rustynails

Thank you for saying that violence can happen to anyone. In Australia, we have a very sexist attitude toward violence. The media (and our own minister for sexism) only ever talk about male perpetrators and female victims.

This article mentions twice that the majority of victims are women(about 2/3), but it purposely ignores violence against men.

My wife said to me the other day, "today's society is more sexist than we've ever seen, isn't it". Unfortunately, I couldn't agree more.

Violence against anyone should be condemned, regardless of the gender of the perpetrator and the gender of the victim.

I like HN because it is less sexist than most information sources, however, the price of non-sexism is eternal vigilance. This article raises a tragic issue In an unnecessarily sexist way. My wife is right yet again.

I am not aware of any difference in how privacy is handled between the sexes (nor should there be).

Can you elaborate on where you see the difference in how privacy is handled?

I don't read it that way anywhere. You seem to be talking about problem solving and algorithms. These concepts run much deeper than coding. I suspect the emphasis is less on problem solving and more on recognising scripted languages.

I recently took on a hobby of building a very large shed and successfully completed it. I learnt more about problem solving using tools (saws, files, chisels, pincers, RHDs, etc) and physics than I have in years through coding. Dealing with stresses, gravity, plumbing, etc was amazing.

I learnt a lot about problem solving without coding a single line of code. The learn to code is emphasising the wrong lessons. I've use several of these sites with my kids to see this first hand.

You have hit the nail right on the head. Everybody + opportunity + non-mandatory. This concept of equal opportunity seems to have disappeared in the last 5 years and I'm heartened to see people still talk about equal opportunity (vs the fallacy of equality), even if the media doesn't discuss opportunity anymore.

I was a kid who was writing assembly at about 10 years old because I loved it. I saved up to buy my own computer by delivering newspapers for 2 years. I learned to program by trial and error. I introduced my kids to programming but never pushed it. They have not embraced programming like my wife and I did when we were kids. I would not want programming mandated for my kids, despite my own passion for programming.

A comfort using computers to do research, word processing, calculation and create basic posters/articles/projects/videos would be very beneficial and may be better a better mandate than programming.

I am disappointed Clinton played the gender card - that was her best argument? I thought Adams' assessment was fair. I really don't like Trump's policies, but, a person who can't see past their own gender and only represents 1/2 the population? That's a great way to lose 1/2 the votes.

It's an amazing feat, but, Clinton managed to change my mind and convince me that Trump is the best candidate of the two. Shudder the thought!

I truly feel for the Amerucan population. The only choice is who to block out, rather than who to vote in.

This theory doesn't make sense (and I read three articles that repeat what you say).

If you use contraception, you won't have pregnancy. So why are the rates down? Health? Then why are 25% of kids obese (I looked up those figures).

I can only assume that technology has created more social isolation.

I agree that there is some group think at HN, but it is significantly better than most other sites. I believe it's impossible not to have group think as society is conditioned to favour certain beliefs and values, particularly through media, law and education.

As an example, I dislike prejudice and believe in a level playing field. This often puts me at odds with Political Correctness and feminism (eg. I disagree that sexism is a male behaviour (eg. The use of the term misogyny to reenforce this belief) and I condemn sexism by anyone). About 50% of the time I am modded down on HN. Challenging sexism from a feminist a guaranteed mod down at The Verge and a near certainty of being modded down at Ars Technica.

So, I consider HN to be more open minded than almost all other forums, save one. Many users on this other forum are mindful of the PC trap and discourage sexist terms like misogynist (instead of the more balanced, less political term - sexist)

When you say misogyny, do you mean sexism or are you saying that sexism toward men is ok?

If you mean sexism, are you using this term to imply that sexism is only directed at women?

This is a great comment. I'll expand it with a few other points that are along similar lines to what you mention.

Most (if not all) platforms suffer from 2 extremes, open discussion involves conflict which is seen as bad but can end up with insightful discussion and robust conclusion. Secondly, forums suffer from prejudice of the moderators. There was a good example recently of this in a HN posting on moderators. I'll illustrate with a topical example for modern times.

Why do people use the term misogynist instead of sexist? It's to reinforce a belief that sexism is a male behaviour, which, in itself is sexist. If you read the recent article on moderation, sexism didn't rate a mention but misogyny did. In other words, certain types of thinking are forbidden and some forms of prejudice are encouraged.

When I read about this new spinoff, my first two thoughts were on avoidance of robust discussion and the prejudice and politics of the founders and moderators. Here's hoping they don't make the same politically correct but prejudiced mistakes that most sites make.

I'm not sure what you mean by positive change.

Firstly, the article was very sexist and I don't see that changing any time soon.

"programming is just another skill to be mastered through persistence — with or without a Y chromosome.". Can anyone point me to a link where anyone (other than a feminist) has said this?

Smashing of records? They came 2nd and 3rd in most instances. That's not refuting they may be talented, but the title is misleading, in more ways than one.

Look, my wife is a damn good engineer. I am not intimidated in the slightest by good female engineers (I've mentored male and female engineers - despite constant accusations from feminists that this does not happen).

Can we please establish a policy on YC that false, sexist or dishonest articles (like this one) be discouraged? This is a thinly veiled pulp piece of sexist journalism.

There has never been a myth that women can't code. My wife is over 50 and is more than capable with specification, design, coding, testing (unit, integration, regression, acceptance) and maintenance. She also does network design, among many other skills. She's old school and got there on her own motivation and talent, not puff and propaganda. I went to university with many women in the same boat.

This is nothing but a propaganda piece. It's s shame we can't celebrate these young people's success without resorting to sexism and untruths.

I'm one of those anti-Facebook people you're talking about. I have several issues with Facebook.

It's principally designed to profile people. This makes it extremely dangerous and a powerful weapon against you. Got nothing to hide? It doesn't matter if someone has something to gain. In the future, someone could easily generate a list based on your political party of preference. I can think of many scenarios how I could aggregate and abuse such information.

Facebook is also one of the least sincere communications I can think of. Many comments here reflect it .. "friends didn't know I was gone". They're not true friends. My friends all speak in person or on the phone. We catch up for coffee, lunch, dinner or as a social outing. I can't even imagine how people equate the synthetic "had a baby" tag (or whatever FB uses) even constitutes worthy communication. You didn't know a friend had a baby? Not a friend. They don't want to send you photos if you're not on FB? Not a friend.

It's fascinating to watch FB users chat online or see them in real life. It looks synthetic and there is a significant emphasis on minutia "[chuckle] my brother just had KFC for lunch".. To which I reply "aaannnnddd??" "Oh, he normally eats Subway".. "Aaannnnddd?" "Oh, you just don't get it!". That's true, I don't.

It is odd that we make so much noise about secret courts and encryption impacting privacy, yet, we give our privacy away freely on FB. To quote OMC, "how bizarre". I don't think I'll ever get it.

Thanks for a great post. I can see the potential for what you describe.

My goal was quite simple: rather than a popularity contest, I wanted someone who was my intellectual equal. This was a novel concept to the women I dated. None of them could cope: dominate or be dominated was the game. I knew my wife as a friend for 10 years before we married. To this day, we see each other as equals, which is unbelievably fulfilling (even after years of marriage).

Other than our love of technology (as early geeks) we don't have many hobbies in common. I don't think any dating sites would have helped us find each other because of our different interests.

I don't believe in a soul mate and never did. My wife and I both understand our personal needs and our needs as a couple. Find that commonality and you are likely to find great happiness.

I'm sure many people were. I've come across many articles that contradict this article. Here are just a few. Mind you, the findings are mixed (but many articles agree that women under 30 are earning more if they aren't written by a feminist).

http://content.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,2015274... http://www.payscale.com/gender-lifetime-earnings-gap http://money.cnn.com/2016/04/12/pf/gender-pay-gap/index.html http://www.theguardian.com/money/2015/aug/29/women-in-20s-ea...

I've talked a number of times about the feminising of education and how it disadvantages boys detrimentally. I even saw it in action at some open days at schools where presenters talked as if boys didn't exist. I'm not surprised that this war against boys is having a huge impact in the workforce and disenfranchising a generation of young men.. For what? Political Correctness.

I'm honestly tired of hearing this 20% wage gap figure with no evidence. I'm tired of domestic violence being a man thing (despite the US and Australia both reflecting a 20-25% incidents of mothers being the perpetrators). I was infuriated when my open visit to schools made it clear they openly bias education and especially sciences towards girls. WTF is wrong with today's society? Are people this prejudiced and proud of it?

Until people take a hard stand against feminism, propaganda pieces like this article (from a website educated to sexism) will drive education and law makers to actively discriminate based on gender. It's no accident one on my kids got asked to write an essay again on "can a girl do anything a boy can?" While he's never been asked the reverse.

I don't necessarily agree with the findings, but you may have missed something. The article talks about typing vs writing. This person talked about listening instead, and that does work for some people.

Let me give you an example where the study can be wrong. My son is an Aspergers. He is classified as gifted or near gifted (it's a fine line). However, he struggles to write. So, in his case, he has 2 options: (1) just listen [he has a great memory and this has proven to work well], or (2) type.

I take these types of advice with a grain of salt. Rather than the what, I focus on the why.

My own experiences reflect those of many commenters here: I wrote notes and either couldn't read them or didn't go back to them. I most probably should have listened rather than scribe myself.

This is the absolute truth. However, what's interesting is that the world is still basically the same as 50 years ago in terms of safety.

When I first went to school, my mother told me not to accept lollies, gifts or rides from strangers. The same fears existed, but people tempered those fears and kept paranoia in check.

What has most probably changed is the social attitude which has become far more judgemental and much more intolerant. I've given a lot of thought to these social attitudes and I see today's society as closer to the Torch and Pitchfork scenes in Beauty and the Beast (think of the feminist attack on Matt Taylor by The Verge as one of many examples of extreme verbal aggression by the masses). This mob intolerance has become popular and frequent in the last 10 or so years.

In the 60s - 80s, most kids walked to school unassisted. This was the norm. I used to walk 1.5kms when I was 5 and today, my kids walk less than 500m. Still, helicopter parenting and Political Correctness has (as another poster stated) almost made this a crime.

I am one of the few parents that trusts their own kids to walk a short distance to school by themselves. I have received a few comments from other parents implying negligence for trusting my kids.

I have doubts that it's busy roads that changed this behaviour.

Mary Beard crafted a brilliant series with BBC, meet the Romans. It superbly covers the topic of graffiti and many other modern behaviours.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meet_the_Romans_with_Mary_Be...

I really can't recommend any of Mary's work highly enough (and my recommendation has nothing to do with her gender).

This is an excellent comment. Mind you, this article and the comments are all excellent, but this one distills that truth isn't important to most people.

The dynamics of conflict are very complex. For example, consider rationalising with ISIS or a discussion around religion. Sometimes, there is no compromise in a discussion.

Here are two contradictory examples of extreme conflict. 1/ Don't pay the Danegeld. 2/ Don't say no to the Mongols. Both were equivalent situations, but totally different outcomes. One guaranteed annihilation (as an example).

I would suggest the methods suggested work on small scale but not on a large scale (eg. Religion, Nations).

Great comment. Values, not truths.

I have no Irish ancestry that I know of. I wasn't moved by this article at all. However, I did greatly resonate with this comment below the article.

"The Republic guarantees religious and civil liberty, equal rights and equal opportunities to all its citizens, and declares its resolve to pursue the happiness and prosperity of the whole nation and all of its parts, cherishing all of the children of the nation equally”

It's interesting that the concepts of equal rights and equal opportunity no longer exist. The last 5 or so years have seen a great shift to Political Correctness and gender based quotas (eg. Code.org). This is achieved through reverse discrimination (which is code for blatant sexism).

I'm not actually sure why the world should recognise this day among many other significant historical events. Australians remember the Eureka Stockade but I would not expect the world to show much interest.

Whether or not the Irish should care is another matter. I don't know enough about Irish culture to compare this to significant events like the great potato famine or The Troubles (Catholics vs Protestants), but I can see why it isn't getting much attention.

And there are plenty of people whose lives didn't revolve around the KKK either. You would find that most KKK members believed in different treatment based on a person's skin colour, but disagreed with lynching or physical violence.

I argue that any group who focusses on itself is similar. You get some vocal intolerance (see the attack on Matt Taylor for a list of tens of thousands of intolerant feminists). However, what you get from the collective group is a misguided sense of entitlement. Eg. The founder of she++ dislikes gender based groups, so she established one herself! In fact, I'd argue she++ is one of the few gender based groups I know of.

As far as I'm concerned, prejudice is prejudice. BLM focus on black lives only. Feminism focuses on special treatment based on gender. how are either of these things fair or reasonable? Such movements can't help but encourage intolerance (eg. the attack on Matt Taylor). Hence, they should be denounced in the same way we denounce the KKK.

Any movement that focuses on one section of society (KKK, feminism) inevitably drives intolerance. Just ask Matt Taylor who was crucified by feminists for wearing a shirt designed by a woman. It is one of many examples that highlights why BLM and feminism are flawed in the same way.

EFA should only promote groups who represent everyone equally. You wouldn't accept the KKK, why accept others who encourage equivalent prejudices.

We all have different experiences. For example,

My iPhone would ring and I could use speaker on a call but I could not hear music or sound in videos. I rebuilt my image, but the issue persisted for about 3 months!! It was my car audio dock and Apple's hidden "other volume" setting that was the culprit.

At one time, I tried to copy music to my phone, but all new songs were being corrupted. I used 3rd party tools successfully, but iTunes would corrupt the songs when I re-synced my phone. About a month later, Apple fixed the bug - but it was "impossible" to get new songs on my phone.

ITunes crashed during synchronisations and I realised at one point that I had about 25 gigabytes in lost space. I had to erase the phone and recover from a backup to fix the leak, which takes many hours to do. There is no file system fixer for IOS.

In most of these instances, I was snookered because I had no control over my device. Going several months without music was a major inconvenience that Apple failed to solve, despite many attempts. This reinforced that I am not truly in control of my device when such basic things are not possible.

TL;DR Apple "just works" is a myth. It's great when it works and disastrous when it doesn't.

I have an alternate view is like you to consider.

My wife and I had major conflict. My son (at 2) was showing very unusual behaviour. He lacked empathy and my wife felt it was normal. When we got to school, his behaviour exploded into destructiveness. My wife stuck to her guns until someone had the courage to say "he's almost certainly autistic". Then, a few good specialists confirmed it. My wife relented and we helped our son learn to adjust (I focussed heavily on empathy, networking, etc). Now, if we waited until it mattered, he would not be anywhere as capable as he is today. The specialists are amazed at how far he's come. The difference is that people were aware and proactive. They looked for the cues (of which there are many and I see them often - eg. Flapping fingers like a birds wings to release energy/stress).

The DSM isn't perfect, but the industry (well, maybe 1 in 5) does a good job of recognising and managing proactively, not retrospectively.

Much of what we become is hard wired by the time we are 8. The sooner problems are diagnosed and managed, the better.

TL;DR - if you find out when you're going for a job, it's almost certainly too late to influence things.

Look up Alan Pease for body language.

It is a difficult path to walk. I learned most of it intuitively as a young child. When I saw a gesture, it would trigger panic, almost certainly creating a self fulfilling prophecy. I also faked my body language to hide it from others, making me near impossible to read. As a young person (under 10), it was a social disaster.

Just so you know, everyone is on the spectrum. There is a threshold that makes it clear if you are autistic or not and often relates to under/over sensitivity of senses. My son is sensitive to sound and light (as an example). He also struggles to string tasks together and can't organise anything. They're all common traits.

"And it is a big step towards a low level understanding of what autism is, how it can pan out to be a gift or a disability (not mutually exclusive), and how the challenges many autistic people face work on a fundamental level."

Overall, that's a great comment. I really like most autistic people (my wife and son included). I would never consider this procedure for my son because I don't believe it would make him a better person (but the choice is ultimately his).

One minor point, I would like you tocondider the way you talk about the challenges faced by autistic people. Yes, I live with it frequently. However, it is much better to talk about the challenge in the "interface" between autistic and non autistic people. Why? Because the language you choose can create a victim mentality as it implies the challenge isn't a 2 way street. Let me put it another way, I have been the victim of an autistic boss who was a sociopath - until I recognised (and had it confirmed that he was autistic). Then, I understood that he had almost no empathy. The point is that there is a challenge from both sides.

I would love to see a world where we don't define ourselves by our gender at all. I don't think 1 in 13 questions should be about gender, let alone 1 in 100. There is so much more to life. I greatly respect those that can rise above it.

My female friends see themselves as people, not genders. I don't talk to them as women and it's fantastic: the conversations are very transparent. I rarely get along with a woman who defines herself by her gender or a guy who defines himself by his gender. It saddens me that the overwhelming majority of people can not look past their gender. Even HN with extensive open mindedness has many people who are incapable of seeing themselves past their own gender.

Why not say that about the article itself? I found the comment fine. There are plenty of unsubstantive comments here. Why single out this poster?

It's funny you should say that.

When I was young, I played dungeons and dragons (the board game). I remember how this campaign ostracised people who wanted to play. In particular, girls were very vicious with the insults about being a freak (to all of us that played).

I would compare the stigma to those that liked computers.

I can't think of a single girl who liked either d&d or computers in the 70s or 80s (my wife tells me she started in computing in the 80s though and I don't doubt her). Strangely, supposedly, revisionist reality is the opposite - girls were driven away by mean men (it's revisionist history, but misogyny is the buzzword of the new century and truth be damned).

I'm glad misogyny was mentioned because my life experience was the exact opposite. However, I enjoyed these pursuits and no amount of bullying stopped me. The attitudes have changed so much today and not for the better.

I'm curious. Do others see this (among other faults) as a criticism and attack on everything masculine? It's pretty thinly veiled to pretend to be egalitarian.

Unicorns and rainbows, every reference is to a woman, how girls are suppressed, bad behaviour is like "football" fans. They even slipped in a misogyny! Feminist bingo!

It fascinates me. We condemn the KKK for treating groups of people differently. Yet, when feminism (referred in the article) makes sexist and false statements, it's lorded by the media. For example, in Australia, domestic violence was a "man" thing. When a mother killed her daughter/son is was never domestic violence. "Men" need to be educated. However, when you have a group (feminism, KKK) that prioritise one group over another, you get these propaganda campaigns that tend to spread worldwide. They encourage intolerance and demonise others.

Now, a fundamental problem with this article's proposal Is that you can be as intolerant as you like as long as you don't say curse words (unicorns and rainbows) and threaten to hit/kill someone. The truth is that far more damage has been done by far more subtle propaganda campaigns, especially in the last 5 years. Not one of them would be stopped by this proposal.

Possibly. An individual murder means it is unlikely to have an impact to you. A serial killer will often impact a demographic in a city. A mass murderer will often impact a demographic in a large area or country. A terrorist will usually target a demographic in many countries, but on a much smaller scale than a mass murderer.

I currently think a mass murderer would be a greater threat to the world collectively, but the terrorist triggers the fear that any location might be attacked. Hence, while much less destructive, has the "me" factor that pulls heart strings of society at large.