Countries with more gender equality have fewer female STEM grads - <AUTHOR> http://www.thejournal.ie/gender-equality-countries-stem-girls-3848156-Feb2018/ <comment><USER2> How do you define which countries have "more gender equality?" It seems like begging the question.

My family immigrated from Bangladesh to America. In most ways, obviously, America is a lot more equal. But my mom and her sisters have STEM degrees, and that wasn't all that unusual for a wealthy Bangladeshi family at the time. Bangladeshis perceive STEM as important, and encourage both girls and boys to pursue it (even if they don't expect girls to stay in the work force after they get married).

Raising a daughter in the US, my perception is that girls in America are taught about "princesses and fairies." We impress upon boys the need to get practical education so they can support families but are more indulgent with girls. Last summer, I signed my then four-year old up for summer camp classes. There literally was classes for "princesses and fairies." Of course I signed her up for "little engineers." My daughter was quite upset to be the only girl in the class. That's not innate. It's somehing we're choosing to do to our kids.

<comment><USER3> In developing countries where women (and men frankly) study STEM in higher numbers it's likely that those women come from elite families (considering the vast majority of population in these countries do not have a chance to pursue higher ed). As a result we're looking at a an elite microcosm that is, by virtue of its own access to education and enthusiasm for remaining (recognizing fierce competition) in the elite tier of an otherwise incredibly gendered society.

<comment><USER2> Yes, obviously, Bangladesh as a whole is a much more gendered society than the U.S. But it's still an interesting microcosm to look at because it's one where both boys and girls are intensely encouraged to pursue STEM. And in India, we see much higher rates of women participating in STEM (despite India being a much more gendered society overall): [http://www.hcixb.org/papers_2017/hcixb17-final-37.pdf](http://www.hcixb.org/papers_2017/hcixb17-final-37.pdf) (45% women with CS degrees, versus 21% in the U.S.).

And even though these folks are elite relative to their own societies, in absolute terms, even a rich Bangladeshi has a similar level of material wealth as a middle class or upper middle class American. It's a microcosm that's still in a mode of striving to protect and enhance their material prosperity, and may be less able to indulge in the "benign" sexism of having lower expectations for girls. (Specifically, having lower expectations for them to go into fields like STEM necessary for both their own economic prosperity and the nation's) than for boys.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'll probably face wrath, and hell's fury for this, but maybe, men and women are different. Has forcing STEM upon the female population, driven any more of them towards the discipline? Taking the sampling size of every woman I've ever went on a date with in my 37 years, none of them were interested in anything related. The vast majority were teachers, psychologists, and nurses. Occupations based around nurturing others. One, was a designer/artist. None of the women in my huge family, sister, mother, none of them care about technology fields. My father, and male cousins on the other hand, are in various fields of tech and engineering.

<comment><USER5> Is it possible that your dating pool is subject to sampling bias?

Empirically speaking, about 1/4 of people in STEM are women, so if you've met 0 women interested in STEM, it seems like your experience simply aren't an accurate reflection of reality. [0]

I think it's incredibly ironic that you're highlighting your own relative interest in STEM while failing to apply any degree of scientific rigor to your own thinking.

[0] [https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the- more...](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-more-gender- equality-the-fewer-women-in-stem/553592/)

<comment><USER4> Oh brother, there's always that one guy on HN. None of this was supposed to "scientific", so relax. I'm giving you my 37 years of experience dating at least a couple hundred women, that's it.

<comment><USER6> That's fine as long as you don't try to draw any conclusions from your anecdote :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is on the front page of Hacker News because people here believe it bolsters arguments about the underlying fairness of our field, in which women make up something like 20% of the workforce.

The article does not accomplish that. Despite an overall trend in STEM throughout the western world for greater male participation than female, computer science is _uniquely low_ ; it is rivaled only by physics and MechE for gender disparity.

Throughout the rest of STEM, including hard fields like chemistry and mathematics, we see significantly improved participation among women. There are a bunch of STEM fields that have near parity, and a few (molecular biology, for instance) in which there are slightly more women. These are PhD numbers, not premed stats.

Besides better gender parity, something all these fields have in common at the graduate level is that they are significantly more demanding than commercial computer science. We kid ourselves that our day-to-day work is so rarefied that we need the top of the intelligence curve, so much so that the supposed variance in intelligence between men and women might explain our staffing. That's ridiculous. We do a bog-standard symbol manipulation job, and, even at the elite level, we tend to do it slap-dash and ad-hoc.

Whatever is keeping women to 20% of our field is artificial, and a travesty.

 _It 's also on the front page, I believe, because it's a cite followed from an article posted earlier this week making some of the same arguments. That post had a huge discussion, making this a needless duplicate. We don't need to keep re-litigating this on the front page of the site. I flagged it._

<comment><USER8> > This is on the front page of Hacker News because people here believe it > bolsters arguments about the underlying fairness of our field, in which > women make up something like 20% of the workforce.

You're being uncharitable again. What it does establish is that the most common narrative for gender disparity in our field doesn't cleanly explain all of the data, unless you simultaneously push for the belief that programmers are _more sexist than every other previously male dominated field_ that has since achieved better gender ratios, _and_ that this bias exists across different cultures thus yielding the same disparities in all of these different cultures, _and_ that this systemic sexism is what's driving women away (despite not keeping women away from other fields in which they achieved parity).

Of course, there's another explanation, which is that women have inherently less interest in some subjects for some reason, and there's considerable evidence for this possibility. To ignore it is dishonest.

Which isn't to say that there isn't sexism, but you're making a positive claim that the sexism is so much worse than everywhere else.

As for why some STEM fields have improved, there can be plenty of reasons, and those are all worth studying. To simply declare it's because they've made inroads against sexism is assuming the conclusion.

> Whatever is keeping women to 20% of our field is artificial, and a travesty.

You keep saying this, but you cite no evidence of artificiality. There's actually plenty of evidence that it's not.

<comment><USER9> _There 's actually plenty of evidence that it's not._

What is the evidence? Even if you accept essentially any and all finding, however iffy, about gender-based cognitive differences, there is a huge leap from that to 'women are simply unsuitable for your typical programming job, to an 80/20 ratio'. I can't think of any actual scientists that make that argument, again, on the basis of _any_ finding. It's not at all obvious how such a question could even be answered scientifically.

<comment><USER8> > Even if you accept essentially any and all finding, however iffy, about > gender-based cognitive differences, there is a huge leap from that to 'women > are simply unsuitable for your typical programming job, to an 80/20 ratio

Who said anything about unsuitability? I said the difference isn't necessarily artificial like the OP claimed, and you jump somehow to it being a matter of ability or temperament? You're putting words in my mouth.

The things vs. people hypothesis much better explains the gender ratios, and explains why it's seen across cultures, which doesn't fit well with the oppression hypothesis.

This is the latest metanalysis I'm currently reading, but there's a slew of studies confirming this gendered difference in preferences:

[https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.0018...](https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00189/full)

Certainly some such inclinations might be socially conditioned, but as discussed in the above, they show up as young as grade 3.

Regardless, even if it were all conditioned, hiring quotas and marketing programs directed even at high schoolers would already be too late and thus largely ineffective given these facts.

<comment><USER9> _I said the difference isn 't necessarily artificial like the OP claimed_

How do you connect any things/people preference to performance or disparity thereof in a generic programming job? It explains the disparity only if you make a substantial assumption not in evidence.

<comment><USER8> Did you even read what I wrote? Who's talking about performance?

<comment><USER10> Aside: I feel for you here `naasking`. It's amazing how hard it is to have a conversation on these types of topics without people jumping to the conclusions about the position you're trying to illuminate.

<comment><USER9> 'Did you even read that' being the typical polite invitation to reasoned conversation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> For those of you who have some form of access, this appears to be the actual research paper:

[http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956797617741719](http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956797617741719)

> _The underrepresentation of girls and women in science, technology, > engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields is a continual concern for social > scientists and policymakers. Using an international database on adolescent > achievement in science, mathematics, and reading (N = 472,242), we showed > that girls performed similarly to or better than boys in science in two of > every three countries, and in nearly all countries, more girls appeared > capable of college-level STEM study than had enrolled. Paradoxically, the > sex differences in the magnitude of relative academic strengths and pursuit > of STEM degrees rose with increases in national gender equality. The gap > between boys' science achievement and girls' reading achievement relative to > their mean academic performance was near universal. These sex differences in > academic strengths and attitudes toward science correlated with the STEM > graduation gap. A mediation analysis suggested that life-quality pressures > in less gender-equal countries promote girls' and women's engagement with > STEM subjects._

Their definition of "gender equality" is this:

> _The World Economic Forum publishes The Global Gender Gap Report annually. > We used the 2015 data (World Economic Forum, 2015). For each nation, the > Global Gender Gap Index (GGGI) assesses the degree to which girls and women > fall behind boys and men on 14 key indicators (e.g., earnings, tertiary > enrollment ratio, life expectancy, seats in parliament) on a 0.0 to 1.0 > scale, with 1.0 representing complete parity (or men falling behind). For > the countries participating in the 2015 PISA, GGGI scores ranged from 0.593 > for the United Arab Emirates to 0.881 for Iceland._

(One of the things I'd be curious about is whether that's just a proxy for Western cultural norms; the more commonly cited reasons for a gender gap in STEM fields in the US are things like harassment and misogyny, and it's certainly possible that those are correlated more strongly with Western culture than with cross-cultural structural inequality.)

</comment><comment><USER12> I wonder if it's possible that men and women, on average, have differing criteria for choosing careers, and artificially forcing the distributions towards the middle might do more harm than good.

<comment><USER13> As expected, this is the top comment on an article practically built for this argument.

It may very well be that men and women have different criteria, but that is completely irrelevant, and I find this line of argumentation very frustrating as it completely ignores the actual complaints at hand.

Women in STEM complain that they have less job prospects and feel uncomfortable in their positions. Many women feel they are disrespected, unrightfully criticized, and scrutinized to a degree unlike their male counterparts. _As a whole, they have recognized that this is not the fault of individuals in their workplaces._ It's "natural" to be more critical of the few women in your workplace because as a human, that's how your brain is built to work. Correcting that requires conscious effort on your part, and most are unwilling to correct themselves.

Instead, as a group women have decided that the best way to make themselves more welcome in STEM - is to have more women in STEM. This will slowly correct the negatives by causing more individuals to come into contact with women and have to learn how to behave properly. But these same systemic issues prevent many women who would otherwise enter STEM from doing so. No one is claiming that a perfect 50/50 ratio is all we need and then "we're done, pack it up folks". Simply that making efforts to get women into tech is actually _a good idea_.

Women are interested. Women want to do the work. Many that do are forced out for one reason or another, and this makes many not want to do it any longer.

Claiming that men and women just have different criteria, and thus the problem should be ignored entirely completely misses the point.

<comment><USER14> This data entirely negates that claim. In countries with the highest levels of gender equality, where women are least likely to experience any of these negative forces, they simply self-select not to participate in certain fields (on average).

If you cannot participate in a field where not enough of the people look and act like you, then perhaps you have the problem.

<comment><USER11> > _In countries with the highest levels of gender equality, where women are > least likely to experience any of these negative forces_

The data does not support correlating those two. "Gender equality" in this report refers to the factors in Table 1 at [http://reports.weforum.org/global- gender-gap-report-2016/mea...](http://reports.weforum.org/global-gender-gap- report-2016/measuring-the-global-gender-gap/) , which is about things like life expectancy and number of female politicians and salary - not about disrespect, unrightful criticism, and scrutiny in technical fields on the basis of sex.

<comment><USER14> Of course it does. Feminism is ingrained into the cultures of these countries. The data overwhelmingly shows that when you give men and women equal opportunities and the freedom to make their own choices, that men and women, on average, make different choices.

This shouldn't come as a surprise to anybody. Apart from those who buy into the world view that the only two groups in any society are the oppressed and their oppressors, which is clearly just toxic bullshit.

<comment><USER11> > _Feminism is ingrained into the cultures of these countries._

Given that the leader of the free world has said that he's not a feminist, I'm not sure I would say that it's ingrained into the culture. It's a recent cultural phenomenon of these countries, sure. But Western civilization has a _much_ deeper culture of patrilineal succession, of the priesthood being restricted to men, of only men having political representation, of the father being the head of the household, etc. That stuff doesn't evaporate from a culture quickly, and even today many of those are strongly believed by huge parts of Western civilization.

<comment><USER14> I'll ignore the irrelevant marxist talking point and trump references, and redirect you back to the data. The Nordic countries always lead in these stats.

These are the countries that are the most egalitarian in the world, where 3rd wave feminism forms a major part of social policy, where women have an equal level of opportunity to men and the freedom to choose their own paths in life. The data shows that under these conditions, this freedom has a negative correlation to women choosing a career in STEM.

You can't say that this is a remnant of some patriarchal system of oppression, because as women's freedom has increased in those countries, their participation in STEM has decreased.

<comment><USER15> > I'll ignore the irrelevant marxist talking point

Which part of the parent comment was a "marxist talking point"?

<comment><USER16> Wow, good job focusing on minute details instead of addressing the overall point your parent is making.

However, I'll indulge you and hazard a guess:

* The historically naive and somewhat incorrect generalization of some ill-defined "Western" culture (what time frame is he using?) * the negative portrayal of it * and the implicit assumption that any part of the portrayal is somehow unique to all Western countries, but not the rest of the world.

I will give you that this criticism of "Western culture" probably doesn't really relate to traditional Marxism, which more or less worked within the framework of Western culture.

I believe your parent might have had the concept of "cultural Marxism" in mind.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I can't help but think that the article/paper are overstating a statistical effect here by attempting to reduce a multicausal phenomenon to a monocausal one.

If you look just at rich western countries, most of them occupy a fairly narrow strip on the graph. There are outliers, but they can go either way; Finland has a very low STEM graduation rate for women, Denmark a very high one (Figure 3b in the paper). Austria and Germany have fairly different outcomes, despite being culturally more similar than other countries that differ less.

This is sort of obscured by throwing in many countries that honestly have very different cultures, very different academic systems, and different constraints for people of different genders that seem to be difficult to reduce to just a single number.

For a simple example, there are countries where nursing is primarily taught at colleges and others where nursing is primarily taught through vocational programs. Given the gender disparity in nursing, that would affect the gender breakdown for STEM graduation rates (depending on whether you count nursing as part of the "M" in STEM or not, one way or the other).

I'm honestly surprised that for most affluent western countries the numbers are not more spread out. If I had to guess – and we really have too few data points for that – I'd say we're simply looking at a normal distribution here, especially as (with the exception of the UK) the larger countries tend to be closer to the midpoint of the 20%-30% range and it's smaller countries that are at the fringes of the range.

<comment><USER10> Seems like a valid consideration. You should write a letter to the authors :)

</comment></comment><comment> purple-again Has anyone ever looked at it from the network effect angle? I'm a software dev because I didn't like being a CPA and my friend was a tech guy who got me into it.

My wife went into the medical field because her sister turned her onto this speciality that was easy to get into and paid quite well.

I tried to teach my smart wife to program and failed miserably because that's not how our relationship works.

Most people in even your industry are not die hard passionate live and breathe the code lifestyle types. They show up, work, and go back to their lives.

We all know that 'in general' in the USA at least but I'm sure in other countries as well the genders tend to self segregate their peer networks. My close friends are men. Her close friends are women.

<comment><USER5> Yeah this is absolutely a large chunk of it. Especially when you consider how many jobs are filled through referrals [0]. At my last company, I only worked with male engineers, and so when I got a new job, I could only think of male engineers to refer to open positions.

I think this is also why inertia is so hard to offset here, we have a strong self-reinforcing cycle that's going to take a lot of external force to break out of.

[0] [https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/new-survey-reveals-85-all- job...](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/new-survey-reveals-85-all-jobs-filled- via-networking-lou-adler/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> However you feel about Jordan Peterson, he brings up this fact all the time, esp w/ regards to Scandinavia, would define this phenomenon as the difference between equality of opportunity vs equality of outcome, and that the genders, when provided the option, tend towards different preferences (e.g. bricklayers vs nurses), and that environment factors can skew these natural preferences in either direction.

raises the question of _why_ women in these egalitarian societies are currently are selecting against STEM. Because for example there are plenty of female accountants, which is not normally thought of as a "people" business. So perhaps the environmental factors could change the preferences.

Whether the overall result is preferable for society, I have no idea.

<comment><USER19> > (e.g. bricklayers vs nurses)

How about doctors vs nurses? I think this is a much more relevant comparison. In the united states (sorry) male doctors outnumber female by about 2:1 [1], while female nurses outnumber male nurses by more than 10:1 [2]. Comparing these two professions it's a lot easier to make the argument that women are implicitly encouraged to set their expectations lower than men, who actually may feel emasculated as a nurse.

STEM jobs are seen as more difficult to train for and to achieve than non-STEM jobs, similar to the job of a doctor compared to the job of a nurse. If you're confused as to why women choose 'difficult' jobs less often, I hope this line of thinking is convincing...

[1] [https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/physicians-by- gend...](https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/physicians-by- gender/?currentTimeframe=0&sortModel=%7B%22colId%22:%22Location%22,%22sort%22:%22asc%22%7D) [2] [https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/total-number-of- pr...](https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/total-number-of- professionally-active-nurses-by- gender/?currentTimeframe=0&sortModel=%7B%22colId%22:%22Location%22,%22sort%22:%22asc%22%7D)

<comment><USER20> Why the assumption that nurses are "lower" than doctors?

<comment><USER21> lesser pay rates on average, less training required, more nurses than doctors exist in the work force.

That doesn't make the profession less noble or endearing or anything -- but by any metric that we use to judge modern occupations, a nurse ranks lower than a doctor in most every way besides number of hours worked.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> "If governments want to increase women's participation in STEM, a more effective strategy might be to target the girls who are clearly being lost from the STEM pathway – those for whom science and maths are their best subjects and who enjoy it but still don't choose it"

I don't understand why we should try to make somebody choose a subject they didn't choose to do.

<comment><USER23> well making Engineering and Science careers as well rewarded and give them the same social status as say the Law, Medicine are might help.

Those young women with triple A's beloved of headline writers come exam time are making a rational decision not to go into a field where they are badly paid.

<comment><USER24> Are women more status-seeking than men?

Are women more money-seeking than men?

It seems to me that the assumptions which gave rise to your comment would imply that Wall Street traders should be dominated by women. Why is this not the case, in your opinion?

Would increasing the pay and status of a job increase, or decrease the percentage of women?

Should CEOs be paid more to increase their percentage of women?

<comment><USER23> Well Traders do have this barrow boy image medicine or law has a much higher "social" status in the UK and I bet the USA also

<comment><USER24> Why do you suppose women dominate primary school teaching? Is it because it's too high status and too well paid?

<comment><USER23> It is a pink ghetto and traditionally pre compulsory education was performed by women and was on the very few profession open to women pre 20th century

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Whenever thinking of gender equality, I like to go back to Beauvoir. plato.stanford.edu's page [1] is fantastic, here's an extract:

"Before The Second Sex, the sexed/gendered body was not an object of phenomenological investigation. Beauvoir changed that. Her argument for sexual equality takes two directions. First, it exposes the ways that masculine ideology exploits the sexual difference to create systems of inequality. Second, it identifies the ways that arguments for equality erase the sexual difference in order to establish the masculine subject as the absolute human type. Here Plato is her target. Plato, beginning with the premise that sex is an accidental quality, concludes that women and men are equally qualified to become members of the guardian class. _The price of women's admission to this privileged class, however, is that they must train and live like men_. Thus the discriminatory sexual difference remains in play. Only men or those who emulate them may rule. Beauvoir's argument for equality does not fall into this trap. She insists that women and men treat each other as equals and that such treatment requires that their sexual differences be validated. _Equality is not a synonym for sameness_." (emphasis mine)

I find this paragraph particularly well written, but watch out, I've had an american writer read it and he understood the _opposite_ of what is written. I had to make him read it again ^^

I don't know if it applies to this particular statistics. My personal interpretation of Beauvoir is that yes, this stat does make sense. In a gender equal society, you shouldn't find equal ratios everywhere because du-hu, we're actually not the same. But we should be equal.

That being said, I don't like talking about these things because I generalize to much, and the question is way too complex for me to approach. I like reading other people's take on it though. Anyway, I just wanted to share Beauvoir's thoughts and my rough interpretation of it in this context.

[1] [https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/beauvoir/](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/beauvoir/)

</comment><comment><USER26> The actual title is _' A gender equality paradox': Countries with more gender equality have fewer female STEM grads_.

The findings only present a paradox if you believe that gender equality requires equal representation in _all_ fields.

</comment><comment><USER27> Countries with more gender equality are richer. Countries with less gender equality are poorer. In poorer countries, you are more inclined to choose careers based on paycheck, less on personal preference. In richer countries you are more inclined to choose careers based on your personal preferences and less on for the paycheck.

It's pretty easy.

EDIT: A good counter example to this correlation could be Japan. Low gender equality but also low female participation in STEM fields.

Why? Because Japan is a rich country.

<comment><USER28> The study showed that adjusting for interest in STEM women were 10% less likely to chose that career than a male in gender equal countries, so personal preference (which you'd expect to match with interest) doesn't entirely explain it.

I don't think the article cites anything that would support your Japan hypothesis.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Link to paper: [http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0956797617741719](http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0956797617741719)

Some analysis (source of link): [https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the- more...](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-more-gender- equality-the-fewer-women-in-stem/553592/)

</comment><comment><USER30> I wonder how much of this is related to parental leave policy versus generic social safety net. Countries with a strong safety net also have generous maternity leave but are behind on paternity. I imagine that at a large scale this does make many companies slightly less likely to hire women, and families much more likely to have the mother take time away from her job. The ultimate effect, albeit in a warm and fuzzy way, could be to deemphasize women's careers by normalizing the idea that it's best if you stay home with the kids.

I don't suppose that this could have a larger effect than the gender inequality in many countries lacking a social safety net, but it could be a contributing factor.

The idea that women, given the choice, generally would rather prioritize motherhood seems totally plausible. If that's the case, it could indicate that we need to think about diversity differently.

But I'm uncomfortable with a side effect that some of these policies could have - subtly pressuring women to focus on motherhood. The solution is complicated though if the mere existence of a good maternity leave policy encourages sexism. Hopefully general parental leave can help address this.

<comment><USER31> As far as I know, all developed countries have birthrates that are below replacement values. Is it really so bad to think that motherhood is something that _should_ be focused on? Of my family/friends that are women with children, every single one of them wants more flexibility with their work, because they want more time to spend with the children. Children certainly benefit from parental attention. Yet many workplace policies regarding childcare are downright draconian. Perhaps we should accept that prioritizing parenting is a good thing, and try and make it so that people can both work and have the support they need to help with their familial obligations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> > Girls, even with their ability in science equalled or excelled that of boys, > were often likely to be better overall in reading comprehensions, which > relates to higher ability in non-STEM subjects.

Why is reading comprehension non-STEM?

I've read that success in STEM graduate degrees is highly predicted by language scores on the GRE, and not well predicted by the math part of the test at all.

<comment><USER33> It's just there's a Math "religion" in the West, and Math is pretty much a sort of holy discipline that's the basis of the hierarchized school system, and I guess it makes people believe such things. It's even more prevalent in France where up till now, general high school shared their students between 3 cursus which were scientifc, economic and litterary. They are hierarchized in the way you know, and pretty much defined by their degree... Of math.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> > Girls also tended to register a lower interest in science subjects. These > differences were near-universal across all the countries and regions > studied.

So girls are less interested in these subjects, but in more unequal countries (read poorer) they do it for career prospects, while in more equal countries (read richer) they do what they want (not STEM subjects).

<comment><USER35> Do you know at what age they checked that? I've seen prior research that suggests that the disinterest in stem appears in middle or high school, and isn't statistically significant before then.

This would heavily imply some level of social conditioning to be the cause for disinterest.

<comment><USER36> What people say they like is one thing, but observing proclivities is another. In elementary schools, boys score higher in math and girls score higher in reading comprehension.

<comment><USER35> A cursory look suggests that math aptitude starts at parity or near parity and grows over time, which doesn't necessarily disagree with either of us.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> One thing I have noticed is that male engineers are intrinsically motivated but female engineers, even highly capable ones, are extrinsically motivated.

So you find very few female engineers in open source projects, under 3% by some estimates, although the percentage of female professional software engineers is much higher. Clearly this is not due to discrimination —- github doesn't ask you your gender. So there must be some other explanation. When someone is intrinsically motivated (i.e., not motivated by salary alone) they are likely to be a better employee.

<comment><USER28> GitHub doesn't ask for gender, yet you assume the 3% figure is accurate.

Even if you do, it doesn't make sense to correlate GitHub contributions with "intrinsic" motivation. You can still love to code but not want to contribute to Open Source.

Also, what percentage of software engineers regularly contribute to a non- corporate sponsored GitHub open source project? I would bet it is a small number, which means you shouldn't use it as a proxy to generalize for the industry and gender differences within it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I wonder if it's that fewer females prefer STEM, or is it that more men are doing things they would prefer not to?

<comment><USER39> If I (male) had a chance to be on a permanent comfortable welfare, I would probably spend more time playing games, doing sports, socializing, traveling etc. instead of being in a noisy office with bad light around desperate people I often dislike, whipped by my boss in a constant rat race, being refused bonuses for great performance as a new car/boat/house is of a sudden interest to my superior.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here are three possible explanations for the observed behavior that don't require a belief in inherent biological differences:

1\. Since countries with lower gender equality also tend to be poorer, STEM could be seen as a rare opportunity to escape poverty, and this motivation could outweighs any kind of societal bias agains female participation.

2\. A quick glance at the graph of results in [0], shows that there's also a strong cultural division. Countries with more gender equality are mostly in Nordic Europe and Western Europe, while countries will less are mostly in the Middle East, Eastern Europe. It's possible for regions to develop cultural norms that reduce gender equality without also developing cultural norms that reduce female participation in STEM.

3\. As a corollary to 1, and pulled directly from the article: "STEM careers are generally secure and well-paid but the risks of not following such a path can vary. In more affluent counties, where any choice of career feels relatively safe, women may feel able to make choices based on non-economic factors."

To be clear, I don't have strong evidence that any of these are necessarily true, but I think the existing of possible alternatives should at least force a reconsideration of the immediate conclusion that this correlation proves anything about biological difference.

I think it's troubling that as of writing this, none of the top comments do anything to suggest alternative explanations, and are quick to use this to confirm the existing narrative [1]. Again, I don't think I've done anything to disprove these claims, but it's indicative of a larger intellectual problem on HN if we would rather have discussions that confirm our beliefs than discussions that challenge and sharpen then.

[0] [https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the- more...](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-more-gender- equality-the-fewer-women-in-stem/553592/) [1] [https://imgur.com/a/1Diel](https://imgur.com/a/1Diel)

<comment><USER40> If a woman doesn't feel compelled to pursue STEM to escape poverty - if she can make a career choice based on non-economic factors - then it's reasonable to assume her more innate traits and desires will come into play. (One such trait that asserts is a preference for dealing with people over abstract systems.) These traits are at their root biological and only modulated by culture.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Even if we do conclusively find that women on average prefer non STEM careers, I think for the good of our society, we should still make an effort to entice more women into STEM who otherwise would not. Not for dime immediate social justice reason, but because the advancement and progress of our own society needs more STEM grads, if we don't produce our own, we'll have to import them, which we should not have to, if we could develop policies of encouragement.

</comment><comment><USER42> The article posits that the affluence of a country (not gender equality itself, though correlated) affects how much the economic security that comes with high-paying STEM jobs is an incentive to purse those jobs.

That can explain a gradient between countries, and doesn't affect the original, purely gender question either way.

</comment><comment><USER16> Given a choice, more women than men will go for non-STEM careers, so in rich countries you will find way more STEM-proficient men than women. This has been known for quite some time.

But take care not to mention this at workplaces where they use diversity hiring practices to try to artificially and unfairly inflate their percentage of women compared to the field as a whole.

It will get you fired.

<comment><USER36> This argument would be more interesting if we weren't seeing heavy female attrition due sexual harassment unrelated to work content.

<comment><USER16> Is there female attrition?

Is there female attrition due to sexual harassment?

You're making a bold claim, which I am personally not seeing at all.

Care to back it up with any references?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I don't think it's a breakthrough, I remember seeing the exact same conclusion from a different research a few years ago already. It was even a little broader since it mentioned that countries with the most gender equality also had the most stay at home moms.

</comment><comment><USER44> In those countries which lack gender equality, in many cases people do not choose STEM because it's really difficult to find a job otherwise.

</comment><comment><USER45> Usually you get what you incentivize. If you go overboard on the equality of outcome, people will adapt to it, be it women or any kind of person.

</comment><comment><USER46> I don't like how there's not any charts anywhere. Numbers usually tell better tale than words.

</comment><comment><USER47> I can't see this thread in the front page any more. Not even the first three pages.

<comment><USER48> Pretty standard. Political posts are heavily downwaited.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> This link was top of hacker news and then suddenly disappeared. What's happened?

</comment><comment> princess-aslaug Maybe women that are free to choose more often don't want to graduate in STEM.

</comment><comment><USER43> It would have been interesting to control for wealth. Unless I missed it in the article, it could be valuable to analyze a group of countries deemed "rich", but with low gender equality (I don't really even know how the latter is calculated).

</comment><comment><USER50> Not sure if this has been posted on HN before but I think this is a much more interesting article: [https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/rabble- rouser/201707/wh...](https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/rabble- rouser/201707/why-brilliant-girls-tend-favor-non-stem-careers)

tl;dr Girls tend to be more well rounded intellectually, with both strong math skills and strong verbal skills, giving them more options, possibly more lucrative options, beyond just STEM. Boys tend to be more lacking in verbal skills limiting their options.

A closely related theory is that girls outperform boys in both sciences and humanities, in HS, but they outperform boys in humanities by a much larger margin, and therefore see themselves as strongest in those subjects.

</comment><comment><USER51> [http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0956797617741719](http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0956797617741719)

Wonderful. Yet another publicly-funded research project with implications for public policy that is behind a paywall.

I guess I'll never know the details of how "gender equality" was operationalized, and therefore never have an informed interpretation of these data. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

<comment><USER52> [http://sci-hub.tw](http://sci-hub.tw)

<comment><USER51> Ah, so it's .tw now.

Do they announce their domain changes somewhere?

<comment><USER52> Wikipedia usually has the updated list.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Too many political article today on HN.

This, code of conduct, fake news, peter theil ect

<comment><USER54> Just click on "flag". They disappear soon enough.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Never forget: causation does not necessarily imply correlation

<comment><USER56> Totally irrelevant to this article, but you are technically correct.

Let X = "angle"

Let Y = sin(X)

Then X has a causal relationship with Y, but Corr(X, Y) = 0.

I doubt that's what you're saying, though!

<comment><USER57> However, small deltas around a particular X correlate with corresponding small sigmas around the corresponding Y.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> The defensive tone of this article is alarming. If you don't study computer science now you will likely be in the same boat 30 years from now with illiterate folks of today. Disparity in computer science education in Western countries puts women at a massive economic disadvantage and is a major geopolitical risk. Arguing that women naturally prefer non-STEM fields is sexist and dangerous. Helping drive up the numbers of women and other underrepresented populations in CS should be a major priority for developed countries.

<comment><USER59> > Helping drive up the numbers of women and other underrepresented populations > in CS should be a major priority for developed countries.

What if we try to respect womens choices and work to get them better pay for the very important work they actually do, first?

Why is it that nursing or teaching should be paid so much less than software engineering?

Or even worse: why is it so much cooler to be an engineeer like me than a nurse or teacher? The pay can partially be explained by supply/demand (qualified nurses are in high demand but buyers don't seem to be able to pay, at least not here.)

<comment> purple-again Because that's how capitalism works. Money follows value generated to society not individual perceived value. A teacher at maximum capacity can only deliver a tiny tiny fraction of the value that a software developer can.

100 students per class 8 classes a day 40 year career. You have provided value to 32,000 children all of whom have two parents so value to 96,000 people well say.

<comment><USER28> Valueable in what sense? Are what most programmers programming intrinsically valuable?

If that teacher was a difference maker for 100k people, that seems very valuable.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Open2D Game Engine Development Begins - <AUTHOR> CONTRIBUTERS WELCOME TO JOIN IF THEY WISH TO HELP IN EARLY DEVELOPMENT, OTHERWISE CAN SEE IN LATER STAGES* Open2D GitHub Project Released! Next Gen Game Engine for 2D early in development. We need Contributers to help me lift this off the ground started it couple hours back. Will always be free and open source! Why this project? Well, there are many great engines for 3d such as Unity and Unreal. However, they do not focus on 2D(and Unity is quite heavy for that). In order to be able to make feature rich games, I am taking a new strategy for the users to be able to fix bugs easily and create their engine! I will always contribute but is is a large project that would need your help to get up and running! <comment><USER2> No offense but it looks like a student project written by someone just getting the hang of using SFML and C++. Its not a game engine but more like a couple of hours of bare bones SFML boilerplate code.

Definitely keep working on this but maybe you should start asking for contributors when you're a little bit further along.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok, I will post after improvements. Thanks

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> [https://github.com/Lord-Coder1/Open2D-Game-Engine](https://github.com/Lord- Coder1/Open2D-Game-Engine) Link to gitHub Project^</comment>


Geometric Folding Algorithms: Linkages, Origami, Polyhedra - <AUTHOR> https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-849-geometric-folding-algorithms-linkages-origami-polyhedra-fall-2012/ <comment><USER2> Cool links from syllabus:

Origami Simulator: [http://www.tsg.ne.jp/TT/software/index.html](http://www.tsg.ne.jp/TT/software/index.html)

Treemaker: [https://langorigami.com/article/treemaker/](https://langorigami.com/article/treemaker/)

<comment><USER3> You forgot [http://apps.amandaghassaei.com/OrigamiSimulator/](http://apps.amandaghassaei.com/OrigamiSimulator/) And maybe [https://rabbitear.org](https://rabbitear.org)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This intereste me because I've been looking at folding and unfolding _of programs_ recently for some bit of fun work on the side of my PhD (or maybe not so on the side). I was looking for easy examples of this thing online and this is the closest I could find:

[https://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/projects/refactor- fp/catalogue/Fol...](https://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/projects/refactor- fp/catalogue/Folding.html)

      -- Folded program
      showAll = (concat . format) . map show
      table   = concat . format

      -- Unfolded program
      showAll = table . map show
      table   = concat . format

I've been wondering if there is maybe some kind of correspondence between programming and geometry in this respect. In the context of programming "folding/unfolding" is just an analogy and one has to stare at examples like the one above for a bit to appreciate how apt it is, whereas it's much more obvious to see when it comes to geometry. Also, the programming term signifies replacement of a structure by another, whereas folding geometric objects is, I think, not really a replacement. But, well, this thing is now stuck in my mind.

<comment><USER5> There is a lot of correspondence. I was recently working on making a "geometry" based programming language. As I was working through it one of the ideas I realized geometry was a really good fit for was a language focused on pattern matching and data deduplication.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> There is an origami-focused, peer-reviewed academic conference "OSME" and the papers that have come out of it (released in books) are interesting reads.

The conference website is [http://osme.info/](http://osme.info/) (hasn't been updated in a while; see Robert Lang's page for more info: [https://langorigami.com/article/origami- conferences/](https://langorigami.com/article/origami-conferences/))

</comment><comment><USER7> Anyone know if this field has gained any substantial traction since 2012 and the collaborations with NASA? Looks really interesting, but seems more recreational, though i could be wrong.

<comment><USER8> He talks about applications in the first lecture:

* Robotics is a big one, folding robotic arms.

* Computer graphics. ... animate your characters ... skeletons as foldable objects

* Mechanics: A lot of the early folding work is in like 17, 1800s, and is motivated by building mechanical linkages to do useful things.

* Manufacturing: if you could get them to fold objects (ex: CPUs), then you could manufacture 3D nano-scale objects.

* Optics. A MIT group does some optical devices through folding

* Medical: folding a stent really small, do non-intrusive heart surgery. Drug delivery.

* Aero-astro. fold things within space shuttles

* Biology. Big one: protein folding

* Sculpture: origami.

* Interactive buildings' architecture: reconfigurable buildings. Hoberman is one example of somebody exploring this, getting the building to fold from one shape to another, or getting your shades to fold from one shape to another, all sorts of things.

<comment><USER9> What about parachutes?

<comment><USER8> Well he doesn't discuss parachutes... What would be an improvement in this case? I guess one could came up with a smaller parachute if it was optimally folded.

Psychologically I suspect I would feel safer with a regular size parachute vs a super advanced, algorithmically folded origami-parachute :-p

<comment><USER9> I never got as far as folding my own parachute, but I know they have to be folded _somehow_ , and if it doesn't unfold properly, you die (modulo the reserve). So I'd speculate optimization could have a role in reliability. My memory is hazy, but I may have been told that the method of folding also affects how abruptly and with how much shock it opens.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> See also: [https://twitter.com/littmath/status/1291143344173846528](https://twitter.com/littmath/status/1291143344173846528)

[https://twitter.com/littmath/status/1291484760875966467](https://twitter.com/littmath/status/1291484760875966467)

</comment><comment><USER11> You can't go wrong with any of Erik Demaine's classes.

<comment><USER12> When I taught an algorithms course, Erik's 6.006 and 6.046 lectures were one of my main sources for lesson plans and other inspiration.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Isn't there a documentary about this guy? It looks so familiar.

<comment><USER14> You're probably thinking of the documentary Between the Folds.

He's appeared in a lot of places though. Really interesting guy: homeschooled by his father in a van, finished his PhD before many people finish their second year of undergrad, youngest ever professor hired at MIT. Tons of mindblowing papers on computational origami.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I wish Erick made an edx course</comment>


Ask HN: Please review my startup for bicyclists - <AUTHOR> http://www.brightspoke.com/

<comment><USER6> I'm a big cyclist so definitely in your target market.

The big problem I see right now: What is your site about? I opened the link with a bit of excitedness and literally I spent a few seconds confused as to what this site is and what it does for me. Some specific points:

Your tag line "We love bikes", yes great, so? Tell me in a nutshell what this site is about.

Have a big heading that explains the site, a starting point for the eye if you will. Right now the only real text you have is a quote about poets and cycling, which is not relevant to me. It doesn't explain anything about the site, and it suggests that the site may be for poets who don't cycle and want to convince them otherwise.

Are you helping me understand how to buy a bike or are you selling me a bike?

The search bar at the top is almost invisible, and the hint that it should be by name is even harder to read (yellow on blue in an odd typeface).

So the key message is: I don't know what the site is about, and even a few seconds later I still didn't know. Now that I've played with it a bit, read the about page, I kinda get it, but I'm not sure. This confusion means I won't remember it.

Great name by the way. I love it.

</comment><comment><USER7> Unclear if this is aimed at bike experts or bike newbies. Is this to help me find a bike? Then help me understand WHY the data points are important. Even your front search frame dropdown: alum vs. steel? I don't know, why should I pick one? This assumes I already know the reasons why these filters are important.

The data dump for each bike is nice, but again, no context, no comparison feature, nothing to let me know why each data point matters.

If you are going for an expert audience, then consider expert tools: experts all already have a bike, so they want to consider upgrades and alternative bikes for alternative uses. So why not allow users to search that way: Given that I have a, say, Trek 7.2 FX, what's the next logical upgrade level/search features from that? It would be differerent and new, afaik.

So, it's a fine data aggregator, but I would love to see some smarts via a more bike-thinking way to search, and a more useful display of the data which allows me to know that some frame angles are "race ready" and cause you to lean down while riding, or that some frame types are better for vibration but may not be necessary if you ride short distances on pavement, etc. That context can also be provided via on screen comparisons: 1 variable across 10 bikes, or comparing 2 bikes across all variables.

I agree with danteembermage around community features; these days, it's hard to get far without them, either built in or by allying yourself with an existing community.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is aimed at helping bike newbies become bike experts, although frankly it has been easier to gain traction with experts. I try to imagine it as a bike expert looking over your shoulder while you're looking at bike specs explaining why you might want or not want feature X (the online equivalent of what good salesperson might do at your LBS).

There's a bit of that in place here and there on the site (for instance, the nascent "undestanding" articles, or trying hovering over the frame or fork parts of a bike details page). I guess it needs to be more in your face.

<comment><USER8> >This is aimed at helping bike newbies become bike experts

In that case, you seem to be going at it exactly backwards. Take the search bar - if I already know the make and model to search for, I'm definitely not a newbie.

Instead, the form could be something like this:

        1. Why do you want a bike (check all that apply)?
        - <USER2>
        - <USER3>
        - <USER4>
        - <USER5>

        2. How much money do you want to spend?
        - [low end]
        - [high end]

        3. Where do you live?
        [type city and country or click location on a map]

Then return a list of bikes that meet the criteria you selected in order by fit, with links to places where you can buy the bike.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you.

That was my first thought as well, but in testing that's quite not the way people like to approach the problem. (In fairness, the form I have on the homepage currently also isn't quite the way people like to approach it.)

For example, here's a sampling of posting from a general purpose (not bike specific) forum from the past 24 hours:

* What is the best comfort bike/city bike for under $500? * Whats a light bike for city riding? * Recommendation for Cyclocross Bike for Winter Road Riding? * Whats a decent hard tail mountain Bike for under 500? * Suggestions for a $650 road bike? * I'm looking to spend around $2000 on a road bike. What should I get?

This is the immediate need I'm trying to serve with that form on the homepage.

I imagine I'll eventually have a bike "wizard" like you describe, but from my research (and watching others in the space) that's not quite an intuitive approach for users.

<comment><USER8> You're probably right that the form I suggested isn't quite right - it was off the cuff.

Still, I think the design needs to reflect the problems people are trying to solve. Given the sample questions you listed, the form currently on the site is still backwards - running from particular products back towards uses.

Here's an idea: have you considered pushing the expertise out to the site community instead of having to hard-code it? I'm thinking of something like a stackoverflow for cycling. That way the site will respond directly to the precise questions that users have, rather than trying to force-map the 'typical' question into a form at all.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's interesting. I'll need to noodle on it some more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> My first impression was that I accidentally typed in the wrong url and went to one of those fake-website landing page sites that just run ads all over them. I'm pretty sure it has something to do with your color scheme and blatantly stock picture. One thing that might help is to soften up the background with either a gradient, texture, or just a more pastel color.

Would be helpful (for me at least) to have some sample search queries so I can get a taste for what I will get even without having to fill out the form. Show don't tell. Maybe a "popular" gallery or a "best deals" gallery etc. Filling out that form takes way too much effort for the "unsold".

Lastly I was pretty sad to find no pictures of any bikes whatsoever! Pictures are pretty important.

Your design really is not "bad" it just gives off the an iffy/questionable vibe as to the legitimacy of the site. So maybe just kill two birds with one stone and focus on getting juicy pictures of badass bikes in a nicely laid out gallery. I actually don't know much about bikes, but would like to, so I'll be rooting your site on.

HTH

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I've been working on Brightspoke (part-time and bootstrapped) for a couple of months and while there's a lot more left to do, I feel there's enough of the MDP/MVP in place that hopefully you should be able to see where I'm headed.

For fear of tainting your first impressions of the site, I won't say a lot more right here, but I'd be happy to go into more detail later in thread if anyone has questions about the site, technology, vision, business model or process that led to here.

I would greatly appreciate any and all feedback, from design to copy to coding to features. I've been looking at some parts of this for so long I can no longer tell whether some changes are better or worse.

Note that some bike pages are a bit more robust than others (a function of the data currently in the system), for example:

<http://www.brightspoke.com/b/2010/surly/steamroller.html> <http://www.brightspoke.com/b/2010/surly/karate-monkey.html> <http://www.brightspoke.com/b/2009/khs/flite-team.html>

Also, this page:

<http://www.brightspoke.com/t/bike-stem-calculator.html>

has proven popular on some cycling forums.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm sort of a target user for your site (family of five, don't own a [working] car, bike everywhere, don't know much about bikes)

I like what you've got; your site would be much more valuable with a lot more information. Things that come to mind

1\. Maintenance of all kinds, how to change a spoke, what is a chain whip for?, truing rims, adjusting rear derailleurs, etc.

2\. Classified information for bikes; you might think craigslist might have this locked up but I bought my bike from there and the guy who sold it to me was really frustrated with people calling him with random questions he didn't understand. A convenient form with blanks for relevant stats would help us newbies.

3\. Events page; cycling events happen all the time, an RSS of rides in my area would be nice

4\. Forum: war stories, racing strategy, a clubhouse for cyclists.

5\. news/blog cycling related legislation, celebrities on bikes

6\. Bike mods page: DIY propelled, row cycles etc. showcase interesting inventions

Basically a community site with really great technical info and lots of pictures could be really compelling I think. To fly I think this thing needs more meat on its bones.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. This is great feedback. I've been thinking along some of these lines as well. In fact you've hit on two things that my customer discover research suggests as the right route to go down.

But there are a lot of basic community/forum sites in the cycling world. I've been trying to focus on a putting something new into the world. Do you think community features are a base requirement?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I just don't know what your product does for me as a user, at least not yet. As a serious bike geek, there's nothing I couldn't find at one of the better- stocked dealers, some of whom will provide very rich and specific data. I've spend stupid amounts of money on bikes, but they've all been carbon-framed, drop-handlebarred, with 20 gears, rendering your advanced search not nearly advanced enough.

Your tool could be incredibly powerful and useful for me if your database held information on weight, allowing me to shop on a dollars-per-gram basis. Comparison shopping features would be very useful and provide you with a substantial revenue stream in the form of affiliate fees. A database of parts and a wish list would allow me to configure a home-built bike or an upgrade.

If I were a casual cyclist, I can't see your site making me any less confused than the front page of the first cycle dealer I pick out of Google. If I found my perfect bike I'd still need to Google for a dealer that stocked it and potentially get tripped up by different model years, different specs etc. I don't really know what any of these terms mean, how many gears I would want or which material I want my bike made out of - I just know that I want a nice light bike for buzzing around town, or something plush and comfortable for pedalling round the park, or something that will carry my shopping. I see the mouseover popups that explain some of the terms, but they don't clarify things all that much and it seems like I'm stumbling around at random.

As it stands, I just don't know why I'd use your tool instead of going straight to a bike retailer. Your stem calculator is useful because it provides information I can't really find anywhere else. The rest of the site feels like you've built it because you can. I can't see the problem that you're trying to solve.

<comment><USER12> If you're interested in weights, you should check out <http://weightweenies.starbike.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> "Our mission is to put more people on bikes by creating informed consumers."

As someone who uses a bike as his main transportation (or maybe because dutch bike-culture is _completetly different_ from american bike culture) I cannot understand how this website will put more people on a bike.

If you want to put more people on a bike, here's a few questions your website should answer:

\- Why would I want a bike? (Cheap transportation? Faster than walking for short distances? 'Green' way of transportation?)

\- For what distances would I prefer a bike vs. a car? (I use a bike for all distances < 10 km (that would be 6 miles), mostly urban traffic.)

<comment><USER8> If you want to put more people on a bike, your startup should be a tool that enables citizens to create local advocacy groups for bike lane networks.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've actually done a tiny bit in the advocacy space and would like to do more, but I'm trying to move the casual cyclist, the once a month crowd, rather than the existing advocates.

Bike lanes themselves are a bit of mixed blessing: Studies suggest street- side, dedicated bike lanes may be less safe than simply treating bikes as traffic, e.g. <http://www.bikexprt.com/research/pasanen/helsinki.htm>. (Whether that's good or bad for actually promoting cycling is a different question.)

If you're interested, I've aggregated some bike advocacy folks on Twitter at <http://twitter.com/WeLoveBikes/bike-advocacy>.

<comment><USER8> Thing is, if you wan to beef up the number of casual cyclists, you need to give them a bike network.

I used to be opposed to bike lanes (and I ride daily in mixed traffic) for the reasons you cite; but bike lanes are _net_ far safer because the main effect of dramatically increasing the number of cyclists is that you dramatically decrease the number (not just the rate but the actual count) of casualties.

Just having more cyclists on the road makes it much safer. This seems to scale - Copenhagen is up to 50% trips by bike and their casualty rate is still falling.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> At risk of duplicating things others have said here -

* If I didn't already know why I prefer steel to carbon, or aluminum, I wouldn't learn it from the site. It really doesn't give any rationale for different materials. It looks like you tried to explain the pros and cons of different handlebars, but it's a lot of text, and could be improved with pictures, showing different hand positions perhaps.

* It may be a good idea to keep commuters in mind, perhaps factoring this in to "Bike Type". The equipment trade-offs are different. In particular, there are incidental accessories - reviews of (say) bike headlights would be nice, and I feel more comfortable getting that sort of thing online than a whole bike. You also don't have anything about singlespeed / fixed-gear stuff, another niche that might be easy to add.

* You don't seem to have anything about bike size in there. "Clydesdale" riders (i.e., tall and/or heavy people) tend to need more durable parts, some people need extra-small frames, etc. This will complicate things tremendously, though, and being able to actually test-ride bikes in person is a huge advantage for LBSs.

</comment><comment> brown9-2 From the front page, it's not really clear to me what the purpose of filling out the "Discover Bikes" form is. Am I going to be shown search results of bikes to buy? Or just general information about different models?

</comment><comment><USER15> Some small observations :

In Firefox 3.0 (Javascript off) the drop-down menus do not sit next to their labels properly. Perhaps if you get it to pass W3C validation <http://validator.w3.org/> it will look better.

It would be nice to browse the bicycles as well as search them.

I didn't really know what information I was searching until I had looked at the results. Is this a bicycle shop, or a portal to other shops, or a second- hand market place?

</comment><comment><USER13> Since I am not very familiar with the english defintions for the handlebars I decided to click the 'Understanding Handlebars' link. Sadly there is an awful lot of text there but no images of the different types of handlebars.

<comment><AUTHOR> Indeed. I'm sorry to disappoint you. That's a work in progress. The stem version - <http://www.brightspoke.com/c/understanding/stems.html> \- is more complete and may be more in line with what you were expecting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I think the drop downs should give totals of the number under that selection

The colours clash and there a too many different fonts used.

The Left hand side rounded corners on the white box don't look right.

</comment><comment><USER17> You've got the quotation on the front page wrong, it's, "Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the human race.".

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. Fixed. The other version is relatively frequently cited online, but this is a much better phrasing anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The "Understanding Handlebars" page should have pictures, not just a wall of text.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. I agree. It's a mistake to have that as the first big link on page, as that's really a work in progress. As I as wrote below, the stem version - <http://www.brightspoke.com/c/understanding/stems.html> \- is more complete and may be more in line with what you were expecting.</comment></comment>


Google maps suddenly becomes more than just a map - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/05/13/google-maps-adds-more-wikipedia-entries-and-geo-coded-photos/

<comment><USER2> It's a nice move, I've seen similar datasets on Google Earth, so it's not new by any means.

</comment><comment><USER3> As someone who codes ActionScript as part of my job, I'm excited about the new Google Maps AS3 API. <http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/flash/></comment>


New Emoji include 'tiny p****' and 'period blood', according to the Internet - <AUTHOR> https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2019/02/06/tiny-penis-and-period-emoji-headed-your-keyboard/2792533002/ <comment><USER2> Does anyone really want to receive tiny dick pics?</comment>


Slackware creator in strife, claims store has not paid him - <AUTHOR> https://www.itwire.com/open-source/83757-slackware-creator-in-strife,-claims-store-has-not-paid-him.html <comment><USER2> Original comment on LinuxQuestions.org: [https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/donati...](https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/donating- to-slackware-4175634729/#post5882751)

"second oldest Linux distribution"

Sorry to nitpick, but it's not, by any metric.

In an absolute sense, there were quite a few Linux distros around before Slackware. MCC Interim Linux, TAMU, and Yggdrasil all predate it, as does SLS (obviously, since Pat derived Slackware from SLS).

In the sense of "oldest _surviving_ distribution", Slackware is not the "second oldest". It is _the_ oldest.

</comment><comment><USER3> Should not people like him get paid from UN for the contribution they make to the human kind?

</comment><comment><USER4> I find this to be awful and I don't even use Slackware.</comment>


Robert Heinlein and the Harsh Politics of Science Fiction (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://www.patrickmccray.com/2013/09/12/robert-heinlein-and-the-harsh-politics-of-science-fiction/ <comment><USER2> "Stranger in a Strange Land" is probably the best sci-fi novel I've ever read. It must have been very daring at the time to discuss the topics he touches on there (religion, polygamy, homosexuality, cannibalism), the ending especially. He's no stranger to controversy, though. Another great novel by him, "Time enough for love" likewise ventures into such a taboo subject as incest. "Ventures" isn't quite the word, actually, more like "jumps into it headlong". "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" explores families in which there are multiple wives and husbands, and as a result the familial relationships get very complicated, and the family can exist for hundreds of years. What's more, families are dominated by women, because they're in short supply on the moon. Pretty thought provoking stuff, I like that in sci-fi.

<comment><USER3> Women can only be "in short supply" as long as the Earth is using Luna as a prison colony and mostly shipping up males; as soon as native Lunarians dominate, it will be 50/50 or so as per usual.

<comment><USER4> That's one of the issues with it; history has seen several instances of high- proportion male societies, and "women in charge" has never been the stable result.

<comment><USER5> My recollection from the book was that, as the sibling comment states, the moon was previously 2:1 men-to-women. It was no longer so by the time of the novel's start, but social norms established during that tumultuous backstory had persisted: mostly the men enforcing good behavior on each other because it was so ridiculously easy to die on the moon and the men were essentially interchangeable to the women and not scarce.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The problem with those enamoured with the necessity make "hard choices" is that they believe they'd be the ones making them...

<comment><USER7> Any reason why you think that should necessarily be so? By implying an ulterior motive, you avoid the need to actually consider the "hard choice"

For example, I was born a long time after world war 2, so couldn't possibly affect any of the decisions. But one can still try to consider (as historians routinely do) what was the right thing to do. Should Churchill have warned Coventry about the upcoming German air raids (learned of through cracked German codes), which would likely have saved lives in Coventry, but might have cost more lives and maybe lost the war by alerting the Germans that their codes had been broken?

On a much smaller scale, doctor's frequently have to make these kind of decisions - what if you have 6 patients who will die without a ventilator, but only 3 ventilators available with no way to get more? I don't know anyone making these kind of decisions who is "enamoured" with having to make those decisions - but we recognize that they do have to get made by _someone_ , and would quite happily offload the decision to others as long as we felt there was an ethical, moral, logical basis to the decisions they would make.

<comment><USER8> Humans tend to naturally do this. The danger is hindsight bias; we can't put ourselves in the same position as those making the decision. (Not just in an informational sense -- people's worldviews were different because society was structured differently).

Hindsight bias is incredibly powerful, it's impossible for us to blend "obvious" signal back into the noise. Think about the discussions around whether the US should have "known" about the Pearl Harbor raid -- in hindsight, there were signals that should have alerted leadership. In reality, there was so much information that the actual signal blended into the noise. It's only much later that we know the Japanese telegrams were meaningful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Enjoyed the books (and even the movie) He was a bit weird but the concept of earning citizenship as depicted in starship troopers always intrigued me.

<comment><USER10> "he was a bit weird" doesn't even begin to describe things... If you read the original unabridged version of Stranger in a Strange Land it's obvious how it's a product of its time in the 1960s, and Heinlein's own fascination with polyamorous relationship ideas.

In the me-too era much of Heinlein's work is problematic, to say the least.

<comment><USER11> In the two Heinlein books I remember, _Stranger in a Strange Land_ and _Job_ , the protagonist is a middle-aged man who has beautiful young women throw themselves at him. The women have no needs or agendas of their own; their only motivation is to please this man. Job seemed so much like the author's personal fantasy that I had to put it down.

<comment><USER12> Check out Farnham's Freehold, where a middle-aged man gets flung into the far future with his wife, daughter, and daughter's friend (and another guy). The wife goes crazy, and then the middle-aged man knocks up his daughter's friend. Then his daughter mentions to him that, of the men she's been stranded with, he's the one she'd prefer to father her child (if she weren't already pregnant). Her dad is completely undisturbed and in fact flattered by this.

<comment><USER13> That's not even the worst part of Farnham's Freehold.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > Although shades of Heinlein's true political leanings – libertarian in the > classic sense – ...

Interesting phrase there. I would say his views are _liberal_ in the classic sense, as in classical liberalism. I don't think the term "classical libertarianism" is commonly used, but if anything it ought to refer to left libertarianism, a quite different thing.

<comment><USER15> Some of his short stories are particularly interesting. "The Roads Must Roll", for example, though written before Ayn Rand started churning out books, anticipates and attempts to brutally tear apart the ideas of "Atlas Shrugged".

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Interesting office in that he had stands and clips to hold up multiple sheets of paper like we use multiple monitors

</comment><comment><USER17> > After his death in 1988, Heinlein's estate helped establish the Heinlein > Prize Trust. It regularly gives out large cash awards "to encourage and > reward progress in commercial space activities." The most recent award – > $250,000 – went to SpaceX founder and libertarian-minded entrepreneur Elon > Musk.

But they could of course beat that: in 2016, they gave it to Bezos! So much for "large cash award"...

<comment><USER16> I've often wondered if Musk was a fan of 'The Man Who Sold the Moon'

<comment><USER18> Me too! I always worry he'll end up like old D.D.</comment></comment></comment>


Humans can give dengue virus to mosquitos - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/11/healthy-humans-can-give-dengue-virus-to-mosquitos/ <comment><USER2> Arstechnica's article title is a little misleading by using "healthy": "A study with kids in Cambodia is the first to examine the transmission of dengue virus from _asymptomatic but infected_ humans into mosquitoes. ... It found that asymptomatic and presymptomatic people were even more likely to pass the virus on to mosquitoes than people who were actually sick with dengue."</comment>


Ransomware gives free decryption keys to victims who infect their friends - <AUTHOR> https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/new-scheme-spread-popcorn-time-ransomware-get-chance-of-free-decryption-key/ <comment><USER2> Next step (unless it is already there) could be affiliate marketing (pay 25% of the ransom to people who distribute the malware). If people start getting smart with backups, the response could be to switch blackmailing (pay or we'll distribute your files).

I find this whole thing quite scary. We all know how difficult it is to protect yourself from a determined and skilled adversary. Now that there is clear business model and opportunity to make hundreds of millions[1] this thing will probably attract more and more people. Building botnets was a mass market operation. Ransomware could become more targeted, since the value of single infected machine can be much higher.

[1] [http://thehackernews.com/2015/10/cryptowall- ransomware.html](http://thehackernews.com/2015/10/cryptowall-ransomware.html)

<comment><USER3> All the more reason to emphasize security over the latest in features and upgradability.

Why doesn't Microsoft get held accountable when a 0-day in Windows is exploited that results in loss of user funds? Without that, there's no incentive to build secure software in the first place.

How do we get society to have more of a security-first approach when it comes to things connected to the internet? A lot of these vulnerabilities are scary in a systemic way. Cyber warfare would likely be as damaging as dropping napalm on cities, and it's all preventable by having more security oriented infrastructure.

<comment><USER4> > Why doesn't Microsoft get held accountable when a 0-day in Windows is > exploited that results in loss of user funds? Without that, there's no > incentive to build secure software in the first place.

There is nothing stopping you from entering into a contract with Microsoft that requires them to take on that liability. And there are some companies that have contracts like that with some software vendors -- presumably in aerospace and so on. And those companies pay $5000 or more for a piece of software that you would pay $10 for. If you asked a normal person to pay that much for every app in the store they would just laugh.

If you made developers liable for vulnerabilities, that's what would need to happen. Software would have to cost enough to cover the liability. If you sell ten million copies of some code and you have _one_ vulnerability (down from 75 before this), that vulnerability may cost 1% of your customers $20,000 each and you're suddenly on the hook for billions of dollars. And you better hope none of your customers are large corporations that could potentially suffer even bigger losses, even though the software developer has no control over that at all.

A big part of the problem here is that we keep trying to _shield_ the users from liability, but they're the ones who make the decisions. The user won't be willing to pay extra or suffer any inconvenience for better security if it's the credit card company or insurance company or software vendor that sustains the loss when they get hacked.

Security is terrible because the party who decides how much to prioritize security is the party we give half a dozen ways to get out of suffering from the consequences of poor security.

<comment><USER5> But what would also happen is that for the software vendor to stay competitive, he would spend a lot of time and effort to harden the software to reduce the insurance premium.

Very far away from Microsoft's "let's use consumers as beta testers" approach.

<comment><USER4> > But what would also happen is that for the software vendor to stay > competitive, he would spend a lot of time and effort to harden the software > to reduce the insurance premium.

That's not competitive though. When the user is at minimal risk the user wants the cheapest software, not the most secure software. In that situation you can't spend money improving security or buying insurance, that would make your software cost more than the competition.

The winning competitive strategy would be to minimize the consequences of declaring bankruptcy. Take on debt financing instead of issuing stock, to minimize net assets. Develop the software as many pieces each owned by an independent business entity so there is no deep pocket to attract claims and there is a smaller loss when an owner has to write one off.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interesting plan. I think people are underestimating how effective it might be.

Suppose a kid gets their parents computer infected. There is a pretty good chance that they will panic and take the non-monetary route. It's not like infecting others is beyond most kids abilities. Just run the exe themselves on school computers, post it in video game chats, send it to friends, etc. Since they aren't sure how many people will pay before their parents notice there is a strong incentive to send it to a lot of people, not just two.

The other route I see is that an adult sees this and tries to infect some company computers, on the theory that the won't be caught and there is a good chance the company will pay up. Not many people will go for it of course, but if it manages to spread internally then they will be in a decent position to demand a lot of money.

</comment><comment><USER7> I wonder how Bitcoin-based scammers launder their money.

Bitcoin addresses are anonymous, but all transactions are public, right? So while it's hard to find out who's behind an address, it's publicly visible if they spend money, and where it goes. Thus, they're only able to spend it on "trusted" peers to not jeopardize their own anonymosity.

For example, if they buy something from an online shop, this transaction will be visible for all Bitcoin users. And if that shop publicly shows its Bitcoin address, authorities might track down that shop and force it to give away their shipment address.

Or am I missing something?

<comment><USER8> Bitcoin tumblers take care of this. Roughly, you set up a service that puts a lot of people's coins in a single wallet, then you route bitcoins from that wallet to a bunch of different wallets operating in similar fashion. Kind of like how TOR works.

It's easy to generate many temporary wallets that can not be linked back to your main wallet, shops can do this too and I think it's considered a good practice to use one address per sale.

You can also convert the Bitcoins to a more anonymous coin (Monero?) and back.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> There's a niche field of malware economics, but it makes sense that for-profit malware is ultimately a business, albeit an usually illegal one, which has to optimize just like any other app:

[https://cyber.harvard.edu/cybersecurity/Economics_of_Malware](https://cyber.harvard.edu/cybersecurity/Economics_of_Malware)

[https://www.coursera.org/learn/malsoftware](https://www.coursera.org/learn/malsoftware)

At some point, it would make sense anonymized malware (i2p, tor only) may go open source similar to commercial open source but instead because of scene cred / blackmarket consulting.

<comment><USER10> This is roughly what happened with several "exploit droppers" a few years ago. It wasn't pretty GitHub sites or open source blogs, but rather "leaked" versions of the software suites, missing nearly all of the actual exploits. Usually there'd be a couple of very old, widely patched exploits in there so you could see how it worked. People would download the stripped out version, play with it, then buy the actual exploit payloads/plugins.

Pretty interesting process to watch from the sidelines!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wonder why no one is looking at the obvious solution - discredit the ransomware folks. I.e. create ransomware that doesn't free your files even after you pay the ransom. As soon as word gets around that there are ransomwares like that their whole business model will collapse. Sure, this will not be nice to the (small number of) people who get screwed over but it definitely solves the larger problem.

<comment><USER12> An alternative solution is to make it illegal to pay ransomware.

<comment><USER11> That'll just make criminals out of ordinary people.

<comment><USER12> Are you saying that it'll convince literally zero people to not pay the ransom? Every ransom that does not get paid is money that doesn't contribute to the "distributing ransomware is a viable way to make money" problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Completely evil and terrifying, yet also somehow brilliant psychologically. Tricking people to install it thinking it's the Popcorn Time streaming app has a bit of irony involved.

</comment><comment><USER14> That's interesting how they use the sob story. Anyone wanting to pay is going to feel conflicted, so they give the user an out by letting them feel like they're helping poor people in Syria. They've chosen Syria because it's well- known and in the news.

I wonder if their English is poor, or if they're trying to be endearing to help their conversion rates. You could confirm the former by correlating it with what common errors people in different countries make.

It doesn't look like they expect people to infect their friends, but offering the false choice is a pretty common way of making people feel slightly more in control. It probably helps their conversion rates, even if nobody picks the blue option.

</comment><comment><USER15> Novel and innovative. This guy is disrupting the ransomware industry. ;)

</comment><comment><USER16> What I don't understand about ransomware in general is how the AES key is stored on the machine. I'm assuming that it's grabbed from the server, used only during encryption, and then scrubbed from RAM/filesystem. Otherwise, it would be possible to recover the key post-encryption. Or am I missing something?

<comment><USER17> I've read a few articles of people managing to get the key out of the ransomware programs, so it some cases it really is just stored on the system and you can find it if you know what you're doing. Those articles were a while-back though, so it's possible they've 'fixed' that issue.

Like others have said, public/private key crypto can be used to achieve this, and fairly easy: The randomware is distributed with a public key, and after generating the AES key and encrypting the system, it then encrypts the AES key using the public key and removes all other copies of the AES key. Thus, nobody with access to the system can decrypt the system now unless they have the matching private key. If you pay to decrypt your system, the program sends off the encrypted AES key, and then they send back the decrypted AES key which they got by using the matching private key. And then from there you use the AES key to decrypt the rest of the system.

<comment><USER16> That makes sense. Thanks for the explanation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This sounds like the beginnings of a future Black Mirror episode.

<comment><USER19> There was already a ransomware episode: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shut_Up_and_Dance_(Black_Mirro...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shut_Up_and_Dance_\(Black_Mirror\))

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> "Viral Marketing"

</comment><comment><USER21> The problem with ransomware is also, that it can infect a lot of people who dont have that kind of money. If they would do it decently, the would allow for partial recovery of files with rising prices per batch, and measuring how long the user could come up with the coins.

Pricebuilding exercise combined with social engineering.

God, they could go full ponzi scheming with this and get a billion people to get rich and accomplices..

</comment><comment><USER22> Clever idea, but I doubt this would work in 99% of cases.

It's basically a link to an EXE. You could probably only convince someone to run it if you have some acquaintance with them, so obviously they'd hate you afterwards. And you only get the key if they not only get infected, but pay up. And you have to do it twice.

A better method might be "get 5 people infected", regardless of payment.

<comment><USER23> Then you could just infect 5 virtual machines.

<comment><USER24> They're probably counting on the average person infected with ransomware not being able to do this

<comment><USER23> But someone could set up a service where they charge $50 and someone gives them their referral link and they install 5 times from that link.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Why is not the FBI actively targeting those criminals?

<comment><USER26> They're still going through Hillary's emails

<comment><USER27> Let's not go there. Please stay on topic with substantive comments.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> And how they know if I infected a friend's computer ? It can be mine, right ? I have just have to setup a new computer with a fresh install and repeat it again and again until they give the key.

<comment><USER29> "Send the link below to other people. If two or more people will install this file _and pay_ , we will decrypt your files for free."

<comment><USER28> Yes, of course! Damn, I read it too fast ... sorry.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Someone has been watching too much "the ring"...

</comment><comment><USER31> OSes will have to start detecting processes that do a lot of disk read/write, and perhaps network upload, and quarantine them. Also, checkpoint/log based file systems like nilfs2 can let you roll back to any point before infection.

<comment><USER32> I'm not sure that would be effective. A lot of legitimate software would get caught up in the dragnet.

<comment><USER31> Yes, and the user would have to whitelist them.

However, how much software do you really have that rewrites even 1/10th of all your documents?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Can we put quotation marks around the word "friends" to show what is really going on more clearly?

It is, in fact, recruitment into cyber crime. The title should read:

> Ransomware gives free decryption keys to victims who infect their "friends"

</comment><comment><USER34> popcorn time software is something completely different.

this sounds more like an attempt to taint the popcorn time name rather than real malware.

<comment><USER35> It seems like a far more plausible explanation that this is real malware that picked well-known software that people are likely to be downloading from sources that they're not super sure about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> If it forms a binary tree, the leaves itself will be 50% of the population. (much worse in case of 3-nary tree?)

</comment><comment><USER37> I wonder what can be changed to help find and prosecute the distributors of malware?

By the way I think that the ones held responsible and paying for the damages should be distributors, not malware developers especially if they did not know exactly how it would be used. Making malware is like making a gun, it is allowed in some countries. Maybe it will be used for good purposes.

<comment><USER38> I think that's bogus. They can and should be held accountable if they're running enterprises like this. How can malware be used for good purposes? (Mal)icious Soft(ware) doesn't sound too "good" to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Sounds like a pyramid scheme!

</comment><comment><USER40> Reamde would have unfolded quite differently had this been the case.

</comment><comment><USER41> 1 - Infect a few virtual machines

2 - Collect decryption keys

3 - Laugh at the hackers

Of course not many people out of the general population know how to make a (primarily) windows VM, but I'm surprised that others aren't mentioning it in this thread.

<comment><USER42> They require that the other people you infect _pay_ the ransom, so you'd still have to pay for the VMs. (Also [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13147428](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13147428) and replies)

<comment><USER41> Whoops, I missed that bit, that would be why. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> With airplanes, the manufacturer is on the hook until the plane is no longer in the air.

We should require OS manufacturers to do the same. They should be on the hook for security until the last device using their technology is no longer in use.

<comment><USER6> That doesn't really make sense. 'Security' is not a binary thing, many pieces of malware, quite possibly including this one, don't break the OSes security model.

The OS doesn't consider your browser downloading and running executable a problem, if it did we would all be complaining about wall gardens. If that executable wants to read and write files in your home directory it is allowed to (otherwise you couldn't download and run emacs). The fact that it happens to be encrypting them to ransom back to you isn't something the OS is really in a position to know, or do anything about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Yet another reason to avoid Windows. The only new software being released for Windows are viruses, malware and ransomware.

<comment><USER32> The only vulnerability in this case exists between the keyboard and the chair.

<comment><USER37> Do you mean one has to be a computer science graduate to use a computer? And I doubt even CS graduates can always distinguish between real software and fake one with malware inside.

I think the problem is in PC and OS design.

<comment><USER32> What I meant is that ransomware predominantly spreads by tricking the user into running malicious code, as opposed to tricking the OS. There's not a whole lot the OS can do if the user is determined to open e.g. "kittenpic.jpg.exe" or "invoice.doc.exe".

<comment><USER37> That is because user has a previous experience of double clicking files to run or view them and nothing bad happened.

> There's not a whole lot the OS can do if the user is determined to open e.g. > "kittenpic.jpg.exe" or "invoice.doc.exe".

I think there are many options:

1) do not download executable files or make them non-executable after download

2) do not run downloaded executable files

3) do not run executable files without valid signature from OS developers

4) run executable files inside a sandbox

For example, iOS uses approaches 1, 3 and 4, and Android uses 4. Only desktop operating systems (including some Linux distrbutions) allow to trick user into running a malware with full access to user's files by clicking a link and pressing Ok twice. That is why I consider this is OS fault, not user's.

In many environments users are not supposed to download and run executable files. For example, in a workplace an employee is supposed to use only software approved by the company. And still no operating system provides an easy way to enforce it.

Imagine if pressing a wrong button on a washing machine would cause installing malware. Would you like to buy such device?

<comment><USER32> > Imagine if pressing a wrong button on a washing machine would cause > installing malware. Would you like to buy such device?

A washing machine isn't a Turing machine.

<comment><USER45> Ah, the glorious days before the Internet of Things made everything a general purpose washing computer.

For instance: [http://www.samsung.com/uk/consumer/home- appliances/laundry/w...](http://www.samsung.com/uk/consumer/home- appliances/laundry/washing-machine/WF12F9E6P4W/EU)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


OkCupid is awesome, and here's why - <AUTHOR> http://impulse.kirillzubovsky.com/post/3282254205/when-it-rains-the-streets-are-always-wet-but-is-it

<comment><USER2> OkCupid's team often publish interesting studies, based on the tests they provide to their users. The last I read, "The best questions for a first date", finds some funny correlations. E.g. between the probability of having sex on a first date, and liking the taste of beer! It's simple statistics, but the charts are provided as a proof.

[http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/the-best-questions-for- fir...](http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/the-best-questions-for-first-dates/)</comment>


Bitcoin Spear Phishing the greedy - <AUTHOR>

Spear-phishermen are aiming for your wallet. At first glance, it may look like you could score someone else's wallet because some noob sent the wrong person this message. All you have to do is download his wallet and, BAM, you can transfer his coins to your wallet. Not so fast... You would be giving out an IP more likely to have a wallet of it's own, and the goo.gl would download a zip archive, which I suspect if you opened it would be some sort of malware to hack your system for it's coins.
As you may notice, I changed identifying details.
""" Hello YYYYYY…
I just did what you advised me to do but the problem remains the same : importing the private key is not working…. drives me nuts! Last time I checked blockchain.info ( https://blockchain.info/address/XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX ) there was still XX.XXXXXXXXX BTC ! But no way my bitcoinqt client loads the key so I am stuck with those BTCs.
Thanks for offering your help with this. Here is my wallet.dat with the password http://goo.gl/XXXXX. If you need anything else let me know. If you can load the key please send the BTCs to VFVFFVFVFVFVFVFVFVFVFVFVFVFVF
This would help me so much. Thanks YYYYYY!
ZZZZZZ"""
The href of that blockchain.info pointed to a different url http://campaignbird.com/click/BNBNBNBNBNBNB and the goo.gl resolves to a zip file at a .nl domain. <comment><USER2> Got one of these today as well, this one claimed to have about 30 BTC</comment>