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Comment Silly (Score 1) 162

This is kind of a silly question.
If development has taught me anything, it is that you can't account for every use case, and unless you're releasing something particularly tiny, you can't have a contingency for every foreseeable misuse.
Easiest solution: The robot provides one drink for one coupon or ticket. It is up to the owner of the robot to control how those tickets are distributed and managed.
Machine for the automated part, while a human handles the human problems.

Comment Re:Pointing fingers at problems (Score 1) 493

"Real girls don't like science" or "Girls are much better at socializing than quantifying"
You know, I hear this kind of stuff all the time from adults, but I can't think of a single time that I've ever uttered those words to either of my daughters. When they do well on any test, we say, "Good job, you're very smart." When they don't do so well on a test, we say, "You know this material, you'll do better next time."
I don't think I've ever told them, "Oh its ok, you're a girl and girls can't maths," when they bring home a less-than-stellar math test. I've also never said, "Of course you did well on that spelling test, girls are better at verbalizing than boys!"
My parents (boomers), were pretty identical in the feedback they gave my brother and sister. Just curious about where these pockets of gender-bias actually still exist and thrive. Teachers are predominately female, so I can't imagine female teachers are telling female students they can't do math. I hope there aren't parents actively discouraging their daughters from the sciences.

Comment Re:Sooner or Later ... (Score 2) 182

Unfortunately, that someone will also have to deal with a very angry China.
China may be frustrated with the DPRK, but by-and-large, China is able to control the stability of most of the entire pacific rim region by proxy through North Korea.
Someone else already mentioned the inevitable razing of Seoul that will occur when the Korean war goes hot again. The situation is a mess, and the only resolution that won't result in the ROK getting toasted is a slow decaying collapse in the North. :-(

Comment Wait what? (Score 4, Informative) 248

"... that reading the material "would not assist the Court in deciding the pending Motion to Dismiss (PDF) because it is not an appropriate means to test the scope of the assertion of the State Secrets privilege.""
Actually, that is precisely what letting the judge read the criteria would do.
I suspect that the real problem is that the criteria used for being added to the No-Fly list are overbroad and arbitrary. The secret here is that the No-Fly list is a farce.

Comment Re:iTunes U (Score 3, Interesting) 82

I don't typically feed the trolls, but I'll bite on this one.
Don't like itunes? Fine. Don't use it.

Material from Khan Academy and MIT are freely accessible on youtube.
MIT's Open Courseware got me through DiffEQ (professor was a researcher who had the burden of a single class to justify his presence on campus...).
If there are concerns about vulnerabilities in Flash, I came across multiple helpful documents in plain ol' HTML while I was going to school. A motivated student can find what they need. An idiot will complain about resources that are essentially available at no extra cost to them.

Comment Generous effort but... (Score 2) 376

[TLDR: Bravo Google, but I think we're attacking the issue on the wrong side]
offering a free pass into code school for underrepresented groups is touching the problem too late.
If Google were genuinely interested in generating a more diverse, technically sharp population, they'd be looking at elementary, middle, and high schools (notice the AND). Education is an iterative process, adults that love to code and code well are either savants, or have had a decent education growing up. This doesn't mean we need One Laptop Per Kindergartener, but it would help if there were learning materials and dedicated staff in elementary schools. It would help if there were rudimentary computer labs in middle schools that did more than surf a subset of the internet. It would help if math was as celebrated as sports in high schools.
Many of the people who will be taking these coding classes will not have had the background in math that strengthens critical, algorithmic thinking - it doesn't mean they can't develop that thinking, but so long as their background is limited to the 'last step' (learning to code), they will continue to be hired on as quota-fillers.
I do applaud Google for doing something. Giving these underrepresented groups easier access to some kind of technical education should have a positive effect on the observed hiring-disparities. However, addressing the issue at this 'last step' level will not be nearly as powerful as improving the limping-machine that is our public education system.
I do think we are overly concerned with the racial make-up of [company x]. Most companies are going to hire the candidate that will help them make the most money. The lack of diversity in [company x] is likely reflecting the lack of a skillset in population subsets y and z. The lack of diversity is a symptom, not the problem. It's just easier to point an angry finger at [big faceless corporation] than at our own communities.

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