Data could definitely change my mind: what percentage of applicants to software developer roles at Google are women, and what percentage of offers extended for those roles go to women? If the former is substantially smaller than the latter, that would definitely sway me.

Surely you'd agree that if a natal male says he is a boy and when asked why he replies "because I'm attracted to boys", then the responsible reply is "it's okay to be a gay boy", and not "yes, because you're attracted to boys you are a girl." It's certainly possible that a child will persist in expressing and opposite-sex gender even after exploring identity as a gay boy and will follow through with transition. But surely the responsible thing to do is to make sure that the child first understands that there's nothing wrong with being a boy attracted to other boys. First, eliminate the possibility that the boy is identifying as a girl out of a gender-essentialist belief that boys are only attracted to girls and he has to be a girl to attract boys. If after that, if the child still expresses a cross-sex gender identity then explore transitioning.

I don't think Singal has ever said that all - or even a majority - of children expressing a cross-sex gender identity are actually just same-sex attracted cis people. He only takes issue with legislation in some jurisdictions effectively prohibit medical professionals from exploring a gay male identity in this scenario, and effectively mandate social affirmation the moment a patients expressed a cross sex gender identity.

Even if you disagree with the above, surely at least you understand why I'm confused about the allegation that Singal is promoting gender essentialism. His concern is that gender essentialism is being misdiagnosed as gender dysphoria, and people aren't doing enough to accept boys wearing dresses, being attracted to other boys, and behaving in "feminine" ways, and being too quick to say "well, you're a girl". Even if you don't agree with his claims about misdiagnoses, it's abundantly clear he is against gender essentialism.

1. https://resources.healthgrades.com/right-care/childrens-heal...

The experiment I linked above sent monitored the callback rates of applicants sent out to Bay Area tech companies for technical roles, and saw higher callback rates for women. This is the sort of prototypical evidence we use as an example of systemic anti-Black bias where Black applicants are called back less frequently than white applicants.

Is Google, specifically, systemically biased against women? Cross-referencing the diversity reports they publish [1], with employment statistics [2] does not show an underrepresentation of women. Google has also taken controversial steps, such as tying executive performance reviews to the representation of "underrepresented groups" - that term has included women at every company I've worked at, but if that's not the case at Google please correct me. When Google conducted an investigation into whether women were underpaid, they discovered that the disparity leaned the other way [3].

Perhaps maybe some introspection is warranted on your part, and revisit the assumptions you have about gender bias at Google and in the tech industry in general.

1. https://kstatic.googleusercontent.com/files/819bcce604bf5ff7...

2. https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat11.htm

3. https://www.npr.org/2019/03/05/700288695/google-pay-study-fi...

Hn discussion of the paper: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25069644

Damore's thesis amounted to "maybe women are 20% of software developers not because they're being discriminated against, but because they're exercising their own agency and choosing other fields."

Given that about 20% of CS grads are women, it seems like a pretty reasonable stance.

Even above age 35, 85% of men are able to conceive within 12 months: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11026002/

Like it or not, fertility decline is substantially different between the sexes.

> The BIPA requires companies doing business in Illinois to comply with a number of requirements pertaining to the collection and storage of biometric information. These include a requirement that companies:

> Obtain consent from individuals if the company intends to collect or disclose their personal biometric identifiers.

> Destroy biometric identifiers in a timely manner.

> Securely store biometric identifiers.[6]

> A key area of focus is that an entity must use a "reasonable standard of care"[7] in managing biometric information and identifiers.

It's not AI, its a deterministic program that analyzes compiled code for similarity.

There are several reasons for this:

1. Cheating in CS is easier to detect. MOSS [2] (authored by CS professor Alex Aiken) is a very effective tool at detecting plagiarism in coding assignments. Personally I witnessed more honor-code violations in math problem sets, but there was no feasible way for professors to detect this.

2. Problems in programming assignments are (usually) very tangibly wrong. I can bullshit my way through an essay with shoddy research, I can hand-wave a proof that is definitely wrong but will probably garner at least some points. But when your program is crashing or not compiling, and the due date is approaching, it produces a very immediate and undeniable sense of failure and pressure to cheat. The thing is, many students would get a decent chunk of credit even for failing code, but this is not immediately obvious.

3. The ability to cheat is more available. Math problem sets tend to change quarter by quarter. It's basically impossible to cheat on a prose essay short of straight up paying someone to write it for you, or fabricating sources. But for CS classes, especially at prominent universities, there are plenty of solutions online. Much of it is people who aren't event at Stanford implementing the assignments for fun or self-learning, and sharing it with their peers. Which, to be clear, isn't unethical or bad - it's the responsibility of Stanford students to refrain from looking at those solutions. But nonetheless, it's a contributing factor.

1. https://stanforddaily.com/2015/03/29/increase-in-cs-106-hono...

2. https://theory.stanford.edu/~aiken/moss/

> And of course the option remains to simply write a single–player game that runs entirely on the customer’s computer, with no networked components at all.

So the solution is to just stop developing multiplayer games? This is just a laughable response.

> 60 days before a digital game operator ceases to provide services necessary for the ordinary use of the digital game, the operator shall communicate all of the following information to purchasers and prospective purchasers of the digital game:

> (i) The date on which services necessary for the ordinary use of the digital game will cease.

> (ii) Any services that will no longer be provided by the operator.

> (iii) Any game features that will no longer be available to the purchaser.

> (iv) Any known security risks that may result from the cessation of services.

> (v) How the purchaser can continue to use the digital game, or obtain a refund, pursuant to paragraph (2).

Scaling in the number of game servers isn't termination of service, though, and would not match the conditions laid out above.

I suspect companies will just scale down the servers to 1 instance with bare minimum support. Technically the online service is still active, thereby eliminating the requirements to distribute source code, even if it can only handle a handful of active players and terrible latency.

I guess they could just strip our the parts of the server code that they don't have the rights to redistribute, but then it wouldn't be functional.