skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> but a woman would not be labelled a liability for reporting a rape or an assault, unless maybe it turned out to be false

This is the crux of the matter and where most men run into trouble with this whole discussion.

Let's say she comes forward and accuses a coworker of rape. The coworker denies the allegations and says she's lying to punish him for some work-related disagrement, or because he turned her down for a date or something. She doesn't have any recordings or physical proof. It's just her word against his.

Now what?? Well if you want to get a sense of what typically happens, take a look at this thread, in which multiple men are spending thousands of words debating the fine points of what exactly is bad enough to count as "rape", and why didn't she just quit, etc.

Basically: when there is not solid proof, guys tend to stick up for each other--and there are way way more guys in tech than women.

That's why she would fear being ostracized.
just apply.
Seeing how down-voted you are makes me scared of the US work environment. Looks like the only way to avoid any potential trouble is to act like a robot not just at work but also at company outings.
Google, Yahoo, the money spends the same. The error doesn't change the meaning one iota.
Slightly more insidiously: she may have given enthusiastic consent to the first step, consent may have dwindled on subsequent steps, and she's still in just as shitty a position regarding refusing further steps, except now she has the problem of being taken seriously by people who think she lost the right to withdraw her consent along the way.
All of the examples here are really horrible code. This is the second article in a few days on Hacker News to list out a few examples of how hard C is. And for little reason; there's absolutely no value in being able to write something like:

return ({goto L; 0;}) && ({L: 5;});

It probably has a bug, will be hard to debug, and isn't more performant than writing it in a clearer way. And unfortunately, while the examples here are probably all contrived, there are plenty of real-life cases where code as bad as this gets into production systems.

So why are we still writing code like this?

The answer is reverse compatibility. Not just of compilers, but of tools and skillsets: people are unwilling to support multiple versions of C and want their code to run forever.

Objective-C and C++ do things to add functionality to C, but they don't remove the functionality of C that allows these kinds of problems.

This points to a need for a new language that avoids these issues. I think Rust is the answer, but I would like to see more languages try to fill that gap--competition is healthy.
Tech companies are staffed with humans, not angry chimpanzees; this analogy is stupid.
>Your finance industry stereotypes are about 30 years out of date.

Not as blatant as the "golden age", perhaps, but it seems "hookers and blow" still figure in the lifestyle. A former hedge fund trader published a book a couple years ago detailing how his company (within the last decade) plied clients with prostitutes and a wide array of illegal narcotics:

http://nypost.com/2013/05/30/former-hedge-fund-titan-bares-a...

Then there's the BofA banker who, last December, was found to have gone off the rails, from continual partying, and killed two sex workers:

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-11-02/bofa-banker-arreste...
I totally agree. People are arguing that video games going mainstream is making LESS people interested in tech? Bizarroland.

Kids today are going to be more likely to get into tech, and it's going to be far far easier for them to do it. We don't need to get nostalgic for how much more "authentic" it was back in the day when the tools sucked a lot more.

(the GameShark comparison may be valid - but in my experience, a GameShark was just a thing you bought to cheat in a game. None of my friends who got them got into learning about programming because of it)
Every time I read a story about a “scandal”, I wonder why the subject didn’t do this or that, which seems armchair-obvious.

It seems trivial, from the outside: you explain the context, apologise for doing something offensive, and ignore further comments from the fools who will never listen to or forgive you, because they aren’t worth a shred of your time.

But I have never experienced this situation, so I’m wondering what it is about this kind of public ridicule and vitriolic reaction that makes otherwise rational people fail to do appropriate damage control. What am I missing?

Has anyone undergone anything of the sort who is willing to explain the experience?
These posts are ironic.
You are right, I'm misunderstanding the scoping rules for law. I was interpreting it as (261 ... (7 ... (b ...))) rather than (261 (a ... (7 ...) ) (b ...) ).

I guess the question hinges on what is intended by the word "retribution".
Is there a word to describe the structure of the notation of mathematics versus programming syntax versus the English language?
The future hiring manager does not know what really happened, and any details is effectively hearsay to them.

The person becomes a very risky hire personally to the new boss then, because if the police were called once, they might be called again, even if you did nothing wrong. And your career and future income might be ruined. It's much safer to just hire the other person with no history of police involvement.

The general principle can be applied to other crimes too.
Bias is perfectly rational, just like murdering your neighbor for his land. That's why we have a social contract, to prevent things that are individually rational yet socially ruinous.
Check out the LittleBigPlanet series... it's got a modding system that would have blown your mind as a child. I'm an adult and a programer and it still blows my mind. It's not just an incredibly powerful modding system, but that's an intended part of the game—there are levels, and tutorials with real voice acting, teaching you how to use it; and an easy to use online system for sharing your levels, or viewing the levels other people have made.
I moved from Cleveland to the Bay Area two and a half years ago. It was probably the best decision I have ever made. While working down in Mountain View, I learned there is absolutely nothing special about Silicon Valley. What is being done here in the Bay Area can be replicated anywhere. Had I not moved here, I would still have this vision of Silicon Valley being a special place.

I would even go so far as to say you're better off starting a company in the Midwest. It's a hell of a lot cheaper, and you can still find good talent. Sure, it will be harder to raise money; however, money will find the truly good ideas.
Closed the tab when I saw it was about Eich. Love him or hate him, if he's the main source of your opinion on Mozilla then you have nothing interesting to say on the subject.

Wait, this was ESR? He's quickly become the fedora to RMS' neckbeard.
I've spent the majority of my time in the Midwest (mainly Chicago, but Milwaukee & Indy) and am currently on both coasts quite a bit (San Diego & NYC).

I would say that the main differences are in scope and pace.

The work ethic & amicability of the midwest is unparalleled pretty much anywhere. That said, as an entrepreneur or founder outside of Chicago-proper, I've found it terribly difficult to connect with any large amounts of people. There are lots of people building small businesses (but have essentially built themselves a job that is dependent on them), but not very many entrepreneurs (building systems that scale).

As far as tech goes, again, it's tough to find people outside Chicago-proper (although it's getting better).

That said, you do tend to have a lot more people who are content & happy, and seemingly a much more consistent pace of life.

Most people on HN seem to have little familiarity with actually living or experiencing the midwest (but many of the cities are well worth visiting - especially in the summer).

The biggest downside to me was the geography. I love Chicago, but for 1/2 the year it's freezing and depressing with not many outdoor activities to partake in :(
>Google and Facebook are expanding up here because there's so much talent that simply won't move to the bay

I think a lot of that is driven by Amazon, because they built the downtown offices. People get used to working downtown and they want to stay there. Easy commutes from Capitol Hill/QA/etc.

Now Facebook is expanding downtown, Google Fremont is growing, etc. because people refuse to commute to the east side.

As opposed to the Valley, where your options are (except for Twitter and mostly startups)

1) Work in the valley, and live the suburbs. Yuck. Pay a billion dollars for the privlege.

2) Work in the valley and live in SF. Pay a billion^2 dollars for the privilege, and have a shit commute (sitting on a private bus is still sitting on a bus).

No thanks.

That being said, I went to Case Western and would move back to Cleveland in a heartbeat, if the salaries and opportunities were even remotely comparable to Seattle.
I didn't get into programming until college, but I remember spending hours creating my own winamp skin as a teen.
"Cleveland is probably a hugely appealing destination. As a person working in the technology industry (a much more centralized niche), it presents a tremendous trade-off between quality of life and opportunity."

I live in the midwest and visited Cleveland last year. Outside of about two streets downtown, it's pretty much a ghost town at night.

Many, many businesses have left over the past 5 years because of the economy.
I believe part of this is your own frustration, and I do not blame you for venting.

Another part is the inherent error is using education as a proxy for ability to contribute.

My biggest concern, however, is that we assume there is a hierarchy of programmers. That the person who surpasses John Carmack is automatically more valuable than someone else, because it's a vertical pecking order.

In reality, it's likely that given the constraints of a position, Carmack++ is not a good fit.

We see someone build a faster sqrt algorithm as ability. What about the programmer who does his best to navigate internal obstacles adroitly -- why is that not praised just as much? It's certainly a difficult accomplishment -- why praise people for ability entirely?
You completely twisted his words.
I don't see how the opinion of Wikipedia editors is a good source for how rape is defined colloquially.

Here is an article that discusses the controversy over force based vs consent based definitions of rape.

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/117630/jed-rubenfeld-rape...
There are explanatory papers that can sum up things far beyond what crawling through each man page would bring. That being said, there is (at least in the 9front project), a man section called "intro" that skims over most of the technical details and focuses rather on concepts and the basics.

To help in transition should you, or someone else be interested, here are some helpful links:
http://www.plan9.bell-labs.com/wiki/plan9/UNIX_to_Plan_9_com...

http://www.plan9.bell-labs.com/wiki/plan9/FAQ/index.html

https://code.google.com/p/plan9front/w/list

http://doc.cat-v.org/plan_9/
The SF office has a street-level room set aside for use as a community space, theoretically it shouldn't be too hard to convince them to let you use it. I know this because I intend to use it for various Rust-relates purposes for the next month or so. :)
As long as you preface that with "Avoid war if at all possible, but " then I think it's quite reasonable.
'Glitch Carpets', Hand-Woven Thread by Faig Ahmed
I was in the exact same boat just two years ago.

I always thought I'd move to the valley to work for a startup and then eventually start my own. After my first offer right out of college with a company in SF didn't work out I ended up taking a job in DC.

My god am I glad that I held out on that one. Not only did I make a comparable salary in DC but the housing cost was at least half. I was paying slightly less than $2k for a nice 600 sqft one bedroom. In SF it would have been closer to $3.5k.

Now two years later I work remotely from Portland for a company based out of Madison Wisconsin. Who would have thought right? Certainly not me 2 years ago. As I've grown and traveled the US I've found the valley to be less and less desirable (and yes, I've been there several times).

Honestly the only draw to the valley is the higher volume of jobs. Aside from Google, Apple, et al, you're going to be saving far less in the valley than anywhere else. There's no incentive to move the valley if you can find a job anywhere else. I know people will tell you the network of VCs, the atmosphere, etc. But it's all overrated. If you're right out of school your number one concern should be saving money and learning. If you work in the valley you're only getting access to one of those and it's certainly not saving money (again, unless you're working for Big Tech Co.).

Now don't get me wrong. There are certainly places out there that are far superior to others. I would certainly rather live in the valley than Houston. The cultural aspect is key. I'm simply saying don't run to the valley because you have some idealized image of it. Research and do the math.
How I turned my Xbox's Kinect into a motion-capture device
Also consider being publicly dragged through the mud, having your sexual history become a matter of public discussion, and having to defend yourself against a far more powerful member of the community, who may be eating dinner with the judge that night. You might find that you become the villain in the eyes of your community.
> And, you do realize that one of the simplest languages for compiler writers, lisp, doesn't have to move heaven/earth to make that calculation work out how you want it.

I've written a C compiler and am currently writing a Lisp compiler, and I'm not sure where you get the idea that Lisp is a simple language for compiler writers. Lisp's simple representation belies a very complicated runtime, to the point that the majority of Lisp implementations don't support compilation at all--they're interpreted only.
Not arguing that it is cheap, just saying that the generalization that everywhere near the coast is fast moving is incorrect. Cheaper options include Wilmington, NC, Raleigh, NC, and Asheville, NC -- I skew NC because I lived there for several years and loved it (and I am now based in the Bay Area).
I so very much hate socialism. The state, with the money it took from all of us through taxes is presented as a benefactor because it gives small amounts of those money back to research. And she wants the state to have more share from successful research.

The state, any state, is a very bad administrator of funds, because the so called state are basically a bunch of people spending other peoples money on things that they dont understand and they dont really care about. What they care about is building their own public image with those money in order to be reelected.

I'd feel much more confortable in having to pay lower taxes and let the private investors do the investment, because VCS actually care about how their money are spent.
This afternoon I just went to see a new opera that premiered yesterday at the Minnesota Opera Company (The Manchurian Candidate). I hardly feel deprived living in Minneapolis with the The Minnesota Orchestra, The Minnesota Opera, The St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, The Schubert Club, and a dozen other ensembles I'm forgetting. And that's just classical music, which is what I'm interested in.

If you're into live theater there's a dozen or more shows going at any one time. I'm sure there's a visual arts scene of which I'm happily unaware, jazz performances, dozens of small clubs, and more.

There's more than enough culture to fill my available time and interest. Living in NYC, I'm not sure I'd go see all that much more of it. Yes, I'd be spoiled for choices (and I miss the American Composers Orchestra) but I'm not really suffering in Minneapolis.
So, has it completely escaped the attention of the makers of mobile games that almost 60% of gamers on mobile platforms are women? Seriously - It's kinda odd that one of the defining characteristics of the mobile gaming market doesn't actually seem to be reflected in what the industry is releasing.

It's one hell of an omission, and actually, there's got to have been a lot of opportunity missed.

And the icing on that cake? On mobile, female gamers are actually way more loyal players (42% higher 7-day retention on average versus males), they also spend about 35% more time in gaming appss, oh and they're also spending around 31% more on In-App-Purchases than their male counterparts too.

http://www.joystiq.com/2014/10/27/report-men-play-more-mmos-...

http://www.joystiq.com/2014/10/27/report-men-play-more-mmos-...
If you do have any interest in subcontracting web or iOS work please ping me. Contact info is in my profle.
> start with the assumption that all computer programming can be done remotely, from China or India. Now ask yourself, what kind of computer programming can not be done remotely?

Just about any kind of software development can be done remotely, really. It's really a function of the skills possessed by everyone involved in a distributed team vs the obstacles distribution may or may not present (and there's different degrees of remoteness -- same city, same time zone, same country, same hemisphere all present different challenges)

> specially to maintain the relationship links between investors and engineers via a CEO. Those jobs need to be in New York or San Francisco.

Unless the CEO doesn't (or your customers don't) live in SF and NY.

I suppose the next line is "well, the investors aren't going to want to visit flyover country." It turns out -- strangely enough -- there are even investors who don't live in SF and NY, though sometimes they strangely don't all want to invest in a slick social deals pyramid or revenue-free chat app or whatever else is hot at the moment...
The problem I have with the cost of living argument is that, while housing tends to be cheaper, an iPad or a new car is not. That lower salary hurts everywhere except in mortgage or rent. And I say this as someone who has never lived in the Bay Area and hopefully never will.
I'm not sure how "not having a body that implies anorexia" is a "norm" in itself, any more than having two feet is. If female characters are created that adhere to destructive norms, the creators should expect criticism; I'm not sure why this is a bad thing, when almost everyone would criticize people for making racist caricture characters or doing blackface.

I think we can agree that the "strong female character" trope is complicated in terms of why it exists and how it works, and every single person isn't going to "leverage" criticism of it perfectly. I accept this as a fact of life and don't think it's relevant to OP's statements.

Choosing to "lose the least" strikes me as silly at best, when contacting a few women in your life (hopefully you have as many in your company) and consulting them about the character you're creating is not hard. If you are still criticized after consulting them, you listen to the criticism, maybe write about how you listened to it, and try again in your next game, which is still not hard -- it doubtlessly happens all the time with criticism of all other sorts.
The author's argument is presented better and in more detail here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9168693
The state, any state, is a very bad administrator of funds

Can you explain how China managed to accelerate its development speed through "state-managed funding" on all and everything?
Sen. Lindsey Graham: “I've Never Sent an Email”
It seems to me that a lot of women are left with pretty much two options in a lot of these situations: the lethal option, and submission. Calling the police or going to HR is the "lethal" option, meaning that, in all likelihood, there is going to be a big problem, and somebody is going to suffer.

I think the following scenario should be easy to understand (if not familiar) for most people:
A person is walking down the street, when somebody approaches them and tells them to surrender their wallet.
What would most people recommend in this situation?
"Let them take your wallet, there's no point in risking your life"?
What if the person being mugged revealed they were carrying a weapon capable of deadly force?
Would you recommend that they use it to defend themselves?

Would your recommendation change if the threatening person in question had a position of default trust (e.g. a police officer), or a member of a powerful gang?

Now imagine a person in a scenario where, instead of just walking down the street, they are approached _in their office_ by somebody they trust, and instead of being asked for their wallet, they are asked for something incredibly more traumatic and unrecoverable, under the threat of complete financial destruction or possibly even physical harm.

I would never want to find out which way I would decide, in any of these situations. It's abominable that anyone should have to make that kind of choice, and it's worse still that it seems to be happening under our very noses and nobody can see it.

I think this article sets forth some very powerful, actionable ideas that are not only gender-neutral, but generally applicable in many other industries for many other classes of people who need options.
One time, I was helping a friend of mine work on Javascript (js) skills. We cycled through all the basic sorting algorithms to practice js best practices and help with understanding computation complexity issues.

On one sorting algorithm, Can't remember which one ATM, involved recursion. It was pretty simple. My friend couldn't understand the nature of the problem because he didn't have a instinctual comprehension of recursion. I threw together a Visio of the process and walked him through the blocks one by one. He still couldn't wrap his mind around it. He started to berate himself and I could tell he was giving up on his dream. I told him to keep trying. To keep spending the time on places like HackerRank. He did.

8 months later, he landed a job as a js full stack programmer. Not a senior level position, but a damn good one. I'd seen his work before his interview and it was good. He had a command of all the major frameworks and he was observing all major js design patterns while avoiding idiotic anti-patterns. His code was clean and easy to read.

IMO Pointing out that someone APPEARS to code like a loser is a petty playground tactic of someone who has a serious ego issue. Taking someone by the hand and helping them through the hurdles so they can become a better programmer is the solution. I can't imagine how my friend would have reacted if he had read this petty article while he was trying so hard to become a decent programmer. He may very well have given up. That's not acceptable.

There are only people who give up and people who refuse to concede defeat. Ranting on a website about bad programmers is giving up.
The city the author was talking about, Cleveland, is a city with a 51% black population. A suburb I live next to in the area has a Jewish population comparable to an Israeli city (over 90%). I'm pretty sure we've got the largest Slovenian population outside of Slovenia. I just got a graduate degree from a college in Cleveland and roughly 80% of my fellow CS students were ethnically Indian, with the rest a pretty random mix from around the world. I guess I could go on.

In contrast, I honestly never felt like the urban techie parts of the Bay Area were hugely diverse when I lived there. Lots of really interesting people but there are much more interesting places to live as far as non-tech stuff goes.