NASA Hackathon Expected to Draw Over 15,000 Coders (fastcompany.com) 46
Saturday NASA began live-streaming footage of their "Space Apps Challenge" hackathon, which they're describing as one of the largest hackathons on earth. "Together, citizens like you have developed thousands of open-source solutions," says the event's site, while Fast Company reports that last year 14,264 people gathered in 133 locations to create apps using NASA's trove of open data. Last year's largest local app hackathon was started by two women in Cairo, drawing 700 participants, and this year NASA is trying to increase participation by female coders. NASA's open innovation project manager tells FastCompany that women "are looking for signals that they will be in a safe space where they feel like they belong," noting that 80% of last year's participants were men.
Aren't hackers criminals? (Score:1)
Yet another proof that the NASA funds crime.
Pareto Rules? (Score:1)
Dunno why, everywhere I go, from USA to Africa to China and places in between, the ratio of male to female coders follows closely to the Pareto rule
It's always 20+% female with the rest male
Even in China where the girls are not being told that they are not suitable for tech stuffs (them Chinese don't have the same Puritanism ideology we have) their ratio of girls getting into tech / engineering field still stuck at 20+%
Gee wiz Wally... (Score:2)
...women "are looking for signals that they will be in a safe space where they feel like they belong," noting that 80% of last year's participants were men.
(-1)(This is a real concern for me and most of /.)
For real? (Score:1)
How the hell does a coding competition by NASA on scientifically relevant data fit in a pattern of stories which allegedly "have nothing to do with science, technology, math, computing"?
I know as AC they will never see my response, but anyone who read parent's comment and was in agreement needs to check their logic and be less blinkered by counter-ideology.
15,000 coders (Score:2)
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Yeah, with 14k participants, it doesn't sound like anywhere a good hacker will want to go. I think this might more be a lan party / science fair for kids to increase PR and future followers.
I don't see any of these participants injecting a goatse into the New Horizon picture stream or waking up Pioneer 6/7/8 for fun.
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Boy, do I have some good news for you, you've found a useful delusion!
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The remark is sexist. Now, what is wrong with (literally) sleeping with your boss, please, apart from the taste of salt you got that they weren't (literally) sleeping with you?
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Safe space? (Score:1)
NASA's open innovation project manager tells FastCompany that women "are looking for signals that they will be in a safe space where they feel like they belong,"
I'm sorry, is there a demonstrable history of rape and sexual assault taking place at NASA conventions, or is this just yet more SJW feminist nonsense?
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The latter, obviously.
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It's not so much the "safe space" that makes me roll my eyes here, but the "where they feel they belong".
It's hacking, not a social club. Hackers don't go to feel they belong. They go to find a challenge in an otherwise challenge free world.
Showing off a great hack buys you my respect, but doesn't make you my pal. No matter where your dangly bits may be attached.
Safe space... (Score:1, Troll)
Okay. Come right this way. We have a time-locked vault. Nobody will be able to get to you. Just..watch your oxygen consumption, it's airtight.
Seriously, NASA's the ultimate meritocracy in the geek/nerd/braniac space.
And while nobody should have to deal with overtly sexist atmosphere, simply having a majority of men == sexism!
And trying to browbeat them into providing a "safe space" basically is telling us that women are, apparently, unable to compete without some white knight cutting the path for them.
T
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> And while nobody should have to deal with overtly sexist atmosphere, simply having a majority of men == sexism!
Nobody said it was sexism. They just want to have more women participants, full stop. It's numnuts like you who turn everything into some OMG MERITOCRACY IS CRUMBLING AROUND US into places that make people feel it's just not worth dealing with non-well adjusted people.
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They just want to have more women participants, full stop.
Arbitrarily dictating equality of results is the wrong way to go about these things. You can only fairly ensure that everyone has equality of opportunity. Otherwise, it's the very definition of sexism, regardless of good intentions.
That being said, I'd have no problem with putting some effort and care into making sure women are made to feel welcome. I have to admit though, I really dislike the use of the term "safe space", because it implies that these sorts of events are "unsafe" for women by default.
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Traceback (most recent call last):
TypeError: unsupported sarcasm
Don't worry, I'll get one of the gals to fix your code
Re: Safe space... (Score:1)
Well, at two extremes: no men is definitely == not sexism. 14,999 men + one coder girl almost == almost certainly > 1 creeper dbag who will make her never want to go to such an event ever ever again in her life. So, I think it's safe to say that in a space this large with mostly men, someone will be made to feel very uncomfortable and threatened at some point. Nobody is beating your brow, sir, it is merely a plea (and from your tone, I deeply suspect that you, personally, were the target of said plea
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Wow, I wasn't rabidly and thoughtlessly in complete support of special treatment for women in a meritocratic setting!
So I got marked a troll!
QUE SURPRISE!
Western Phenomenon (Score:4, Interesting)
Late last year I spent a month on an exchange program with a university engineering department in Hanoi. I never saw any indications that the women there (who were also more numerous than I encountered in US/Japanese engineering departments) were begging for "safe spaces". In general the women I met were the most well-adjusted, entrepreneurial, and self-sufficient I've ever met.
Strange that this "Communist" country, and one with very traditional, masculine men at that, seems to not suffer from the same societal poisons in STEM as the West.
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So women felt safe at a place where the female:male ratio was better? News at 11 you say?
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so much for meritocracy (Score:2)
limited, 'safe', 'just' (as in 'fair' and equal), static, VS unlimited, 'dangerous' , 'just' (as in meritocratic), dynamic.
Well... (Score:2)
That's it, the nerds have left. (Score:2)
So, I followed the link to the data, looked around a bit, and decided to see if I could get ahold of a decently large and interesting dataset that I could play with. I've been messing around with Fortran and OpenMP, and this sounded interesting.
So I go to the website, and it's... bad. Slow as fuck, no browsability (just searching through large categories), back button doesn't work right... it might be all right if you know exactly what you're looking for, but there's no discoverability there.
So I came h