Bingo.

What do you propose to do and since when were science and tech jobs lucrative? I think that's probably the problem right there. It's not lucrative.

It pays the bills. If you're a womyn-born-womyn, however, it's easier just to sign up for entitlement programs. Those pay the bills, too. I see it all the time. Sometimes this behavior is even encouraged by the individual's mother!

I wish it wasn't that way, but what is there to do? Get me a genie so I can wish to be a womyn-born-womyn so I'm not blamed for choices others make? Sure, why not. That's perfectly fine with me. Won't be statistically significant, but at least I won't be accused of sexism anymore.

I mean, look. I have literally been accused of sexism because the I wasn't willing to resign a job I had and just roll over into a gutter because a womyn-born-womyn who had absolutely no background in tech believed that merely by having a vagina, that'd make her better at the job because Ada Lovelace had a vagina, too!

Sometimes accusations of sexism can be deeply rooted in sexism itself.

This is a situation where feminism would have more credibility in pointing the finger of sexism just as soon as they get around to caring about what percentage of builders, plumbers, HVAC technicians, and diesel mechanics are womyn-born-womyn. Instead, it seems that feminists and white knights are doing little more than exploiting the "geek" stereotype and engaging in bullying.

There are plenty of geek girls out there. If they want money, they go into sales or medicine where there is money. If they want family, they know how to get pregnant and enroll in entitlements. They have no need for science and tech careers.

They also know every time I point this out, there's a white knight that will jump up to defend their victimization. Well, sure, let's try to get more womyn-born-womyn into CS careers. I'm not the best teacher, but I've pointed numerous womyn-born-womyn at languages like Python and offered to answer questions, just that doesn't appear to do jack shit about this problem.

Hell, once I was helping a womyn-born-womyn with her C homework. I compiled it and ran it on my computer and didn't get the same result she got. I found the error (buffer overflow iirc that worked on win32 but not on linux) and told her why we were getting different results, but she jumped on me and called me sexist! How the hell is pointing out a buffer overflow sexist?! (Really, think about that. Does it make you feel good to know that there's a programmer out there, programming computers, who thinks that a buffer overflow is a term I invented because I was trying to intimidate her and be sexist!? And that the only reason she gets away with it is because of her assigned gender and all the feminists and white knights backing her up! If it were a guy we'd just call him ignorant or an idiot or both and be done with it. Womyn-born-womyn have the privilege of being victims when they're objectively wrong.)

Just don't punish me for being assigned the wrong gender at birth in any more ways than I've already encountered, but that's exactly all anyone's ever proposed. If I don't roll over into a gutter and hand my job over to a womyn-born-womyn who doesn't have any experience or education, then I must be sexist and a misogynist!

I am so, so sick of it. I am an individual, and I am not accountable for the actions and choices of others. I am sick of being beaten over the head with Ada Lovelace for no other reason that my assigned gender and stupid choice of career. What's funny is that I've never, ever encountered a woman using Ada Lovelace as a weapon who even understands her Notes. Well, unless I count myself, but that's because I forgot to type out womyn-born-womyn in the previous sentence.

If I had been a womyn-born-womyn, I think I might have studied human language or maybe history instead of CS. Instead, I wound up in CS because I had a knack for it and I needed a paycheck. It's not somewhere I would be if I had understood how money works earlier in life and had been interested in that or if I were able to start a family without worrying about how to provide for one. I wonder how many other assigned males that's true of?

lol. You're not quite right on what the term means.

I don't understand why you get so riled up at the term "womyn-born-womyn." This is a term that was invented by feminists specifically to shame trans women.

Womyn on its own is the term you're describing. The -born-womyn thing gets thrown on because feminists like to make sure that trans women understand that they're not "really" members of the gender their mind is. So, I got the message!

What the term does is take gender out of the realm of biological and medical fact and turn it into a caste one must be born into.

Didn't click on your links, but one of the things I find hilarious about the whole "wage gap" thing is that in science and tech sectors, womyn-born-womyn are more guilty of it than assigned males!

If you're a womyn-born-womyn and you want to get a science or tech job, you'd better get interviewed by an assigned male, because he'll pay you more.

Yet, even though this is a problem womyn-born-womyn are perpetuating, perhaps even causing, we still refuse to hold them accountable. I think we need to start.

Well, you'd need to explain why then trans women do just fine in tech careers and why in other places womyn-born-womyn are doing ok as well.

Does the brain have a gender? Yes. However, it has nothing to do with ability or preference for one career or another. I can also tell you firsthand that the estrogen/testosterone thing is a complete and utter red herring.

You're looking in the wrong place in your attempt to be scientific. It's much more subtle than one chemical that gives you soft skin and another chemical that helps you build muscle.

Look at all the privileges womyn-born-womyn have.

If you could start a family with no means to provide for it, then run out on the person you had sex with to make the baby, get custody of the child practically by default (especially if you use the R word), and then live a middle class lifestyle going between minimum wage jobs, why would you want to screw yourself up with something as complex and difficult like tech and science? For what, especially when you're now a class of person that we view as infallible: a Mother?

That's just one example, but a pretty big one.

For example, in places womyn-born-womyn are at 50-50, genital mutilation is also a 50-50 industry from what I understand.

Maybe we need to start making womyn-born-womyn as expendable as assigned males are over here.

I'd also like to respond to another of your comments:

The problem is you're wrong. These things create differences, but these things do not create the differences we're looking at.

If they did, switching from testosterone to estrogen would change a person's entire personality or set of interests instead of just making it a little easier for them to cry. Trans folks would be utterly unable to fit into their assigned gender at all, although I'm not sure if that would be a good or bad thing. The things that do emerge in a child's behavior that don't match what's expected of his or her assigned gender are easy to overlook to the point of denial or humiliate and beat out at any rate. We also tend to have confirmation bias when somebody does something that we consider gendered.

Womyn-born-womyn would be getting into tech and science careers, but they need similar motivations to why a guy gets into these careers: he needs an income to support himself regardless of his interest or lack of interest.

What feminism and womyn-born-womyn have essentially done is to take the argument that since they're physically weaker and because they carry children, that they should be protected to an absurd level. When a womyn-born-womyn fails, look how we try to find somebody else to blame. When an assigned male fails, look at how quickly we are to blame him.

We're ok with homeless men. We aren't ok at all with homeless womyn-born-womyn. Why? Because feminism has so coupled the womyn-born-womyn with babies and destroyed the role of the father that we can't imagine doing anything else other than giving a womyn-born-womyn with a child entitlements. Far be it for us to even question what she was possibly thinking when she was sleeping with a guy without protection, without any way to support a baby, and without any intention of abortion.

Well, I can tell you what I've overheard straight from womyn-born-womyn: they were thinking $$$. Womyn-born-womyn aren't stupid.

That's a bit more powerful to think about than armchair pontifications about estrogen and testosterone.

What if those pressures are things that we're supposed to consider good such as welfare programs?

Would you still want to eliminate them?

In some of those countries where things are close to 50-50, womyn-born-womyn aren't protected from genital mutilation. Does that mean it's finally time to implement the American Academy of Pediatric's 2010 idea to legitimize the practice over here, too?

Yes, there are cultural reasons womyn-born-womyn avoid certain careers. I wonder how that would change if we took away entitlement programs that allow them to live the same lifestyle while working minimum wage (or not at all) they would otherwise have to work those careers to earn?

I mean, hell. Tell a womyn-born-womyn that she needs to afford her own birth control, and you've got a major political party trying to claim that's somehow basic healthcare.

We need to stop privileging womyn-born-womyn. We need to start telling them "tough shit, now get a job."

The only reason this wouldn't work is because men are ok with supporting a wife who doesn't have a career. Men would need to be ok with seeing a woman starve and taking her child from her the same way they're ok with seeing a man starve and taking his child from him.

Otherwise it looks like 10% is all you get. Not all womyn-born-womyn are the same, but boy howdy that must be something else to grow up knowing that having children isn't something you'll need to fight for and then realize that all you really need to do to become a Mother and get a Room of One's Own is to sleep with a guy who's had one too many beers. Thanks to feminism, nobody will think less of you, and they'll actually see you as the victim! Your parents will love you for giving them grandchildren! Nobody cares what's wrong here!

Hell, I've met womyn-born-womyn who have done this very intentionally and with guidance from their Mothers about how to sign up for all the best entitlements from sugar daddy government.

Welfare queens are real; it's just that their skin color is white so you don't mind and look the other way. Let's stop pretending that womyn-born-womyn are victims and start holding them accountable for their choices.

Shhh!

Next we might find out that womyn-born-womyn really aren't segregated and living in ghettoes in the bad part of town! Next we might find out that womyn-born-womyn actually have pretty much the same opportunities as the males in their families!

Who knew?!

Next we might even find out that when one is assigned the male gender, one realizes that one needs to get a job that's going to provide a decent income and work whether it's something one finds personally interesting or not, and that when one is able to become pregnant, minimum wage is good enough because nobody dares question a Mother.

If we want to solve this problem, we need to start questioning Mothers. We need to drasticly reduce spending on entitlement programs for Mothers. Require womyn-born-womyn to get skilled jobs regardless of their interest if they want to have children, and you'll see things change.

Eh, screw it. I have a feeling that womyn-born-womyn would rather wind up back in the kitchen than do something hard like math. It's true! I interact with so, so many womyn-born-womyn at work who can't do anything with numbers beyond the basic 4 operations. It's not because of estrogen or because of their womb or their period or anything stupid like that. It's because it's below them.

Oh, but that doesn't stop them from bashing me over the head with Ada Lovelace. Proprietary software having a problem? It couldn't possibly be the vendor, according to some womyn-born-womyn I work with, it must be my assigned gender! It must be a hormone I don't even have in my blood! If only a "woman" were in my position, then everything would be sunshine and rainbows!

These aren't individuals who are oppressed. These are individuals who are just quite simply above things like programming. After all, somebody will provide food and housing for them.

The triumph of feminism was transforming the source of that security from a good husband to the state. Feminism may have opened some doors along the way, and do we see some womyn-born-womyn who actually do want to do things like being a doctor or lawyer, but ultimately that's a side effect of what feminism wanted to do. Feminism is about the hegemony of one assigned gender over everyone else.

Feminism absolutely hates the idea that with equality might come accountability. The idea of a "room of one's own" is that because one is born with a womb, the world just owes one something, and since anyone assigned the male gender at birth is an evil rapist, regardless of the gender of the body part between their ears, regardless of what hormones are in their blood, regardless of whether they're revolted by intimacy with womyn-born-womyn the same way you'd be revolted if another guy tried to sleep with you, it's moral to demand that assigned males actually build the "room of one's own." The idea that one would work for the "room of one's own" is absolutely foreign to feminism.

I love it, and I think we need to do more to make womyn-born-womyn personally accountable for their lives. I say start kicking them the same way we'd kick a guy who was a bum. Put them in some pain if they don't start signing up for CS classes.

Maybe if we take away the womyn-born-womyn privilege of being able to start a family without any way to provide for it, we'd start seeing more womyn-born-womyn in tech. As it stands, why would somebody want to screw themselves up with a mountain of technical crap for a mediocre salary, when they can just get pregnant, work a minimum wage job, and live with about the same quality of life?

So yes, a womyn-born-womyn who wants to make her own income will get into medicine or become a lawyer. Womyn-born-womyn aren't stupid. They know the chances of being a rockstar like Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg or even making it past the quality of life they could enjoy on welfare by getting into science and tech jobs is miniscule.

We need to level the playing field. If we want to pour gobs of money into something to do that, let's cut back or eliminate entitlement programs, create work projects to say, address our crumbling infrastructure or even replace infrastructure, say copper with fiber, and let's see how womyn-born-womyn like it when they need to get one of those jobs they have no interest in if they want to eat.

It couldn't have anything to do with the fact that we expect anybody assigned the male gender at birth to be breadwinners and have no such expectations for womyn-born-womyn?

Why are there so many trans women in tech careers and no womyn-born-womyn? Perhaps it's something other than biology.

I believe this is a problem that feminism created for itself. Womyn-born-womyn know they don't need to learn a skill or trade in order to become Mothers, and oh how we shower Mothers as a society.

I hear in Iran, things are quite different. Maybe feminism would like it if we took some direction from them since whatever they're doing seems to be encouraging womyn-born-womyn to get into tech. Maybe we should implement the American Academy of Pediatrics' 2010 recommendation to legitimize the practice of female genital mutilation. Who knows what differences might exist because we mutilate one gender at birth and not the other; maybe we should just do both. Even the reactions womyn-born-womyn had to both the AAP's 2010 report and the AAP's 2012 male circumcision report. The AAP says, sure go ahead and mutilate little girls, and knees jerk until the cows come home. Say that men are better off circumcised, and you get a small army of womyn-born-womyn reporters smirking and nodding. After all, if we screw up when we're cutting a man's genitals and slip or wrose, he was just expantable anyway, and he probably wouldn't have been good in bed anyway, so who cares, right? It's utterly lost on womyn-born-womyn that if they hate having sex with intact men, why are they mutilating an infant instead of having this conversation with somebody they're dating?! Do these womyn-born-womyn plan to have sex with the infant?

No. It's about control. Womyn-born-womyn love that nothing as horrible as a botched circumcision could ever happen to them, and they love it. If we waited until the child was a bit older, the child might protest or the child might be aware that a part of his body that he needed was amputated and that it's not normal for his glans to constantly hurt.

That's just the beginning of all the stupid, artificial ways we've decided to create gender. Maybe it's because of the cisgender blind spot, but I don't know that I care anymore. When womyn-born-womyn are telling me that my skill with computers is because of a chemical that's not in my blood or because of a body part that's been mutilated that I'm seeking to remove entirely what should I fucking do?

Womyn-born-womyn love how things have turned out.

I don't know if they do this in Iran, but maybe we should force womyn-born-womyn to play sports that they hate whether they like it or not. Maybe we should take away their privilege of wearing their hair however they want it and tell them they're just ditry hippies if they want it to be long. I suppose I could go on.

How about if a womyn-born-womyn gets pregnant and she can't afford to provide for the child, we take the child from her instead of giving her cash and housing? That might shake up the career and life choices that womyn-born-womyn make!

None of these things has anything to do with biology and everything to do with the post-feminist culture we've created where anyone assigned the male gender at birth is expendable and womyn-born-womyn are privileged brats.

The problem with every single one of these damned threads are people like GP who start off well enough pointing to all the data that proves that male and female brains are wired differently, but then completely misses what those data are saying as you've aptly pointed out.

Those data aren't saying that women are better or worse at xyz or are biologically predestined to be interested in something or other. What those data are saying is that the brain has a gender, too. Now, if only I could get MRAs to look at their own very good data and come to a more sensible conclusion: that the male gender is not more authentic than the female gender---that anyone who does not desire living as the male gender is not somehow a commie pinko feminist. But whatever, that's another rant and I could have replied to GP if I'd wanted to post that.

However, I think you're wrong, too, because lumping women and minorities together is brain damaged at best. Minorities (including minority women) face completely different problems than white women do. In fact, at times the problems facing both groups are completely and utterly inverted.

Look at arrest rates. If you're black, you're probably going to be arrested. I know firsthand what it's like knowing that walking into a business I've never been in before might get the cops called on me for no other reason than my unusual appearance. At least for me, I can go for a little while before a store owner will realize that I'm not a womyn-born-womyn, freak out, and call the cops. I can only hope to imagine what it must be like to have a skin color that would get you refused service at the counter because of what some moron Christian believes about some story in Genesis about how their god made some guy black because he was wicked and was meant to be a slave as his punishment.

And no, don't tell me that nobody seriously believes that shit. They do. And the more the economy tanks, the more of them there are.

Now, white women on the other hand are something utterly different. This may surprise you as well, but go actually interact with some real white womyn-born-womyn and you'll see this too. Their Mothers give them all the information they need to become Mothers themselves. It's easy for them to do, and it's a guaranteed paycheck from the government, guaranteed subsidized housing, and guaranteed food on the table. As a bonus, if she can bring on enough of the crocodile tears in front of a judge, she'll even get the father's (or some other guy she was cheating on him with) wages garnished and sent her way too!

Womyn-born-womyn, by and large, know that they don't need skilled jobs for a living. This is the problem we've created by listening to the feminists and coddling womyn-born-womyn, putting them on pedistals, and letting them get away with just doing whatever the fuck they want. I won't say they don't have self-discipline; they do. These are the daughters of Mothers, and they've been given everything they need by being assigned the female gender at birth with a reproductive system on the inside.

Think about it. If we didn't force boys to get their hair cut instead of letting them wear it however they want like girls can, how would you ever tell the difference between a boy or a girl before the age of 10?

We listened to the feminists, presumed womyn-born-womyn to be damsels in distress and oppressed, despite enjoying the same socioeconomic status as men born to similar situations, and it turns out that individuals who don't need skilled jobs to afford to live and have children, won't .

That is why there are no womyn-born-womyn in tech jobs. Trans women get into these jobs just fine. What the fuck is wrong with womyn-born-womyn and why should we care? They've decided they don't need to be a part of the tech sector, and why should we force them?

Or, as I've said before, maybe we do need to force them. If I had been a womyn-born-womyn, I would have studied human languages instead. That's really where my interest lies. However, when you're assigned the male gender, we expect you to work, and that means you don't get to just do whatever the fuck you want. That means you get yourself a skill, whether you're "interested" in it or not, and you go out there and fucking make some money. Why don't we start forcing womyn-born-womyn to get skills and real jobs?

The problem it solves as I see it is being able to pay someone else without needing them to be a merchant or needing to send a check or money order in the mail or needing to hit them up at their place and give them some USD.

Paypal attempts to solve the problem, but as we all know here on /. is not to be trusted.

Bit/doge/prime/lite/whatevercoin have almost the same characteristics as gold. Those calling them a pyramid scheme might as well call gold a pyramid scheme. It's not. It's simply a scarce resource with a nearly finite supply.

I'm sure the first man with a gold vein in the back of his cave got accused of starting a pyramid scheme, too, when folks started switching from barter or seashells or what have you to gold.

Getting back on topic, I've been looking into cryptocurrency more lately. I just got my first 500 DOGE (no, it's not worth much of jack shit other than me mucking around and getting familiar with the practical aspects) the other day. Looking around exchanges and the other currencies supported by my mining pool, I found myself scratching my head at the idea that there are SO MANY different cryptocurrencies.

I think what it'll come down to is that a currency that's new will remain worthless because mining is trivial. My 500 DOGE won't even get me an appreciable fraction of a bitcoin. Why? Bitcoins are much, much harder to mine. I suppose it boils down to the question of why we value gold and silver so highly, then copper to an extent, but not aluminium or iron. (Assuming all metalurgical aspects being equal, which they aren't obviously.)

Also one thing that's constantly discussed on dogecoin's freenode channel is that as the price of BTC continues to rise, the price of DOGE declines. What's really happening is that the price of DOGE is remaining steady in terms of USD, but most (all?) exchanges will only exchange BTC or LTC to USD, so if I want to get my penny's worth of DOGE, I'd need to convert to BTC first.

I have, many, many times over. It's extremely frustrating.

These are individuals who believe that somebody assigned the male gender at birth has some kind of fundamentally male "stuff," and somebody assigned the female gender at birth has some kind of fundamentally female "stuff." Then they go on and extrapolate from there into snips, snails, puppy dog tails, sugar, spice, and everything nice. For example, these individuals often bristle at the "dead-beat dad," but the concept of a dead-beat mom hasn't even occurred to them. Our welfare system and family courts play into this. If you're a Mother, then you can count on the state providing for you: welfare, food stamps, subsidized housing, and garnishing the wages of the father. Nobody expects that you make $20-$30 per hour, say, to earn assistance. If you're a male who was tricked into impregnating a Mother, well, you better hope you make at least $30/hour, because anything less than that is being a "dead-beat."

Here's one way you can tease out the anti-male and womyn-born-womyn victimhood bias in our culture. Read the article "My Hair Is My Accomplishment." Then ask yourself these questions. Womyn-born-womyn can choose to wear their hair short or long, but why do they choose long? How do we view an assigned male who wears his or her hair long? Who forces womyn-born-womyn to put on uncomfortable heels in the morning? That article blames all assigned males, but think about those things critically.

Looks like there's nothing but partisan hacks who can't comprehend anything more complicated than a 5 word sound byte in this discussion.

Let me summarize what I just read, even as implied in TFA. Obama and anyone who opposed the Keystone XL pipeline are at fault for the explosion and not the rail company.

Because it's impossible to improve rail safety. Because it's impossible to address the concerns raised about the Keystone XL pipeline. Because from what I can gather big oil has decided to throw a temper trantrum because they didn't get the instant gratification of having *their* way *now* and many of our right-wing authoritarian members here are in full "authoritarian aggression" mode carrying out that temper tantrum.

Why, in this day and age of information technology and satellite tracking systems, do we have trains colliding with each other AT ALL?

Oh, I know why, because a good deal of you posting today, and you know exactly who you are, are too busy holding the POTUS and environmentalists and hippies and anybody else you don't like accountable while giving the rail company an implicit pass.

Jeebus. Oil *will* run out some day. The shit fits some of you are having are so utterly stupid. We need to reduce our reliance on pumping crude out of the ground NOW. The best ways we have of doing that is nuclear fission and biodiesel (NOT corn, there are better ways to make the stuff--apparently an algea process or hemp if I recall are the most promising, so take your pick). Then we can still have the crude for better uses than just literally burning it up while we figure out how to replace those things with alternatives then too.

The paranoid, outraged, partisan world some of you live in is frightening.

I refuse to believe that in some abstract sense a species that can put one of their own on their own moon and has sent robots all over its home solar system can't tackle the problem of growing energy demands and dwindling supply of the easiest energy source available. Thank goodness we live in a world where crude oil from the ground isn't the only energy source and when it's gone it doesn't need to be all over, go back an live in caves! Thank goodness there are other ways! However, take that same species, convince them they're all "temporarily embarassed millionaires" and then pit them against each other on issues as asinine as how to get something safely from point A to point B and then convince them that if their side doesn't win, they'll never be millionaires again!, then we are headed straight for another dark age.

And this shit is only gonna get worse in 2014, isn't it? At least maybe in a few years I'll be able to buy some cannabis downtown so I can just tune all this shit out and be happy and drugged (no, not all of us who are interested in using it know where to get it).

Have to admit, that would be the best possible private sector "bail out" one could hope for. Better than throwing it at Wall Street. Just imagine all the science that would get done with a rescue mission.

But yes, this does seem to be utterly foolhardy. On the other hand, I can barely imagine how thrilling it would be to live on another world for even a year or two, even if it were a death sentence.

We'll get there some day, just probably not in this century. Maybe something like asteroid mining would create enough of a need to see it happen, assuming that asteroid mining ever becomes necessary. Small moves.

I'd really like to know the answer to #3.

Off the top of my head, I don't understand why they don't have a private key known only to the bus/station equipment that does the reading/writing of the amount on the card and some kind of incrementing or rotating ID to prevent replay attacks/card cloning? Each bus could have an ID and a counter, then each morning distribute to a system on each bus the bus/counter combinations that have already been used maybe say in the past 3 or so months depending on how much data that would be and how much storage would be available on the bus. Make sure to design in some key rotation of the private key as well. Sure, it's not perfect and probably has attack vectors I'd need a second set of eyes to catch, but it's better than this and doesn't require any wireless anything except maybe at the station (or a USB thumb drive would work just fine to get the lists to the busses in the morning). Why isn't there a market for a more secure system?

Is there really something about a solution along those lines that would cost an order of magnitude more than the existing equipment or at least more than these flawed systems cost bus operators both in lost revenue and paying the lawyers?

BUT, I guess implementing a system that would require some serious effort on the part of a criminal to circumvent doesn't play as easily into the American narrative of poor folks and their lack of virtue and lives of petty crime. I also don't have any family in government or backroom connections that would get me the contract, either. Maybe that's sadly the answer to #3.

That leads us to an answer to #2 and sort of to #1 as well: it's more satisfying to Americans to create a flawed system and catch people in the act of exploiting that system than it is to just implement a system that's too difficult to circumvent.