An open letter on feminism in tech - <AUTHOR> http://modelviewculture.com/pieces/an-open-letter-on-feminism-in-tech <comment><USER4> I appreciate the authors taking the time to write this (unfortunately this HN comment page emphasizes the uphill climb ahead). But there's one thing in particular I, selfishly, appreciated them addressing:

"Does this mean we're going to get angry at you if you try to help and get it wrong?"

This fear was something that kept me from speaking out for many years. I'm a guy in tech and I want to see change occur but I'm ignorant about these things. I don't truly understand the challenges that women face in our industry. And because I'm relatively ignorant, I worry that I might say something that was intended as supportive but winds up contributing to the problem: white-knighting, disempowering, calling attention to something that the person affected wanted to leave alone.

Personally, I've come to terms that I'm going to try my best and risk screwing up occasionally. It's scary but I think it's better than the alternative of sitting by and doing nothing. But it makes me feel a lot better to hear that I'm not alone in worrying about this.

<comment><USER5> Compare that with [http://jacobian.org/writing/what-can-men- do/](http://jacobian.org/writing/what-can-men-do/) , which is linked to in the OP in which he criticizes Jeff Atwood for doing it wrong. So wrong that he won't even link to him, even though he acknowledges that his intentions are good.

Edited to fix pronoun.

<comment><USER6> I assumed that was a dig at Jeff Atwood, who initially refused to link to Shanley's piece on the grounds that it was hateful.

<comment><USER7> That isn't actually what he said, and this is the sort of thing that hurts relations rather than helps them.

What he said is that he doesn't link to Shanley _in general_ because all of her stuff is so vitriolic. He then went on to post links to twitter posts of her's showing where she has been _extremely_ vitriolic.

He stated that his reasoning is that he does not want to send people to such a place.

He didn't simply refuse to link to "Shanley's piece", he refused to link to Shanley at all. But it should be noted that he _did_ link to other authors who are feminist in nature. He has every right to have a problem with a specific person for non-gender reasons, and your portrayal of him otherwise is unfair and deserves to be moderated in order to preserve actual conversation.

<comment><USER6> I appreciate the clarification of Jeff's position and rationale. The only point I was making is that the non-linking struck me as a reference to Jeff not linking to Shanley.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> vezzy-fnord One thing that no one seems to address in these discussions (of which at least one appears every week) is how will feminism actually solve these problems?

Actually, I'd like to address this paragraph:

 _Feminism is not a dirty word. Feminism is the radical notion that women are people, and that we want to be treated as equals. Don't let someone else pretend otherwise out of their own misguided notions._

The author(s) repeat a very common cliche, and insist on this as the one true definition of feminism. Yet in reality, feminism is splintered, divided into many schools, disagrees on fundamental issues (sex-positivity versus sex- negativity and transgender inclusion versus transgender exclusion, most notably) and is not a coherent movement. The same applies for virtually all ideologies.

Some will repeat that quote, some will say "gender equality", others will go for "women's liberation", "abolition of X concept considered problematic", "separatism" or a variety of other reasons.

Which school do we adopt? Why? How will it change things? Is feminism really that seamless of an ideology that it is the one true way to fix things?

<comment><USER8> Do you have a better solution to propose, then?

<comment><USER9> I'd propose to be more careful when throwing "feminism" in the ring - <USER2> really is an umbrella term, and it makes it so much harder to discuss things because so much time is wasted looking for where the goal posts reside today.

One potential downside is that deconstructing the umbrella also removes that feeling of speaking for a huge majority. I'd consider that a feature because it's a misleading notion.

<comment><USER10> Indeed. A good post on the shared properties and differences of feminisms: [https://culturallyboundgender.wordpress.com/2013/07/24/share...](https://culturallyboundgender.wordpress.com/2013/07/24/shared- girlhood-red-herrings-and-the-creation-of-the-third-wave/)

All women are different, but all women experienced girlhood, and experience male violence. Sadly most in the HN crowd don't have the proper familiarity to understand that kind of nuance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Sometimes I feel like there are people that confuse just being a jerk in general, with being a jerk specifically to women.

In this industry I've met a lot of really great people, and unfortunately a ton of arrogant, egotistical, pretentious and aggressive jerks. I've felt like crap being around those people tons of times.

Sometimes they say mean things about women, sometimes about liberals or republicans or people from India or making fun of someone's Github pull request to an open source project. I've heard things that smell of Social Darwinism. All kinds of junk. But all of it seems to come from the same jerks. It doesn't seem like there is like the "I hate women" jerk and the "Stupid people deserve poverty" etc. It seems like most hateful jerks just hate everyone.

It seems in tech, people's positions in companies are very much based on a particular skill or having a bunch of money. And very little to do with whether or not they are a jerk. So maybe this is just that we end up with a higher concentration of general jerks? Also, right now this industry is where the money is, and that always has a tendency to up the jerk ratio as well.

<comment><USER12> That's the thing, though. By promoting a more feminist, egalitarian, diverse culture for tech, we by definition eliminate the jerks. Why do we have to take as a given that we have to take the jerks along with the money?

<comment><USER11> I absolutely agree. I was only relaying that maybe if we focus more on the jerk part, and less on the specifics of the brand of jerk we might help solve the problem of all the people who have to deal with jerks in this industry, not just one specific group.

<comment><USER12> Sure! But I guess my point is that by embracing the voices of marginalized groups, we can solve a huge chunk of that at once. If you think about it, jerks usually act the way they do because of a perceived power differential. The guy with enough insecurity to harass a woman (or POC, or LBGTQ person) is likely to try to power trip other men, too.

<comment><USER11> I think I understand your logic here. It does make some sense to use the harassment of a marginalized group as a sort of "tell" that this person is a jerk. I do worry though that it is a bit divisive. A lot of terms like "white male" and "feminist" are very loaded at this point and it feels to me like focusing on specific groups might be a distraction.

For example if I were to say that one of the most arrogant and aggressive people I've known was a self described feminist, it starts to distract from the fact the in reality this person is just a jerk and the feminist part really doesn't have anything to do with that. And any of the hateful gender specific things that person said to other people didn't really have to do with gender issues as much as this person was a total jerk to almost everyone around them.

<comment><USER12> Yeah, it's sad how those terms ("white male", "feminist") have become loaded. But again, I think it's because of perceived power differences. For some reason, the term "feminist" has come to mean, in some circles, "person who wants to take away my power". When in reality, promoting an egalitarian world benefits both women _and_ men, since it reduces jerk behavior. Promoting equal rights for women does not take away rights from men, you know?

I feel you on the second paragraph, but I think what's really distracting is the unnecessary stigma of the labels. What if more women and men, especially those with influence, openly identified as feminist? It's like the xkcd comic about girls being bad at math ([https://xkcd.com/385/](https://xkcd.com/385/)). If one self-described feminist behaves poorly, you'd probably blame that on her personally, instead of writing off all feminists (and feminism, at the same time).

<comment><USER11> Personally speaking, I think feminism is a benefit to the world. I think it has helped, and will continue to help make the world more inclusive place and increase the understanding of the unique issues women face in society. I hope I am not coming off as saying that I think feminism should go away or that I'm speaking generally about the world at large. I was only using the self described feminist as an example to show that it might distract. I've met plenty of jerks, only a couple of them considered themselves feminists. ;)

I was more specifically talking about tech, especially the more app/web side of things as that is my personal zone of experience. There just seems to be a lot of jerks in general. That said, there are also a lot of inspiring, compassionate and incredibly intelligent people that I feel so lucky to have worked with and learned from. I only brought that aspect up as I wonder if maybe some of the issues with tech is that some women and other people who might typically face discrimination and harassment in other aspects of their life, do not realize that in a lot of ways its just a jerky place. That they might not realize that plenty of tech workers are made fun of, talked down to and even sometimes outright yelled at. For example all of these things I've just mentioned have happened to me personally on multiple occasions. The yelled at was only once a long time ago fortunately.

So maybe we might focus on making tech less jerky in general? Because there are plenty of people, not just a few specific groups that are treated pretty poorly in this industry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It makes me sad to read this stuff, but a genuine question for other male readers. Have you heard of, or come into contact with any of this abhorrent behavior that's mentioned? I have never seen it anywhere I worked, or heard of that sort of thing through word of mouth, but obviously that's a terrible sample set.

My experiences related to women in tech:

* Everywhere I've worked, it's been a boys club, but we'd LOVE to hire more women. Frankly, hiring is hard in general. When women have come in to interview, I can't speak for others - but I know in the back of my head, my biggest concern is, "Make sure you interview with the same standards as anyone else, but make sure you don't have some subconscious bias because she's a she."

* There are probably good female engineers, and not so good ones. One of the few "not so good ones" I know of (doesn't mean she'll never improve, just at the time) had to be super carefully managed out over a long time. There was no unceremonious firing, that's for sure.

* Is there even a "women in tech" problem? Or is it just "women in the workforce, no matter the industry"? The kinds of ridiculous behavior women are describing in these articles sound to me like they could happen in finance, sales, marketing, HR, or anywhere.

* On any of the open source mailing lists I'm on, I've never seen anything remotely close to, "Your pull request sucks you wh _re, try again ". Are these just the mythical basement dwelling trolls of Slashdot lore reaching out privately via email?

Most of the engineers I know in tech are decent, upstanding guys. If anything, I feel like if any of us was pulled aside by a female co-worker and she described shenanigans of the sort I read about in these articles, we'd probably jump to their defense in a heart beat, almost maybe too easily.

What have the rest of you experienced?

_ __ __ __ __*

Edit: I left the above (my OP) in tact. After re-reading it, and some responses, it's become clear to me that it gives off an air of, "I don't believe these reports", and that's not really what I intended.

I suppose my main point was that no, I haven't experienced it, and I think that's exactly what these women are saying - Just because you haven't seen it, doesn't mean it's not there. So really, despite getting some up votes, I think I missed the boat.

I was curious if others on my (the male) side have in fact seen it, but what does that tell us? Probably not much.

<comment><USER14> You read the story of a range of women from across the industry, said you haven't had the experience these women have had, and then explicitly asked men for their opinions. See if you can figure out the bug here.

* "We have this problem with our iOS app."

* "I use Android and have never seen this. Any other Android users encounter this?"

<comment><USER13> Anil - I'd have expected a bit less snarky of tone from someone so public, but I'll try and answer you anyway:

Yes, I asked other males what they've seen. You can't change reality. Our industry is about as male as the army. I could probably have counted the females in my computer science program back in college on one hand.

I'm just wondering if it really all is as behind closed doors/hidden as is implied, or perhaps I just haven't come across it. People talk. They meet up in bars. I hear all sorts of things from other people in the industry over FrieNDA - though I really haven't heard many stories like these.

<comment><USER14> Honestly wasn't trying to be snarky -- it may just come naturally. (Would also separately argue I'm not particularly well known on HN.)

If "our industry" is defined as the technology industry, it's actually far _less_ male than the army; We just insist on not counting the women who frequently lead efforts around communications, corporate development, design, marketing, office management, and other essential parts of the business. And even within engineering-focused disciplines, there used to be far _more_ women involved but the number has been going down in recent decades.

But the question all of us men have to ask ourselves is: Why do you need another source. You had a whole range of people already telling you what they saw, and you're looking for people who _by definition_ would have less information about this topic to provide their opinions. Why do you think that's the case?

<comment><USER13> I edited my post (only to add, not change it.) After reflection, I think it was a little off base, even if well intentioned.

<comment><USER14> I appreciate the thought and reflection, especially given that my response could reasonably be seen as snarky.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> this is one of the more thoughtful pieces i've read on the issue.

it's obvious to anyone really paying attention the tech industry (and probably most other industries) has been extremely unfair to women. writing like this-- clear on the problem and supportive of people who want to help--is important, but it's also important to remember that we all collectively have to act to actually change things.

<comment><USER10> "this is one of the more thoughtful pieces i've read on the issue" is bull shit. I'm male and even I can figure this out.

Do you see what you're doing here? Do you even realize? Your comment reads: "THESE women are actually thoughtful, not like those bra-burning man-hating diatribes that I've come across from those crazy women in tech. If only all women were this calm and docile when talking about this subject." Maybe that wasn't the precise thoughts behind it, but it comes off as that condescending to everyone (particularly the women) who don't fit to your standards. You are saying "if you're going to talk about gender in tech, or even gender at all, be like these women or I don't care/you're crazy."

Every "piece", whatever the tone, is written for specific reasons, and you'd rather take the lazy route and rank them as "more/less thoughtful" than actually try to understand those reasons. Hey, I agree, there are some articles and such on gender-in-tech out there that could make points more strongly, could be tailored to their audience better, etc etc. You should respond to those with honest, interested questions. Not this. Edit: from the actual article itself:

"Being nice doesn't work. We've been nice. Some of us that have written down our stories here have even been _paraded around by men in the industry_ for how nice we've been in trying to address the social problems in tech as a way to discredit more vocal, astutely firm feminist voices. We don't like this, we've never liked it, and it needs to stop."

Parading this article as "more reasonable" is the same dynamic; don't settle for the speech that you're comfortable with. Go back and try to understand why the other, louder speech made you uncomfortable.

<comment><USER16> Disallowing people from having/expressing an opinion as to how helpful/thoughtful a piece is -- particularly a _positive_ opinion -- seems as problematic as disallowing some pieces.

Maybe it's better to just let people express it when something resonates with them.

(And while any judgment on how thoughtful a piece is probably subjective, it seems unlikely that every piece is equivalent in how broadly it leads people think about issues in a helpful way.)

<comment><USER10> I'm not saying "don't allow men to give their opinions on feminism articles," I'm saying that "this feminism article really helped me understand things better/gave me a new perspective" is infinitely more polite and fair than "this article is good, better than those other feminism articles I've read."

You don't have to push other women down to congratulate the ones who speak in the way you like. Feminism, from what I've gathered over the years, involves working to understand the experiences of _all_ women.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Just a side note this site is run by a person who thinks

"This is NOT unrelated to the fact that YCombinator built Hacker News, a platform that has consistently terrorized women in tech for years."

[https://twitter.com/shanley/status/460566412226883584](https://twitter.com/shanley/status/460566412226883584)

<comment><USER18> I remember reading through that account's tweets when pg was accused of saying teenage girls can't code or something. Thought the author was pretty despicable. No surprise there was no apology or retraction when the full context / truth of that interview was revealed a few days later.

<comment><USER19> I followed it for a few weeks/months previously. The amount of hate she attempts to stir up is insane. That's exactly why I'm not interested in participating in this discourse 99% of the time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I am going to convey my experience of reading this, in the hopes that it might be helpful. The message that I get from this essay is as follows.

"We are angry with the way we are treated as women, by men. We are angry with the way we see other women being treated by men. Even though you might not personally have treated us like this, we know that you are a man, like other men, and we hold you responsible for what has happened to us and what we have seen. You have power, and we don't. It is by your choice and negligence as men that we are powerless and demeaned. You are not innocent, even though you think you are. We aren't interested in your opinion. You don't know anything. You need to change to make us not angry."

The reason I think this might be interesting is that I know (re-reading the letter, especially) that THIS IS NOT WHAT THE LETTER SAYS. For one thing, it is far from the only thing discussed in the letter; more importantly, however, I don't think this interpretation is all that fair a reading of what the authors have actually written. I know that it's a distorted version of what they intended to convey, and it might not even represent a correct interpretation of how any of them feel.

So why is this my impression? Your own conclusions are welcome, of course. You're free to dismiss me out of hand. But for myself, I think that it has to do with the confluence of two factors. Firstly, I don't really feel that I have a lot of power over women. Actually, I feel like women have a lot of power over me. My life is inextricably entangled with the lives of women, and it would be a meaningless, barren hell were this not so. But instead, and secondly, I am being told how separate I actually am --- and always will be --- from women. I am being told that women are not being treated as people by writers who go on to talk about women, and men, and the relationship of victimization between the two, without hardly a word about people, and how people treat each other, and how some people come to treat other people differently, and what we can do about it. Instead, I feel, I am being told that I am wrong to treat people as 'women' by people who are using the power of that identity as leverage to demand my compliance.

If feminism is the radical notion that women are people, then a feminism that is not about people is radically flawed. I don't like people having power over me, either. I don't like being treated as the avatar of someone's fears, pain, and disappointment, either. I don't like not being treated as if I'm me, really a person, either.

This is all off the cuff, and I have no time to be writing it, but that's my experience, and my reaction, and thanks for reading it.

<comment><USER21> I also was worried that there was something wrong with my reading comprehension. To me, one of the most critical parts of the essay seemed the most weakly written, namely the "Encouraging greater diversity in the workspace" section. Here I am thinking "ok, here comes the concrete suggestions for what men should do"\--and then I'm left with a phrase without a definition. That section talks about events thrown by women for women it seems--precisely the things companies that "only pay lip service" would point to as evidence of their feminist credentials. In other words, those places and events don't look like "workplaces" at all. They may be encouraging women to work in tech "in general" and improving their skills but they are no means directly getting the women hired into the workplaces in question.

So just so I get this right: When they say "Encourage diversity in the workplace" do they mean "all things being equal, hire the women", or do they mean "all things being not _immensely_ unequal, hire the women"?

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> >Kat has started organizing casual lightning talks featuring female speakers. The talks have now taken place in both San Francisco and New York.

I thought that attending these would help me in various ways (all the words I can come up with fail to fit my sentiments so I'm going to leave it vague like this), but the link [1] doesn't lead to any resource where I can find out about future such events (presumably they'd be held at Stripe since Kat, the host, is employed there). Does anyone know where I can find this info?

[1] [https://stripe.com/events/lightningpies](https://stripe.com/events/lightningpies)

</comment><comment> jack-r-abbit > _If you see someone engage in bad behavior and you do nothing, you 've > chosen to let that person think that what they did is okay. This leaves us > feeling like we're fighting this alone._

There is easily dozens (hundreds?) of "fights" that I could get into everyday but I don't. I'm not really a confrontational person. Please don't take it personally when _this_ fight is also one I don't get into.

<comment><USER7> It isn't even about that, you pick and choose your fights. If you try to fight every injustice, you'll succeed at none.

You have to choose when to fight.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Article conflates feminism with women. Not all women are Feminist or seek to be. Women are human beings and should be treated as such. Feminism is an ideology and should be treated as such. Why confuse people by taking about them like they're the same thing?

<comment><USER10> >Feminism is an ideology

This is where you're factually (yes, factually) wrong. Try: !w feminism

<comment><USER23> What are you trying to say, exactly? If you're trying to say I'm unfamiliar with feminism, you're wrong. If you're trying to say that feminism isn't an ideology, you've made the poor choice of suggesting an article that uses the word _ideologies_ in the first sentence. If you're trying to snipe at me for using the singular instead of the plural, I shall have to say Q.E.D.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> "Some men made statements that made us feel unwelcome in the tech industry"

We are going to respond my making generailized hate speech towards all men in the industry.

But seriously, are people expecting 100% support from all sections of society? Is that even a realistic expectation?

<comment> mycroft-holmes > We are going to respond my making generailized hate speech towards all men > in the industry.

This is a large part of my problem with some of the MVC writers. If you're a male, you're guilty. If you're white and male, you're really guilty.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am a straight white male, and I know (and am friends with) many of the MVC writers. I even sponsored the latest issue. So I can say, empirically, you're wrong.

<comment><USER24> You seem like a nice guy, but I think this is about what arguments get deployed if you are perceived not to be toeing a specific kind of feminist line. Socially, in certain circles, you are not allowed to disagree or even question and maybe not talk at all unless you have some kind of special sex/race combination. And the same facts or arguments deployed will be acceptable or despicable depending on WHO says them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I wish we could leave codebabes.com out of the equation when it comes to women in tech. This is not an industry thing, and opinions on whether or not it's okay for these kind of things to exist are divided, and not across gender lines and including amongst feminists.

It falls in the same category as porn. It's a valid debate, but it's a separate debate.

</comment><comment><USER26> This is a topic I feel very strongly about, but I have to treat like it's radioactive. Hence, this is a throwaway account and I will not be using it again.

I am a white male in my early 30s. I'm strongly libertarian and do everything in my power to make sure that people have the opportunity to work in a safe and non-threatening environment. I go out of my way to make sure that people who do not share my "type A" personality are included in group activities, and spend a good deal of energy monitoring and adjusting my body language to be inviting without being aggressive. This in particular doesn't come naturally to me, and as an introvert, is quite exhausting.

The one time I attempted to work with the the social circle that authors and maintains Model-View-Culture, I was met with the single most obvious and aggressive display of sexism I've encountered in my professional career. They used gender-based names to refer to me in a very derogatory and degrading way, and proceeded to go through my social profiles and mock my private life and family - because I had the audacity to attempt to engage them in a conversation while being male.

> Does this mean we're going to get angry at you if you try to help and get it > wrong? > This is an a fear that has come to light through side channels. Men > know there is a problem, and they're worried the women they know are on the > defensive - especially when reading a direct call to action like this one.

> They want to help but they're worried if they don't get everything just > right, someone will chastise them into oblivion.

No, I'm not worried that I'll be chastised - I'm worried that my gender will result in a situation where any action (or inaction) on my part will result in my being ostracized from the professional community to which I've devoted a large part of my adult life. Further, I base this fear on my own actual experience and the direct observation of the experiences of others.

> The people signing this document are patient when they see someone trying to > make a difference.

Perhaps. To be fair, the people who lashed out at me are not listed on this document. They are members of the same social circle though, and the thought of putting my career and my family's livelihood on the line to try and solve problems that do not directly impact me is terrifying. I am supposed to trust them not to dox me, spread that information to their entire social circle, then use it to publicly shame me?

[http://modelviewculture.com/pieces/investigation-online- gath...](http://modelviewculture.com/pieces/investigation-online-gathering- information-to-assess-risk)

I want to help. I really do. I have a wife, daughters, and my own mother is a long-time feminist. I consider _myself_ a feminist, though not of the radical far-left variety they practice. As much as I've been preached to about how feminism is hostile because they are not in a position of power, they've wielded that power arbitrarily and willfully when they found themselves able to do so.

The only way to win this game is not to play.

<comment><USER7> And the worst part is that not all of them are that way.

Like you, my mother was also strongly feminist. She had a very strong personality, and I grew up being a "feminist".

It wasn't until I got older and started seeing the movement as a whole that I started distancing myself from it.

Because I agree that wrongs need to be righted, and that women have every right to equality as men.

I just don't agree that means I should be ashamed of my gender, or that I'm automatically an asshole.

<comment><USER27> Thank you for making better points than I did. I feel like there is no "discussion" here, just blatant attacks on anyone who disagrees with any of the conclusions made by the authors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28>
      >> We are not the 'nice feminists' of this community.
      >    Being nice doesn't work. We've been nice.

In this article you were actually all nice and I read right to the bottom. I certainly do find it a lot easier to listen to and agree with people that aren't spilling hatred at me. I never want to feel like I'm giving time to somebody trying to extract some psychological harm as revenge on my gender - whether or not they have a reason to be angry with the status quo, the target market often doesn't last long enough to receive your message.

       > We are tired of our male peers pretending that because they
       > do not participate in bad behavior, that it is not their problem
       > to solve. If you see someone engage in bad behavior and you
       > do nothing, you've chosen to let that person think that what they
       > did is okay. This leaves us feeling like we're fighting this alone.
       > We can't work on what we can't see, but if you're there when it
       > happens, you can help. It is absolutely imperative that men work
       > with other men to combat bad attitudes and behavior.

This is true. Though it's not just heteronormativity or misogyny. It often seems like there might be the "bystander effect" at play, too. Not that you were arguing that and not to try to argue that this makes it okay, but just to argue that people taking responsibility when they have the power to do so are the exception and not the rule in human nature.

I agree that people should speak up if you see something wrong even if they just say something small, but I reckon it will be hard/impossible to educate all to do so. However if those that notice something is up speak up then it will be a better place for all of us. And for those that notice but are too shy to kick up a fuss, there is always more subtle signalling that can be used: tilt your body away from the aggressor, go quiet and start a conversation with somebody outside the group - disinterest, and "awkwardness" can be powerful.

       *   *   *

Going slightly off-topic here just to say something that I care about. Something that has been quite difficult for me to read in other feminist pieces/tweets is the meme "not all men" which is often quickly followed by "ALL MEN!". It might be annoying to have guys constantly interrupting to raise themselves onto a little pedestal as caring gentlemen, but this is creating a wall between two groups and we both need to work beyond the meme. @slatestarcodex made a very good point in an article [1] I read recently, which explains how both sides are affected:

       > "So the one problem is that people have a right not to have
       > unfair below-the-belt tactics used to discredit them without
       > ever responding to their real arguments. And the other
       > problem is that victims of non-representative members of a
       > group have the right to complain, even though those complaints
       > will unfairly rebound upon the other members of that group."

In nerd-speak what he's saying is that you have a right to be angry with people that are victimising you and need to be able to speak about this, but at the same time when you say it anybody else in that group that didn't victimise you often feels that they are collateral damage (and this is actually the case, the connotations will affect them.) I don't know a solution. I side with you but some activist somewhere will hopefully step up and find a way of talking about groups in a way that doesn't turn all men into misogynists, all germans into nazis, all whites into walking privileges, and all feminists into fat, angry, lesbians (or whatever people say to discredit you.) It clearly isn't fair to individuals.

      *   *   *

I don't think all men are out to get you. I also don't think there's a huge misogyny problem in the industry in comparison to some other industries and cultures I've mixed with. (Perhaps my bad luck.) This is my opinion from listening to the perspectives of the people around me and watching their behaviour around women.

However I do think we have a significant diversity problem and that it's altering the interactions between men and women in the tech industry in a very bad way. We're unfortunately at a point where it's probably most difficult for women. There are enough of you to talk about the problems you face, but not enough that you don't have your environment dominated by us.

I often hear tech men desperately wishing they had more women working in their company. And here is a big problem: it's not because they want to give you economic choices but because of sexual deprivation. I'm sorry if communication is nasty for you right now, I think a more diverse group would stamp out the majority of shitty interactions and we'll get there eventually. Until then some of those men are going to be acting nice trying to get close to you so they can eventually flip to their ulterior motives, while others will be running asshole PUA game on you to see what they can "get away with". Finally of course there'll be a large percentage of misogynistic or bitter (MRA) jerks that want to make you feel small so they can feel good - and unfortunately with the current diversity levels they have a voice. I can imagine it's enraging.

Sorry if I inadvertently said something that clashes with whatever feminism you all share. I just wanted to speak truthfully about how I see everything.

[1] [http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/05/12/weak-men-are- superweapo...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/05/12/weak-men-are- superweapons/)

<comment><USER7> >I don't think all men are out to get you. I also don't think there's a huge misogyny problem in the industry in comparison to some other industries and cultures I've mixed with. (Perhaps my bad luck.) This is my opinion from listening to the perspectives of the people around me and watching their behaviour around women. However I do think we have a significant diversity problem and that it's altering the interactions between men and women in the tech industry in a very bad way.

I think this is a fair assessment.

> Finally of course there'll be a large percentage of misogynistic or bitter > (MRA) jerks that want to make you feel small so they can feel good - <USER3> > unfortunately with the current diversity levels they have a voice. I can > imagine it's enraging.

This is where the wheels come off, and the bias shows.

There's a large percentage of men who are either misogynistic, and /or MRA jerks? Why aren't feminists characterized as jerks? Why are you painting MRA as jerks, but apologizing to feminists if you've accidentally offended them?

This is where those of us who really hold no bias start getting annoyed about the portrayal of the male gender. Men who care about men's rights are jerks, but women who care about women's rights get apologies if they get offended by reasonable arguments?

And this was done by a male. If the feminists were really _honest_ they'd call this man to task for being biased _towards_ women, and they would tell him they don't want to be held above the other gender either.

The person who posted this goes into depth about the men who have an "ulterior motive" about hiring women. What is this person's ulterior motive for pandering to women in this way?

Why do I have to be ok with being told how terrible my gender is in order to work in this industry anymore?

For the more moderate feminists, consider that. You have a lot of would be allies who get just as tired of being told how terrible they are, and just want you go to away as a result. And folks like the person who posted the above are not helping, they are pandering. A rational person can look at it and think "this isn't right either".

<comment><USER10> There's no such thing as the "male gender" ('male' refers to sex). You have a bias. For one thing, it's your years of socializaton as a boy and now a (young?) man. Understanding what feminists are trying to say takes work. You haven't done enough work yet. No one in 2014 is saying that it's terrible that you're male.

<comment><USER29> > There's no such thing as the "male gender"

Maybe it's a cultural thing but here in the UK at least I think male and female are seen as genders... What word should the parent commenter have used? "man gender" is not grammatical, so I can only think of one other option; "male".

(edit: and in case I'm misunderstood, I don't mean any kind of subtext on the wider debate here, I'm just asking because I think 'male' is a gender and am confused).

(edit: right, found this: [http://www.med.monash.edu.au/gendermed/sexandgender.html](http://www.med.monash.edu.au/gendermed/sexandgender.html) so basically it's the difference between sex and gender. I wasn't acutely aware that the words male vs masculine carried such an important distinction. I'm not sure if they are commonly used in that distinct way).

<comment><USER7> The poster was just trying to find something to attack.

If you read the wiki article here: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender)

You can see the following quote: _Depending on the context, the term may refer to biological sex (i.e. the state of being male, female or intersex), ..._

LGBT has a tendency to use the term gender to mean gender roles, where the lines are a bit more obscure. I believe psychologists do as well.

But in every day vernacular, gender refers to sex for most people, and as the wiki article suggests, it's completely acceptable to use it in that manner.

I'll repeat what I said before, the poster was just looking for something to attack.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> FTA:

> The last few weeks have been very difficult for women in tech:

> Gurbaksh Chahal - then-CEO of a startup, was allegedly video taped violently > attacking a former partner 117 times in 30 mins (He was finally fired some > time after this was made public)

My reaction when I first read this: "wow, the guy beat up his company partner AND a woman, at that. What an asshole." Then I clicked through (note: he's still an asshole).

If you actually click through and read this, it is completely unrelated to tech. The partner that was attacked was a girlfriend. Not a company partner at all.

I'm not condoning the behaviour, obviously, but I feel like this article is setting the stage to create a "men vs women" thing in tech. If we spell it out, a full ___two out of five_ __points the authors use to make their case can be summarized as:

A guy who has a temper problem and runs a tech company attacked a girlfriend who had nothing to do with the tech company. Everyone wanted to see proof.

Why is this particular instance difficult for women in tech? Why not everywhere? Why is this not used as an example of perhaps the stresses that people are under that cause them to behave this way? Is there a link to aggression and CEOs? This would be a better set of questions to take away from that incident than "if you work in tech and you are a woman, will you get beat up on a daily basis?"

> The last thing we want is for people reading this to be put on the defensive

The last thing I want is for people who want to bend the truth this much to be on the front page of HN.

The other stuff you wrote about? All great stuff. No one wants rapey emails. Even if you are fine as hell, you should be free from getting groped or otherwise harassed.

Don't adopt tangentially related stories to create a narrative that is more dire than real life. It just makes me shut off to anything else you want to say and then I don't want to work with you at all.

<comment><AUTHOR> > The partner that was attacked was a girlfriend. Not a company partner at > all.

Many people have switched to saying 'partner' for all relationships to help demonstrate their support for gay marriage.

> Everyone wanted to see proof.

He already pled guilty.

> Why is this particular instance difficult for women in tech?

Well, it's an example of someone's incredibly personal abuse story possibly being shown to millions of people against their will.

Also, he was the CEO of a tech startup, and the tech startup media did all the reporting on it, and all his investors literally said 'congratulations, I'm glad this is behind you' after he pled guilty.

> Why not everywhere?

Something can be a problem in a certain industry, and also in general. Both statements can be true.

<comment><USER7> > Also, he was the CEO of a tech startup, and the tech startup media did all > the reporting on it, and all his investors literally said 'congratulations, > I'm glad this is behind you' after he pled guilty.

Still has little to do with gender bias. The investors are there for the money. I've seen companies keep known alcoholics around because they provide enough value for said company to deal with it.

The issue isn't that it happened, it's attributing it to simple gender bias. It's dishonest.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nobody is claiming that it's cause is simply bias. It's a particular instance of the general structural issues women face.

<comment><USER7> men face the exact same issues. It's akin to women complaining that they have to purchase gasoline in order to make it to work daily. So do men, why is that something the women are rallying around?

<comment><AUTHOR> If men and women face the same issues, and women are working towards fixing those issues, I'm not sure why you're so upset. Isn't that positive?

<comment><USER7> I think the travesty is how quickly you choose to mis-characterize me as being upset for no other reason than the idea that I disagree with you.

Can we be more honest than that?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> This post has fallen in rank because users flagged it. No moderator penalized it.

</comment><comment><USER32> [Quick prefatory update: HN's throttling algorithm has decided, on the basis of five comments counting this one over the space of the last hour, that I'm "submitting too fast". It'll therefore be a fair while before I am able to respond to the replies I confidently expect this post to provoke.]

You know, at base, I think this is a class issue.

No, I don't mean in the Marxist sense, so all you libertarians who're even now clearing for action and double-shotting your broadsides, hold off a minute and finish reading first.

I mean it's a class issue in the sense that acting like the assholes these women have found themselves forced to put up with, throughout their careers in our industry, is stigmatic of a _complete lack of class_.

Our industry, after all, revolves around a profession. We arrogate unto ourselves the title of "engineer", despite the complete lack of licensure or regulation commensurate with every other industry whose professionals bear that title. It is therefore incumbent upon us to behave in accordance with our pretensions -- and especially so, I'd argue, given the relative lack of rigor which characterizes our industry as a whole.

Now, maybe I'm just an effete, precious little snowflake. But I have absolutely no desire to associate with people who behave in the fashions described in the open letter published by Manian et al., and in a thousand other places, by a thousand other women, who are themselves remarkable among their fellows in our industry only in that they're courageous enough to tell their stories -- despite the excoriation they know full well will come their way in response -- in hopes of provoking change.

Such people lack class. They lack taste and refinement. If nothing else, they lack the basic good sense to recognize unprofessional behavior in themselves, and to acknowledge the solid reasons why the constraints of professionalism exist at all.

Speaking of which: I've recently participated in a couple of HN discussions around the topic of office politics. From them I have gleaned the impression that a lot of engineers consider office politicking to be something which just gets in the way of getting the job done, and is undesirable therefore.

To engineers who share that opinion, I point out that what we're talking about here _also gets in the way_. Unless you're willing to declare flat out that women have nothing to offer the industry, or unless you prefer to imagine that the women who've described maltreatment at the hands of their supposedly professional male peers are just lying out of some conspiratorial urge or other, I don't see how you can evaluate this situation any other way.

Anyone who reviews my comment history on HN will recognize quickly enough that I have no particular fondness for feminism as a movement, or for feminist theory, much of which strikes me as ill-argued and overly reliant on an axiomatic infrastructure which is not so sturdy as its proponents seem to believe. Worse, by the lights of feminism _per se_ , someone like Adria Richards, who reacted to a vaguely tasteless joke in so spectacularly ill- considered fashion as to end up getting three people fired, has no cause for reproach.

On the other hand, I see no reason why it's necessary to have any fondness at all for either of those things, when the problem, at its base, is that there are too many assholes in our industry with no sense of how to behave. It's not a question of "how to treat a woman", as though that were some sort of magical separate category. None of the shit we're talking about here is anything you'd be inclined to put up with for one _minute_ , if anyone directed it at you. That it's directed almost universally at women, instead, makes no difference. These behaviors, in themselves, are utterly unacceptable in any even remotely professional context. That they're so widespread in our industry -- indeed, that they're suffered to exist at all in our industry, to say nothing of the degree to which they're actually tolerated -- gives every one of us a bad name.

I don't like that. I refuse to tolerate the company of the people who are responsible for it. I'm not looking to start a movement; I'd be crap at it and there are already far too many of those to begin with. I'm just looking to see those of us in the industry who _do_ have class, who _do_ have taste, behave accordingly with regard to those who don't.

No doubt some of them will realize why they've been excluded, and will learn better. Great! That's what ostracism is _for_. If they can show they know how to behave themselves like grown adults, they're welcome to join those of us who never needed remedial education on the subject to begin with.

And, equally without doubt, some of them will never figure it out, and, like MRAs, MGTOWs, and others who prefer abandoning society over learning to interact with it, will grow bitter in their increasingly self-inflicted solitude. Those, we're better off without, and to hell with them.

<comment><USER33> s/class/common human decency/g

I think a lot of what you're talking about has more to do with an apparent inability of some people to act with any sort of common sense around other human beings rather than 'class'. This happens in any workplace (my mother was a secretary, and had to leave one of her companies because her boss was consistently making advances), but in technology especially so.

Perhaps this is a symptom of the social environment a lot of programmers seem to have in common. A lot of us spend our teenage years alone or with a small group of very close friends. Because of that, certain people might not develop a full understanding of social customs, or worse: deride them as 'silly'. This is a fundamental mark of immaturity, and most people and most programmers grow out of it. Some people don't, and I think it's especially common among programmers because they (and yes, this is stereotype) tend to be very solitary.

People like us tend to spend a lot of time online, where you can make sure you only talk to people who are very similar to you (case in point: HN). Not being forced to talk to people with different opinions results in stunted social growth. A huge part of life is learning to interact with people who are different than you.

When you throw someone who doesn't have a lot of experience with social norms and is used to having everything their way into an office work environment, they generally don't mesh well.

<comment><USER32> > I think a lot of what you're talking about has more to do with an apparent > inability of some people to act with any sort of common sense around other > human beings rather than 'class'.

Some of it, maybe. A lowered standard of functional adulthood for such people doesn't seem like it would do them any favors; instead, it'd deny them the very feedback they need to learn better.

Immaturity doesn't strike me as the major problem here, though, unless you want to argue that the average degree of social maturity in our industry resembles that more commonly expected on a grade-school playground.

Even if that were true, then the maltreatment under discussion would be a lot more evident than it is to those of us who aren't its targets, because those who engage in it would lack the necessary cunning to choose their target and their context so that a complaint can be dismissed as he-said-she-said. Such cunning requires at least some capacity, whether cognitive or intuitive, for social analysis -- enough so, in fact, to exceed the minimum threshold for "I didn't understand what I was doing was wrong".

This being true, your choices are either to assume the existence of a feminist conspiracy aimed at the overthrow of the existing industry, or to assume that those men who are most responsible for the problem under discussion know very well that most of us would utterly refuse to put up with their shit if we saw it going on, and that's why they make sure that we _don 't_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> > Feminism is the radical notion that women are people, and that we want to be > treated as equals. Don't let someone else pretend otherwise out of their own > misguided notions.

So what do we call the feminists who work to suppress research that shows gender symmetry in domestic violence?

What do we call the feminists who demonize men as rapists, deadbeats, child molesters, and abusers?

What do we call the feminists who lobby against equal parenting rights for fathers and for stripping the right to due process of those accused of domestic or sexual violence?

Feminism is not about equality - that would be called humanism or egalitarianism and would not focus on one specific identity group.

Feminism is the dying ideology of demonizing and subjugating men. Feminism is Marxist ideology maladroitly applied to the genders in order to paint the male gender as sub-human, innately heartless, and evil oppressors, while painting women as perpetually innocent victims.

A movement truly concerned with equality would address areas where human rights are actually unequal such as the outcomes of family courts or no-fault divorce law. Instead we see feminism focusing on non-issues to further their political agenda (#banbossy) or in warping every situation in which a woman gets slighted by an asshole male into proof of "patriarchy".

<comment><USER35> It's disappointing that you think advances in rights for women have to come at the expense of men.

<comment><USER33> I knew a feminist in high school who wanted to photocopy my draft papers so she could sign up too. Definitely not legal, but she was absolutely adamant that if men and women were to be equal, women should have to defend the country too.

Feminism _is_ about equality, when it's done right. Unfortunately, it's been perverted into "down with the patriarchy". We call those people "Feminazis".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Such a fascinating article. Let's break this post down:

\- Anecdotes used for evidence (check)

\- Moral outrage declared (check)

\- Call to arms based on emotion (check)

\- Appeal to baseless fanatical ideology (check)

\- Vilification of a massive segment of the population as homogeneous villians (check)

There really appears to be a massive disconnect between very high intelligence and the ability to accurately observe the real world. Or perhaps in the age when page views reign supreme, rational empirical analysis becomes a vestigial burden from a bygone era.

For you rebels out there who still demand scientific rigor in your articles, please consider an expert's opinion on the matter at your discretion [1].

1\. [http://edge.org/memberbio/helena_cronin](http://edge.org/memberbio/helena_cronin)

<comment><USER37> \- And how do you get evidence without anecdotes?

\- If true, should we not be morally outraged?

\- If true, should we not be emotional? Should there not be a call to arms?

\- ( _expletive deleted_ )

\- Are men truly treated homogeneously in this article?

\- Is every opinion you don't like stupid and/or irrational?

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> My only questions is why we're making bullying a gender issue. Bullying affects boys and girls from childhood, and learning how to deal with bullies seems like a gender agnostic issue. But maybe that's my privilege speaking..

Edit: Maybe I seem dismissive of the issue, but I'm really not. I just feel like there's a core problem here that has been incubating since the recess playground. I don't think people turn into bullies over night, rather they've grown to accept their role as aggressors due to never being confronted, and consequently grow even more empowered.

What we're witnessing as adults is what we see on the school yard. Everyone can see that the bully is a jerk, but everyone passively goes along with the flow. Why? Fear of retaliation and ostracization. Maybe everyone will think you're a looser for sticking up for the other looser. You want to be in the cool club so keep your mouth shut. Anyways, that's my two cents.

</comment><comment><USER7> I just want to develop software, and I don't personally give a shit about the gender of the people I'm working with.

...Until they start shoving these sorts of issues down my throat. If I get to choose between the male that just wants to develop software and the female who wants to tell me all about how terrible it is working in our industry as a woman, I'm going to pick the male. Why? Because I'm very goal oriented and I just want to develop software. Take your fucking crusade somewhere else please.

OTOH, and this is the mystifying part, I've seen just as many men complaining about it as women. Guess which I'd choose if it was the female just working and the male going on about the female inequality? I'd prefer working with the female. That's what a lack of gender bias gets you.

Did you know I was once dismissed early from a job interview because I refused something to drink when it was offered to me(I had a weird suspicions and had it confirmed that the offer was a 'test')? I once got feedback from a job interview that the reason they didn't hire me was because I didn't show up with a notepad to take notes. And l lets be honest, that's not the real reason, I have it on good authority they already found who they wanted, but were fulfilling obligations.

I once had a CEO roll his eyes at me in the middle of a meeting and say something to the effect of "you software people...".

We've all experienced the bullshit. The truth is, people are stupid, biased creatures. yes. EVEN YOU.

Do you think ugly people have it harder than attractive people? Do you think younger people have it harder than older people in most industries? What about southern accents in a northing US state? Southern accents are considered "dumb", after all. I know of atleast 1 man from Rhode Island who _refused_ to work with anyone from southern states because they were all dumb. That's a true story.

There are _so_ many things that people can be biased about, yes, including gender.

The problem is that nothing has been so divisive in our industry in recent years as much as the "discussion" surrounding gender equality.

And me? I just want to fucking get work done. I don't care, not because I'm an asshole, but because I myself am not biased. Nor have I really seen a lot of bias in the places I've chosen to be. I have seen behavior that's resulted from the fact that males and females have a tendency to be attracted to each other. It's a fact of pretty much every facet of our lives. It isn't good, it isn't bad, it just is.

One thing I would like to address though.

I saw a complaint about "being called a cunt on a mailing list, and no one said anything about/to the person saying it".

That's equality for you. If someone called me a dick, or an asshole, on a mailing list, in no way would I expect others to rally to my defense. I'd have to make a choice. Do I respond in kind, do I not respond in kind, do I not respond at all? Do I escalate, do I de-escalate? Do I walk away for a few hours/days while I contemplate what to do, or do I simply blacklist the individual?

But at no point would I expect others to step in and defend me _for me_. I'll defend myself. I expect it of myself, and everyone else expects it of me as well, including the women. Is that gender bias on the women's part?

No, it's differing expectations. _everyone_ will think the person is an asshole, whether they called the female a cunt, or the male a dick/asshole/what have you. But they may not say anything, that's life on both sides of that coin.

Someone calling you a bad name on a mailing list just means you got called a bad name. The name chosen may have been gender specific since you're female, but that doesn't indicate a bias. We live in a society with gender specific insults... and people not defending you isn't a bias either. Learn to defend yourself.

Now being groped is completely unacceptable behavior for both sides. That person should be dealt with immediately. There are few things I would agree someone needs to be called out for, but that sort of behavior is one of them.

tl;dr; STFU, develop software, and learn to defend yourself. I have shit I have to deal with too, but I didn't enter this industry to be told how terrible my gender is, I entered this industry because I love building software.

edit: One thing I should note. I've had women walk up to me and grab my ass before. It may not be as prevalent, but it happens both ways, and it's just as inappropriate both ways.

<comment><USER39> > I just want to develop software

So do they.

<comment><USER7> Many of them do. The ones going on crusades do not, they are the ones I'm specifically referring to.

<comment><USER40> I hear you.

But I hear them, too. They just want to develop software, and to ignore all this other BS, and the BS keeps hitting them, and they're tired of having to deal with it. I can see why, too. I can see how this stuff would get to you after a year or two, or a decade or two.

I think the takeaway from their point is, they need to attack specifics when they occur. But I think your point is, they need to not make that their focus, or it's going to ruin their ability to actually work with males.

That's a tough balance to maintain. It stinks that they have to do so.

<comment><USER7> > That's a tough balance to maintain. It stinks that they have to do so.

That's true, but it's also life in general, I'll explain what I mean.

I'm an agnostic who tends towards atheism with a very specific policy. I will not lie to people about my religious views, but I will let them make assumptions. Many people assume I'm Christian and I never disabuse them of that notion. The reason is simple: For me, the issue isn't important. I believe more in people than ideologies. For them, it is important, so let them have their comfort. Their beliefs do not offend me, and I defend their right to have them without harassment (I dislike Atheism in general even though I tend towards that thought process).

In all my years, I've only ever had a single person ask me straight out if I was Christian (in a work environment). I was working through an outsourcing company, and a week later they were asked to replace me with someone else. In essence I was "fired".

It's was unfair, and it was crap. I doubt you'll find many people who will disagree with you. Could it truly have been a coincidence? Possibly, but I find the likelihood of it very doubtful.

I took it as just more bullshit that's happened. I didn't get particularly offended by it, I certainly didn't start painting everyone with the brush that I'm a victim and they're terrible.

people are shit sometimes, you just move on. You deal with your own shit.

This is all to say that I _understand_ their point of view, and this is one of the reasons why I reject them in general.

To bring it back on topic, it is tough, and maybe it is unfair. But woman have a right to an opportunity, they do not have a right to no bullshit. Someone making unwanted sexual advances isn't a problem. Someone doing it after it's been made clear they're unwanted is. Someone playing grabass is absolutely a problem that needs to be dealt with immediately.

However, someone dismissing an opinion because they have a bias against women is not something they need to be crusading against, and the reason is quite simple: I've had my opinion dismissed for being male (by them), for being a software developer (by business people), for political reasons (I'm a freelance software dev... I'm sure you can imagine).

There are shit environments no matter who you are, what you believe, or what you look like. But you deal with them and move on because that's life, it isn't perfect, and you do not have a right to everyone being perfectly fair to you.

This is a separate issue from why women do not join our industry, but it gets conflated. We do not have a problem with women entering our industry and then leaving (anymore than men). We have a problem with women not entering at all.

They hurt themselves by conflating the two, and causing many people (like me) to stop listening to them. At the end of the day, we have to deal with shit too, and when they put themselves on the list of shit we have to deal with, we have a tendency to simply move on. We cannot emotionally engage, because we'll get angry.

If they want us to emotionally engage, they need to approach it differently.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> From the stories that have come out it sounds that avoiding this behaviour is practically impossible to avoid if you are woman. That's a terrible working env.

This also appears to be an American problem. I find this difficult to imagine happening as pervasively ( not saying it doesn't happen at all) in London or Berlin or any of the other European tech hubs. The problem may be more evident in America because it has the largest and most successful tech community presenting more opportunities for alienating behaviour around women to be amplified. The reasons are likely to be more multi-faceted and complex.

<comment><USER41> It looks like I may have unwittingly offended a few people with an idea that wasn't expressed as eloquently as I would have liked. Some may have read the post and thought I was voicing a common male position of it not being a problem or something that should be swept under the rug and dismissed.

There are indeed many explanations for the appearance of what I described and some have rightly mentioned that it may just be under-reported in Europe due to culture differences. I don't pretend to know what those may be but can only offer my experience and anecdotal evidence, just like most have done here.

Sexism does exist in Europe and I have not said in my post that it doesn't I think we are all talking specifically about tech culture here and let's not conflate this to sexism in Europe across all industries. I've had friends experience inappropriate male attention at work but it's frequently in Law or Finance, and more recently in Education. Friends (more than a handful) in London and in Brussels have experienced this directly. That's a lot considering that 1 in 10 women experience some form of harassment at work. I've rarely ever heard it happen in tech over here. Not to say that it doesn't happen, from my experience I've heard a lot less.

I'd understand better some of the reactions to my post if it was clearly and strongly entrenched in a dismissive or an unsympathetic position but the post is littered with words like 'may' and 'appears' and suggests the problem requires a deeper exposition than what can be stated in an HN comment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> "We are your community leaders, your open source contributors, your keynote speakers, and many call us role models."

.... Yeah, ok.</comment>


F# vs OCaml vs Haskell: hash table performance - <AUTHOR> http://flyingfrogblog.blogspot.com/2009/04/f-vs-ocaml-vs-haskell-hash-table.html

<comment><USER2> Ah, Jon Harrop pushing F# or Ocaml again. He has a long history of trolling in various newsgroups, so I would take everything he claims with a grain of salt.</comment>


Ask HN: Any UK based devs leaving because of Brexit? - <AUTHOR> This topic came up in another thread. I'm curious to hear what UK based devs are planning to do because of Brexit? Are you looking abroad? Or think it won't be a big deal?<p>I'm an immigrant living the UK. Didn't really have a plan when I was arrived but now I'm somewhat settled and married to a nice English girl. I don't think Brexit will hit us badly so I have no intention of leaving. <comment><USER2> I had a job lined up in a different country just before the vote

I'm glad I'm out (of the UK), but it's more for political reasons than economic

Voting with my feet (even if I was leaving anyway)

I'm sure middle to high income earners will be ok. It's people on low incomes that will have a tough time, especially if the government starts scrapping workers rights

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm also in the North East of the UK (Newcastle). I'd leave if I thought it'd be better elsewhere. Brexit is a big problem, but everywhere has some sort of local issue. I strongly suspect I won't leave.

<comment><AUTHOR> As incompetently as the government is handling it, I suspect it won't be too bad in the end.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've made some enquiries and am attempting to keep my options open</comment>


One liner NPM package "is-windows" has 2.5M dependants, why on earth? - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/caspervonb/status/1139947676546453504 <comment><USER2> Even the guys on our Node team joke that the node modules folder is abhorrently large. More massive than a black hole is the most common meme.

I think there's two things going on here. One, Javascript has taken Don't Repeat Yourself to an absolutely insane extreme. Python claims "batteries included" and Java boasts "there's a library for that", but it's at a higher level than stuff like is-windows.

Most libraries are large and include a lot of functionality, and something like is-windows would be found inside a larger dependency like system-utils. Similarly, a Java dev would import Guava, not immutable-list and and multiset and multilist.

Second, I think many Javascript devs see themselves more as plumbers than developers. The goal seems to be to stitch a bunch of dependencies together to achieve the desired outcome, rather than _developing_ the desired outcome.

I've seen plenty of people rip FileUtils.writeStringToFile out into a standalone utility class, because they didn't need all of commons-io as a dependency. In order to do that, you need to know how writeStringToFile works, and be able to fix whatever breaks when you separate it from its ecosystem.

Devs that pull in is-windows don't have that kind of ... curiosity, I guess is the right word. There's no desire to see _how_ is-windows works, or to see if they can improve it. It does what they need, so they include it as a dependency and move on, end of story. The overhead, and more importantly the security issues, involved just aren't a factor.

I do wonder if the short lifespan of many UI projects is a factor, too. If you're just going to rewrite the UI in six months, there's no reason to make it efficient or maintainable.

<comment><USER3> > Even the guys on our Node team joke that the node modules folder is > abhorrently large. More massive than a black hole is the most common meme.

This "argument" gets brought up every time there's an article about NPM. The STD library for node is relatively small so a lot of that work is outsourced to third-party libraries. The node binary is 17mb for mac os x, the node modules for a project end up 100-800mb maybe? So let's say binary + library size reaches 1GB. Now go and download visual studio to work on a C# project and wait for 15GB to be downloaded. I'm not arguing that relying on a third- party ecosystem is great as it does have legitimate security issues, but filesystem size is not the problem here.

<comment><USER4> Why are you comparing the size of application dependencies to the size of an IDE that includes several compiler toolchains and tons of other build-only stuff?

<comment><USER5> Because node_modules generally includes a "compiler toolchain" (webpack) too ?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This line is tested against and super optimized. By requiring this, you are future proof. The maintainer is active and writes tests. It's also a bit esoteric and hard to undestand.

`return process && (process.platform === 'win32' || /^(msys|cygwin)$/.test(process.env.OSTYPE));`

Here's is what's probably going on in the head of the people who require it:

"What does this do exactly? Why do I need to test against 'win32'? Should I also test against 'win64' or 'x64'? What if it changes later on? Do I need to keep track of Windows versions and then change all my apps? What if I write it without testing for 'cygwin' and someone else in the project do? Will the app only work partially on some hardware? What if some new OS comes out?"

Don't get me wrong, it's not perfect and is a security hole. But that's the reason it's done.

<comment><USER7> You really think that line is "super-optimized"? It generates and executes a regex to check if a string has one of two different prefixes. I don't know a lot about JavaScript internals, but I would imagine that is both forces memory to be allocated (and garbage generated) as well as being significantly slower than a basic prefix check. If doing this is considered "super-optimized", I don't even know what this industry is any more.

<comment><USER8> It's not even testing prefixes, it's testing the whole string. It's the equivalent of:

        process.env.OSTYPE === 'cygwin' || process.env.OSTYPE === 'msys'

Though I don't know enough about V8 to say how each is optimised.

<comment><USER6> Here, test it. If you test it multiple time you get slightly different results. Both seem to be similar. You would have to ask the author why they went with the regex solution to know why they chose that one. Knowing Javascript, there's probably a pitfall we are not thinking about.

[http://jsben.ch/uFK8t](http://jsben.ch/uFK8t)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I will often use things like this, not because I don't know how it's done, but because I have a hope that whoever made it will maintain it and keep it working properly under future changing conditions. Today, it's easy to see if the platform is windows. Later, that may change, and if this code is maintained it will save me headaches. If lots of other people are also using it, there's a very good chance that it will be updated quickly and that weird corner cases I'm not aware of will be already taken care of.

<comment><USER10> Yea, I agree completely. While I tend to reinvent plenty of wheels, I don't find the idea of importing a package designed for one small task, bad. _(edit: missing word)_

_Especially_ if it's used by a ton of repos. If, as your example says, something changes where `is-windows` needs to be updated it's likely to either be updated or break so many codebases that someone will update it.

There's a bit of chaotic safety in relying on a web of dependency trust like this. On one hand more people invested in the behavior of a simple package gives you more confidence. On the other hand, it means more developers are depending on more packages, introducing possibly more brittle behavior.

The latter _(brittle behavior /deps)_ has been my experience fwiw. While I don't dislike the idea of `is-windows`, I do dislike introducing more points of random failure. In general if I don't have the idea that my own implementation of something like `is-windows` is likely to need maintaining then I'm happy to do it myself and remove a dependency.

Coming from Rust mostly, but I wonder if the safety of the language aids this problem too. For example, I imagine `is-windows` level of dependencies is far less problematic in Rust than NodeJS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This kinda of thing (see: the "left-justify" fiasco) seems unique to NPM. Why is that? Python packages are very easy to import as well, but you don't see this kind of madness in most python programs.

<comment><USER12> Python has a standard library.

<comment><USER13> and you see the other madness there, in which parts of stdlib are absolute garbage so you will always install requests and lxml anyway.

<comment><USER14> I've been using Python for 20 years and have never used either of those libraries. People _do_ use Python for more than accessing web services and processing HTML, you know.

Besides, the stdlib, and Python packaging in general, is unquestionably light years ahead of NPM.

<comment><USER15> Oh wow am I glad to read that! What is the python equivalent of "npm publish"? What do I need to install and configure in order for that to work?

<comment><USER14> It's "twine publish"...

And yes the setup is more extensive than NPM, which is exactly why the PyPi ecosystem isn't the steaming pile of shit that is NPM.

<comment><USER15> Haha "twine". [0] Seems like a real mainstream tool there. Of course I know from previous python debacles that while npm just uploads the directory structure that already works in development, with python one has several obscure and changeable package preparation steps to perform first.

You're using some colorful language ITT. "unquestionably light years ahead", "steaming pile of shit", etc. This sort of idiom is good for convincing children. Whom are you trying to convince?

[0] [https://www.python.org/search/?q=twine&submit=](https://www.python.org/search/?q=twine&submit=)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The DRY culture taken to the logical extreme ends up exactly here.

Perhaps someone influential can create an acceptable definition for when it is OK to "repeat yourself". The node.js package dependency culture is toxic.

<comment><USER17> I see it as a combination of that and no incentive to review the code you require. We live in a "I need it to just work because everyone wants the dream of tech seemlessly working" age. This will probably become more and more common as the market opens up and the easier jobs (work?) become more and more blue collar. JS lends itself well to entry level devs that just want to write code and not understand needs or how an application works and why code is needed...and the exacerbation continues.

<comment><USER18> Is this just JS entry level devs bringing in is-windows just because?

I have my doubts about that. I suspect it is more a question of what other packages they bring in... that for some reason use is-windows.

I think that is a difference and points to a different set of folks who for some reason, use this thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> One-line NPM packages promoting naive excessive code-reuse are eyebrow-raising but not as bad as it gets.

How about fundamentally inane things like giving a cutesy obfuscated name to swallowing exceptions?

[https://github.com/electerious/nice- try/blob/master/src/inde...](https://github.com/electerious/nice- try/blob/master/src/index.js)

[https://www.npmjs.com/package/nice-try](https://www.npmjs.com/package/nice- try)

Used by 1.1 million other packages apparently.

</comment><comment><USER20> The reply by @mcclure111 [1] is good:

 _> When I write code, I want to write things semantically— I want to call an isWindows() function, not idiomatically compare a string process.platform (node only) to a string that could change in the future._

 _> If I have "semantic" functions like isWindows, I want it in a library, not one-off in my project. And if I have a library management system, it's great if the libraries are highly granular— IE, a standard library where each function is one library sounds great._

 _> …It's just that, instead of maintaining a standard library set containing many small granular sublibraries, the javascript community decided to make every single one-function library an attack/vuln injection surface OH WELL_

[1] [https://twitter.com/mcclure111/status/1140007877547106305](https://twitter.com/mcclure111/status/1140007877547106305)

</comment><comment><USER21> It's a bit more than `process.platform == "win32"` but the bulk of it is boiler-plate for the insanity of multi-standard JS module definitions.

[https://github.com/jonschlinkert/is- windows/blame/master/ind...](https://github.com/jonschlinkert/is- windows/blame/master/index.js)

If you go read the code, you are doing more than most JS developers do when they pull in a massive sequoia of dependencies.

<comment><USER22> There's also more to it than checking process.platform: 'process.platform === 'win32' || /^(msys|cygwin)$/.test(process.env.OSTYPE)

<comment><USER23> Checking for Cygwin is a false positive (IMHO at-least)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'm glad people publish packages like this, but feel like there needs to be a better way to consume them.

What if you could do `npm install-inline ./src/utils is-windows` and npm downloaded the module and inserted it inline in your utils directory, along with a comment referencing the original package, version number, and license information (if required). There could be an update-inline command as well.

This seems like a ok compromise between "install 376 micro libraries" and "copy code snippets off StackOverflow".

</comment><comment><USER25> Here's an idea. Why doesn't NPM or some big guy maintain a node "standard library" which pulls top 1000 most used small npm packages into a single one?

<comment><USER26> The best part about that would be the endless arguments about which license was appropriate for the thousand different licenses aggregated together.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I wouldn't use it but I can see why this might happen.

The correct solution would be process.platform === "win32" but if you aren't familiar with Windows then you might not realise this includes 64 bit Windows or Windows Server.

If process.isWindows() existed in the standard library nobody would be concerned about it.

<comment><USER7> Ok, but lets say you're doing something that requires an isWindows() function. You search NPM, you find this package. At this point, do you not even look at the code? Like, even a glance would make you aware that all it's doing is comparing with "win32", which you can trivially do yourself. So why use the package at all, then? All it adds is overhead.

No, clearly the people who use this package has not taken even a second to review the code, because it if they had, they'd know that it was trivial. Security-wise, that's deeply troubling.

<comment><USER5> Wait, do people look at the code of the librairies they're using in Java/PHP/Python/C++/Go/… ?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Humans are stupid and cannot learn anything

[https://www.davidhaney.io/npm-left-pad-have-we-forgotten- how...](https://www.davidhaney.io/npm-left-pad-have-we-forgotten-how-to- program/)

</comment><comment><USER29> I think it's a question of maintenance. You can check if process.platform is "win32" or "win64", but what happens when they release a 65-bit architecture and all your code breaks?

<comment><USER30> Your code would break if you pulled in the dependency, too, until you updated it. I don't think that matters much here.

<comment><USER29> Then maybe we need a SaaS solution to determinine if we're running on Windows.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I think it's funny how so many people have an allergic reaction to using a package manager to add fragments of small but non-obvious code to their codebase, but have no issue with frequently using Google to track down one- liners on Stack Overflow, which they then copy-and-paste into their codebase.

Why is you acting like a slow, biological package manager for small bits of code better than using a real package manager for the same purpose?

<comment><USER4> 1\. The code you pull in will not get updated unless you do it explicitly.

2\. The code you pull in will not get exploited when someone masquerades as the package owner. (How many widely publicized cases of this have there been by now, 5? 10?)

3\. Presumably you read the code enough while copy-pasting to be sure it isn't mining Bitcoin or something.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Welcome to the times when we import code by semantics, rather than it's pragmatics. We're getting to the next step of evolution in engineering.

Suggestions: series of wrappers for Array renamed as possible applications of Array for those who don't know what an Array is.

</comment><comment><USER18> At one point could this have been a more complicated thing to determine and later less so, so the code changed to just the one liner?

<comment><USER8> The first commit on git boils down to:

        function isWindows() {
            if (typeof process === 'undefined' || !process) {
              return false;
            }
            return process.platform === 'win32';
        }

<comment><USER18> Man... what heck was the point of making that?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Spelling correction: dependents

<comment><USER23> Not in proper real English it's not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> [https://www.npmjs.com/package/is-odd](https://www.npmjs.com/package/is-odd)

is-odd 831,460 weekly downloads

<comment><USER35> It's very easy to flippantly go "why would you ever use that???", but I'm honestly wondering what is the actual justification for the use of such a package. I see it does some initial checking (which will take more lines in your own code to deal with), but I can't figure out why someone would actually use that.

<comment><USER36> This one year old reddit discussion [1] seems to indicate that the package was used in another, pretty popular and more complex, package by the same author. The dependency doesn't look current anymore but it might be downloads of previous versions.

As for justification and usage I couldn't tell you, apparently it was only used once in that whole codebase anyway (also according to that thread).

[1] [https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/886zji/why_has...](https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/886zji/why_has_there_been_nearly_3_million_installs_of/)

<comment><USER7> Even worse: it is only used one time in the entire code-base, and that one time was to check whether or not a value returned by the string length function was odd.

What.... why.... the only concievable point of a package like this is that at least it does the kind of type-checking needed to compensate for JavaScripts weak typing system, but why do you need to check the type of String.length?! Do you really think it's going to start spitting anything other than a positive integer? Fucking hell....

<comment><USER37> 0 is not a positive number.

<comment><USER7> Fair enough, "non-negative integers" then.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How to install LAMP on EC2 Ubuntu with phpmyadmin in 4 mins - <AUTHOR> http://www.edukatr.com/how-to-install-lamp-on-ec2-ubuntu-with-phpmyadmin-in-4-mins/

<comment><AUTHOR> Look at this step by step installation process of LAMP on Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala 64 bit server. It also includes installation of Ubuntu Uncomplicated Firewall for the server and the installation of phpMyAdmin.</comment>


Are "Shameless Plugs" Worth It? Some data - <AUTHOR> http://danmaz74.me/2012/11/08/are-shameless-plugs-worth-it-some-data/

<comment><USER2> You make a library for A/B testing. Why didn't you use A/B testing here?

<comment><USER3> I agree that that would have been the best way to measure the effect of the plug. But that wasn't an experiment, I just wanted to get as many readers as possible; the idea to measure the effect of the plug only came later (actually, it was suggested in a comment here on HN).

<comment><USER4> Test it now :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So your conclusion is that advertising works ? Well, I can see why you'd be concerned about pissing people on HN off.

However, if there were no advertising anywhere, how would we know what products to buy ? Mainstream advertising channels make users extremely susceptible to 'banner blindness', 'channel flipping', etc.

Of course, the more sensitive users on HN would question your motivations. It's because advertising is becoming so insidious these days that you can never be sure whether an 'expert' is just talking out of his hat or actually giving 'expert advice'.

In this case, since your product is yourself, I'd still give you the benefit of the doubt. Anyone getting annoyed at that needs to think about what's being sold and why :)

I don't know how it's elsewhere but in India lawyers and chartered accountants aren't allowed to advertise their services. They can have only a small board (very discreet) outside their workplace saying who they are and what they do. I wonder if programmers are ever going to go the same way :O

</comment><comment><USER6> I guess the desired conversion from promoting yourself is getting a client, not click and tweet count. So: did you get any gigs thanks to that?

<comment><USER3> Author here: the desired end result is to get clients, but the first step is to get your readers to know what your "offer" is. The objective of the plug was this first step; then you should measure the conversion of the offer itself, but that's probably quite independent from the plug itself.

Anyway, for your curiosity, the end result was only one little gig for now - vs 0 from the first post, for what this is worth. I'll have to work on my portfolio etc I guess.

<comment><USER6> Frankly I was surprised so little of people viewed the 'about' section, I've read it's common to check who's the author, and I do it myself. Until I tried to find yours and it took me a moment. You should expose the menu bar better and maybe get rid of the highly distracting binary crap. It may be one of the reasons why the plug generated more views of the 'about' and 'consulting' section - nobody sees those links without it.

<comment><USER3> The placement of the menu was very conventional and I didn't think it could be a problem, but, now that you made me think about it, I'll consider this.

On the other hand, I don't think that the "binary crap" can be so much more distracting than any other picture I could put there. And I happen to like it :)

<comment><USER6> my point was the pic takes enough attention I didn't notice there is a menu below. the important elements for you are under-exposed. you added the plug but didn't fix the main problem that made it necessary in the first place :)

<comment><USER3> Ok, I'll look for a solution. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The other way to look at it - 97% didn't react to your shameless plug, and probably a good chunk of these were annoyed by it. An ad is an ad, regardless of how you call it.

<comment><USER7> >97% didn't react to your shameless plug, and probably a good chunk of these were annoyed by it

I think that's a pretty bold claim. I can't remember ever being annoyed by a blog post which included a brief "This is me and what I do" plug.

<comment><USER8> It's not the "This is me and what I do" plug that's annoying, it's the endless advertisements its attached to.

Right now we have on or just falling off the front page

\- 37signals writing about Siri

\- Thumbtack writing about ab testing

\- weddinglovely on why a startup has a print product

These are advertisements disguised as random bla bla written for HN.

<comment><USER9> Not all random bla blas are created equal.

There are a few authors I wish they advertise themselves more on HN.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Shameless Plug < C2A

Why reinvent marketing best practices? At least be aware of them before you test something.

Design - 3-4 C2A at the bottom pointing to your consulting page (or about page) and then A/B test those C2A. Readers are probably more annoyed by a shameless plug then a well designed C2A.

<comment><USER7> What is a C2A please? Google was no help without more context.

<comment><USER11> Call to Action

<comment><USER7> Ah, of course. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Regarding shameless plugs, how about using your own app embedded midway through the article to exemplify the concepts being talked about? Is that done, and how is it perceived?

<comment><USER3> I'm sorry but I don't understand which app you're talking about. The Hacker News plugin can't be embedded...

<comment><USER12> I'm talking about any given app which the developer embeds into his own article to create a seamless promotion.

<comment><USER3> Ok - when that's possible, it makes a lot of sense.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


See Twitter's SQL. - <AUTHOR> http://twitter.com/dpn/statuses/851577779 <comment><USER2> It seems like twitter is taking fail to new levels every day.

<comment><USER3> I hate to upmod something so derisive, but when you have truth on your side...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> They really weren't kidding when they said that they'd mistakenly built it as a CMS instead of as a messaging platform.

<comment><USER5> The title pretty much covers it. Twitter is more like an IM network or email list service than like a typical database-backed webapp; a relational database is just the wrong platform for large-scale messaging.

<comment><USER4> I agree, of course. But before the twitter bashing starts, I wanna say, I don't think that they foresaw messaging being the primary use-case. After all, you already have IM and SMS and a gillion other messaging systems. Twitter was conceived as a blogging platform, but smaller. Messaging was how you would _post_ to twitter, not what you would _do_ with twitter.

Of course, that was wrong. (How annoying are the twitter users who _actually_ "answer the question: What are you doing?") But that kind of insight only comes out once your product is exposed to real humans. It's obvious, but only in hindsight.

As it turns out, when you make LiveJournal really small, you get Jabber.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Did anyone get a screenshot before they disabled it?

<comment><USER7> Yeah... screenshot please!!! And I'm also wondering how this ink was found

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> here's a screenshot. i didn't include the table stuffs. <http://skitch.com/thomasswift/xef3/twitter>

<comment><USER9> What are they using to analyze the queries like this? It looks pretty useful.

<comment><USER10> They are using query reviewer

<http://code.google.com/p/query-reviewer/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I dimed this out and had it disabled. Twitter doesn't need people poking through its' SQL. Imagine what we'd find if we were poking through yours...

</comment><comment><USER12> these queries are not optimised at all. first of all, every page gives of MySQL warnings...and second, there are alot of SELECT count(*)...instead of SELECT count(1). This may not seem like it would increase speed alot but given the number of users and the amount of times that query is executed, it will speed up twitter by a bit. There are a few other things that i have noticed...they should really clean up their sql

<comment><USER13> The search page looks particularly sloppy. Searching 'john' yields 27 queries, including a number that look redundant

Grabbing the users

SELECT * FROM `users` WHERE (users.id in (<list of user ids>))

followed by queries for each user id in that list

SELECT * FROM `users` WHERE (`users`.`id` = <user id>)

Maybe there's a reason for doing that, but if there is, I can't think of it

<comment><USER14> Most likely whoever wrote it cut their teeth on MySQL 4.0 or earlier which didn't have subselects.

They don't do this so much now, but back in the day (mid-late 90s) MySQL documentation was notorious for glossing over why they didn't have features. Foreign keys were "too slow". Transactions were "too slow", etc. If you need to rollback, store the previous values in memory in your own code, they told everyone (then quietly added the feature and changed the docs).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Wish I'd taken a screenshot now.

It was basically a semi-transparent box in the top left of the screen which showed you the query as well as which DB served the data (for me they came from db007, and the friend data from some shards), and two links, one for a popdown box with info about the query, and another with the file trace infomation.

Quite intresting, shame they have removed it.

</comment><comment><USER16> I give up. How do I enable the analyzer?

<comment><USER6> I think you missed it. It seems to have disappeared.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Seems like this was a mistake by twitter: [http://getsatisfaction.com/twitter/topics/staging_twitter_co...](http://getsatisfaction.com/twitter/topics/staging_twitter_com?utm_medium=widget&utm_source=widget_twitter)

Some profile pages are being linked to the staging server.

<comment><USER17> Okay it's down now. They put up the whale page on staging and probably just disabled the plugin.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Thanks to Twitter's chief architect for giving me a good laugh :)

</comment><comment><USER19> Wouldn't a working service be more interesting than this thing? Or are they expecting us to fix their code?

</comment><comment><USER20> Too bad we can't run 'explain plan' on them :)

<comment><USER2> Explain Plan? Isn't that oracle? I ask because there is an "EXPLN" link that gives you what I think you're asking for.

<comment><USER21> postgres has something similar. Pretty nice for benchmarking and optimizing queries.

<comment><USER22> Postgres: EXPLAIN ANALYZE.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Before being acuired by Google, does anyone know Jaiku's uptime and other stats? Were they too this bad as Twitter?

<comment><USER23> uptime was much better, and reaction was much quicker and to the point. with recent switchover to Google infra they are almost non-stop -- only Google is not that stupid to pay for your messaging ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Yeesh. This does not seem safe.

At least maybe (big maybe) some good will come of this?

</comment><comment><USER25> Mmmm... this should be juicy hacker fun for a few days!

<comment><USER26> Days? I think we're already into negative minutes...

<comment><USER6> I wonder how many minutes to techcrunching...</comment></comment></comment>


Don't be a Stanford asshole - <AUTHOR> http://48hillsonline.org/2015/01/26/dont-stanford-asshole/

<comment><USER2> None of the people I knew growing up here even live here anymore. None of my high school friends, no one.

It sucks.</comment>


Show HN: PWA about Avengers built with React.js - <AUTHOR> https://www.amitmerchant.com/pocket-avengers <comment><USER2> Site is pretty poorly optimized for desktops. Responsive design should take the basic spread of form factors into effect.

On a 1080p screen, only about two thirds of the image is visible, and I have to scroll down to even realize there's text below it. (I initially wondered if each page was just the picture.) Also, a hamburger menu for three buttons is an exceptionally poor choice on a desktop.

Finally: What does being a PWA provide this site, feature-wise? It seems more or less the same as you could do with plain HTML circa 10 years ago.</comment>


Resume-as-a-service? Anyone - <AUTHOR> http://ghosting.posterous.com/resume-as-a-service-anyone

<comment><USER2> I believe that, at least for programmers, this is called "GitHub."</comment>