I stopped watching the MSM news propaganda years ago along with websites that don't allow direct comments to the stories. I would say the MSM is the worst way to stay educated.
I find that some of the alternative sites where everyone beats themselves over the topic with opposing views far better method to dissect the truth (middle-ground) than from a MSM news source.
Also helps that I don't constraint my thinking and views by boxing myself into one political ideology over another. I also don't do social media news and couldn't be happier.
"This recent push to make everyone a software engineer is such an obvious attempt by companies to push down wages. You will be wasting your spare time trying to reduce your salary."
absolutely agree and it is obvious.This is simply about trying to expand the pool of qualified individuals to drive down the salary.
I'm short and skinny. (I wouldn't normally describe myself as ugly, but, who knows? I guess that's not up to me to say...).
It seems to me there are a ton of short skinny guys in the software engineering industry, so I rarely feel out of place on those particular grounds. If you have a specific question about that experience, though, I'd happily answer it.
I have noticed that the paucity of women is undeniable and pervasive, and it does at times lead to a dude's club atmosphere. Not every minute of every day in every way, but it's around. Overt sexism isn't generally tolerated, because, well, it's overt, but the environment is definitely experienced differently by many women than for men, in a million small ways, which can add up to big feelings.
For some things, looks matter a lot. For other things, gender matters a lot. Of course, the way we evaluate looks is itself highly gendered. These are all things worth talking about! That at some particular time, someone wants to discuss one thing doesn't mean dismissing all other concerns or conversations.
wasn't suggesting that you were dismissing all other concerns.
I just didn't see the point of stating your sexuality when that by itself really means nothing.
Not all women and men are created equal and other factors such as looks,weight,height,color can make all the differences on experiences.Even among same sexes.
While your request is a little unreasonable, this is actually important. A younger, attractive male teacher at a primary school likely has a very different experience from an obese, older man.
You're welcome to start your own "ask a fat engineer" page. Other people don't have to cater their topics to your personal interests.
Here, you can start an "ask a tall engineer" page with some comments from me: office chairs are too small and I have to shift posture constantly; communal desks are too low; and there's nowhere high enough to try a standing desk.
Because your original comment wasn't innocent or genuine, and you already know the answer to it. It's a comment that gets made every. single. time. something like this comes up, has been answered a million times before, and it's not worth pandering to.
> Or maybe you can't justify the value of simply stating female in the topic heading.
Stop it already: point is it should be OK for anyone to start any group they want but some are bound to be more interesting than others.
You are starting to annoy even me and I'm definitely a non-"SJW". (although I do care and will sometimes make an effort to fix things, just not in a "SJW" style blame-society-and-all-white-men way)
Sounds like you got some issues if you are letting someone annoy you, in a forum where you are not forced to participate.
So according to you the point is that it should be OK for anyone to start any group they want , however its not ok to ask any question.
On a good note despite your hypocrisy on allowing any subject to be created while controlling the questions that can be asked, you atleast have been consistent.
You have been consistent in making personal attacks and dodging the questions on the value of stating "Female" engineer. Good job!
I never said it was wrong to start the thread with that title, I just questioned the purpose or value to include female the in title.
> I really don't see the importance of sex in relations to engineering
that expression is too vague to really say anything about. there exist "minority groups" in various fields (such as "male nurses"), and said groups sometimes have distinct life experiences and insights as a result, including their relationship with the "majority group".
> Or perhaps explain why the following characteristics are irrelevant or less important when it comes to engineering
this seems non-sequitur or a strawman. the mere existence of "ask a female engineer" does not necessarily imply anything about other potential "ask a _ engineer" q&a's.
"that expression is too vague to really say anything about"
The same goes for "Ask a Female Engineer" hence I wanted more information about other non engineering characteristics such as her height,weight, color, height, etc.
"this seems non-sequitur or a strawman"
Its not a strawman it was a valid question , why did she only decide to single out her sex. Why not disclose her weight,height,color,etc?
non-sequitur. it's a q&a with a particular segment of individuals. if you're not interested in the experiences and insights of a segment of the workforce, you don't have to ask anything.
however, asking about "the importance of sex in relations to engineering" requires explanation of what you mean by "importance" and "engineering". otherwise it's a bit of a weaselly question.
> Its not a strawman
you said: "explain why the following characteristics are irrelevant". nobody said they were.
> why did she only decide to single out her sex
did you not even look at the link? even the first paragraph? there isn't a "she" who "decided to single out her sex". it's a content publisher/blog (?) that took questions and then posited them to a group of female engineers.
> Its not a weaselly question or a strawman. Its a fair and valid question.
it's not, because it's unclear, and i demonstrated why it's unclear. you refuse to clarify.
"important" in what way? the mechanical exercise of job functions? individual qualia? cultural aspects? something else?
"to engineering" in what way? the position requirements of a job? the industry economics? the workforce as a body of humans? the state of the art? social climate?
this is what i mean - it's not immediately clear what you're asking, so any answer is dismissable.
> versus stating other non engineering characteristics
what is an "engineering characteristic"?
> what is the value of stating they are female when not all females are the same
there is no "value" in "stating they are female". it's a statement of fact. so, the question is unclear. you also haven't explained why the notion of "not all females are the same" implies anything about a so-called "value of stating they are female".
> nor do they automatically have the same experiences simply because of their sex
"experience" isn't a fixed unary number. it's a manifold of many things. it's a trivially true observation that two individuals will have individual experiences of life. this says nothing of overlapping or commonality.
there is no specific answer to such an open question, beyond minority genders have distinct experiences (like male nurses). you could just as well be asking why engineer was "added to the title" but not other characteristics.
Some research shows for women, the prettier you are the easier it is to get ahead maybe the halo effect ?
For men there is research that shows the taller you are, the more money you get.
The stuff you mentioned should probably be a separate conversion, but I do think there is probably overlap with the gender issue.
Its not about just technical ability, but social and economic power through jobs.
"This confuses me too. The camera wart is ridiculous, and I bet if they made the device just that slight bit thicker they'd have room to retain the 3.5mm jack."
This looks like another method to lock in the consumer to their eco system and or squeeze that extra buck out of them. Not so much about shrinking in size or technology.
IMO this is nothing more than selling and controlling peripherals that can play with iphone and drm.
You don't actually have to use iCloud for what I described. I mentioned iCloud Drive because it's built in to iOS and OS X, but any app can register as a document provider, which allows it to be accessed from document pickers (what I meant when I said "can open files directly from iCloud Drive" - it's not only for iCloud Drive) and to be an icon on share sheets. For example, Dropbox does so. This is an iOS 8 feature, for the record; it's just the iCloud Drive standalone app that was new in iOS 9.
You do have to use iCloud for some other things, such as full system backup, integration with the builtin photos app, etc.
Kind of true. You get 5 GB for free, which is enough to back up contacts, etc. But you can get 50 GB for $1/mo, which, if you can afford a smartphone, probably won't be the straw that breaks the camel's back.
Its not about money, its about options and a closed ecosystem obviously designed to make you dependent on their system. Its just to blatant to be ignored.
With android I have the option to get sd card to backup my pics.
With android I have options to easily map the OS as a hdd on my PC or linux and not be forced to used there crappy software to backup files ,music,videos etc in their proprietor format.
I understand its not only crApple that is pushing for the golden egg cloud monthly subscriptions but atleast with android I still have other easy options to choose from.
They even lock you into their ecosystem as a developer. I have to purchase a mac if I want to develop iOS apps. You can't even legally use virtualization as they force you to buy both their hardware and and software license.
I just don't like their lack of confidence on their products that their marketing efforts is based on locking you into buying their products and services vs you wanting to buy them because of their awesomeness.
"I switched back from Android for the 6s because I was tired of fragmentation and terrible battery life. "
I can relate. I had some many fragmentation problems with android that I said I'm done with it, then I tried Iphone. However, I returned my iphone before my trial period expired. I just couldn't sacrifice the android UI flow, multitasking ease of use, and a open ecosystem.
So I ended up getting the Note 3 when it first came out . That was like 3 years ago and I still have the same phone without any issues. My batters is now finally starting to give out and is only lasting about 6-8 hrs with use. However a new battery is only like 7 bucks on amazon.
I think 2 things happened that improved my fragmentation issue with android. Android itself has matured but more importantly I stopped all the automatic updates from my carrier and apps.
I observed with my previous android devices that once a new phone came out all the sudden my phone became slow as molasses . I'm under the opinion with nothing to back it up with, other than my observations is that the carrier (atleast ATT) updates the phone and purposely degrades performances with newer apps and updates to get you to buy a new one.
I don't think this is possible on the iphones because I don't believe that the carrier is allowed to bastardize it like android but I could be wrong? However that has been my observation and the one advantage I see for ios.
I tried the Iphone for the trial period due to its popularity once. Never again. Multi-tasking on the android is a breeze and flows more naturally vs my experience with the iphone. Plus the Iphone while once set the standard it now appears to be trailing far behind most android devices.
I recently switched my mom from the iphone to samsung s7 because it has a SD card storage. She recently lost all her pictures because the iphone died on her and there is no way to get it back . She had tears in her eyes because it had pictures of the grandkids. Keep in mind she has no internet nor computer at home she just wanted a phone wiht camara capabilities .
I had to explain to her that unlike her previous android phone that had removable SD card storage the IPHONE ecogreedness doesn't, because they want you to pay for there icloud storage.
Hence I switched her back to android with SD storage. Which makes it breeze to swap cards when they fill up and back them up without having to use craptunes.
Not saying androids are the best thing since slice bread but I don't see the hype about iphones and there closed ecosystem?
Made some good points but clearly with left leaning bias. When discussing negative points throws bush and trump snippets, on positive points Obama.
1. Both party are lobbyist prostitutes. Congress, DNC and the GOP need big money from the lobbyist for elections, re-elections, MSM Positive PR, and it takes half a billion dollars to run for office and millions for congress.
2. Congress does not create the bills and regulations, they just robosign them. Those bills and regulations are drafted by the lobbyist and their dream team of lawyers on the payroll. There is a reason why billions are spent on lobbying
3. The Reason why tax money is wasted is because of reason number 2 above. The lobbyist draft and create the bills being robosigned by congress.
So when the gov't waste money the tax payer picks up the tab and the Lobbyist who drafted the laws end up on the winning side. Its only the tax payers that gets shafted not the Lobbyist
Obamcare is an example. Drafted by lobbyist, excessive waste but if you look at the top healthcare insurance providers before and after Obamacare you will notice something interesting. Their stagnate earnings went to an almost 45 degree incline to the positive after
4. To fix the issue you need to get the majority of the people to get their heads out of their @rse and identify the actual problem and not chase their tail with the symptoms. For the last 5 decades at minimum we have been discussing the same symptoms of corruption: Taxes, jobs, economy, immigration, SS, medicaid,sexism,racism,sexuality,religion,foreign matters,energy,environment etc.
However not one of those things have been fixed and that is because they are all effected by gov't and lobbyist conflict of interest and corruption.
To fix those areas we need to demand that the DNC,GOP, and the MSM not ONLY FOCUS on corruption but make it ISSUE number 1:
We should ONLY be discussing the following things.
1. Congregational term limits
2. campaign financing reform.
3. Lobbying reform
4. doing away with super-pacs
5. Revolving door between gov't and private sector
That's actually Amazon's fault. They send a personalized email to the customer, saying e.g. "You purchased thing, and another thing customer has an important question about thing that you should answer by clicking this button." Sophisticates like the HN crowd know that clicking that button to say "n/a" isn't actually helping anyone. Amazon should know that most of its customers are not that sophisticated.
Loads of products have fake bad reviews now, left by competition. The next logical step is fake corrections, and fake silly reviews on own product. I wouldn't be surprised if at some point in the future every product has a 4.75 star average, and the shills instead of bad reviews start writing fake-sounding good ones.
This is close to my strategy, but I mostly read reviews of 2-stars, 3-stars, 4-stars. I sort by usefulness, and read about 10 of each star-rating by usefulness, then recency. I've been thinking about packaging that 'workflow' into a browser extension, but I'm not sure how often Amazon changes the structure of their review content.
> I'm not sure how often Amazon changes the structure of their review content.
All the time, I think they do a decent amount of A/B testing on product pages (which would make sense). I looked into scraping reviews and doing some analysis for this exact reason.
I find that some of the alternative sites where everyone beats themselves over the topic with opposing views far better method to dissect the truth (middle-ground) than from a MSM news source.
Also helps that I don't constraint my thinking and views by boxing myself into one political ideology over another. I also don't do social media news and couldn't be happier.