Brief thoughts on the "Google memo" - <AUTHOR> https://juliagalef.com/2017/08/08/brief-thoughts-on-the-google-memo/ <comment><USER3> > However, his overall claim that there exist personality differences between > genders that differentially affect men's and women's interest in and > aptitude for tech jobs, is what people are mostly getting mad at. And that's > a claim that seems plausibly true. Not obviously true, but also not a claim > you would be justified in emphatically dismissing as false, as many people > have, including Google, who called them "incorrect assumptions."

This is quite well-put, and gets at the heart of what pisses people off.

There exists a large set of hypotheses which are plausible, and not just "spaghetti-monster God" plausible, but "> 20% chance this is the case" plausible.

Many of those hypotheses, however, are shouted down as "racist", "sexist", or some other "ist" when they come up, and all of their possible costs are then listed in a litany, with all possible benefits ignored.

It's intellectually stifling, and I'm no longer interested in enabling people who use that kind of rhetoric.

<comment><USER4> >It's intellectually stifling, and I'm no longer interested in enabling people who use that kind of rhetoric.

Not only is it stifling, it is tearing our society apart. If a person believes one of these "forbidden hypotheses" they sudden find themselves to be the target of irrational hatred and hostile actions.

Everyone must understand that demonizing people creates demons who may one day seek violent revenge.

<comment><USER5> > violent revenge

If not violent, we're creating the next generation of bigots.

The current people identifying with James Damore (=men who were promised they would be selected on skills) are as young as 15 years old. Do we expect them to be inclusive during the remaining 45 years before their retirement?

I don't even understand how I should adapt my expectations for career. If competence isn't the criteria anymore, what is, then? Do opportunities now depend on our ethnicity, gender and religion? "Sorry, we know the situation is unfair for males, we're only looking for males who don't mind never being promoted and who know how to shut up." Should I choose an education based on the male/female balance in that sector? In which direction should a white male adapt?

<comment><USER6> Accomplished Diplomacy is the skill of choice. If you can manipulate all those political warriors and fanatics to support propelling you on - against there own interests, you may have a career still.

Think of it, less like a race of skilled people- and more, like rising through the ranks of a political party.

<comment><USER7> But I chose computers because I like clear cut solutions and the lack of bullshit......

<comment><USER6> The fundamental problem is- you where to succesfull. Society moved into your flat, and with society came the priest-caste and the various lords of various thiefdoms.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > This topic is harmful to people and we shouldn't discuss it

It would be so very refreshing to hear a company just say "let's not throw incendiary memos around at work; it upsets people", instead of feeding the fire with a rationalized social stance.

Actually, I _have_ seen great CEO's defuse situations like this. I don't understand why it's not done more often.

<comment><USER9> I take umbrage that its actually harmful - I'd totally get behind the idea that its a gross distraction.

I really believe truly that each gender (because of biology and societal gender roles) has been given some unique problems solving gifts - and that we're shoving square pegs in round holes to gloss that over - but there is no universality here - I've seen men that are amazing at 'people' problems - <USER2> women who are fantastic at 'thing' problems - gender in my opinion is just another factor - like experience, knowledge, personality, education (and even age - often in engineering older _is_ better) and others that factor into whether someone is suitable for a role.

Right now, however, we as a society are not.. 'evolved' enough to discuss stuff like this as rational adults - it turns into a very personal argument very very quickly and ends up doing more harm than the (very real, but) small good that can be accomplished by taking into account what is inherent to us.

<comment><USER10> On the contrary, it's a sign of our "evolution" that sexist ideas like the one in your second paragraph are now increasingly subject to fierce rebuttal.

<comment><USER9> There is a different between refuting (proving it wrong) and rebutting (stating it is wrong) an idea - I've seen many rebuttals, but few refutals.

People being different should never be used as an brickbat to claim inferiority - all people are different, and equality is one of the most important values to be found.

<comment><USER10> Totally agree - but in my opinion, and in the knowledge that this will receive a lot of downvotes, such statements don't require refuting, only rebutting. In my opinion, again, only statements which bear at least a nugget of rationality require the expenditure of one's own rationality in the effort to refute them.

<comment><USER9> I can argue my statements (and the underlying memo) do have a nugget of rationality - we can debate on that.

Also, I'm pleased to see you didnt take downvotes either.

<comment><USER10> Your civility is making it hard for me to pigeon-hole you as an unreasonable reactionary. Please desist.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I previously mentioned that in a previous life, I worked myself thru school --somewhat blue collar jobs.

People, predominantly older black and white, under-educated, had quite a few views people who go beyond high school might consider offensive or ignorant and stereotyping: about race, aptitude, gender, sexuality, weight, promiscuity, prowess, etc.

You know what --people worked, they joked, occasionally scuffled --and got over it. They made their money, they saved, they retired.

It could have been better. It could have been more professional. It could have been nice and bland (in a good way)

You know one thing people didn't shy away from was strong opinions on things, one way or the other. No one got fired for cursing, or being un-PC. You'd get sacked for theft, but they called their managers and bosses asses all the time. I can't imagine Googlers calling their bosses arseholes [even if deserved]

I sometimes miss blue collar candor. Of course, when you're in it, it gets tiresome, redundant and unproductive.

</comment><comment><USER12> I find the idealism present in this thread both sweet and optimistic, and simultaneously incredibly naive. In a way, it's SV/startup culture in a nutshell. "Anything is possible if we work together and use our brains!".... "Move fast and break things!"... "What could possibly go wrong?"

The reality is that we are only a generation from a time when not hiring black people or women for jobs requiring intelligence or competence was standard operating procedure and saying out loud "You really think hiring a black/female engineer is a good idea?" would not have been considered especially controversial. Our parents (or grandparents for some of you) lived through this time, saw the incredible damage it did to millions of people, and wisely decided to seal it away with a powerful ward (laws + social taboo). This is of course an oversimplification of a process that started long ago and is not finished - but it will have to suffice as a metaphor.

Keep in mind, this process was (and is) a hard fought war with many casualties - friendships, families, and of course actual lost lives. When I chastise my 73 year old father for not being progressive enough, he reminds me that his mother, who grew up during the depression in the south, did not consider black people to be human. His outspoken support for civil rights caused a major rift in their relationship that never healed before she died.

Of course there are costs to this ward of taboos - as well as the similar ones we are presently building around LGBT people. Any time an avenue of discussion is cut off, we are all slightly poorer for it. I would argue however that we know what is behind that ward - awful things that hurt people - and I would argue that right now, it is just not worth it. Maybe in a century we will be ready to have more frank conversations about sex, gender, and race, but I am pretty sure we are not ready now.

<comment><USER13> That seems to me like a pretty length way of saying you agree with option 2:

 _Say "This topic is harmful to people and we shouldn't discuss it" (a little draconian maybe, but at least intellectually honest)_

<comment><USER14> You should read the post again and perhaps use a bit of generosity this time.

<comment><USER15> But that's all that is there. It says "I would argue for X" and then doesn't argue for it, just claims that it must be so. So it is just that _minus_ intellectual honesty.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The core of what he is asking, and failed to drilled into sufficiently in my view, is exactly what the OP says: what % of the gender gap in various fields can be explained (within that field specifically) due to demographically correlated population preferences vs other factors.

I think there are two unforced errors:

\- Trying to tie things back to causation due to biological factors gave cherry pickers sufficient ammo to snipe him as some kind of supremacist, sexist, bigot, whatever. Explaining causation was unnecessary for his argument. All that was needed was highlighting statistical correlations measured on demographics which could influence career choice. The question then reduces down to "do these correlations actually influence career choice or not" not anything about causation. From there, it's easy to ask "if so, how much? Zero is an acceptable answer."

\- He should have made a good faith argument of what the world looks like if you assume these demographically correlated attributes have no effect. It was important that he really highlight other potential explanations, since to people who disagree with his premise fundamentally, "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." Once illustrated, leave it to readers to decide on the absurdity or validity of that counter example. Some would consider it a sufficient "proof" by counter example to make his point, others would not be convinced but at least could digest his argument more likely as one of good faith not bigotry.

In general, a lack of empathy for the lens through which his biggest, most vocal critic will read his argument was his undoing. The best path to having this discussion (regardless of merit) would be to continually buttress the argument on all sides with qualifiers and signs of good faith to those who will read it in the worst possible light. He did some of that, but not nearly enough.

<comment><USER17> I'd wager a lack of empathy is the source of most of humanity's problems at this moment.

<comment><USER18> I think there is lack of trust forbidding that empathy. If you don't trust that this guy has good intentions, it's very very hard to have any empathy towards him.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Yes, there may or may not be biological differences. Or cultural differences. In fact, it's almost certainly both, and it really doesn't matter.

The single most important argument people like this ex-Googler never seem to understand is that they're confusing what is with what ought to be.

If there's one defining characteristic of humanity, it's our ability to overcome biology (the 'hardware',so to speak), using our unique 'software' of self-awareness and abstract reasoning.

Even if there were jobs that women were less qualified for, or had less interest in, we would want lower the difference, with equal representation if possible.

Take politics as an easy example: it's a profession that is closely associated with a bunch of stereotypical 'male' characteristics, such as the pursuit of power and the willingness to engage in conflict.

BUT: even if women as a group had a lower propensity to seek elected office, they still have an interest in being represented somewhat proportionally.

That argument easily extends to leadership positions in the private sector, and it has become relevant for the IT industry because of the growing power of technology over all aspects of life.

<comment><USER16> > Even if there were jobs that women were less qualified for, or had less > interest in, we would want lower the difference, with equal representation > if possible.

I agree that a 50/50 split in men and female software engineers seems like a desirable thing. If it existed today I would not consider it surprising, and I would consider it to be a great thing. That said: is this also true for bricklayers and construction workers, who are basically 100% male? What about nurses or child care givers, who are predominantly female?

How do you decide which jobs that have gender skew warrant specific attention towards a balanced gender ratio? All of them? The ones that don't involve physical labor? In sports we accept men on average have higher physical strength and endurance than women, hence league separation, so perhaps gender skew is expected here and uncontroversial for the same reasons? What about the jobs that are particularly high paying or high status? Should it be the case that everyone should get an equal share of the pie of value for these desirable fields, but less desirable fields do not matter because of their high supply? Perhaps its just the jobs that just don't seem to make any sense as to why gender would skew them that are the ones we should worry about?

I think answering this question concretely and consistently is a pre-requisite to having a constructive debate about this subject. There is nothing to me particularly special or interesting about software engineering in particular that makes it stand out among other fields that are heavily gender skewed that do not seem to cause nearly as much debate, other than that it seems counter- intuitive that there _should_ be any such imbalance, given the nature of the work. Perhaps that is enough, a "gut check" if a field should be gender dominated. If the "gut check" says "that doesn't make sense", we should strive for equality.

But here we are, back at a facet of the original memo's thesis: when those gut checks pass they are probably based upon internalized models we have for gender preferences. If you are being uncharitable, stereotypes. If you are being nice, statistically significant correlations of preferences tied to gender, backed by evidence.

<comment><USER19> > is this also true for bricklayers and construction workers...?

No, it is not–and I tried to make that argument: you want female CEOs and politicians and software engineers not (just) for the sake of each of these CEOs and engineers. You want it because these roles come with power over other people, either directly, because they make the law or they design the software we all use. And also, quite generically, they are well-paid, and money is also power.

There are, obviously, no absolutes in this: I wouldn't for a second doubt that I, as a white male can be adequately represented by a black congresswoman.

But I can easily see that, for example, more women at the CXO level could lead to better company-financed childcare.

I think what's important to mention is that this isn't a zero-sum game where any advances by women create equal and opposite losses for men: when women fail to advance to the level that their skills would usually warrant (not just because they didn't get that top job, but also because they got the impression that they should rather go into nursing than medicine etc.), then we are, as a society, letting these skills go to waste.

To see this mechanism, just consider what would happen if we prohibited everyone born in the summer months to work: would that make it easier for the other 3/4 to find a job? Of course not: their loss of income would result in a loss of demand, and therefore jobs, of equal proportions.

This effect, together with the idea that higher diversity seems to also result in better performance of companies, should more than compensate any first- order losses that better representation may initially bring.

And, specifically to your question about bricklayers etc.: of course nobody complains about not having access to something that they don't want. But women being underrepresented in some of these labor jobs doesn't mean they're getting a better deal than men: the female overrepresentation in nursing alone probably makes up for it, considering how many nurses there are. And I'd even say us men have at some point collectively decided that housework is rather unattractive, and women do the vast majority of that.

<comment><USER16> By your separation of "direct vs indirect" power it seems hard to know where the line is. Arguably, my barista has more power over me than any software engineer, because my barista can poison me if they so choose. It seems like any argument can be made that if someone is in a field that can influence other human beings they have power, so it seems hard to pin down. (though i agree some roles are clearly power oriented, like executives and political roles.)

> "And I'd even say us men have at some point collectively decided that > housework is rather unattractive, and women do the vast majority of that."

This to me is a pretty huge reach (and seems vaguely sexist) but if you accept this then I don't see how you can not just apply what you said here to other fields. Do you think women seek out housework?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> "Intellectual honesty" \-- that's the phrase I couldn't think of. It seems to me the stronger the condemnation the greater degree to which his arguments were misrepresented.

</comment><comment><USER21> I don't understand why it's such big news. No matter what's in it, it's just some random guy who happens to work at google. It's not a senior exec, it's not an official google position, it's.... nothing. I just don't understand why what this guy thinks warrants discussion?

<comment><USER22> It's not about the guy. It's about what he said. And what he said is highly polarizing.

<comment><USER23> But anyone can say or write something idiotic and inflammatory (just for the sake of argument, let's assumed that the memo was such), would it have become this huge thing if he didn't work at Google? If not, then why is Google placed on such a pedestal and why do we lionize and in turn pillory Googlers? I think part of the problem is the place Google occupies in the popular imagination. It's sort of this lightning rod and poster child of Silicon Valley. Had this happen at most company, it would have simply been an HR issue at that company.

<comment><USER24> It sparkled a discussion because it wasn't idiotic. It makes sense and it causes cognitive dissonance among certain parts of the population.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Author does good here, but perpetuates the same mistake most people talking about the memo do:

There were additional sections after the "hypothesis", which had specific policy suggestions--most of which were aimed at helping the situation for a broader class of people and for improving visibility into the process. That somehow keeps getting missed.

<comment><USER26> And he also pointed out that people are scared to actually talk about these things at Google. Considering he was fired, that seemed like a pretty on the mark observation.

<comment><USER22> If worked at Google and thought the evidence suggests that due to natural difference in the sexes, women are less likely to seek a job in tech -- that's not an ethical opinion on whether that is as it should be, but an opinion (whether right or wrong) on how things are -- then I'd be more scared than ever of voicing that opinion.

<comment><USER26> Yes, and if the evidence he was using was wrong the best thing Google can do is to explain why it is wrong to change the perception. Instead, they are basically telling people that if they look at the evidence and reach a similar conclusion, they stand a chance of being fired for talking about it.

If someone points to the fact that there are many more blacks in the NFL than can be accounted if football talent is randomly distributed in the population and points to some evidence that maybe there are biological differences behind those numbers, the worst thing you can do is try to punish them for thinking. If they are using bad data, address that. If they are making a logical error, address that. But you can't just try to punish them because they looked at the statistics and the evidence and reached a conclusion that you don't like, but don't want to explain why you think it is wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The real tragedy in the discussion is this assumption, quoted from the OP:

 _" His hypothesis implies that personality differences mean a smaller percentage of women will be interested in and/or qualified for a Google job than men"_

Empathy and social intelligence are actively disqualifying factors for a job at Google, or software in general? That is so wrong on so many levels.

I really like Bob Wyman's take on this:

[https://medium.com/@bobwyman/back-in-the-1970s-when-i- first-...](https://medium.com/@bobwyman/back-in-the-1970s-when-i-first-got-in- the-software-business-i-remember-there-being-a-much-higher-f70e8197fbd9)

<comment><USER13> I completely agree that communication and people skills are necessary to be a great programmer.

But consider that in order to get a job as a programmer, I first had to spend 4 years taking relatively intensive courses in math and computer science (even longer if you go back to elective courses in high school), and empathy was not an important factor in getting through my coursework or examinations. Sure there are other paths into the industry, but no matter how you get here, the fact is that learning to code is intensive.

Consider also that a large portion of the population can't pass a FizzBuzz programming interview (at least if Jeff Atwood is to be believed). And if you can't write FizzBuzz, no amount of empathy in the world is going to make you a good programmer.

So yes, "soft skills" are tremendously important. But "hard skills" take priority. And whatever the cause may be, the fact is that right now there is a larger proportion of men than women who possess those hard skills.

<comment><USER28> > But consider that in order to get a job as a programmer, I first had to > spend 4 years taking relatively intensive courses in math and computer > science (even longer if you go back to elective courses in high school), and > empathy was not an important factor in getting through my coursework or > examinations. Sure there are other paths into the industry, but no matter > how you get here, the fact is that learning to code is intensive.

If you look at the number of maths majors compared to the number of computer science majors, this argument isn't very persuasive. The former had more than 40% women in 2012, the latter less than 20%.

[1] [http://www.randalolson.com/2014/06/14/percentage-of- bachelor...](http://www.randalolson.com/2014/06/14/percentage-of-bachelors- degrees-conferred-to-women-by-major-1970-2012/)

<comment><USER13> Couple of thoughts on the percentage of female math majors...

First - a significant percentage of math majors eventually go into teaching. I wasn't able to find the exact percentage, but 3 of the 5 most common jobs for math majors are in teaching. Second - the types of math courses that undergraduate CS majors take is different from the types of courses that math majors take - especially math majors who are planning to go into teaching. CS degrees tend to focus more on discrete math and algorithms, whereas as math degrees focus on... well... I don't actually know what math degrees require. This is pure anecdote (and probably bound to piss off a few math majors), but I remember taking a group theory course in my 4th year and all of the math majors in the course seemed to struggle far more than the CS majors in the course.

So if you consider that math major often means teacher, then no I don't think that data point about 40% of math majors being female does much to dispel traditional gender stereotypes.

[https://datausa.io/story/06-16-2016_math- teachers/](https://datausa.io/story/06-16-2016_math-teachers/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> > 2\. Say "This topic is harmful to people and we shouldn't discuss it" (a > little draconian maybe, but at least intellectually honest)

This is so wrong in so many ways. Don't call back in question that the universe was created in 7 day, that the earth is flat, global warming etc. Because it is harmful to believers ?

It's not just a difference in personality. It's a difference in behavioral and intellectual capability. Denying or repressing it is plain stupid. This essay proves that something is totally wrong in the way people handle this issue. But this is sadly not a surprize.

<comment><USER13> I think it's fair for an employer to say to its employees. After all, you are there to get work done, not solve all of the problems in the world.

But in this particular issue I think that Google actually opened the door by implementing a diversity program that favors one group of people over another (note: I personally have no issues with affirmative action programs, but let's at least be intellectually honest about what they are), and forcing employees to sit through special training. Now he is complaining about workplace conditions. And firing employees for complaining about workplace conditions is not ok (and potentially illegal in California).

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> What happened to the good old days of vim vs emacs?

The real basilisk is believing basilisks exist. Heterodoxy strengthens us all and if you chose to exclude the smart people because their thoughts are unhelpful, or patently offensive, you might find yourself without any allies when you need them most.

<comment><USER31> > What happened to the good old days of vim vs emacs?

Whoa, whoa. Are you trying to start WW3?

<comment><USER32> Nah, it's just a precursor skirmish for spaces-vs-tabs.

<comment><USER33> Okay, now we're talking about Armageddon. Why bring it up when one option is clearly better than the other?

<comment><USER34> Neither! [http://nickgravgaard.com/elastic- tabstops/](http://nickgravgaard.com/elastic-tabstops/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I think very few men even if they agree with point 1, would dare advocate that at their workplaces for fear of getting fired.

</comment><comment><USER36> > However, his overall claim that there exist personality differences between > genders that differentially affect men's and women's interest in and > aptitude for tech jobs, is what people are mostly getting mad at. And that's > a claim that seems plausibly true. Not obviously true, but also not a claim > you would be justified in emphatically dismissing as false, as many people > have, including Google, who called them "incorrect assumptions."

I'm sorry, the last sentence is not true - Pichai was very careful not to say which parts of the memo were "incorrect assumptions".

</comment><comment><USER37> Note that Sundar Pichai is very clearly in category 2, i.e. he does not dismiss the memo as untruthful or expressly voices disagreement.

What irks me is that the discussion in the main stream media ignores the fact that someone was fired for writing relevant information in a forum explicitely introduced by the employer to anonymously voicing workplace opinions (a "safe space"), not by "circulating a memo". Maybe discussions in this forum can be restricted to arguments about whether the fried chicken was particularly bad today.

<comment><USER13> _What irks me is that the discussion in the main stream media ignores the fact that someone was fired for writing relevant information in a forum explicitely introduced by the employer to anonymously voicing workplace opinions (a "safe space"), not by "circulating a memo"._

Citation on this point? I have been following the news on this story pretty closely and have not been able to find out much about how the "memo" was initially "published". I agree that if true, this would be relevant to whether or not he deserved to be fired.

<comment><USER37> Search for "The document was first posted to an internal company forum". I cannot find an authoritative source, but it seems much more plausible to me than James Damore mailing it to the global Google email list. If you know enterprisey social networks, posting on some forum there might send notifications to subscribers (IBM Connections does this, for example), but stating "James Damore wrote a memo" is very misleading.

Now, I don't deny that Damore is somewhat of a (smart and polite) troll, but he played fair within the rules set by Google by posting to a forum dedicated to workplace issues. His message to SJWs is clearly that he hates the game, not the players, but Google responds by banning an opposing player instead of honestly acknowledging the fact that they have a large part of the workforce with a conservative mindset who are silenced by company policy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> > His hypothesis implies that personality differences mean a smaller > percentage of women will be interested in and/or qualified for a Google job > than men, but that doesn't mean any of the women at Google fall below the > "qualified" threshold.

I think its fair to say that not everyone shares that view.

This is probably the key to controversy in my mind. You could read it that way.

However, you can choose to interpret the sections about 'Hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for "diversity" candidates by decreasing the false negative rate' and 'Alienating conservatives is both non-inclusive and generally bad business because conservatives tend to be higher in conscientiousness, which is required for much of the drudgery and maintenance work characteristic of a mature company.' as 'some people we're hiring don't cut it, we should hire more white men'.

That's not what it says. You don't have to interpret it that way.

...but clearly _a lot of people did_.

My advice? Stop defending it. You can talk about these issues _without_ this memo.

Forget the memo. The memo was stupid and misguided. Releasing it internally at work was unreservedly stupid. ...but what's done is done.

Do you want to spend the next year talking about the memo, and the specifics of 'did it or did it not _technically_ say such and such', or the actual issues he was trying to raise?

<comment><USER39> > 'Hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for "diversity" > candidates by decreasing the false negative rate'

Imagine you have 100 people applying for 10 positions, and the demographic breakdown of applicants (based on current trends in tech) is 20 women and 80 men.

Let's also say that being male or female doesn't give you any special aptitude, and that the aptitude of all candidates regardless of gender follows a normal distribution along a bell-curve.

Because of that and because of Google's standards, let's say that only 25% of all candidates have the skills and qualifications necessary to work at Google, which breaks down to 5 women and 20 men.

Once again assuming a normal distribution with neither men nor women over or underrepresented in skill level, then without any sort of correcting for diversity, candidates would need to be in the top 10% of all candidates to receive a job offer (10 / 100). , this is 2 women and 8 men, leaving us with a false negative rate (i.e. people skilled enough to work at Google but who get declined) of 3 women and 12 men.

But with an eye for diversity, Google decides to hire all the qualified women (5), with the remaining positions taken by men, so 5 and 5, a 50/50 split.

Each of the candidates is qualified and capable of working for Google, but the false negative rate for women has been reduced from 3 to 0. This is what he meant by an effectively lowered bar by decreasing the false negative rate. The women now only need to be in the top 25% of all women candidates, whereas the men need to be in the top 6.25% of male candidates.

There's nothing false or wrong about that statement, it's just maths that happens as a result of the diverse hiring practices skewing the distribution of candidates, with the bar being 'effectively' lowered for the diverse candidates from top 10% to top 25%.

This has the unfortunate side effect that over time, if you are taking the top 6.25% from the non-diverse group (men in this case), but the top 25% from the other group then the non-diverse group will eventually have on average more high-performers (which affects things like salaries, promotions and more).

It's not to say that men are better, just that the hiring practices have been structured to select men from a higher performing percentage of the population. You would get the same results in favor of women if you were only selecting the top 6.25% of women vs the top 25% of men.

<comment><USER40> Your analysis assumes that it's always the best candidate that's hired. Given how much tech companies are afraid of false positives (i.e. hiring candidates that turnout to be bad), I'm not sure that assumption is warranted. It's more likely that there's a bar, and _everyone_ that clears that bar could be hired, and then a (random) sample of those people are.

So in the above example, it's still top 25% of women _and_ men that are hired, it's just that a top-25% woman has a higher chance of being hired (because of "fast-tracking" or other affirmative action policies) than a top-25% man.

Personally I find it hard to believe that the companiesdoing affirmative action manage to do it without lowering the bar, but it's definitely logically and statistically possible.

<comment><USER39> > Your analysis assumes that it's always the best candidate that's hired.

Which is something Google has gone on record as saying it does, see for example here: [http://www.businessinsider.com/how-google-hires- exceptional-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/how-google-hires-exceptional- employees-2016-2/#1-set-an-uncompromisable-high-standard-1)

But you are correct in that my analysis makes several assumptions that might not hold up in real life, it was meant merely to show that the statement from the original memo doesn't mean (as many people incorrectly thought) that Damore was saying Google was lowering its standards for diversity hires.

> Personally I find it hard to believe that the companiesdoing affirmative > action manage to do it without lowering the bar

Ok but even assuming as you do above that a random sample is hired such that "it's still top 25% of women and men that are hired," then you have lowered the bar for everyone from 10% to 25%.

Yes that still meets their own internal requirements, but is what the author meant when he said 'effectively' lower the bar by decreasing the false negative rate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Recycling (and slightly modifying) a previous comment [0]:

Certain topics, that otherwise might be interesting to discuss, are surrounded by minefields. One such topic is the distribution of intellectual ability within subgroups of the population. This minefield was not put in place by a repressive government. Nor was it secretly put in place overnight by a fanatic band of social-justice zealots.

My observation, which I will offer without citation, is that this particular minefield was put in place, mine by mine, over a period of decades, through a process of fairly broad societal consensus.

To those who suggest clearing the minefield, thus permitting this topic to be discussed freely in public, I will invoke the principle of Chesterton's fence [1]: Before you talk of removing the mines, you need to show that you understand why the minefield was created in the first place, and you need to explain why now is the time to remove it.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14970661](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14970661)

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Chesterton%27s_fence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Chesterton%27s_fence)

<comment><USER42> > _I will invoke the principle of Chesterton 's fence [1]: Before you talk of > removing the mines, you need to show that you understand why the minefield > was created in the first place, and you need to explain why now is the time > to remove it._

That's a bit different to what the Wikipedia page describes it as. It describes it as being to important to understand the reasons for X before trying to change X. It doesn't say anything about needing to show that you understand it, and needing to explain why now is the time to remove it.

Those two additional requirements seem unreasonable for wanting to talk about some topic. For example, I would imagine that, 50-100 years ago, in a lot of the world, the idea of discussing the legitimacy of gay marriage would have been mostly taboo in public. To say that anyone wanting to broach the topic needed to show why the taboo was created in the first place, and why then was the time to remove it, seems unreasonable to me.

\----

As a sideline, that Wikipedia entry is, in its current state, pretty poor quality. Here is a quote from it:

 _History is full of examples of negative outcomes that resulted from the failure to understand this admonition. Pandora opened a box containing all the world 's evils. Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, despite God's admonition not to, and the whole world was plunged into original sin_

<comment><USER32> > That's a bit different to what the Wikipedia page describes it as. It > describes it as being to important to understand the reasons for X before > trying to change X. It doesn't say anything about needing to show that you > understand it, and needing to explain why now is the time to remove it.

That seems like the same thing to me...

<comment><USER42> Understanding X is one thing, having to provide a demonstration of that to others, that is considered adequate to others, is another.

Understanding the reasons for X before trying to change X is separate from needing to show why the present time is right for changing X.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> > 1)/[sic]he never made a case for why we shouldn't think other factors are > even bigger

Really? The memo wasn't about answering life's questions, but to propose narrow solutions with based on pointed evidence. Preference or not, attacking the hypothesis because you want a different one answered is idiotic and is not a proper response. It's basically a common SJW ad hominem. "You just aren't smart enough to understand what's going on here!"

Julia might want to look at the nordic countries that have pushed the gender gaps even wider with some very sophisticated progressive social policies to prevent other factors.

</comment><comment><USER37> In addition to people in favor of affirmative action and people opposed to affirmative action, there's the large class of people who are in favor of affirmative action, but against the political correctness pressure of having to act like they believe this in for the benefit of all instead of the explicit benefit of the affected minority.

</comment><comment><USER44> This column is set in a modern edition of Baskerville, one of my all-time favourite typefaces and (unlike Garamond and Optima) one that has now transitioned beautifully to a pixel display. Ironically the first time I saw Baskerville on a screen it was the heavy glyphs of Google's early (ca.1998) logo, in which it seemed to me rather flabby and unwell. So it is delightful to see this variant, like an old friend showing up looking happy and healthy. I love the vitality of those broad-shouldered, energetic capitals, and the careful flourishes of the italic form that so gracefully engage us for asides and for emphasis! And that open bowl on the 'g' for which I am always such a sucker.

One day I hope there will be a usable screen variant of Garamond. I've had a tinker and I know it's beyond my own very limited design abilities to achieve.

The typography of the Google Memo, by contrast, is simply dismal and a sorry reminder of why I don't use Google Docs.

</comment><comment><USER45> I don't doubt that the writer of the memo had the best of intentions with this memo. And there's even some parts that I could support.

But the main thing that gets to me is the idea of biological differences being partially to blame. He views males as predetermined to be better engineers. And he was a senior engineer who was in a hiring position. Someone who is hiring engineers, that views female engineers as biologically inferior for the job, allows for a system of discriminatory hiring to occur.

<comment><USER20> > that views female engineers as biologically inferior for the job

Did you read the article? Here's the money quote:

> His hypothesis implies that personality differences mean a smaller > percentage of women will be interested in and/or qualified for a Google job > than men, but that doesn't mean any of the women at Google fall below the > "qualified" threshold.

None of his expressed views lead me to assume that he'd think less of a female candidate that made it through the screening process -- and that's a viewpoint he's explicitly concerned about protecting. Even if some of his opinions did lead him to have biases at least he's open about them and interested in examining them which is the first step to fixing them.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Most creative and/or effective use of a domain name? - <AUTHOR> The question should be explanatory, but I think some domain names are more effective or eye catching than others. This is especially true with the new tlds available.<p>Any favorites? I recently saw deno.land that I thought fit perfectly. <comment><USER2> The domain bico.media serves media files from the Bitcoin SV blockchain</comment>


Using semantic waves to improve explanations and learning in computing - <AUTHOR> https://blog.teachcomputing.org/quick-read-6-semantic-waves/ <comment><AUTHOR> I didn't know this technique had a name but I've often used it when I've written books and tutorials. Learned about it from Linda Liukas of Hello Ruby [1].

[1] [https://helloruby.substack.com/p/no-03-computer-science- in-6...](https://helloruby.substack.com/p/no-03-computer-science- in-60-seconds)</comment>


Retreat, rethink, regroup, relaunch - <AUTHOR> http://lacquer.fi/pauli/blog/2013/11/retreat-rethink-regroup-relaunch/

<comment><AUTHOR> This is my personal 2013 activity report for the Thanksgiving occasion.

Spoiler - it's mostly failures, but with a glimmer of hope! :)</comment>


Security Will Need Big Insight, Not Just Big Data - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/10/25/security-will-need-big-insight-not-just-big-data/

<comment><AUTHOR> Neill Occhiogrosso of Costanoa Venture Capital discusses areas for exploration in infosec as IT mega-trends and would-be hacker profiles change.</comment>


Ask HN: A credit to site/app's UI designer? - <AUTHOR>

While it is easy to spot who designed the cover of a CD, a book or a poster, when it comes to websites/apps UI, there is no convenient way for that.
The current state is totally depends on the site's owners whether or not to give a credit line, in fact, unless it is a free theme integrated into a blog, in most cases one cannot tell from the site/app itself who is the creative soul and mind behind that specific amazing piece of art one is currently observing.
I am in a point of searching for a site designer, and was thinking, instead of telling one, do me something nice an elegant, minimal and clear such as A or B or C, I should simply hire the one who designed A or B or C directly.
But I cannot found them.
I was thinking what if someone will come with a single form to provide site's design credit(s) that will be easy to adopt and integrate, either via headers, or pre-defined URI or alike.
Wouldn't that will be a nice thing?
IMHO, this will make the world a better place, no matter how small this might look.
Think about a freelance [wo]man out there who will get leads and new business opportunities. <comment><USER2> I get what you're saying but what you're asking for serves no purpose for the site owners or business itself. People go to X for the product or service they provide, not to know who developed or designed the site. While I get why you'd like to know, going by your reasoning, it would be easy to argue why can't everyone also list who developed the site or where its hosted, etc... The list can get quite long and it doesn't make sense to list those things to most people and their intended audience.

If you genuinely want to know who designed A, B, or C, email the owners of A, B, and C, and ask them who designed the site, and maybe even for a referral.

This also doesn't take into account the fact that maybe A, B, and C were designed by the founder, who may not be a contractor for hire. It also doesn't take into account premium design firm prices you might not want to pay.

Point being, there are ways for you to go about finding out the information you need with a little bit of work rather than thinking the detail you want to know really makes "the world a better place" when it fact it doesn't. There's nothing wrong with you trying to find the info just because its not listed on a footer link somewhere.

I should also point out that the link in your HN profile (<http://www.reguluslabs.com/>) also doesn't show who designed the site... Just saying... "Be the change you want to see the in world"

<comment><AUTHOR> bottom up:

1\. reguluslabs.com was not designed by a "designer" ratehr, by me. Hence, this is irrelevant, as those are the cases you realized yourself which designer for hire is irrelevant.

2\. I am willing to pay whatever it takes for the good job I expect, as I am expecting to be paid for mine, not sure why you assume I did not take that into account.

3\. I suspect that twitter founders (simple.com and squareup.com are sites I loved) will bother answer my email.

4\. apparently, there is a thing called humans.txt which I forgot about, yet it is the answer for this issue.

have a nice day, and I wish you a happy new year.

<comment><USER2> I wasn't implying that you definitely wouldn't pay premium prices. I used it as an loose example, hence the term "might".

As for you assuming the founders of simple.com and squareup.com not responding, that's an assumption at best. All you can do is try. And the founders don't need to respond. Anyone with knowledge of who designed the site can.

Glad you got your answer. Best wishes to you as well =]

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Some good sites employ humans.txt, similar to robots.txt That might be helpful to you.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ooops, forgot all about this..

Will google[1] or that, see if anything good comes up

By the way, <http://www.google.com/humans.txt> asks to come work at google.

[1] <https://www.google.com/#q=inurl:humans.txt></comment></comment>


U.S. bill seeks to give Americans more control over online data - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-congress-privacy-idUSKCN1PA2SG <comment><USER2> Actual bill[0]. Synopsis[1].

[0] - [https://www.rubio.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/3859c1d4-fd...](https://www.rubio.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/3859c1d4-fd09-47c1-afa1-c1684e2f8df9/A9470F75C36C8115D756746340CC1E55.american- data-dissemination-act.pdf)

[1] - [https://www.rubio.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/afe71d4b-20...](https://www.rubio.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/afe71d4b-201e-4273-b136-eb0555623b98/2F5D3F8CBF7E2BF65DB6E0FCF99D2797.add- act-one-pager.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER3> that is an extremely charitable interpretation of this bill.</comment>


Why the Go Language Won't Be Successful - <AUTHOR> http://www.koszek.com/blog/2015/07/22/why-the-go-wont-be-successful/#.Va_YVVCSRCo.hackernews <comment><USER2> The only thing that seems like it's missing here, in the instructions for the project, are that it should be pulled down with _go get_ instead of _git clone_ , which would have resolved the dependencies for you.

Obviously, correct me if I'm wrong, but... that doesn't ever actually change for any other language. You still do a _pip install_ or an _npm install_ and then another command to run and/or compile your code.

So, really, it's a documentation failure, and on the part of the project authors, at that. You never used Go prior, so you didn't know to use _go get_. You used Python, Node.js, etc for a first time, too, at some point, and the only reasonable conclusion is that you also didn't know to use <insert language-package-manager-relevant command here> that first time, either. Unless, of course, the project you were using it for documented that. Or you went off and searched for it yourself.

</comment><comment><USER3> I mean yeah it may not be as conveinent as pip or npm, but neither of those allows you create and distribute a statically linked binary either. Go probably wasn't for you, but in many places npm or pip will not be installed and its a lot easier to give someone a single binary than tell them they have to install python or node.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right. I like the fact that it compiles to a single binary, but getting it to work is a PITA.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Go is already successful- based on its current market share and growth rate, it will easily be one of the top ten languages for the next 10 years.

So that part of your conclusion is wrong, factually.

<comment><USER5> Did you just say the extrapolation of current trends into the future establish a _fact_ about what the future will be that enables you to reject a prediction as "wrong, factually"?

<comment><USER4> No. I said it is already successful. Then I said, based on trends, it's likely to become one of the most successful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > As a FreeBSD person...

Much as I like FreeBSD, ease of use on it is rarely a predictor for whether a language is successful or not (so long as it can be made to run on it).

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you think that Python/Ruby would be as popular as they are right now if they were hard to even start to run?

<comment><USER6> That's a rhetorical question, and not something that I'd say is relevant. My point was and remains that if compiling from source on FreeBSD is doable but takes some effort, it's not a brick wall for language adoption.

<comment><USER7> Also compiling C could be quite hard If you don't use tools like make, autoconf, etc.. I mean statically link to all places could be quite hard..

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> really curious, somebody who writes CSH Scripts can't install go. That makes no fucking sense. I thought people working on Unix/Linux reading manuals.. And aren't just robots. Currently the article is definitely plain stupid.</comment>


The Vulnerabilities of Our Voting Machines - <AUTHOR> https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-vulnerabilities-of-our-voting-machines/ <comment><USER2> Black-box security is like hiding your house key under the door mat.

If the door mat was transparent, everyone could see that the house was insecure...</comment>


The Normalisation of Deviance - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastjetperformance.com/podcasts/how-i-almost-destroyed-a-50-million-war-plane-when-display-flying-goes-wrong-and-the-normalisation-of-deviance <comment><USER2> Good story and example of the normalization of deviance.

First time I saw it in reference to the Gulfstream crash was: [http://www.rapp.org/archives/2015/12/normalization-of- devian...](http://www.rapp.org/archives/2015/12/normalization-of-deviance/)</comment>


Why Does Mozilla Maintain Our Own Root Certificate Store? - <AUTHOR> https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2019/02/14/why-does-mozilla-maintain-our-own-root-certificate-store/ <comment><USER2> As a user, I love that Firefox has their own root store. It tends to be more up to date, and have higher standards in some circumstances.

As a sysadmin, the enterprise policy that came in 65 [0] was a "finally!" moment. Until then, Firefox was an incredibly irritating little special snowflake. It's still a special snowflake, but a little less annoying.

[0] [https://wiki.mozilla.org/CA/AddRootToFirefox](https://wiki.mozilla.org/CA/AddRootToFirefox)

<comment><USER3> Thanks for that link- I run the proxy at work, and since we do some ssl decrypt, dealing with FF can be a pain- this should lessen that considerably.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you work in a corporation that manages your windows pc but you are still able to do things like install Firefox yourself then you may well notice the man-in-the-middle certificate(s) your company installs on your system because they won't appear in Firefox and it will warn you of that fact when you attempt to securely visit a site.

<comment><USER5> MiTM certificates don't even try and disguise themselves, they usually have an obvious CA name like 'Macaffe firewall CA' or something similar. Often they'll have your employers name on them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I love that FF has its own root store. I've often wondered why Chrome _doesn 't_ have its own, which seems like it would be a Googly thing to do. But I'm glad that they don't and hope they don't implement one any time soon.

<comment><USER7> It seems as though it's just a difference in design. Chrome uses the system's default store, which for systems that are constantly updated is not a problem. But for systems that aren't regularly updated and can't get addition & revocations to their store then FF takes the lead here.

<comment><USER8> example :

a friends ancient Huawei android phone can no longer access his online banking via the system browser, or chrome.

Firefox works great.

Whether or not you should be online banking with an outdated platform is another discussion, but he's happy that it works.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What softwares do you use every single day in your work? - <AUTHOR> My list is:
SublimeText
RoboMongo2
Dropbox
Evernote
Terminal (Mac)
Google Docs
Twitter <comment><USER2> Dialpad, Hubspot, Chrome, Slack, Hangouts, Tiny Scanner, Inbox, Signal.</comment>


Move your Posterous blog to Tumblr - <AUTHOR> http://www.justmigrate.com/

<comment><USER2> If you're going to move from one hosted blogging service to another, at least make sure you set up a custom domain this time, lest the new service also goes belly up with no 301 redirects.

<comment><USER3> Yes, in fact lot of casual bloggers are not aware of this. Loosing out on SEO which you have build over the years is pain.</comment></comment>


Flatironjs: an unobtrusive framework initiative for node.js - <AUTHOR> http://flatironjs.org/

<comment><USER2> I'd like a simpler explanation of how it all works. With colorful flow charts and graphs.

I'm really interested in how it compares to what express does. How is it the same, how different? _However_ since I'm reading this from the office between doing _actual work_ I've not got time to read this version.

I may or may not remember to come back and check it out after work.

Anyways, all of that is intended as a round of constructive criticism. At the end of the day, it is what it is.

<comment><USER3> If you want colorful flow charts, there are plenty at the "Isomorphic" link:

<http://blog.nodejitsu.com/scaling-isomorphic-javascript-code>

The proposed Resource-View-Presenter model is a bit of a brain bender.

Anyway, that aside, I agree -- this is described as a framework "initiative", and that page has no links to actual code, making it sound like a mere proposal.

However, looking back at Nodejitsu's blog, it looks like they have a post with a more cogent explanation... and github links:

<http://blog.nodejitsu.com/introducing-flatiron>

<comment><USER2> Thanks so much for this! The graphs are exactly the kind of "conceptual flow" I like to have to give me a 1000 meter view of what's going on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I found the layout of the website extremely obtrusive. I'd have preferred a much more basic layout, without so much fixed text/graphics.

<comment><USER5> Agreed. I'd prefer to discuss the pros/cons of the framework, but honestly the content on the left was enough to make me stop reading. It's unfortunately very common to miss out on interesting content because of UI pickiness.

<comment><USER6> There was a link posted on reddit about this framework, however it linked to a nodejitsu blog post, and iirc, nodejitsu links cannot be submitted to hackernews.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> github link? Some radical ideas in this framework! Quite close to what I've predicted in the merging of frontend and backend frameworks (think Brunch with backend DOM awareness). EDIT: [github link](<https://github.com/flatiron/flatiron>)

<comment><USER8> Speaking of backend DOM awareness, have you seen this? <https://github.com/tblobaum/nodeQuery>

<comment><USER7> Seems like quite a feat has been accomplished. But it also feels like it was simply done for the sake of it, instead of creating a framework that addresses real problems. Will have a close look however, correct me if my 2 second impression is completely off.

<comment><USER9> > instead of creating a framework that addresses real problems.

If you need to protect code that is currently client-side while retaining responsiveness, this will solve that problem.

In my opinion, the price for that is too high. You are significantly increasing the traffic between the server and the client. On top of that, you are forced to do all your work on the server, which to me feels like a step back to the way we used to do things a decade ago. Beefy servers handling a few clients, rather than light servers handling thousands of clients.

<comment><USER8> Without going into too much detail about it your assumption is only partly true. It depends on how many API calls you make to jquery from the server, but also sending your realtime data in HTML actually doesnt suck (your server already renders html like this for http requests) and you also dont have to serve up any client-side assets -- the total number of KB transferred is likely to be less with nodequery even after x amount of time on the site because you keep everything but arbitrary strings of HTML on the server.

You could make a 10,000 loc app, and you wouldnt even have to serve up a line of it to run it (in realtime) with a browser.

EDIT: After looking through Flatiron/Plates, I'm really interested in seeing how I might be able to get them to work together.

<comment><USER9> > your server already renders html like this for http requests

This hasn't been the case for me for literally years. Everything is pretty much dynamically loaded into the DOM by javascript. The server just pushes raw data to the client via XHR.

If you're still rendering HTML on the server, then yeah, this would be a drastic improvement. Absolutely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> unobtrusive framework is an oxymoron

</comment><comment><USER11> Awesome! I had a similar on building something like this. One thing is for certain, members of the community lean more towards a simplistic, minimal, and clean toolset. Express.js delivers, and this seems to as well.

I've dedicated myself completely to Node.js for the last month, and I'm sold!

</comment><comment><USER12> I see a list of libraries, but no links. Where's the source, the docs, etc?

<comment><USER13> <https://github.com/flatiron></comment></comment>


Open JDK has a lot to answer for - <AUTHOR> http://bluetrainsoftware.blogspot.com/2009/09/open-jdk-has-lot-to-answer-for.html <comment><USER2> I, for one, am quite happy to see Java take a back seat. It isn't the ideal language to driving the future of the JVM. It's Scala, and Clojure, and Groovy, and JRuby, and and and so many others that should be the driving forces behind the JVM. Java can only benefit from those as C# has benefited from the DLR and F#. As long as they don't let it atrophy into nothingness.

</comment><comment><USER3> Java isn't becoming irrelevant because Sun is neglecting it or plans to neglect it. Java is becoming irrelevant because even though it's a great tool, the community represents many of the things that passionate developers have come to hate. Technology is progressing. Hardware is getting faster, virtual machines are getting smarter. The original focus of Java, productivity and simplicity, is now being found elsewhere.

<comment><USER4> It also hasn't helped that Sun continued to do everything possible to make Java hard to get for end users, and to completely and hopelessly break Java on client systems. Java is relegated to server apps and cellphones now, neither of which have as strong a requirement on "write once, run anywhere". Other languages are closing fast on Java on server code and I've yet to see a mobile java app that was as good as a natively compiled app.

Java is no longer "write once, run anywhere" anyways. It's more like "write once, run anywhere that has the exact matching JRE with all the right updates, and the correct version of the JRE w/r to being either some standard runtime, or Java SE, ME, EE, ER or whatever the various versions are now."

Add to that a completely opaque and overly complicated VM distribution channel for end users, forced downloads of unrelated software and toolbars, constant barrage of update tooltips, a completely hosed standard library for developers of desktop/client apps, and a general failure to improve the language with age or listen to the community about language requirements and you have the makings of a dying language.

We have to beg our developers to even think about using Java even for server apps because the standard library and restrictive syntax is so lobotomizing to users of other languages.

<comment><USER5> Exactly right.

It'd been awhile since I downloaded Java, and I hadn't known about the Great SE/ME/EE switchover™ at the time. I literally stared at their web pages, navigated all over the place, and I couldn't figure out which version I should have. Sun (excuse me, Oracle) needs a big fat "Download Java 1.7" button, that has everything. They should fire everyone else in their marketing department.

<comment><USER4> Oh, it's miserable. If they can't even explain what differentiates one from the ta' other, they shouldn't have the options.

They also have too many things called "Java" that are really unrelated technologies. Is Java on the server side (say JSP) the same as a Java client app? Outside of similarities of language and libraries not really. All of the frameworks are really different things. The language and the VM are different things (both called Java). The entire platform is called Java.

In my view, Java should purely be a "kind of technology" or perhaps a "particular software development pipeline/toolchain". Namely, Code in some language that is compiled to bytecode designed to run in Sun's(Oracle's) VM technology.

So instead of just packing in different kinds of cruft and slapping an obscure two letter appendix to the title, they should really call them entirely different things.

Sun/Oracle Client VM

Sun/Oracle Mobile VM

Sun/Oracle Server VM

Sun/Oracle IDE/Compiler/Libraries

There's no sense in packaging it up and calling that package "Java 7 SE R43" or 1.7 or whatever insane marketing logic non-standard version scheme they're using now.

End users download Sun/Oracle Client VM. Period.

Server admins download Sun/Oracle Server VM. Period.

Mobile VM shouldn't even be a download, it should just be included on all phones that can run it (like it basically is now anyways).

Developers download The IDE/Compiler/and Language Libraries. Heck, they compiler and library toolchain should really just come with the branded IDE.

The VMs don't really change that much. The standard library shouldn't change that much (if the Java team could ever get their act together and write reasonable interfaces to common things like I/O and hurry up and deprecate bad design decisions). And the class libraries for Client VMs and Server VMs are ultimately very different anyways.

The names should be clear and make sense. SE/EE/ME/whatever doesn't help anybody. Client VM, Server VM, Mobile VM does. It _used_ to be this simple, but then they let the monkeys in to the packaging process.

<comment><USER6> You should use "JVM". But other than that you should get a job as Sun's marketing department.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> He seems to be saying that Sun's stance will be let the Open JDK develop, and roll that into the official package.

I thought this would be good news. Sun has a shaky future and a lot of people use Java. The more control of it the community has the better.</comment>


Inside My World – Ode to Functor and Monad - <AUTHOR> http://blog.jle.im/entry/inside-my-world-ode-to-functor-and-monad <comment><USER2> Outstanding explanation.

I think it's so good partly because I had come up with a similar explanation ;-) but it turns out that my explanation for a Monad was actually more correctly the explanation for a Functor :-(

I might tweak it slightly: Explain that a Monad really is an algebraic monad, _and that it really needs to be that_ , not just because that's what the function signatures wind up being, but because Haskell is, under the hood, expecting it to satisfy the monad identities. (Or do I have that wrong?)

<comment><USER3> In one of the Reactive Programming Scala class on Coursera, one of the teachers said types only need to satisfy 2 of the 3 Monad laws to be useful in for comprehensions (similar to do blocks in Haskell), so it didn't actually matter whether they satisfied the 3rd law. Monads do need to have at least those 2 properties, though. (I don't remember at the moment whether it was the right or left identity law that was unnecessary)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi, author here; experimenting with some ways to explain two very useful concepts that I feel don't get enough mainstream popularity, despite being applicable to many languages :) Let me know if there are any obvious mistakes, awfully written sections, or questions :)</comment>


AI text generator not released for concerns about implications - <AUTHOR> https://blog.openai.com/better-language-models/#sample5 <comment><USER2> Dupe [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19163522](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19163522)

</comment><comment><USER3> Hmmm....

> As the above samples show, our model is capable of generating samples from a > variety of prompts that feel close to human quality and show coherence over > a page or more of text.

OK, let's look at the sample that's displaying by default:

> System Prompt (human-written): Legolas and Gimli advanced on the orcs, > raising their weapons with a harrowing war cry.

> Model Completion (machine-written, first try):

> "You are in good hands, dwarf," said Gimli, who had been among the first to > charge at the orcs; it took only two words before their opponents were > reduced to a blood-soaked quagmire, and the dwarf took his first kill of the > night. The battle lasted for hours until two of the largest Orcs attempted > to overwhelm Aragorn. When they finally stopped, they lay defeated and > lifeless for miles and miles.

> [Aragorn says something]

> "I'll never forget it!" cried Gimli, who had been in the thick of the battle > but hadn't taken part in it.

This is not "close to human quality". It's terrible. Gimli kills an orc in battle... without taking part in the battle. It takes two _words_ before the opponents (as opposed to, say, the battlefield) are reduced to a "blood-soaked quagmire", but the battle lasts for hours after that. After which two orcs lay defeated and lifeless for miles and miles.

This isn't even coherent from one sentence to the next. And paragraph three directly contradicts paragraph one. And Gimli calls Legolas a dwarf!

<comment><USER4> This is pretty directly addressed right after what you quoted:

> As the above samples show, our model is capable of generating samples from a > variety of prompts that feel close to human quality and show coherence over > a page or more of text. Nevertheless, we have observed various failure > modes, such as repetitive text, world modeling failures (e.g. the model > sometimes writes about fires happening under water), and unnatural topic > switching. Exploring these types of weaknesses of language models is an > active area of research in the natural language processing community.

The authors go on to discuss more limitations (for example, the dataset doesn't contain much outside of LOtR and some celebrities). I imagine that what the authors call "coherence" is weaker than what you are referring to (the AI is not necessarily telling a story, but it stays on the same topic / characters).

I still think that the result is incredibly impressive and powerful. You could start with this as a sort of English "noise", and then run the result through a parser. This would allow you to add some "hard coded" world modeling or constraints. Ex: Maybe you could mix in sentiment analysis and reject some sentences to roughly control the narrative.

<comment><USER3> > I still think that the result is incredibly impressive and powerful.

I agree in a way that I suspect is much more specific than what you have in mind. This system is managing to produce a lot of text which is not heavily constrained, and what it produces is generally grammatical English. That is impressive; in the past, producing grammatical text meant very tight restrictions on what it was possible to say, making "text generators" little more than prerecorded phone tree messages.

But this model clearly doesn't know the meaning of anything it writes, and therefore can't produce anything better than obvious nonsense. This is true of some humans too -- it is a very serious condition known as Wernicke's aphasia ( [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Receptive_aphasia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Receptive_aphasia) ):

> Patients with Wernicke's aphasia demonstrate fluent speech, which is > characterized by typical speech rate, intact syntactic abilities, and > effortless speech output. Writing often reflects speech in that it tends to > lack content or meaning.

Obviously, those suffering from Wernicke's aphasia are not able to function in society, since they effectively can't say or understand anything. I don't think matching the performance of humans who have mental deficiencies so serious that they are unable to function really counts as being "close to human quality".

> I imagine that what the authors call "coherence" is weaker than what you are > referring to

I had two specific things in mind as "coherence" failures:

\- Gimli kills an orc, and then is said to have not taken part in the battle.

\- The sentence "When they finally stopped, they lay defeated and lifeless for miles and miles." In context, the referent of "they" can only be the two orcs that attempted to overwhelm Aragorn. But it isn't possible for two dead orcs to cover "miles and miles" of terrain. If this had been written by a human, I would assume that what the writer had in mind, but failed to achieve, was to use "they" to refer to everyone taking part in the battle; I can't really make that assumption here. That sentence needs to use nouns, not pronouns, because its context doesn't allow for the pronouns.

<comment><USER5> Huh. Likening current NN limitations to aphasia is actually a brilliant insight.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The best weapon against centralisation and control by the few is publication and distribution.

Others are going to do it, others will replicate the work, the best defence is getting it out there so we can understand it and learn how to counter it.

"Open" AI indeed.

<comment><USER7> Yep, you can't put the genie back in the bottle.

If you successfully tested a nuclear weapon it would be incredibly naive to think you could save the world from nuclear weapons just by keeping its implementation secret, someone else out there is just as smart as you and once you've proven it's possible then it's just a matter of time before someone else figures out how you did it.

Although personally I don't think their creation is anywhere near as dangerous as they would like to think, feels more like a PR stunt/dystopia LARPing.

<comment><USER8> Yes, indeed, I myself have several large nuclear weapons at home which completely validates your point.

<comment><USER9> There is always that boy who built a nuclear reactor at home. Not quite having nukes besides the wine bottles in the cellar but he overcame at least some of the problems you'd face to get there, that shouldn't be doable

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hahn](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hahn)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > We are aware that some researchers have the technical capacity to reproduce > and open source our results. We believe our release strategy limits the > initial set of organizations who may choose to do this, and gives the AI > community more time to have a discussion about the implications of such > systems.

i wish people would stop pretending that there is some good way to bring this technology into existence. yes, its nice to try and let the good guys use it first but its just irrelevant in the long-term. ultimately the result is going to be total proliferation of this technology in all areas where it has utility, and it will be used to maximum extent in every application it is suitable for, including the really bad ones. the roll-out will make the transition smoother but it wont change whats actually important: the end result on the lives of our grandchildren.

growing up around rapidly advancing technology, i thought of technology as a double-edged sword: it cuts equally in both directions. but after thinking about it for a long time, i now believe that, in relation to human well-being, the presence of a given technology or combination of technologies can be a net positive or a net negative as well as neither. we need to think more carefully before letting these genies out of their bottles.

this is not an example that i think will be very negative, but its very powerful and unexpected for me at least. the next powerful and unexpected thing may not be benign. banning development of these kinds of technologies should not be off the table.

after reading this: [https://blog.openai.com/better-language- models/#sample8](https://blog.openai.com/better-language-models/#sample8) and browsing reddit for a while, i have realized that from now on i cannot assume human origin for 90% of the comments i read on reddit. this is insane.

<comment><USER11> >i have realized that from now on i cannot trust 90% of the comments i read on reddit. this is insane.

I hate to be cynical here but I'm glad this has made you realize something that's been true since the Internet started; you shouldn't trust what's written on any forum! Be skeptical.

<comment><USER12> I agree with being skeptical but there is a point where rational skepticism just turns into pure cynicism and that's not productive.

Also, with the advances in deep fakes and synthetic video...how long before you can't trust video evidence either?

<comment><USER11> Hmm, video evidence may be trustworthy - eg. video from a CCTV system. Perhaps it could be written onto some write-once, tamper resistant format? Not sure how that would look.

I suppose one place to start thinking about this would be photos. Are photos admissible evidence or do courts only allow negatives? Photos have been modified for a very long time. This is probably the most famous example: [https://amp.businessinsider.com/images/52af668569bedd3b2643d...](https://amp.businessinsider.com/images/52af668569bedd3b2643dd68-750-299.jpg)

But yes, I am far more worried about how much more effective fake news will be once they start coming with actual videos.

<comment><USER13> Cctv on blockchain?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Wow. I am curious how "specialized" the training was because those sample responses are beyond remarkable.

I think we're going to face a lingering question with AI. We're imminently reaching the point where AIs will be able to generate fake everything. In the near future (if not present!), I could be fake for all you know writing lots of otherwise coherent posts, only to secretly jam in some sort of agenda I've been programmed to advocate for. And there could be millions, billions, an unlimited number of "me". Or the latest hottest site trying to sell itself on its own 'buzz' could be full of millions of people actively engaging on the platform, except none of them actually exist.

So do we try to keep these AI systems secret, or do we make them widely available and rely on a rapid shift in public consciousness as a result? It's one thing to try to tell people to engage in sufficient scrutiny over text, images, audio, and increasingly even video. It's another when people see that such fakes are trivially produced by anyone.

I do realize that the 'chaos scenario' sounds... chaotic... to put it mildly, but I think the underlying issue here is that these tools will reach the public one way or the other. By keeping them secret the big difference is that the public will be less aware of the impact they're having, and the players operating such tools will be disproportionately made up of people trying to use them for malicious purposes - be that advertising, political influence, or whatever else.

<comment><USER15> I think the sooner this kind of thing gets out in the open, the sooner sites being propped up in valuation based on fake users today can change.

On another note, think back to how general people responded to things like Eliza and other chatbots, or the sims and other emergent storytelling games. What if there was a "social media" platform where all your connections were purposely AI, like your own personal TV sitcom/drama/comedy/whatever. Surroubd yourself with people who think like you that you can finally have "intelligent discussions" with without heated arguments from all the idiots who disagree. People love gossip; what if you had an endless supply from fake people? "You'll never believe what Frank said to Janice!" "I thought Bob and Alice would be together forever."

<comment><USER16> A social media that is part Her, part Westworld. I think that could be a multi billion dollar idea.

<comment><USER17> Arguably, this is the best and the worst idea I've ever heard on HN.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> OK so...

So, they never say this is near flawless, or that it would fool you in a turing test. In some contexts though, it may be usable maliciously. It could spoof amazon reviews (as they mention), scalably fish for romance scam vicims, or sockpuppet political social media, harrass, manipulate or scale troll- farming to new levels or set up dates for you on tinder.

The point is that the ability to impersonate humans is troublesome, potentially. I don't think non-publicatin is an answer, but i do think the concern seems valid... to me.

</comment><comment><USER19> This is just a hastily assembled excuse for not living up to the expectation created by their name. OpenAI have also failed to release their Dota 2 model which has absolutely no security implications, despite the fact that it cannot be properly tested without public release. OpenAI isn't.

</comment><comment><USER20> Those implications not even look _that_ scary to me.

Otoh I saw enough marketing fakes/mock ups to be skeptical on this one. For example my takeaway from OpenAI five was that the bots outmicrod the human players with little more to it.

</comment><comment><USER21> This is utter BS. Dude you are not releasing your AI because you guys are scared that people will know for sure that you are fooling people for long on the name of AI.

<comment><USER22> Exactly. Either show your code or the story that AI can generate fake news is, itself, fake news.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Maybe when this genie is out of the bottle everywhere it will convince us to re-prioritize face to face communication and simpler lives with less computing.

</comment><comment><USER24> Any computer program is an AI.

What matters is how intelligent they are along various axes.

Automatic programs have been surpassing humans on some dimensions for ages, but we keep insisting that they are not truly intelligent because they can't beat us along all axes. Throughput on simple logic tasks was the elephant in the room, and the scope of "simple" has been expanding at an exponential pace.

Now they are closing the gap or surpassing us on axes that were thought to be bastions of human cognition (TFA, and after chess and go, Google (Alpha Zero) recently beat two Starcraft 2 champions).

Freaking out (err... I mean "not releasing the full model") is understandable, but ultimately misguided as it will only delay the unavoidable... Unless the plan is to enact a global ban on AI research which I don't think is feasible anyway.</comment>


Try Blogger's New Interface - <AUTHOR> http://draft.blogger.com

<comment><USER2> Beautiful _and_ functional. There are things to nitpick of course, but this is light years ahead of the old blogger. It's nice to see Google making a concerted effort to elevate the design of products across their portfolio. I used to think that visual design wasn't much of an institutional priority for G, but they've proven that wrong.

<comment><USER3> Am I the only one who thinks that the new design colours are somewhat bleached? I would like more contrast.

I also find the "Reading List" from my Blogger account homepage to be useless. If I want to subscribe to a feed, Google Reader is a much better option.

<comment><USER4> I agree with you on the colors. No contrast, it makes it very hard to locate what you need.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It _looks_ nice, but it doesn't feel quite right.

Too much functionality depends on iconography, which leaves me having to map pictograms to actual words. It's OK for me to read some words. You're going to have to translate the interface anyways.

And there's very little use of contrast or color to help determine what is going on. My blogs and the reading list don't have a lot to differentiate each other, so I was initially confused where I would even go to post to my blog.

Also, the "New Blog" button is confusing. Are people really creating that many new blogs that they need a huge, highlighted button for it? I thought it was to make a new post (using "blog" as a verb, really), so I was confused when I click it and got something else.

Pretty attractive update, but fairly bad functionality and usability.

<comment><USER6> The huge highlighted button seems to be a common usability issue with many of Google's new designs. They seem to confuse "new user" with "regular user".

Case in point being the new groups design. Huge buttons to create a new group, an action that happens very infrequently for me. Plus a huge splash screen with product information (similar to the Blogger blog in the reading list) which as a regular user, I just don't care.

<comment><USER7> It's the page you go to to create new blogs. It is supposed to have a button like that. The most important button on the respective pages looks like that. On that particular page it's most certainly the button to create a new blog.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is nice! It also fits the pending revisions of blogger etc to unify the google ui styles etc.

one thing I recently discovered about blogger that won me over is this: you can have you default draft template include the right commands to import the mathjax javascript into every post, so I can then just write inline and display math latex naively with \\[ some math \\] and \\( math \\) and it'll just work! (both in preview of post, and the live post!)

</comment><comment><USER9> Inexplicable. I'm pretty sure Google just released some kind of new social product (although I've been having trouble finding links around here). The word on the street is also that Google has some kind of reader app (the name escapes me). These two things are what this Blogger interface does, so why on earth aren't they integrated?

Instead, they've taken a similar starting point (lightweight, white-heavy design that runs using Javascript and back-end data) and created something lifeless and disconnected from everything else.

This is Big Company Syndrome at work; exactly the kind of thing that you'd expect from a company like Microsoft, rather than the company that just released the best web app in years.

<comment><USER10> Actually what I'd expect from Microsoft is to delay launching the new thing for several years in order to integrate it with various other services, re- branding it to windows/live/.net XXX, and wondering why the world has moved on in the meantime

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> All the design changes since the launch of G+ could use some decrease in padding imo . In netbooks the real content will start halfway across the screen - lot of unnecessary scrolling, looks good though .

<comment><USER12> The killer for me is this: <http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lo0ebqK4bl1qzasmo.png>

On Google Music, the actual music has good padding, but the rest of the page has so much crap I can barely see any songs. And that's on a 1366*768 display, so I'm a bit miffed.

<comment><USER11> An option to select from 2 settings would be better , like Gmail's new themes - dense/regular , although dense is still too spaced when compared to the default theme at the moment .

<comment><USER13> I'm worried we'll lose the look and feel of the old themes once the new Gmail interface is rolled out. I dislike the Big Blue Button that is showing up in all of Google's UI refreshes too. Google's search results seem very cluttered as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's pretty, but I'm left wondering why they bothered to launch it without the Google+ "funeral bar" integrated, or whatever you want to call it.

I find these UI refreshes an irksome feature of web software. They tend to appear on a day and time when you're most stressed, horking their newfangled wares with pop-ups that only do harm to the software's usability. Recent examples: the new Facebook chat sidebar abomination, the new Gmail people sidebar.

<comment><USER15> Have you nicknamed the Google bar as the "funeral bar" because it's dark? Are all dark things funeral things?

<comment><USER16> Never thought about it that way but it does start with a cross and my first name, kinda fits the nickname.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Nice to see Blogger getting some love. They seemed pretty stagnant for awhile.

</comment><comment><USER18> What happened to the new templates they announced at the end of March? I liked the look and was hoping to try one out for a personal project.

[http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/03/fresh-new- perspective...](http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/03/fresh-new-perspectives- for-your-blog.html)

<comment><USER19> They are not really templates, but separate views. If you append "/view/<template_name>" to any blog URL on BlogSpot, you get this view. Example: <http://googleblog.blogspot.com/view/flipcard>

<comment><USER18> _Today we're previewing five new dynamic templates in Blogger that you'll soon be able to customize and use for your blog._

Looks like the /view is just to preview them

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It seems that they have been working on this for a long time, as you can see in this video that they've put up in March: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPhFc6GqVdU#t=97s>

I think it's really interesting to see what huge amounts of time goes into these redesigns at a company like Google. It's very different from what I do.

It's also interesting to see how the design has evolved from what they showed in March to what they finally arrived at.

</comment><comment><USER21> The only real problem I see with this interface is that my own dashboard pages now display content from Google that I don't care about. When I'm doing _my_ content, I just want to see _my_ content. Maybe the page layout of the dashboard is configurable, but ... I dunno. It's just too in-your-face.

Otherwise, though, I like it.

</comment><comment><USER4> This looks terrible in terms of usability. Everything is so white, there is no contrast at all. I find it really hard to see the difference between elements, and the "highlight" is barely visible. I guess one can get used to it, but would be much better with at least some contrast.

</comment><comment><USER22> Anyone mind posting a screenshot? I'd like to see the UI but I don't want to create a blog on Blogger just to see it.

<comment><USER6> <http://i.imgur.com/5eSmA.png>

Email redacted in the top right. Four blog titles (sites, not posts) redacted down the left.

</comment></comment><comment> johnx123-up Glad that now draft.blogger.com and blogger.com are integrated together with nifty UI.

</comment><comment><USER23> Any hope they might actually revive Google Reader as part of this redesign frenzy?

</comment><comment><USER24> They are doing browser detection instead of feature detection.

"ERROR: Possible problem with your *.gwt.xml module file. The compile time user.agent value (opera) does not match the runtime user.agent value (unknown). Expect more errors."

<comment><USER25> It basically looks the same in Opera. (Unfortunately, I'm tempted to say.)</comment></comment>


Foundation (Asimov) - <AUTHOR> https://youtube.com/watch?v=xgbPSA94Rqg <comment><USER2> It is one of the best he has written.

Strange when I read it decades ago I thought it is about Hong Kong; the knowledge run to the south to persevere. And the fight of the empire with the 1st foundation is on. Except Hk is just a conduit not a real new world, but the contact to the world.

Sadly just cancelled Apple TV !

</comment><comment><USER3> best scifi book I've ever read. such a shame i discovered it by chance at 28. I guess Asimov is not popular in .pl cause rarely can find his book in public libraries funny thing is that describing gender role aged like milk</comment>


Introduction to DevOps: Agile Development and Operations Hand in Hand - <AUTHOR> http://agileelephant.blogspot.com/2011/09/introduction-to-devops.html

<comment><USER2> Nice idea! Where I work, agile is very successful in the development teams, but interaction with Ops is a constant source of frustration.

Implementing something like this in my organisation would involve a real culture shift, but I can really see the value of the idea. Thanks for that.</comment>