Despite the vast wealth of the tech industry and its self-proclaimed corporate commitment to women, LGBTQ+ people, and minority rights, the industry is still largely a heterosexual white world.
Much of the burden of changing the system falls on women: They are advised to learn to code, major in STEM, and become more confident. But assertiveness and masculine swagger aren’t enough to overcome structural barriers, especially for tech workers who are also parents. Even the pandemic’s shift to remote work hasn’t made the workplace more women-friendly.
Not always. Software programming used to be an almost exclusively female profession. As recently as 1980, women held 70 percent of programming jobs in Silicon Valley, but the percentage has flipped completely since then. While a number of factors contributed to this shift, from the educational pipeline to the tiresome persistence of fictional technology as a kind of gender-blind “meritocracy,” no one can fully explain it. The real heart of the tech gender issue is money. Read the full article.
—Margaret O’Mara
Google studies how different generations deal with misinformation
NEWS: Compared to older generations, young adults are more likely to believe they may have inadvertently shared false or misleading information online – often under pressure to share emotional content quickly. However, they were also better at using advanced fact-checking techniques, a new study by Poynter, YouGov and Google found.
What they found: One-third of Gen Z respondents said they Always or most of the time practice lateral reading (doing multiple searches and cross-referencing their findings) – more than twice as many as baby boomers.
BUT, BUT: The study relied on participants reporting their beliefs and habits, a notoriously unreliable method. The upbeat data on Gen Z’s actual habits contrasts with other findings on how people verify information online. Read the full article.
—Abby Ohlheiser
MUST READ
I’ve combed the internet to find for you the most interesting/most interesting The most important/horrific/fascinating tech stories.
1 Amazon wants to start offering teletherapy
The e-commerce giant is rapidly expanding into healthcare. (Insider $)
+ and it is expanding its palmprint reading payment system to dozens of Whole Foods Market store. (Ars Technica)
2 US rejects Starlink’s bid for broadband supply 🛰️
+ Who is Starlink for? (MIT Technology Review)
3 Big Techs Want to Build Data Centers on the US Battlefield
4 China’s economic crisis has spawned a new wave of rich people
But they made their fortunes in activewear and skincare, not tech. (Economist $)
5 talented young founders of Silicon Valley join the big resignation
Their loss-making businesses need experienced leadership during tough times in the industry. (NYT $)
+ Why Steve Jobs loves his turtlenecks so much. (NYT $)
Better building ventilation and greener units are just some of the alternative solutions. (Vox)
+ The legacy of the European heatwave will be more air conditioning . (MIT Technology Review)+ Big Tech engineers are leaving traditional businesses for Climate-focused startups. (Agreement)
+ China wants to control the behavior, speech and even the dress of its famous streamers Way. (MIT Technology Review)
8 The Rise and Rise of Electric Bikes ⚡
Electric bikes are cheaper than cars as gas prices go up alternatives. (WSJ $)+ Lithium, which is essential for electric vehicle batteries, is in short supply right now. (WSJ $)
Twenty-six years later, the series has a mass-generation appeal. (WP $)
+ Fewer people are playing games now than at the height of the epidemic. (Reuters)
10 Job Seekers Pay $1,000 for the Perfect LinkedIn Avatar
In a world obsessed with images, they hope it gives them an edge. (WSJ $)
“Cybercriminals have been eating our lunch.”
– Chris Krebs, former director of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, believes the government’s response to daily ransomware attacks The threat turned a blind eye because, according to PC Mag, its focus was on tracking sophisticated overseas attackers.
Big Story
This is it Why Demis Hassabis founded DeepMind
2022 2 March
March 2016 Demis Hassabis, CEO and co-founder of DeepMind, in Seoul, South Korea, watching his company’s artificial intelligence make history. AlphaGo, a computer program trained to master the ancient board game Go, played five games against South Korean pro Lee Sedol and defeated him 4-1, a victory that changed the world about what AI can do the opinion of.
But as the DeepMind team celebrated, Hassabis was already thinking about a bigger challenge. He realized that his company’s technology was poised to tackle one of the most important and complex puzzles in biology that researchers have been working on for 50 years: predicting the structure of proteins. Read the full article.
—Douglas Paradise
We can still have good The Thing
A comfortable, fun and distracting place in these strange times. (Any ideas? Leave me a message or Tweet me .)
+ 8glitchorbit’s digital art is surprisingly soothing.
+ Prey, the new Predator prequel, sounds like it might just be exempt from some of the horrors of the series’ past.
+ All hail the rise and rise of the emo male lead.
+ This is funny: Investigators are using DNA to fight illegal loggers.
