The issue was both Windows marketshare and crap security. If it wasn't easy to write malware for Windows not as many would write it. If there was no one to infect with the malware, also no one would write it.
Is anyone else bothered by the fact that of the 752 comments on this thread at the moment probably >700 were written by men? Isn't it potentially sexist in and of itself to have a large discussion about this subject exclusively between men?
AFAIK, ycombinator forum software does not make a sex/gender distinction. I don't see how it could be sexist.
Being labeled a sexist is a terrible thing.
Saying that a discussion by man on the subject is sexist seems potentially sexist because it implies that man should not discuss because they are man.
That's not what sexism or racism is. Racism is not statements like "black people dance better," it is only when a negative statement is made about a race in a perceived inferior statement (e.g. vis-a-vis white people).
Racism and sexism are, respectively, stereotyping someone based on their perceived race or sex. Yes, even positive stereotyping ("pracism") like "black people dance better", "asians are great at math", or "girls are better note-takes".
The negative effects of this form of racism & sexism are fairly well documented.
Maybe the downmodders are right in a "by the books" sense, but try to accuse someone of sexism when they say "men don't make good homekeepers" and see how far you get. Practically speaking, it doesn't work. Also I'll add that this weird feature seems only to exist for white people in Western countries.
I don't think you'll find any arguments that the US government doesn't have insane double standards and sexist laws. But I doubt you can make that kind of claim for any government, really, since they're constructed by people - to get rid of it, you'd have to get rid of it in people, and I'm not aware of that ever having happened.
Oh bullshit. If I'm hanging out with my boss at a barbegue and does something stupid and I say "you're such a dumbass", it's a fun jab. If my boss says incorrect or misinformed in front of customers, and I say the exact same thing, in the exact same tones with the exact same stupid grin, it could be a lost sale, and a reprimand. Context does matter, and it's not some whimsical flight of fancy by fickle and capricious women.
The rule is: don't assert your situational power. A woman alone or outnumbered among men is going to feel pressured. Comments you make won't be well received even if she is worried enough by the pressure to smile and hide her discomfort. She'll just curse your name to her friends after work.
Contrast: if you're the only man in a room of women, and the boss is a woman, would you dare speak up with your "nice dress" type comment? That's what it feels like to be on the downside of a power gap.
Yeah, why not? In a room full of men, the comment would be made to the other men, but for the benefit of that woman. It would be flippant and funny. In a room full of women, the comment would be more personal, and I would have to keep the tone extremely light because the more serious I am, the more vulnerable I am.
Seriously? You're saying that standing alone in a room full of women of uniformly equal or higher social standing (suggestion: if you have kids, take a day off and bring them to any local parent/child activity -- it's likely to be 100% mothers) you'd feel comfortable blurting out "You're wearing a low cut dress! I know where I'm sitting!".
Please (please!) try this. And bring a camera. I suspect you'll be very surprised at the results.
Of course I've done it. I was at an all-mothers event mostly by accident. She glared at me and kind of laughed. My mother gave me a dirty look lol. Pretty much expected. Did you expect something bad to happen? Maybe it would be different if she were single and available?
So I guess the lesson is that because sp332 feels no shame in deeply embarrassing situations that no one else would. Yikes. I'd be bright red and backing slowly toward the door if that came out of my mouth. You, sir, are weird.
Well I felt pretty bad about it at the time, and left the room after a minute. But later she told me (when I asked her about it) that it wasn't a big deal and I shouldn't have taken it so hard. My mom doesn't remember the incident but she tells me that no one would have cared much.
OK, but that's a really telling detail: she was gracious about it, because she could be (she was in a position of social power), and because you were visibly embarrassed. In the anecdote above, the guy wasn't apparently embarrassed, and Katie didn't have the social power to tell him "it's OK" even if he was (and why should she have to, if she was the one who was embarassed?).
See the point? These are critical details, and they change the moral calculus. You can't wave away an incident like this just because you can imagine something similar which wasn't a problem.
Like I said way up-thread: someone (you) is going to point out that not all women would react like Katie did. So what? Context matters!
I totally agree with you. I think JulianMorrison missed that point. Being on the "downside of a power gap" doesn't always mean that speaking up will have bad consequences. It's up to the person who has power. The men in the original scenario need to explicitly give the woman room to speak up if she's feeling uncomfortable.
Missing the point still. Everything done by the person on the downside of a power gap is done in the context of the predicted consequences for doing otherwise. This is a sexist society, full of such concepts as "humourless ice bitch". Actually showing a discomfort which is felt inside might be dangerous. A room entirely full of women is enough to counterbalance this and allow communal frowns to speak loudly. Merely "explicitly giv[ing] the woman room to speak up" is liable to get a response that means "don't hate me" more than it means "here is what I honestly feel". Power has to work harder to blunt its bad effects than just saying "so please ignore the power gap".
A young woman of a specified kind or having a specified job
- a career girl
Women who mix socially or belong to a particular group, team, or profession
- I look forward to having lunch with the girls
Perhaps this is a language issue, but it's just as common for me to call my male friends 'boys' as my female friends 'girls', even though all are adults. Not sure what the issue here is.
If you're calling any female co-workers "girls" in conversations at or about the workplace, you're doing it wrong.
There is a long history of society downplaying women's contributions in the workforce by using cutesy terms like "girls", and some of the definitions you've cited here reflect that. But just because a term like "career girl" was once in wide use doesn't mean that it's still appropriate today. (Or for that matter that it ever was: can you imagine anyone ever having used the term "career boy"?) Much like the ridiculous term "co-ed" for "woman who we decided to allow into college", its time has thankfully come and gone.
I guess the words I use are closer to guys/gals then boys/girls then, except that it's used commonly the language (as opposed to gal in english, which is fairly rare - at least from my experience).
There can be a lot of hang overs in languages that aim to demean and diminish people. Calling a black man "boy", or a woman "girl" is a way to belittle them.
"Boy" vs "Girl" is an interesting one. It's not uncommon, as you pointed out, to call adult women "girl". However you rarely in the straight male world do people refer to adult men as "boy". However in the gay male world, sometimes "boy" is used (e.g. this collection of gay short films 'Boys on Film': http://www.amazon.co.uk/Boys-Film-Hard-Love-DVD/dp/B001L5JMQ... ). This shows that "boy" (and hence "girl") is a slightly sexualised way to talk about someone. Should you be using sexualised terms in a professional environment? No, so say "women".
(BTW: Just because your google search found some results that back up what you say, but might be a bit misogynistic doesn't mean google is right. "Jew Watch" still shows up above the fold if I search for "Jew", but it would be wrong of me to excuse anti-Semitism based on that reasoning)
For men: I'm hanging with the "guys" or "bros."
For women: I'm hanging with the "girls." (you can't say "ladies" in this context, you can't use "sisters," you could use "gals" but it would sound like you were from Texas).
The facts may speak for themselves, but someone still has to put them into an article so that we will read them. If it requires inserting a few hyperbolic statements along the way, I'm willing to accept this.
There's better reporting out there on how we found ourselves in this situation.
Try "All The Devils Are Here" which is a much better accounting of the circumstances that led to the financial crisis. In short, there isn't one player, or even one industry, that's responsible. There is plenty of blame to go around and at least part of that blame lies with the public. There are also lots of innocent parties that have been caught up in this mess and are being blamed even though they had nothing to do with the crisis.
Taibbi's articles reflect the bias of his audience and he writes to that bias. Somewhere along that path, he obscures the facts (or omits important ones that dont jibe with his argument) in order to write his story. That actually hinders the transparency, which inhibits understanding, which lowers the chance we'll take the right corrective action.
<<Third, Rubyists possess an often exaggerated, yet nevertheless merited, reputation for being the quirky hug-everyone kids of the programming world. Their motto is MINSWAN, or Matz Is Nice So We Are Nice, a reference to the language’s legendarily sweet founder, Yukihiro Matsumoto, nom d’Internet Matz. We might just all get along.>>
For real? Most Rubyists I meet these days are annoying hipster types that I want to smash with their skateboard (yes, yes, I'm huge _why fanboy).
Actually, it would seem to be just as simple as he implies. VCs in the valley care only about money and don't give a hoot about morality. You haven't debated the fact that Milner is linked to the looting of state resources; you've simply said that anyone else would also take his money if they could.
Makes all you VCs and Angels in the Valley seem like dogs fighting over a doggie biscuit -- or in this case, the looted flesh and bones of the Russian people.
Let me be more precise. When I said the situation was not as simple as his comment implied, I meant that even if Yuri's money was tainted in some way, it was being used as a counterweight to another bad thing.
"The reason VCs don't like Yuri is that he is disturbing the cosy world they formerly inhabited by offering more founder friendly terms."
I greatly respect and admire you pg, and god knows you're far more intelligent than I am, but surely you can't be so naive as to think that Milner is doing what he is doing out of some altruism for founders?
He is spending outlandish amounts on startups for the same reason Abramovich spends hundreds of millions on yachts, why the Sultan of Brunei spends millions on cars, and why the Saudi princes spend millions on trips to the Riviera. Because he never worked hard for the money, and so he doesn't care about throwing it around.
When a man works hard, he is loathe to spend it carelessly, because he knows the sacrifice in time and effort it took to acquire the money. In the words of the great Milton Friedman: "Nobody spends somebody else's money as carefully as he spends his own". This applies not only to government officials but to the criminal element as well, from hoodlums to ponzi schemers and everything in between.
People like Milner and others associated with Russian oligarchs spend lavishly because the money they have came with no sacrifice on their part. The sacrifice came from all those miners working in subzero temperatures in the Kazakh steppe for kopeks a day, their bodies broken down prematurely, with the share of wealth that was promised to them stolen away. And instead of those who betrayed them being brought to justice, they instead depart to the West where they are greeted with applause by those who mistake cunningness with intelligence.
...surely you can't be so naive as to think that Milner is doing what he is doing out of some altruism for founders?
pg didn't say or imply that. If you read what he's written about investing (e.g., http://paulgraham.com/future.html, http://paulgraham.com/control.html), you'll see there's a much simpler explanation: pg thinks being founder-friendly is a good (i.e., profitable) investment strategy.
>Because he never worked hard for the money
This is simply not true, most of these people work hard, risk and sacrifice a lot to get their money. There is a cultural tradition in Russia to spend a lot if you can afford it.
(In this particular case it an investment strategy, so your theory doesn't apply either).
From reading this post, I am surprised that this story is not on top of the Hacker News....anyway, i agree 100% with what the above comment says....PG and Hacker News sold out and sold their Souls to Yuri and all the corrupt Souls that Digital Sky Technologies (DST) is associated with. Good Going Paul.
I would be hard pressed to not believe it. From my own experience.
I don't know Yuri - you do.
He may as well be the only honest Russian oligarch (or a front for the only honest Russian oligarch).
But what GP posted is the state of affairs everywhere in eastern block and by far the norm.
Thus you must understand if people think less of you because of your associates. It is an prejudice but a well founded one.
In the end it won't matter anyway. But this is the way things work. I believe I read somewhere that yourself are of Russian ancestry? If so I believe you should be familiar with long tradition of tyranny of the few in Russia.
<People like Milner and others associated with
Russian oligarchs spend lavishly because the
money they have came with no sacrifice on
their part. The sacrifice came from all those
miners working in subzero temperatures in the
Kazakh steppe for kopeks a day, their bodies broken down prematurely, with the share of
wealth that was promised to them stolen away.
And instead of those who betrayed them being
brought to justice, they instead depart to the
West where they are greeted with applause by
those who mistake cunningness with intelligence>
Pg it~s time yo returm the $$$$ back you sold you sole and sold out
Nuff Said
You seem to be implying that breaking up the VC cartel in Silicon valley with money that was potentially stolen from russian peasants maybe OK. I understand that Ycombinator companies need their $150K, but this seems contrary to Valley values. Or maybe you meant something else?
“Founder unfriendly conditions” do not compare to the way oligarchs operate and the consequences of their actions.
Much of the authenticity that comes through in your essays is based on being truly committed to the things you talk about. They are often controversial and authoritative (in a good way), but the possible discrepancy between what you say and what you do could easily undermine that authenticity.
Saying that other VCs do not care where their money comes from, does not make sense here. They are not judged as authorities on topics you write about.
Do you disagree with any of these points?
- You can use the profits from investing tainted money for further investments, but the money still stinks.
- The money that came from DST's partners is tainted.
Exactly. The real question is whether it is a difference in type or a difference in scale. "Laundering" may be a dirty word used to make things untracable, but it is equally possible to do unseemly things so well that no one can call you to account. If so, you do not need to launder your money -- but the question remains as to whether or not what you are doing qualifies as a difference in type.
