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Women in Open Source computing.


abarbarian

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Senior kernel developers defended the "right" of maintainers to indulge in verbal and emotional abuse in order to release their own frustrations.
Translation: Senior kernel developers defended the "right" of maintainers to behave like children when they are frustrated.
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3 misperceptions women have about computer science (2015)

 

YouTube's CEO Susan Wojcicki delivered a powerful keynote this morning to thousands of attendees at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, which is being held this week in Houston. She started with, "My daughter told me she doesn't like computers."

 

 

Fullstack unveils the Grace Hopper Academy (2015)

 

 

 

A new coding school dedicated to combating gender disparity in the technology field has launched. The Grace Hopper Academy, named after computer science pioneer Grace Hopper, is an all-women school designed to provide high-quality education with no upfront cost.

The new school comes out of the Fullstack Academy, a coding school based out of New York that provides a project-based educational structure, along with advanced curriculum on emerging technologies.

 

 

:breakfast:

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CSU students join thousands for celebration of women in computing(2017)

 

 

This past fall, 10 undergraduate computer science students from Colorado State University had the opportunity to rub elbows with some of the biggest names in computing – all of whom were women.

 

The occasion was the Anita Borg Institute’s Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, an annual conference that draws more than 15,000 attendees, held this year in Houston, Texas. The CSU students in attendance all received special scholarships to attend the meeting, where they were able to meet women at all stages of their careers – and hear from high-level speakers, including Ginni Rometty, the current president and CEO of IBM, Latanya Sweeney, the founder and director of Harvard’s Data Privacy Lab, and Megan Smith, the United States Chief Technology Officer.

The conference provides an important touchpoint for women in a field that is still staggeringly lacking in diversity.

 

Nationally, fewer than one in five bachelor’s in computer science goes to a woman. But that’s a trend that the College of Natural Sciences and its computer science department have been working to address. Rallying support to send a group of female computer science students to this meeting for the first time is one of the ways the department is helping to bolster and encourage this growth.

 

:breakfast:

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The True Story of 'Hidden Figures' and the Women Who Crunched the Numbers for NASA(2017)

 

 

There's a moment halfway into Hidden Figures when head NASA engineer Paul Stafford refuses the request of Katherine Johnson (Taraji P. Henson) to attend an editorial meeting about John Glenn's upcoming mission to become the first American to orbit the Earth. Stafford's response is dismissive—"There's no protocol for women attending." Johnson replies, "There's no protocol for a man circling Earth either, sir."

The quote underlines this based-on-a-true-story movie. For NASA to get John Glenn into space and home safely, institutions that supported prejudices and biases needed to start tumbling down. All hands (and brains) had to be on deck.

 

An excellent article. It focuses on women not just the film . :breakfast:

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The fight to get women into the coding industry starts in middle school.(2016)

 

 

 

 

 

The gender gap in computing jobs has gotten worse in the last 30 years, even as computer science job opportunities expand rapidly, according to new research from Accenture and Girls Who Code.

 

In 1984, 37 percent of computer science majors were women, but by 2014 that number had dropped to 18 percent, according to the study. The computing industry's rate of U.S. job creation is three times the national average, but if trends continue, the study estimates that women will hold only 20 percent of computing jobs by 2025.

 

The study offers insight into factors that create either positive and negative associations with computer science for girls at the middle school, high school and college levels, as well as strategies for educators to make computer science more appealing to girls.

 

:breakfast:

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The Rise of Robots Will Make the Tech Gender Gap Even Worse(2017)

 

 

 

Whether it was IBM boss Ginni Rometty, dashing onto the podium to anchor a panel on artificial intelligence, or a defiant Christine Lagarde, holding forth on the need to fight back against populism, high-powered women were everywhere at this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos. Women reached a record share of attendees who scored prestigious white badges at the event.

 

What echoed through the halls of the main Congress Centre and after-hours events, though, was the sobering truth that the tenuous gains women have made in the world economy are at risk for those further down the ladder. Especially when it comes to the jobs of the future.

 

The so-called Fourth Industrial Revolution, the rise of automation and artificial intelligence, is projected to be far more destructive globally to jobs currently favored by women than to jobs favored by men, according to the WEF.

 

:breakfast:

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The surprisingly unknown history of women in computing (2017)

 

 

 

Ask someone to tell you the role gender has played in the history of computing and computer design. More likely than not, you’ll hear something about how all the important inventions and contributions to computing have been brought about by “great men.”

 

Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Sergey Brin, Larry Page, Mark Zuckerberg—you get the point.

 

Nothing could be farther from the truth.

 

The computer industry was once dominated by women. Programming, computer design, computer maintenance, innovation, even “war machines”—computers used to decrypt enemy communications—were all traditionally feminized careers in the ‘40s and ‘50s.

 

 

Across the Atlantic, something very different happened. Britain led the way in the computing industry, beating the USA to the first electronic computer in the world, the Colossus.

 

The Colossus, which was also predominantly maintained, used, and programmed by the Women’s Royal Naval Service, and which actively affected the outcome of the war, was shelved upon Allied victory. So were the women who worked on it.

 

The women who worked on the Colossus were sworn into secrecy, and couldn’t mention their work (let alone put it on a resume) until the British government reluctantly declassified the machine, decades later.

 

 

 

I do believe, however, that if women as a whole are able to take ownership of their own narrative by teaching their friends and daughters about the rich history of women in computing, it will not only benefit women as a whole, but also countless intersectional classifications.

 

If we can take back the narrative from the history books, from the media, from the misperceptions of hiring managers (among other workplace functions), we have a chance to change the contours of society in such a way that women could be within reach of true (or almost true) gender equality, at least in terms of the workplace.

 

You can start by sharing this article with as many women as you know, starting a dialogue on social media, or just bringing it up at the dinner table tonight.

 

:breakfast:

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abarbarian

Dell's 'Alice' Will Guide Women Through VC Wonderland (2017)

 

 

 

One of the interesting things at Dell EMC World last week came from Karen Quintos, the most powerful woman at Dell.

Karen is responsible for its Entrepreneur in Residence program, which, among other things, focuses on equipping and helping woman entrepreneurs. Dell Technologies apparently has created "Alice," a female-focused artificial intelligence focused on helping support and drive innovative firms backed by women.

 

I do so hope that they watched all the AI gone bad movies from the 80's and took note of all that can go wrong before they built Alice :Muahaha:

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School of Informatics

 

 

Women in Computing

 

 

A number of female staff and students have kindly volunteered to be interviewed about what it’s like to study and work in the School, to encourage other women to apply here.

 

women-in-academia.jpg?itok=EYyNtmcn

The following short films, video interviews and written case studies have been produced as part of our Athena SWAN Silver Award programme to encourage more women to consider a career in artificial intelligence, computer science, cognitive science, informatics and software engineering.

Most films are 2-3 minutes long.

 

 

This is one of the interviews. It has nothing to do with Lord of the Rings though.

 

 

:breakfast:

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A Brief History of Women in Computing

 

Women invented the field. Then men pushed them out of it.

 

 

 

In this week’s mashup episode of Scandal: Silicon Valley, James Damore, a newly-fired Google engineer, wrote a 10-page memo arguing that the company’s efforts to improve diversity were misguided. Damore based his thesis on ideas from Evolutionary Psychology and the Big 5 personality traits, arguing, in essence, that because psychological differences exist between men and women (true), these are therefore bound to biology (tenuous), and therefore explain differences between men and women in their interest and subsequent representation in the field of computer science and programming (no evidence provided, and ahistorical — see below).

Curious minds can read the full memo (including its citations, which were previously omitted when it was leaked to Gizmodo).

 

:228823: :breakfast:

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abarbarian

Person with diabetes finds open source and builds her own medical device

 

 

 

The result was a do-it-yourself artificial pancreas system (DIY APS).

Using the algorithm to process data from the insulin pump and CGM, the DIY APS forecasts predicted blood glucose levels and automates adjustments to the insulin delivery, making small changes to keep blood sugar within the target range. This makes life much easier for people with diabetes because they no longer have to calibrate insulin delivery manually several times per day.

"Because we had been using open source software, we knew that the right thing to do was to turn around and make what we had done open source as well so that other people could leverage it." And thus, OpenAPS (the Open Source Artificial Pancreas System) was born.

 

Awesome :worthy:

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Webinar: Women in Tech – How to Build an “And” Culture & Thrive

 

 

Join Amy Marrich, Linux Academy OpenStack Training Architect II, and Elaine Marino, Equili Founder, as they delve into the stats behind the state of diversity in the tech industry, how to create an “and” culture, and how to thrive.

 

Webinar-women-in-tech-Elaine-Amy-1024x538.png

 

In this live webinar, Elaine and Amy will discuss:

  • The current state of diversity in the industry
  • Why diversity and inclusion is still an issue
  • Real life experiences to provide depth and insight into the issue
  • How you can build an “and” culture to stimulate diversity
  • And much more!

 

Webinar details:

When: Friday, August 10th, 10:30am CDT

Where: Sign up here!

 

:breakfast:

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Losing Lena – Why Removing One Image Will End Tech’s Original Sin
 

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Lena, a Swedish Playboy model who prefers not to use her surname nowadays, is the face of the most used test image in the world – and it all happened in the 70s after she did a Playboy centrefold.


Now, Lena is joined by multiple organisations including Code Like A Girl in her plea to the world to have the image of herself be removed

 

 

Quote

 

Losing Lena  ends with a call on individuals, tech companies, universities and image processing facilities around the world to stop using Lena, and to help drive equal representation of, engagement with, and respect for women and girls across all areas of tech.

 

 

 

 
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About Code Like a Girl:
Code Like a Girl is a social enterprise providing girls and women with the confidence, tools, knowledge and support to enter and flourish in the world of coding.

 

 

 

 

 
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About Creatable:
Creatable is a creative technology curriculum that leverages industry partnerships and engaging, high impact learning experiences to ignite a passion for creative technology and prepare young women for the future of work.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

😎

 

 

 

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Katherine Johnson, NASA mathematician portrayed in ‘Hidden Figures’, dies at 101

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Ms. Johnson and her black colleagues at the fledgling NASA were known as “computers” when that term was used not for a programmed electronic device but for a person who did computations. They were little known to the public for decades but gained overdue recognition when the book Hidden Figures was published and the 2016 Oscar-nominated movie hit the screens. Ms. Johnson attended the 2017 Oscars ceremony, joining the film's cast in presenting an award for documentaries, and was given a standing ovation.

Ms. Johnson had a groundbreaking career of 33 years with the space agency, working on the Mercury and Apollo missions, including the first moon landing in 1969, and the early years of the space shuttle program. Astronaut John Glenn thought so much of her that he insisted Ms. Johnson be consulted before his historic earth-orbiting flight in 1962.

“Get the girl to check the numbers,” he said.

 

 

😎

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19 hours ago, V.T. Eric Layton said:

There was no opensource back then, but let's give Erik a pass on posting here. There probably wasn't any place else to post this that would have been appropriate.

 

Or, if he doesn't mind, we can move this to: The Restaurant at the Edge of the Universe.

 

Yup technically the lady had nothing to do with open source directly. However it is an almost certainty that she inspired some more modern miss to participate in the field so a tenuous link could be claimed. An if that don't carry the case in my favour then consider that this is the best place to gain the attention of females interested in computing imho.

 

I rest my case yer 'onurs. Dofs cap and retires. 😎

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See this beautiful lady?

5f7Hfhx.jpg

 

This is Austrian-American actress, Hedy Lamarr, recognised as one of the most beautiful, sensual women in Hollywood during the ’30s & ’40s, during Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's “golden age” of cinema.

What many won't know, is that she basically invented the technology we use today for GPS, Bluetooth & Wi-Fi. It's a pity that history remembers her for her looks, rather than her intellect.

But why is that so?

Back in the ’40s, Lamarr recognised the flaw in radio-controlled torpedoes and how they could be easily jammed. Together with her friend George Antheil, she developed a “secret communication system” for war-time use.

She created a “frequency hopping” signal as a way to guide radio-controlled missiles without any detection, which would effectively counter any attempts by the Nazis to jam or track their signals.

On June 10, 1941, the duo submitted their patent. US Patent No. 2,292,387 was subsequently granted on August 11, 1942 for their early work on spread spectrum technology. But since the military wasn’t too keen on receiving help from civilians, and because this technology was way ahead of its time, they chose to overlook her work entirely.

Lamarr's technology was eventually implemented in naval ships in the ’60s, but up until her passing in 2000, she didn't earn a single cent from her pioneering concept. This was because her patent had expired in 1959, and yet the idea was still utilised in the development of a new secure military communications system found on ships sent to the Cuban blockade in 1962.

That may have been an oversight on her part, but to think that the world failed to acknowledge her for her contributions for so long is deeply saddening. It wasn't until 1997 when she was presented with two awards by the Electronic Frontier Foundation did she finally gain recognition, though she had already turned 82 by then.

 

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They didn't have FOSS in 1942 but as the patents expired and she was awarded by the EFF, I reckon this article can squeeze in this topic. Unashamedly copy/pasted from Quora.

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securitybreach

Very cool. I had never heard of her before (on screen or with radio signals) but its nice the EFF recognized her for the important contribution she gave us.

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On 2/27/2020 at 4:13 AM, sunrat said:

See this beautiful lady?

5f7Hfhx.jpg

 

This is Austrian-American actress, Hedy Lamarr, recognised as one of the most beautiful, sensual women in Hollywood during the ’30s & ’40s, during Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's “golden age” of cinema.

What many won't know, is that she basically invented the technology we use today for GPS, Bluetooth & Wi-Fi. It's a pity that history remembers her for her looks, rather than her intellect.

But why is that so?

Back in the ’40s, Lamarr recognised the flaw in radio-controlled torpedoes and how they could be easily jammed. Together with her friend George Antheil, she developed a “secret communication system” for war-time use.

She created a “frequency hopping” signal as a way to guide radio-controlled missiles without any detection, which would effectively counter any attempts by the Nazis to jam or track their signals.

On June 10, 1941, the duo submitted their patent. US Patent No. 2,292,387 was subsequently granted on August 11, 1942 for their early work on spread spectrum technology. But since the military wasn’t too keen on receiving help from civilians, and because this technology was way ahead of its time, they chose to overlook her work entirely.

Lamarr's technology was eventually implemented in naval ships in the ’60s, but up until her passing in 2000, she didn't earn a single cent from her pioneering concept. This was because her patent had expired in 1959, and yet the idea was still utilised in the development of a new secure military communications system found on ships sent to the Cuban blockade in 1962.

That may have been an oversight on her part, but to think that the world failed to acknowledge her for her contributions for so long is deeply saddening. It wasn't until 1997 when she was presented with two awards by the Electronic Frontier Foundation did she finally gain recognition, though she had already turned 82 by then.

 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

They didn't have FOSS in 1942 but as the patents expired and she was awarded by the EFF, I reckon this article can squeeze in this topic. Unashamedly copy/pasted from Quora.

 

Brains and beauty --- sighs, and rushes of to work on the time machine.  😍

 

I had read about Hedy a while ago an it is no surprise that the macho dummies in the army overlooked her fine invention. I wonder how many lives would have been saved if only they had utilised her invention.

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abarbarian

Open Source Feminism: The Unfinished Revolution
 

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Women in open source had been an issue in open source since the founding of LinuxChix by Deb Richardson in 1999. However, the motivation for greater organization was the FLOSSPOL study of open source in 2006, which is no longer available online although a few references remain. The study found that while women were 28% of those working on proprietary software, only 1.5% of those working on open source were women.

 

 

 

😎

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Ok so this is not all about computers but I bet this lady used computers a lot in her work.

 

Doctor goes from Miss World to saving the world! Former Miss England is part of Oxford University team carrying out crucial coronavirus vaccines work 

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Being at the forefront of the battle against Covid brings to mind images of boffins in white coats.

But as a one-time Miss England, doctor and academic Carina Tyrrell is equally at home in bikinis and flowing ballgowns. 

Carina Tyrrell, 31, ditched bikinis, ball gowns and beauty pageants to spend the last year spearheading ground-breaking research at Oxford University.  

The hero scientist has now spoken of her delight after her work helped Britain become the first in the world to begin vaccinating people against the virus.

Dr Tyrrell MA MB BChir MPH - to give her full title - is regarded as one of the brightest young minds in the country six years after she won Miss England in 2014.

She came fourth in the Miss World competition that same year but has spent the last 12 months working around the clock to help find a coronavirus vaccine.

 

 

 

36981526-0-image-m-66_1608240786080.jpg

 

36981530-0-image-a-67_1608240794768.jpg

 

37000938-9065499-image-m-53_160828598078

 

Well done that lass. 😋

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10 minutes ago, V.T. Eric Layton said:

My doctor doesn't even remotely resemble her. :(

 

You are lucky to have a doctor. I have been trying for four weeks to get an appointment with a doctor. 🤔

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20 minutes ago, abarbarian said:

 

You are lucky to have a doctor. I have been trying for four weeks to get an appointment with a doctor. 🤔

NHS "Health and high quality care for all, now and for future generations."

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