I understood gender discrimination once I added "Mr." to my resume - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/103453/i-understood-gender-discrimination-after-i-added-mr-to-my-resume-and-landed-a-job/ "I made one change that day. I put Mr. in front of my name [Kim] on my CV. It looked a little too formal for my liking but I got an interview for the very next job I applied for. And the one after that. It all happened in a fortnight, and the second job was a substantial increase in responsibility over anything I had done before. In the end I beat out a very competitive short-list and enjoyed that job for the next few years, further enhancing my career." <comment> cupcake-unicorn I get this so much, although I've had the opposite experience, where when people notice that I'm female, certain companies get excited for the chance to have a "token woman" on their team. Isn't necessarily a bad thing. Anyway, it made me think of all the LinkedIn spam I get _addressing_ me as sir, Mr., "we're looking for some cool dudes like yourself", etc.

Sadly it's not just the gender thing that's going on here as well, I'm thinking of some study they did where they attached photos with the resumes - the "attractive" people (both men and women) were rated as better skilled than the "normal" and "ugly" people that had the same resume. Although, I think that if I took some fancy photos of myself and primped myself up, I don't think it would do me any favors and I'd get some unwanted attention!

My name isn't even gender neutral, very feminine...I think I once was on some board online using my real name and people were still assuming I was a guy. When I asked how they could possibly think it was a male name, they replied, "I dunno, I was thinking it was like one of those fancy Italian names, like Fabio or whatever..Fabia..yeah, same thing...they always sound like girls names."

I've now started picking the most ridiculously cutsie usernames possible, like this one, to keep people guessing. Sometimes it backfires still and people just get homophobic, but I generally stick with it anyway for fun :)

<comment><USER2> >Isn't necessarily a bad thing.

I would personally find it offending that someone would hire me on the basis of my gender to become a "token" person.

<comment> cupcake-unicorn Well, that's why I said "isn't necessarily" \- some people may not mind and be happy to reap the benefits, and others (like you) would (justifiably) feel offended.

In my experience it hasn't really been 100% about "just being the token woman" but I feel like I have gotten interviews and jobs that I wouldn't have otherwise.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I am female with a hybrid background in UI design and front-end dev. A while back I created a fake linkedin profile identical to mine except with a male name. Even though it has no profile picture and no contacts, the fake profile gets more recruiter messages than I do, and for more technical positions (I get ones for design, he gets ones for engineering).

<comment><USER4> You should write about this somewhere.

<comment><USER5> LinkedIn has a blog, doesn't it have guest writers? You should try for that, give them a chance first.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> That's really, really sad.

And the worst part is, it's surely conscious on nobody's part. There have even been studies showing this effect.

What's even sadder is that there's no obvious or easy way to fix it.

<comment><USER7> There is a simple way to fix it. Namely providing a means to submit your resume that anonymizes name, gender, age and anything that could bias the reviewer's assessment. The best HR departments already do that, at least that's the hope.

<comment><USER8> What's next? All the interviews have to take place in a dark room so that the interviewer can't see the color of the interviewee's skin?

<comment><USER9> That would be excellent wherever it's feasible. The way Gladwell tells it (so take it with a grain of salt), when symphony orchestras started conducting their auditions with a screen in place so they couldn't see the person playing the instrument, the fraction of female musicians in top orchestras shot way up.

However, in cases where the quality of in-person interaction is a major part of what you're trying to assess — like for a team programming environment — it's going to be pretty hard to do anything comparable.

<comment><USER10> How important is personal interaction to most programming jobs, really?

<comment><USER11> I'd go so far as to say that it might be slightly more important than the ability to write code, depending on the company, the project, etc. Being able to effectively discuss requirements and technical tradeoffs with non-technical stakeholders is extremely valuable.

Obviously some level of programming expertise is required, but once you've crossed that minimum threshold, personal communication becomes a larger and larger share of an employees value.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The fact that this post is getting so much attention is baffling me. There is literally nothing in this story to indicate that the name made any difference.

It's blatant confirmation bias. Nothing more.

Allow me to state, once again, there is absolutely no denying that sexism exists and that it's an issue that needs to (and eventually will) change however this article adds absolutely nothing new to the debate.

<comment><USER13> He didn't provide empirical evidence because there are already resources for that. This is a personal anecdote and is being shared because personal anecdotes are effective in making people think in ways that many won't be moved to by statistics.

It's not news and it's not providing any objective data, but that doesn't mean it's devoid of value.

<comment> jack-r-abbit But it happened in the "late 90s." One anecdote from 15 years ago is not really of much value today, IMO.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> As a father, when I had my first kid, & read a few "Parents" magazines, I was so disheartened to see 99% of the references in articles referring to the parent as the "mom" or "She/her". I said, "WTF! Are fathers not parents!?"

Then, it hit me. As a male engineer, manager, etc... I just got a very small taste of the less than subtle gender biases that exist all around us. That made me appreciate my wife more (who is also an engineer), and all the others who put up with that crap even in this modern day.

This is the only forum I've complained about "Parent's Magazine"'s female gender bias. And, I only do so within a context that shows it's just a lesson in empathy for a much more severe bias in the other direction.

<comment><USER15> > bias in the other direction

No, both biases are in the same direction - "women stay home and parent" and "men go out and work" are two sides of the same coin.

By choosing not to fight the stereotype that those parenting are women, you are implicitly shoring up the stereotype that those working are men.

Mind blown yet?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Interesting, enlightening, and thought-provoking article.

To me, another interesting experiment would be changing the first name of the resume to something that's nearly unambiguously male, say instead of Kim O'Grady to just Robert O'Grady, and seeing if that has the same effect.

Another interesting experiment would be adding "Mrs." in front of the name Kim and seeing if that has the same effect.

Personally speaking, I believe that technical people are sick and tired of the sausage fests at most technical companies and all other things being equal would go out of their way to hire more women.

<comment><USER17> True. I would assume women would have a better chance since most men are tired of being surrounded by other men all the time at work, like you said.

What is the motivation for someone to be biased against women, seems counterintuitive.

<comment><USER18> Men can get away with making sexist jokes (or even not-jokes) around other men. You don't have to think so hard about how what you say might be perceived. Taking the overhead of that mental filter out of the loop lets men feel more at ease around each other.

I'm not making a moral judgment, just describing what I've seen over the years as to one explanation of how men can have a subconscious bias that prefers hiring men.

<comment><USER19> _> Men can get away with making sexist jokes (or even not-jokes) around other men._

That's an important observation and plays a huge role in perpetuating sexism and gender discrimination. It continues to exist because guys let other guys get away with it. If you speak up and indicate that you're not okay with it, behaviors and attitudes may change.

It's not easy and it requires courage. But it's necessary to really make a dent in the historical patterns.

<comment><USER20> Maybe it isn't a problem that needs fixing? Maybe making work another place of constant judgement and time under the PC microscope would not be a net positive?

Remember there's a difference between bare-faced misogyny and garden variety politically incorrectness.

<comment><USER17> Nice observation. One of my colleague got a stern warning for using the word dick ( 'dont be a dick' kind of way) around female colleagues, because two women sitting behind him complained to management about it. I am sure he is not discriminatory, biased or misogynistic.

I guess it wise to think about what you are saying and not say stuff like 'fuck off', 'stop bitching' which may be construed as inappropriate.

<comment><USER20> I can't claim it is my own observation. I got it from a feminist talking about how maybe the reason men are resisting women's ingress into male-dominated professions is because when women find the traditionally male workplace environment unsatisfactory, they expect the environment to change to suit them.

<comment><USER21> As a man in a pretty male-dominated profession, (Military) I can say that this is the case. It's exacerbated by blatant sexism, but the biggest rational fear is that women expect the environment to change when they arrive and that this change will be detrimental. The current culture and environment has been tried and proven to work, and they're fearful of a change in that culture impacting success.

Having worked with women, I'm of the opinion that it really depends on leadership and the maturity of everyone in the shop. If you have scumbags around that are allowed to act unchecked, then a woman can destroy a shop in a matter of weeks. If you have good leadership that clearly outlines proper and improper behavior, then things usually come out ok.

<comment><USER19> Thanks for sharing your perspective. It's especially valuable since you are working in a historically male institution. It'd be interesting if you wrote about more of your experiences and observations on this topic (like a blog post). I would be excited to read it.

<comment><USER21> Women in the military is a really, really complicated topic. It'll take a long post to do it justice; you could easily write several books on the subject.

First, as you have said, the military has always been a male-dominated institution. The first time that we actually started putting large amounts of women into uniform was during World War 2. We took women for clerical jobs so that more men were able to fight on the front lines. The recruiting slogan was "Free an Man to Fight."

The military has always been seen as a catalyst for social change. It's arguable that the integration of black and white soldiers was the first step in the civil rights movement, and the end of Don't Ask, Don't Tell is probably going to be seen as the first step of the federal government ending _de jure_ discrimination of gay people. With this in mind, a lot of feminist lobby groups are trying to do the same thing with women with the exact same goals.

The problem is that men and women are much further apart than these other integration challenges. Black men and white men are culturally different, and there were a lot of problems with integration. I'd say that there still are problems; if you look at a battalion, you'll notice that all the black guys hang out with each other, all the Hispanic guys hang out with each other, and so on. However, everyone is still able to function as a unit. The same is true for gays. I'd say that it's mostly because most gay men stay in the closet for their terms, (lesbians are almost universally accepted) but the repeal of DADT didn't really have much of an effect on anything because a gay man is still basically the same as a straight man when it comes to doing work.

This is not so with women.

Similar to firefighting work, the military is a very physical job. Everything ends up being physical in some shape or form, and it really doesn't matter which MOS (Military Occupational Specialty) you pick, you're going to end up doing something physical as a matter of your daily duty. There are particularly egregious cases where they stick women into Ordnance, but even a job like avionics technician involves doing hard labor (Ha, you thought you'd use a soldering iron all day? Guess your recruiter didn't tell you that you have to take off all the hydraulic lines before you can take the control box out. Have fun).

There's a very clear double standard that is communicated, and it's insidious for several reasons. When a man "falls out" (can't keep up with the rest of the unit) of a run, his life sucks. In my shop, falling out means you just volunteered to run with the master sergeant at 2:00 in the afternoon. It's summer in Arizona, and it's usually around 115 degrees. Not a good time. We have a guy who isn't very good at running; as a result, he gets to run every day at 2:00. He is pretty miserable. He's definitely getting better, though.

When we had a female sergeant, she also fell out every time. The response was indifference because, "well, she's a woman and it's just par for the course that women can't keep up with men." It's also implicit that said sergeant could make the case that the master sergeant is only making her run at 2:00 because she's a woman. The case would go, "Your standard is too high, and you know that I can't keep up. You're being a big meaniehead and you're only making this standard because you're sexist." The master sergeant's career would be fried before you can say "Equal Opportunity." An EO case is a career- ender.

Because this issue can't be dealt with in the open, (it's verboten to say that women are simply not as physically capable as men) you have a lot of people who pay lip service to the "We're all equal" party line but snicker at women in leadership positions. And, sadly, it's justified in many cases. This aforementioned double standard also get applied to promotion along with daily life, and it's a kick in the teeth when you're a lance corporal obeying a corporal who is, by all objective measures, a worse Marine than you. That applies to either gender, but it just so happens that due to affirmative action, there are a lot of women in leadership positions who have no business being there. Couple that with the fact that women make just over 6% of the Marine Corps, (small sample size) and you get sexism.

I don't really feel like going into the sexual harassment / assault part and the fraternization, as that's just shitty behavior that can be remedied by court-martialing people and setting a clear standard. In any case, the real problem is the double standard. If you apply a double standard, then you get sexism. If you hold everyone accountable, then you get genuine respect. Doing so, however, would drastically decrease the number of women in the military. I personally think that's a good thing if it means that the remainder are respected and valued.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I was very surprised to see the admission of his giving family information. Employers are prohibited from asking such questions here in the US, and I've always thought it improper to put it on a resume. It either invites unfavorable discrimination or comes across as a ploy for sympathy or favoritism.

It may have been a lesser factor in this case, but I would guess hardly anyone does this today, and I had thought it was no longer considered OK even before the 90s.

<comment><USER23> "Employers are prohibited from asking such questions here in the US"

Regardless of what you can ask you can always ping people and find out answers.

You can discuss your own situation and see a reaction on the part of the person you are speaking with. Takes a bit of creativity.

I know of someone who wanted to hire only puerto ricans for his bricks and mortar store (forgetting the reason). So you can't advertise for "puerto ricans" but you can say "knowledge of spanish a plus".

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Not to negate the point, but I witnessed some MALE gender discrimination when applying to a local IBM office for a college co-op.

Ratio of females to males is low in computer programming courses, but 100% of females were interviewed for an IBM position, and 0% of males were interviewed (approx. 6 females and 16 males). This happened twice in back-to-back years.

It seems the whole gender discrimination has taken a swing in the opposite direction for this small office - work hard to find female workers over male workers. But I haven't figured if they are doing this because they care about female workers, or they want to boost their public image? Are they giving females a chance to prove themselves to work for IBM, or are they just filling the most menial jobs with females to balance out their gender ratio?

This doesn't seem like the "give the job to the person best fit for it" mentality, but maybe to them the "first glance" isn't enough to make that decision. Plus, this was just a co-op, almost anyone in the class could perform the position. I decided to view IBM's actions as a form of tactic to develop female presence in IT industry rather than gender discrimination.

</comment><comment><USER25> Interesting article. I wouldn't necessarily say you can understand gender discrimination just because you were affected by it as a side affect. It is true the author became aware or more aware of gender discrimination because of his name, but he still doesn't have the experience of living in a society where gender discrimination is a daily occurrence.

That said, gender bias a real thing in hiring and faculty practices in the US.

[http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/unofficial- prognosis/201...](http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/unofficial- prognosis/2012/09/23/study-shows-gender-bias-in-science-is-real-heres-why-it- matters/)

[http://www.upenn.edu/provost/images/uploads/Gender.Racial_.B...](http://www.upenn.edu/provost/images/uploads/Gender.Racial_.Bias_.pdf) (pdf warning)

<comment><USER2> >It is true the author became aware or more aware of gender discrimination because of his name, but he still doesn't have the experience of living in a society where gender discrimination is a daily occurrence.

All genders face gender discrimination. For example, the country I live in is a Nordic country often hailed for equality, but the state forces all men to do slave-labour for the government. Men and women face about the same amount of gender discrimination in Western nations. Men's problems include more severe jail sentences, forced labour, lack of father's rights and so on. Interesting fact: majority of rape victims in USA are male.[1]

1\. [http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/men-outnumber-women- among-a...](http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/men-outnumber-women-among- american-rape-victims/)

<comment><USER25> > All genders face gender discrimination.

This is true, but it should be noted that gender discrimination is fundamentally related to patriarchy and misogyny.

> For example, the country I live in is a Nordic country often hailed for > equality, but the state forces all men to do slave-labour for the > government.

I don't know anything about this so I can't really comment.

> Men and women face about the same amount of gender discrimination in Western > nations.

I'm from the US, so I can't speak for every place, but that is most certainly not true here. Women and trans* folks are far more likely to experience sexual assault and violence compared to men and generally women face systemic issues revolving around family and work that men do not.

> Men's problems include more severe jail sentences, forced labour, lack of > father's rights and so on.

In the US, its not just men that are more likely to receive jail time, but esp. black and hispanic men. There are systemic issues with racism that perpetuate this problem and this is intersectional with systemic issues with gender. All prisoners suffer from work programs that are essentially indentured servitude and forced work (not sure if that is what you were getting at).

In the US lack of "father's rights" is a red herring. Men have a high success rate in getting custody in family court when they pursue custody, however men do not pursue custody nearly as often. Also, any kind of bias or discrimination in favor of women in family court is rooted in misogyny in the first place.

> Interesting fact: majority of rape victims in USA are male.

This because the rates of rape for men overwhelmingly come from prisons and being incarcerated. Further more, this isn't really that useful of a thing to say anyway outside of the context of prisoners rights and prison abolition, as women do face high rates of sexual assault and rape and most perpetrators of rape are never convicted.

<comment><USER26> >This is true, but it should be noted that gender discrimination is fundamentally related to patriarchy and misogyny.

Making faith based statements like that and acting as though they are evidence based is not productive. There is no evidence to support feminist mythology surrounding their redefinition of patriarchy.

>In the US lack of "father's rights" is a red herring.

No it is not. A system that was equal would begin with shared custody as the default, and a case would need to be made to remove either parent's custody based on their being unfit. A system where men are required to spend considerable time and money fighting to get less custody than women get by default is not equal. The reason men have high success in getting custody when they pursue it is because they almost exclusively pursue it in cases where there is substantial evidence that the mother is grossly unfit. Have a man talk to a custody lawyer while you listen in. They will universally tell you not to bother pursuing custody unless you have proof the mother is an addict or has allowed another man to assault the children frequently. Using selection bias to dismiss valid concerns makes it appear as though you have a vested interest in maintaining inequality.

>This because the rates of rape for men overwhelmingly come from prisons and being incarcerated.

And those don't count because of what?

<comment><USER27> > Making faith based statements like that and acting as though they are > evidence based is not productive.

Cool; how about some evidence for your custody assertions?

> There is no evidence to support feminist mythology surrounding their > redefinition of patriarchy.

Systemic sexism is widely documented. This ranges from pay gaps [1] to harsher views on overweight women vs men [2] to sexual assault [3]. I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here. Are you objecting to appropriation of the word 'patriarchy'?

[1] [http://www.oecd.org/social/family/LMF1.5%20Gender%20pay%20ga...](http://www.oecd.org/social/family/LMF1.5%20Gender%20pay%20gaps%20for%20full%20time%20workers%20-%20updated%20081212.pdf)

[2] [http://dx.doi.org/10.1108%2F02610150910937916](http://dx.doi.org/10.1108%2F02610150910937916)

[3] [http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/SOO.PDF](http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/SOO.PDF)

> And those don't count because of what?

 _Read the next sentence_. Male rape is predominantly a the parent isn't saying that male rape victims "don't count".

<comment><USER26> >Systemic sexism is widely documented.

Oh?

>This ranges from pay gaps

Which are a deliberately misleading "problem" feminists like to complain about, but which don't actually exist.

>harsher views on overweight women vs men

Where? You mean personal preferences? Like how short men are viewed harsher than short women? That is not systemic.

>to sexual assault

Where the actual systemic problem is that the government deliberately misrepresents male rape victims by not counting "forced envelopment" as rape?

>Read the next sentence. Male rape is predominantly a the parent isn't saying that male rape victims "don't count".

You didn't make their point any clearer.

<comment><USER27> I accidentally deleted a line when I was typing; I meant to write "Male rape is predominately a result of the way the United States does incarceration and needs to be discussed in that context; the parent isn't saying that male rape victims 'don't count' "

Also, you clearly didn't bother to glance over any of the data I provided. You probably should, especially about the extremely well documented gendered pay gap. Denying that such a gap exists when there are mountains of evidence to the contrary only makes you sound ignorant and chauvinistic.

I'd still like citations on the male custody and on this 'forced envelopment' business.

<comment><USER26> Yes, I did see your "data". Comparing the average income of all men to the average income of all women does not establish a pay gap. The average of all women works fewer hours than the average of all men, work less demanding jobs, and has less experience. Comparisons of men and women with the same amount of experience, working the same hours, in the same job show there is no difference in pay.

I have no idea why you have such a hard time with the FBI rape stats, googling "forced envolpment" would get you what you want: [http://www.good.is/posts/the-fbi-expands-its-definition- of-r...](http://www.good.is/posts/the-fbi-expands-its-definition-of-rape-will- we-take-it-seriously-now)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> If your company is discriminating, it's not getting the best applicant for the job, it's getting the best young male for the job. That is missing out on at least 60% of applicants. That should be all the reason any intelligent person needs to be concerned about these factors. It is hard to hire good people. Also the pool of individuals discriminated against by other employers is perhaps more likely to contain qualified people who have not been hired.

<comment><USER10> Why should I be concerned? I like working with talented people, but my experience has been that those employers that employ gender-balanced workforce employ a lower proportion of highly talented people than those that do not. And if we're speaking solely about self-interest then as a male such discrimination works in my favour.

So no, that's not "all the reason any intelligent person needs", you have to give an actual reason.

<comment><USER29> It depends on the definition of "talented". If "me myself and everybody like me" then it's very logical.

<comment><USER30> If you need someone with qualification X, and n%, n != 50, of students attending university to earn qualification X are of gender A, yet you try to employ genders A and B equally, you will get fewer good people with qualification X than if you employed n% people of gender A and (100-n)% people of gender B.

Since there are very, very few subjects attended equally by both genders, employing equally will get you worse people.

Note that the above actually assumes that people from both genders are in general equally capable/intelligent. If you add, for example, a higher standard deviation of the IQ for gender C, you will get even more skewed results.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Okay HN, I knew this sounded familiar and then i remembered a similar story which was flagged and kicked off the front page. [http://www.techyville.com/2012/11/news/unemployed-black- woma...](http://www.techyville.com/2012/11/news/unemployed-black-woman- pretends-to-be-white-job-offers-suddenly-skyrocket/)

Could someone explain why one was flagged and the other not? I am honestly just curious.

</comment><comment><USER32> I am graduating in a few month and also applied for some jobs in the USA (I'm from germany). I found it somewhat intresting that every employer I sent my resume to was asking what gender and race(!) I was before I could submit. You could also choose the option not to give an answer, but I have never seen that in germany.

On the other hand some people on HN find it odd to have a picture of you on your CV - which is the norm here.

<comment><USER33> They don't use that information for interviewing/hiring decisions. If they have any contracts with the federal government, they are legally required to collect that information about applicants specifically for compliance with equal opportunity employment.

In other words, no one was looking at that information when looking at your resume. Someone in HR was looking at aggregate data at the end of the year to say "Hey, we're hiring group X at above/below average" or in the event of a lawsuit to prove they don't discriminate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> We've been interviewing for our first 2 roles recently and I have to say that male or female doesn't bother me either way - we've interviewed in equal quantities and, while we're yet to fill the positions, I genuinely am not bothered if the successful person is male or female.

Reasons for this could be: 1\. I'm 25 so I wonder if I haven't experienced enough to bias me one way or another (what that experience would be I've no idea)? (don't claim I'm being ageist, I'm not it's just one possibility) 2\. My fiancé is an excellent engineer so I might have had the male dominated field bias squashed by that.

<comment><USER35> You might be surprised. Many times biases like these are subconscious.

<comment><USER36> Indeed!

Anybody claiming to be unbiased (color, race, sexuality, etc.) should take several Implicit Association Tests - [https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo/](https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo/)

<comment><USER37> Unfortunately, their software is broken. It goes through the test, and then the post test questions (I strongly prefer X, etc) just keep repeating over and over. You can't actually complete a test.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Interestingly, it's not _just_ a case of gender: Rather the uncertainty and its associated cognitive dissonance, leaves a negative feeling in the mind of a reader.

There are many other kinds of uncertainty present in a resume; and its always a risky factor because folks like to understand context.

Have an ethnic name? Assume people might think you're an immigrant. If you don't want them to assume that: emphasize where you're from, etc. This is good personal branding. Is it unfortunate that you might feel a liability here? yes

For example, in my office when someone doesn't show their picture in our email system: I feel negative about them. When they don't show a picture _and_ have a name that makes it difficult to know how to refer to them, I'm doubly- frustrated.

Much of this frustration is subconscious but people need to be congnicent of how they come across to others in many contexts.

 _here_ I choose to be 100% identity neutral, because I can be. But in work this is a big mistake, because formal expectations are applied in correspondence and you need to feel you're meeting those expectations with a job applicant.

If you're in this position, you've done yourself a disservice: "Dear Sir or Madam, We are sorry to inform you that we cannot offer you a position"

Is this a problem with our society? yes.

</comment><comment><USER39> There is much better data out there concerning the effect of gender (and race) on CVs. That would be much more useful than this guy's anecdotal experience.

<comment><USER40> It's not supposed to be data. It's supposed to change your perspective on the data you have.

<comment><USER39> The first third of the story leads with all this talk about how he had all the qualifications and shouldn't have any trouble finding a job. Then a couple paragraphs about how hard it was to find, and how this was so surprising. Then a couple of paragraphs on how "Kim" could be assumed female. And then a complete turn around when he added "Mr".

This _was_ supposed to be data, in the sense that it _was_ supposed to provide you with the sense that, empirically, gender has a huge effect.

If you subtract this from the story, what do you have left? A personal account of how having difficulty finding a job shakes your confidence, forming maybe 3 or 4 sentences? Were you unaware that getting rejections is hard?

<comment><USER40> The article gives you a mental tool that you can apply as you like to various situations that you encounter. It's like learning a type of logical fallacy. You wouldn't disregard an article that described what a "false dilemma" is as "having no data".

<comment><USER39> First, what is the tool? (This is an honest question.)

Second, my complaint wasn't that it had no data, my complaint was that it was essentially _just_ data, and that this data was much noisier than some good, widely available data. Wrapping crappy data in an engaging story that stick in the mind of the reader, when better data exists, is doing the reader a disservice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Not to argue that gender bias doesn't exist. But this is not a good study case as he tainted his resume pretty badly from the start. Not being currently employed is a red flag to a lot of employers and gets you immediately discarded. And putting personal information, even if seemingly innocent, triggers the lawsuit avoidance mechanism at a lot of places and immediately gets you discarded.

<comment><USER42> I'm not sure you really read it closely. The ONLY thing that changed about his resume is the clarifying "Mr.". Whatever faults his resume might have were present before and after, yet the differences in its reception were dramatic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Original blog post: [http://whatwouldkingleonidasdo.tumblr.com/post/54989171152/h...](http://whatwouldkingleonidasdo.tumblr.com/post/54989171152/how- i-discovered-gender-discrimination)

</comment><comment><USER44> I really want to read this, but the site goes completely bonkers on iOS. I can see some content but it's wedged behind this top banner. They don't really expect people to read through a tiny gap in their images, do they?

<comment><USER45> If it makes you feel any better, on my desktop scrolling does not work with neither space, the cursor arrows or the scroll wheel.

Another addition for my "don't waste my time" domain block list.

The whole content of the post is "I got rejected many times. I added a Mr. before my name. I got accepted many times."

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Maybe it had to do with the resume appearing more formal. Try another version with "Ms." and another with "Mrs." to really make this something we can draw conclusions from.

<comment><USER47> When you use the "anecdote-not-data" contentless dismissal, you're not supposed to follow it up with a suggestion to add a control to the single data point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> This is so sad...wow! I cannot imagine what goes through people's heads when they see a very qualifies individual and then they decide it's a woman and skip even considering her.

<comment><USER40> They never see the qualified individual. They trained their brain to do pattern-recognition on the resume for quick filtering, and women just don't fit the pattern. They probably don't even realize they've trained themselves to ignore women like you don't pay attention to the weight of the shirt on your back. It doesn't rise to the level of consciousness.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> I kind of doubt that this is true. Wouldn't the managers see that she was a female in the interview, and ask why she misrepresented herself or take that opportunity to not hire her?

</comment><comment><USER50> Since this is entirely devoid of any discernible facts, it's a little disturbing that this has made it to the front page of HN. When did random assertions become unquestioned truth?

This feels a lot like a sensationalized modern day witch hunt, "Burn the misoginists! Burn the sexists!"

Also, for whatever it's worth, never have I heard "Kim" considered anything but a woman's name.

</comment><comment><USER51> This is scary. I go out of my way to remove gender hints from my CV. In particular I use a shortened version of my first name which is slightly more commonly associated with women. And I have had problems finding work recently. Now, do I change things because I need work? I could even pretend it was a bit of research to give a second data point to this story.

</comment><comment><USER52> Oh my god. I'd seriously write fuck you letters in 72pt bold comic sans ms to all other companies, explaining what dicks they were. Seriously, 4 months of nothing (must have been lots of applications), and then the word "Mr" changes it all? Incredible.

</comment><comment><USER53> I would love to read this article, but quartz.com is horribly broken in Opera Mobile on my phone...

I'll just wait and read it on my laptop, but this does look like a sign of Webkit bringing back the days of sites "best viewed in Internet Explorer 6".

</comment><comment><USER54> Is it weird that this article doesn't have many comments?

<comment><USER19> Not at all. Thoughtful and open discussion on gender discrimination is hard to come by, even on Hacker News. I think a hard first step to take is admitting that the problem really is quite serious and that it is something that affects all of us.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> This was the late 90s. A lot has changed since then. Yeah, there's still problems with male-dominated industries but it's gotten a lot better. Nowadays it's more about getting women even interested in the fields.

<comment><USER56> You would hope, but sadly not much as changed. There have been numerous experiments lately where someone created identical mid-career LinkedIn profiles one posing as a man and another as a woman.

The male profile always gets far more views and recruiter messages.

<comment><USER12> >You would hope, but sadly not much as changed.

The finance industry has a terrible reputation for blatant sexism for example however it's been proven categorically by the world largest finance recruitment firm that over the last 70 years the number of females in executive positions in finance is steadily and blatantly improving.

Their studies also prove that there is still a gender issue in finance but claiming that not much has changed is categorically wrong.</comment></comment></comment>


New patent granted for building a "snow man/woman" - <AUTHOR> http://improbable.com/2011/09/07/new-patent-granted-for-building-a-snow-manwoman/

<comment><USER2> To be fair, the article is inaccurate.

The patent describes a component (in this case, a sphere of some material that grabs snow around it) being used in the construction of a snowman. Thus, the snowman/woman is not the creation here.

<comment><USER3> To be clear, the patent owner also holds a patent on the wheel: <http://www.ipmenu.com/archive/AUI_2001100012.pdf>

<comment><USER4> The first page of the document explains it all, however:

 _Innovation patents are a new type of patent available only in Australia. [...] Innovation patents are granted without examination, usually within 1 to 3 months, whereas standard patents are examined only after paying the examination fee, and usually take 2 to 4 years. After an innovation patent has been granted, the owner or any person may request examination, and such examination must occur before the owner can commerce or threaten to commence infringement proceedings._

So basically you could submit anything you want as an invention patent. The paper is more or less worthless as long as you don't get it examined.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> _The patent not only provides methods for creating a spherically-shaped body that provides an interior structure of the snow man/woman, but also describes how a generator can provide a sufficient electric charge to attract and adhere snow to the outer surface._

</comment><comment><USER5> The unfortunate part is all the prior art melted.

</comment><comment><USER6> A patent to snowman was filed by Angela Holiday in 2006. Number 7,963,500. Apparently granted in June 2011.</comment>


Ask HN: HTTP P2P? - <AUTHOR>

Is it possible to have a Javascript game running in a web browser that somehow allows networked play without going through a central server?  How about with web sockets and TCP hole punching (obviously this would need a server for initial setup)?<p>Has anyone heard of any work in this area?  Am I missing something obvious, simpler and easier?  Thanks. <comment><USER2> FWIW, I managed to get two clients, each behind its own HTTP proxy, connect to each other using symmetrical TCP open. Not browsers, and with the help of a coordinating server, but the clients did end up with a direct connection between themselves.

People tend to think it is hard, because no one does it, and no one does it, because everyone thinks it's hard. Catch 22. Just try it, damn it. It's trivial :)

</comment><comment><USER3> You need a server. JavaScript does not have access to the necessary sys calls to open sockets or perform IO. This could be possible with browser support, but I doubt browsers would want to support such features since they could be abused really badly. AFAIK Opera bundles a web server to allow for some kind of file sharing, but it seems unlikely you would be able to use it for your purpose.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, but why wouldn't web sockets work with TCP hole punching? [<http://www.acooke.org/cute/WhatisTCPh1.html> \- self link, but used to be a reasonable Quora post] Is it just that no-one has done this yet? I don't see an obvious technical reason.

<comment><USER3> Does web sockets actually allow you to bind() and listen()? I do not believe so. Will take a look at your link in a bit.

<comment><AUTHOR> TCP hole punching avoids the need to bind and listen. You arrange things (thanks to some looseness in the TCP spec, with the help of a central server) so that two "outgoing" connections talk to each other. It's how Skype manages to make incoming connections to computers, for example, even though they are behind NAT (firewalls and modems).

[edit: for some reason I can't reply to your reply below, but you are misunderstanding how hole punching works. They do not listen - that (avoiding listening) is pretty much the whole reason why hole punching is needed/used. But the latter point about complexity is probably valid.]

<comment><USER3> According to [1], section 4.2:

> From the same local TCP ports that $A$ and $B$ used to register with $S$, > $A$ and $B$ each asynchronously make outgoing connection attempts to the > other's public and private endpoints as reported by $S$, while > simultaneously listening for incoming connections on their respective local > TCP ports.

This makes it sound like both hosts have to listen for incoming connections: there is no way to hijack a TCP session and redirect it to a different host on the fly (aside from some very special circumstances where you have set up anycast and TCP session sharing, which you wouldn't be able to do in a network you do not fully control).

Also, AFAI remember, the WebSockets API is a step above TCP: you ask the browser to make a connection to endpoint S, and it negotiates the connection by asking the server if it supports not just TCP, but WebSockets and from where, etc. Thus the example from [1] would get much more complicated: you now have to make sure the browser not only performs the normal WebSocket setup, but then makes a new connection to a different server, while simultaneously listening for an incoming connection: not something, I believe, a part of the WebSockets spec.

[1] <http://www.brynosaurus.com/pub/net/p2pnat/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> mike-cardwell A signed Java applet which has asked the user for permission can bind to local ports and make arbitrary connections to any IP. JavaScript can interact with the Java applet too. I don't know, but the same might be possible with Flash too?

<comment><AUTHOR> yes, i think this would work. unfortunately, i can't see anything in "pure" javascript that is equivalent: the xmlhttprequest is restricted to the originating ip (and it looks like they are single request/response, but in practice perhaps that could be worked around); websockets have the same restriction (but are bi-directional and multiple message) _plus_ they are implemented on top/inside of the http stream, so don't (uniquely) own a tcp connection.

and server-side java libs exist for hole punching. so you could pretty easily implement a java-only solution, called from javascript.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> ok, since there's little in the way of useful responses, here are some results i've found since asking.

first, there's a draft standard for arranging p2p connections with tcp hole punching (STUNT or STUN for TCP) - <http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf- mmusic-ice-tcp-16>

second, there's a draft standard for sip over websockets (sip is a protocol used to arrange a connection between two peers) - [http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ibc-sipcore-sip- websocket-0...](http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ibc-sipcore-sip-websocket-00)

these almost overlap, but there's an annoying gap, which is that i can still find no way to connect websockets to tcp. so you could use sip to negotiate a circuit, and you could use ice to close the circuit using tcp, but not (afaict) with websockets. furthermore, because of how websockets seems to be implemented (it's kind of multiplexed in to http, as far as i can tell) it seems like it would be hard to close this gap.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is so late I doubt anyone will see it, but I finally have an answer, thanks to Saul Ibarra Corretge. The missing link is WebRTC - <http://www.webrtc.org/>

You can set up a connection using SIP (see above) and then WebRTC will provide a Javascript API for making the connection between peers (and the WebRTC docs include various references to ICE which makes me suspect they will work correctly behind NAT etc).

So it's possible with experimental Google APIs today ("Latest Google Chrome (dev channel) comes with WebRTC support" - Saul).</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What is your weekend project? - <AUTHOR> I'll code a Rouguelike game in haskell. Whish me luck :) <comment><USER2> Elodie - An EXIF-based photo, video and audio workflow automation tool

[https://github.com/jmathai/elodie](https://github.com/jmathai/elodie)

I've been working on Elodie for over a year. It's organized over 15,000 of my personal photos and videos for me. It's also helped me craft a hands-free backup system.

I've written pretty extensively about it so I'll just link to those posts.

[0] (motivation) [https://medium.com/vantage/understanding-my-need-for-an- auto...](https://medium.com/vantage/understanding-my-need-for-an-automated- photo-workflow-a2ff95b46f8f)

[1] (solution) [https://medium.com/@jmathai/introducing-elodie-your- personal...](https://medium.com/@jmathai/introducing-elodie-your-personal- exif-based-photo-and-video-assistant-d92868f302ec)

[2] (adaptation for google photos) [https://medium.com/swlh/my-automated- photo-workflow-using-go...](https://medium.com/swlh/my-automated-photo- workflow-using-google-photos-and-elodie-afb753b8c724)

[3] (one year reflection) [https://artplusmarketing.com/one-year-of-using-an- automated-...](https://artplusmarketing.com/one-year-of-using-an-automated- photo-organization-and-archiving-workflow-89cf9ad7bddf)

[4] (protecting against bit rot) [https://medium.com/vantage/how-to-protect- your-photos-from-b...](https://medium.com/vantage/how-to-protect-your-photos- from-bit-rot-9d0c6998121f)

<comment><USER3> Neat! I was meaning to write a FUSE filesystem for my personal use that exactly accomplished this with EXIF data. I don't feel as motivated to do that now, will give elodie a spin instead.

<comment><USER2> I think this GitHub issue [0] refers to what you're saying. I've _sort of_ accomplished it with scheduled tasks but something a bit more native is a great idea.

I wrote about it a bit here [1] under "the file system as a real time reflection of its contents"

[0] [https://github.com/jmathai/elodie/issues/35](https://github.com/jmathai/elodie/issues/35)

[1] [https://medium.com/@jmathai/introducing-elodie-your- personal...](https://medium.com/@jmathai/introducing-elodie-your-personal- exif-based-photo-and-video-assistant-d92868f302ec#e1eb)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've been working on my Electron-powered desktop launcher (Alfred alternative) for the past year or so on and off. The idea is to eventually enable compatibility with existing Alfred workflows and also provide a rich DX for creating themes/plugins via the CLI tool that comes along with it.

Dext: [https://github.com/vutran/dext](https://github.com/vutran/dext) Dext CLI: [https://github.com/vutran/dext-cli](https://github.com/vutran/dext-cli)

</comment><comment><USER5> It's a bit more than a weekend project but I've been working on Cachet [1] for a while now.

[1] [https://cachethq.io](https://cachethq.io)

</comment><comment><USER6> [https://github.com/julesbond007/Android-Jigsaw- Puzzle](https://github.com/julesbond007/Android-Jigsaw-Puzzle) started as a weekend project but evolved a little bit. It's not complete yet. A user draws something and use it to create jigsaw puzzles.

</comment><comment><USER7> Newman Mail - A mail-merge service for Gmail with message A/B testing

[http://sendNewmanMail.com](http://sendNewmanMail.com)

I have been doing a lot of customer development lately and I needed a tool that made it easy to reach out to large-ish groups of people whilst testing the efficacy of different messages.

I chose to build my own product because I could not find another tool that was simple enough to use (all the others were full-blown CRMs), I did not want to pay for the subscription to those other tools and (most importantly) I wanted to use this project to learn a couple new things (Javascript ES6, using Google APIs, building task queues).

It's pretty rough and I built it just for myself (I don't allow signups because I took a couple security shortcuts in the design) but it works and has increased my productivity dramatically.

10/10 would code again

<comment><USER8> Love the name!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I had been wanting a web app where I could quickly open GPX, KML, and KMZ files to see them on a map. I use it to look at hikes, and some KML files from some experimental mapping tools I've worked with in the past.

This is the result: [http://87.is/mapspray/](http://87.is/mapspray/) . There are sample files on this page that can be shown.

The main unique feature of this project is the handling of KML file styles above what is preserved by i.e. converting them into geojson. Since it serves my needs I've ran out of steam on it and it will probably remain incomplete for the forseeable future.

</comment><comment><USER10> I've been working on Otter, which is an Operational Transformation Engine(think google docs real-time collaboration). [https://github.com/TheAustinSeven/otter](https://github.com/TheAustinSeven/otter)

The hope is that this will make it a little easier to build collaborative apps. More recently, though, I have been spending some time designing a new programming language(I know, I know, we already have so many), so I haven't spent as much time on otter.

</comment><comment><USER11> I do weekend projects fulltime now, well as much as coding whenever i feel like it is considered full time. I recently finished [https://ForwardMX.io](https://ForwardMX.io) and now lack of motivation for anything else so i've started working on updating my TUI library for ruby: [https://github.com/b1nary/rutui](https://github.com/b1nary/rutui)

<comment><AUTHOR> in your blog post about launch: This is essentially how this all works. It is not exactly magic, but not easy [ether] also [failsave] a few words ahead.

Nevetherless it was an interesting read.

You mention a "few weeks" of development and testing. How many few weeks?

<comment><USER11> Thanks for the corrections, corrected. Obviously not my mother language :)

Well i've run the email server that is now the second server for nearly half a year i think. Developing the site, creating tests and binding it to the email server maybe took 2-3 weeks. It is hard to tell because i had the landing page and backend developed shortly after the first test server was setup and then finished it much later within a little more than a week (i think, i tend to underestimate these things :).

To be fair: I've used my own Rails template which saved some time and i've reused a lot of code for stripe from a different project as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Fantasy Feuds, a multiplayer rts/capture the flag type web app with a custom game engine. Someday I'll add projectiles and a user database.

[http://fantasyfeuds.com/](http://fantasyfeuds.com/)

[https://github.com/wmaillard/FantasyFeuds](https://github.com/wmaillard/FantasyFeuds)

</comment><comment><USER13> I just completed this one, it was to be done till sunday but I was really excited for this, so finished it today.

A machine learning driven web application firewall

[http://fsecurify.com/fwaf-machine-learning-driven-web- applic...](http://fsecurify.com/fwaf-machine-learning-driven-web-application- firewall/)

<comment><USER14> That's really cool! Quick, unsolicited 2¢:

1\. Your data is severely imbalanced, so accuracy is a very misleading metric to use here. From what I see, you have a 1:20 imbalance (malicious vs non- malicious distribution). This affects both the metrics and induces bias in classification.

2\. I'd like to add to the other comment asking you for calibration curves and see what your minority class performance looks like in terms of precision, recall, f-beta, average precision (area under precision-recall curve).

3\. Then, try and see if resampling helps or hurts the predictive performance- it typically speaks to the level of noise and small disjuncts in the data.

4\. I see you've done a 0.2 split for test-train, but try and eliminate split bias by using stratified cross validation. This would ensure that you didn't just get lucky with random seed = 42 and get a really great test set.

All of these can be implemented using sklearn and imbalanced-learn [0]. Not included- deeper dive into cost sensitive and adversarial techniques. Let me know if you have any more questions and keep up the good work!

[0]: [https://github.com/scikit-learn-contrib/imbalanced- learn](https://github.com/scikit-learn-contrib/imbalanced-learn)

Source: PhD in imbalanced machine learning.

<comment><USER13> Thank you so much for these suggestions, I'll surely try these and will let you know.

One thing to add, the data is not that much imbalanced. I only used 100000 non malicious and 50,000 malicious so its 2:1 actually. I didn't use all the non malicious queries.

Thanks again.

<comment><USER14> Sorry, just saw this after all these days. Do check out Adversarial Machine Learning as a really cool next step.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Freeciv WebGL 3D [https://play.freeciv.org](https://play.freeciv.org)

</comment><comment><USER16> Elixir library, named Ashliah, to parse the IEX-TP protocol[0]. IEX-TP is the protocol that the Investor's Exchange uses. I plan to utilize that to create a service to sell real time stock data.

My other is an Amazon affiliate site that has lists of 4+ star amazon programming books[1]. I'm constantly adding more books and languages to it.

Finally, I'm working on my Elixir library that generates Ecto models from an existing database table called Plsm[2]. It currently supports MySQL and Postgres

[0] [https://github.com/jhartwell/ashliah](https://github.com/jhartwell/ashliah)

[1] [http://www.topbooks.site](http://www.topbooks.site)

[2] [https://github.com/jhartwell/plsm](https://github.com/jhartwell/plsm)

<comment><USER17> [http://www.topbooks.site](http://www.topbooks.site)

link is not working.

<comment><USER16> Yea I'm playing the config. Trying to reverse proxy with nginx and it is causing issues. I'm just going to change it back to straight Cowboy

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> [https://www.findlectures.com](https://www.findlectures.com)

Right now it has an index of ~70k conference talks / lectures / speeches. I'm working on improving it to get slide text and audio quality (for ranking), and getting more historical content.

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't know i wanted this.

How do you scrap all that data?

<comment><USER18> I wrote up some more info here on data acquisition here (just notes right now) - [https://www.findlectures.com/articles/2017/01/22/Software- Ar...](https://www.findlectures.com/articles/2017/01/22/Software-Architecture- of-FindLectures-com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the write up!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Snakepit! [https://github.com/K4lium/Snakepit](https://github.com/K4lium/Snakepit)

Snakepit is a docker-enabled framework for analysis and triage of malware samples in a networked and containerized environment. It's designed for the easy addition of whatever tools you want to use. Written in Python, rarely worked on when fully sober.

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm making a deep learning library myself.

</comment><comment><USER21> This weekend I'm hoping to compile and install a simple Gear VR project w/ Unity. I got all the tooling installed yesterday but haven't had a chance to open it yet. The goal is to get a simple "hello world" level application installed on my phone.

We will see how far I get on that.

</comment><comment><USER22> I have been working on a new version of my food web app [https://bestfoodnearme.com](https://bestfoodnearme.com)

I decided I wanted to learn Go so I used this as a way to learn.

The social login stopped working reliably a little while back so right now it sort of read only mode.

</comment><comment><USER23> An admin interface (among other improvements) to Platypus ([https://github.com/GGServers/platypus](https://github.com/GGServers/platypus)). It's a (admittedly simple) server monitoring application written in Python.

</comment><comment><USER24> Not really a weekend project, but I've been working on a control panel for hosting Minecraft servers.

I've started a free open alpha-test which you can check out here:

[https://cloudcrafting.com](https://cloudcrafting.com)

</comment><comment><USER25> Working on my cli frontend to speedtest. Trying to figure out why I'm getting inconsistent speed readings

[https://github.com/zpeters/speedtest](https://github.com/zpeters/speedtest)

</comment><comment><USER26> I'm working on a coffee timer app for all the coffee nerds out there. This is mainly to teach myself Swift and practice good UI design:

[http://getfiltru.com](http://getfiltru.com)

</comment><comment><USER27> Teaching my kids to code. :)

</comment><comment><USER28> I just fell in love with Django and I am following the tutorial someone posted yesterday here on HN :)

</comment><comment><USER29> Mine is www.barber.pk Online barber booking platform Best of luck for yours

</comment><comment><USER30> Something boring: writing a user API for an app I'm building.

</comment><comment><USER31> some sort of NLP/RNN chatbot thing</comment>


Dark Matter May Be Trapped in All the Black Holes - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/blog/dark-matter-may-be-trapped-in-all-the-black-holes <comment><USER2> Meanwhile, the evidence for unbound WIMPS is sorta growing: [http://earthsky.org/space/waterloo-image-dark-matter- cosmic-...](http://earthsky.org/space/waterloo-image-dark-matter-cosmic- web-2017)

<comment><USER3> And the X-Ray axion evidence from a few years ago looks OK too.

But honestly: my money would have to go on this one. Black holes are by far the most boring and conventional of the existing theories, and the easiest to refute. aLIGO will tell us if it's right or not within years.

<comment><USER4> > _Black holes are by far the most boring and conventional of the existing > theories_

I was ready to start arguing, but then I realized you were speaking in the context of dark matter theories. :)

I feel there's gonna be a few interesting years or couple decades ahead. Maybe not as big as the early 1900s. Maybe as big. Maybe even bigger.

<comment><USER5> That's all options :)

<comment><USER4> Well, uncertainty is exciting. :)

<comment><USER6> May you live in uncertain times.

<comment><USER7> May all your predictions be either jointly exhaustive or not jointly exhaustive.

<comment><USER2> Threads like this are what keep me coming back to orange website. They are rare & touchingly innocent flowers amongst a field of awash with metaphorical blood.

Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> At the top of the article, is that real imagery or some sort of mock-up?

<comment><USER4> Of course it's a mock-up. Black holes have never been imaged from up-close. Maybe the background is an actual photo, but not the thing in the middle.

But it does seem to be a more or less realistic simulation of light ray distortion in the gravitational field of a black hole.

<comment><USER8> I thought NASA usually described these sorts of things as "artist depictions", and that maybe I had not been paying attention and some wonderful imagery had arisen.

<comment><USER9> Basically non of the images you ever see from anything in outer space are real. It's always composite images or colored in or spectrum-shifted into our visible light range.

<comment><USER4> I am actually active in the field of astrophotography. What you're describing is a common-enough opinion, but it's inaccurate to the point of being misleading.

When imaging outside of the visible spectrum, you have no choice. You must translate it into visible light, or else you could not see it. So, yes, there are many false-color images out there, and for a good reason - they show us the invisible part of the EM spectrum.

Of those taken with visible light, there are several categories.

Some of them are indeed false color. Examples: imaging the Sun with a narrow monochromatic filter such as hydrogen alpha, or some "magic" wavelengths like 540 nm. These should be displayed in their respective colors (red for hydrogen alpha, green for 540 nm, etc), but often arbitrary color choices are made, because the original image is monochromatic anyway, so it should not matter what color is displayed in as long as its nature is understood by the viewer.

And then there's a very broad slice of the pie where the colors are basically real, they're just not perceived that way by the human eye, or even by the camera - and yet they do represent the original spectral content of the incoming EM radiation.

For example, when observing a galaxy or a nebula, all the human eye can see is a black-and-white smudge. Even in a telescope, you almost never see color with your own eyes when looking at these objects. Why is that? Because we have two kinds of light receptors in our eyes, and the ones that actually see color do not work in low light conditions - we are all colorblind there.

But attach a camera to a telescope, have the instrument track the nebula for a long time, open the shutter and let the sensor collect photons for a while. Then look at the result. Suddenly, you see colors. Why is that? Because with long exposure, the camera can actually see colors. That's something that our eyes cannot do.

But are those images "enhanced" somehow in post-processing in ways that make those colors unnatural? It depends. For objects like the Orion nebula, or the Horsehead, the colors are strong enough to not need much post-processing. In other cases, you may have to apply fairly strong contrast and saturation boosts.

So there's a whole continuum of images taken in visible light, where the amount of post-processing varies from quite lightweight to pretty heavy. With some experience, you can tell which is which. I've taken images of the Moon in high resolution and I've left it alone in post - you can tell because the colors are drab, it looks like the surface of an asphalt road. I've also taken moonshots where I've applied very heavy saturation boosting - you can tell because you can start seeing colors in an otherwise gray landscape. This allows you to detect surface, terrain, and mineral features that would not be apparent otherwise, things like ejecta from impacts and so on.

[http://i.imgur.com/le5vrzh.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/le5vrzh.jpg)

And finally there are many, many images of planets such as Jupiter or Saturn, where the colors basically match the imagery taken by space probes hovering nearby, and would match what people would see with their own eyes if they were in actual orbit there.

\---

TLDR: The real answer is "it depends". Some colors are totally fake. Some are real, but boosted. Some are real, it's just that the human eye could not see them due to our scotopic vision characteristics. And others are actually quite realistic in every way. It's a broad continuum. You learn to tell them apart by being involved in actually making them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What semi accessible books are available on the subject?

</comment><comment><USER11> A universe peppered with black holes may also explain the Fermi paradox. A terrifying but logical thought.

<comment><USER12> Could black holes also be masking an infinite number of stars?

Stephen Hawking notes in his book "A Brief History of Time" that we know that there aren't infinite stars because otherwise the night sky would have no patches of darkness since an infinite number of stars would imply that you could shoot out an arbitrary ray from earth and it would always reach a star.

However, black holes (lots of them!) could trap light and obscure line-of- sight stars.

<comment><USER13> This line of reasoning works only in a static universe. In a expanding universe, stars can move apart faster than the speed of light. Thus there might be a lot beyond the observable universe that can never be detected.

<comment><USER14> I mean... isn't it still technically correct though? We have an opaque horizon of light, it's just all in the microwave spectrum.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> nonsense context makes science very hard to understand.

</comment><comment><USER16> So the way I understand it dark matter doesn't even have any physical interaction with matter. But it must be affected by gravity, or else it wouldn't end up trapped in black holes right?

<comment><USER17> Dark matter does interaction with matter via gravity. It just doesn't interact via electromagnetism, the weak nuclear force, or the strong nuclear force. Our usual observation techniques with electromagnetism can't detect it.

<comment><USER18> Yes. In fact, this is how we detect DM, by measuring the speeds of the galaxies, rotating around the galactic core. Our calculations point to a slower speed than observed, thus implying some mass of "matter" which we cannot see.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I am sceptical about dark matter. It feels like it was invented because the theories we have do not match our observations.

<comment><USER20> That is kinda the hole point.

<comment><USER21> I see what you did there.

<comment><USER22> I'm missing it...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> So if, hypothetically, dark matter had some detrimental effect in those parts of the universe where it appears in overly high concentrations (making the universe less "interesting" in those parts... less able to produce life- bearing planets, say) --

\-- then black holes would, in effect, be (our) universe's GC mechanism. Or at least, its "janitors" in some form.

Pretty cool.

<comment><USER24> Except they don't relinquish what they gobble up, so they're not making a finite resource (memory) available for re-use, they're a total resource sink.

Whether that's 'cool' or not is a matter of persona preference.

<comment><USER25> Don't black holes emit radiation or something?

<comment><USER26> Hawking radiation, yes. They eventually evaporate.

<comment><USER27> Hawking radiation is speculation AFAIK, there's no observation to back it up.

<comment><USER28> Some light reading on it:

[https://medium.com/the-physics-arxiv-blog/first- observation-...](https://medium.com/the-physics-arxiv-blog/first-observation- of-hawking-radiation-9d77fa8c8055)

<comment><USER29> OP isn't wrong. That we haven't proven the existence of Hawking Radiation is the only reason why Hawking hasn't won a Nobel.

<comment><USER28> No, just some light reading where we have reason to believe it has been observed and may be able to devise further methods to observe it.

<comment><USER29> I don't dispute that. I think the consensus has accepted Hawking radiation as real ... but we haven't seen evidence yet (and we may never, your link notwithstanding, given how tiny the effect is).</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is it always a good thing to be a "serial entreprenuer" - <AUTHOR>

Seems like this could be taken two ways: 1) you've successfully started multiple companies or 2) you continually fail at starting a long lasting company. <comment><USER2> I'd say its good in the first context. But when I hear the term, I usually think of the second one.</comment>


Dwolla – Free micropayments - <AUTHOR> https://www.dwolla.com/micropayments

<comment><AUTHOR> Why aren't more people using this for micropayments? Instead of paying an arm and a leg in transaction fees to credit card companies?

<comment><USER2> Because platforms generally make money from transaction fees, so they're reducing their revenues/profits if they adopt such things.</comment></comment>


Admit it, Apple fans: Microsoft's stores are a lot of fun - <AUTHOR> http://www.geekwire.com/2011/admit-apple-fans-microsofts-stores-pretty-fun <comment><USER2> I think the problem and opportunity for Microsoft's stores is the relatively constant changes in products.

Apple has it fairly easy. 4 main products (Air, Pro, iPhone, iPad) which change rarely, and usually have a long lead up to a new release.

Microsoft will find that in PCs, tablets and phones, keeping store employees informed of what is on the floor, and the capabilities of these devices will be a challenge. Particularly with new devices being released every few months.

Of course, this also could make the Microsoft stores more interesting as there is always some new gadget to see and play with.

</comment><comment><USER3> Hey Todd, you should try buying something in each store. The actual purchase experience is so different that it's shocking (at least it was for me)

The Microsoft store has the look worked out, but the actual purchase process is horrible compared to Apple's (still better than most retail stores though...)

<comment><USER2> Can you describe the purchase experience of the Microsoft store Tom? There won't be one near me for a VERY long time I'm sure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If it wasn't for the Microsoft logo at the back, I would have thought this was an Apple store.

<comment><USER5> Or a Gateway store.

<http://www.vizwerks.com/porfolio/pages/gateway.html></comment></comment>