Why Brit Ruby 2013 was cancelled and why this is not ok - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/4106776 <comment><USER7> Why is the Ruby community addicted to drama?

<http://rubydramas.com/>

[http://web.archive.org/web/20080102040259/http://www.zedshaw...](http://web.archive.org/web/20080102040259/http://www.zedshaw.com/rants/rails_is_a_ghetto.html)

[http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2012/03/...](http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2012/03/ruby_ruby_on_rails_and__why_the_disappearance_of_one_of_the_world_s_most_beloved_computer_programmers_.html)

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4487963>

<http://martinfowler.com/bliki/SmutOnRails.html>

<http://www.flickr.com/photos/planetargon/127984254/>

It feels like an abusive relationship.

<comment><USER8> Hey Influx.

Every community has its dramas. Ruby just likes to make ours really really public :P

Ruby folks like to talk about passion for coding, so unsurprisingly controversies in Ruby are equally passionate.

One thing that is very much worth noting about the Ruby community is that when controversies happen, things change. Sometimes they're things like Zed Shaw flaming out of the community (which i'm still kinda bummed about), sometimes it means organizations like Railsbridge (<http://workshops.railsbridge.org/> ) are formed.

But these are not needless controversies with no results. This stuff matters.

<comment><USER7> Passion is great, but why couldn't this have happened in e-mail instead of Twitter, perhaps the OP could have e-mailed the conference organizers with some names of some great Rubyists that had been overlooked, but would give a great speech. Win-win. Instead, the conference is canceled, and no one wins. :(

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Even if we had perfect gender and ethnicity equality, probability tells us that we would still expect there to be some proportion of conferences where the best available speakers are all white and male.

In this case, there is self selection too. Britain is still predominantly white. And even as I accept that there must still be factors which make women feel less welcome, I remain convinced that even if no factors of unfair discrimination existed, more men than women would self-select technology careers.

These factors mean that we would expect even more conferences with all white and male speakers, still without unfair discrimination.

To pick out a single conference in our industry with this property is textbook selection bias [1] and doesn't demonstrate any kind of discrimination at all.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selection_bias>

</comment><comment> guard-of-terra There is an old Russian joke about this:

Professors of a music school gather and try to figure out who to enroll ethnicity-wise. One of them says they should accept jews for every opening because they make perfect violinists. Another one tells they should accept russians only because it's a russian state after all. Then someone offers to to accept them evenly: five jews, five russians. But then there is an argument that jews only make up ten percent of citisens and therefore for nine russians they should accept one jew.

Finally, some rogue professor blames them all for being racists. What would you do!? They ask. Who to accept?

"We should accept those who are the best at playing violin!"

The same thing applies here, plus innocence until proven guilty. As long there are no facts that those speakers were selected by foul play, they should not cancel the conference. Anything else is racist.

Regarding sponsors who pulled support: who do you think gave them this idea? I have an answer you won't like.

<comment><USER10> I don't know, who did give them this idea? I'm brave enough to hear an answer I might not like.

<comment> guard-of-terra People who occassionally consider race and sex of a person over everything else this person does.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Hey white dudes. I see you're pretty worked up. Non-white dude here to explain.

When you're white, and you're male, technology (as a career field) is pretty accessible. And here's why. You can open up a newspaper or a tech blog or whatever, and many of the major important people in the photos staring back at you _basically_ look like you. And that's nice, because you can be reassured that someone with your background and origins _has a place in technology_.

If you're not male, or not white, you have to look a bit harder. Sometimes a lot harder, indeed, to find people who both look like you and are doing what you want to be doing professionally.

Now, you'll give me an argument that looks just shouldn't matter. That we should look at people's minds and ideas, not their skin color, in evaluating their contributions.

And while I'm sure such an ideal feels reassuring – it's bunk in this context.

Diversity of "race" is really a proxy for diversity of background, experience and origins. For maximizing the varieties of life story represented.

It's useful to do this because diversity of experience leads to diversity of solutions. Diversity also breeds further diversity, as people with wildly different backgrounds feel more welcome into the fold.

So when we see people helping to lead a community, and some of those people aren't like the majority, that's encouraging. It says that even though a given person is "different" from the norm, they are welcome, they may be successful.

Star Trek is lauded for this reason. Actor Nichelle Nichols was thinking of leaving the show. None other than Dr. Martin Luther King implored her to remain – he believed a black professional woman on television would be a crucial role model for young people. (In her childhood, Whoopi Goldberg is said to have screamed, "Hey Mom! Look! There's a black woman on the TV and she ain't no maid!")

And you may argue, well, why should diversity matter? Let some people do some stuff and other people do others. And I'll tell you that position, on top of being lazy, opens us up to many missed opportunities. In technology, we want as many different sorts of humans as possible all working on our hard problems. If STEM is a country club for white guys, that leaves out a huge chunk of the population who might otherwise make great contributions.

One last thing. When you say stuff like "Wull, shucks, what were they supposed to do? Find a token [non-white-male] to fill the spot?" you make it sound like you don't believe there are any people _but_ white guys with useful things to say on the subject of the conference. Careful with that.

<comment><USER12> The barrier to entry to becoming a Ruby programmer is as low as can be: all you need is a laptop and internet access. You can become a celebrity without people even knowing your name, let alone your face: why_ (or _why or whatever) was at one point the biggest name in Ruby (AFAICT from outside), and he might have been a cat with a keyboard for all anyone knew.

On top of that, there's plenty of famous and powerful non-white engineers. And if you don't want to look at the top, look at your peers: in my university in America, whites are the minority in most gradute CS classes.

By all objective measures, this is the _last_ industry where people should be subject to a witch-hunt and have their conference cancelled because of their speaker lineup.

<comment><USER13> They didn't "have their conference cancelled". They cancelled it because they felt pressure from their sponsors. Without more example or explanation, we have to take them at their word that the pressure was on level with a witch- hunt. If that's the case, that is indeed a poor state of affairs in terms of open debate and civility.

<comment><USER14> If I organised a conference, and failed to attract a single female speaker, especially in a community where sexism is a sensitive issue, I would immediately decide to cancel it of my own volition. I don't want to contribute to the type of things that make women feel excluded.

<comment><USER15> So if women choose not to be included on your activity, you would cancel it, because women would feel excluded? OK....

If I never took part in anything that didn't attract females (that were not family), I would have never learned anything, or seen any movies, or eaten any food...

<comment><USER16> That's a bit of a disingenuous comparison. Organizing a conference that should be representative of a very large, diverse community is not quite the same as organizing personal activities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Well put!

I really hope the responsible trolls (e.g. John Susser, James A Rosen) on Twitter reflect on what they have done with their careless and frankly ignorant comments, and also that Brit Ruby 2013 finds new sponsors as soon as possible.

I still believe there _must_ be a chance Brit Ruby 2013 is going to be reality. Don't give up, guys.

<comment><USER18> I can't fathom any definition of trolling that would include any of the comments that John Susser made about this issue (there's a grand total of 6 of them).

I have no doubts that once the ball got rolling, people were quick to throw around all kinds of accusations of sexism and racism (which to be fair, I don't think characterizes the Brit Ruby organizers at all.)

Pointing out that an otherwise interesting conference is less interesting because of a lack of diversity of the speakers isn't trolling.

<comment><USER19> Why is it less interesting, why does skin color matter? Would be it be less interesting if all speakers wore plain white t-shirts too? Why do you care at all about anything other than the content/experience?

<comment><USER18> Your comment implies that you think that content/experience is orthogonal to a diverse speaker group.

I strongly disagree. I think a diverse speaker group leads to overwhelmingly better content and experience.

I think this extends much further than gender or race, however. I think this extends to the totality of human experience. I have a great interest in seeing the technical community encompass as wide a range of people as possible.

I want this partly for reasons of equality and fairness, and partly for purely selfish motivations (plainly that I want to work in an industry made up of people with a wider range of experiences, it makes me happier).

I think conflating a desire to see a diverse population of speakers to people's t-shirts probably means that you and I aren't going to see eye to eye on this subject. Which is fine, as I don't think you're a racist, or sexist, or a terrible person.

I do feel pretty confident betting that in 200 years, we'll see a much more heterogeneous makeup of both speakers and conference attendees, regardless of whether an active effort is made to make that so (it'll happen eventually).

Some might say if that's the case eventually, than shouldn't people just pretend that it's the case now (in which case drawing attention to gender and race is actually doing more harm than good).

I'd argue that if people agree that that's what the future is going to look like, and by most accounts, that seems like a better future, than why the hell aren't we doing more to turn the present into that future.

<comment><USER19> A diverse population doesn't necessary mean different skin colors. In this case diversity, to me, would mean people that work on different technologies, proprietary vs open-source, web/mobile/enterprise etc, small studios vs big co vs freelancers; it's a software conference. I don't give a damn what a speaker looks like, and also don't have any reason to assume they share anything besides being british and liking Ruby. And what about women, why did nobody complain?

I do support pro-activity measures in education/work, but I don't think being conscious (or "pro-active") about inequality all the time does much good for equality either.

<comment><USER18> A diverse population absolutely means different skin colors. And different genders; and different income brackets; and different religions (including lack thereof).

The world is an incredibly diverse place. Full of people, all with different experiences. I argue that the more all of those people get exposure to one another, the more we can all learn from one another.

And I don't mean in a "everyone has an interesting life story to tell" way. I mean that our experiences absolutely inform our thoughts and decisions. This is as true for thoughts on technology as it is for any others.

Everything that you (and by you, I mean all of us) have to say, everything that has shaped your outlook on the world (including but not limited to technology) is inexorably linked to the sum total of things which have happened to you.

And if I grew up somewhere else, or am of a different gender, or have a different religion, than that's less total perspective that I have to inform my decisions.

So I don't care what specifically a speaker looks like; but I do care that huge sections of the population are way less likely to be sharing their experiences.

And if you read the tweets which seemed to cause all of this, the overwhelming majority are people complaining about a lack of women, including numerous ones listing groups and people the con organizers could reach out to if they wanted help in trying to make the speakers more diverse (advice the organizers seemingly took to suggest that they should select some woman speakers to "balance out the male-heavy selection"; which isn't what was offered).

I can appreciate that you don't think every situation should be an excuse to rail against inequality, but I think it's important to be conscious of these things.

<comment><USER19> Well, we don't seem to be talking about the same thing; I was talking of a diverse population in the context of a technology conference. Despite personal contact being a huge part of it, the focus for presentations is on technology, not people. Selecting for cultural diversity is not a goal - it could be, but it shouldn't be a crime if it isn't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> So, from the outside looking in knowing this is a tough subject to "sum up" in a few paragraphs ...

What's the end goal? I find it incredibly _more_ insulting, demeaning, and counter productive to include someone _JUST_ because they are white, black, female, asian, etc. It's just as discriminatory as excluding them.

In fact, in my opinion, it's far worse. It's discrimination masquerading as equality.

You want everyone treated equal? Awesome. The best speakers get in, period. You vary from that in either direction, and you are embracing inequality.

</comment><comment><USER21> I don't know what to make of this. I tend to feel that if you want to accuse someone of racism or sexism then you have to be sure it was deliberate. The accusations can be so damaging that it's irresponsible to sling them about freely without due care or thought.

I don't think that playing the discrimination card before getting your facts straight is the best way to encourage improvement. In the case of the accusations made, the people making them have contributed _nothing_. What they have done is deny the minorities they were supposedly defending an opportunity to speak at a large conference, because the whole damn thing has been _cancelled_ as a result.

</comment><comment><USER13> A commenter on the OP said:

> _This is awful. The accusations are a disgrace. Have considered suing for > libel?_

This may be actionable on Brit soil where libel laws are tougher, but not as likely in the U.S., which is a good thing. As far as I can tell from the OP, the circumstances were:

1\. The lineup was indeed all white and male 2\. People alleged that the organizers of being racist and sexist.

The OP used the word "allegations"...and if every allegation based on the reading of the facts were grounds for libel, then most of HN discussion would be shut down.

(Think about every time Zynga, Groupon, or even Apple, is discussed.)

It's disconcerting to see the hacker community so blithely call for the courts to step in when freedom of expression infringes upon their viewpoint.

<comment><USER22> Github comments are getting closer to YouTube in terms of quality— especially when an issue or gist is linked on reddit. You'll see a flood of image macros and memespeak derailing any meaningful conversation.

It doesn't surprise me to read such comments. It just saddens me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Dear God! As if it wasn't hard enough to arrange a conference, apparently you have to make sure to invite every minority as a speaker at that conference too. I'm not even in the ruby community, but judging from the python/django community, assembling a team of good speakers is hard enough already.

</comment><comment><USER24> Having only white male speakers is a sign that something _might_ be wrong, but it seems that a number of people took it as a sign that something _is_ wrong. If there was evidence that action was taken to avoid having minority speakers, then sure, throw a tantrum. But saying there might have been bias, so it needs to get shut down - that's not fair to anyone.

</comment><comment><USER25> It is not ´careless words´ that caused this. After all, everyone is entitled to express their opinion.

What really caused this is the climate where it is ok for women to meet without the least danger of being accused of sexism. It is the climate where it is ok for blacks to meet without any danger of being accused of racism. It is the climate where it is VERBOTEN for white guys to meet, even if the topic is something totally neutral like Ruby and the attendance is self-selected.

<comment><USER26> Please tell me more about how awful it is to be a white guy in Western society.

<comment><USER25> To all of you trying to justify this, I only have this to say. I am sorry to have to repeat the obvious but it is true and it needs to be said.

The best test for injustice in all these situations, if you are unable to see it staring in your face, is just to turn it round. Imagine the best rubyists just happened to be all black and their conference was cancelled because they were all black. If you still think it was justified, I have nothing more to say except: `Please, beam me up, Scotty!'

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Greetings. As an active feminist and a Python programmer who may organise this sort of thing in the future, this is a fascinating discussion. On one hand, diversity is exceptionally important for a multitude of reasons, and there must be an effort made to make people of other ethnicities and genders feel welcome and represented. On the other hand, personally I know that "white dudes" significantly outnumber everyone else in the tech scene here in the UK. There definitely are, for instance, women who are fantastic programmers and would give amazing talks, but they may not be able to make the conference. It is also, I think, a difficult line to walk between encouraging diversity and tokenism.

I think what I'll do is bring this up as a point of discussion at our next meeting (interestingly, our feminist group meets at the tech community "hub" in Brighton) and see how our members feel the best way to approach an issue such as this in a constructive and positive manner.

</comment><comment><USER28> I don't get this. What should be in focus is not your gender, nor your race. It is the talk you are going to give which should be the focus. I don't care if you are a man a woman, an indian, a japanese and so on. But I deeply care about the talk being interesting.

That said, I would much prefer having diversity in the speaker lineup - <USER2> makes for more interesting talks in general. I am also for biasing toward the minority: If you have, say, only one woman who applied there should be a good reason to reject her.

The problem is statistics. If there are only a few women who are applicable - simply due to the sad fact that there are so few women in the field - <USER5> there will be a lot of conference where random selection will mean there are no women in the lineup. That is, you have to weigh the chance of an all-white- male lineup to occur at random toward the fact that people where _chosen_ to be all-white-male.

</comment><comment><USER29> What this tells me is that a significant part of the Ruby community is racist and sexist.

The proper approach is to utterly ignore the race and sex of people. Anything else is racist and/or sexist.

<comment><USER30> There's a ton of literature on the topic if you care to look, but in short: this simply does not work due to societal assumptions and levels of privilege.

It's a non-starter to "not care", because privileged groups automatically get their foot in the door.

<comment><USER29> That's just utter nonsense.

(You haven't even defined what you mean by "working" and "not working." But let's assume you mean that certain groups have an advantage in society.)

I'm a white male. I'm not particularly attractive. I am not able to exhibit certain class indicators. I am not very sociable or "cool." And I don't agree with mainstream ideology. Also, I don't have many social connections.

All of these are a pretty big disadvantage compared to, say, a black person with relevant social connections, or a handsome and suave white male, or an attractive female.

But at the end of the day, meritocracy still rules, and if you're good enough, you can get by just fine on merit.

That's just reality, and it "works" just fine.

And if there is any correction I want to advocate for publicly, it's certainly towards merit and away from any other factor. Any other factor ought to be irrelevant and is just going to change the balance of unfairness rather than improve the situation.

And, fortunately, in a free country (and even a semi-free country like the USA), merit is an absolutey overwhelming advantage.

That doesn't mean reality is fair. It's not. It will never be. Forget "fair." What we want is for things to be just.

And when you start discriminating based on race or gender, _for any reason,_ you stop being just.

<comment><USER31> Can we all please get over this ridiculous idea that we are perfectly rational agents in some free-market meritocratic utopia? People are irrational, biased, accident-prone, living things. That alone precludes unbiased judgements of another person's "merit".

I mean, come on. We're programmers. We have jobs because of how much people screw up.

<comment><USER29> I don't disagree with anything you're saying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Racism and Sexism are not bad because they involve race and/or sex. They are bad because they imply that you are judging a person before first knowing that person well enough to pass sound judgment.

The real lesson here is that the internet is an echo chamber for context free judgments.

</comment><comment><USER26> It's rather clear through their actions and words that the organizers didn't have the goal of diversity when choosing the speakers. That was their mistake.

No, that doesn't make them sexist pigs. But that's a pretty serious oversight to make for the people who are curating a Ruby conference for England in the year 2012. Their sponsors are right to pull out for such an error.

<comment><USER33> To play devil's advocate for a moment--would you rather go to a conference with diversity as its goal, or one with quality speaking?

(And I'm not suggesting either is the worse choice, or that they are mutually exclusive!)

<comment><USER8> Then why are we speculating about counter-factuals?

There are women in the Ruby community, and they are interesting speakers who have done interesting work. There's no need to ask folks to prevaricate about whether diversity or quality are at odds.

<comment><USER34> Yes, there are women in the Ruby community who fit that criteria. But the question isn't whether there are women, it's how many of them are there vs how many men are there with similar qualifications? If there are 100 men for every 10 women (which doesn't seem too far off based on my experience), then it isn't unrealistic to have a panel of 6 composed entirely of men with no gender discrimination taking place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Were they using a speaker selection system designed to try and increase equality in the line up like for example JSConf EU have in the past?

[http://2012.jsconf.eu/2012/09/17/beating-the-odds-how-we- got...](http://2012.jsconf.eu/2012/09/17/beating-the-odds-how-we- got-25-percent-women-speakers.html)

</comment><comment><USER36> TL;DR "kicking up a shitstorm on Twitter these days is easy"

</comment><comment><USER37> "Please: think before you speak. Investigate before you judge. And look beneath the surface before you retweet."

This is the problem I have with "free" speech. Yes you can say anything you want, but the problem is that those with the audience take no responsibility or apply any judgement to the effect. Someone yelling racist epithets on their doorstep to an audience of no one is free speech. Bill O'Reilly calling for vigilante justice on Dr. George Tiller and taking zero responsibility for it is not the intent of "free speech."

"And if I could get my hands on Tiller -- well, you know. Can't be vigilantes. Can't do that. It's just a figure of speech." - Bill O'Reilly (2006)

In a similar way, this John Susser takes no responsibility for stirring up this particular storm but the effects are real. No one got killed over it but its huge disservice to an already very contentious issue. With ignorant comments like those of John Susser we won't be able to make much forward progress.

</comment><comment><USER38> I wish you could sue the muppets slinging mud around on Twitter etc.

<comment><USER39> It's tricky. I know most of the people involved on both sides and you may be surprised to learn almost all of them are decent, every day people, and not brogrammers, militant feminists, or typical 'argument on Twitter' types.

There have been a lot of crossed wires, misinterpretations, and faux pas here which probably wouldn't have occurred in real life (or even video). Online communications, especially on Twitter, is so woefully inadequate when dealing with social issues :-(

<comment><USER40> " _It's tricky. I know most of the people involved on both sides and you may be surprised to learn almost all of them are decent, every day people, and not brogrammers, militant feminists, or typical 'argument on Twitter' types._ "

But the net result is loss of coding/development related activity in Manchester, sponsor getting wet feet, loss of credibility for future events &c Seems a shame.

Note for US readers: UK is small island(s) and most of the fun stuff happens in London (my perception).

<comment><USER39> Oh, totally. But I think those are separate issues.

The curious thing is it was the first serious attempt to have what I'd call a 'full scale' Ruby conference in England (other events like Ruby Manor do a great job but are unique experiences or unconference type events). Scotland Ruby Conference has done pretty well, but it's very odd that England (and London, in particularly) hasn't had any success with a large Ruby event given the huge market.

<comment><USER41> This is orthogonal to the main point of this thread, but since Ruby Manor has been mentioned, and Peter doesn't read my blog (which is fair enough): <http://interblah.net/ruby-manor-is-not-an-unconference>

Just for completeness sake, there was also a successful RailsConf Europe in London, and a well-received Rails Underground too. I therefore assume that 'full scale' must mean something quite specific. Anyway, as I said, orthogonal.

I'm aware of and not fan of the gravitational well that London influences, and definitely agree that it would be great to have events all over the UK. It's a shame that BritRuby isn't going ahead, whatever the reasons.

<comment><USER39> I subscribe to almost no Ruby blogs anymore! :-) But I _had_ seen your post once before. In my defence I said "or" and Ruby Manor has seemed to me, wrongly or rightly, to be in the "unique experience" group (where I'd also include JSConf and RubyFringe).

By 'full scale' I did mean something reasonably specific, yes: a typically annual multi-day event with at least a few hundred attendees, a large numbers of sessions (or a very strong single track) focused on the topic at hand, a commercial presence or influence, and a sizeable number of well known speakers or attendees.

RubyConf, Scotland Ruby Conference and RubyKaigi would be examples of events like that.

I don't have anything against smaller or more creative conferences (and frequently support them!) but they _tend_ to emphasize socializing rather than business. With a family and a business to run, by necessity I go to conferences 50% for business and 40% for networking, and 10% for socializing. So if I can't do business there, it's a really hard sell in terms of time and leaving my wife stranded with the kids.

This might be unfair to Ruby Manor, and sorry if it is, but I got the impression Ruby Manor would be more like a fun day out for my personal enjoyment than one I can justify to my wife, daughter, business and the tax man. That's really the line I'm drawing.

(I had forgotten Rails Underground so thanks for bringing it up. It did tick a lot of boxes - just a shame it didn't run again(!))

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> shawn-butler I guess I don't see why a conference like this even exists in 2013 anyway. If you're not trying to educate someone about some product, all these events do is serve to stroke the egos of everyone involved (see SXSWi). You don't really learn much, you pretty much network with people you already know.

Just ditch this ridiculous format and the pretensions to academia or "professional" events altogether. Have a star keynote for each day, a planned, fun social "mixer", a hackathon, and space for organic groups to get together and for attendees to find them without much friction.

All of this nonsense about planning for diversity is irrelevant when the activity is driven by the community and not community "leaders" (unless of course the community is actually racist which I seriously doubt in this case and which in any case disappears in the sunlight of a public event anyway).

</comment><comment><USER42> "Yes, gender equality and racial equality are important. But the team's motives were to get the best speakers who were able to make it to Manchester. Turns out, a lot of the famous Rubyists are white guys and all of the ones who said they'd like to come were, indeed, white guys.

... It doesn't matter who speaks at a conference, as long as they're capable, interesting and relevant. That's what matters: content, not style."

Why do the speakers have to be famous? Frankly, probably a lot of what they've said and think on subjects is already known - they're _famous_ already. Why not have that be less of a factor? It would probably have reduced costs some, assuming there was financial travel costs covered, and perhaps been able to focus on 'content', without respect to the fame of the speaker.

<comment><USER43> "Why do the speakers have to be famous?"

To get people to go.

<comment><USER42> Well, then they should be able to sell enough tickets to cover costs. You can't have it both ways - we want "famous" people to attract crowds (who generally pay for a ticket) but also want sponsors to cover the costs.

EDIT: can't

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Do people realise how offensive it is when they say things of the form "we shouldn't include a speaker who isn't a white male because that would just be tokenism, and tokenism is bad"?

<comment><USER45> That's not what they're saying.

What they're saying is: "We reached out to the best, and it turns out that the ones who accepted our offer were white males. People complained about that; but we don't want to go out of our way to find a non white male just to tick a box".

<comment><USER46> I'm kind of skeptical that they even tried to reach out to diverse people. For example, Keavy McMinn indicated on twitter they never asked her. She's a very well known and liked speaker in the Ruby community and lives relatively close by. If you largely reach out to white guys, of course that's who you'll end up with.

<comment><USER21> I'm not sure I like this argument. Because one woman (who from your comment I presume everyone should know about - I don't know her) said they were never approached, this means the organisers intentionally selected (using your words) 'non-diverse' people?

<comment><USER46> Their argument was that there were only white guys available from the list of popular ruby presenters. I'm saying they may not have tried very hard to reach out if they didn't even ask a closeby popular presenter (yet they asked a ton of white guys from the US). There were others that also weren't approached - <USER4> mentioned Keavy specifically because she spoke about it publicly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> As a white guy, I think any conference struggling to attract female speakers, probably should be canceled.

It doesn't mean the conference itself or its organisers are explicitly racist or sexist, but there has to be some reason why either the topic, or the community or whatever seems so hostile to women wanting to participate. Essentially it is a symptom of a deeper issue.

The fact that no women wanted to speak at the conference is a fairly clear indicator that something is sick in the community. It is just not normal. In Saudi Arabia maybe, but these days any healthy community in a modern western country should be able to attract a couple of female speakers.

We have known for a while now that parts of the programming community have issues with sexism, especially the ruby community, and if it takes a few conference cancellations to get the issue discussed than that is all good.

Here is an idea: The organisers should organise a Ruby Girls event or something.

Main thing is, lets not pretend there is not a serious problem here, and lets do something to address it!

</comment><comment><USER13> OK I'm going to play devil's advocate here.

The OP says:

> _...Turns out, a lot of the famous Rubyists are white guys and all of the > ones who said they'd like to come were, indeed, white guys._

And:

> _Making an issue out of that is, frankly, misguided. Adding a token minority > speaker is offensive to that speaker, it says "You're here because you tick > a box - not because you're skilled." It doesn't matter who speaks at a > conference, as long as they're capable, interesting and relevant. That's > what matters: content, not style._

The second point is a strawman argument (and doesn't reflect well on the OP, unfortunately). Unless the detractors were complete reprobates, I doubt their reasoning was "You guys should include a non-white female for balance's sake!" I would hope that the line of allegation (and maybe it got muddled up in tweets, as oft is the case) was: you guys did not look hard enough to find alternative viewpoints, or: you guys have a narrow viewpoint on what makes for an interesting Rubyist.

Which brings me to point 1: Ruby was invented by a Japanese national. And last time the the Ruby 2.0 announcements were posted on HN, it was in Japanese. So in terms of pure white vs. non-whites, you most definitely can't say that all of the pioneers in Ruby are white, as you might be able to with other languages.

That said, I don't think (again I was only playing devil's advocate) that the organizers' intentions were bad. It's within the realm of possibility that every "minority" candidate they wanted could not make the conference. Yet it's also possible the organizers have a mostly-white circle, and without prodding, are prone to select from that group...not because they're racist, but because they happen to follow these people more and thus are more aware of their achievements. That most of these people are white males is a _symptom_ of this natural tendency to look within your clique, without racism playing any influence at all.

Case in point: if you asked me to assemble a panel of top Rubyists and if I were unaware of the language's origins...I would most likely pick mostly white males and no Japanese at all. Not because I'm racist against Japanese (FWIW, I'm Asian), but because I don't speak/read Japanese, have never been to Japan, have never met other Japanese rubyists...and thus their accomplishments don't even enter my head when brainstorming top rubyists because I'm just unaware of their existence.

In that case, I'd welcome people to call me out for not ever looking up who this "Matz" character is. But I'd still probably be insulted if someone just called me a racist. So maybe in the OP's case, it's true that their circle is not large enough...and yet it's not right at all to just call them racist/sexist. The end result, I'm afraid, is that despite the well-meaning parties in this fight, the problem and problematic judgment of "tokenism" will just increase.

* One more point: The OP says:

> _Please: think before you speak. Investigate before you judge. And look > beneath the surface before you retweet._

I'm not going to argue whether it's fair or not to expect this: but if an organizer is facing these kinds of allegations, then they can help alleviate the issue by writing a substantial post on their criteria for selecting the speakers and some examples of people they asked but who could not make it. If all outsiders see is the list of speakers as it stands, then they have to give the organizers the benefit of the doubt...which is not always going to happen...

<comment><USER47> That isn't a strawman argument: the point that the detractors were making was "This is not the correct assortment of speakers because there aren't enough of X race or Y sex."

They are arguing against speakers only because of their race and gender. Would more diversity be welcome in the Ruby community? Absolutely, but judging a speaker based on their race and gender is idiotic - it says nothing about what they'll bring to the table.

Imagine if people were criticizing a lineup because there were too many women? We would flip a shit - and rightly so! Pointing out verbally militant discrimination that causes a conference to be cancelled isn't a strawman, it is a reality.

<comment><USER13> > _That isn't a strawman argument: the point that the detractors were making > was "This is not the correct assortment of speakers because there aren't > enough of X race or Y sex."_

Was that the detractors' point? I can't tell because the OP doesn't link to any. But just to be clear, I think there is a difference between:

1) Why is this panel completely made up of white males? 2) There aren't enough of people of x/y category

Argument #2 is, I think everyone here agrees, is not a strong one, since this wasn't a conference to discuss diversity issues.

Argument #1, however, could be countered with examples of people they asked but who could not make it. And I for one would completely understand if they wanted to invite Japanese Rubyists, but could not because of schedule conflicts or costs. I don't know enough about Brit Ruby to see if it's meant to be just a local gathering of all-Brits...and even if that were the case, the U.K. strikes me as a very diverse place where it would be odd to see any group that was just all of one demographic.

i don't think the OP's intentions are bad and I don't think it's right to fault someone for being a poor debater when their heart is in the right place. But Argument #1 does not equal #2 (though obviously, the two are somewhat correlated)

To your point: > _Imagine if people were criticizing a lineup because there were too many women? We would flip a shit - and rightly so! Pointing out verbally militant discrimination that causes a conference to be cancelled isn't a strawman, it is a reality._

Well, unless the conference were depicted as "The Women of Ruby", I most definitely would question a general Ruby conference in which all the top panelists were females (or Japanese. Or Japanese females), especially given the demographic of computer science. This same demographic makes it more likely that an all-male Ruby panel could be selected, but doesn't automatically invalidate questions about its makeup.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Sorry to make a different thread than the two others I've made, but FYI, here's was the proposed Brit Ruby 2013 lineup:

<http://lanyrd.com/2013/britruby/speakers/>

It was important to see this list, for those of us who have never been, to understand if Brit Ruby includes only British speakers or Rubyists from all over. (it at least includes a few Americans)

FWIW, here are a few other speaker lists for comparison:

Ruby Conf 2012: <http://lanyrd.com/2012/rubyconf/speakers/>

Ruby Midwest: <http://lanyrd.com/2011/ruby-midwest/>

Ruby Madison (Wisc.) <http://lanyrd.com/2011/madison-ruby/>

It should be noted that all of these conferences feature at least more than one non-"white guy"...but all have more speakers than did the announced lineup for Brit Ruby 2013.

<comment><USER48> As a 60-year-old, I'm glad to see Jim Weirich in the Brit Ruby lineup :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> <https://gist.github.com/4106776#gistcomment-602103> is relevant, and everyone involved in this discussion should read it. The argument so far has been presented as a false dichotomy - either take the best speakers (who all happen to be white men) or accept lower quality proposals in order to ensure some token degree of representation. Those aren't the only options. It's entirely possible to obtain a larger number of speakers from minority groups in your community without compromising your conference's quality. You just need to care about things like outreach, the way you write your CFP and the presence of policies to reassure people that harassment won't be tolerated. Do that, and you'll suddenly find that you have a high quality conference with a more diverse panel of speakers.

<comment> guard-of-terra This is a nice example but I doubt this skill is transferrable, and anyway I don't think ruining a conference will make anybody happier. Barring a few trolls who didn't care much about Ruby in the first place.

<comment><USER49> The person who originally complained about the speaker lineup on Twitter is an organiser of the Golden Gate Ruby Conference. That conference successfully attracted a far more mixed speaker demographic. Are you implying that he was attempting to ruin the conference?

<comment><USER50> To me much of this whole thing boils down to differences between the UK and the US and there respective approaches to equal opportunities and affirmative action.

Similar factors were are play in the reaction to Faruk's .net article and Laura Sanders response.

The US approach to diversity and equal opportunities isn't right for everyone and some people perhaps need to remember that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> These HN comments are some of the most disconcerting that I've seen in a long time. The amount of ignorance displayed in some of them makes me--a white male --question this community. I could only imagine what message they would send to a minority.

Here's my take on a few comments in this thread. (I don't mean to single anyone out.)

>>Imagine if people were criticizing a lineup because there were too many women.

If our society treated males and females equally, then this hypothetical would make sense. But in a society where females face discrimination their entire lives and barriers can often prevent from reaching their potential, I think such a hypothetical is silly to bring up.

 _It is everyone's responsibility to try to adjust for this inequality in society._ That might include going out of your way as a conference organizer to encourage more qualified minorities to apply as speakers. As some HN'ers have brought up, quality will not be jeopardized in the process.

>>To pick out a single conference in our industry with this property is textbook selection bias [1] and doesn't demonstrate any kind of discrimination at all.

If you notice, no one (as far as I can tell) explicitly called this discrimination. There will always be people who question the validity of things like these, and why shouldn't there be? Conferences, if they did their share of work, should be able to hold up against arguments like these (if they're invalid).

Yes, statistically some conferences might have gone out of their way to find minorities and failed to do so. Looking at any single case, though, such a scenario is unlikely. One should not just say, "Oh, statistics show that this might happen by chance, and therefore _no one_ should question the validity of the selection process."

>>The problem is statistics. If there are only a few women who are applicable - simply due to the sad fact that there are so few women in the field - <USER5> there will be a lot of conference where random selection will mean there are no women in the lineup.

Like before, _the problem cannot be blamed on statistics._ I don't believe that there will be a _lot of_ conferences where no qualified women could present at. If they couldn't be found, I'm guessing that--most of the times-- the organizers didn't look hard enough. This is just a guess, but I'm not going to assume the utopian society that others on this page have and say that everyone tries their hardest to attain diversity.

>> Dear God! As if it wasn't hard enough to arrange a conference, apparently you have to make sure to invite every minority as a speaker at that conference too.

Misunderstanding the issue at hand and making outrageous claims like these _does not_ improve my opinion of HN.

>> I really hope the responsible _trolls_... [emphasis added]

Enough said. Calling people who raise valid concerns _trolls_ (or _muppets_ , like someone else did) is not respectful. The fact that such an ad-hominem attack on HN got upvoted to the top is shocking.

>>Why should that have been their goal? This isn't a conference about racial issues or gender issues.

Taken from the BritRuby's website:

      Our mission statement was to encourage Ruby developers to unite and
      create a community, which would allow such to network, exchange ideas
      and provoke innovation for the future of Ruby.

Britain has 51% women. Women are underrepresented in the Ruby community, but there is no reason why it should stay like that. Is not anyone's job to increase the percentage of female coders. It is _everyone's_.

HN user _luigi_ says it better than I ever could:

      The act of organizing a conference makes one a leader for their
      technical community. We all know we have a diversity problem.
      And conference organizers are responsible for helping address
      that problem. Leaders should lead.

</comment><comment>=====

If I were _pg_ , I would close this thread before we make a fool of ourselves even further. People are seriously questioning this community and its views on gender imbalance in technology, minorities, etc. This is not an isolated case.

<comment><USER52> _Britain has 51% women. Women are underrepresented in the Ruby community, but there is no reason why it should stay like that. Is not anyone's job to increase the percentage of female coders. It is everyone's._

To my knowledge, it has never been established that women and men share identical dispositions towards all things. In fact, to me it seems unlikely that it should be so.

Given this, I'm not sure how you can claim that it's everybody's responsibility to push for more female coders. How would we know what the 'natural' split should be?

<comment><USER51> Correct me if I'm wrong, but men and women are not that far apart. We are all humans who love solving problems.

The ratio of men graduating with CS degrees to women is around 8:1 or 9:1. Do you honestly believe that our genetics are that different?

>> Given this, I'm not sure how you can claim that it's everybody's responsibility to push for more female coders.

Ok, since we can't prove _identical dispositions_ and--who knows? maybe women are 8 times more unlikely to want to solve computer science problems--let's just disregard the imbalance and do nothing. Is that your philosophy?

[1] [http://www.cra.org/uploads/documents/resources/taulbee/CS_De...](http://www.cra.org/uploads/documents/resources/taulbee/CS_Degree_and_Enrollment_Trends_2010-11.pdf)

<comment><USER52> My position is that I don't know how the percentage of men who are interested in coding and the percentage of women who are interested in coding compare. I have no way of knowing.

In fact, the reasons people pursue a particular career are undoubtedly more complex than you or I realise. For example in vetinary science, a field once dominated by men, women are now the majority. No quotas were required to achieve this reversal.

So I am naturally cautious about the idea of enforcing quotas when we have no way of knowing what the natural balance should be.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Maybe they should use double blind revision to select their talks..

</comment><comment><USER54> There's some text up on the main <http://2013.britruby.com/> \- among other things it says:

" _We at Brit Ruby were well aware of this fundamental and important issue. This was one of the reasons why we encouraged everyone to submit a speaker proposal. Sadly, BritRuby was used as the arena to air these issues on Twitter and this has fundamentally destroyed any chance we had of addressing these issues. Instead the community should have worked together and allowed us to bring these issues to light at the conference. How can the community address these issues if every time someone tries they are shot down and accused of such awful things?_ "

I really feel for the organisers. Organising conferences is a bloody hard and often thankless task. But when you're aware of the problems with sex and technology conferences - and when their are numerous examples of previous similar shit storms - doesn't putting out a male-only speaker list just seem a tad... sub-optimal?

In the last year or so I've been to about a dozen technical conferences and events in the UK, mainland Europe and the US. The only ones that didn't have female speakers were the ones with only 1-3 speakers. I can tell by the quality of the female speakers I did see that they were not chosen for their sex.

Great female speakers are out there. You don't have to pick by gender quota.

I helped organise the UX stage of Agile 2012. We had a 50/50 male/female speaker split on that stage with zero effort on my part - apart from rabidly pursuing good speakers - some of which were female (the selection process was briefly discussed in another thread for those who might be interested <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3993049>). Plenty of female speakers on the other stages too.

At the moment I'm organising a UK conference for early next year ([http://www.balancedteam.org/2012/11/12/balanced-team- uk-2013...](http://www.balancedteam.org/2012/11/12/balanced-team- uk-2013-survey/)) and the survey has already produced some great possible speakers of both sexes, and a volunteer team of one man and four women.

Wearing my conference organiser hat: If my CFPs and my personal network had only produced a list of male speakers I'd be going "Fuck. I've messed up somewhere." because I see great female speakers every time I go to any major conference.

I'd be reaching out to folk like <http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/>, or <http://www.womenwhotech.com/>. I'd be looking to how other folk got more great women speakers at their conferences like [http://geekfeminism.org/2012/05/21/how-i-got-50-women- speake...](http://geekfeminism.org/2012/05/21/how-i-got-50-women-speakers-at- my-tech-conference/).

Because if I didn't have some really excellent female speakers in my bucket list of possible speakers I'd take it as evidence that my network for finding good speakers is not as effective as it should be.

</comment><comment><USER55> What were the original tweets that caused so much trouble? I've tried to gather what I can but I don't see much 'trolling', just criticism, some polite and constructive, some less.

And there's a few tweets by @britruby that have been deleted.

<http://www.exquisitetweets.com/collection/iamdanw/1898>

</comment><comment><USER55> You are running an event. Running events is hard. You do not have money to cover upfront costs. Seek sponsorship to cover upfront costs.

Sponsor is possibly concerned over conference diversity. Solutions:

1) Address sponsors concerns

2) Seek alternate sponsor without the concerns

3) Seek non-sponsorship funding (bank loan, kickstarter)

4) Cancel conference, transfer blame onto those who stated event diversity.

</comment><comment><USER56> More than anything it seems to be a failure to communicate their intentions and/or write contracts with their sponsors.

</comment><comment><USER57> this is hilarious (read ridiculous)

would all the pro-equality people tell me how you suggest to fix the inequality of XY chromosomes between males and females? or inequality of melanin in people's skins? or inequality of hair on our heads?

demanding to have 50% male/female or black/white speakers reminds me of a joke: "- what is the chance that dinosaur will cross this road this very moment? - 50%. it will either cross or will not."

rather than whine and cry about not having enough women in tech go and tell your employer to hire your female friend because she's good.

</comment><comment><USER58> The big question is, who _should_ they have invited to speak?

</comment><comment><USER59> Disclaimer: I know some of the BritRuby organisers personally. I haven't spoken to them in months though, so I think I can say all this without fear of being branded either an "insider" or too biased.

I have been one of the most vocal critics of gender and racial bias in the programming community in the UK in the last few years. I have wrung my hands at the misogyny, the "jokes", the lack of diversity and I have spoken to as many people as I could about "what we can do to fix this".

BritRuby did not - and would not - fall into this category had it proceeded with its planned line-up. There was no evidence of racial or gender bias in the line-up, because the line-up reflected the community.

Are there too many fat white guys in the community? Speaking as one, yes. But conferences aren't how we fix that.

To explain why that's a legitimate call, we need to look at a bit of history. First, let's go back to one of the most vocal pieces of hand-wringing - <USER6> a milepost for critics of gender and racial diversity in conference line-ups - Chris Messina's arguments about the 2006 FOWA line-up: [http://factoryjoe.com/blog/2006/09/15/the-future-of-white- bo...](http://factoryjoe.com/blog/2006/09/15/the-future-of-white-boy-clubs/)

This piece was so controversial and so widely read at the time, that when I talked about "the fat white boy club problem" for several years later, many knew what I was talking about. As a fat white boy myself, I realised there was a germ of truth in this, but I felt Messina had tackled the problem in the wrong way.

The issue of gender and racial diversity is not one that is fixable in conference line-ups. Conferences _do_ have problems (I'll come back to that), but speaker selection at conferences is the wrong point to deal with the lack of diversity. By then - by the time somebody is qualified to talk at a conference - it's clearly too late.

By definition, speakers at conferences have to be domain experts. To be domain experts they have to have worked in the domain for many years. To work in the domain for many years, they must first enter a career in that domain. To enter the domain they must be attracted to the work.

In other words, if you want to increase racial and gender diversity in conference line-ups, you must first go down the stack and increase it at the entry point in the programming/tech careers.

We are crap at attracting women and non-caucasians to the geek industries.

So that's the problem I set out to solve (in my own small way), some years ago. I joined the Royal Society's STEMNET Ambassador programme and I went into schools around Greater Manchester (the 30-mile radius around where BritRuby was to be hosted), cheering on kids from all sorts of backgrounds to learn some coding, play with some tech under the hood, and get them to imagine what they could do.

The stereotypes I had to fight were varied, and it's _there_ the fight must take place.

For example, I did a Summer school type away day programme with about 40 girls from a range of Greater Manchester schools at Salford University. Myself and the 4-5 colleagues I was working with from other companies asked them as they came into our part of the away day what careers they thought we did.

One girl thought I was a crane driver (I'm a biggish bloke). When I laughed a little and explained no, I ran my own tech consultancy and helped SMEs develop ideas to go into the app store, on the web, Facebook apps, etc., etc. her jaw dropped.

Later when I pointed out to another girl that she could develop her mild interest in space with perhaps a degree and career in aviation engineering and that we were about to see a boom time for people building small scale commercial space craft, I could see hope dawn on her face. Nobody had ever told her she could do that.

Why was all this so odd to them? Because as a society we didn't bother telling them that these careers were for them as well. They assumed that they were out of reach for them. The news that they're for anybody came as almost a cultural shock.

Another time, I did a presentation at Manchester's Muslim High School for Girls. I went in as a 30-something white fat boy agnostic with virtually nothing in common with a single person in that room. I talked about Babbage and Lovelace. I talked about Turing and the work he did a few miles up the road at Manchester University. I talked about Zuckerberg, Jobs, Gates (because they're people the audience knew slightly, and knew the products they had created) and their teenage exploits.

I pointed out that with a laptop or the kit in the school's computer lab and a bit a of knowledge they too could create something that could spread out over the World and change it forever. All they needed was their intelligence, their creativity and a little bit of relatively-easy-to-acquire knowledge. They ranged in age from 11-14, and I don't think a middle class white guy had ever talked to them quite like that before. The feedback after the talk I got was that they were amazed this was a possibility open to _them_.

Imagine how my heart sank when the talk after mine that I stayed for was from British Gas telling them they could become boiler service engineers: "You get company-supplied overalls and use of a company van!"

But slowly, surely, I hope through STEMNET and other programmes we'll see the number of women and non-caucasians involved in the industry increase. If every person who is reading this went and signed up for such a programme, or just phoned a school and talked about going and doing a talk, if every person who reads HN went and did this, then in 10 years time the industry would be transformed.

And 10 years after that, the speaker line-ups at conferences will be transformed. And this kind of situation will never happen again.

The BritRuby organisers aren't the problem. The problem is with people who aren't actively recruiting diversity into the industry. The problem is with people who think the current diversity situation is acceptable.

Earlier I said there _was_ a problem at conferences that needed addressing though. It's the content.

I know the Wiki I'm about to link to gets some heat from many on HN (that heat is part of the problem, not part of the solution), but let me remind you of some of the talks that have caused us issues in the past:

* <http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Flashbelt_slide_show> * <http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/CouchDB_talk> * <http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Sexist_jokes_at_JSConf>

Fuck it, just go through these that are conf-related (there are plenty): <http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Incidents>

That's just the documented cases at that wiki about misogyny - race related ones aren't there (perhaps because thankfully it's less prevalent, but I'm not sure if the KKK have a programming conference arm).

The number of gender and racial discriminatory incidents I've seen with my own eyes (mostly sexism rather than racism) at conferences number more than that. It's absolutely disgusting that when it's pointed out many will explain it away with the argument it's "all in the eye of the beholder" and that the critics should learn to "relax".

Not cool people. Not cool.

Etiquette in the Victorian sense was created as a concept that was designed to avoid embarrassing or upsetting others around you. You would eat soup a certain way so you don't make a disgusting noise everybody else had to put up with. You would bow and curtsy in different ways for different ranks of Lords, Earls and Barons to show you knew their title and their contribution to the nation. In other words, etiquette was forgetting yourself and saying to somebody else - somebody you might not even like - you matter, let's make this work, here's a little piece of theatre that shows how deep down I think you and your feelings are important to me and to everybody else. And those who were the best at etiquette became the most revered, the most liked, the most socially connected people of their era. And the society became so efficient it ended up conquering half the planet. That bit, not so good, but you get the idea.

We need a little etiquette here, hackers. We need to step back and realise that whilst we might think a joke is funny, for many it is not and if we want them to feel welcome in the room, the joke should be unwelcome. You don't get to decide if the black lesbian in a wheelchair should or should not be offended by the content of a talk, you only get to decide _if you care about them being offended_ , and so when putting together a talk, think about that.

BritRuby didn't get a chance to do that.

I am 100% certain any content that was discriminatory would have been canned. I am astonished they weren't given that chance, and instead were judged on an incomplete line-up.

I'm hoping that in a year or two they'll try again. I'm hoping they'll get the support of the community, and if need be I'll go around the UK tech scene knocking on doors getting them some under-writing in lieu of sponsorship so they won't feel the sponsor pressure quite so much again. It's a simple pitch: "write a cheque now. It'll be returned when the conference goes ahead with full sponsor support, but your cheque under-writes them so if another Twitter furore blows up, they can ride it out".

And in the meantime, let's all make sure our content isn't offensive, our doors are open, and please, please, please go out and talk to kids from a range of backgrounds about how they can get into coding: we can start today on making sure this kind of scenario is impossible to recreate in a decade.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for this, Paul. I'm actually really encouraged by how supportive the community has been about this.

And I'm pleased at how many other people have stood up in the last 24 hours and announced their plans to start organising Ruby conferences in Manchester. This community is wonderful and, where Brit Ruby stumbled, I don't doubt someone else will succeed.

See you in the front row :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> And the Al Sharptons of the web are nowhere to be seen now...

</comment><comment><USER61> Here's my question: How many of the top 10 Ruby speakers in the UK are white males? What about the top 20? Top 50?</comment>


A shorter way to do Math.floor – A little known trick - <AUTHOR> http://www.tapper-ware.net/blog/?p=112 <comment><USER2> Interesting, but if someone else sees your code they wont know what is going on.

Also, it only gives the right answer for positive numbers, its off by one on negative numbers.

<comment><USER3> When I read about these sort of hacks to get performant JS code, it reminds me of how things used to be thirty years ago. Sacrifice code readability to get a speed increase because of poor tools...

<comment><USER4> If you look at the comments you'll see some test results. The slowest result was 38ms / 100,000 iterations. Even if you looked at that result on a mobile device it still wouldn't be what you'd call unperformant.

In other words, this is micro-optimisation at a pointless level.

<comment><USER3> I don't disagree with your point. I was speaking more towards the general trend. It seems like I see one of these articles every week or so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Unusable micro-benchmark. The JIT can compile everything away. From the code in <http://ernestdelgado.com/js/main.js>

      function doubletilda() {
        ~~0.12341234;
        ~~0.2;
        ~~-3.1234;
        ~~100000.23;
        ~~2.12341234123412341324;
        ~~100.0000000000000000001;
      }

      function pipe() {
        0.12341234|0.12341234;
        0.2|0.2;
        -3.1234|-3.1234;
        100000.23|100000.23;
        2.12341234123412341324|2.12341234123412341324;
        100.0000000000000000001|100.0000000000000000001;
      }

The JIT should be able to optimize the function bodies away.

And the loop is:

      // var fn = doubletilda;
      for (var n = 0, t = 0; t < 1000; n++) {
        fn();
        t = new Date() - start;
      }

So he's basically just testing creating objects and GC.

</comment><comment><USER6> Hmm Math.floor(3e100) -> 3e100 0|3e100 -> 0 This is really just a truncate that only works on numbers between MIN_INT and MAX_INT.

</comment><comment><USER7> That is really truncation and the result happens to be the same for positive numbers</comment>


Bitcoin shoots past $150 today - <AUTHOR> https://bitfloor.com/market_data

<comment><USER3> This look eerily familiar to the NASDAQ in February/March of 2000. Plus there's no recent financial news to justify such a huge jump in value in such a short time.

This bubble will burst. It will burst soon and it will burn the people who just jumped in and bought the new mining-specific machines that recently came on the market.

<comment><USER4> "In the short term the market is a popularity contest; in the long term it is a weighing machine." - <USER2>

If you'd like to hold BTC for 10-20 years, they may be quite cheap at the moment, as most of them have already been made. If you're looking for returns/stability/growth over the next six months, look out.

As a medium of exchange, the BTC is presently sub-par; it's just too volatile. I can't be certain that, if I exchange USD for BTC in a wallet on my phone, that it will be worth within 1% of what I paid by the time I walk to a store to spend it.

<comment><USER5> "If you'd like to hold BTC for 10-20 years, they may be quite cheap at the moment, as most of them have already been made."

That fact that most have already been computed has little bearing on the future price of BTC. What matters in the future is whether or not people will actually use Bitcoin as a currency (it has no other use); I am still not convinced that it will ever become mainstream. I hear about all sorts of places that accept Bitcoin payments, but I have yet to see anything that matters -- I cannot buy diesel with it, I cannot pay rent with it, I cannot pay utility bills with it, my local supermarket does not take it, and I cannot pay taxes with it. Even for black market transactions (drugs, guns, etc.) Bitcoin is obscure; even with all the sales that happen on Silk Road, you are looking at a tiny fraction of the market for illegal drugs.

Bitcoin is in a very precarious position. Most of the cost of buying in is the result of speculation about its future use, which is fueled by the media coverage it receives on tech news sites. A lot of the hype is based on questionable assumptions about Bitcoin's security and about the lack of authorities in the system. Bitcoin's ability to survive when the hype dies down and the assumptions are challenged is doubtful, at least from where I sit.

<comment><USER4> The day the assumptions get challenged, especially when the Man steps in, is the critical one.

Something like BTC, however, just seems convenient. In a thread yesterday, I needed to express the price of tools in a country-independent way. For giggles, I expressed it in BTC instead of USD; afterward, it felt right. A country-invariant store of value has real value on its own. It might not be BTC, but I don't think cryptocurrency is going away.

<comment><USER6> It may have felt right, but by tomorrow it will be inaccurate, since BTC/USD will have continued to shoot up.

There really is no country-independent way yo express price, even those with the same currency have different prices for the same basket of goods based on a myriad of conditions. That's what Happy Meals don't cost the same everywhere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Buyers keep entering the market. Mt. Gox is so inefficient at "approving" new users that it may actually be slowing down the crazy growth. Last I heard, there were over 9,000 people waiting to be approved on Mt. Gox.

<comment><USER8> Why in gods name would anyone want to use MtGox? Their verification requirements are ridiculous (they dont accept watermarked passport scan), why in gods name would anyone upload good document scans to what is essentially the money laundering arm of the Japanese Yakuza!

Aint the whole point of bitcoin is that one doesnt have to use centralised systems like Paypal who love to freeze your accounts, MtGox do the same now, they freeze an account until you "verify" which might take months if ever all while your bitcoins are sitting in their account

<comment><USER9> It takes days, not months, to get verified, and a cell phone camera picture of a drivers license and utility bill will go through fine.

<comment><USER8> No it wont, I uploaded a 200dpi scan and they refused saying they wanted a 300dpi scan, without the words Mtgox watermarked in red text across it

What sort of fools upload hiqh quality passport scans to shady sites online who can uses these to steal your identity with great ease

<comment><USER9> It will, because that's all I gave them when I verified my account.

<comment><USER8> Well then you are lucky, in meantime I will use bitstamp who dont fuck around freezing your bitcoins and dont ask for documents unless you are adding/withdrawing thousands.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I have some bitcoin that I've been sitting on for 2 years which I'd like to liquidate, but the spotty track record of bitcoin exchanges makes me wary of providing the kind of identifying/financial information that seems to be required.

<comment><USER11> You could probably sell some in person if you live in a major metro area; for example if you're in SF I'll buy them off you today (in person).

<comment><USER12> Why would you buy bit coin? What value does it have for you?

<comment><USER11> You think it's hard to hire developers right now? Well guess what, there are a bunch of talented ones who only want payment in Bitcoin.

<comment><USER13> Really? I'd like to know more about this, if true that would be an interesting development.

<comment><USER14> He probably means blackhats.

<comment><USER13> More than likely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> You can say whatever you want about this bubble, but a couple of days ago it was around 100 $ who bought it 2 days ago now have earned the 50%... In 2 days... It is just crazy.

I can remember the HN post of "BitCoin just hit 10$" and I remember to say to my brother... Whooa that stuff really worth something, we should start mining it...

Plus if there is more than 9000 people waiting to buy more than 50.000 dollars of bitcoin, the price is gonna raise again... I might buy some...

</comment><comment><USER16> Welp, time to sell.

<comment><USER17> _Welp, time to sell._

The price two days later: $234. Up $84.

Required reading for prognosticators:

I'm Raising My Bitcoin Price Target To $400 [http://www.businessinsider.com/im-raising-my-bitcoin- price-t...](http://www.businessinsider.com/im-raising-my-bitcoin-price-target- to-400-2013-4)

<comment><USER16> Hindsight is 40/40.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The CAD market is even more insane. It's hit $CAD 173.9 on <http://cavirtex.com> .

<comment><USER19> In UK it is even worst, the equivalent of US $177, check on bitbargain.co.uk/buy or localbitcoins.com.

<comment><USER18> Heh. I have tried to buy BTC for the past two days, but nobody was interested in selling at the last lowest ask price. On the Canadian exchange, it seems as if some people are controlling the market by buying and selling to themselves.

I understand that the ask prices are going up in part because of increased demand, but the constant ratcheting up of asks smells fishy.

<comment><USER20> Buying and selling to yourself on Cavirtex would be a strange decision. You'd lose 3% on each trade you make.

<comment><USER21> True but if you were able to nudge up the price by more than that it might be worth it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> it's $172 on mtgox, went up another $20 today. This is not a natural movement. This thing is a bubble that can pop any point, but at the same time, I won't be surprised if it goes to $1000 first. Like the .com bubble, you just hope that you can cash out before it crashes.</comment>


Apple Doesn't Target Markets. It Targets People - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2010/08/26/apple-doesnt-target-markets-it-targets-people/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OmMalik+%28GigaOM%29 <comment><USER2> "It targets people. It focuses on users. And Apple lets them decide how and where they'll use its products."

I just about choked to death on my coffee.

</comment><comment><USER3> At the last D8 conference, Steve Jobs said that he likes the consumer market because "everyone votes for themselves", as compared to the enterprise market where the users may not be the ones in control of the purchase decision.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I think this is part of the startup thinking that lives within apple itself... when u move to corporate america then you start worrying less for the average joe who saves money to go cash it on ur goods... look at msft</comment>


Do drugs help programmers? - <AUTHOR> http://www.itworld.com/it-management/311962/do-drugs-help-programmers?page=0,0 <comment><USER2> Modafinil does.

<http://www.gizmag.com/go/3574/>

</comment><comment><USER3> No

<comment><USER4> I had an ear infection once that was so bad I couldn't balance. I also couldn't code. I took an antibiotic. I got better.

Some drugs help some programmers some of the time.

<comment><USER5> That's just being pedantic. I'm pretty sure that the idea of recreational drugs helping you is just wishful thinking.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: My Marketing Page Before and After - <AUTHOR>

A few days ago I put up the first draft of my marketing page for critique, and I got good feedback and enough visitor data to get me going toward a second draft of my marketing page. The advice and research I got from it was very good, and I'd like to show ya'll the Before and After.
Here is a link to the screenshot of how it looked before:
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B8EKDJz2xKNvRkhNLUdkMjBkMVU/edit?usp=sharing
And you can see how it looks now at:
http://ulisesrmzroche.github.io
What I learned was that the subject of your illustration is really important. If you don't have a remarkable idea for it, no stock picture can save you. It was literally getting in the way, so I decided to cut it out. I think the headline has more power this way, and pulls its weight, but I miss the visual impact anyway, so  I was thinking of listing portfolio projects in a slideshow in place of the illustration. Though I'd need to get some good ones under my belt first. I also sold my capabilities more and honed in on my target market, as was advised. This I thought was a better idea.
Also, I adjusted the contrast of the call-to-actions. Now I just have a single call to action on the page, Learn More, which now opens a modal that contains more information about me. But I tucked the second one, Contact, into a small label on the bottom right corner of the Learn Modal, that contains my phone number. I feel this may work better, but I'm going to experiment more with the contrast and see if I can find some middle ground.
In any case, thanks again for your time! I learned a lot from this and it really helped a lot. If you have any critique, I would be very grateful and have a good rest of your weekend! <comment><USER2> I can't say I'm a pro at this (I don't freelance and don't have a personal marketing page), so take this with a grain of salt:

> My claim to fame is that I shipped a large-scale Ember.js application, > backed by a RESTful Rails API, tested all the way down to ie6, and somehow > lived to tell about it.

While I find this funny, because I know what all the buzzwords mean, not everyone knows what RESTful, Rails, API, Ember.js, or IE6 is. Even if they know what IE6 is, they don't know what a pain it is to code for it.

> (From the other thread) I want to do code and marketing for local > businesses, and coaching in project management. No hi-tech startups for now. > The tech stack would be my advantage right now, I think, among all the other > small web shops.

How is this tech stack and advantage? Why not wordpress and PHP, and slap some websites up in half a day? Local businesses definitely don't know what Ember.js is, and why should they care that you "live on it"?

You make this mention of "before I got into startups". Why not tell the story of how you've run/been in a small business just like them, and you've made some webapps that helped your brand. Then mention that pampelmoose and spiral16 (who they heck are these people, do they have real names or better known websites?), wrote some reviews on the marketing.

Change the passive voice to active (e.g. prefer "I did" to "it was done")

> I build high quality web applications that run a long time and sell more > software despite having relatively little marketing or a low budget.

Good selling point.

> Thanks in advance for your time and consideration, and looking forward!

You missed a few words after "forward".

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your critique! I removed "and looking forward" as you noted it was lacking, and fixed the active tense issue that you noticed as well. As for your point about target market, I decided to focus on web development again, since that's really where my experience lies. I have never worked in a small business. I can't write honest copy that way.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clickable Links:

Before: [https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B8EKDJz2xKNvRkhNLUdkMjBkMVU/...](https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B8EKDJz2xKNvRkhNLUdkMjBkMVU/edit?usp=sharing)

After: [http://ulisesrmzroche.github.io](http://ulisesrmzroche.github.io)

Previous Discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5987762](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5987762)

<comment><USER3> 1\. Needs a shorter headline. Even something like "High Quality Web Apps on a Low Budget?"

2\. Needs a call to action that doesn't require two clicks.

<comment><AUTHOR> I really like that headline. I'm going to work off of that. Thank you! I agree on the call-to-action, and thanks for letting me know about that bug. It's supposed to take one click. I'll look into it right away.

<comment><USER3> My pleasure!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> If I may, take a look through some of the bootstrap docs (both free and for- cost). They're amazing looking and incredibly simple to work with. If anything, some designs can provide you with styles to work off of.

Free Docs - [http://twitter.github.com/bootstrap/](http://twitter.github.com/bootstrap/)

Buy - [https://wrapbootstrap.com/](https://wrapbootstrap.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> The site is running on Foundation 4, I'm on the mobile first camp. Thanks for the share to wrapboostrap though, didn't hear about them before.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Ad some left and right padding to your container or body for iPad.

Also, it's a lot of text. Look into highlighting your personal tagline in headings, pull quotes or something like that.

Your top right language links (are they links?) aren't clickable on iPad.</comment>


Iranian lawyer who defended women's right to remove hijab gets 38 years - <AUTHOR> https://womenintheworld.com/2019/03/11/iranian-lawyer-who-defended-womens-right-to-remove-hijab-gets-38-years-148-lashes/ <comment><USER2> I don't think there is any other way to spin this story.

What a shitty fucked up country to live in. I hope people remember things like this next time they vote away another privacy or right to their government.

<comment><USER3> They didn't vote for it! In a very short and unfair summary: They had revolution 40yrs ago. They took down Shah (who was actually very liberal and was modernizing the country) to replace kingdom system with democracy! A revolution that was supported by west by the way and was promising democracy and freedom. But when they took power, everywhere has changed. Basically they lied about revolution's agenda to people.

There are some conspiracy theories suggesting that CIA did it to destabilize the country because Shah(who happen to be US allied) had a lot of influence on Oil industry and Iran was buying a lot of assets, and stocks around the world.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _"Sotoudeh was ultimately charged with seven crimes and given the maximum sentence for all of them. Five additional years were added from a 2016 case in which she was convicted in absentia."_

Does this mean she was out of the country?

</comment><comment><USER5> Wow, she is 55 years old and will be 93 when completing the sentence. I would prefer a noose for myself instead of that outcome.

<comment><USER6> There is good enough chance for a revolution until then.

However Iranian prisons are well different, guards are allowed to rape inmates so maybe yeah....

Fun read: [http://www.ihrr.org/ihrr_article/violence-en_sexual- torture-...](http://www.ihrr.org/ihrr_article/violence-en_sexual-torture-of- women-political-prisoners-in-the-islamic-republic-of-iran/)</comment></comment>


Show HN: MathQuill, my open source JS formula editor - <AUTHOR> http://mathquill.com <comment><USER2> MathQuill is amazing, I haven't seen anything else as nice for inputting moderately complex formulas.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Happy to answer any questions here or in our Slack ([http://slackin.mathquill.com](http://slackin.mathquill.com))

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> nifty! Are there any parts of latex you don't support yet?

<comment><AUTHOR> Lots, the biggest probably being environments like matrices (\begin{pmatrix}...\end{pmatrix}) and piece-wise functions (\begin{cases}...\end{cases}).

Lots of work to be done! And we love new contributors :)</comment></comment>


Walking could protect brain against shrinking, US research says - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/oct/13/walking-could-protect-brain-against-shrinking <comment><USER2> Another reason to be happy I don't own a car. Woot!</comment>


An Urban Menace : walk and text - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/15/nyregion/15bigcity.html

<comment><USER2> Talk about burying the lede! From the last paragraph of the article:

"The issue became pressing to me personally when I nearly mowed down, in my car, a teenage boy crossing West End Avenue."</comment>