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NASA Hackathon Expected to Draw Over 15,000 Coders (fastcompany.com)
Saturday NASA began live-streaming footage of their "Space Apps Challenge" hackathon, which they're describing as one of the largest hackathons on earth. "Together, citizens like you have developed thousands of open-source solutions," says the event's site, while Fast Company reports that last year 14,264 people gathered in 133 locations to create apps using NASA's trove of open data. Last year's largest local app hackathon was started by two women in Cairo, drawing 700 participants, and this year NASA is trying to increase participation by female coders. NASA's open innovation project manager tells FastCompany that women "are looking for signals that they will be in a safe space where they feel like they belong," noting that 80% of last year's participants were men.
Yet another proof that the NASA funds crime.
...women "are looking for signals that they will be in a safe space where they feel like they belong," noting that 80% of last year's participants were men.
(-1)(This is a real concern for me and most of /.)
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
After Dice sold the site, things were really looking up. There was a brief period of time when the stories were relevant, the political submissions were kept to a minimum, and we weren't subjected to social justice nonsense. I'm disappointed by how quickly things have regressed. There have been numerous purely political submissions on the front page that have nothing to do with science, technology, math, computing, and subjects that are relevant here. And now with this submission we're subjected to more social justice shenanigans.
I had so much hope! I really thought things were going to get better here. But now I'm really starting to think I was wrong. We're getting the same kind of shitty submissions on the front page that we got during the recent dark period. Politics and social justice aren't Slashdot's niche, and never will be. Please, let's go back to articles about science, technology, math, computing, and good stuff like that, without the overt and unnecessary political focus!
And a half-dozen confused sword-carrying nerds.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
All of this sounds fucking awesome right up until
women "are looking for signals that they will be in a safe space where they feel like they belong"
And this is defined how, exactly? A competition where no men are allowed? A room full of women only? And what about trans women, are they welcome?
NASA is supposed to be looking for signals, but SETI != Search for Estrogen Tech Inductees.
NASA's open innovation project manager tells FastCompany that women "are looking for signals that they will be in a safe space where they feel like they belong,"
I'm sorry, is there a demonstrable history of rape and sexual assault taking place at NASA conventions, or is this just yet more SJW feminist nonsense?
"If there was a gay Afro-Puertorican Linux distribution, I'd give it a try" ~lucm
Okay. Come right this way. We have a time-locked vault. Nobody will be able to get to you. Just..watch your oxygen consumption, it's airtight.
Seriously, NASA's the ultimate meritocracy in the geek/nerd/braniac space.
And while nobody should have to deal with overtly sexist atmosphere, simply having a majority of men == sexism!
And trying to browbeat them into providing a "safe space" basically is telling us that women are, apparently, unable to compete without some white knight cutting the path for them.
That's the opposite of equality, meritocracy and the basic feminist message.
But, it's totally in line with the eternal victimhood narrative of modern feminism.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
How the hell does a coding competition by NASA on scientifically relevant data fit in a pattern of stories which allegedly "have nothing to do with science, technology, math, computing"?
I know as AC they will never see my response, but anyone who read parent's comment and was in agreement needs to check their logic and be less blinkered by counter-ideology.
All this talk of "safe spaces" for women....
Late last year I spent a month on an exchange program with a university engineering department in Hanoi. I never saw any indications that the women there (who were also more numerous than I encountered in US/Japanese engineering departments) were begging for "safe spaces". In general the women I met were the most well-adjusted, entrepreneurial, and self-sufficient I've ever met.
Strange that this "Communist" country, and one with very traditional, masculine men at that, seems to not suffer from the same societal poisons in STEM as the West.
limited, 'safe', 'just' (as in 'fair' and equal), static, VS unlimited, 'dangerous' , 'just' (as in meritocratic), dynamic.
... In the business of space. They are out of space shuttles.
So someone smuggled a device to kin colorful land, it infected some shit and the power forces had to join hands to defeat the scheme. toy boy didn't liked it, theeeeeen whiz fixed eeeeeeverything. i nedd money whiz. c'mon man. I heard about the 1000 roman soldiers. is that false? really? tell me about it. they burned the books damn it. there's mind control. there's mind erasing. they took out my cloaking device. so keep torturing them I say. the cross and that big bang toy. meh. just let me play with codes already. it's what I do man. c'mon.
Dunno why, everywhere I go, from USA to Africa to China and places in between, the ratio of male to female coders follows closely to the Pareto rule
It's always 20+% female with the rest male
Even in China where the girls are not being told that they are not suitable for tech stuffs (them Chinese don't have the same Puritanism ideology we have) their ratio of girls getting into tech / engineering field still stuck at 20+%
"Make my breakfast just once and I'm yours forever" - God.
The circus ended! \o/ I'm so happy. :)
"Mar's ain't the kind of place to raise your kids. In fact, it's cold as hell." It's not a "safe place". Neither is the surface of the Moon, nor being in orbit inside a tin can. If you need to be in a "safe place" then space exploration probably isn't for you.
So, I followed the link to the data, looked around a bit, and decided to see if I could get ahold of a decently large and interesting dataset that I could play with. I've been messing around with Fortran and OpenMP, and this sounded interesting.
So I go to the website, and it's... bad. Slow as fuck, no browsability (just searching through large categories), back button doesn't work right... it might be all right if you know exactly what you're looking for, but there's no discoverability there.
So I came here and it's nothing but asshats talking about their insecurities over gender issues.
Guess this place really is dead now.
Those who can't do, teach. Those who can't teach either, do tech support.