rustynails

When Mayer took over Yahoo, it was a poison chalice. I don't think anyone could have turned Yahoo around unless they were truly exceptional. For the truly exceptional, Yahoo would give them little benefit and they could do better elsewhere (financially and recognition wise).

Mayer's performance had nothing to do with her gender. I'm adding this statement to respond to some other peoples' comments.

I also wholly agree that diversity for diversity's sake is idiotic. Can't wait to read The Verge and Ars Technica spins on this one..

This is not Apple's policy (as they informed me). Once a device has been compromised in any way, they will no longer touch it. If you want it repaired, you either go through a 3rd party repairer or you get it replaced under insurance. Also, Apple don't sell Authorised parts and I could not find anyone that provided genuine OEM parts.

"asking this question only for females make sense"

This is a dangerous attitude. One other poster talked about "old school" but the truth is that things haven't improved for anyone. It's attitudes like this quote that are indicative of how it's always been - some people are sexist and some people are not.

We should not justify differentiating genders. People who do this(eg. Australian police who are mandating 50% female employees, regardless of suitability) should have the book thrown at them. In this day and age, gender should not be a variable in almost any job.

I agree with your sentiment but it's far too simplistic.

Take for example, a forum on ISIS. Yes, I've just triggered Godwin's law. I'm sorry about that.

Now, the idea is that there should be no challenge to ISIS on some parts of the Internet because they have the same right as anyone else.

However, this fails Karl Popper's criteria, don't tolerate the intolerant.

I support the criticism of any prejudiced and intolerant group in any forum (even the ones that Political Correctness blindly defends). If the goal of a group is truly noble, I will often support it.

I don't put media and philanthropy in the same sentence. The media is manipulative and self-seeking. As one example, during the last federal election, my local newspaper told me who to vote for. They glossed over the candidate's policies and honed in on popularity.

That advice resonates with me.

My wife and son are Aspergers. I put a lot of effort into teaching social skills to my son (via myself and through courses) and by proxy, my wife has benefitted too. We also put my son into a regular and high performing school, despite his gifted ability (WISC tested).

I've had several friends tell me that I saved my son, which I think means that focussing on socialisation and behaviour was of more benefit to him than solely driving his academic performance.

He went from a troubled boy to reasonably accepted in a few years. While it's feigned behaviour (eg. He mimics being like others), it helps him socially. I've seen other Aspergers kids be broken by their peers because they don't try to (or can't) conform.

I spoke with his teacher last week and said "I expect the same respect and treatment for my son where possible" and highlighted a bad example where my son was singled out in front of the class "you can't treat an Aspergers like that".

I'd like to tell you about my most gifted friend. He is my classic definition of genius. He is a particularly lovely human being, handsome, tall and can do most intellectual tasks exceptionally well (eg. Chemistry, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, software engineering, etc). He matches the best I've seen in any of those fields (and I've been involved in complex systems and software for decades).

So, what does he do for a living? Odd jobs. He has held one steady job in the decades I've known him. This is because he has poor social skills (although I've tried to help him learn the ropes of understanding people) and because he finds accepting other people's mediocrity frustrating as he politely tells them their errors - and conversely, they resent his cleverness.

I was lucky enough to work with someone similar to my friend about 10 years ago. As his boss, I sat down with him and basically said "you are very clever but you are also ignorant. You change external interfaces that drive significant changes to the rest of the system. You must stop it for the sake of the project". He exploded and told me to "f* myself" in front of the project team of ~100 to hear. Two hours later, he apologised and thanked me for my honesty and wisdom (translation: courage to tackle the wild brumby). When I saw him a few years ago, he was a different person. He thanked me for my kindness and patience back then, which meant a lot to me.

To wrap it all up: some people truly March to the beat of their own drum. I thrive on these people.

Good luck. I hope you find your groove. No one else will find it for you, unfortunately.

>Bullying mostly targets the gifted

I believe bullies target what is different. Intelligence or lack of it will make you a target in equal measure. Got a birthmark on your face? Boom, you're a target.

My kids don't go to a school that accepts bullying. I don't think bullying was seen all that different when I was at school.

From my own anecdotal experience, everyone I can think of who is gifted (rather than clever) has social troubles to some degree, one of my sons included. He finds it difficult to relate to most children as he largely speaks a different language. He's a 99th percentile in most areas.

However, unlike the kids in the article, he doesn't enjoy Shakespeare or fawn over Incan currency. Talking to him is amazing. His thought processes are very mature, even compared to many adults. His language (when not telling fart jokes) is eloquent. He has no choice with his peers: dumb it down or be a freak.

Several of my friends fit into this profile too. None of them fit the mould painted in this article. Although, that doesn't surprise me. I found this article disappointing on several levels (eg. generalisation about gender is 'she').

There were a few points in the article that resonated with me: behavioural problems in my son (which we later categorised as Aspergers compounded with boredom) and misdiagnosis by teachers. My son was put in a special class for struggling students until I produced a WISC report showing he was gifted or near gifted. When he wrote a beautiful children's book at 5, they thought it was a forgery and ignored it until I had the WISC report to confirm his ability. The report changed a lot with his teachers.

The article talks about segregation as a positive. I'm not convinced this is a positive as these children are likely going to need to integrate in broader society. I purposely put my kids at a standard but high performing school rather than choosing a special school for this reason. The results have been mixed. There is bullying by peer girls and boys and at least one 'friend' said "my mother can't see me play with you or I'll get in big trouble" (also known as Aspergers are lepers to some parents - if this is true, she is an awful person).

If I have one suggestion for parents of a gifted child, it would be to accept that your child will have areas where they are smarter than you and to nurture their talent through their interests. I've recently observed at length two mothers with near gifted or gifted sons whom they mercilessly bully (I have no idea why a parent would do this to their child). Both mothers have a daughter too - and the daughter (in both instances) can't be praised enough. Two of my closest and gifted friends (50+) recalled similar bullying from their mothers (and were unsupported by weak fathers). Thankfully, my wife is not like that with our son.

So, yes, I see odd behaviour from gifted children as normal due to an incompatibility at an intellectual level. Gifted is noticeably different from clever. When you talk to a 5 year old that shows complex reasoning like an adult most of the time, they are most probably gifted. Someone that knows some surprising facts is probably clever rather than gifted.

That's an excellent comment. Very insightful. I saw a rebuttal of the feminisation of education, but here's a good link that talks about the modern disparity. It's quite prejudiced (eg. Ignores a huge shift away from boys performance - which any honest person knows is true),

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/09/education/09college.html?p...

This article even gets offended when girls aren't totally dominating by an overwhelming majority at ALL institutions. That's feminism.

Feminism has never demanded equal respect. Two Si olé examples,

1. Australian right for women to vote. It took another 60 years because they didn't care about aboriginal votes. That's not equality!!! 2. An education system that went from a majority of honors students being male to 80% women earning honors in 30 years - and you call that equality? Do you argue that boys have become stupid (as is the modern myth of feminism) for such a drastic swing at almost all levels of academia.

Feminism has nothing to do with equality. The poster you responded to was totally correct. Research falling performance of boys before commenting. While you're at it, check hiring rates and incomes of younger women in the states. I hear the word pendulum swing (which means double standard hypocrite) a lot these days.

I had a look through New York Times on India (note: I have no connections with India, it was in response to a poster's comment about prejudice toward India and its subsequent brash dismissal that caught my attention).

Many of the articles on India are negative. However, bad news sells. So, I wouldn't have expected anything different. There were some general non-negative articles (Whales dying on shores, LGBT laws gaining momentum). There was an absence of positive articles about India from a quick search.

By contrast, I looked at Australia in the New York Times. Most of the articles were on sport and bushfires, so, there's definitely a different focus and attitude. Australia seems to be social events, India social unrest and injustices.

I consider the New York Times to be prejudiced at times though. However, the article in question was well written, despite a lack of explanation of why there are less women in the Indian workforce than there were in the past. One example of NYT prejudice I remember was about Australia's first female PM, Julia Gillard. The NYT described Australians (collectively) as misogynistic because we dared to criticise a female Prime Minister about her looks. I searched at the time and found ONE media reference to a criticism from Germaine Greer - a prominent feminist - about Gillard's fat ass (I saw 'ditch the witch' after this article). I contrasted this to other PMs: John Howard in a bondage pose with his nose up George Bush's ass among many personal attacks on him (conveniently ignored), tony Abbott in his budgie smugglers and exaggerated lips, etc. The NYT must have had very big blinkers (or my prejudice comment holds).

The reality is that India does bad things AND the media is very prejudiced. I think the dismissal of prejudice in the media is dangerous.

Maybe, a letter to NYT suggesting some positive things in India may help raise awareness.

This worries me, a lot.

There has been a strong trend of sexism in education for a long time now. Reading between the lines,

"Americans of all kinds – from the Spanish teacher in Queens who added programming to _her_ classes to the young _woman_ in New Orleans who worked with her Police Chief to learn code and share more data with the community – are getting involved to help young people learn these skills. And just today, states like Delaware and Hawaii, companies like Google and SalesForce, and organizations like Code.org have made commitments to help more of our kids learn these skills. "

Code.org makes no bones that it prioritises girls on its homepage. Obama gave two examples of women. Why are we driving gender into learning? It shouldn't even enter the equation, unless our goal is to encourage one gender at the expense of another, like code.org does so brazenly. With failing grades for boys over the last two decades, you think we'd be horrified for young boys, but the campaign to discriminate against them is strong.

Interestingly, there are very few articles willing to discuss why this non-subtle trend has occurred. It's usually explained that boys have become sexist or become slow learners in recent years. I found this article that seems to tackle the topic of "why" in an open and plausible way.

https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/eliminating-feminist-teach...

One such quote of many,

- In science and general knowledge, as in math skills, the data showed that kindergarten and first grade white boys’ grades “are lower by 0.11 and 0.06 standard deviations, even though their test scores are higher.” This disparity continues and grows through to the fifth grade, with white boys and girls being graded similarly, “but the disparity between their test performance and teacher assessment grows.” -

I found so much more in the article. To quote another poster.. Hubris. The overconfidence of management was shocking. Aggressive schedule drove the system problems quoted above, which were compounded by a lack of training and experience and understanding. If it was just a set of software glitches, this could be recoverable... But 1.8bn in property investment meant that the show must go on, otherwise the debts would rack up quickly. So, aggressive expansion was the plan - but there was no foundation of experience to build on. Boom! A house of cards.

7 billion debt and no profits until 2021? That was the most telling story to me.

I took it as a positive. It's an opportunity for homeless people to be given a chance. As long as the lessons are learned.

That's a fascinating web site and interesting article. They use the term "people" a lot (great!), but refer specifically to only women being impacted (bad but very PC), "She said she and the other women in her shelter felt burned". That might be that the shelter is a female only shelter, but it's very common.. However, I read about 10 articles on that site. They were only about women or a black man... Very interesting. On the surface, it looks like a prejudiced website (PC on steroids).

On a side note, Australian Bureau of Statistics says that ~70% of homeless people are men, but most articles in Australia talk about the plight of homeless women. I wonder if that becomes self-fulfilling: extreme sexism in the media means that homeless men are neglected for Political Correctness' sake.

Personally, I think most media have a lot to answer for in driving prejudice as hard as they can, especially in the last few years. While some call for a men's movement, I see how much feminism drives sexism - and we don't need more sexism driven by gender based movements. We need society to universally condemn prejudice.

No, but two wrongs don't make a right. Also, as a society, we should be better than that.

I'll give you an example. Some of my friends made disparaging remarks about Muslims. I made it clear that was a generalisation and pointed out a (predominantly Australian) area with a lot of crime, "what about that? Is that any different?" I've slowly but surely educated good people to show more tolerance.

Having said that, I'll be the first to condemn inappropriate behaviour from a Muslim, Asian, white, feminist - I don't really care who. I don't have a PC bone in my body.

There are some great comments in this thread. The one I can least relate to is that we can't talk to people who listen to different music or watch different TV. Really? I was involved with an African woman, Asian, European, Australian. I have had mixed friends all my life. I never honed in on TV shows, but, I honed in on honesty, integrity, attitude (eg. I can't stomach arrogance, victim mentality and aggressive people). Is this so rare that people can converse beyond skin colour and gender?

When I was about 10, I loved the idea of technology. I knew (loosely) about 50 people (all male) who were interested in computers and technology. There were no sign posts, ads, encouragement - it was binary: you were either interested or you weren't. I fought my parents and got a job at 8 to get a computer because my parents wouldn't buy me a glorified toy.

When I watched an old documentary from the 70s a few months ago, they had boys going around junk shops sniffing at junk parts to put together their own systems. Now, revisionists talk about women being barred, ostracised, etc - but the only people I ever saw ostracised were the geeks like me. We didn't care what gender you were: you either were interested or you weren't. Even my nerdy female friends thought I was odd back then.

I hear these revisionists like you and it annoys and disappoints me.

When we were in computing classes, girls and boys wanted to be my friend in equal measure. When we left the room, us nerds were scorned by both sexes in equal measure.

It most probably doesn't surprise me, but my wife (the same age as me) was in the same boat as me - but I didn't meet her until we were adults. In short, I never met a girl in my childhood that was interested in computing. I am not inclined to agree with the "social conditioning" excuse as everyone I knew motivated themselves. Two years of paper round tells you how dedicated I was.

The New York times has been very sexist for as long as I can recall. If you have any doubts, search Google against New York Times on general terms like men, women - see a trend of extreme sexism? It's hard to miss.

As has been pointed out by many other posters, there is no difference in the figures of unemployment for older men/women.

I honestly believe society is far more sexist today than it has ever been in at least 50 years. In my lifetime, no one would ever do a code.org by saying on the front page that (only) girls are welcome, or in Australia, we now have minimum quotas for police based on gender.. They must hire women regardless of who applies or their experience.

The sexism and misrepresentation of this article should not be a surprise to any intelligent person.

The article is reasonable in the scope it addresses. It's ok for some to be richer than others. We get it. Where it's not fair is that the system is rigged (as other commenters have said). I'm very surprised it's missing from the article.

Maybe, the author should talk about inequality of taxation and the good old Dutch Sandwich. No, the top 1% don't play fair or even remotely pay fair taxes. Pick the top 100 on NASDAQ. I'll almost guarantee they pay less than 10% tax.

If you addressed taxation, you'd eliminate almost all valid criticisms. There'd still be outsourcing, legal system bias (eg. White collar crime such as the GFC where there was little or no accountability) and monopolistic issues, but tax was meant to be the great liberator.

I'm curious why the author skipped the Dutch Sandwich and tax rate paid by the top 1%.

The note that was added made a big difference. There is no genetic basis implied, it's assessed on an environmental basis. The links do an excellent job at summarising some measures of IQ.

Another question is why raise the comment? This could imply a prejudice. While the reasoning wasn't clear, it made me think that Africa is a source of radicals unless its education standard can be lifted.

I have little faith in most sites being able to objectively discuss differences, but HN is still better than most. I encourage people to challenge prejudice in a consistent way (eg. No free tickets on being prejudiced based on gender or skin colour, unlike what happens at The Verge and most other media sites).

I know what you're saying but it isn't true. Let's look at 2 examples, the LGBT community and Feminism.

LGBT celebrates its differences. It welcomes everyone. It is open minded and tolerant.

Feminism bullies, ridicules, excludes, creates us/them divides and is continually hypocritical.

You could not have 2 more different different approaches. You don't need to be a bully. You don't need to threaten or ridicule or divide.

A few (repeated examples) to highlight my point. Matt Taylor bullied by large numbers of feminists for wearing a shirt designed by a woman, showing women wearing bikinis. Do women wear bikinis? Yes. Yet, he was mercilessly attacked by at least 10,000 radicals.

Domestic violence. It's repeatedly reported as a man thing (note: someone close to me was stabbed by his wife while she was high on drugs - but it wasn't domestic violence.. As the media says, that's only a man thing). Also note the absence of mental abuse that goes almost ignored.

Code.org who didn't bother to put a link to encourage boys, but explicitly put one to encourage girls on their main page. This was no accident - they have a quota to meet, apparently at any cost. Mind you, this could equally be attributed to political correctness.

I greatly respect how the LGBT community has embraced most people to support their cause without alienating anyone or demanding ridiculous quotas. I am totally gay friendly. Yet, I strongly oppose feminism. I believe in equality, but not equality for one gender or skin colour or sexual orientation.

I respect movements that embrace differences rather than reject them. Bullying is not required.

The truth is that controversy sells, truth does not. Truth is the first casualty.

The use of propaganda has increased significantly as a substitute for research and robust argument. Today, it's rare to find a media source that is unbiased and honest (I'm struggling to think of one). What concerns me more is that the propaganda is getting worse. Maybe, it's a side effect of free news on the Internet as there's no money in journalism anymore.

I agree with most of the sites that have been criticised in this thread. However, I'd rather see a list of media sources that people respect. I used to love ArsTechnica until about 18-24 months ago. Something happened in their management because they started with prejudice and politics in their articles (read Casey Johnson, San Mechkovich and Megan Guess articles as an example) and by dumming their content (someone used a camera/drone rubbish that appears almost daily).

These days, HN is one of the better (not really media) resources around for openly challenging propaganda. I think it struggles with Political Correctness but it's significantly better than most other outlets.

An offbeat topic to challenge my mind.

My first experience with Turkish delight was a commercial product in a gold foil wrapper and a purple label (I don't know if it was fry's or not - it was in similar wrapping to the old kitkat - 1/2 paper, 1/2 foil). It was covered in chocolate with a centre that was chewy like a slightly softened beef jerky. It had a fragrant flavour that reminded me of perfume, but it was a resounding yuk.

In later years, I came across a gelatinous pink treat covered in a white powder - the texture was about as squishy as jelly. There was a more subtle taste and it was delicious.

I never remember associating Turkish delight with Narnia. But, I remember associating gold foil wrappers with willy wonka.

I know you mention that women do better in formal education. That wasn't the case a few decades ago, when I believe there was far less prejudice.

I had lunch with a few female teachers several weeks ago. One of their conversations was around the over-enthusiasm of boys in class. They unanimously agreed that boys needed to "shut up" (literal quote) so girls could answer questions too. This view parallels that of my ex-girlfriend who is (and was then) a teacher who felt boys had some sort of natural advantage that needed to be suppressed.

I also made mention of code.org that had one link only on the main page "why girls should participate in IT" (or very similar words). My young son noticed this and asked if he was welcome.

I would not use today's metrics on boys vs girls in education as a basis for any measurements. If we stopped with the prejudice (which is extremely common today), the picture would look quite different.

I do my best to avoid generalisations about people, unless they consciously choose to label themselves (eg. KKK is racist, feminist is sexist, etc).

There is a difference between looking for patterns in people and stereotypes. For example, walking down a dark lane at night in Kings Cross (Australia) is dangerous with any person you meet. Seeing a black person in Pitt St is unlikely to be dangerous. A person wearing tracksuit pants and a backward cap walking in an agitated manner may represent a threat. A woman in a dress might or might not be a CEO. Now, how does a stereotype of skin colour, gender, sexuality, etc help anyone?

I agree that the US is particularly biased and that truth is the victim. I went to code.org with my young son who asked "are boys not welcome?" The link on the title page said "why girls should be in IT". Political Correctness - another word for prejudice. The idiot who approved it didn't give a crap about the message to young boys, they're just a casualty of war.

Slavery was not a white problem, it was a humanity problem of multiple skin colours, and in some places, still is.

No one should be held accountable for their ancestors actions. I certainly don't look at anyone Who is Japanese and think "Pearl Harbour", it's just not sensible.

There's another variable that the headline doesn't capture: the legal system. The fear that you might infringe and be be taken to court is often enough to deter people from innovating. The legal fees and lost revenue can be enough to ruin a business.

I think the parent poster's comments are still valid. There was a good article yesterday about Antoine Lavoisier, the father of modern chemistry, who was killed unnecessarily during the French Revolution (but not during the dark ages). Someone said it most probably set back chemistry 20 to 50 years. It happened, often. Or Galileo and his rotation of the planets. Many people consider Europe to have been largely ignorant during the dark ages. I'd definitely agree.

That's an excellent point. Add to that a lack of historical diagnosis and you have difficulty in assessing historical trends. As Aspergers get older, they can more effectively mimic behaviour and are more likely to slip under the radar. My wife (an undiagnosed Aspergers candidate) is often described by my friends as a bit odd. When my child was assessed as an Aspergers, the penny dropped for everyone (ie. My wife's slight eccentricity had a label).

My wife doesn't look like me. We have reasonably different ethnic backgrounds (common Scottish ancestry maybe 5 generations ago, maybe 5% ethnic commonality at best). We have an autistic child. So, what's your conclusion?