maxklein

That is EXTREMELY offensive

Google is making a huge shift from dominating search to dominating the browser and the mobile OS, which have basically become the platforms on which most modern technology is going to be built.

It's my opinion. Working at a startup, you're underpaid and overworked for very little financial benefit.

You'd have to be pretty dumb to be an employee at a startup because of the money: bad hours, lots of risk, bad pay and lots of personal confrontation.

I really don't see what this has to do with HIV. There is only a passing mention of HIV on the page. And I think this constant association of Africa with HIV is insulting - there is a higher HIV prevalence amongst gays than among Africans, yet there is no instant association always.

For african technology to progress, these negative associations have to be removed from peoples minds - starting from you, reading this comment.

This is why Django is so slow moving. People are not really spending time developing it. Thank goodness there is Bottle.py and Flask now.

The one thing you cannot describe Django as is 'fun'. Django has the unique property of being able to suck the fun out of any project.

I have run endless tests comparing Android revenue to iOS revenue. It's pretty difficult to make money from Android with the same apps. Either with Ads or Paid - the Android version of the exact same app gets less downloaded (even if free), the revenue from Ads dies out quicker and if it's paid, it will get bought much, much less.

I believe the core problem is that there is no clear discovery mechanism. With iOS people use iTunes to sync. They open the app store and can try to discover new and unknown apps that happen to be in the charts. The same does not exist in Android. New apps don't get discovered.

Almost all apps in Android making money are externally marketed or viral. Making an app for android is like making a website - nobody will come unless you do something else. iOS however, does the marketing for you.

Is it a statement that will always be true, and that has always been true? If it may not be continuously true temporarily, can it still be described as a fact?

You misunderstand. I am not impressed by your school. I'd be impressed by your achievements

Graduating from MIT don't mean you would be beneficial to starting a tech company

I assume that people are influenced by the media they watch. African American media 15 years ago had no computer scientists featured

I'm not talking of an individual, I'm speaking of a general trend. And by the way, "graduating from MIT" means nothing to me. I went to a university, you did too, the university you went to does not mean much (to me).

The "clearly" comes out of logic. If you assume that my "result" statement is correct, then the reason would also have to be correct.

Do you think African American students, 15 years ago, were spending time studying how to use computers? I think it's rather likely because:

- I've never heard of this

- Such playing-with-computers is something that was confined to the somewhat richer and educated people in American society, which the african-americans were not, 15 years ago.

I doubt that my audience thinks the exact way I do, and I doubt I have any bias that needs to be confirmed.

I believe it did not occur to them. I doubt that asian students had much more resources 15 years ago.

I really fail to see how anyone can see racism in this. The current people trying to make it big in silicon valley now did not start the process now, they started 10 or 15 years ago when they started fiddling around with computers or learning to code or reading business books. And it's at that stage that the current audience was created, and not right now. The people applying and the selection is just a result of that process.

And clearly, many african-americans and many women were not doing the steps needed to be talented enough to be able to make it big now. The most likely reason they did not do that, is probably because it just did not occur to them.

And in any case, there is this theory: if you pick any group of people at all, there are going to be a few people who are simply more able to do many things. Let's say these people are more talented and more intelligent. These people tend to work on what is currently 'intellectually trendy'. For example, a while back they would have been painters, another while back, they would have been writers, another while they would have been physicists, now they are technologists. These people search out a trendy intellectual effort and then spend their time developing their abilities there. This 'trend' is different for different groups, depending on the media that they are exposed to, and what the people around them are talking about.

Groups in America are pretty segregated, and there is a form of intellectual segregation betwen men and women. It leads to gender specific roles. It also leads to the effect observed above: Smart black guys did not start fiddling with computers 15 years ago, so they are not currently active in the tech industry.

Internet criticism can be very hurtful. A simple way to prevent further startup suicides is that when you see someone being heavily criticized, or when you see a startup that is being criticized a lot, send them an email supporting them and offering to listen to their side of the story. Even if the people are not suicidal, it can help them through a difficult time and motivate them to continue to do good stuff.

The reality of the situation right now in the startup world is that when people hear you are making x amount/month, you get 500 emails, but when the tables turn and you are suddenly on the receiving end of heavy criticism, you get zero emails.

The underlying theme behind the article and your comment is that black people are assumed not to be as bright as other people.

I'm not surprised. I remember playing chess in Africa years ago and was amazed at the speed that some people picked up the game and dominated everyone else, including me, who at the time already had many years of chess experience. I believe chess is something that, if your mind is wired the right way, you can become really good at. But those people who were so good at the game back them - well, they still play, but they don't compete because, well there are no real tournaments, and the prize money is tiny compared to what other pursuits would bring.

There is a lot of ability to play chess with many people all over the world, irrespective of ethnicity, but there are just situations where people are born into, where being focused on such a niche sport means you cannot be successful in general.

It's the same problem that mathematicians face. When society is developed and most things already exist, some people will choose such narrow activities, but when it's a dog eat dog world, there is no time for that.

Parse probably has the easiest-to-integrate library I have ever used...in my life. It took me five minutes to have a database backend to store 'share event's for my mobile apps.

So the "change banking startup" has morphed into a credit card reseller?

Yes, the ones who haven't succeeded yet.

I really don't see how racism in tech is relevant, because

a) Nobody knows or cares who wrote a piece of software, because 99.9% of the time, the customer never sees the photo of the author

b) If your software is super-hot and gaining a lot of traction and people are smelling the money, they will not care what colour you are

c) For those tiny number of people who don't have traction and want other peoples money, the colour of your skin may give you a disadvantage with some particular money givers, but it will give you an advantage with other money givers

In general, for the success of your product to be affected by peoples prejudices against you or the colour of your skin, you would have to belong to a very unlucky 99.99%. If that happens, well, bad luck, try again. That's what entrepreneurship is all about, isn't it?

Add the berlin section of this: http://startupdigest.com/

I'm not confusing African ethnicities. I mean people from the same extended family, living in london.

Take a look at this link: http://www.traedays.com/blog/2006/06/are-you-thinking-what-i...

I'm not sure exactly what you look for, but you can ask most Africans and they will recognize the difference.

Look at this link for example: http://www.traedays.com/blog/2006/06/are-you-thinking-what-i...

It can also be seen, but to a different extent. An african that grows up in a city in a wealthy household seems to end up with a different sort of facial structure and skin than those who grow up in rural areas...and it never goes. However, the effect is far more pronounced among those who grow up abroad.

You can see this clearly in london - it's pretty easy to observe which Africans migrated to England at perhaps age 10, vs those who were born and grew up in England.

One thing I have observed, particularly with Africans, is that if they grow up in Europe or if they grow up in Africa, there is a clear difference in the way they look when they are older, no matter their socio-economic status at that point.

Shouldn't you filter the ones that don't have a real photo? Seeing the photo of the person makes them seem real and personable...those pure avatar ones to me feels like one is just looking at the HN username.

Django is so slow to fix the obviously broken stuff. Django must be the slowest moving project I've ever interacted with.