If you haven't heard it, you haven't been listening. The government routinely argues discriminatory lending cases on just such a basis.

Then it should be trivial for you to provide evidence of this claim. I'll wait...

If not that, then what should the number of black, female, etc. employees in software development be?

Quoting from a comment above:
"Instead of general population as the criterion, if you use STEM graduates of the top 100 or 200 US colleges, the percentages might not look so terrible for Google. If Google could say, "our workforce reflects the talent pool we recruit from" and that argument is accepted it would be good."

That's exactly the criterion that should be used. The question of whether racial minorities are being hired at an appropriate rate is different than the question of whether racial minorities are graduating with the necessary qualifications an an appropriate rate.

They are very different questions with very different solutions. Expecting companies to hire unqualified candidates because of government mandated is just another form of charity, which should not be the responsibility of private industry. This issue just gives the government an easy scapegoat and avoid the real issue: the education system in the USA has serious issues and nobody is willing to do anything about it.

Nope. Having the wrong gender/race mix is prima facie evidence of wrongdoing in a civil suit.

Reference?

Every legal precedent I can find regarding discrimination requires the prosecutor to show that equivalent candidates were systematically approved/rejected on the basis of race. I have never seen a legal argument made based on the racial characteristics of an employers workforce.

If that were a valid legal argument, I would expect to see many more lawsuits of sexism in heavily male or female dominated industries.

Says who? I have never seen anything remotely like that used as a legal argument. Do you have evidence for this assertion?

The federal government has every business doing commercial product R&D that won't pay off in the short term, but that may very well reap huge benefits in the long term. When the average tenure of an S&P 500 CEO is only 10 years (https://www.creditdonkey.com/ceo-statistics.html), they have no interest in investing in technologies that may only pay off in 20, 30 or 50 years.

Unfortunately, that's exactly the kind of investment humanity needs right now....long term, speculative innovation.

Or we could just stick our head in the sands, say that black is white, coal is clean, news is fake and we've always been at war with eastasia. Maybe that will work out for us.

history has only one very dubious record of a man recovering after being stabbed to death.

Jesus Christ, who was that?!?!

It sounds like the plot of a terrible book.

And the money has to come from SOMEWHERE.

We also know that a segment of the population, given the option to do nothing WILL DO NOTHING.

Even if this is true (and I don't believe it's been proven so), these people are already costing society. Either in tax dollars going towards welfare programs or tax dollars going towards police forces / incarceration.

It's entirely possible that there is a segment of the population that will do nothing. Do you really believe this segment is doing something productive in the absence of universal basic income? Alternately, there are likely some people who want to do something productive, but lack the means to obtain the basic necessities required to gain employment.

Now, I'm not saying universal basic income is a good idea or a bad idea. We don't know whether it works or not, but it very arguably has the potential to save money in the long run. Isn't that a good reason to study it?

Who are these imaginary people who "get all their browsing needs served locally" anyway?

I can't think of anyone I know who would want/use such a thing.

Disclaimer: I have siblings, but they don't look like me.

You should ask your mom about that sometime :-)

Exactly!

And never mind media creators, do you know what I found out that exists....pizza restaurants that ALSO run a delivery service!

And I just found out that the company that owns Steam ALSO makes video games!

And you can download Debian directly from the Debian website!!!

When will the atrocities end?!?! How has the government let these anti-competitive reight-wing regimes exist for so long?

I'm gonna go watch "The Defenders" on Netflix just to calm myself down. At least Netflix isn't part of this whole "Produce content and distribute it" conspiracy.

You don't "test" math proofs. They are either true, or they are not. If they have errors, then you got good ol' TPATWTCIF.

Wait, are you saying the P vs NP proof is not verifiable in polynomial time? :-)

So just for fun, I tried it.

Did he happen to ignore the popup with the big yellow exclamation mark that says:
"Are you sure you want to discard ALL changes? This is IRREVERSIBLE!"

At the very least the ALL CAPS WITH EXCLAMATION MARK! should have possibly made him think "Hmmm...this seems to be a pretty important question"

But apparently he decided: "Ah, screw it. It's only 3 months of my life".

Given that level of skill, I can't think much of importance was lost.

Unit for unit, on small runs, cassette tape is WAY cheaper than any other medium.

Where the heck are you getting your cassette tapes produced?

The article indicates small runs cost around $2/unit. That's around the same price I've seen online.

I can get CD's produced for as low as $0.50/unit.

About three million illegal aliens cast votes in the election

You have proof of this? Or at least evidence?

Now, think about it, who will be taken seriously? The oil companies funneling funds into information that is alarming where they have an interest in the "new products" that will be designed to overcome it

Are you seriously suggesting that oil companies are funneling funds into studies where the conclusion supports AGW?

Seriously?

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA
(catch breath)
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