone at work is ok as long as they're interested, otherwise you get fired?
That would be good advice in that situation. Certainly, allowing people to believe that they can "pick up" programming knowledge without working hard at it would be irresponsible. Telling someone the truth about their work is generally a good idea. You can easily do this in a helpful, non-mocking way, so I don't really see the conflict here.

The OP linked to the Hacker School Rules, which state that people should not be humiliated for their lack of knowledge. These rules say that the following responses to encountering an inexperienced person would be wrong:

"omg, you call yourself a programmer but you don't know how to write a thread-safe hash map?"

"well, actually, if you knew how to use git properly you would have done a rebase there"

"you're using MegaTest? everyone knows SuperDuperTest is the best testing framework, use that instead"

Those are all unprofessional and unhelpful things to say. In contrast:

"that's OK, concurrency is pretty hard. if you want to learn more about it, I can give you some pointers but you probably want to build up your knowledge a bit more before attempting this."

"ok, let's take a look at the git log now. you see how the history has some of your 'figuring stuff out' commits in there? well, there's a way of tidying up your commit history before merging it in - there's this thing called rebasing, which we can use to make our history easier to understand. here's a good tutorial on it - give me a shout if you need some help"

"the MegaTest library is OK, but it's not that well-maintained any more and quite a few people have migrated to SuperDuperTest. there's a really good post about the differences here, and you might want to pick that up for your next project"

Obviously, these are caricatures to some extent. But the point is not that people who are getting stuff wrong should not be corrected, the point is that there's a good way and a bad way to correct them, and choosing the good way makes the world a better place for everyone.
I was mostly speaking about myself there, but yes, I believe it is true of most men. Tell them they can't have something, and they will suddenly want it more than they've ever wanted anything in their entire lives.

Also, didn't this just happen at GitHub?
That actually sounds extremely plausible to me. I mean, I don't think the guy literally said to himself "she won't fuck me, revert!"

What I imagine happened is some guy at work had a crush on her and made an awkward pass at her. Maybe he tried to smell her hair or something, I don't know. She shot him down, then he got all butthurt and started undoing her commits on the projects they worked on together. Because they were painful reminders of her.

From his perspective, he's a sensitive guy who just got rejected and isn't coping well. But to her, he's the guy deleting her code because she wouldn't fuck him.

That doesn't seem crazy at all to me. It seems totally possible, and just the kind of situation competent HR departments are supposed to prevent and mitigate.
Does this need to be posted every single time the site disappears and reappears?
Incredibly disturbing how little news this has made. No comment from anyone on the Board or at RadiumOne. I really hope they don't get anywhere near the IPO stage if "G" remains in control.
> They've have told me they "only" deliver for Amazon and won't really be pushed on the matter.

Amazon Logistics UK

They bought-out APLE in Milton Keynes, which had previously worked as a contract courier for Amazon and others.

http://www.aplemk.com/ContactUs.php

Not a company that had a stellar reputation.
So, here's how I imagine these rules were created.

1. Collect a large number of stories of harassment or toxic work environments that drive away women.

2. Look for common elements.

3. Make a list of rules to avoid those common elements.

It's hard to balance competing needs.. it's inevitable that rules constructed in this way are going to protect against more behavior than is actually necessary. The question is whether it's more like a seatbelt (I've never gotten in a car accident, but I still always wear mine) or more like the snowsuit from A Christmas Story.

I, like you, am not a misogynistic jerk. However, I can imagine such a jerk, and that jerk is much worse when they've had a bit to drink. They can also be really mean when rejected in a relationship. I can also imagine it being really hard to tell if that is the case ahead of time.

These rules would lead to some changes.. if it didn't, then you wouldn't expect a different result. That includes some changes which would not have been necessary. It's a matter of balance, but if you really want change, then it can make sense to overcompensate.
I don't see the connection between the first and the second part. What's the point of establishing a baseline if it's not going to be used to find a solution ?
I think it's very good advice; just overly specific.

It should be "have a dating policy," or have explicit guidelines on how to handle intra-office relationships.

I'd say it doesn't matter whether it's a 'no-dating', 'no propositions in the office', or a 'one goes, both go' policy in case of problems... just as long as you're explicitly addressing the issue.
> "No well-actuallys. "Well, actually, you can do that without a regular expression.""

I don't think that's quite what is meant by "well-actually". In Miguel's blog, he gives the example of someone injecting a non-sequitur well-actually to shift attention to themselves and their superior intellect.

The reg-ex example given isn't (necessarily) an example of that. I can easily imagine a situation where I'm discussing some code with someone and if they're using a regex for something that's easily achieved without one, it's almost universally a good idea to do the other thing and I should point that out. That's not "showcasing my superior intellect", it's teaching.
Obama Plays Soccer With Asimo Robot
Psychologists abandon established diagnoses with every revision of the DSM. For instance sexual aversion disorder was also removed in the latest DSM [1].

[1] http://www.psychiatry.org/File%20Library/Practice/DSM/DSM-5/...
Yes, I access email, calendar and contact via browser only on all desktop computers I use. And on phones and tablets I use native Gmail and Calendar apps and have contacts synchronized everywhere.

I haven't used desktop client for private mail for years, and I don't see that changing, because of the privacy and security concerns. I'm willing to let NSA or some other faceless foreign entity snoop my email if that will prevent people around me that can get hold of my phone or computer from reading my mail.
Yes, there's no one true definition of a free market but to say there's a logical contradiction rather strikes me as a jump to conclusions. What I meant was, impeding the flow of packets to or from competing networks prevents free trade on the Internet. It's easy to get the two mixed up, but the parallels between net neutrality and the rise of free trade in the 18th and 19th century seem realistic imho. I'm no historian though, merely biased by being on the content provider side of the fence.
So it's a horrible inequality that more programmers are men, and code would be so much better with more women.

In Sweden, 57 percent of judges are women[1]. Where do I hear the feminists shouting that judgements would be so much better with more men? Again in Sweden, 52% of women gets accepted to University, but only 36% of men[2]. Where do I hear the feminists shouting that University would be so much better with more men?

The feminist agenda is "more women, more women" and is one way - much more sexist than any other ideology out there.

[1] http://www.advokatsamfundet.se/Nyhetsarkiv/2014/februari/Fle...

[2] https://www.hsv.se/publikationerarkiv/pressmeddelanden/2012/...
I'd say it's a "Drink responsibly" thing. Possibly refers to college culture and by extension hip cool startup culture, where (if I am to believe popular media etc) things can get rather excessive, with drinking games and trying to out-drink each other and just get pissed.

We have the occasional drinkup, where we just enjoy a few drinks without things going in full party mode. It's just behaving like an adult, imo.
The best part is, 15% of GitHub's employees are women, and only 6 of them are developers. So you could actually do a really accurate survey with a small sample size!
Well, that's kind of exactly my point. Facebook does the "things happening in my friends' lives that are largely inane but relevant to me" thing far better than some give it credit for (going to great lengths to determine relevance based on real actions you take). Twitter does the "I want a mind dump of the people I admire from afar with no filters" thing much better.

If Circles were the other way around -- a way to organize and categorize your thoughts for better consumption of other people -- I think that would have been better, and more along the lines of what you're talking about. If it had done it somewhat automatically that might have been even better.

But one thing that always kept me unhappy with G+ was that managing my circles felt like painful busywork better left to a computer, and it was only for my own benefit. It feels like work to control who gets to see what, and it's amortized on the wrong end, so I never did it. I don't know that anyone really does.

At any rate, no one's arguing people use facebook because of the people they don't want to hear from. That would be ludicrous.
It is interesting that you cast this idea in this way, because while I can see your point that he's talking about women getting the "rough end" of a deal, specifically, it isn't telling _only_ men how to behave.

And while I don't want to "sell" you on the idea, I can say that my ex, who dated three different coworkers (one while she was married to me :D ) probably should have taken that advice, not that she would have... people will do what they do.

But I agree with the larger point of making it a specific policy... if just because it gives graceful outs all around.
The skew in CS Bachelor's degrees has been getting worse recently.