Think women in tech is just a pipeline problem? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@racheltho/if-you-think-women-in-tech-is-just-a-pipeline-problem-you-haven-t-been-paying-attention-cb7a2073b996 <comment><USER2> More generally, not specific to the dear tech industry, there's been a fantastic discussion on metafilter titled ""Where's My Cut?": On Unpaid Emotional Labor" [1]. If you are a person who has personal/professional relationships with other people, it's probably worth a read [2].

Anyhow, I'll quote an excerpt from one of the comments:

> A married man is considered (in the sociology findings) to bring "more than" > one person to work with him, because it is assumed he has someoone > feeding/dressing/cruise directing him. This frees up his brain space for ... > work. On the other hand, a married woman is considered to bring less than a > whole person to work. Because she is assumed to be feeding/dressing/cruise > directing at least one other human. And possibly incubating another. This is > taking up valuable brain space that could be devoted to work.

So, there's a conscious or unconscious bias against women in working life, due to the assumption that they'll be doing more than their fair share of unpaid, generally undervalued labor outside of the workplace. Oh so plausible. This would be a _rational_ reason for a workplace to discriminate against women, given the existing context of structural unfairness and bias in the rest of society. "Hurray!"

[1] [http://www.metafilter.com/151267/Wheres-My-Cut-On-Unpaid- Emo...](http://www.metafilter.com/151267/Wheres-My-Cut-On-Unpaid-Emotional- Labor)

[2] ...unless you are very uncomfortable with reading criticism of men, and you cannot stomach discomfort. in that case, it's probably best for everyone involved if you don't follow the link.

<comment><USER3> Also sounds like a bias against men. Men are perfectly capable of feeding and dressing themselves. And while I don't know what exactly "cruise directing" means in this context, there is no reason to believe that men aren't also capable of doing that either.

I just got out of a relationship where I handled all those responsibilities. I wasn't compensated for it, nor did I expect to be. Insofar as my own generation is concerned, I've encountered lots of men that cook. In fact, I have known more men that cook than women. I also know more men than women, but the relative frequency seems about equal between the sexes.

<comment><USER2> Sure. I agree, and certaintly cannot argue with you about facts of your own life.

It's more subtle: I don't think anyone is making sweeping uniform generalisations. i.e. "ALL MEN DO a" "ALL WOMEN DO b". I'm not claiming anything about specific individuals. but I _am_ indeed claiming there is a general bias, at least in a statistical sense. For example, here's an arbitrary statistic from the UK in 2012 [1]:

> Just over one in 10 women – 13% – say their husbands do more housework than > they do, while only 3% of married women do fewer than three hours a week, > with almost half doing 13 hours or more.

So, given no further information about particular circumstances, if I were a betting man, I know which way I'd bet about this kind of thing.

[1] [http://www.theguardian.com/society/2012/mar/10/housework- gen...](http://www.theguardian.com/society/2012/mar/10/housework-gender- equality-women)

<comment><USER3> I'd take that bet if we're talking about the SF Bay Area.

I honestly have a hard time with any such figures since they take entire heterogenous regions and distill them down to a single figure that isn't going to hold true for all places. Single figures suggest homogeneity and that couldn't be further from the truth.

The UK is not the US. There are totally different cultural forces at play. I'm half British and all my aunts do most of the housework. My female and male cousins are one generation younger and share homemaking responsibilities with their male/female counterparts. The effect is stronger for those that live in larger cities. I've also live in China and Brazil. The homemaking habits of either country are not in the least bit applicable to the US.

Even within the US, there are big differences between California (where I live now) and North Carolina (where I went to school and college). Many of my classmates that stayed in Raleigh-Durham area have lifestyles where women are likely to handle homemaking responsibilities relative to those that left the region to live in places like SF, NYC and LA.

Here in the Bay Area, it's even more extreme. I wouldn't assume that any of the women I encounter does any more or less housework than any of the men I encounter.

Since all this talk is about the SF Bay Area and regions that aren't the least bit comparable in terms of homemaking activities. I don't even know many tech couples that live together. If they live together, they both handle homemaking activities.

You can't take a bias from somewhere else and blindly apply it to the SF Bay Area.

Furthermore, the modern house is sufficiently automated or simplified that handling home chores is hardly the full time or even part time job it once was. Laundry you can do once a week to every two weeks. You can get a roomba. You have services like homejoy to take care of the heavy duty chores like cleaning the bathrooms, mopping floors and cleaning the kitchen. I'm one of the few people I know that actually handles such chores themselves instead of hiring help to do it. It's not that hard and it's not that time consuming, especially considering that most people can hardly afford more than 300 to 600 square feet of living space per dwelling inhabitant in this city.

At the end of the day, these figures just aren't compelling as a way to describe the housekeeping chores division between men and women that work in tech in Silicon Valley.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > A culture that rewards facetime and encourages people to regularly stay late > or eat dinner at the office puts employees with families at a disadvantage > (particularly mothers), and research shows that working excess hours does > not actually improve productivity in the long-term since workers begin to > experience burn out after just a few weeks

I suspect excessive hours also contributes to unintentional harassment [1], mostly against single women.

Most people are heterosexual. Most of them want to find partners to have relationships with ranging from casual flings to long term romantic relationships.

If people are expected to work long and hard hours they will be left without the time and/or energy for activities outside of work where they can seek out sexual and romantic partners. Since people are _not_ going to give up on seeking out sexual and romantic partners inevitably some of that activity will shift to the office. If that office has significantly more single men than single women it is going to get particularly annoying for the women.

[1] By "unintentional harassment" I mean actions that are takes as harassment by the person they are directed to, but are not intended as harassment by the person taking the action.

</comment><comment><USER5> Serious question: why are women so harsh to EACH OTHER? From the article:

> both men and women were significantly more likely to hire a male applicant > than a female applicant with an identical record.

And from the linked studies: "Men only penalized female candidates for attempting to negotiate whereas women penalized both male and female candidates."

And the pay rates, and drops, from here [http://www.pnas.org/content/109/41/16474.full.pdf+html](http://www.pnas.org/content/109/41/16474.full.pdf+html) are both worse from female faculty - with sale offered from men 30K -> 29K vs 27K -> 25K for female faculty, and male faculty scored women higher in all categories than the female faculty.

<comment><USER6> Also from the article: "These biases occur unconsciously and without intention or malice."

In my opinion, the origin of these biases is in the early, formative years: When children see mom stay at home and dad go to work, they learn that that's the way things are - without any conscious negative judgement and regardless of gender. It's the society they grew up in, so seeing something deviate from that can create a bias. It's naturally self-propagating as well, so it will take conscious effort (from everyone) over generations to overcome.

I highly recommend taking the Harvard Implicit Gender - Career Bias test ([https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html](https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html)). I found it extremely enlightening because I could actually FEEL my brain pulling me to answer incorrectly. It's timed, so there's mental pressure to make quick decisions - where the brain takes advantage of pattern matching that's been trained over a lifetime.

<comment><USER7> "Your data suggest a strong association of Female with Career and Male with Family compared to Male with Career and Female with Family."

I didn't expect that result at all. My family is balanced in term of gender composition, and my parents both work the same amount. But my mother still has a tendency to do more of the housework. I'm curious whether having to pass the test in my native language would have significantly influenced the outcome.

Side note: rereading a bit the descriptions of the tests, it seems these are targeted toward an American audience. Could it have an influence in the tests too ?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> A few questions:

What does it mean to "leave the field"? Does that mean to no longer practice low-level work or to leave the industry entirely for another industry? If it is the former, does moving into management or another complementary area (like moving from engineering to product management) qualify as leaving the field?

So what I've always been curious about is what percentage of women leave other fields? It would be nice to have numbers to compare it to there.

Also, what percentage of men leave the field? If "leaving the field" is defined as no longer actively practicing software engineering and instead doing more human contact work (like managing), then I would expect a significant number of men to leave the field at all.

I'm not trying to dismiss the number out of hand, but merely demonstrate that it's a useless figure to bandy about with context or comparison.

<comment><USER8> > What does it mean to "leave the field"?

You can read it in the linked article: [http://fortune.com/2014/10/02/women- leave-tech-culture/](http://fortune.com/2014/10/02/women-leave-tech-culture/)

* "716 women who left tech"

* "I have collected stories from 716 other women who have left the tech industry"

* "Of the 716 women surveyed, 465 are not working today."

* "Two-hundred-fifty-one are employed in non-tech jobs, and 45 of those are running their own companies. A whopping 625 women say they have no plans to return to tech

Which strongly implies "left the industry", not "moving to product management" or "managing". 2/3s of them aren't working at all, not "promoted to management"

<comment><USER3> How do they make a living if they aren't working at all?

That seems like a shockingly high figure of people who have the means to avoid any sort of labor productivity. I can only conclude that "are not working today" is loosely defined or that these people were unfit for working at all, since someone that has the means to quit work and not have to look for other work elsewhere probably hasn't lead a very rigorous labor existence.

Also, this appears to be study of only the ones that left. I'm certain I could find 716 men that left the tech industry too, and come up with a set of reasons why they left. Looks like a classic case of selection bias. There doesn't appear to be one women who stayed in the industry in that study. Does that mean I should conclude from this study that 100% of women leave tech? Simply put, you need to survey more than just those that left.

That study comes across as far more biased than the biases it's trying to combat.

It's far more interesting to discuss base rates. Start with a sample of women in tech, follow them over n-years (you can get a good representative sample by choosing different cohorts like those that are recent grads to those with 5-10 years industry experience) and do the same with men. After 2-3 years check out how many from from each gender from that sample have left the industry. Interview them to find out why.

My ex was a documentary filmmaker interested in social causes and whatnot and I've seen how the sausage is made firsthand and know how data and statistics are twisted to support an agenda. Good statistics that strive to be impartial almost never produces numbers as "story-worthy" as the ones from that study, which means you need to question the numbers presented and also ask which figures were conveniently omitted.

<comment><USER9> > How do they make a living if they aren't working at all?

I'm one of those women who left the field after a 10 year career, and then returned several years late. The answer is, our quality of life drops. We end up in alternate careers that usually don't pay as well as tech, but come without the headaches. I worked as a private chef after I left tech. Some of the women I know have become academics in other fields, some pursue completely different careers in non-technical fields, some drop out completely to embrace a SAHM role or some other traditional gender role.

I'm not going to argue about whether this study is right or that one is wrong; but I can tell you from my own anecdotal experience that every year I see less and less women my age in tech. I rejoined IT after that hiatus and there's not a single woman I work with who has the kind of technical expertise I do. The women who have that expertise have all left for greener pastures; for most of them, tech is an uphill battle against ignorance and bias that just gets to be too stressful to deal with.

<comment><USER3> Thank you for participating in the discussion. I have a bunch questions if you don't mind me asking.

When you left after 10 years in the field and were working as a professional chef, how long did you work as a chef before returning and during that time what did you do to remain current on how tech evolved during those years?

When you returned, did you join a company working with a relatively "fresh" tech stack (read: currently popular) or did you return to a company that worked largely with the technologies with which you had worked before leaving?

When you returned, how do you feel about your own technical skills upon returning? Were they as good as before? Were they worse? Were they other softer skills you learned as a chef that you found useful upon returning? (my older brother was a professional chef d'cuisine and it's remarkable career that teaches you how to lead like few other industries do).

The feelings you had as a women in tech after returning, did you feel the same way prior to leaving to become a chef? If so, how was the experience similar? If not, how did your experience after returning differ from your experience before?

What were the primary motivators that originally lead you to pursue a career in cooking? Was it a love for cooking? Were you already cooking a lot and decided you wanted to go to school for that and then pursued it as a career? I'm particularly interested in this question because I've known people who have taken a similar path and also wouldn't mind getting into cooking after tech. A friend of mine was a senior engineer at one of the "unicorns" and is now pursuing a career in baking and plans to open a bakery.

I totally understand the desire to avoid the headaches in tech, and one might choose a different career without those headaches. I'm curious to get your opinion on the women with whom you worked on in tech that chose to become a SAHM and traditional gender roles instead of choosing an alternate career without the headaches you tried to avoid. My instinct suggests that women like you truly left due to the headaches, but I find it harder to reconcile someone leaving due to sexism in tech and then adopting traditional gender roles. That strikes me as a contradictory path to take if their motivation for leaving were the headaches you describe. What do you think about their motivations and do you think many of them probably would have ended up as SAHM and in traditional gender roles even if tech had not had the headaches you endured?

For the women who pursued careers in other field, it seems to me that moving into academia is likely to stimulate people in similar ways as software engineering. They are both similar in that they involve lots of reading, research, learning, problem solving, hypothesizing, and then application and observation. In other words a career in academia is a different way of enjoying the scientific process. For the women with whom you worked that didn't follow a path towards another career that is similarly rewarding in its daily application of the scientific process, what kinds of careers did they gravitate to? Were they strikingly different careers like moving from working with computers and technology to working with people, or something else entirely? What do you think the level of satisfaction is for these women in their new career relative to their career in engineering, once you discount or attempt to control for the headaches women encounter?

Lastly, regarding women your age in tech: when you see fewer women your age in tech, do you also see fewer men your age in tech? How much of the effect of seeing fewer women your age is due to age and how much gender? Which do you believe to be a greater problem? If you worked and returned to work in tech in the SF Bay Area, do you think that housing prices and starting a familiar may account for some of the reason why you see fewer women your age in tech (per the thought experiment I put forth as a hypothesis here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9960338](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9960338) )

(Sorry for the barrage of questions. I know it's overwhelming and can be especially so when there aren't many women in tech who can also help address these questions leaving you as one of the few voices that can offer firsthand perspective. Answer only what you feel like answering)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "almost all of them said they liked the work itself, but cited discriminatory environments as their main reason for leaving"

If the work environment is not to women' liking and has no bearing on outcome, where are all the successful companies formed by women who want a more friendly environment?

"This is a huge, unnecessary, and expensive loss of talent in a field facing a supposed talent shortage."

Again, if true, some enterprising person should have found a way to tap all the amazing talent.

<comment><USER11> I try to usually stay away from such debates, but I've thought a lot about the point you're making: if people are being irrational with respect to hiring then clearly the solution is to start a company that isn't ageist, sexist, or any -ist by formalising the hiring logic and finding people who share something deep - like a passion for building things - in common. But after talking to people and many, many companies, I've come to realise that, although a "market correction" is inevitable, markets can stay irrational longer than most people can stay solvent.

Change is inevitable and sooner or later a company will come along which will swoop up all of these people and apply them towards an audacious goal, but the time at which the stars align and such a company is born cannot be predicted and most people can't hold on until that time. Hence their desire to fix it through advocacy, which is quite understandable.

<comment><USER12> I think this argument needs to be less black and white than what you present. There's no need for a company to "swoop all" of these people and go for an "audacious goal"; that's all too exaggerated. All that's needed are a few companies competing in a largely male-dominated space, staffed with "a larger presence" of women, and being reasonably successful in whatever goal they have, regardless of how trivial or lofty it is.

Advocacy is great, and necessary to get out of local maximas, but living proof is always going to be more effective.

Of course, there's always the question of how useful such a competitive advantage (access to a large pool of excellent staff) would be to drive success. It may not be, which is a different discussion and one that would make engineers of both genders nervous regarding their own value.

<comment><USER3> Some companies actually are able to disproportionately hire many of the women available to be hired in the industry.

Company A has a hard time hiring women because Company B had a few more and better female engineers early on. Network effects take over as the company grows affording it the opportunity to hire far more women than other tech companies.

This infographic shows the ratios at a bunch of companies from those with gender ratios below the higher education pipeline ratio to those well above that ratio: [http://do-better.studiometric.co/](http://do- better.studiometric.co/)

Women earn 18% of computer science degrees: [http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d12/tables/dt12_349.asp](http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d12/tables/dt12_349.asp)

That table shows the ratio at that sample of companies to be around 19% women. Assuming those companies are representative, that is a 1% different in favor of more women than men based on the pipeline feeding the industry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "When Google increased paid maternity leave from 12 weeks to 18 weeks, the number of new moms who quit Google dropped by 50%."

This seems to be such a spectacularly good result that I wonder why they haven't tried it sooner.

<comment><USER14> Well, they didn't know, did they.

But I would say that with such good results, they might want to increase it even further. 18 weeks is still rather short.

<comment><USER15> I'm sorry, but paying someone to take off for more than 1/3 of the year? Is this based on how long they are with the company before said leave? 4.5 months of maternity leave is very generous, and honestly enough for a physical recovery and to spend time with the baby. I'd even be in favor of 4-8 weeks maternity leave for new dads.

I'm all for maternity leave, I think it's important, and there are too many companies that don't offer any, or enough. That said, there's a point where you really aren't an employee anymore. I'm not saying they should shorten their leave, but making it longer probably isn't a great idea.

<comment><USER16> Here in Canada, maternity leave is a Federally-mandated full year. Before having a baby I thought that seemed excessive, but after having one, I see the value it brings at a critical time in a child's life.

Now the idea that the US only allows for 2 weeks seems cruel and unusual.

<comment><USER15> I agree that two weeks is insane... and I understand why many would leave a job to stay at home for the first few years of a baby's life. I'm not sure I entirely understand having paid leave for that long though.

It would be easier to handle if the U.S. adopted a basic wage, and eliminated most of the welfare and subsidy programs.

<comment><USER16> Well, the Canadian method involves the parent going on Unemployment for the duration of the leave, so it's not 100% salary. Still, a better option than a child missing out on key parental bonding time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> From my experience:

1\. It is a pipeline problem (I never got as much women applications as I wanted, even with targeting a women audience)

2\. It is a problem of not enough role models for women (so women do not see themselves in tech and do not aspire for tech careers or for becoming CTOs - women CTOs go a long way here).

3\. It is a problem of the vile and toxicity of the tech community in general (just see all the fights over programming languages, about being right vs. understanding each other). And the bro culture in some places.

4\. It is a problem of women in general being more risk averse (so they gamble less with salaries or risk to push for promotion)

5\. It is a problem of job ads (male focused, where males might say 'Ah I can do all those things' and women might say 'I don't know all the things they want') and the recruiting process in general.

<comment><USER15> Wrt the pipeline, I have to agree to a large extent. I admit it, I'm biased on a lot of levels, not really against gender, but I will admit I prefer to work with men. That said, doing pre-screening of applications at a job a few years ago opened my eyes a lot.

To be honest, I no longer hold much of any value to a resume... I've seen too many people with higher degrees and years of experience that can't seem to do what it says they can on said resume. Me, I'm particularly bad at white board coding... but I understand the need. That said, I'd rather have a laptop connected to a projector.

I've probably sat in on a couple hundred interviews of other people over the years, and only a handful were of women... For the most part, I appreciate that women tend to be much more accurate on their resumes and in responses as to their skill level. I've never really liked excessive arrogance, and prefer someone more honest. This is just me though.

I also think that efforts to make language and interactions politically correct are a disservice to the goal of letting anyone that wants to work in IT do so. A few months back I witnessed someone pretty much accosted because he dared to ask, "...can any of you guys help me with this?". My extended family is over 80% female... my step father was an only child, but my mom was one of 4 sisters, her mom one of three, and half of the women in my family only had daughters (including my sister). hearing things like "I miss you guys." was said by women, to women, without any gender bias, as a generic phrasing.

There's a difference between being overtly sensitive and issues of bias/discrimination worth bringing up. We're at a point where awareness is increasing, but as a society we've also been heading down a path of so much excessive sensitivity that it's downright abusive towards people who aren't ill-meaning. I hope that a balance is found sooner than later.

<comment><USER18> > I admit it, I'm biased on a lot of levels,

> not really against gender,

> but I will admit I prefer to work with men.

You don't see the contradictions here?

<comment><USER15> Not really... When I was younger I worked in several offices where I was the only man there... I'd rather not have that experience again. A workplace is a _very_ different environment when the majority of people are of a single gender. I don't think that this is inherently a bad thing though.

When I work with women, I find I have to edit myself more in general conversation, which I don't like doing and would simply rather not.

My preference has nothing to do with a negative opinion on women, their skill or ability to do a job. I also don't have a problem interacting with them in the workplace on a regular basis (one of the best project experiences I've ever had was with a woman who was the PM on a project). I just prefer to work on a team where the people I interact with the most are men.

TBH I actually prefer when I can do an Army of One project where at least the piece I am working on can go for days without having to interact with others except for lunch. I tend to make it a point to get away from the desk and be more social during lunch break.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I agree there is a problem, but is it ever frustrating having to tolerate completely fallacious statistics and bogus metrics every time someone talks about this. That sets the conversation back.

There is no such thing as equally qualified for a promotion. To pretend that performance is a simple formula with two inputs is being disingenuous.

It is a pipeline problem, because I have interviewed zero females and 100 males. I've never even received a woman's resume.

Any study related to people being more likely to hire, or pay more, involving names being switched on a resume, doesn't make sense. Nobody hires a resume, they call you in for an interview.

VCs investing disproportionately in male CEOs is hardly surprising because even if they have no bias, they know their money is on the line for someone who will be up against the rest of the tech and business world, with all of its bias.

Diversity quotas are harmful. Great, now nobody takes you seriously not just because they're biased to begin with but also because you only got the job over more qualified applicants to fill a quota. That isn't helping anybody. A much better option is to get more women to apply.

I have actually taken bias training and yes, I'm biased as hell. I don't like this fact and try to correct it. I also point it out to my male peers. But it's really hard to overcome when nobody has non-junk data and nobody is showing up to interview.

And are we allowed to be open to the fact that maybe, on average, women are weaker performers in tech? It seems like that is not allowed to be an option. It should also be a possibility that they're actually stronger performers in tech (I bet you reached for the down arrow before getting to that sentence). Pretending everyone must have equal ability and 50% of executives and 50% of programmers should be women doesn't get us anywhere.

<comment><USER8> > _Any study related to people being more likely to hire, or pay more, > involving names being switched on a resume, doesn 't make sense. Nobody > hires a resume, they call you in for an interview._

The study ( [http://www.pnas.org/content/109/41/16474.full.pdf+html](http://www.pnas.org/content/109/41/16474.full.pdf+html) ), asked interviewers to rank how "hireable" the candidate was, and what they would offer the candidate.

Yes, the resume gets you the interview, not the job. But without the interview, you definitly don't get the job. If changing the apparent gender of the resume gets you better odds of getting the interview, then the gender gets your more/better jobs!

This is science. Creationists are invested in believing the earth is 6,000 years old and don't like evidence that contradicts that. Antivaxxers don't like evidence that shows vaccines are safe. Homeopaths don't like evidence that shows that it's just as good as water. And here we have evidence that men get more interviews.

> _you only got the job over more qualified applicants to fill a quota_

To quote the article: "These biases occur unconsciously and without intention or malice". You (and I) have a bug in our brains. We are not actually able to correctly deduce with 100% accuracy whether someone is more qualified than other.

Yes a female quota might mean that there's a woman who's being hired when you would have given that job to a man, but how do you know the man is definitly more qualified? The function in your brain that calculates "qualified" has a bug and isn't always accurate about "most qualified".

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> > These biases occur unconsciously and without intention or malice.

As someone who has faced situations where a gender microagression has caused workplace conflict, the above quote cannot be stressed enough. Just because you didn't have the intention to be biased or discriminate does not mean it did not happen. For some reason this concept eludes even the sharpest people.

We all have our biases. It's about time we owned up to them and put effort into mitigating them.

<comment><USER21> What is "gender microagression"?

<comment><USER20> It's when a guy from another department walks into a room and asks for a developer, unconsciously ignores the female developer closest to him and starts addressing the male developer.

It's when a guy kindly asks a woman to stop debating a technical spec because she wouldn't understand the details (even though she's more technical than he is).

It's when a sales guy makes a joke with his female colleague that her eye makeup is what is closing deals that day.

<comment><USER3> I don't know about other departments coming in to ask for an engineer, but when it's an engineer looking for another engineer on a different team, it usually takes the form of asking openly in that teams hipchat/slack/irc room (as gender neutral as it gets) or specifically addressing one particular engineer (usually because that engineer is known for being great at providing advice or technical details on the issue at hand)

I've never once witnessed that second one and would be shocked if I did witness that. I've been around long enough that if that were still a problem, I would expect to have witnessed it firsthand.

I know the third happens (my sister is in sales and has been subjected to it).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Where does the 50% obsession stem from? Serious question. Why _must_ all fields be equally staffed by men and women?

<comment><USER15> Where's the staffing drive to bring more men into nursing?

<comment><USER13> There is. I suggest Google search, for example "bring more men into nursing".

<comment><USER22> But why?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> "Don't rely on self-nominations or self-evaluations"

I think this is the big thing that should be rallied around. This is prevalent, obvious, and hurts companies in more ways than just discrimination (not to marginalize that aspect).

Focusing on self-nominations means the most successful people aren't going to be your people best able to do the job, but people best able to 'play the game'. This is in fact not independent, but negatively correlated with skill. (Citation needed)

</comment><comment><USER3> So I noticed that maternity leave is cited often, but that strikes me as a lesser problem in tech relative to the cost of housing. Raising a family in San Francisco is not a cheap proposition. Rent keeps rising in the Bay Area.

Let's do a thought experiment.

Lets say a man and a women in tech both moved here 5 years ago and each got small rent-controlled studio apartments for about $1000/month. Let's say they met and started dating two years ago. They decide they want to move in together. They can forego one dwelling and share a studio apartment, or they can look on the market. They look around for a one-bedroom. Two years ago, a one bedroom is probably going for $2500 a month. Fast forward to today and they decide to have a kid. Everything is great for the first 1-2 years, but by 2017, they feel like they need a 2-bedroom. They start looking around and see that the only options cost about $5000 to $6000 month. That's a huge cost of living increase before the cost of child-rearing and is far more likely to drive people (men and women) out of the industry than unfavorable maternity leave policies.

In the thought experiment above, both a man and a woman both leave tech in SF together once they are forced out of the area by the conflict between housing prices and raising a family. The different is that the age distribution for men is likely to much broader than for women because of the biological clock. A man marrying and having a kid could likely be anywhere from 27 or so to past 40, where the range for women is likely to have approximately the same lower bound, but a much lower higher bound. I suspect 33 or so. This would suggest that housing prices are more likely to prematurely end the careers of women in tech in San Francisco.

</comment><comment><USER23> Earlier in the article the author states that both men and women have bias. Then we get this quote, "If tech culture is going to change, everyone needs to change, especially men and most especially leaders."

It would be nice to know why "especially men," with no foundation for this statement it makes it hard to believe as a scientist, and even harder to act upon.

Any revisions with this included would be greatly appreciated. :)

<comment><USER24> This article is heavily biased. Consider that the case of the other 59%(!) is not explored in the article even a little bit... You'd think a position paper that is proposing solutions would at least cover potentially existing solutions before concluding that the system needs an overhaul.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> frankly, the IT industry has to be the fairest industry in the world. the problem with statistics when one side has few data and the other side a lot (women in IT vs men in IT) is that you can "choose" datasets that speak for what we look for. it is easy to pick the bottom male engineers and compare them to women and im pretty sure women will be better paid at "similar" jobs (haven't seen one similar job in 10 years in the it industry but ok).

I am myself married to a woman who codes and as long as she has shown to her managers that her productivity and quality of work was excellent she never got discriminated. people assume everything should come to them because it came to others. a company is not some socialist everland where everyone gets paid same. people get paid what their are worth (minus/plus negotiation skills)

as for women leaving the field. knowing that most engineers in big companies or services companies are leaving the field to become PM or manager of something I see this as a sign that women are more passionate about their carreer than about IT.

</comment><comment><USER26> Didn't read the whole article but this stood out to me;

"Confirm that men and women with the same qualifications are earning the same amount and that they are receiving promotions and raises at similar rates (and if not, explore why)."

Yeah, no. I have never worked for a company which pays employees based on skill, it's all in salary negotiations. If you work for a company where salaries aren't public, then this is the case for you. Also, although anecdotal, in my experience men are willing to risk more when they know they're worth more than what they're being paid.

<comment><USER8> > I have never worked for a company which pays employees based on skill

How many companies claim to be a "meritocracy"? If it's a big lie, we should admit it.

<comment><USER27> Negotiating is also a skill. Most companies are negotiation meritocracies.

<comment><USER8> They claim to be technical skill/programming meritocracies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm curious about this quote, "Investors preferred entrepreneurial ventures pitched by a man than an identical pitch from a woman by a rate of 68% to 32% in a study conducted jointly by HBS, Wharton, and MIT Sloan. "Male-narrated pitches were rated as more persuasive, logical and fact-based than were the same pitches narrated by a female voice.""

They leave out all details on how the study was conducted. Does anyone know whether it was the same words, and they just changed the name, or if they actually composed different pitches?

<comment><USER28> This is addressed in the study[0] on the third page (4429):

"The pitch videos showed images related to the ventures, but they did not show the entrepreneurs themselves. Participants heard the entrepreneur's voice-over narration while they watched each video. This video pitch format allowed us to dub in a male voice and a female voice (randomly assigned), holding the narration script constant. After watching the videos, participants chose which company to fund."

[0]: [http://www.pnas.org/content/111/12/4427.full.pdf](http://www.pnas.org/content/111/12/4427.full.pdf)

<comment><USER21> This is such garbage science I can't believe it was published in PNAS outside of an old direct submission. Using only one narrator for each sex just tests the narrator and tells us nothing about the role of gender.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> > Create a collaborative environment Stanford research studies document that > women are more likely to dislike competitive environments compared to men > and are more likely to select out of them

That is not how it works. Tech is as pure marketplace of ideas as possible. So while we should all collaborate after the decisions are made, the process before them is by definition adversarial. We must nitpick and deconstruct each other's solutions. Because we programmers cannot work if we don't understand anything in full. To grok it.

<comment><USER15> There's a huge difference between, "I'm not sure I understand where you are coming from." and "You are a god damned idiot, what the hell are you thinking." ... I have to admit, I've thought the latter on more than one occasion having to fix a bug, or do a feature enhancement in a piece of software. I try to be more sensitive in my actual interactions though.

You can review, advise and even critique without being outright abusive. I tend to take similar arguments when people want to use curse word filters... tone is a hell of a lot more than specific verbiage.

<comment><USER3>
       There's a huge difference between, "I'm not sure I
       understand where you are coming from." and "You are a god
       damned idiot, what the hell are you thinking."

True, but I don't see how this is a gender issue, but an issue with how specific individuals handle competitive and potentially abrasive environments. Women are as capable of handling competitive and abrasive environments as men and I've met plenty of men that can't handle competitive or abrasive environments and end up opting out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm curious why only one of the studies about gender-bias has anything to do with tech. Are there just not enough studies being done in that field? Are there conclusions we should be making about the world at large? Why has the author chosen to focus on tech in the title, and yet diverge once getting to evidence?

</comment><comment><USER30> Surprised not to see this [1] cited next to the Yale study for the sake of completeness.

[1] [http://www.pnas.org/content/112/17/5360.abstract](http://www.pnas.org/content/112/17/5360.abstract)

</comment><comment><USER31> Most likely this submission will be flagged as most sexism or racism articles get flagged.

Corporate American needs a major reform. US society need a major reform. Our culture and community need major reforms. The way boys and girls are raised need to be changed, the way they are educated and develop social skills and people skills need to change as well.

As it is Corporate America and the Tech industry has developed a certain mindset based on the power elite of Silicon Valley that controls VC and who gets on the board of directors via shareholders. Everyone has to work 80+ hours a week, and it is hostile to trying to raise a family. Corporations favor the worker who is single over one that is married and has children. They don't like it when there is responsibilities other than work that an employees has. Which is why there is no good maternity leave, or even child care services. Heck in most cases you have to drop your religion and become non- practicing so you don't attend services so you can work more hours.

When I was a young boy in the 1970s it was different, people got the weekends off and spent it with the family with family picnics and they only worked 40+ hours a week, and took off for family matters. The 1980s and 1990s changed that and the Dotcom Boom made the Startups and marathon coding that required more time per week to work. People got less sleep, worked more hours, gave up relationships and family, and put everything into working a job.

For me it got so stressful that in June 2001 I developed a mental illness from all of the stress I was under and all of the extra hours I worked. I took time off to pick up my son from a babysitter because child care was not offered and my wife worked a different shift, and I got made fun of because I was taking care of my son instead of my wife. I ended up on short term disability and when I returned I was fired for being sick. You see once you become mentally ill they don't want you, even if you were hurt in the line of duty. Which is why so many mentally ill people hide their illnesses and go untreated and then do a suicide later on. I ended up on disability in 2003.

I never made it back to work. But I know of all of the problems in the industry and can talk about them freely without worrying that I'll be fired for talking about them.

In order to make up diversity, many tech companies use the H1B Visa program to hire people from India because they are not white males and because they will work for less money. Being from India gives them a more diverse work force, and they are disposable employees. If they don't do what they are told, the Visa is canceled and they go back to their native country. Then the company hires someone else. It is a big racket.

<comment><USER32> > When I was a young boy in the 1970s it was different

People in the 70's thought work life was hellacious and going deeper into hell, just like today, and every decade since (and probably every prior decade). I recall people declaring they weren't going to have children and bring them into the rotten world. Of course, the politicians all campaigned on fixing everything, just like today, and nothing changed, just like today.

Source: I was working for a living in the 70's.

<comment><USER31> As I grew up in the 1970s we knew it wasn't a perfect world. My father's generation wanted to fix things and make it better for our generation.

We had family picnics on the weekends because back then hardly anyone worked on the weekends.

Around the 1980s that had changed and the family picnics had stopped. It was the Me decade, Reagan was in charge, everything had changed and the PC Era had just started with the IBM PC and DOS dominating business.

I got an Amiga 1000 with the 1020 5.25" floppy drive and PC-Transformer software to emulate DOS on it. That way I had all the features of the Amiga and could still run DOS programs like Turbo Pascal for my college on it. Later on I got the Amax dongle and Mac 128 ROM chip to run Mac software on the Amiga. The fact that it ran DOS and Mac software didn't matter as the PCs had dominated the Amiga when VGA and Sound Blaster cards became standard.

I think since the 1970s that the world did get better because we got easier to use software and easier to use computers to make things easier for a lot of people. The Internet made buying things easier and web sites automated things to cut down on costs.

What got worse is that our advanced technology needs carbon burning power sources that contribute to global warming aka climate change. The world is still hell to some people and they might not want to raise children, but some people still raise children anyway.

The truth is most of the people do the hard work to make the elite 1% richer who profit from their labor. The only exception to this is doing your own startup and then building something worth value and then IPOing for millions to make yourself rich. The trick is having a business plan that works, and not just another Dotcom cookie cutter business plan ripped off from another company.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What is the best goal tracker app? - <AUTHOR> I am trying to find a goal tracker app which is as simple as it gets. I just need the capability of creating a progress bar with an end goal and being able to update it, but it seems like all the apps out there have a lot of extra stuff and not the simple progress bar. Do you know of anyone which is simple? <comment><USER2> I use Loop Habit Tracker. It's very simple, not very customizable. But it allows you you see your progress and tick your progress easily.

</comment><comment><USER3> Strides - [https://www.stridesapp.com/](https://www.stridesapp.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Strides looks great but it is only compatible with ios :(</comment></comment>


My checklist to becoming a programmer. - <AUTHOR> https://trello.com/b/VtdXlUlh/programming

<comment><USER2> I noticed you are missing two languages you will end up working with the most C# and PHP. And why is Ruby on the Tutorials you will read and not on the languages you plan to learn. Anyway good luck and I hope you stay at it.

<comment><USER3> It is entirely possible to be an excellent programmer and never work with either C# or PHP. If you work at Google or Apple, for example, you will never touch either.</comment></comment>


Who decided indenting with spaces was a good idea? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.amwmedia.com/post/115220544982/who-decided-indenting-with-spaces-was-a-good-idea <comment><USER2> It's because at some point, your code _will_ encounter low-tech technology that doesn't let you set the tabstop. This might be a terminal app, or an actual dumb terminal, or a cut & paste into a textbox on a webpage, or a third-party tool that expects spaces only, or a refactoring tool that you wrote yourself but don't have time to get working with tabs, or a parser that can count characters but has no logic for tabs. When this happens, your tab- based formatting will get messed up, while your spaces-based formatting will look exactly the way you wrote it.

A lot of mysteries about why people don't use clearly-superior technological solutions are solved by understanding that ubiquity is a feature, in many cases the most important feature. I don't use vim because it's the best text editor; I use it because I can be reasonably sure every single UNIX-like system I ever log into will have it, and once it's in my fingers from having to learn it on a remote server, I might as well use it for daily programming. I don't use HTTP because it's an efficient protocol; I use it because every single device, library, and language speaks it. I didn't write Gumbo [1] in C because I like the language; I did it because every modern language can bind to C libraries, and so this lets a maximum number of people use it.

[1] [https://github.com/google/gumbo-parser](https://github.com/google/gumbo- parser)

<comment><USER3> The tab character has been around since 1963. I have so far never in my life had a problem with using "smart tabs"[1][2]. For my purposes (web development), I don't expect that this will ever happen.

I'd be interested to know a real-world, recent example where tabs could have been a problem for someone.

1\. [http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/SmartTabs](http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/SmartTabs)

2\. [http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Indent_with_tabs,_align_with_space...](http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Indent_with_tabs,_align_with_spaces#Smart_tabs)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Oh god. You might as well have posted, "Why do people use Mac instead of Windows?" in the year 2002.

People use spaces _because_ they're a fixed width, not in spite of that fact. They allow you to know that your code will look exactly the same with any monospace font, which is especially important if you do things like lining up operators.

I personally use a hybrid: the entire line is indented with tabs. This tells you which block you're in.

Then, for alignment or anything else that isn't related to the entire block, I use spaces.

Many IDEs support this hybrid mode, including the IntelliJ family. It gives you the best of both worlds.

<comment><USER4> Makes sense in a way I guess, but I would hate to work with you. I've now got to use some different text editor or install a plugin to alternate between white space characters?

<comment><USER3> It's not a problem working with others, since you can replicate this manually without much effort.

Let's say I have the following code:

            if (test1) {
                if (test2) {
                    executeSomething({
                        "first"  : "1st",
                        "second" : "2nd"
                    });
                }
            }

Here's the same code with spaces replaced by "S" and tabs replaced by "T":

        TifS(test1)S{
        TTifS(test2)S{
        TTTexecuteSomething({
        TTTT"first"SS:S"1st",
        TTTT"second"S:S"2nd"
        TTT});
        TT}
        T}

You could set your IDE to use tabs, and then for fine-grained indentation (where I've lined up the property definitions in the object), you'd use spaces.

Many IDEs and text editors will automatically detect indentation settings, and some of the popular ones (WebStorm, Netbeans, I think vim) also support hybrid indentation.

So it's only really a problem when someone uses a plain-text, Notepad-like text editor, but I haven't met a professional developer who does that in a long time.

<comment><USER5>
      TTifS(test2S&&
      TTSSSStest3)S{
      // ...

Show me an editor which can tell indentation from alignment at the beginning of the line. And moreover, which can tell it for a dozen of unrelated languages, like Perl, C, make, Erlang, XML and YAML.

<comment><USER3> All IntelliJ products[1], vim[2], and emacs[3] support this. They call it "smart tabs". Sublime has a plugin that does something similar[4].

I don't have it installed and can't find documentation for it, but I believe NetBeans does this by default.

Again, this is something that usually happens naturally when you're indenting with tabs. Very few humans or programs are going to do alignment with tabs, even if they're indenting with them.

1\. [https://www.jetbrains.com/idea/help/code-style- java.html#d53...](https://www.jetbrains.com/idea/help/code-style- java.html#d53261e130)

2\. [http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Indent_with_tabs,_align_with_space...](http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Indent_with_tabs,_align_with_spaces#Smart_tabs)

3\. [http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/SmartTabs](http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/SmartTabs)

4\. [http://wbond.net/sublime_packages/alignment](http://wbond.net/sublime_packages/alignment)

<comment><USER5> OK, and now explain me why none of these work correctly with _all_ the mentioned languages.

<comment><USER3> They work fine with Perl, C, XML, and YAML. I wouldn't know about Erlang, but I'd imagine they work with that, too.

It seems as though you have an idea in your head that you're unwilling to research, and when I present you with information, you're unwilling to accept that you could be wrong.

<comment><USER5> > They work fine with Perl, C, XML, and YAML.

Or do they? Either they are language agnostic or they are not. If they are language-independent, they can't work properly, since indentation and alignment are syntax-specific (that is, need some information extracted from syntax). If they are language-specific, they can't work with all the languages I happen to need, which may include some DSLs rarely used by programmers and some languages defined by myself. I see no other option.

I have checked plugin for Vim; it doesn't work as you advertise. It either puts only spaces or only tabs at the beginning of the line, depending on _expandtab_ setting. I assume from your comment that others work as well as this one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > tabs actually use less space on disk as only one character is stored instead > of 2, 4 or 8.

If I didn't have the ability to store 1,000,000,000,000 of them, I'd care greatly. To be honest source code size isn't even in the ballpark of concerns I have. Intermediate bin files (e.g. obj files) are far larger and problematic for source control and sending source to someone (e.g. several meg a piece rather than a couple of hundred KB).

As for an answer to your question: Spaces are an exact width. Tabs change widths. Therefore for precision and reproducibility spaces are a better choice across all platforms.

Many IDEs support inserting a preset number of spaces when you tab anyway, so the problem is invisible to you.

<comment><USER3> Code size does matter for websites and web apps, and for high-traffic sites, the difference between 1 byte and 4 bytes is significant.

That said, if you've gotten to a point where you have high traffic, you've had lots of time to implement something that optimizes your assets anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Because sometimes you _must_ use spaces, because you are indenting a continuation line that should be indented to an exact spot with respect to the previous line (you're in the middle of an expression, you want to be at the start of an open parenthesis, etc).

Surely the suggestion in that case is not to carefully insert tab characters to the same indentation of the previous line, and then spaces for the rest, so that you have some tabs and some spaces on the continued line? Anything else fails if the tabs are set as "developer preference" on display, but that tabs + spaces on one line is incredibly fiddly.

<comment><USER8> yeah, I would wonder why your continuation line has to line up perfectly with the previous one. When you start laying your code out so that everything is perfectly aligned to everything else, it just leads to headaches and heartbreaks when other developers don't share your passion for perfectly manicured code. :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> [http://www.jwz.org/doc/tabs-vs-spaces.html](http://www.jwz.org/doc/tabs-vs- spaces.html)

</comment><comment><USER10> Even though I prefer to use tab characters at home it would be much better if a single tab character could indent the code to the appropriate level. So a tab character means indent the code to where appropriate based on some predefined rules. Granted this is only possible for some languages and not others, and it would be much nicer even when using a non-flat file for code.

</comment><comment><USER11> The guy that had to use punched cards to enter code that would be printed to paper.

[http://computers.mcbx.netne.net/media/pcards/k_cobol_cyf.jpg](http://computers.mcbx.netne.net/media/pcards/k_cobol_cyf.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER12> TABS + 1TBS = Pabst Blue Ribbon MF!

</comment><comment><USER13> Because you can move the cursor vertically and be in the correct column.

<comment><USER14> Use an IDE that's smart enough to do it for you</comment></comment>


Same-Site Cookies in Firefox 60 - <AUTHOR> https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2018/04/24/same-site-cookies-in-firefox-60/ <comment><USER2> For those wanting to use this feature, Chrome already landed support for this. Also, other browsers are following soon [https://twitter.com/mikewest/status/988692500947853312](https://twitter.com/mikewest/status/988692500947853312)</comment>


GitHub UI changed – user dashboard got a face lift - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Absolutely terrible update; can no longer see what repos are private, nor are they sorted in order of "last updated". Very bad user experience and messed up my workflow somewhat (before I knew that the repo on top was the last one I pushed to to quickly make a PR or the like)

<comment><USER3> Private repos have a lock next to them, while public repos have a book icon. I did however prefer the highlight. And on the sort order--I don't understand what it's doing at the moment, but it's neither "created at" or "last updated" which makes things hard to find. Will definitely take some getting used to, unfortunately.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> For others like me who are not to keen on the update; I made a quick (and dirty) Chrome extension that reverts it back to the old way; kind of: [https://github.com/olssonm/github-dash](https://github.com/olssonm/github- dash)

</comment><comment><USER4> why did they remove the highlight for private repos? That was hugely helpful in sorting which ones were projects and which ones were public supporting libraries. iirc i have over 100 repos.</comment>


Mullvad VPN for iOS is now available - <AUTHOR> https://mullvad.net/en/blog/2020/4/8/launched-mullvad-vpn-ios-here/ <comment><AUTHOR> The Android beta was also released on the Play Store: [https://mullvad.net/en/blog/2020/4/7/get-mullvad-vpn- google-...](https://mullvad.net/en/blog/2020/4/7/get-mullvad-vpn-google-play/)</comment>


Preparing to peer into a black hole - directly - <AUTHOR> http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20227091.200-preparing-to-peer-into-a-black-hole.html

<comment><USER2> Different link, same article: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=625182></comment>


Nuclear Energy Is Climate Justice - <AUTHOR> https://thebreakthrough.org/issues/energy/nuclear-justice <comment><USER2> "climate justice" is a charged term that's trying to piggy back on broader social trends. It is not even close to constructive or scientific. It's asinine. I'm all for nuclear energy. Not for the dilution of complex grey topics like energy to be flattened into some sort of good vs. evil or right vs wrong argument.

<comment><USER3> "Climate Justice" is a _social_ scientific term. So if your focus is on climate models given a current trend, focusing on climate justice is certainly out of scope.

However, social scientists absolutely should focus on climate justice. And policy makers definitely should bring social scientists to the table when addressing policy to account for climate justice.

The climate disaster is disproportionately caused by a wealthy elite, and it disproportionately affects poorer communities. An effective policy like carbon tax could significantly slow the speed of climate change and potentially give us enough time build these beloved nuclear plants.

Climate justice is simply asking the polluters to either stop polluting, or at least to pay for their pollution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> While I do agree with the premise of the article, my gut reaction is "tell that to the community living in Hunter's Point in San Francisco."

That community has suffered from being around radioactive waste from nuclear research for decades, with no real resolution. Regardless of whether that radioactive material is because of (or relevant to) nuclear energy, I have to imagine telling them "our solution to climate justice is nuclear energy" would not get very far.

<comment><USER5> For background Hunter's Point situation had nothing to do with radioactive waste from a power plant. It had to do with careless handling of nuclear materials following experiments. The Verge had a good video on this a couple years ago, [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouzU08Byrwk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouzU08Byrwk)

<comment><USER4> Right, no doubt about that. However, the perception of nuclear energy is just as important for policy as the science of nuclear energy. Therefore, I think gut reactions are important to discuss alongside the science.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Set aside any short-sighted focus on renewables über alles, or justifiable concerns about nuclear wastes. Isn't part of the point of restrictions on nuclear energy to have means of restricting nuclear weapon proliferation? While the technology of a nuclear power plant and a nuclear bomb are not the same thing, they are related. They have common technological roots and use same or similar materials. Once you can refine the right elements to sufficient purity and gather enough of that high-purity material in a single location, you can kick of a fission reaction. Once you can kick of a fission reaction, you are that closer to being able to do a couple different things. You can use it as a controlled heat source for a power plant. Or, you can use it for a runaway, all-at-once heat source to vaporize everyone in an area. Iran claimed its nuclear program was for peaceful purposes. But I don't doubt that Iran's leadership was also itching to glass Israel as soon they were able.

Improving the energy situation and thus standard of living in various parts of Africa may well reduce warlordism or inter-tribal fighting. But I'm not keen on various conflicts in Africa escalating to nuclear exchanges. I can only hope that those who would implement nuclear power in Africa have well internalized the lessons of the West's sins and mistakes with nuclear tech.

<comment><USER3> Not only nuclear weapons, but I'm also worried that if nuclear power plants proliferate, we will start seeing deregulation and hap-hazard safety standards that could lead to something like a nuclear scale Bhopal disaster. Not to mention proliferation of nuclear waste which would really escalate in a world where we can move these plants to an area with more lax standards.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> One thing I haven't seen in this thread: so far, countries operating nuclear power plants are mostly the world's elite in terms of engineering culture. Aside jokes about French cars or American approach to safety vs profit, these are the countries that lead the world in engineering feats.

I'd be very cautious about extrapolating nuclear safety to the rest of the world. And this is not a dig at Africans. In my native Poland, nuclear-free, we have a lot of coal mines, some with very poor safety records. A number of disasters happened when methane sensors were deliberately tampered with, so that extraction could continue despite unsafe conditions. Both management and front miners have been blamed for such events. What would happen when operating a nuclear plant?

In both Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters, there have been organisational (political corruption?) issues as well that clouded the judgment in safety. So abstracting from technical culture, would countries with lower standards of governance do as well in keeping their reactors in top shape?

Maybe yes, and maybe even if not, that's still better than coal, but I haven't seen this considered.

Not to mention, we usually assume the only way a reactor could be deliberately damaged is via a terrorist attack. But in a proper war, don't reactors seem like pretty obvious targets?

</comment><comment><USER8> I know it's a bit of a aside, but somewhat related:

I wonder if the lightening of regulations has something to do with China starting to gain a foothold in the African markets.

I wonder if the next first-world war will be fought in Africa.

<comment><USER9> While it's true that China has poured billions upon billions of dollars into infrastructure projects in Africa, most of that has been done with the sole purpose of getting to and extracting natural resources to send back to China for manufacturing purposes. Just about every foreign investor in Africa does so in order to obtain value of some sort, either economic or political. A question which must be asked is whether the locals are truly better off after foreign investments by the US, EU, Russia, or China or if they end up more impoverished in the long run and with useless or dangerous infrastructure they cannot maintain. There might not be a good actor in all of this.

<comment><USER10> I recently spent three years driving around Africa - I went through 35 separate countries and I saw a lot of what you're talking about. The jungle in Gabon being smashed down, deep sea shipping ports in Cameroon, massive bridges in Uganda over the Nile, power plants in Guinea, the new train line in Ethiopia, etc. etc. I feel so strongly about this I wrote multiple chapters about it in my forthcoming book.

The history and situation goes like this:

Back in the day the European powers enslaved the Africa nations to pillage their resources. Decimated the people and the resources. Gave nothing back.

When the African countries got independence, the West enslaved them monetarily. They all owe so much money from that they'll never even meet the interest payments, let alone pay it down. That way we control them because we can make them do anything we want, else we'll call in the loans, or kick them off the global financial markets (cough.. Sudan) and cripple them economically. They're not our physical slaves, but they are our economic slaves. There's a reason Switzerland is the 3rd biggest coffee exporter in the world despite never growing a single bean and Ethiopia is #11. [1] . Ethiopia would love to change that, but the World Trade Organization won't let them. Don't get me started on the countries growing fields of cocoa and palm trees that stretch hundreds of miles for global corporations we know the name of.

Now China are coming along and building bridges, roads, power plants, hospitals in exchange for very cheap mineral extraction rights. No doubt they're stripping the land, but they ARE actually improving the lives of ordinary Africans much more than the West ever did. That is a fact.

It's a shame what's happening to the wilderness, but we'd be hypocrites if we didn't let them develop in the same way we have, given downtown San Francisco and Vancouver used to look like Redwoods National Park.

[1] [http://www.worldstopexports.com/coffee-exports- country/](http://www.worldstopexports.com/coffee-exports-country/)

<comment><USER11> [0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYm3TbVNf-o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYm3TbVNf-o)

(some (punk?) bands piece about that in 1980, has lyrics)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> If I had infinite Nuclear energy I would pump fresh water to irrigate northern rockies. They are just getting drier and drier, the fires are going to drastically change everything.

</comment><comment> temp-dude-87844 This is the kind of pushback that's needed against ostensibly well-meaning activists from privileged and prosperous countries trying to export their worldview, never having had to face a comparable situation nor achieving a comparable victory at home.

Africa's countries are facing an energy deficit, and weak central governments, and distributed solar and wind cannot be their only option to prosper while everyone else sees fit to trade carbon credits, plant some trees in some place afar, and even contemplate the tremendous luxury of nuclear phase-out.

The US is smart to propose lifting this development ban. Russia and China have no qualms about assisting African states with their nuclear energy programmes, or at least dangling the suggestion that they are willing to do so: they are enticed by the prospect of gaining economic allies that they may one day turn into political allies.

<comment><USER3> Africa is not a major contributor to the climate disaster, but is becoming an ever more victim of it. I would say that suggesting that "Africa build more nuclear plants" is exactly the kind of "privileged reasoning" you could expect from a "well meaning activist" of a "privileged position".

First a little reality check. If a country does not have the resources and infrastructure to build a distributed system of solar and wind power plants, it certainly does not have the resources to build a nuclear plant.

Second, there are safety and environmental concerns. Nuclear power proliferation can not come at the cost of deregulation and laxer standards. A poorer community with a weaker government is in ever more risk to be exploded with a sub-standard facility. We have seen this happen in the chemical industry (look at the Bhopal disaster, or Cancer Ally, Louisiana), and I would rather not see this in the nuclear power industry.

And finally the climate disaster is happening at a pace where we simply don't have the time build the amount of nuclear power required to phase out fossil fuel. Let alone building them in places with very limited infrastructure.

Building more nuclear power plants in Africa will contribute nothing in the battle against the climate disaster. And I'm extremely skeptical that it will result in any economical benefits for the vast majority of the population in African Countries (except maybe in Nigeria).

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> "lifting a longtime ban on financing the construction of nuclear power plants in developing countries."

Nothing will kill nuclear faster than having these built in developing nations with political and operational instability.

Why do we think that that can't keep an electricity grid regular, will be able to manage this? They will do that 'one little thing' wrong and it will end up in disaster.

This is the paradox of Nuclear: if you build a safe kind of reactor (CANDU anyone?) in a stable area, with stable political regimes (Canada?), with excessive oversight, then, you're going to get the benefits of nuclear. (We still have to figure out a few things and there is more work to do).

But the messy, poor places of the world who ostensibly need it the most ... have too much risk.

In fact, it's not really a paradox at all: 'more power' usually means 'more consequence' and therefore likely 'more responsibility'.

Why do we presume that 'high concentrated power', orders of magnitude greater than the concentration of energy in Fossil Fuels, would be anything but 'very dangerous'?

A society can only use the power sources its responsible enough to harness.

There has to be strong credibility in all the surrounding institutions to make it work.

Also - 'terrorism' in all its forms has not gone away, some group 'hates' some group somewhere, the theft of some dirty spent fuel, simply 'put' in NYC could make city blocks a 'no go zone' for 100 years.

The worst thing we can do is build Nuclear power in Columbia or Morocco. At very least, they could be built in 'International Zones' where the land is declared sovereign (like a diplomatic house) managed by some other nation literally troops from that 'other nation' can guard the place.

Of course, that has really ugly echoes of colonialism, and issues of sovereignty etc., which is why it won't work.

It only takes one stupid dictator, wanting to 'grab it all for himself' to build an insanely dangerous operation.

I'm very cynical about this move, I think it's just big business lobbying so they can make money.

Instead of 'foreign financing' \- they should be spending on R&D for safer reactors and fuel processing - as well as establishing rigid operational guidelines and oversight so that 100 solid reactors can be built in the US. With rigour in place, unit price can be brought down.

<comment><USER11> Who the fuck are you to decide what to build in Morocco, or not? When I look at [0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morocco](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morocco) it looks rather civilised now. And has for long times, until western colonialism meddled with it. Very rich history! They even have an expanding high speed rail service operating at 200mph. Beat that!

Also: _Masters of Kif!_

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Yes, if you can guarantee that the system that underpins it is stable. That means: political situation, economic situation, safety/checking mechanism, engineering ability, and the ability for none of these to be compromised. Then yes: nuclear energy.

</comment><comment><USER15> Can anyone recommend any good books on nuclear power?

<comment><USER16> Are you looking for technical how-it-works stuff, or more political/environmental things, including safety and waste disposal? For the latter, I liked "Power To Save The World" by Gwyneth Cravens. For the former, I've mainly kept up with the differences between new reactor designs by wandering around the web.

<comment><USER15> i was looking for both - thanks for the rec!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Being against nuclear energy, is like being against vaccines because of risk of side effects. A lot of the anti-vaxxers have the same form of argument, demanding absolute safety and talking up the rare incidents where people were harmed, instead of considering the risks in context of what it is preventing.

Climate change if we can't control it, will end human civilization as we know it and at best result in tens of millions of people dying and many more being displaced. Compared to this, even a 100 Chernobyls would be an acceptable risk.

<comment><USER3> This is a gross oversimplification and simply wrong. There are number of unsolved problems with nuclear energy, including:

* Safety – e.g. we don't trust Iran to operate a nuclear power plant).

* Waste – There are some expensive solutions that can store the waste (and the problem) for the foreseeable future, but we lack a permanent solution.

* Time – Global warming is already out of control, we simply don't have time to build all the new plants required.

* Cost – Nuclear plants are _really_ expensive, spending that money elsewhere is probably cost effective for the battle against the climate disaster.

A more apt analogy is probably GMO. Sure there are concerns about the safety, pollution, and marketability of GMO product, but what grosses most environmentalists about GMO is the false promise that GMO will safe humanity from a potential food shortage. It doesn't. Food shortages are a problem of distribution, not quantity. There are other safer, cheaper and quicker ways to solve the problems. Focusing on GMO is simply derailing us from talking about actual solutions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Bitcoin Is Climate Cancer

</comment><comment><USER19> Nuclear energy is dangerous, extractive, and wasteful. If Germany can make due without nuclear the world can.

<comment><USER20> Germany is not making it without nuclear. They are buying power from abroad (mostly coal sourced) and opening _new coal_ (!) and gas (less bad, but still bad) powerplants. While they're a net exporter on average, averages mislead and Germany buys _a lot_ of power during winter.

Nuclear is the least exploitative, least wasteful, least deadly and most safe power generation method. Every other method is at least 10 times less safe, more wasteful and more exploitative, going up to absurd amount of exploitation and waste in case of solar due to low conversion efficiency and the requirement of a large amount of rare elements and absolutely absurd amount of required land _which should be nature and not solar panels_ \- think about all the lost ecosystems when you drive past solar arrays (same goes for hydro, which completely destroys water ecosystems).

[https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of- energy](https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy)

<comment><USER21> Can you show me which part of this graph [0] indicates that Germany is opening new coal? What about CO2 emissions [1]? Shouldn't they go up because Germany is so dependent on new coal?

Okay, lets investigate the claim about Germany buying a lot of power during winter. [2] shows that the seasonal variance in the renewable share is reasonably low. There is one big 9% dip in November but that is about it. That same site also has a nice export chart [3]. Germany did indeed import 1.2TWh from France in December but what about the other months?

Amount of electricity Germany imported from France in 2019

January 130GWh

February 543GWh

March 962 GWh

April 848 Gwh

May 1.8 TWh

June 2.1 TWh

Juli 1.6 TWh

August 2.2 TWh

September 1.7 TWh

October 1.1 TWh

November 673 GWh

December 1.2 TWh

Well, I'm actually surprised by this myself. Germany imported very little energy during Winter and a huge amount during every other season. Overall french electricity imports make up 2.8% of energy consumed in Germany. In terms of energy trade this is quite a significant number but in terms of energy self sufficiency that is almost nothing.

[0] [https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/g...](https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/gallery_image/public/paragraphs/images/fig2-gross- power-production-germany-1990-2019.png?itok=b60n1-1q)

[1] [https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/g...](https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/gallery_image/public/paragraphs/images/ghg- emissionsgrafik-trend-1990-2019-nach-ksg-einteilung-0.png?itok=Htalj0Wh)

[2] [https://www.energy-charts.de/ren_share_de.htm?source=ren- sha...](https://www.energy-charts.de/ren_share_de.htm?source=ren- share&period=monthly&year=2019)

[3] [https://www.energy- charts.de/exchange_de.htm?source=de_pf&ye...](https://www.energy- charts.de/exchange_de.htm?source=de_pf&year=2019&month=12)

<comment><USER22> > Can you show me which part of this graph [0] indicates that Germany is > opening new coal?

Look up Datteln 4. It's one block of an existing coal plant that opened in 1964 with the other three blocks ceasing operation in 2014 and the new block having opened this year. So it's not in your graph yet but even if it were I doubt it would show up. Not much in the great picture, but still a sad symbol.

Agree with the other parts of your comment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Nuclear Energy does not exist without severely controlling access to fissile material, which is a strong police state.

Nuclear Energy does not exist without being aware of where the fissile material is, and who is trying to get access to is, which is a strong surveillance state.

The politics of Nuclear Energy are aligned with cops and surveillance.

Wind and solar power are sold at retail, plutonium isn't.</comment>


Tinder experiments: man, if you are not hot don't waste time there - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@worstonlinedater/tinder-experiments-ii-guys-unless-you-are-really-hot-you-are-probably-better-off-not-wasting-your-2ddf370a6e9a#.svc6fpdrq <comment><USER2> > Lying in this way is ethically questionable at best (and highly > entertaining), but, unfortunately I had no other way to get the required > data.

I like the researchers honesty. :)

So in regards to OKCupid, there are people who do ethical research (not creating fake profiles) like this guy did with his Python scraping:

[https://www.wired.com/2014/01/how-to-hack- okcupid/](https://www.wired.com/2014/01/how-to-hack-okcupid/)

And not so ethical research, like this girl who created fake profiles (and also refuses to date non-jews -- which is the whole 'are preferences racism?' question that can take multiple blog posts on its own):

[https://www.ted.com/talks/amy_webb_how_i_hacked_online_datin...](https://www.ted.com/talks/amy_webb_how_i_hacked_online_dating/transcript?language=en)

Additionally, the way I use Tinder is that I swipe a like before the image loads in rapid succession (hopefully before the image loads and thereby minimizing my mobile data usage .. but even if I'm on Wi-fi I still do this. It's just easier). The researcher's 1 in 115 statistic feels about accurate from my own empirical observations.

I'd say I'm well over the 100 range or rapid swiping before (if) I get a match. It usually takes 2 ~ 3 days for a single match. From what I've found, you get 100 swipes per 12 hours. I wouldn't get on more than once a day, so I'd say my match percentage is probably 1 in 200~300. I'd be tempted to measure it, but I'm way more lazy than this guy .. and lonely.

<comment><AUTHOR> I would try OkC djsumdog, I think it is better for geeks :)</comment></comment>


So I wrote my own - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=%22so+I+wrote+my+own%22&type=Code&ref=searchresults <comment><USER2> Please join me in flagging all those Github search submissions.

The first one was cool. The second, not so much. Numbers thirty through ninety-three are basically spam.

<comment><USER3> flagging seems harsh. Just don't up-vote.</comment></comment>


7 backbone.js mistakes you must fix today - <AUTHOR> http://geeks.bizzabo.com/7-battle-tested-backbonejs-rules-for-amazing-web-apps

<comment><USER2> Thanks for sharing.</comment>


New Qt Releases Might Now Be Restricted to Paying Customers for 12 Months - <AUTHOR> https://mail.kde.org/pipermail/kde-community/2020q2/006098.html?print=cGh4 <comment><AUTHOR> The official KDAB position:

[https://mail.kde.org/pipermail/kde- community/2020q2/006101.h...](https://mail.kde.org/pipermail/kde- community/2020q2/006101.html)</comment>


Ask TechStars - <AUTHOR> http://ask.techstars.org

<comment><USER2> I'm confused: how is this a version of ASK HN? It's clearly an early beta deployment of a product from the TechStars startup Sponge <[http://getsponge.com>](http://getsponge.com>). Considering all the activity in the Q&A space lately, this title seems unnecessarily hostile.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sponge is not a TechStars startup, you clearly didn't know.

<comment><USER2> _checks TechStars founders wiki_

Oh hey, you're right. My bad. Sorry about that. I guess I just kinda assumed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is a Great program. It puts people directly in touch with very interesting an helpful advisors, and lets you ask them quick one/two paragraph questions.

Then, it shares the advice out so everyone can benefit from it as well.

</comment><comment><USER4> Not surprised to see this question, pretty surprised to see the answer (from David Cohen):

[http://ask.techstars.org/what-if-we-outsourced-the- developme...](http://ask.techstars.org/what-if-we-outsourced-the-development- of-our-technology)

<comment><USER5> Take all those answers with a grain of salt. Remember: He's saying "Feel free to apply" That's the same as a loan officer at a bank. They'll tell you to apply for a loan even if you're unemployed and 100k in debt. That's no guarantee that the application will go anywhere, but they want to keep the pipeline full.

<comment><USER4> In this case I think it's fair to expect more. The best investors give quick "No"s, right?</comment></comment></comment>


Aaron Swartz: prosecution or persecution - <AUTHOR> http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/latenightlive/aaron-swartz3a-prosecution-or-persecution/4500208

<comment><USER2> A calm, sensitive broadcast which gets to the facts of what aaron did and did not do in that closet. Although there is no new information here, it is heartening to see accurate details concisely conveyed to the public at large.</comment>


How to PR and Market on little budget - <AUTHOR> http://webinar.startupblink.com <comment><AUTHOR> Struggling to get press mentions & market your Startup? StartupBlink CEO, Eli David, will be discussing PR & Marketing on a low budget tomorrow at (1pm & 6pm London). Don't forget to register here:</comment>