theodp writes: In a Monday blog post, the outgoing Head of Education for Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's Chan Zuckerberg Initiative made the claim that "we've made investments that enabled our partners to double the number of Black and Latinx students and girls taking AP Computer Science." The claim is an apparent reference to the highly-promoted and wildly-successful new AP Computer Science Principles course (dubbed "Coding Lite" by the NY Times), which the NSF and College Board began development on in 2009. Zuckerberg's CZI LLC was created in late 2015.

An anonymous reader quotes the official Rust blog: The Rust team is happy to announce a new version of Rust, 1.23.0... New year, new Rust! For our first improvement today, we now avoid some unnecessary copies in certain situations. We've seen memory usage of using rustc to drop 5-10% with this change; it may be different with your programs... The documentation team has been on a long journey to move rustdoc to use CommonMark. Previously, rustdoc never guaranteed which markdown rendering engine it used, but we're finally committing to CommonMark. As part of this release, we render the documentation with our previous renderer, Hoedown, but also render it with a CommonMark compliant renderer, and warn if there are any differences.
A few new APIs were also stabilized in this release -- see the complete release notes here -- and you no longer need to import the trait AsciiExt to provide ASCII-related functionality on u8, char, [u8], and str.

The Rust blog made another announcement earlier this week. "As open source software becomes more and more ubiquitous and popular, the Rust team is interested in exploring new and innovative ways to solicit community feedback and participation." So while defining Rust's roadmap for 2018, "we'd like to try something new in addition to the RFC process: a call for community blog posts for ideas of what the goals should be."

An anonymous reader quotes the official Rust blog: Rust's development in 2017 fit into a single overarching theme: increasing productivity, especially for newcomers to Rust. From tooling to libraries to documentation to the core language, we wanted to make it easier to get things done with Rust. That desire led to a roadmap for the year, setting out 8 high-level objectives that would guide the work of the team. How'd we do? Really, really well.
Aaron Turon, part of the core developer team for Rust, wrote the blog post, and specifically touts this year's progress on lowering the learning curve with books and curriculum, as well as actual improvements in the language and a faster edit-compile-debug cycle. He also notes new support for Rust in IntelliJ and Atom (as well as preview versions for Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code) in 2017 -- and most importantly, mentoring. I'd like to specifically call out the leaders and mentors who have helped orchestrate our 2017 work. Leadership of this kind -- where you are working to enable others -- is hard work and not recognized enough. So let's hand it to these folks...! Technical leaders are an essential ingredient for our success, and I hope in 2018 we can continue to grow our leadership pool, and get even more done -- together.

An anonymous reader writes: A column on the Wall Street Journal argues that sexism in the tech industry is as old as the tech industry itself. At its genesis, computer programming faced a double stigma -- it was thought of as menial labor, like factory work, and it was feminized, a kind of "women's work" that wasn't considered intellectual (Editor's note: the link could be paywalled; alternative source). In the U.K., women in the government's low-paid "Machine Operator Class" performed knowledge work including programming systems for everything from tax collection and social services to code-breaking and scientific research. Later, they would be pushed out of the field, as government leaders in the postwar era held a then-common belief that women shouldn't be allowed into higher-paid professions with long-term prospects because they would leave as soon as they were married. Today, in the U.S., about a quarter of computing and mathematics jobs are held by women, and that proportion has been declining over the past 20 years. A string of recent events suggest the steps currently being taken by tech firms to address these issues are inadequate.

"James Damore opens up about his regrets -- and how autism may have shaped his experience of the world," writes the west coast bureau chief for the Guardian. An anonymous reader quotes their report: The experience has prompted some introspection. In the course of several weeks of conversation using Google's instant messaging service, which Damore prefers to face-to-face communication, he opened up about an autism diagnosis that may in part explain the difficulties he experienced with his memo. He believes he has a problem understanding how his words will be interpreted by other people... It wasn't until his mid-20s, after completing research in computational biology at Princeton and MIT, and starting a PhD at Harvard, that Damore was diagnosed with autism, although he was told he had a milder version of the condition known as "high-functioning autism"...

Damore argues that Google's focus on avoiding "micro-aggressions" is "much harder for someone with autism to follow". But he stops short of saying autistic employees should be given more leniency if they unintentionally offend people at work. "I wouldn't necessarily treat someone differently," he explains. "But it definitely helps to understand where they're coming from." I ask Damore if, looking back over the last few months, he feels that his difficult experience with the memo and social media may be related to being on the spectrum. "Yeah, there's definitely been some self-reflection," he says. "Predicting controversies requires predicting what emotional reaction people will have to something. And that's not something that I excel at -- although I'm working on it."

theodp writes: Most TV computer scientists are still white men," USA Today reports. "Google wants to change that. Google is calling on Hollywood to give equal screen time to women and minorities after a new study the internet giant funded found that most computer scientists on television shows and in the movies are played by white men. The problem with the hackneyed stereotype of the socially inept, hoodie-clad white male coder? It does not inspire underrepresented groups to pursue careers in computer science, says Daraiha Greene, Google CS in Media program manager, multicultural strategy." According to a Google-funded study conducted by Prof. Stacy L. Smith and the Media, Diversity, & Social Change Initiative at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, Google's Computer Science in Media team conducted "CS interventions" with "like-minded people" to create "Google influenced storytelling." The executive summary for a USC study entitled Cracking the Code: The Prevalence and Nature of Computer Science Depictions in Media notes that "Google influenced" TV programs include HBO's Silicon Valley and AMC's Halt and Catch Fire. The USC researchers also note that "non-tech focused programs may offer prime opportunities to showcase CS in unique and counter-stereotypical ways. As the Google Team moves forward in its work with series such as Empire, Girl Meets World, Gortimer Gibbons Life on Normal Street, or The Amazing Adventures of Gumball, it appears the Team is seizing these opportunities to integrate CS into storytelling without a primary tech focus." The study adds, "In the case of certain series, we provided on-going advisement. The Fosters, Miles from Tomorrowland, Halt and Catch Fire, Ready, Jet, Go, The Powerpuff Girls and Odd Squad are examples of this. In addition to our continuing interactions, we engaged in extensive PR and marketing support including social media outreach, events and press."

Google's TV interventions have even spilled over into public education -- one of Google-sponsored Code.org's signature Hour of Code tutorials last December was Gumball's Coding Adventure, inspired by the Google-advised Cartoon Network series, The Amazing Adventures of Gumball. "We need more students around the world pursuing an education in CS, particularly girls and minorities, who have historically been underrepresented in the field," explains a Google CS First presentation for educators on the search giant's Hour of Code partnership with Cartoon Network. "Based on our research, one of the reasons girls and underrepresented minorities are not pursuing computer science is because of the negative perception of computer scientists and the relevance of the field beyond coding." According to a 2015 USC report, President Obama was kept abreast of efforts to challenge media's stereotypical portrayals of women; White House Visitor Records show that USC's Smith, the Google-funded study's lead author, and Google CS Education in Media Program Manager Julie Ann Crommett (now at Disney) were among those present when the White House Council on Women and Girls met earlier that year with representatives of the nation's leading toy makers, media giants, retailers, educators, scientists, the U.S. Dept. of Education, and philanthropists.

New submitter Kant shares a report: The codebase for popular Node.js JavaScript runtime has been forked again -- the second time in less than three years -- with a growing number of contributors charging that the Technical Steering Committee (TSC) leadership is ignoring repeated violations of the project's code of conduct. The new project, called Ayo will be managed under an open governance model. The complaints centered around ongoing behavior of NodeSource Director of Engineering, and Node.js TSC member Rod Vagg. The TSC received multiple complaints from Node.js members about a Tweet from Vagg promoting a Men's Rights Activist-slanted article, one that cast doubt on the validity of project Code-of-Conducts. In that Tweet, Vagg commented "If you've never considered the potential downsides of codes of conduct, here's a good place to start." [...] On August 21, The TSC voted on whether or not to remove Vagg from its ranks. Of the 10 TSC members who voted, 60 percent voted against removing Rod from the TSC and 60 percent voted against asking Rod to voluntarily resign. That the TSC voted to keep Vagg on the committee inflamed others in the project. One committee member, Myles Borins, resigned in protest. The decision to keep Vagg "undermines our Conduct Guidelines, drives away potential contributors, and in my opinion undermines the Committee's ability to govern," he wrote in a blog post. In a post further explaining the need for the forked Ayo project, developer Rudolf Olah explained that "Driving away contributors can be fatal in the open source world where most developers are essentially using their free time and volunteering to contribute. It is already difficult enough to attract contributors to smaller projects and larger projects, such as Node.js, need to be careful to make all contributors feel welcome."

According to a report from The New York Times, Hollywood continues to praise plus-sized actresses in knockout roles and then reduce them to bit parts about physical weight. Slashdot reader cdreimer shares an excerpt from the report: The first thing Danielle Macdonald did at the Cannes Film Festival in May was break into a cold sweat: The airline had lost her luggage. She was already nervous enough. Ms. Macdonald, 26, had been plucked from obscurity to play the lead role in "Patti Cake$," a drama about a rapper that was about to face the Cannes critics. Now she had to find something glamorous to wear -- pronto -- to the premiere. "As a bigger girl," Ms. Macdonald told me recently, "where was I meant to find something that would fit?" Her story then veered in an unexpected direction -- revealing her approach to Hollywood, which expects its lead actresses to be scarily skinny. "I gave myself a pep talk," she said. "This situation is what it is. Find a way to work around it." The red carpet crisis was resolved (another "Patti Cake$" star, Cathy Moriarty, lent her a black dress), but if the experiences of countless actresses before Ms. Macdonald are any indication, it will not be as easy to overcome the career obstacles that await her post-"Patti Cake$."

For women -- less so for men -- weight is perhaps the most stubborn of the entertainment industry's many biases. Have an average-sized body? Call us when you've starved yourself. In particular, Ms. Macdonald must avoid a cycle that plays out over and over in moviedom, one that some film agents coarsely call the fat flavor of the moment. A plus-size actress, almost always an unknown, lands the central role in a film and delivers a knockout performance. She is held up by producers and the entertainment news media as refreshing, long overdue evidence that Hollywood's insistence on microscopic waistlines is ending. And then she is slowly but surely pushed into bit parts, many of which are defined by weight.

An anonymous reader writes: An engineer at Google's Mountain View headquarters circulated a 3,400-word essay internally that argued a "moral bias" exists at Google that's "shaming dissenters" and silencing their voices against "encroaching extremist and authoritarian policies." It attributes the gender gap in technology to biology-based differences in abilities (such as "speaking up" and "leading") and different personality traits (including "neuroticism"). Its suggested remedies include "Stop alienating conservatives" (calling it "non-inclusive" and "bad business because conservatives tend to be higher in conscientiousness"), and it also suggests as a solution to "de-emphasize empathy" (which "causes us to focus on anecdotes, favor individuals similar to us, and harbor other irrational and dangerous biases").

As the essay leaked over the weekend, former Google engineer Yonatan Zunger identified its anonymous author as "not someone senior," saying the author didn't seem to understand gender -- or engineering -- or what's going to happen next. "Essentially, engineering is all about cooperation, collaboration, and empathy for both your colleagues and your customers. If someone told you that engineering was a field where you could get away with not dealing with people or feelings, then I'm very sorry to tell you that you have been lied to... It's true that women are socialized to be better at paying attention to people's emotional needs and so on -- this is something that makes them better engineers, not worse ones... You need to learn the difference between 'I think we should adopt Go as our primary language' and 'I think one-third of my colleagues are either biologically unsuited to do their jobs, or if not are exceptions and should be suspected of such until they can prove otherwise to each and every person's satisfaction.'"
The leaked internal essay is now being discussed in literally dozens of news outlets. Click through for some official responses, including leaked reactions from Google's VP of Engineering, from Google's new VP of Diversity, Integrity & Governance -- and from Slashdot's readers.

lxw56 writes: Garmin engineer Srinivas Kuchibhotla was shot and killed at a local bar in Olathe, Kansas, the U.S. headquarters of Garmin. Co-worker Alok Madasani was also injured along with bystander Ian Grillot, who attempted to help the men. "The suspect in the shooting, Adam Purinton, was drinking at the bar in Olathe, Kansas, at about 7:15 p.m. that night," reports The Verge. "A witness said he yelled 'get out of my country' to two of the victims, reportedly saying the men, believed to originally be from India, were 'Middle Eastern.'" In 2015, Garmin employed 2,700 workers in Olathe and has plans to double this number, which the article notes has led to "increasing diversity" in the community.

An anonymous reader shares a report on The Guardian: Top tech companies are talking to grassroots organisations across the globe to organise a fightback on their platforms against online abuse, hate speech, misogyny and stalking. Facebook, Twitter and Google are reaching out to women's groups, NGOs and communities in Africa, America, India, Europe and the Middle East as the scale of abuse online continues to increase. But their attempts to foster a "counter-speech" movement to challenge the violent misogyny, racism, threats, intimidation and abuse that flood social media platforms have prompted some of the communities they are trying to empower to question whether they are ducking their own responsibilities. Sarah Green, of the End Violence against Women coalition, said: "Any moves by social media companies to support, encourage and empower individuals and groups to resist and counter abuse is very welcome."

HughPickens.com writes: Scores of women have reported assaults by Uber drivers... Now Jenni Avins reports at Quartz that a ride-sharing service that only uses women as drivers, Chariot for Women, is set to launch April 19 in Boston, featuring more stringent background checks and additional steps to ensure riders correctly match with their drivers.... "[U]nlike other services, Chariot for Women features a patent-pending technology that will provide both users and drivers with a code after a request is made that will need to be verified upon starting the ride," reports Glamour. But "whether it's legal or not is a different question," says Joseph L. Sulman. Quartz reports that "According to civil rights lawyers, Chariot for Women's female-only policies could put it squarely in the crosshairs of gender discrimination lawsuits, which would be difficult to win." Founder Michael Pelletz says he welcomes the legal challenge. "We want to show there's inequality in safety in our industry," says Pelletz. "We hope to go to the US Supreme Court to say that if there's safety involved, there's nothing wrong with providing a service for women."

An anonymous reader writes: A Sony employee created a custom PlayStation controller for a 21-year-old gamer with cerebral palsy. "I honestly got choked up reading the letter..." gamer Peter Byrne told 9News. "Mr Nawabi really cared about my situation and did this on his own time to make my experience better." On his old PlayStation 4 controller, Byrne kept inadvertently pausing the game whenever his left hand hit the touchpad. "It killed me to hear how something you used to enjoy thoroughly was being ruined because of our new controller design," Sony's Alex Nawabi wrote back in a letter, including a new controller with the original touchpad re-rerouted to the back. Nawabi spent 10 hours assembling parts from three different controllers, adding "Since I've torn the controller apart to modify it, the warranty is no longer valid... I'm not sure how long this will last." But Nawabi promised that he's already planning to also build one more replacement controller.

An anonymous reader writes from an article on TechCrunch: Microsoft hired a bunch of women wearing very little clothing to dance and socialize with people at the company's official Game Developers Conference after-party last night in San Francisco, Business Insider reports. Phil Spencer, head of Xbox, said in a statement to TechCrunch. "At Xbox-hosted events at GDC this past week, we represented Xbox and Microsoft in a way that was not consistent or aligned to our values. It was unequivocally wrong and will not be tolerated. I know we disappointed many people and I'm personally committed to holding ourselves to higher standards. We must ensure that diversity and inclusion are central to our everyday business and core values. We will do better in the future." What's problematic is that Microsoft chose to throw a party that clearly caters to heterosexual men by hiring women as objects of sex.

StartsWithABang writes: Geoff Marcy. Tim Slater. Christian Ott. And a great many more who are just waiting to be publicly exposed for what they've done (and in many cases, are still doing). Does it mean that astronomy has a harassment problem? Of course it does, but that's not the real story. The real story is that, for the first time, an entire academic field is recognizing a widespread problem, taking steps to change its policies, and is beginning to support the victims, rather than the senior, more famous, more prestigious perpetrators. Astronomy is the just start; hopefully physics, computer science, engineering, philosophy and economics are next.

AmiMoJo writes On Monday, imageboard site 8chan's "baphomet" subboard, an Internet destination known for hosting aggressive "doxing" posts, received a major history wipe the day after one of its users posted the personal information of a federal judge in the Silk Road case. A follow-up post by baphomet's "Board Owner" account stated that "HW," a reference to site founder Frederick "hotwheels" Brennan, deleted "the SSN posts" and told the baphomet board founder, previously identified via an associated Twitter handle as Benjamin Biddix, to "lay low." The same day baphomet's "Board Owner" announced a "doxing for hire" service due to "running low on funds."

AmiMoJo writes: On Friday, developer and doxing victim Zoe Quinn launched an online "anti-harassment task force" toolset, staffed by volunteers familiar with such attacks, to assist victims of a recent swell of "doxing" and "swatting" attacks. The Crash Override site, built by Quinn and game developer Alex Lifschitz, offers free services from "experts in information security, white hat hacking, PR, law enforcement, legal, threat monitoring, and counseling" for "victims of online mob harassment."

They have already managed to preemptively warn at least one victim of a swatting attempt in Enumclaw, Washington. As a result, the police department's head e-mailed the entire department to ask any police sent to the address in question to "knock with your hand, not your boot."

MojoKid writes "There's no such thing as an official Grand Theft Auto game until there's been a bit of controversy leading to its removal from at least one set of store shelves. It's a right of passage for the GTA series, if you will, and GTA V just earned its place among the franchise's previous titles by ruffling feathers in Australia, leading to its ousting from Target stores. At issue this time around is the "game's depictions of violence against women." Jim Cooper, general manager of corporate affairs for Target, explained that customers have voiced a "significant level of concern about the game's content." Separate reports say Target Australia received a petition with nearly 40,000 signatures demanding the game be removed. According to the petition, the game gives players plenty of "incentive is to commit sexual violence against women, then abuse or kill them to proceed or get 'health' points."

An anonymous reader writes: We frequently discuss diversity in the tech industry, and all the initiatives getting underway to encourage women and minorities to enter (and stay in) the field. The prevailing theme is that this will be good for companies, good for innovation, and good for the future of technology. While that's true, greater representation will also be good for the individuals themselves. Erica Joy has been in IT for a long time, and she's worked in many of the industry hotspots. She's written an insightful article on how the lack of diversity has affected her throughout her career. An excerpt: "Unfortunately, my workplace is homogenous and so are my surroundings. I feel different everywhere. I go to work and I stick out like a sore thumb. ... I feel like I've lost my entire cultural identity in effort to be part of the culture I've spent the majority of the last decade in."

theodp writes After an NPR podcast fingered the marketing of computers to boys as the culprit behind the declining percentages of women in undergraduate CS curricula since 1984 (a theory seconded by Smithsonian mag), some are concluding that NPR got the wrong guy. Calling 'When Women Stopped Coding' quite engaging, but long on Political Correctness and short on real evidence, UC Davis CS Prof Norm Matloff concedes a sexist element, but largely ascribes the gender lopsidedness to economics. "That women are more practical than men, and that the well-publicized drastic swings in the CS labor market are offputting to women more than men," writes Matloff, and "was confirmed by a 2008 survey in the Communications of the ACM" (related charts of U.S. unemployment rates and Federal R&D spending in the '80s). Looking at the raw numbers of female CS grads instead of percentages, suggests there wasn't a sudden and unexpected disappearance of a generation of women coders, but rather a dilution in their percentages as women's growth in undergrad CS ranks was far outpaced by men, including a boom around the time of the dot-com boom/bust.