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One of the reasons why Windows 95 was so successful in the corporate workplace was the icon set and look-and-feel

Microsoft invested heavily in the design of that UI. Lots of testing.

Also a lack of usability testing. My UI designs were subjected to usability testing a few times, with customers video recorded while attempting to accomplish a task. Watching those videos was a very humbling experience. I kept trying to scream "NO! Not THAT button!", but since it was a recording, they didn't hear me. Afterwards, my designs got much simpler.

That reminds me of a great story about Microsoft's usability testing of Windows 3.1.

...one study subject took twenty minutes of staring at a Windows 3.1 desktop before being able to open a text editing program. Finally, a programmer spoke up that this was unacceptable, to Oran's relief. But that relief would be short lived: "Our customers are morons!" exclaimed the programmer.

This was frustrating enough, Oran says. But then they talked to that user, and it turns out that he was actually a propulsion engineer for Boeing.

"He was literally a rocket scientist," Oran says. "And even he couldn't figure out Windows."

Define which tasks are ripe for automation?

The tasks most ripe for automation are first and foremost at the top. Ironically they are the CEO's who are telling all other layers of the workforce that they will be 'automated'. Look at how good the decisions of CEO's are and shareholders. They mostly get things wrong and cost a lot.

An AI expert system and a flattened corporate hierarchy where groups of people make decisions would be correct more often and less expensive.

http://www.businessinsider.com...

I respectfully disagree that say circuit level board repair could be entirely automated. You're dealing with CMOS devices, the fundamental chemistry of this stuff is that it does not last long, do you make machines to repair the machines that repair the machines? There are trade off's but the urgency of the E-waste issue has millions of jobs associated with it. As opposed to greenwashing the problem:

https://motherboard.vice.com/e...

One of the best things about a former colleague who got into the smart-home industry say is all those sensors are constantly breaking and needing repair. Never been busier. One form of automation has opened up an entirely new path to create jobs.

As for AI supplanting comp-sci/SW engineers welcome to an open discussion where a few people would have a quibble or two about that ;-)

Doing so would entail substantial financial risk for the Trump business conglomerate:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-02/ivanka-trump-s-china-sewn-line-turns-profit-at-a-political-cost

http://www.businessinsider.com/ivanka-trump-clothing-line-made-in-china-hong-kong-2017-2

I've been a programmer in everything from 6502 assembly language to Java with struts and Ajax. I spent 3 years cleaning almost non-functional programming delivered by young, ignorant IBM college grads into something elegant before I became a project manager and then team lead over 15 developers. And I saved my ass off the entire time. Because I knew my time would come.

And it did- in a company that had never had layoffs before after it tried (against a lot of senior programmers advice) to convert to all six SAP packages at the same time and failed catastrophically (because a lot of young people said it could be done if we just ran at it fast enough and "believed!" it would work. I know so many people who had nice houses, kids in college, and good skill sets who never got programmer jobs again.

I'd seen it before after Y2K as well. Mass layoffs. 40 and under got jobs easily- 55 and over left the field. Even tho they had more knowledge than us younger folks.

Age discrimination among programmers is rife and regularly reported in the industry. It's rife in other fields too. But IT is the worst. 80% of people leave the field by age 40. It is not really a career you can count on.

Anyway...Good luck. I'll leave you these to digest.

Time for bed, I'm retired and I'm helping a young whippersnapper programmer friend of a friend who hasn't got a clue how to remove wet sheetrock and insulation from his flooded house. (It's dead simple- you can find it easily without even requiring google fu- he's just young and lacks confidence and much worse physical condition than I am- but I ski 3-4 weeks a year and exercise regularly). After that, I'll be helping a couple other folks with their flooded houses. Then maybe I'll do something longer term thru a formal group like RC (I don't trust their legal document tho) or Barkley (a united way group with a much friendlier legal document.

http://www.businessinsider.com...

He told us, "Sooner or later, your corporation will get rid of you, not because youâ(TM)re old, but because they are concerned what kind of face they put in front of their clients," he said.

"They want to be thought of as youthful, to look progressive, and they won't put a guy out there who is 60 years old. I know it's stupid, but you would be surprised how many people think like that."

"Whatâ(TM)s happening in the tech sector is a general trend toward youth," Dermody tells us.

Facebook, LinkedIn and Salesforce have young work forces. Google's median age based on data from 2014 is the ripe old age of 30. (See chart on median employee age from salary analyst PayScale, below).

"At some Silicon Valley companies, the top executives are explicit in their preference for workers under 35," she says.

https://www.javaworld.com/arti...
A late-1990s study by the National Science Foundation and Census Bureau found that only 19 percent of computer science graduates are still working in programming once they're in their early 40s. This suggests serious attrition among what should be the dominant labor pool in IT.

http://www.scpr.org/programs/a...
But in tech, people tell a different story. Programmers in their 40s leave their graduation years off resumes so as not to tip the employer off to their age. Engineers with 15 years of experience canâ(TM)t get a response from potential employers. Hiring managers at companies in Silicon Valley have spoken openly about preferring younger candidates because they will work longer hours for less money and usually don't have certain family or home obligations that older employees with families might have.

Part of the problem could be that the indus

Well it came from the same people that held a funeral for the iPhone because they believed their Windows Phone 7 was going to take the market and destroy Apple. You know that product line that doesn't exist anymore.

Reminds me of an excellent post from an Iranian blogger who was put in prison for six years, from 2008 until an unexpected pardon in 2015. It's worth a read, especially for the younger folks who weren't paying much attention to information theory or internet philosophy prior to the Rise of Social Media.

Instead, there was the web, and on the web, there were blogs: the best place to find alternative thoughts, news and analysis. They were my life.
It had all started with 9/11. I was in Toronto, and my father had just arrived from Tehran for a visit. We were having breakfast when the second plane hit the World Trade Center. I was puzzled and confused and, looking for insights and explanations, I came across blogs. Once I read a few, I thought: This is it, I should start one, and encourage all Iranians to start blogging as well. So, using Notepad on Windows, I started experimenting. Soon I ended up writing on hoder.com, using Blogger’s publishing platform before Google bought it.

- https://medium.com/matter/the-web-we-have-to-save-2eb1fe15a426

See also: https://www.pri.org/stories/2016-01-04/after-six-years-prison-iranian-blogger-sees-very-different-internet and http://www.businessinsider.com/iranian-blogger-hossein-derakshan-internet-changes-6-years-filter-bubble-2015-7

iMessage will never exceed penetration beyond iPhone itself.

It's also on iPod touch, iPad, and Mac.

More phones are Android

If the average iOS user spends nine times as much money using his phone as the average Android user, a 7 to 1 lead for Android installed base still means the iOS market is bigger in total dollars per year.

This one dates back to Dec 27 2015...

Exact same story.

The rest of your post falls of into "lizard people are secetly running the world" territory. No, most businesses have no interest in killing off their customers (Oracle, maybe).

It has nothing to do with lizard people. It is the natural concept of saving money. One of the major expenses of any business is salaries and benefits. And Wall Street typically rewards a company that has large layoffs most of the time. http://www.businessinsider.com...

Which is completely understandable. But like any other group, too much of having your own way is not good for you. Your customers are not killed, but many of them cannot afford to buy what you were making any more.

And as far as I can see, the US is already suffering a good bit of this.

http://uk.businessinsider.com/... documents things that only happened online.

There were very real offline consequences.

https://vault.fbi.gov/gamergat... is 170 pages of collateral from an FBI investigation into things that happened online.

It boggles my mind how the UK can in any way equate these two activities as in any way comparable. They aren't. Period.

Maybe they are, maybe they aren't. That doesn't stop them having offline consequences, and doesn't stop the police assessing whether the law has been broken.

hmm.. first, I would have been "t-boned" not "t-bone". Second, being t-boned means a side collision in a middle of the car, usually at 90 degrees. None of this applies in this case since the ship was hit in the font part with an angle.

Also, when you get t-boned, your vehicle looks like a t-bone afterwards.

http://www.businessinsider.com...

3. James has a Ph.D. in Biology. What are your degrees?

Argumentum ad authoritum aside, Damore lied about his Ph.D.

Here's a long interview with an actual female engineer at Google. Some of the best quotes:

During an internal discussion about the memo, "One of the women put her hand up and said, 'Look, I’m a conservative. I completely disagree with everything he said, but I’m still a conservative. And I don’t feel like I can’t voice that opinion here'... Google really does have an open culture of debate, I think."

"It’s hard because I think he couches so much of his document as if it’s fact, when it’s actually not. There’s so little evidence in there. And it’s all really opinion. And the whole argument is couched as, 'Well this is fact.'"

"there were parts of my Google existence internally that I was like I’m going to have to delete this for the fear that someone is going to take this and post publicly and screw me for speaking out against this."

"I just really want us to think about why we’re not asking the women at Google how they feel about it because that to me is the root of misogyny right there. We’re not even asking them to participate in the debate about an issue that directly affects them."

Considering how forceful and near-universal condemnation from women and women's groups in and out of tech has been to the memo, it is extremely difficult to believe that this Ask Slashdot was submitted in good faith. Particularly in light of the extreme ease of finding high-profile responses. Here is a (small) sample from a simple google search:

https://www.vox.com/the-big-id...
https://www.vox.com/first-pers...
http://fortune.com/2017/08/09/...
http://www.businessinsider.com...
https://patch.com/california/m...

If you really are that out of the loop, that should inform you pretty well. If you're begging the question, then the quantity of vile reactions in these comments have likely confirmed that it was worth it. I hope it is the former.

1. And yet in all that time working with computers you still haven't figured out how to Preview and add line breaks??

2. Your link is broken -- it should be: james-damore-diversity-manifesto-science-logical-fallacy-2017-8
* http://www.businessinsider.com...

3. James has a Ph.D. in Biology. What are your degrees?

4. Four scientists agree with James' analysis.
http://quillette.com/2017/08/0...

5. You are the one not thinking properly -- your logic is broken. **THINK** about what is _actually_ being said. I'm going to quote the last part from the link above because you _completely_ missed the paradox.

The memo didn't address this paradox directly, but I think it's implicit in the author's critique of Google's diversity programs. This dogma relies on two core assumptions:

* The human sexes and races have exactly the same minds, with precisely identical distributions of traits, aptitudes, interests, and motivations; therefore, any inequalities of outcome in hiring and promotion must be due to systemic sexism and racism;

* The human sexes and races have such radically different minds, backgrounds, perspectives, and insights, that companies must increase their demographic diversity in order to be competitive; any lack of demographic diversity must be due to short-sighted management that favors groupthink. The obvious problem is that these two core assumptions are diametrically opposed.

Let me explain. If different groups have minds that are precisely equivalent in every respect, then those minds are functionally interchangeable, and diversity would be irrelevant to corporate competitiveness. For example, take sex differences. The usual rationale for gender diversity in corporate teams is that a balanced, 50/50 sex ratio will keep a team from being dominated by either masculine or feminine styles of thinking, feeling, and communicating. Each sex will counter-balance the other's quirks. (That makes sense to me, by the way, and is one reason why evolutionary psychologists often value gender diversity in research teams.) But if there are no sex differences in these psychological quirks, counter-balancing would be irrelevant. A 100% female team would function exactly the same as a 50/50 team, which would function the same as a 100% male team. If men are no different from women, then the sex ratio in a team doesn't matter at any rational business level, and there is no reason to promote gender diversity as a competitive advantage.

Likewise, if the races are no different from each other, then the racial mix of a company can't rationally matter to the company's bottom line. The only reasons to value diversity would be at the levels of legal compliance with government regulations, public relations virtue-signalling, and deontological morality â" not practical effectiveness. Legal, PR, and moral reasons can be good reasons for companies to do things. But corporate diversity was never justified to shareholders as a way to avoid lawsuits, PR blowback, or moral shame; it was justified as a competitive business necessity.

So, if the sexes and races don't differ at all, and if psychological interchangeability is true, then there's no practical business case for diversity.

On the other hand, if demographic diversity gives a company any competitive advantages, it must be because there are important sex differences and race differences in how human minds work and interact. For example, psychological variety must promote better decision-making within teams, projects, and divisions. Yet if minds differ across sexes and races enough to justify diversity as an instrumental business goal, then they must differ enough in some specific skills, interests, and motivations that hiring and promotion will sometimes produce unequal outcomes in some company rol

I read this article (see bottom of thread), felt like screaming and then felt compelled to write about my experiences and thoughts on the matter. ****I am a women in Information Technology and I have been doing this since 1995. Actually, even before that time since I worked at a computer camp at age 17 teaching BASIC computer language. ****Before there was oodles of money in IT, I rarely experienced prejudice and sexism in my job. I loved what I did and all of the guys in my field were very nice and helpful. They were collaborative and fun to be around. I never felt out of place and I did what anyone else was doing without anyone blinking an eye. When the dollar signs started to increase a lot of men must have thought "Well, I could like Tech if there's money in it." and started studying CS in school. Later, they would emerge into the dotcom time where money was flowing like honey. The boys club moved into my world and it has never been the same. **** I've been marginalized, badgered, stalked, ostracized, been the center of vicious gossip, denied work expenditures, had someone digging into my childhood and family and had IT peers hack into my home PC turn it on and listening to private conversations. Sadly, the list goes on and that last item is more common than you would believe. Note that that kind of voyeuristic behavior would have had someone in jail before the 90s. (Just creepy if you ask me.) But, the good guys are still there and they are somewhat left behind as well. They quietly watch the bullies from the Lord of the Flies and go about their business. ****This hierarchy that these guys have created is brutal. They are each testing boundaries trying to find out where they fit in and the weakest and most insecure pick on women. They pick on women because first and foremost, it bonds them with other men. Secondly, they do it because they can't hack being at the bottom of the pecking order and a woman is a nice target. Woman will often say nothing in a blind attempt to keep the peace. And if they do say something, they become a bitch. Which of course fits in with the first item mentioned, it bonds them with other men. ****So, what does this have to do with Information Technology? NOTHING! Yeah, that's right. Nothing! So, all of your money, all of your private information, all IoT (Internet of Things), all of your Security is exposed to this lot of people! Hence why this guy was fired. Google is smart enough to realize that they hold information about ALL of us. Male, female, straight, gay, black, white, Asian, Hispanic, transgenders etc. And guess what, we all want a say in who has our information and how it is used. We all want them to show empathy with our personal information and lives. And if Google, Facebook and IBM etc. are experimenting with AI, most of us would want them to build a system with agents that are compassionate. How will that happen if all of it is run by men who live like we are all on an island like the Lord of the Flies? So, I beg everyone to think about these ideas. We cannot afford this kind of behavior at the height of an epoch of science and discovery that has the tell tale signs of a change that will effect all of human existence as we know it. As for James Damore and his so called manifesto, his call for the elimination of empathy in IT is so short sighted that I can barely believe it. How can someone with such intelligence be so blind to how dangerous that would be. Hey wait, I answered my own question. He's on the island of The Lord of the Flies, that's how. He's not thinking properly. http://www.businessinsider.com...â¦

Healthcare and job training is the responsibility of the individual.

In the US it is. In many other civilized societies they realize that the long-term dividends provided by universal access to high-quality health care and education more than pay for themselves in the long run. We used to value education, now the federal government is giving out student loans at 10x the interest rates that businesses get. Go capitalism? Similarly, health care should be seen as a fundamental human right, not a luxury. But you would rather treat being poor as a pre-existing condition. The problem with health care in the US is insurance. If everyone paid even a part of their existing insurance premiums into a single pot that could be used to pay for health care for everyone, the insurance industry would go away and we would stop treating sick people like a commodity. Capitalism doesn't need to be heartless. The US pays, by far, the most per capita for health care, and our overall performance is no better than 15th place. That puts us in 37th place overall. That is a horrible return on investment. And, what do we get for all that money? The added benefit of an insurance industry that tries to fuck everyone over at any opportunity, and a bill for $150,000 if you have to go to the hospital because a venomous snake bit you. The world's largest economy can absolutely afford to pay for quality health care for everyone. But for you, it's not that it can't be done, just that you don't want to do it. You want to make people pay for it themselves, if they can afford it, for no apparent reason.

"Yaaaaaaaay life! It's so precious! Wait, you're already born? GO FUCK YOURSELF, STOP BEING POOR."

So back to whether or not you should force children to be born, now you want people with no support structure at all thrust into a system that will not care for or educate them, and just hope that all goes well because life is so precious (before you're born) and they can just pick themselves up by their bootstraps and the entire system totally won't be set up against them. If you've never lived in a foreign country and don't have a spouse who has ever lived in a foreign country then you might not be the best judge of how good (or bad) the system is here. It is strongly set up against the majority of people. It is not designed to help people succeed like it used to be, it is designed for people to make money any way they can on the backs of everyone else.

And, just so we're clear, I'm not in favor of murdering babies. You know, just so there's no confusion. I understand that you silly conservatives like to set up your strawmen where you re-define your opponent's views and then try to knock those down, but that's not how it works. You either know that, and you're an idiot for doing it anyway, or you don't know it, in which case you're just an idiot. If you want to have a rational debate it's best to avoid logical fallacies. Or, you could just quit while you're behind.

Who runs 32 bit...in 2017? How about (at least) the 140,000,000 people still running Windows XP*.

This Redditer estimates that half of all Windows 7 users (that is, half of 48.5% of 2 billion = some 485 million) are running 32 bit.

tl;dr? One-third of all computer users...some 650M people...are still using 32 bit.

* Windows XP is still the third most popular operating system in the world (as of May, 2017)

Isn't there some kind of protection, specifically laid out in (amendments to) your Constitution for groups like this?

Well, there's this (emphasis mine):

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

So the next question would be whether this is a well regulated organization, or a bunch of guys who bought body armor and helmets and came as a show of force and intimidation.

I can't say, on seeing, or hearing, either of the groups in those first two mini-clips, that I'd feel impelled to do them harm.

Them showing up like that doesn't require violence, but it quite obviously puts violence on peoples' minds. When you show up armed and armored, it makes people pay attention. It would be like going to a barbecue and trying not to think about food (this is America, so a food analogy is right on target).

Sure, they do look somewhat intimidating (2), but certainly no more so than the police appear.

The governor of Virginia defended the hands-off behavior of police by saying the protesters were better equipped. So this "militia" (and I use that term here very loosely) is apparently impeding the operation of the police because of their heavily armed and armored appearance. That's pretty much exactly opposite of the purpose of the second amendment quoted above. It seems like when they show up like that, they are basically daring people to attack them. That goes back to whether or not these demonstrations have an inherent threat of violence.

I can't say I agree, or disagree for that matter, with what they stand for, or what they say (3) but I'm pretty sure they have a right to believe it, a right to say it, and I'm pretty sure their forebears died for those rights same as (y)ours did.

No problem, if they want to have a debate then I don't see any problems with that. If they want to drive cars through crowds of people and dare others to attack them that I think that's a bit of an issue. And, if they want to parade through American streets waving the flags of governments that our country has fought extremely bloody wars against, then those people are probably not looking for any kind of debate. If they're going to wave a battle flag of the Confederate army, which fought against the United States, or a Nazi party flag, which 60 million or so people died fighting against, then sure they have the right to say whatever they want to say, but I wonder why they even live in the United States in the first place. This is not the Confederate States of America, and it's not the Third Reich.

Your post kind of jumps all over the place, I feel like I'm reading a Choose Your Own Adventure book. I don't know the background of the person who organized the rally, it doesn't really strike me as having anything to do with the Democratic party though. Regarding "herding people together", from what I understand the racist side showed up several hours earlier than what the plan was, and there were so many people that the police asked everyone to go to another, larger, park. I don't know the location of where the various clashes and murders happened, I don't know if those were predominately in or near the original park, the larger park, or between the two.

If you wanted to drive a wedge between 'moderate' and 'hard-core' Republicans I would struggle to think of a better way to do it than this.

That wedge was driven many months ago, during the campaigns. Donald Trump is the wedge, his nomination caused a lot of Republicans to be disillusioned and brought a lot of his supporters into the process.

The moment we start broad brush

It's a decent book, and the storyline keeps moving, but I'm trying to find what would make it both a Hugo and Nebula award winner.

For me, it's a beautifully written novel with a classic 'what if?' premise that, like most of the best SF, takes a sideways look at contemporary issues, set in a vivid and compelling world. But not everyone has the same taste. Looking at the list of joint Hugo/Nebula winners: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... I see plenty of favourites like Dune, Rendezvous with Rama, The Forever War, American Gods and The Windup Girl, not to mention Le Guin's The Dispossessed. But I'm baffled by the inclusion of Ender's Game. A lot of people love it, but this guy pretty much sums up my reaction to it (including his more positive view of the last chapter): http://www.businessinsider.com...

Sarcasm noted, point made, although the language used opens you up to 'boomerang abuse'.

Perhaps that's why my post was moderated as "Flamebait"? Or perhaps someone just disagreed with my point.

If you feel my language was out of line then I apologize to you. I didn't intend to be unpleasant. I used the word because it is a popular neologism that connotes extreme badness in a vague and nonspecific way, and as far as I can tell is popular among SJWs as a putdown for anyone they don't like. In short this was a rude thing but also the kind of thing SJWs say.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=shitlord&defid=9738032

I must confess, I am being hard on the SJWs here. But people who work at Google are supposed to be smart enough to read Damore's paper and understand what it actually says... I believe that these SJWs didn't exercise even basic diligence of trying to understand what the paper said.

Although the two situations are not quite the same, race being something you cannot discriminate against while personal opinion is not similarly protected, the situations are close enough that the comparison holds validity

There are elaborate rules in place to protect workers. They were originally created to protect union members from being fired for complaining about working conditions or for being members of a union, but they may protect Damore. According to this article Damore has an "above decent" chance to win.

http://www.businessinsider.com/james-damore-may-win-nlra-legal-case-google-2017-8

But aside from whether he meets some legal standard or not, I think morally the comparison works. People have publicly chastised Damore for being incredibly hurtful to women, saying things like "I couldn't in good conscience ever assign anyone to work with you ever again", with the implicit assumptions: (a) the words of his essay hurt these people a lot, (b) it's not these people's fault they hurt so much, it's Damore's fault for being so hurtful, (c) therefore Damore must be fired. This validates one of his complaints, that Google is trying to promote an atmosphere where certain thoughts are so wrong they may never be uttered.

A better metaphor would have been someone being fired for being gay. The comparison is nearly exact: a gay person can stay "in the closet", and similarly Damore was expected to stay "in the closet" and not challenge the echo chamber with forbidden ideas. And it would be "Sorry, I personally don't care if you're gay, but all these other people refuse to work with you because you're gay, and I can't fire all of them, so you have to go."

If Google had ever hired me, I'd be very much "in the closet" there, careful not to talk about anything. Damore has more guts than I have, it seems.

P.S. As a tactical matter, Damore should perhaps have adopted the language and tactics of the SJWs. He should have said "I find it hurtful when the mandatory diversity class tells me that as a white male I am innately an oppressor. I have a right not to be required to sit and have people say hurtful things to me." They could have fired him for that, too, but the hypocrisy would have been even more obvious.

No, he does not have a PhD in biology. He apparently abandoned that before completion.

http://www.businessinsider.com...

Maybe Mr. Damore isn't quite the champion of the victimized male that people want to believe. But way to go with trying to make him into an expert in cognitive studies, because he went part way through a biology PhD. In my part of the world that's called a fallacious appeal to authority. So tell me, are you genetically predisposed to such faulty logic, or was that a cultural artifact?

This. Something else went on that he's deliberately not telling us. His own memo opens with "Reply to public response and misrepresentation". Reply to what I have to ask?

CEO's don't get called back from holiday to deal with a politely worded memo that goes against the groupthink. That's what HR deals with no matter how "Lib-rle" the alt-right thinks the organisation is, as others have said Google is a Fortune 100 company, this means HR is done properly. Given that the memo is dated July 2017 and he was not fired until the 7th of August... What happened between that time?

Meanwhile, Damore has been crying foul all over alt-right media but ignoring major publications without an obvious bias. What was he saying about Google's ideological echo chamber? Even the WSJ only counts as semi-legitimate having become yet another Murdoch mouthpiece.

Reading between the lines, his actual philosophies are much harsher than the memo eludes to and likely got into an argument with other employees. Something was said or done that was harsh enough for a lot of employees to make a complaint about, harsh enough that a CEO had to be called back from holiday. If this is true, trying to create a media circus will eventually backfire, especially the way he's currently doing it. The only thing saving him would be that it is illegal for Google to release the actual details on why he was fired, if he sues, this comes out.

We've heard Damore's side of it, I'd like to hear Google's, which is probably being parsed by some very high priced IR lawyers as we speak. As always there's three sides to the argument, your side, their side and the truth.

No, he does not have a PhD in biology. He apparently abandoned that before completion.

http://www.businessinsider.com...

Maybe Mr. Damore isn't quite the champion of the victimized male that people want to believe. But way to go with trying to make him into an expert in cognitive studies, because he went part way through a biology PhD. In my part of the world that's called a fallacious appeal to authority. So tell me, are you genetically predisposed to such faulty logic, or was that a cultural artifact?

There's a huge logical fallacy in Damore's argument, and this guy nailed it. Damore's argument boils down to this:

A) There are biological differences between men and women, as science has shown.

B) Men and women, on average, do different things in the workplace, as statistics show.

C) Therefore, A causes B.

D) We are trying too hard to change this because A causes B.


This has all been such a complete waste of time.

Except that's fucking bullshit. Until there are blind resume reviews and tests, the myth of the meritocracy is just so-much garbage spouted by people that are worried they'll lose their jobs to someone ACTUALLY qualified.

I'm not aware of the breadth of literature on the topic, but there was a study from Australia from just this year that found that using blind resumes had worse results for women then if information about the candidates sex was available. I also recall a study I read some time ago that found large levels of discrimination against job (or it may have been for apartment applications, but the idea is still generally the same) applicants with names that are typically associated with black people. For example Jamal vs. James.

Personally I think resumes should be blind as it does limit bias. You'd probably want to go just beyond name, race, and gender though as there are some colleges that essentially give that information away or perhaps create other types of bias. Sure you'll eventually have to bring in some candidates for an in person interview, but I think at that point it's a lot harder for people, even those who are racist, to fall back on prejudices when they're dealing with an actual individual who probably doesn't conform to their notions. I'm reminded of the story of one black man who has probably gotten more people to leave the KKK than the untold thousands that just insult them on the internet. All he did was go and talk with them and try to be their friends. If you can get people who joined a white nationalist movement to quit just by meeting them in person and interacting with them for a while, I think you can probably overcome any slight racism that a hiring manager might have as well.

The NFL has a contract with Microsoft to use their Surface tablets on the sidelines. They tout it as a way for the team to get almost real time information on play calling, whether offense or defense. Unfortunately, and directly related to this article, there are those, particularly coaches and quarterbacks, who bemoan the unpredictability of the Surface and its many malfunctions.

Even worse, people were initially calling them iPads or iPad-like which certainly didn't sit well with the marketing crew at Microsoft.

Microsoft can claim all they want their Surface is doing well, but from real world experiences, where timely information is invaluable, or in the case of Consumer Reports where Surface owners report the numerous problems they have, there is only so much spin which can be done to try and spackle over these poorly performing devices.

No, they are not ministerpreting his profile, quite simply he was lying. You do not have a PhD until you are actually awarded it, nowhere in his profile did he say the equivalent of "student studying for PhD". Frankly the amount of bullshit from misogynists trying to wave away that lie is downright hilarious, we all know he was lying, you could save far more face by not twisting yourselves up in linguistic and logical contortions on a lost cause. He has a Masters degree.

In fact, he has now removed the offending lie from his profile. Does this have anything to do with this whole debacle? Well, no, it should be unrelated, unless of course you appeal to the authority of "he has a PhD" when defending his position.

I have to be cautious with my statements for obvious reasons, but... Randy Kern was publicly poached from Microsoft. Look at the executives hired by salesforce since and all will become clear. I very much doubt any executives will be harmed for this decision regardless of the outcome of a lawsuit. http://www.businessinsider.com...

http://www.businessinsider.com...

No, he doesn't have a PhD in anything.

http://www.businessinsider.com...

He's apparently studied for one at some point, but that's not quite the same thing.

> (He has a Ph D from Harvard)

Incorrect. He lied on his linkedin profile, he only has a masters degree.

James Damore, the fired Google engineer who wrote the now-infamous memo on diversity at the company, has removed mention of PhD studies in biology from his LinkedIn profile.

The removal comes after Wired writer Nitasha Tiku confirmed with Harvard that Damore has not completed his PhD. Damore did complete a master's degree in systems biology in 2013, Harvard told Wired.

Damore's biology studies became a crux of a right-wing argument that he had credibility in claiming biological differences between men and women could account for lacking gender diversity at Google.

http://www.businessinsider.com/james-damore-removes-phd-studies-linkedin-2017-8

1. Adblock Latitude For Pale Moon browser only. Blocks display of ads. "Adblock Latitude is a direct fork of Adblock Plus made specifically for the Pale Moon browser."
2. BetterPrivacy Deletes Local Shared Objects, LSOs. LSOs are files placed on your computer by the Adobe Systems Flash plug-in. Use of Adobe Flash allows web sites to track you, permanently even though your browser is configured to delete the files known as "Cookies" after each re-starting of your operating system.
3. CanvasBiocker Prevents websites from using the Javascript <canvas> API to fingerprint them.
4. Classic Theme Restorer Quoting 3 paragraphs:
   
   "This add-on will stop working when Firefox 57 arrives in November 2017."
   
   "This add-on will stop working when Firefox 57 arrives in November 2017 and Mozilla drops support for XUL / XPCOM / legacy add-ons. It should still work on Firefox 52 ESR until ESR moves to Firefox 59 ESR in 2018 (~Q2).
   
   "There is no 'please port it' or 'please add support for it' this time, because the entire add-on eco system changes and the technology behind this kind of add-on gets dropped without replacement."
   
   
5. Cookies Manager+
6. Disconnect
7. Facebook Blocker Prevents Facebook from following you everywhere there are Facebook "Like" buttons.
8. Firebug "Firebug integrates with Firefox to put a wealth of development tools at your fingertips while you browse. You can edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page..."
9. Ghostery DON'T UPDATE. New versions don't allow sufficient user control.
   USE THIS: ghostery-5.4.10-sm+an+fx.xpi Link: Version 5.4.10
   Ghostery sells data it collects. (Business Insider, Jun 18, 2013)
   Ghostery web site
10. MozArchiver For Pale Moon browser only. Like Mozilla Archive Format that is used with Firefox. Saves web pages.
11. Mozilla Archive Format For Firefox only. Saves web page

Not sure I agree that pickup trucks are called lorries. When I think of lorries I generally think of a commercial-type vehicle that (almost) nobody would ever consider buying or driving as their regular daily driver. Yes, pickup trucks swing both ways, there are spartan "work truck" pickups – and the number one selling "car" in the US is actually the Ford F150 pickup[1].

In London a non-work pickup truck or other SUV might also be called a Chelsea Tractor, although I believe that term is really reserved for the high end SUVs (e.g. Range Rovers) that never actually go off-road.

[1] http://www.businessinsider.com...

Seattle Misery: Together with Microsoft and bad city management, Seattle is a miserable place:

Traffic: Seattle one of the worst U.S. cities for traffic congestion, tied with NYC (March 31, 2015) Quote: "An additional 23 minutes a day spent in traffic may not sound like much, but when it adds up over a year it becomes 89 hours." (Whoever wrote that must be accustomed to Seattle misery. An additional 23 minutes a day spent in traffic sounds HORRIBLE.)

Slow internet: Many areas of Seattle have poor internet connections. See the article, These places have the slowest Internet in the country. (June 25, 2015) Quote: "... Seattle ... CenturyLink (CTL) customers trying to access particular sites from 9 p.m. to 10 p.m. will have unbearably slow speeds."

Amazon: Worse than Wal-Mart: Amazon's sick brutality and secret history of ruthlessly intimidating workers (February 23, 2014)

Amazon: Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace (August 15, 2015) Quote: "The company is conducting an experiment in how far it can push white-collar workers..."

Amazon: Amazon Under Fire Over Alleged Worker Abuse in Germany (February 19, 2013)

Microsoft: Microsoft Is Filled With Abusive Managers And Overworked Employees, Says Tell-All Book (May 23, 2012)

Wow, your memory is short. It wasn't very long ago (1 year?), and it was just Microsoft, with their chat-bot "Tay".

It very quickly started saying things like "Hitler did nothing wrong", that the Holocaust was made up, that black people should be put in concentration camps. [1]

They shut it down because it made the company look bad. But it's too late: I'll never forget, and I happily tell anyone who'll listen that Microsoft supports Hitler and genocide.

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

From Wikipedia: "According to Microsoft, this was caused by trolls who "attacked" the service as the bot made replies based on its interactions with people on Twitter." Yeah, a likely story... they expect me to believe that?

[1] http://www.businessinsider.com...

I guess he didn't do this too...
http://www.businessinsider.com...

TFA doesn't mention this, but http://www.businessinsider.com/bitcoin-price-war-amid-volatility and other newer articles I read say things like:

This, McNeal says, was done on purpose to protect the network from hackers and other cybersecurity threats.

("This" being the size.) So that sounds to me like increasing the size could increase those threats. Yes or no?

Other browsers (i.e. Opera) feature built-in ad blockers just like this. Chrome must compete. They're doing pretty well, having captured the majority of the market, but one does not stay in the lead by standing still.

Also, by making this feature optional and culling the most obnoxious and egregious ads Google alleviates some of the friction from their users. Most slashdotters are probably already using an ad blocker and blocking all ads by default. I started using an ad blocker because of auto-playing video ads and other obnoxious time wasters that I kept running into.

Ad blocker usage seems to be increasing. Building this feature into Chrome allows them to help control ad blocking-- block the most obnoxious stuff and make it all totally optional in order to help dissuade users from blocking all ads. Better some ads, thinks Google, than none.

But let's say Google does block all ads. They still make their money because Chrome could just track everything the user does anyway and they could just sell that data instead of old fashioned "look look click click".

The kill switch was first widely implemented by Apple on their own phones prior to any law,
There were some reported vunerabiities found in 2014, which were since patched and I haven't heard of any exploits since.

Granted politicians have a habit of passing laws without any understanding of technology or implementation, but this was already a proven solution when the law was passed.
Maybe there are some underground hacks, but I don't think they'll be easily available to the kind of people who feel they have to steal smart phones for some cash. To your point, why *wouldn't* thieves give a shit about it? When nobody wants to buy a stolen phone because they know it wont work they'll get the message. Yeah you can still sell it for parts or sell to unsuspecting people but that's a lower incentive.

Here's a bunch of older stories claiming that the iPhone kill switch lowered thefts
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/ip...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sci...
https://www.theguardian.com/te...
http://www.businessinsider.com...

As others have said, the overall reduction in phone thefts are probably due largely to do with the greater availability of phones, but let's not all of us just jump on the cynical bandwagon and suggest every idea ever is stupid.

You all voted for conservative politicians in the States who ran on cut now pay later starting with Reagan and vodoo economics.

Later is here! No it is not Obama's fault. It is yours and your parents.

I couldn't understand your post.
  - I make $200k/yr
  - I don't own a nice home. I share a flat in NYC with three other adults. I have enough saved for a down payment on a house, but not in NYC.
  - my parents usually, maybe never, vote conservative.
  - I've never voted conservative.
  - according to liberal Krugman, debt/GDP is the appropriate number, and it's falling. Conservatives focus on the absolute value of the national debt because it's an excuse to cut programs. Whose side are you on? What's the thesis again? I can't tell if it's internally consistent for you to worry about the absolute value of the debt.
  - Only a very tiny portion of the debt is owed to "banks and investment companies," so that also confused me. Owing foreigners, the actual case, is good because the disaster scenario is a default which would weaken our currency relative to theirs, which makes the debt easier to pay off and causes less inflation, but default is unlikely since debt/GDP is shrinking.

Whether anyone finds them valuable is irrelevant... they don't have to make money, they don't have to sell issues, they don't need subscribers...

Lol. The NY Times just announced a record-breaking number of subscribers.

But more to your fundamental point - making money shouldn't be the goal of a news organization. It causes them to chase sensationalism and subvert honest reporting in favor of telling people what they want to hear. In other words, your argument is just a variation on "eat shit, a billion flies can't be wrong!"

"Do you really believe that all the 326,000,000,000,000,000,000 (326 quintillion) estimated gallons of water upon the earth came from outerspace?"

Yes I do believe it because *everything* is from outer space. What the Sun is made of, the Earth and Moon, the countless galaxies. The the large number you quoted only accounts for 0.022 percent of the total weight (mass is a better term) of the Earth. The Sun weighs something like 1.989 × 10^30 kg. It contains 99.86% of our solar system's total mass. That all came from space, too. So the large, mind boggling number you quoted is really tiny in the grand scheme of things. And we're talking over millions and billions of years so again, not that hard to believe when you think about it.

Really, not harder to believe that an all-powerful god took 7 days to create everything. I mean, why wasn't it just a snap of the proverbial fingers? Who made God? Who made the one who made God? Why did God destroy his first creation - did this perfect being make a mistake? Too many loose ends for me.

Science isn't always right, but if you look at some of the predictions they make it does an impressive job. Computers and the Internet are built based on our understanding of electricity, signal loss, material science, mathematics, and countless other things built up over the years by a lot of people.

Scientists don't have all the answers on how life formed, but what they do know does a pretty good job of explaining the commonalities between creatures and their DNA and other traits, how the separation of a continent of millennia separated a species into two geographic locations which eventually diverged into different creatures with a common lineage, for example. When they find flaws in their theories, they update them. Think of how science has progressed in the past 100 years. At one time the atom was thought to be the smallest thing. Now science knows there are smaller things inside the atom.

On the comment about "evolution is not science", consider this page which says:

One of the most useful properties of scientific theories is that they can be used to make predictions about natural events or phenomena that have not yet been observed. For example, the theory of gravitation predicted the behavior of objects on the moon and other planets long before the activities of spacecraft and astronauts confirmed them. The evolutionary biologists who discovered Tiktaalik predicted that they would find fossils intermediate between fish and limbed terrestrial animals in sediments that were about 375 million years old. Their discovery confirmed the prediction made on the basis of evolutionary theory. In turn, confirmation of a prediction increases confidence in that theory.

I'll just finish by saying that science isn't always perfect, it bothers me how sometimes things are presented as "fact" before they should be (which could be the individual scientist's or news outlet's fault), how it can be politicized, etc. I don't instantly believe all new theories - I'm not a fool. But still, science is the best framework we have to build upon and increase our understanding of the vast universe we live in. I'm sure much of what we think we know today will be replaced by updated knowledge. That's just the nature of things. Maybe some all-powerful being did set things in motion, who knows, but wouldn't it follow that the universe conforms to an amazing set of rules which makes planet formation, evolution, and other wonders possible? Given the impossibly grand scale of the universe we may never know for sure.

Do you really believe that all the colorful, flavorful, appealing, and amazing fruits, vegetables, nuts, grains, spices and meats all

It's telling that the issue is trying to be framed as one about the intelligence agencies revealing U.S. citizens whose conversations were intercepted as part of legitimate intelligence gathering rather than the fact of collusion between a presidential campaign and a foreign government.

We know for an absolute fact Russia was trying to, and successfully did, influence our election. The Senate committee, the House committee and the intelligence services all agree on that unassailable fact.

Yet instead of being concerned or even upset at this interference, Nunes is trying to deflect from this fact to one of, "But people's names were revealed!", as if trying to figure out who was colluding with Russia is a bad thing.

Another thing which is even more disturbing is the continued insistence, and outright denial, by the con artist that Russia either did anything during the campaign, or if they did, that they did anything wrong. This raises the very real question of why the con artist is trying to protect Russia? Why has he abjectly refused to say a single bad word about that country despite it deliberately bombing hospitals in Syria and coordinating the chemical weapon attack in Syria, not to mention its seizure of the Crimea from Ukraine, its invasion of Ukraine and its support for terrorist groups inside Ukraine? If this were Iran doing this the con artist would be bombing away, but because it's Russia, he lets them literally get away with murder.

Further, had Hillary Clinton won and these exact same facts come out, you can be absolutely sure Republicans would be laser focused on who did what and trying to pin the collusion on her. But when it comes to the con artist, they are doing what they can to deflect from the crimes and protect him. Hypocrisy at its best.

Look at the pictures below:
tesla front luggae space: https://static-ssl.businessins...

tesla back luggage space: http://electromotivela.com/wp-...

In which gas car can you have luggage in both the front and the back? The model S has so few components, yet it's priced 2x to 4x a typical gas car.

It's like a smartphone: 1/4th CPU power of a laptop, but the same price as a laptop.

WARF is reportedly a non-practicing entity that exists only currently by defending its patents in litigation.

My first question would be does anyone else license this patent from them?

Actually it looks like they do. http://www.businessinsider.com... (the single page link does not seem to work)

I'm not sure troll applies to this company anymore than it does to Apple itself.

I did like one of the comments on the linked article from 2014 though;

"So apple get sued for patent infringement is patent trolling but apple suing for rectangles with rounded corners or unlocking by sliding your finger (on a touchscreen!) Is fine...."

one example: https://www.wired.com/2011/04/...
another: http://www.businessinsider.com...

Apple has also stated publicly "We may collect information such as occupation, language, zip code, area code, unique device identifier, location, and the time zone where an Apple product is used so that we can better understand customer behavior and improve our products, services, and advertising."

Apple Park will have 14K employees, 11K parking spots and 28% of employees (~5K) are expected to take public transit. That's leave 1K of parking available for the public to visit the Apple Store and Visitor Center.

http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-park-new-campus-more-parking-than-offices-2017-4

Thank you for the link. I've seen this logic applied in several large campuses. It's wrong every time.

http://www.businessinsider.com...

And being transgender or anything else doesn't mean you're not qualified either.

Dump is just pumping his base and diverting attention from his other stupidities.

Apple Park will have 14K employees, 11K parking spots and 28% of employees (~5K) are expected to take public transit. That's leave 1K of parking available for the public to visit the Apple Store and Visitor Center.

http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-park-new-campus-more-parking-than-offices-2017-4