It's Different for Girls - <AUTHOR> http://heidiroizen.tumblr.com/post/84530650750/its-different-for-girls <comment><USER2> I have an ex-coworker who is a really attractive girl, and she used to tell me lots of stories like this about places she had worked at previously. Vice presidents calling her to their room and offering her promotions if only she would give them weekly blowjobs, prospective customers turning away from million-dollar deals at the last minute after she refused to sleep with them, etc.

The really sad thing about is that the _vast majority_ of guys I talk to about this topic are simply not aware that women, especially attractive women, go through stuff like this _all the time_. So when they hear women complaining about discrimination, harassment, glass ceilings, and so on, they think those women are simply "being bitchy." Which simply perpetuates and intensifies the status quo.

<comment><USER3> Don't understand why we don't start naming and shaming. It's a lot easier to not see as a real problem when it's always stories of nameless men in unspecified locations and situations. And the kinds people who are prone to this behavior are being given a free pass, only to do it again later.

<comment><USER4> Shaming usually makes people either dig their heels in more and justify their behavior, or it drives the behavior underground where they won't get caught for it. Neither is a desirable result.

I think that what Heidi did is basically perfect - she's educating people that this does go on, it does have an effect on the women who are subjected to it, and they shouldn't have to put up with it. But she's doing it in a neutral, non-defensive tone, without calling out specific people. That's usually much more effective at changing behavior.

<comment><USER5> Naming and shaming is hard for anyone who has to have a continue relationship of even a distant sort with a guy and it is hard to prove a lot of accusations. So I wouldn't pressure anyone to be the namer-and-shamer.

But if you could get over those hurdles, it should happen, regardless of those shamed "digging in". Seriously, this kind of behavior seems much more authentically shameful than a lot of illegal activities carrying multi-year sentences. Sorry but knowing that inappropriate behavior has hard consequences works as a deterrent, maybe not for the first guy confronted but for the tenth guy, who at that point knows they just better not do that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think the big takeaway here, not just for women but for anyone in the workplace who feels uncomfortable with or offended by something someone else has said, is to consider the intent.

Sometimes somebody says something offensive, and they don't even know they're being offensive. And in those cases, you can take them aside, explain to them why it's offended you, and hopefully they'll say, "Oh, dreadfully sorry, I didn't realize" \-- and they won't do it again.

Which doesn't necessarily mean that people should always be let off the hook if they say/do something in ignorance; there are some things that one ought not be ignorant about.

But I think there's something fundamentally different about someone saying or doing something in ignorance -- especially if they appear contrite once they realize how it's made others feel -- and someone doing it purposefully, like the creep in the restaurant in Heidi's story.

<comment><USER7> That is not the big takeaway.

The big takeaway is that straight white men's privilege gives them an advantage over everybody else since they face fewer obstacles such as having their hands forced onto a penis while closing a business deal.

<comment><USER8> > _straight white men 's privilege_

The article didn't actually include the man's race.

<comment><USER9> The point is the same though: it's about power and privilege.

<comment><USER8> _I am an individual!_

When you equate power and privilege with my appearance and gender, not only do you dehumanize me and treat me like a caricature, but you seem to assume that I hold some sort of power that makes me immune to your hate -- or you just don't care.

Well, I'm not immune, and I'm sick of it, and if anything, I'd like you and people like you to take your message of prejudice somewhere else.

I never graduated high-school, much less from Stanford with a MBA, and as far as I'm aware, I've never even had a meeting with a VC. I guess we all just "look the same" to you.

<comment><USER10> I agree that we should be judged as individuals, but if you are white and male, then you should also be aware that you are perceived differently and generally more positively in many situations than minorities and women. If you apply for a job or a loan, you have an advantage. Even without a Stanford MBA, you would have an easier time getting VC funding than more qualified women and minorities.

<comment><USER8> Let me apply the necessary nuance to your argument to strip away the racism and sexism:

"I agree that we should be judged as individuals, but if you are white and male, then you should also be aware that you are _perceived_ differently and _generally_ more positively _in many situations_ than minorities and women. If you apply for a job or a loan, you _[MAY]_ have an advantage. Even without a Stanford MBA, you _[MIGHT]_ have an easier time getting VC funding than _[MANY SIMILARLY QUALIFIED]_ women and minorities."

In your statement, you ascribed stereotyped attributes to me, and to _every_ situation I might find myself. In doing so, you ask me to accept the core premise that I _always_ have an advantage over others, in _every_ situation, _because_ of my appearance and gender.

Yet, Heidi Roizen, in many ways (but clearly not all ways, as evidenced by her experiences) started from a position of much greater privilege than me. I hope you can see how these things are nuanced, and that sexist/racist stereotypes are convenient but inaccurate, and in aggregate, those stereotypes become very wearing on those of us who, as is often stated by those with your point of view, "do not inhabit positions of power" relative to you.

The "white man" stereotype used to roll off me, because I only saw it on the fringes of impolite society. Now, I see it said regularly and publicly, in popular if not polite company, often in contexts where I _don 't_ have "power" and I _do_ find it both demeaning and threatening.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> She makes a really good point about pausing to evaluate the intent behind the words -- and even using the opportunity to educate -- rather than always assuming the worst.

But did anyone else feel that Brad Feld was very, very lucky that it was Heidi Roizen in the room and not someone less forgiving when he said, "well if you need a dick to hold you can borrow mine anytime"?

What Brad did in that one comment was underscore the power differential in the room between a number of males and a lone female who had just said she feels "very uncomfortable" (even if she couched it as a joke so as not to rock the boat.) Worse yet, Brad was essentially saying, you're here to service the males. Again, it was a comment made as a joke -- but what a crappy joke, to point out that there's an implicit hierarchy in the room.

The only way I can see how that comment would _not_ have made a woman in the room very uncomfortable (or even any respectful male), is if he said it sardonically to make fun of guys who do say things like that without realizing why it's not acceptable.

EDIT: There are a lot of responses analyzing this particular situation and pointing out that Heidi said she wasn't uncomfortable. My point is not about Brad & Heidi, it is that you can't take this one very particular relationship and setting and extrapolate anything from it. The risk of misreading the situation and making someone feel harassed is so high and happens so often, that sexual innuendo in a professional setting is a bad idea. You can find another way to break the tension or team-build.

<comment><USER12>
      "This is bullshit.  Each one of us is just sitting here with
      his dick in his hand asking for more money without truly
      justifying it."

      Jason looked nervously at me, wondering how I was going to react.

      "This is making me very uncomfortable," I said. "Because I don't
      even have a dick to hold."

      Without skipping a beat, Brad replied "well if you need a dick to
      hold you can borrow mine anytime."

What I think Brad did in that comment is express his frustration at the vanishingly small pot of money they were trying to divvy up, and the way everyone was going about it. From the extremely narrow context, I definitely do not get the impression Brad was saying anything even remotely like "you're here to service the males."

I also think you have it wrong that "any respectful male" would feel uncomfortable from that comment. From that one comment I can relate to exactly what Brad is describing, and I assure you it has nothing to do with actual dicks.

Who in this industry _cannot_ identify with the feeling that everyone in some meeting is 'sitting here with his dick in his hand, asking _______'? I could never feel uncomfortable with someone making that comment, because I would understand exactly what they were saying.

<comment><USER13> My thoughts about someone on HN getting called out for "sexist language" that I put on my blog instead of mixing it up here, thus probably almost no one has seen it:

[http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2014/03/grow- set.htm...](http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2014/03/grow-set.html)

Have an upvote.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is a good, substantive article that draws on long experience.

Commenters: before posting, please ensure that your comments are both substantive and civil. You should always do that on HN, but for obvious reasons, this topic requires a reminder.

<comment><USER15> Well I should have realised that before putting in my comments. Got massive downvotes, the reason seem obvious now. Maybe I should have atleast have been substantive. Ah well, lessons learned.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Very refreshing read for a few reasons:

\- The use of specific examples, rather than broad generalizations. \- Explaining that the intent and attitude of the potential offender makes a huge difference (ie. Feld vs. hand in pants dude). \- Acknowledging that even she has made some un-PC comments unintentionally. \- Not offering any silver bullet solution, because there isn't one.

As a white guy, hearing stories like this are really helpful at getting a sense of what real world challenges women face in the entrepreneurship/tech world.

<comment><USER17> > Explaining that the intent and attitude of the potential offender makes a > huge difference (ie. Feld vs. hand in pants dude).

_what???_ You think INTENT was the difference between those two situations? You really don't see any inherent difference between using an expression that involves genitals but doesn't have anything to do with them and...sexually assaulting by forcing them to touch your genitals? The difference between those two examples had nothing to do with intent or attitude, but the actual action itself was explicitly malevolent in the latter case while accidentally offensive at worst in the former.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Lack of diversity in the tech industry truly saddens me. I love technology, and I want to encourage everyone else to discover how magical it is. It's a tragedy that the industry can be so hostile to some, for apparently no reason.

But as a white male, I feel powerless to do anything. I can't speak for women, or for other races, or really for anyone else. I want to help fix this, but where do I begin?

<comment><USER19> You can educate yourself and others! There are lots of resources for learning how to do more, including speaking up to other men and putting some money toward supporting people who are making a difference.

Here's an article with a bunch of options ("What Can Men Do? Men working with other men against patriarchy in technology"): [https://medium.com/tech- culture-briefs/a1e93d985af0](https://medium.com/tech-culture- briefs/a1e93d985af0) \- and here's an allies training workshop that you can encourage your company (or your friends' companies) to do: [http://adainitiative.org/what-we-do/workshops-and- training/](http://adainitiative.org/what-we-do/workshops-and-training/)

<comment><USER20> Sorry, but I find Shanley's approach to framing this issue _completely_ the opposite of the OP here. The OP sees the good in good men and lifts them up. The closing point about the joke she shared with her colleagues underlines it: there are people who are unable to laugh off a "dick in your hand" joke regardless of context and who it comes from. Not because of a lack of sense of humor, but because any such joke will be framed as oppressive and sexist due to the gender of the person it comes from.

Shanley sees all men as de facto oppressors (of varying degrees) due to their gender and the existence of the patriarchy. (Don't believe me? Look at her point: "Men need to work with each other on sexism. It is not okay to lean on the class of people you oppress to solve your system or your discomfort with it.".) This is not a productive avenue for making progress IMHO.

<comment><USER21> I've shown Shanley's post to quite a few women in technology (including some diversity experts) and they all think her concrete suggestions are excellent. [As do I.] So I strongly suggest any guys who really want to help read it and act on the suggestions even if they would prefer a different framing.

And specifically, which of her points do you disagree with? Are you saying that men don't need to work with each other on their sexism? Or, are you saying that instead of men taking a responsibility to address sexism or overcome their discomfort with this issue they should instead lean on women?

<comment><USER20> I push back hard on the tumblr-ization of language, much as I do with the Luntz-ification of language perpetrated by right wing outlets like Fox News.

Terms like "patriarchy", "privilege", and even "problematic" serve to re-frame the debate in a way that causes many negative consequences. It is pretty much the same tactic used in politics to control the language in order to disarm your opponent before debate even begins.

First, it causes debates on issues to immediately have one side assume the premise. If we are having a discussion about privilege, then I am already conceding that in this instance I had privilege in the first place. Second, it turns small issues between individuals into illustrative examples of a wider power and class struggle, regardless of how appropriate such extrapolations might be. Third, it carves a lens through which all day-to-day human interactions may suddenly become viewed, where innocent actions that normally would have gone unnoticed become immediately magnified into sexist acts because they fit into a pre-conceived mold defined by this language and ideology (lets call it what it is) regardless of context. This is what the OP is talking about. Fourth, these terms provide no way to measure progress, similar to the "War on Terror", the "War on the Patriarchy and White Male Privilege" will never be won since it is by definition immeasurable against an enemy that is a concept. Finally, in this particular case it serves to cause women to see men, all men, as inherently flawed and part of a systemic regime of oppression, and men to see themselves that way too. This is all counterproductive, dare I say, _problematic_.

<comment><USER22> Since you haven't acknowledged a single substantive point from the Shanley post cited upthread, you should reconsider writing 250+ words about "framing" and Frank Luntz. And by "should", I mean that you should follow the Principle of Charity.

If you'd like, you can wait to start doing that until the principle becomes an HN guideline. You might have a couple of weeks left to ignore it ('dang has more or less said it's coming). But since it's just a good plan regardless of what the site rules say, I think you should start now.

The tendency for people to litigate framing, tone, and decorum _instead of_ substantive points has a name in online feminist circles: "tone policing". I find the application of that term incredibly annoying. Which is why it's especially discomfiting to see someone directly play into the pattern of behavior the term was coined for.

<comment><USER20> It seems you are doing the same thing you are accusing me of by not addressing my points. The specific calls to action she makes for the most part seem reasonable. But they are hung not just on a poor tone but a general worldview that in my view alienates both genders from one another and in general would cause more friction and emotional hurt in day to day life if it were adopted by all. Hence the reason I called out what I saw to be a poor comparison, the OP and Shanley are coming at this from what I think are completely different angles. (And yes I agree with you, the 'tone police' card is overplayed and stupid.)

<comment><USER22> You understand that Britta wasn't saying "tell all your male friends to follow everything that Shanley says", right? She was saying, "this Shanley post has good suggestions in it". It turns out you agree.

If you'd like the "tone police" card to get played less often, stop _burying the lede_ that you agree with all the substantive points of this-or-that feminist blog post under a mountain of concern trolling about tone.

You can buy yourself the rhetorical space to criticize someone's tone by demonstrating that you took their substantive points seriously. But read your comments; you can see clearly that you did nothing of the sort here.

<comment><USER20> Fair enough.

<comment><USER22> Hey, I'm being super snippy. Thank you for responding gracefully.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I would love to write "It's Different for Boys", not as a rebuttal, but to explain how two-sided this problem is from a man's perspective.

That sexual harassment and the weirdly dysfunctional sexual culture of business is perpetuated on men as well as women.

I arrived on the scene in the Bay Area start-up culture ~5 years ago from a very different industry / cultural perspective.

I was in LOVE with the idea of the Bay Area tech-start-up culture - it's incredibly magnetic.

Within a month I'd closed a major deal with a new client - they'd just raised tens-of-millions in venture money from prominent VCs, the CEO was very visible in the SF bay start-up culture, etc.

I was living the dream - everything in their office was just as I imagined, the people were all hip and fresh and liberal-earthy-but-wise-and-techie just as I'd hoped.

Then the work day ended and I was invited out to drinks to celebrate our deal with the "boys" from the office.

Drinks led to more drinks, led to a strip club, led to the CEO literally going home with a hooker (and he was dating another prominent valley founder at the time no less).

And nobody batted an eye.

Like the author I don't quite know how to wind this up other than to say this is a two way street.

And the more time I spend with rich and powerful SV men, the more I see a "women as toys" culture perpetuated.

Yes, we're all human susceptible to our very human flaws and needs, but it's insane how completely acceptable sexualized behavior is behind the scenes.

<comment><USER24> I don't see how that would be a rebuttal, but from what you say it could be interesting to read.

<comment><USER23> Good point, edited my first sentence.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I'm a woman who is new to hacker news. I've been told I have to be on this thing if I ever want to apply for YC. I don't know if I'll ever do that but I don't want to ruin that opportunity. I've been reading through all these comments and a lot of them make me sick to my stomach. Articles that surround women in the work force interest me because my startup is in this space, but at what cost of my sanity do I have to put up with all these sexist comments to have value to this community?

<comment><USER22> Something about this topic makes the Internet creepers come out of the woodwork. It seems to be much easier for them to get a charge out of gender- based stories than, say, Java type system debates.

What I can tell you as someone who has spent altogether too much time on HN is that for the most part, the people writing the worst comments on these threads are drive-by anonymous trolls, and not serious members of the community. Further, people who have a serious HN presence who contribute to the muck on these threads are, as you can see from the grey cast their comments take, driving themselves into pariah status. You'll notice that even when a creepy comment is written by someone with a lot of karma... they're gonna tend not to have their real names on their profile.

There's probably not a whole lot HN can do in the near term to keep hostile, offensive noise off threads like these. Anyone can make an account, and some people keep a whole battery of sockpuppet accounts handy so they can stir shit up on the threads. All I can tell you is that if you feel like you need to stand up for yourself on a thread like this, there are lots of long-time serious people on HN who will have your back. If you don't want to do that, nobody can blame you.

Welcome to HN, by the way. Stick around.

<comment><USER26> > Something about this topic makes the Internet creepers come out of the > woodwork. It seems to be much easier for them to get a charge out of gender- > based stories than, say, Java type system debates.

Java type system debates don't usually come with a side of blaming all men (especially low status men like most engineers) for the actions of a few (usually extremely high status) men. I would expect a lot more angry comments on Java typechecking if that topic impacted directly on every man's chance of social and professional livelihood.

<comment><USER27> Engineers are low status? Please. That might have true in 1984, when Revenge of the Nerds came out. But it sure isn't now.

Also, as a man, I have benefited from literally millennia of people advantaging my gender. If I occasionally get blamed for that, I think I can handle it. Maybe you can too?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Incredibly classy of her to not name & shame the bad guys but to accent the good ones. Kudos. Also, the behavior of some of those guys is absolutely shocking, I'm sorry to say I never suspected it to be this bad at that level. Call me naive.

<comment><USER29> Would you have a problem with someone naming those responsible?

It is obviously wrong to demand of victims to take specific actions (or not). Telling a victim (especially one you do not know personally) what to do is definitely never ok. At most you might recommend a certain action, but depending on how that is framed such a recommendation might already be problematic.

That said, I'm not sure I see the problem with naming those who are responsible. Had she done that I really don't see what would be wrong about that.

<comment><USER13> _That said, I'm not sure I see the problem with naming those who are responsible._

One of the problems with naming names is that there are two sides to every story, so it tends to lead to "he said, she said" and tends to get very ugly -- the man has reason to defend himself and often feels he didn't do anything wrong and may not have been intentionally bad. Another is that the _woman_ who does so harms her _own_ reputation. Who the hell will want to work with her if they know that should they crack an off color joke or make some other faux pas, she will go all SJW on them and seek to publicly hang them high?

Women are never going to get anywhere if they continue to jump on their high horse every time they have a run in with some guy. It is the men who have power. We (women -- as I am one) have to find a way to work with them if we want to get anywhere. And learning to sidestep trouble and frame things as innocently as they are reasonably able to be framed is a path forward. Jumping to ugly conclusions and starting a shitshow every time something happens is not.

The author was a CEO who apparently did multi-million dollar deals. I suspect she knows whereof she speaks. The shitshows we have seen posted to HN mostly seem to be women who are less successful than that.

I say this as someone who was molested and raped as a kid, who talks openly about that fact and what it did to me yet I have protected the identities of the perpetrators, for quite a lot of reasons. So this is something I have firsthand experience with.

The other problem is that naming names tends to not let it be a growth experience for men who screwed up because they just did not know any better. We all inherit an awful lot of shit culturally (I grew up in the deep south -- here is me talking about stupid racist assumptions I did not know I had and how I became aware of them: [http://ask.metafilter.com/261222/How-can-I- practice-gratitud...](http://ask.metafilter.com/261222/How-can-I-practice- gratitude-while-recognizing-and-fighting-injustice#3794660)) You have to start with the assumption that men are just as much a victim of circumstance as women if we are ever going to find a path forward.

Once you out a man, he is publicly branded. Once that is done, he is much more likely to feel compelled to justify his actions to himself. That means he is likely to keep being an asshole and not become more sensitive to the issue. That does not let us, as a culture, move forward. Nailing men to the cross for relatively harmless assholery keeps all of us, as a group, pinned in place. I would like to move forward. The status quo sucks. I do not wish to do anything which prevents progress.

I am not saying that names should never be named. But the kinds of things described in the article, while definitely deal-breakers socially and in terms of business, are relatively harmless. She is not talking about being beaten and raped. She is not talking about the sort of thing that would justify calling the police and having him charged, criminally.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I'd say a man placing her hand in his unzipped pants counts as criminal behavior.

<comment><USER31> It's also very relaxing. I do it all the time when, say, watching television.

<comment><USER32> You probably misread the previous statement - it says placing _her_ hand in _his_ pants...

EDIT: Dear downvoters: This statement is a favor to the guy above me, who probably thought the statement was referring to Al Bundy like behavior of watching TV with hand in pants.

EDIT 2: Removing some needless name-calling. Was just annoyed.

<comment><USER31> Yup, my bad. Totally read that as him placing his hand in his pants. As in, only one person involved.

<comment><USER33> Probably not in a restaurant, though.

Dragging the subthread back on topic, while I don't doubt Ms. Roizen or anyone else who describes having encountered such abhorrent behavior, it amazes me every time I hear about it, and not so much because it's sexual assault as because I have such a hard time believing any man, indeed anyone of any sex or gender, could be so incredibly _déclassé_.

I don't know -- maybe it's because I'm gay, or because I gravitate toward the company of people who deport themselves with something which at least vaguely resembles good taste, or I don't know what all, but honestly? Who actually _does_ something like that? Who can even _contemplate_ doing something like that without shriveling in well-deserved shame?

<comment><USER34> Given HN's comments above, apparently we are to believe it is all men who do these things, and think women are "bitches" for objecting to them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I'm old now, but when I was a younger man, I was something to look at. I got sexual come-ons and innuendos by female and gay male coworkers all the time. It's not a "girl thing", it's an "I'm attractive thing". It goes away.

Guys also like to make dick jokes. Because dick jokes are funny. See Louis CK net worth. And guys build rapport by being funny. I showed a guy at work my Chromecast. "It's smaller than I thought". "That's what she said", I replied. Laughs by all genders.

Accept dick jokes. Punish actual harrassment. Don't think it only happens to women.

</comment><comment><USER36> "Again, not criminal behavior. I suffered a few unwelcome gropes at late-night Comdex parties and the like, but never felt like I was in danger and I was always able to walk away unharmed."

An unwelcome grope is criminal behavior.

</comment><comment><USER37> > That is why I encourage my fellow female trailblazers to look for the intent > behind the words. Offensive language is often unintentional, and sometimes > you can turn an awkward situation into a bonding experience.

This is probably the most common-sense, insightful piece of advice that our news cycle does its best to make people forget.

<comment><USER38> I agree that this is balanced advice, but I worry that it is actually another way of masking the problem. In the example she gave with Brad Feld, his response to her critique wasn't really LESS sexist, just more absurd. That may just be an issue with the the example though.

In a broader sense, intent is nearly impossible to determine, and it's dangerous to put the responsibility for understanding intent on the party that is being offended. I edited a comics section in college, and I am not sure how I feel to this day around the nature of offense and intent, but taken to an extreme this feels similar to someone telling girls to dress conservatively to avoid rape - its not HER job or MY job to make sure that something dumb is not done by another party.

<comment><USER37> > to look for the intent behind the words

It's just giving the benefit of the doubt - not attributing malice to what might be just ignorance.

I think it was a refreshingly balanced perspective.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Judging others by their intentions seems like good advice in general, not just for offensive speech.

Goodness knows I've been judging _myself_ by intention more than deed for over 40 years. It's probably a courtesy I could extend to others more often.

<comment><USER17> It's sad that we've looped around to needing to specify this in interactions, when it used to be simply something that decent human beings did. It seems like the need to remind people to do so is only necessary in the (relatively) recent context of "the goodness or badness of your actions should be judged by how other people reacted to them".

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Not that it ties directly to this article but Ive always found the quote "Judge people by their intentions, not by their actions" to help me quite a bit in the professional world. People can often be frustrating, counter- productive, or as in the case of this article sexist, but sometimes they don't mean to be. When you have to deal with others try and look at what they were intending to do not necessarily the results of what they did.

 __EDIT __I bring this up because of how she ended her blog post and felt it was relevant.

<comment><USER41> I sorta disagree, actions are what really matter. I think it's good to cut people slack and avoid grudges/judgement in general, but how are we supposed to deal with society-level problems if each example of the problem can be written off as a well-intentioned mistake?

<comment><USER40> I can see where you are coming from but if you boil people down to being good or evil (over generalizing), who do you want on your side? There are people who purposely intend to do bad things and do, and there are people who mean to do good things and do bad. No one is perfect and people make mistakes, and results don't always come out as intended. But the people who intentionally act on bad intent are never people you want to work with. To come back to your original statement actions are not what matters in the end (in relation to what hacker news represents) but results are. In the end we all want positive results, but we are all people, and good people will always get you closer to your goal than bad people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I was so happy this was published. As a female founder, the grossest things happen. It sucks, there are some VC firms where I no longer feel safe attending their events. I don't get why men I ask for business help to this day still feel comfortable asking me out knowing that a) I'm a very vocal feminist and b) I state very clearly that I need business assistance.

</comment><comment><USER42> I like this article specifically because it is the only APPROPRIATE level of "women have it different" I've ever seen (I don't read a lot on the topic, to be fair). It doesn't detract from men (or even compare to them), it doesn't say how it must be if you are a woman, it's just saying "there's things here, they happen, it should be something we're aware of and probably keep in mind." That level headed attitude is the right thing to engender and bring to the discussion.

</comment><comment><USER43> I am so glad articles like these are coming out. It's brave to reveal these intimate and embarrassing situations. I wonder how things would have gone if she or another man in the room had reacted. I think there is a need for women (and men!!) to stand up for women rather than just "walk away." Could you just imagine what that meeting would have been like if a male employee just said, "seriously?" and walked away instead of Heidi walking away?

</comment><comment><USER44> Was the question about the baby really so bad?

It seemed to me like the person asking about it tried as hard as he could to ask it in a positive way (i.e. not accusatory, but offering opportunity to explain).

<comment><USER22> Yes. In an employment setting, it's an unlawful question. The reason it's unlawful to ask a job candidate the question is the same reason that it's unethical to ask a prospective investment target: the premise of the question is bogus, and rebutting it requires the candidate to explain and defend private child care and home life arrangements.

Offering a candidate an "opportunity to explain" a question that shouldn't have been asked in the first place isn't a positive thing.

<comment><USER45> It's obviously a reasonable question and the fact that it's illegal to ask is outrageous.

<comment><USER46> There was a bunch of discussion of good intentions above. You're one of those people who may or may not have good intentions, but as a woman who might someday have a kid, you make me angry. People like you make me REALLY angry. It's reasonable to doubt my interest in my own f(&ing company, it's reasonable to think I'll suddenly get stupid for hormonal reasons and won't be able to deal with business, it's reasonable... what? Do you not think I'm an intelligent being who has thought about the ramifications of having a kid and running a business? Do you think that it's just some sort of thing that I don't even notice until _pop_ I have a squalling child and then I'm all like wow my brain has turned into maternal mush and I never even expected that! Unlike men who just do stupid business s#(& for rational reasons, like wanting to buy a yacht or upgrade the girlfriend or plain old greed. You don't even give men the credit of asking them if they might pay enough attention to their own kids to lose a moment's focus when one is born.

People like you see stupidity, lack of focus, and incompetence in men as simply individual traits. At the same time you treat women as some sort of broad idiot class, implying that women need to justify to you that popping out a kid won't jeopardize the business. You're the reason one of my friends in grad school wouldn't tell anyone she was pregnant for months and months and months, so that no one would deny her a research or teaching assignment or put her on some involuntary leave.

edited for asterisks. And one last comment: if you think the woman you are doing business with is not good at business, stop doing business with her. If you think she is, give her enough respect to figure she'll deal with children appropriately, and don't ask stupid questions about whether she'll lose interest in her own company. If you want to ask who will handle x business aspect if she takes leave, that's fine, as it is not a stupid question.

<comment><USER45> >People like you make me REALLY angry.

Same to you buddy. Guess we'll have to fight it out in the political arena like anything else people can't agree on.

PS I didn't even say the things I believe that would really make you angry, like "pregnant women and women with young children probably shouldn't be working at all, and definitely not running a startup".

PPS That's a hell of a lot of wild assumptions about what "people like me" believe" off of one sentence.

<comment><USER22> This was already fought in the "political arena", and your side lost, because your side is dumb. But you keep flying your freak flag proudly, anonymous retrograde goofball. We'll all just take turns pointing out how stupid your arguments are.

<comment><USER45> Ah, good old Whig history. Well, as we can see from the rise of the Right world-wide and of neo-Reaction among thoughtful people online (hey, I used to be liberal too, you know), you may not be on the 'winning' side forever. So try not to be such an arrogant douchebag now, lest you fall that much harder later.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> _It pains and somewhat embarrasses me that I am not recommending calling out bad behavior and shaming the individual or individuals responsible. In a perfect world people would have to account for their behavior. But as an entrepreneur who spent years in a daily battle for existence, I did not feel like I could afford the hit I'd take in exposing these incidents._

I agree with her and I blog about such things. I could not have returned to Hacker News had I begun attacking men publicly for some of the shit that has gone down. I am glad to be back and I think I did the right thing, not "morally" but pragmatically.

 _In many situations, my answer is, you have to simply walk away._

I am still working on trying to blog about other options, not just walking away and not having a shitshow. I struggle with it. My last few posts on the topic have not gotten any attention. I wish I knew how to get some additional feedback so I could figure out how to communicate more effectively. Some of that is just happenstance -- I have had a rough month and just haven't been at my best for writing -- but some of that is that many of the things I want to discuss frequently either get attacked or dismissed. It is thus difficult to get good constructive feedback. It is such a hot button issue for so many people. Perhaps in the future I can figure out how to invite more meaty discussion and feedback. I am certainly not just looking for fanlike adulation and the opposite -- the ugly attacks, where my thoughts are not taken seriously at all -- is generally useless for determining how to communicate more effectively.

I am glad to see this here. She was a CEO and has bigger public accomplishments under her belt (than I do). It gives some of the principles I am trying to promote more credibility. My lack of public stature makes it all too easy for a lot of people to ignore and dismiss me.

<comment><USER47> _I am still working on trying to blog about other options, not just walking away and not having a shitshow. I struggle with it. My last few posts on the topic have not gotten any attention._

I would maintain that her blogging about her experience is "not just walking away" and is "not having a sideshow." The feminist movement produced tremendous cultural benefits through "consciousness raising" and I think consciousness raising worthy of the name is a good thing as any truth revealing self-examination is. Unfortunately, some of what happened under that rubric has devolved into labeling and name calling. (Granted, this could be an effect of the most strident voices being the least valuable.) The population as a whole has to be actively brought into such consciousness raising for it to benefit society as a whole. Also, I don't think that it can happen under something called "feminism" in a manner that's non-sexist any more than "mankind" can represent all of Homo sapiens in a non-sexist manner. I think there are some valid points raised by "Men's Rights" activists, but I see so much angry and anti-intellectual nonsense from under that banner. I wish there were an egalitarian movement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> We are in the 21st century, everyone knows right from wrong, and we're still in this situation of sex & sexism in the workplace? Despite the rise of anonymous, democratic, and free voice, whistleblowers still have more to worry about than ever. Majority of rape incidents go unreported, sexual harassment to males is increasing, and we are creating tools to draw people together. If the culture is to change, common decency, morals, and ethics need to be emphasized consistently throughout age, career, and power progression. As we saw with Dropbox and Mozilla, public outrage has an effect and upper management has to address these concerns. Founders need to create the culture of transparency over even matters like this. People need to call each other out when words come out like "Which girl in the office would you like to...?" At the end of the day, you have to choose whether your opposite sex coworkers are your family or friends.

</comment><comment><USER49> I really wish she would name names. This sort of conduct shouldn't be tolerated.

<comment><USER50> Agreed. Frankly, the hands on the crotch moved well past shouldn't-be- tolerated and to should-have-been-prosecuted.

I know it is a hassle dealing with the police and the legal system, but good god until a few of these assholes get publicly shamed and thrown in jail for a while, I'm not sure we're ever going to be rid of them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Articles like this just reinforce stereotypes (women as victims) without recognising the reality that men can also be victims (of male or female abusers). This makes it even harder for men who are victimized to come forward.

There are plenty of studies which show that men are very unlikely to report sexual assault -- for example, recently [http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2014/04/male_...](http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2014/04/male_rape_in_america_a_new_study_reveals_that_men_are_sexually_assaulted.html)

Sexual harassment is an important issue; but it affects both genders. Starting out with examples of unwelcome sexual touching in the workplace and saying "it's different for girls" drags the debate back twenty years.

I'm a man and I've faced unwelcome touching in the workplace and I'm sure I'm not exceptional.

<comment><USER27> "What about the men!" is a deeply disappointing response here.

Yes, men can also be victims. And it's also important to fix that. But you can make that point without instantly demanding equal air time or suggesting that a woman telling stories about her life is placing an enormous burden on you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> "Men categorize women in one of four ways: Mothers. Virgins. Sluts. and Bitches. Of course none of the above is suitable for the modern business woman. But, you can create your own image by selecting pieces of each archetype suitable for you. For example, the sexual attractiveness of the slut. The wisdom of the mother. The integrity of the virgin. The independence of the bitch. This leaves men confused and unable to pigeonhole you. They are forced instead, to take you seriously."

From "Syrup" (2013), Amber Heard, [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vO8jBcL0oAQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vO8jBcL0oAQ)

Not saying this is the solution. You should get respected no matter what.

But... if everybody you meet is a shallow asshole, why not start manipulating them?

</comment><comment><USER53> >>My partners are concerned that when you have this baby you are going to lose interest in the company and not be a good CEO

As a practical matter this is a legitimate question. For example, "why are you taking this job when you plan to be busy for the next 6 months?" (or even longer).

<comment><USER22> No, it isn't a legitimate question. In fact, in an employment setting, it's an unlawful question. It presumes that the interviewer can extrapolate from the probably irrelevant detail of someone's pregnancy status to their ability to perform after the birth; refuting that bogus extrapolation requires the candidate to explain and defend their child care arrangements and home life.

As a practical matter, if someone in my company asked a candidate a question like that, premised on the candidate's ability to perform a job based on pregnancy status, I would fire the interviewer --- both because they were playing games with the most important function of the firm, and because they'd have exposed us to legal risk.

<comment><USER54> As a man I have been asked whether my performance at work has been affected by raising children.

When I made a mistake I was asked 'Are your children affecting your sleep? Perhaps you should take some time off as you seem to be losing focus.'

Other feedback that came in was 'He seems disinterested in the tasks assigned' with the implication that my children were more interesting than my work ( which of course they are ).

Would you also fire anyone who asked those questions of a man?

<comment><USER22> It's presumably just as unlawful, and obviously the same kind of bullshit. Yes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> This is not intended to diminish the perfectly valid stories in her blog, but about 30 years ago I went to a Silicon Valley talk where Heidi Roizen was the featured speaker. Minutes before the talk started she swept into the room surrounded by a half-dozen very handsome young guys in designer suits, all smiling beautifully. It was exactly the same as if some older guy had showed up surrounded by models in Versace dresses. I thought it was very inappropriate and lost some respect for her. Of course, I may have interpreted it incorrectly...perhaps there is another explanation for the entourage of young men accompanying her.

</comment><comment><USER56> It sounds as if it sucks to be attractive.

I am not convinced that it doesn't still suck more to be unattractive (as in male).

There are no interesting stories to be told. You don't rant about the awful party - you weren't invited to the party to begin with.

Those experiences she describes sure sound awful, but they are the extreme end. In between there are probably lots of encounters that she get because non-creepy people were attracted to her. Maybe people even rationalize they like her startups because they like her.

Men also get rejected from VC companies all the time. Also if I would witness men doing awful stuff to women, I wouldn't want to work with them either.

</comment><comment><USER57> Perhaps if we legalized prostitution it would decrease incidents like this. We know that as pornography consumption increases, violent sex crimes decrease. It's plausible that giving people a legal outlet would make them less likely to sexually harass others. Then it shifts the costs to the men rather than on the women of society.

</comment><comment><USER58> When thinking about my female friends, it is hard to believe that this is the type of crap that they will most likely, scratch that, _will_ experience. I can keep my actions in check, call people out on theirs, but it just doesn't seem like it's enough.

</comment><comment><USER59> There is a related HN post a few pages away for the curious: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7686491](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7686491)

</comment><comment><USER60> I just have to say how nice it is to read a discussion about this topic that's productive and supportive. I guess the new H/N algorithm that I whined about is actually working. :)

</comment><comment><USER61> I find the phrase "Tits up" simultaneously offensive and hilarious. Thinking of saying it in front of my mother tilts me more towards offensive, but I still smile...

</comment><comment><USER62> Strong white-knighting in this commentary.

</comment><comment><USER63> Speaking as a privileged cis straight white male under 40 here, can we at least as a community agree to roast assholes who sexually harass our female compatriots alive? If I ever caught someone I know pulling shit like that, I would make it my personal mission to wreck their reputation and end their career. I realize that's not going to level the playing field completely, but I cannot believe stories like this still come out in 2014.

<comment><USER64> i'm incredibly reluctant to post in threads like this, but I think this attitude is actually hurting diversity in the industry: excessive "chivalry" by males gives more of an illusion of preferential treatment when women stand up to discrimination, which is just more fuel for the gender war fire. women need our support, not our defense. it's fine to be outraged, but your response should not be to go on the offensive.

<comment><USER65> If women can't speak up, lest they be further marginalized, and men can't speak up, lest they add more fuel, what _can_ be done?...

(Not that I disagree at all! Serious question.)

<comment><USER66> You are directly responsible for yourself and anyone you employ. You have some responsibility for the actions of those you do business with insomuch as you can stop doing business with them. Lets start here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> How exactly is this "news"? What does it have to do with "hacking"?

<comment><USER24> from HN's FAQ: "On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> I like the article, but I must point out this one thing I don't want it to perpetuate.

"Every time I see the word 'Girl' used in scenarios that are supposed to empower women, it really grates on me," [http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/01/30/girls- lad...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/01/30/girls-ladies-folks- heres-a-visual-guide-to-what-you-should-call-that-group-of-individuals/)

It bothers me too.

"A girl is any female human from birth through childhood and adolescence to attainment of adulthood when she becomes a woman." [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girl](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girl)

</comment><comment><USER69> If you compare an "ideal" man with an "ideal" woman, being a woman is, arguably, a disadvantage. But the vast majority of real men and women are not "ideal."

For instance, what if you are a black man? What if you are short? What if you don't have the right "swagger"? What if you visit the VC when he happens to be having a bad day? What if you have a different accent?

This is why feminism is ridiculously unfair to all men except the "ideal" men, and also not applicable to the vast majority of women, who are not "ideal" women.

<comment><USER27> I have heard a lot of ridiculous arguments about feminism, but this one at least has the virtue of being novel.

It's still not very interesting, though. If you were to read as much as a book on feminism, you'd know that there are reasonable answers to these questions.

<comment><USER69> Can you give me an example of a reasonable answer to this?

And if my argument is novel, I'm not sure how a book on feminism could have already answered it.

<comment><USER27> Sorry, the last line was the novel part. The "what about people of differing levels of privilege" bit is standard and well answered.

No advantage is absolute, and all generalizations describe tendencies. That there is also white privilege or tall privilege doesn't negate that their is male privilege, or prevent people from thinking about it. So as a white guy, there are many circumstances where I get boosts from one, the other, or both that non-white, non-guy people may not get. There are some circumstances where being a fat person costs me, but that doesn't erase the advantages from being male.

Some sorts of feminism focus purely on the male-female issues. That's often fine; the problems, evidence, and solutions are often specific, and there's plenty to deal with. Others view various sorts of prejudice as part of a connected system. You can read about intersectional feminism for more: [http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Intersectionality](http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Intersectionality)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> I won't accept "it's harder for women in business" because it is impossible to actually demonstrate and it devolves into a pissing contest about who has a greater frequency of unpleasant experiences with coworkers, partners and clients.

It is also impossible to balance that against reasons it is easier for the genders. How often did Heidi have an easier time being trusted or otherwise "invited in" because of being an attractive woman? No one can really claim to know who has it easier at the end of the day.

What is true is that it is different.

</comment><comment><USER71> Attractive woman are going to have such problems as a matter of course. Men are attracted to woman primarily based on their looks and confident men are going to act on their desires. If you are an attractive woman and want to do business under such potential circumstance, then your best bet is to try to make yourself look unattractive. You can't have it both ways. You can't lure a client with your looks and then always expect totally platonic behavior from them. And if instead, you just want to pin all the blame on men for being pigs and expect them to change, well good luck with that. Mother Nature quite clearly has other designs.

<comment><USER72> Sorry, this is a pretty fucking horrible comment.

>You can't lure a client with your looks >And if instead, you just want to pin all the blame on men for being pigs and expect them to change, well good luck with that.

It's perfectly reasonable to expect men to not commit sexual assault in the workplace. What world are you living in where anything like this is remotely acceptable?

<comment><USER34> You are right that it's a completely horrible comment. But even so, where did he say that we should expect men to "commit sexual assault" in the workplace? Flirting with someone or asking them to coffee is not sexual assault, though it is inappropriate for the workplace.

<comment><USER72> I've seen this argument so many times at this point they blur into one. It's a watered down version of "She was asking for it" when talking about about a rape case. The way someone looks or the clothes they have on doesn't give you carte blanche to harass/assault them.

I'll show you what I mean:

>If you are an attractive woman and want to do business under such potential circumstance, then your best bet is to try to make yourself look unattractive.

This is the exact same kind of victim blaming as in "She was asking for it". He's telling women to make themselves look unattractive, implying that they are partially to blame for their own harassment because of what they were wearing, or how they looked. Saying "well, it's _bound to happen_ " isn't good enough.

>You can't have it both ways.

>And if instead, you just want to pin all the blame on men for being pigs and expect them to change, well good luck with that.

These two quotes both show that he really is talking about harassment and assault. The OP article wasn't talking about relatively harmless (if inappropriate) workplace flirting; some couples meet at work. That happens. The difference is that those kind of things generally begin with very subtle signals over an extended period of time. The context of this article, this thread, and implicitly this comment (by explicitly agreeing that women are asking for this harassment to stop) is one of harassment and assault.

>You can't lure a client with your looks and then always expect totally platonic behavior from them.

>Mother Nature quite clearly has other designs.

I don't need to break this down. It's so shitty.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> Jesus, the profile pic she is using here is 2000x3008 and just rendered as a 1-inch wide circle.

</comment><comment><USER74> Walking away silently is not the appropriate response. Tolerating a colleague's obscene language isn't either.

In both cases, the outcome is that the perpetrator is going to repeat the same offensive behaviour. People who are offensive should be shunned and told why they are shunned. If they are borderline criminal, others should be told about them. If they are criminal, government should be involved.

Being afraid of what others will think, or of them potentially closing their doors (why?), is a sanction of evil and encourages further victimization.

<comment><USER74> To those who downvoted my comment without argument: what I said is outrageous? unacceptable? men who physically assault women or treat them as purely sexual objects should be tolerated? am I missing something?

<comment><USER27> It's certainly not very thoughtful or empathetic.

It's easy for you to say what other people should do. But if somebody has been harassed or sexually assaulted, reporting it or suing has to be up to them. There are enormous personal consequences to doing so. Blaming people who decide not to do that is putting an additional unfair burden on somebody who has already been victimized.

<comment><USER74> You assume and assert so wrongly that I have not put much thought in what I said, and that I don't have empathy for the victims. I've witnessed and been subjected to harassment. These stories, and now your comment, make me viscerally sick.

<comment><USER27> In which case, you'll need to write your point better. People can't react to what's in your head, just what's on the page.

What I said is a pretty common response to your point, and often comes from people who have been through the wringer: not just the initial harassment, but also the enormous difficulty of speaking up. Read more on the topic and you'll see what I mean.

<comment><USER74> You're so smug and condescending, repeatedly ascribing thoughts, knowledge, or lack thereof -- without evidence.

In Sweden women, and men, don't tolerate any of this kind of behaviour, and are _certainly_ not taught to keep quiet. Since you position yourself as knowing everything and dispensing lessons, you surely already knew all about how women are treated and expect to be treated in different cultures. Or maybe you think it's really wrong that in Sweden we teach girls that none of this sexual harassment or obscene language is tolerable and none should be treated with silence.

<comment><USER27> I'm responding to what you wrote. I of course don't know what you're thinking; I'm trying to convey the impression that your paragraphs left me with. An impression you asked for, by the way.

I'm not saying anybody should be taught to keep quiet. I'm saying that you judging other people's actions without knowing their situations (as in "Walking away silently is not the appropriate response.") does not demonstrate thought or empathy. There are legitimate reasons why victims of sexual harassment and assault choose silence, and I think it's important to respect those choices.

If we want to fix their silence, the solution isn't to moralize and say that they're doing it wrong. They already have enough to deal with. The solution is to change things so that the incentives around reporting are better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER75> It is the same for men in some situations.

When I worked my male bosses asked me to give them a blowjob in exchange for a promotion or drop my pants and be sodomized instead. I refused and was never promoted. They told me they did this with everyone. I complained to HR, but they refused to do anything about it.

I don't really consider myself an attractive man, I think they were doing it to be mean and have some dirt on me. In order to be promoted they need dirt on you to keep you in their control. It is more of a bully and domination thing.

Manager of HR, said she would fix it if I slept with her, by the way.

You will find that a lot in big businesses, smaller businesses not so much. Which is why I try to startup my own small business and never do those things and go by ability to do the job, experience, talent, and skills as well for promoting people.

<comment><USER66> Why didn't you go the police instead of HR?</comment></comment>


Show HN: Log File Anomaly Detector - <AUTHOR> https://www.zebrium.com/anom-detector <comment><AUTHOR> Hi! I'm Larry, founder and CTO at Zebrium. I used to build bespoke machine data analytics platforms for software and appliance vendors. These systems were really useful, but it took a lot of work to make and maintain them. So, I took a couple years to myself to learn, apply, and develop the ML chops I needed to build such a system automatically. That's what Zebrium is all about: applying a range of techniques at different scales to achieve near-100% structured log data coverage, with no supervision or pre-structuring, from as little as 100K of real-world log data.

Our software builds a catalog of event types and parameters for each of a set of log types (for us, a "stack" corresponds to a set of log types). With this context, it finds "anomalies" through the logs, using a model built on a set of features. These features include simple things like severity and first/rare occurrence, and complex things like change in rate/periodicity, cross-event- type and cross-stream correlation, NLP topic, and timeseries features. We've trained our model on data from a few dozen stacks, including dozens of real and interesting "anomalies" the operators would have liked to see uncovered.

Our software seems to spit out "good stuff" most of the time, and tends not to want to "ring the pager" when nothing breaks. I think it's become quite useful - but I'm biased. :) We want to continue to make it better, so we want to get feedback on what happens when people submit log files with interesting problems that could have been spotted within the logs. Let us know what we get right and wrong.

Our SaaS service is in private beta, but anyone can try our log anomaly detection. You can upload up to 5 logs at once (more data and related files improve accuracy) and get a report listing your anomalies, the reasons for the anomalies, and a visualization of the event patterns within your logs. The report is sent to you by email (this is why we ask for your email address). The service is free and you can use it as many times as you want (limit 500MB of logs each use). Please try it (www.zebrium.com/anom-detector) and let us know what you think.

</comment><comment><USER2> Interesting concept, but I'm not going to trust a tool from an unknown provider with my potentially sensitive data.

Give me a tool that I can run locally, and I might be interested.

<comment><USER3> Co-founder here. Understand your concern and perspective Brad. In the near term this is a SaaS offering, so the best we can do to address these concerns is to offer strong security controls (a short list on our site, longer list on request) backed up by external certification (underway). Plus the credibility and track records of the team behind it.

<comment><USER4> I'm going to echo the GP - this does look like an interesting tech, but it must work in a privacy-preserving fashion. Logs contain loads of sensitive info, _especially_ if they are of a verbose/debug type, which is what will probably be used to capture failures. But in SaaS form, where it wants raw logs, it's a no-go even for the eval purposes.

<comment><USER5> Gavin from Zebrium here. Again, we understand this concern. All data is encrypted in-flight and at rest and we have a lot of security controls in place (see our website). We also have the option of a dedicated VPC assigned to a single customer. Beyond this, we have a unique capability: since our machine learning structures and types everything, we have a feature that lets us hash (or delete) any sensitive information in logs (and we can record match to find other places this info occurs that you might not even be aware of). Not dodging the fact that we're SaaS, just pointing out what we do.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Best ways to get my money out of IRA? - <AUTHOR>

I have a good chunk of my money in an IRA account. I would like to get it out so that I can invest in non-dollar based assets.
Has anyone got any creative ways to do this?
I once read somewhere that if you have a start up, with some clever accounting, you can pull in the money from your IRA into the 401(k) of your start up and then use it for funding your start up. Is this true?
Any other hacks greatly appreciated. <comment><USER2> I'm having trouble separating the two questions here: do you want to get away from the dollar, or do you want ready cash?

If it's the first, why can't you just buy into non-dollar-denominated funds with your IRA?

If it's the second, and if you're able to roll your IRA into a 401(k), then depending on the trustee you could loan yourself half of it in cash.

Alternatively you could probably create an ESOP for your company and (again, trustee permitting) invest your IRA or 401(k) into that.

Disclaimer: I don't know anything about accounting.

<comment><USER3> Well, I want to invest that money in either gold bullions or in myself.

When you say, "if you're able to roll your IRA into a 401(k), depending on the trustee you could loan yourself half of it in cash",

do you mean, I could loan myself half of it without penalties. How does this work?

<comment><USER2> Some, but not all, 401(k) plans allow you to borrow up to 50% of the balance, at some defined interest rate. You make the payments, principal and interest, back into the 401(k).</comment></comment></comment>


The Moral Peril of Meritocracy - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/06/opinion/sunday/moral-revolution-david-brooks.html <comment><USER2> I'm not finding a case for the moral peril of meritocracy in this essay. Whatever the differences between the second versus the first mountain, isn't the ability to climb either of them a kind of merit?

Is cleaning a hospital room to make it clean a form of merit, but cleaning it to calm a fraught parent not merit? Why would that be?

It's not that Brooks is making an inadequate argument against merit, but that I can't find one in there at all.

<comment><USER3> Broadly speaking, I think "merit" is being used by Brooks here as a vague stand-in for extrinsic motivation.

In his terms, being motivated by getting to the top of the mountain isn't as good as being motivated by the climb, and for that to happen, the climb itself has to be meaningful in some sense besides just as a means of getting to the top.

IOW, he's comparing someone trying to do a good job in order to get a promotion (which will make them feel good) with someone doing a good job because _doing a good job_ makes them feel good.

There are various related metaphors (eg. journey>destination, etc.), he could have used and most of them resonate to some extent, but I am not sure I buy the further connections he's drawing to the surrender of ego/self, I think there is some correlation but not necessarily causation.

IOW, there is some correlation between people who are intrinsically motivated and people who are motivated by working for a larger cause, but selfless/egoless causes can be extrinsically motivating too (think of volunteering for a political campaign, for example).

Finally, for this site's audience, the janitor story might make more sense if cast in terms Ulwick's jobs-to-be-done framework.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Whenever I read David Brooks I always hear "bla bla bla" but written in a very pleasant way. Has the guy ever produced anything interesting or thought provoking?

<comment><USER5> "Pleasant sounding noise" as my literature teacher would quote on the regular.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> At some point, David Brooks will presumably stop writing columns of the type whose subtext is explained so well here: [https://theconcourse.deadspin.com/i-dont-think-david- brooks-...](https://theconcourse.deadspin.com/i-dont-think-david-brooks-is- okay-you-guys-1702674607)

(But then it's been four years since that was written and he's still writing them, so maybe not.)</comment>


Engindex: the search engine index - <AUTHOR>

http://www.engindex.com/<p>Would you use something like this instead of Google or Bing? Why or why not? <comment><USER2> You're just an aggregator ?</comment>


Amazon has long ruled the cloud – now it must fend off rivals - Bella-Xiang https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-has-long-ruled-the-cloud-now-it-must-fend-off-rivals-11578114008 <comment><AUTHOR> Using market share along isn't a very good measure, because it hides that fact that they entire market is growing significantly, far outpacing the market share loss.

It's not that Microsoft is stealing customers from Amazon. It's that both companies are brining in lots of new to the cloud customers, and Microsoft is just doing it faster.

But both businesses are growing at enviable rates.

<comment><USER2> As a hypothetical CTO worried about the political consequences of failure when choosing a cloud provider, why would I choose GCP? If I choose AWS and things go wrong , I made the safe choice "and no one ever got fired for choosing AWS". If I'm already running a MS shop, Azure is a safe political choice. Every time something goes wrong, even if it could have happen with any provider, you will always be questioned about why you chose GCP.

Besides I'm sure that AWS and Azure are some where in the right top corner of Gartner's magic quadrant.

<comment><USER3> GCP has a really strong ecosystem around AI. If you end up dealing with some type of ML problem with absurd memory requirements, TPUs can be useful there. A lot of recent Transformer architectures have these requirements.

Also, a huge amount of cloud costs are based on egress, so having it on one cloud saves you resources.

<comment><USER4> > having it on one cloud saves you resources.

All the major cloud storage providers tout geo-replication so that if an earthquake or meteor takes out a datacenter there's still other copies.

But nothing can protect against an administrative SNAFU where you - or your cloud provider - and accidentally or intentionally deletes your account and everything's gone in an instant (yes, there's usually recourse and backups to recover from - but that's hours or days of downtime).

Sometimes it isn't even the cloud provider's fault: see Adobe's blameshifting onto the US executive for their dropping all their Venezuelan customers.

While Azure has the "Black Forest" unit which is legally - and technologically - firewalled off the main Azure cloud - and you can also license Azure Stack for running many (most?) of Azure's platform on-prem or self-hosted, I haven't seen similar offerings from AWS or Google.

<comment><USER3> I'm biased toward my use case - but if I have to move a bunch of terabytes for a ML data pipeline - I arguably am having stuff on GCP.

To your point though, yes there is business risk of having it on one cloud.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Didn't realize Google Cloud was so far behind in revenue and growth. Seems like it would be risky for companies to switch to Google Cloud because it might end up in the graveyard.

<comment><USER6> Google is unparalleled at building efficient data centers. Cloud already has tons of enterprise customers with contracts. They've spent $$$$$$ creating the infrastructure to be able to cash in over the long term.

Anyone who thinks Google will get out of Cloud (already more than an $8 _billion_ business [1]), as if it were comparable to Reader (which made $0, AFAIK), isn't looking at the economic realities here.

I repeat: Google Cloud has more than $8 _billion_ in annual revenue. And AWS proves that clouds are a profitable business.

I just can't understand how anyone can suggest with a straight face that Google might shut it down.

[1] [https://www.sdxcentral.com/articles/news/google-cloud- annual...](https://www.sdxcentral.com/articles/news/google-cloud-annual- revenue-tops-8-billion/2019/07/)

<comment><USER7> Because the mandate was to be top 2 by 2023 and that looks doubtful.

<comment><USER8> Mandates in a large company generally do not imply a threat to nuke the entire organization if the mandate isn't met.

<comment><USER7> In a large company, sure, but in Google? They nuke their own stuff all the time, users be damned. Since AWS offers a larger ecosystem, and doesn't have the Google product TTL of like 5 years, I really don't know why anyone would use GCP unless they're going for multi-provider redundancy

<comment><USER9> Tired and bad meme is tired and bad. Why would prior evidence of Google shutting down things that are not anything like GCP suggest that Google would shut down things that are like GCP?

<comment><USER7> How are they different? It's another Google product failing to meet the goals leadership has established.

<comment><USER9> Most of the google products that have been shut down that HN loves to harp about were shut down not because they failed to reach some sort of goal, but because they had no goals at all. They are by and large the work of a few people and nobody felt like maintaining them. The one exception is Google+, which notably unlike Google Cloud didn't require spending billions of dollars on datacenters and undersea cables, or on hiring/diverting thousands and thousands of engineers. Nor did it require building a third-party partner ecosystem and signing long term contracts with deprecation windows. Nor did it have a projected total market revenue larger than all digital advertising.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> My biggest takeaway from this article was that while Google publicly reports its "cloud" revenue (including GSuite revenue) as $8 billion a year, its cloud computing revenue (the portion that competes with AWS and Azure) is at $1-2 billion a year.

That would explain why Google would be willing to shut down Google Cloud in 2023 if they are not one of the top 2 players in this space. (Additional context and previous discussion below.)

[1] The Information: [https://www.theinformation.com/articles/google-brass- set-202...](https://www.theinformation.com/articles/google-brass-set-2023-as- deadline-to-beat-amazon-microsoft-in-cloud)

[2] Discussed on Hacker News previously: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21815260](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21815260)

<comment><USER11> >That would explain why Google would be willing to shut down Google Cloud in 2023 if they are not one of the top 2 players in this space.

I wonder how much of an effect this disclosure will affect the outcome?

I've used AWS heavily for work-related services and have touched GCP a few times for little side projects in the past. Knowing that they'd be prepared to shut down GCP if they're not market leader or market second within a small amount of time ensures I personally will never, _ever_ use them for enterprise work, and I'm sure I'm not alone in that.

<comment><USER12> I'm in the middle of a painful migration from AWS to GCP and my advice is definitely stay away from GCP.

The cloud tools do not usually have real parity or interop with other cloud tools as claimed (eg interop with boto or s3), many gcloud utilities have way worse performance and memory issues, the docs are plastered with up-selling ads and, inconsistent service account auth vs IAM-style user auth issues, and on top of all that, there is this risk Google shuts it down.

Even if they don't shut down GCS or GKE core stuff, there are so many peripheral products like managed big data solutions, Cloud Functions, etc., that seem like _classic_ cases where Google will abruptly shut them down.

<comment><USER13> For info on how things are shut down, see

[https://cloud.google.com/terms/#deprecation- policy](https://cloud.google.com/terms/#deprecation-policy)

[https://cloud.google.com/terms/deprecation](https://cloud.google.com/terms/deprecation)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's actually a great testament to Microsoft's execution that they were able to catch up (to some extent at least), despite AWS having a seven year head start.

Bezos himself called this a business miracle (the seven year head start, that is): [https://youtu.be/f3NBQcAqyu4?t=2133](https://youtu.be/f3NBQcAqyu4?t=2133)

And this is against Amazon, which is known for execution. I suppose we're in for a fun couple of years, especially with the JEDI contract soap opera and all that.

<comment><USER15> Id argue Microsofts strong suit here is making themselves _look_ competitive. During the web server wars Apache reigned supreme, until the numbers shifted in favour of IIS which overtook Apache for a time. Was this a better product Apache was fending off? no. Microsoft had paid hosting providers to park web domains and registrations on IIS servers so Netcraft would finger them as #1.

now we have Azure and its the same thing all over again. Azure Cloud has lots of tenancy, but these numbers I suspect are bogus. Azure runs Office 365, Exchange, Bing, and Xbox Live assets as well, and these are all "tenants." MS also bundles discounts for business critical things like desktop and server licenses into accepting Azure credits, so its likely many of these tenants are on paper only.

<comment><USER16> Azure doesn't run O365, Exchange, Bing, or Xbox Live. Please stop spreading misinformation. (I work at MS.)

<comment><USER17> O365 workloads are distributed across a number of environments. While Exchange mostly lives one its own hardware, SPO is very distributed now - it still has its own hardware, but also has a lot of data and services that run in Azure. And O365 is very dependent on AAD.

<comment><USER16> This is all true, but it's a far cry from OP's statement

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Financial inquire: I would like to see the breakout from MSFT on what is actual Azure revenue. That would be a good comparison with AWS on the revenue side. MSFT now includes the O365 entire suite and other SAAS products with their cloud revenue. Office is huge alone.

Also, genius tactic, MSFT gives you free SQL Server, Windows Server, and Exchange when you buy Azure credits. I have friends with expiring Azure credits coming up soon, waiting to see how MSFT handles. MSFT has massive cash, so prob extend for free or some other magic move.

Edit: For context, these are multi millions dollars in Azure credits, some 20M+, not being used.

</comment><comment><USER19> [http://archive.md/Gblhd](http://archive.md/Gblhd)

</comment><comment><USER20> Just an anecdote, but for my small project I recently switched from AWS to DO and am saving about 60% or more.

<comment><USER21> Likewise, we run everything in DO and it's around 30% less so far, but we're also able to afford managed databases at that rate. To make them redundant will bring us closer to our AWS rates, but... I'm very happy to have managed services at the moment, and the value is felt both in productivity and finances. I'm really happy we moved over.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> One thing to note is that the cloud is only about 5% of total IT expenditures. So getting data which has never been on the cloud is more important than taking data away from competitors.

</comment><comment><USER23> So, there's a thing I wonder about cloud businesses, Amazon or anyone else's. How much of this is funded by businesses that are not profitable, but are running on VC money? I recall the IPO documentation for companies like Uber stating a stupendous amount of their $$ going for AWS.

I am reminded of Paul Graham's description of Yahoo's advertising business in 1999. Lots of paying customers, things seem great, you're solidly profitable. But what if most of your customers aren't profitable? What happens when the next recession comes?

Not saying cloud computing is going away, but I think its current apparent growth rates are being propped up by a lot of Softbank (and similarly unprofitable) investments, which will go away fast when the next recession comes. Until then, we don't really know how profitable cloud computing is as a business. It may not be as good as it looks right now.

<comment><USER24> I thought uber ran their own data centres, and Lyft was the one running on AWS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Have none of you used GCP? It's a fantastic platform and those who your AWS are blind to the cloud native world.

<comment><USER26> Unless GCP is an _order of magnitude_ better or cheaper (which I have seen no evidence of), the question becomes "Why take the risk?"

<comment><USER27> I suppose if you have an _order of magnitude_ more cash floating around and nothing better to spend it on, that's true.

Most businesses like to keep as much of their money as they can. They can use it to pay people and stuff.

<comment><USER26> An "order of magnitude superior" is generally the _minimum_ that causes me to start expending engineering effort to move from something implemented and nominally working to something unfamiliar and unimplemented.

10% _savings_ is almost never worth engineering effort. Those engineers are probably worth more than 10% by implementing features or fixing a bug for a customer.

However, even if 10% savings is $1 million, the edge odds probably _still_ aren't in your favor. You may burn engineering time and the project fails or takes 3 times as long. Those engineers are effectively "dead" during that time and whatever contribution they could have made elsewhere is lost. For some reason, nobody ever factors that into their "savings projections".

Obviously, if I've reached the point that 10% savings is $10 million, I'm in a different bucket. But having $100 million in cloud spend probably indicates a lot more problems than AWS vs GCP.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> [http://archive.is/Gblhd](http://archive.is/Gblhd)

</comment><comment><USER29> Here's the thing though, they actually _don 't_ have to fend off rivals. Amazon's cloud business is based on excess capacity that they have as one of the internet's biggest chokepoint in traffic (post-Thanksgiving holiday spending). When I took managerial accounting classes, we looked at situations where it would seem on paper that producing a certain good would lose money, but when you compared total profitability in letting excess capacity sit idle and distributing fixed costs like rent and overhead, you can actually sell a good for a loss. Amazon doesn't have to make more money than they spend on cloud computing, they only have to make more money than what they would have had to spend on cloud computing without competing on the market.

<comment><USER30> >Amazon's cloud business is based on excess capacity that they have as one of the internet's biggest chokepoint in traffic

This meme needs to die. It is not true and it has never been true that AWS was built out of excess Amazon infrastructure.

[https://www.networkworld.com/article/2891297/the-myth- about-...](https://www.networkworld.com/article/2891297/the-myth-about-how- amazon-s-web-service-started-just-won-t-die.html)

<comment><USER29> I stand corrected.</comment></comment></comment>


Visual Quantum Physics - <AUTHOR> http://www.visualquantumphysics.org/ <comment><USER3> If this is your thing, you'll enjoy my wavefunction visualizer:

[http://ridiculousfish.com/wavefiz/](http://ridiculousfish.com/wavefiz/)

You can drag around the potential, energy levels, etc. and it will do its best to solve the 1D time-independent Schrödinger equation (Numerov method). Turn the dial to see it in 3d, with imaginary components in the z direction. Momentum-space solution can also be enabled.

Built on WebGL and TypeScript, source is at [https://github.com/ridiculousfish/wavefiz](https://github.com/ridiculousfish/wavefiz)

<comment><USER4> Thanks for sharing!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have a tangential question.

I'd love to be able to get into stuff like this, but when I see the pages of equations.... my eyes just glaze over and I lose track of what's what.

I get that it's a skill I lack and I'd love to improve on it. I'm wondering if anyone knows any good resources specifically for this? Something that takes you through _how_ to read equations, preferably something that starts off simple and gradually gets more complex?

Intuitively I can watch something like a 3Blue1Brown video and get it (or at least feel like I understand it on some level). I'm just not sure where to find practice material for reading equations that doesn't start right at the deep end, or even if I'm looking at this in the correct way.

For reference I have no trouble jumping into a new programming language; I immerse myself in the culture and idioms of the language, learn what the reasoning behind the design of the language is, learn the syntax, etc. I just can't seem to find a way to do this with written math and equations.

<comment><USER6> My two cents (as someone a bit more familiar with this stuff):

I don't think there is a single universal skill at play. Much like reading code, I think it depends on your familiarity with the specific 'programming language' in which the code/argument is written: show, say, Lisp to a Javascript-only programmer, and they would likely get stuck as well.

In this particular case, I happen to be familiar with this particular dialect of mathematical physics (and its style of argumentation), so I was able to follow along. But show me, say, some crazy algebraic number theory stuff, and I would be totally lost.

Going back to your question, then, I suggest getting familiar with the particular mathematical 'dialect' (and, I cannot emphasize more, _style_ of argumentation) you are interested in.

For example, in this particular case, I would read up on --and, ideally, develop some 'muscle memory' for-- (some) differential equations and multivariate differential calculus using, say, Khan Academy.

(A bit of familiarity with the somewhat non-constructive style of argument of 'modern' classical mechanics wouldn't hurt either.)

<comment><USER5> Thanks for these pointers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If you're interested in getting more intuition for quantum mechanics, I recommend starting with discrete systems (e.g. qubits) rather than continuous ones. The latter approach is how QM was discovered, mostly, and still unfortunately dominates the educational material, but an introductory focus on qubit is becoming more popular in light of the success of quantum information as a field. Almost all the deep and confusing parts of QM can be learned with qubits, and it's much easier to do so without adding continuum complications.

<comment><USER8> Scott Aaronson has a good point of view that one of the better ways to teach QM is as probability theory generalized to complex numbers. I learned it the old-fashioned physics way, but I have more of a programming mindset, so it probably would have made more sense starting from the quantum information approach.

I think the real mind-blowing thing is that most of quantum computing can be described as applying a unitary matrix operation to some state vector and computing the result. The rest of the field is just about what those unitary operations are and how you chain them together. (Oh... and the whole engineering problem of actually building a machine that does that without decoherence)

<comment><USER9> well, in that sense the op was saying disregard the real factors of complex numbers, use only 1 and i.

In sum, I interpret that as a start from binary probability. The bayesian rule for example follows trivially from Laplacian equal-chance decision trees, so I think that's a good hint. Does the bayesian/frequentist distinction play a role here (I'd like to think it's not a fundamental distinction, but I really don't know).

<comment><USER7> > well, in that sense the op was saying disregard the real factors of complex > numbers, use only 1 and i.

This is incorrect. The quantum mechanics of discrete systems still requires the use of the continuous field of complex numbers for the amplitudes of different configurations (not just the fourth roots of unity or anything like that). The "discrete" refers to the discreteness of the _configuration_ space (e.g., the discrete spin of an electron, in contrast to the continuous position x of a particle).

Very analogously, one can do classical probability theory for discrete (e.g., binary) outcomes or continuous ones, but either way you need to use the continuous interval between 0 and 1 to represent probabilities for those outcomes. Restricting to binary probabilities (i.e., true or false) would be classical _logic_ , a subset of probability theory.

(It's possible to work with an equivalent formulation of quantum mechanics with only real numbers, rather than complex amplitudes, but these numbers must still be continuous and allowed to go negative. The Wigner representation is an example.)

Incidentally, mixing up the continuity of the amplitude with the continuity of configurations is _exactly_ the sort of mistake it's easy to make when these things are introduced simultaneously! So your misconception is exceedingly reasonable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> As a fair warning - Bohm interpretation (even though as fine as any other _interpretation_ of quantum mechanics), is neither the most popular or the easist to follow (don't be tempted).

(If you already know QM (as in: are able to perform calculations in QM, rather than "listened/read to however many hours of narration"), disregard this warning.)

In general, I strongly advise against starting from classical mechanics to understand quantum mechanics. While is the classical, and historic, way - <USER2> gives a lot of paradoxes and confusion.

Just start with a two-state system (ideally polarization of light, but spin-1/2, while harder and less intuitive, is still OK). Then only well after that (including 2-3 particles, entanglement, etc), and provided you learn Fourier transformation beforehand, move to position & momentum stuff.

See [http://p.migdal.pl/2016/08/15/quantum-mechanics-for-high- sch...](http://p.migdal.pl/2016/08/15/quantum-mechanics-for-high-school- students.html) for my longer overview from my experience of teaching quantum mechanics to high-school students (and I link to the books & sources I find the best). And of course the Quantum Game with Photons: [http://quantumgame.io/](http://quantumgame.io/)

</comment><comment><USER6> If you want to skip to the more visual stuff, see the gallery of videos:

[http://www.visualquantumphysics.org/?page_id=397](http://www.visualquantumphysics.org/?page_id=397)

This one, in particular, I find amazing:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHSluoPqank](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHSluoPqank)

(Even if you have studied this stuff before, 'seeing' the solutions in this way is pretty cool IMO.)

</comment><comment><USER11> In case somebody wonders, apparently most (if not all) photos and videos are made with Mathematica.

I think that website has been there for quite a time. You can also tell from the technical standard (embedding LaTeX equations as pictures, low-res plots, etc.). Nevertheless plotting in physics is crucial! :)

</comment><comment><USER12> Is there a reason to refuse to explicitly label variables, especially in a pop-sciesque article like this?

I could more or less follow the math but because I havent memorized a dictionary of Greek variable meanings this becomes meaningless.

What's the point? You're alienating everyone but the people who already know exactly what you're talking about and you're left preaching to the choir.

It's unfortunate because this seems really interesting.</comment>


13 Crazy Interview Questions That Awesome Companies Will Actually Ask You - <AUTHOR> https://www.themuse.com/advice/13-crazy-interview-questions-that-awesome-companies-will-actually-ask-you <comment><USER2> I wonder what's the best way to tell an interviewer that you won't "dance monkey! dance!" for them. It doesn't seem like a good idea to throw random shit at interviewees just to see how they would react; what does that even measure.

</comment><comment><USER3> 5 and 6 are acceptable. All the other ones, I would cut the interview short and leave the room - I've done it before but not at these specific companies.</comment>


Backbone CollectionView Plus Plus - <AUTHOR> http://rotundasoftware.github.io/backbone.collectionView/ So you are using backbone.js and need to render a collection. What about when people click on your models? They should get selected right?? What about when they drag them around, the collection should reorder itself right? This collection view class will help you, check out the demo page. <comment><USER2> Very cool, man!</comment>


The Difference Between Google Assistant and Siri - <AUTHOR> https://birchtree.me/blog/the-difference-between-google-assistant-and-siri/ <comment><USER2> [video]</comment>