spcoll | 10 years ago | on: Men who harass women online are quite literally losers, new study finds
spcoll's comments
spcoll | 10 years ago | on: Welcome Amy, Susan, Colleen, and Steven
Congrats everyone! Glad to see more women in key roles at YC : )
spcoll | 10 years ago | on: Edward Snowden: The World Says No to Surveillance
Snowden is a traitor and deserves to be locked up.
spcoll | 10 years ago | on: Scientists reverse aging in human cell lines and give theory of aging a new life
People here don't care about the future, they just want to live forever. They think they are the end-all-be-all of life, that after them nobody younger needs be born.
spcoll | 10 years ago | on: Africa's Worst New Internet Censorship Law Could Be Coming to South Africa
Factors that prevent states from going totalitarian:
- small size
- decentralized/local government structure
- limited geopolitical influence
- high level of education of the population
- history/culture of democracy
Large, powerful states with a lesser educated population will inevitably drift towards totalitarianism over time. This implies the use of various means of population control, with total surveillance being first and foremost.
spcoll | 10 years ago | on: Chinese Men Indicted in Theft of Code from U.S. Tech Companies
It does sound like witch hunting with a McCarthyist nationalistic vibe. Overall the brain drain from China to the US has been working to the benefit of the US, for years.
I expect we will more and more such propaganda pieces in the NYT and elsewhere, as China is being increasingly positioned as "the Adversary".
spcoll | 10 years ago | on: Poor Little Rich Women
You're not even trying to make a point, you're just flat denying these women are being oppressed, without any argument to back that up.
Is the oppression of women in America such a sensitive topic that you feel the need to reflexively deny it's happening whenever the subject crops up?
spcoll | 10 years ago | on: The Decline of Wikipedia (2013)
> That's a sexist statement.
It's a realistic statement. Or would you deny the obvious, that Wikipedia would be better off (less bureaucracy, more openness, less bickering, less toxicity) if the community was more gender-balanced and included less misogynist neckbeards?
It's not exactly news that organizations were women and more progressive types are in charge fare better: https://www.fastcompany.com/3033950/the-future-of-work/why-t...
spcoll | 10 years ago | on: Game theory’s cure for corruption
Hunter-gatherer societies that did fit this model could be considered to be the ultimate totalitarian organizations. Extremely strict rules controlling every aspect of the life of the members, from birth to death, and no deviation ever tolerated, under pain of banishment or even death.
spcoll | 10 years ago | on: Game theory’s cure for corruption
> In reality, I would think that such a system would result in mob violence, sometimes triggered by good information, but often triggered by hearsay and rumors.
Basically what you see today on social media, where everyone is empowered to be an agent of "justice" (a public shaming and harassment-based justice system).
spcoll | 11 years ago | on: Sexism in science: Peer editor tells females their study needs a male author
The paper was an argument demonstrating that males in academia are sexist fuckheads. Then an anonymous male reviewer comes along and writes:
"It would probably also be beneficial to find one or two male biologists to work with (or at least obtain internal peer review from, but better yet as active co-authors), in order to serve as a possible check against interpretations that may sometimes be drifting too far away from empirical evidence into ideologically biased assumptions."
Thus confirming that males in academia are sexist fuckheads. Brilliant! QED! I hope the next edition of the paper includes the review as supporting evidence :)
spcoll | 11 years ago | on: Rorschach Tests at the Nuremberg Trials
> I saw 2 dwarves high-fiving.
The fact that you saw two dwarves is indicative of a psychopathic mind obsessed with belittling others in an attempt to convince itself of its own adequacy. The high-fiving is a sign of childhood trauma caused by a lack of meaningful friendships.
This kind of "psychology" really is a pile of crap : (
spcoll | 11 years ago | on: Ways Men in Tech Are Unintentionally Sexist (2014)
Good writeup. Women in tech are faced with a constant barrage of microaggressions.
I see many men taking a stance of "I'm not sexist, this is not my problem", but really this is every man's responsibility. And it needs to stop. What are YOU doing about it?
spcoll | 11 years ago | on: Updating Our Open Source Patent Grant
> Today it's Facebook PATENTS, tomorrow maybe it's nation-wide automatic license plate tracking. One thing is for sure, staying silent never changed anything.
On political issues, the three-letter-agency-mandated bots/shills in the comments of mainstream news outlets and on mainstream social media sites (twitter/reddit) will always be louder and more numerous than us.
It's only on issues that the powerful don't really care about that democratic change is possible.
EDIT: To the downvoters: may I know why you are downvoting me? Maybe you believe I'm a tinfoil hatter? Maybe you think governments, who have been controlling media "narratives" for as long as media has been a thing, don't care about social media even though it is dead easy to manipulate? Maybe you don't know that this has been heavily documented for a while, and is really happening on a large scale, all the time?
spcoll | 11 years ago | on: Reddit CEO eliminates salary negotiations for new employees
She is.
She had the courage to stand up against sexism and bullying, and take on a stronger adversary (KPCB), when many would have just given up. She fights for what she thinks is right, and her fight is empowering all women in tech. If that's not heroism, then I don't know what you need.
spcoll | 11 years ago | on: Reddit CEO eliminates salary negotiations for new employees
I see it more as leveling the playing field. Women are less aggressive and ruthless in negotiations, and that contributes to the staggering pay gap we see in tech and elsewhere. This gap needs to end, and such a measure might well prove effective.
Such a measure will also mean that aggressive salary negotiators will go elsewhere after their attempts at negotiation are rejected by Reddit HR. Since these people are almost always male, that's a win. It will result in a workplace with less men : )
spcoll | 11 years ago | on: “Today we moved into our new Facebook building”
> What I find most strange about all of the photos of office design for "big companies"
> The funniest thing about all of these "office design" photos that I see of big companies.
Are you A/B testing your comments?
spcoll | 11 years ago | on: Facebook Sued Alleging Sex Discrimination, Harassment, Other Charges
The issues of diversity and equality are becoming increasingly harder to ignore for tech companies of all sizes. This is a great reminder to Facebook (and others watching) that they should care.
It's an uphill battle, but one day there will be one female engineer for every male engineer, one female PM for every male PM. And no woman will be afraid to go and do her job.
We're still so far from this dream...
spcoll | 11 years ago | on: YC Stats Winter 2015
No stats for Asian founders? It would be interesting to see a complete breakdown of WC W15 entrepreneurs by ethnicity.
spcoll | 11 years ago | on: Boys are being outclassed by girls at both school and university
As a woman in this industry, you have to be twice as good as men to be taken seriously. Thankfully that is easy.
page 1
My personal theory is that the reason the tech industry is so hostile towards women is that it is mostly comprised of "nerds" and "geeks" who, being lower-status in society while usually being part of the dominant group (white men), are much more likely to be aggressive towards people not part of that group, women and people of color.