I would have exactly the same reaction if we were talking about a guy going around town in tight fitting speedo's doing technology projects and interviews. Ridiculous. Stupid. Demeaning.

I suspect that because she is a woman I am not allowed to object to her walking around nearly naked, nipples showing through nearly see-through clothing, nearly all of her ass out there to behold, etc. I, personally, find it disgusting and as far from role model behavior as one can get. I am not a prude by any measure.

She does nothing for women other than to propose that to be accepted in technology you have to walk around showing your tits and ass in a ridiculous outfit that paints you as a sex toy and, yes, know your shit too. I find that repugnant. Just as I would for a man who might behave behaving similarly.

Raise your hand if this is what you want to teach your little girls. Exactly.

She is not yours - nor even other women's - servant.

Not everyone has to be a role model for your little kid.

I don't want my kid to hear people swearing, but I'm not going to slander Linus Torvalds for doing so. I'm not stupid enough to believe that just because someone is crass they can't possibly be a good maker/developer/engineer/etc.

I am not trying to pass judgement for all of humanity here. If you are OK watching videos of a nearly naked woman playing with tech and think that's great for women and humanity, so be it. I happen to thing it's disgusting.

All I can speak for is myself. I see this person as a clown who demeans every single female engineer I have every worked with or hired. She might as well be doing soft porn videos and make more money, she ain't too far from that.

Because of that I can't respect what she is doing.

Do we really want to portray women in tech this way? Really?

At one end of the spectrum people are up in arms about politicians objectifying women (and worst) and meanwhile, on the tech side of things we are OK with a woman walking around with tits and ass hanging out there?

Is the tech community OK with women being portrayed this way? I am not. Definitely not. If you defend her you are defending the objectification of women. Which is shameful.

Sorry, this is disgusting to me.

Conformity in a way increases opportunity. On the other hand, she's a transhumanist, so she probably believes all of these rules and customs are pretty primitive and totally changeable. I mean, who says you ever have to wear clothes if you're in a warm climate? Who says our genitals shouldn't be seen? These are all developed customs and specific to each society. She's deliberately breaking the mold and refusing to be shamed.

I'm ok with people portraying themselves however they want to portray themselves. I can make a rational argument for "playing it safe" and being conservative, then again, when you're 70 years old and lived a life of conformity, maybe you'll regret you didn't live life openly and flamboyantly like she does.

In short: sexism.

For further reading, see criticism of the "fake geek girl" meme.

> the negative impact of my tweets was amplified by the fact that I, a white, Western, male CEO of a key company in the Maker community

This guy was not low status by any definition.

The fact that he maintained a sustained slander campaign when he ostensibly had other priorities implies he felt that ‘exposing’ her became important to him, again a trait of insecure, low status individuals.

Isn't this what the Internet is all about?

Since they are using "maker" to describe persons that are engineering electronics related work,why not just call themselves "electronics engineer"?

Edit: seems I stepped on toes with my comment,I don't know how else to react to a term like "maker". Could have been less sarcastic but I'll eat up the downvotes and maintain what small amount of common sense I have.

So, yeah, "DIY dinner" does sound a bit silly. But, as someone who has done amateur shoe modification - I would never call myself a cobbler. A maker? Sure.

I sympathize a bit with your criticism of the term, because I've thought long and hard about whether or not some new terminology is coined or supported by men when they get into a hobby which is traditionally practiced by women.

eg, "crafting" is a well established word, but seems avoided by men, and DIY is an easy substitute, eg "DIY foam halloween costume"

I first noticed this when I got a sewing machine, and started to frequent DIY camping gear/hammock forums. There's an obnoxious habit around those parts to not even call a sewing machine a sewing machine - it's a "thread injector." It drives me up the wall, it seems so blatantly sexist.

Everyone is a maker. The point of a language is to communicate information,not to obscure it. Would it be a proper use of language if a programmer called himself a "writer"? After all he is writing. "programmer" or "software developer" is used to distinguish what type of writing he/she works with for a living.

Sorry if that offended you,but from my perspective,it just does not communicate the nature of their work efficiently.

> Would it be a proper use of language if a programmer called himself a "writer"?

No, because that would be confusing; no one uses "writer" in that way without extra explanation. In contrast, "maker" is used to describe a tinkerer who builds designs and/or builds projects, often reusing ideas from other makers. It's "proper use of language" not because it makes sense, but because that's how people use it.

Lack of specificity is a much better one.

Sure language is made up,but isn't an obstacle to clear communication bad language?

I find it hard to accept unreasonable logic(even the popular and trendy kind).

If you go to her channel, watch the build for her LED transparent bikini top for example. That can’t be faked by her husband, she demonstrates skills with the tools that many people on HN don’t even have.

Is she an electrical engineer? No, she’s a tinkerer, but what’s wrong with that?

A beautiful girl decides she wants to tinker, is into transhumanisn and body modification, uses her popularity to encourage other girls and women. Does it even matter if she has help?

I mean the guys on Mystbusters have a production staff too as do many YouTubers have collaborators.

Why do we only doubt Women’s ability or downplay it? Is it not real real because she’s attractive? Because an attractive woman couldn’t possibly be into hacking and making?

What does an engineer “look like”? What does a hacker “look like”?

Naomi already coded ruby under a male pseudonym for this very reason, to avoid gender discrimination.

tldr: articles and interviews are proofread and corrected by english native speakers.

was?

In the interest of full disclosure, I am myself a migrant in an English-speaking country (a Greek living in the UK). I know first hand that there is a big difference between having been taught English as a foreign language, and actually using it to speak with native English speakers day-in and day-out.

My first years over here I had real trouble talking to people and making myself understood, or understanding them, although at the same time I was perfectly fine reading English literature and textbooks, participating in lectures and writing university assignments. I believe many foreign students (if not all of them) had the same issue.

There's an assumption that the way you speak a language reflects your general intellectual skills, but when it comes to non-native speakers it's just wrong. People taught a language as a foreign language acquire oral and written literacy skills in a different order and pace than native speakers. For instance- two friends of mine can read and write Japanese, but can't speak or understand it when spoken.

Basically, speech can be much harder than text for foreign speakers. So using the disparity between oral and written skills was already a very shaky piece of "evidence" in the original claim- even before reading Naomi Wu's explanation. It reminded me of classic conspiracy theorists looking at the shadows in pictures of the moon landings.

I think it comes down to reading a lot and absorbing that formalism, but not really speaking that way because, well, spoken English is a different bird.

(er, not trying to make some political comment on gender roles etc, just genuinely interested to hear from a speaker. I guess I can just google it :)

On a side note, it is a pain in the butt to search for Dakota as opposed to Lakota on Google because it keeps giving Lakota pages. What a pain.

Like I say above, I had a big problem with that in my first couple of years in the UK. I once spent an hour having a conversation with a man from Glasgow. To this day, I have no idea what he was talking about. I didn't understand a word he was saying, so I just nodded along politely. I might have been agreeing to the need for the extermination of all sentient life or that the Earth is flat, for all I know.

I got better at it. I can now understand about 40% of what someone's saying in a Glaswegian accent. I love Scottish accents btw- probably more because I don't understand everything being said.

For reasons I cannot fathom you're reiterating the same type of suspicion that started the whole controversy, and that this apology seeks to address. Then you feel a need to share that unsubstantiated and damaging conspiracy with other people.

The apology include several reasons why this is wrong.

> Should I not be suspicious at all?

No, you shouldn't.

Far fewer Americans are taught Mandarin, and even fewer from an early enough age that they can master tones easily (I suspect that like Danish vowels you almost need to be born into it)

What does that have to do with Wu? Presumably she never went through any similar experience, and her language skills have been largely driven by her own personal desire to communicate with foreigners rather than any structured program or religious duty. (I don’t know much about her, so maybe that’s wrong.)

I think the OP is correct that it is far more likely to find white collar mainland Chinese with a good command of English than it is to find a Westerner with a good command of Mandarin.

The reasons are really simple:

1) English is taught in school from a early age. In US schools, Mandarin usually wasn't an option until very recently, mostly Spanish, French, German, and Japanese were the standard choices.

2) English is the defacto international lingua franca. English speakers can live their whole life and not really have to learn another language to consume most of the world's published information and trade. However, Chinese speakers often need to know English to consume the output of other countries. If you need to need read an AI paper, it's most likely published in English, and unless the original authors were Chinese, they're not likely to have published a good translation.

Given the importance of the Chinese economy, I expect the next generation will change this asymmetry somewhat. Already many schools in California offer Mandarin immersion, and it seems even more common these days to see Australians who can speak good Mandarin.

In the grand scheme of things, being able to learn another language well does not beggar belief. In the context of this discussion, your comments are leaving a sour taste in my mouth. She's been questioned enough already.

I’m just saying her English seems quite a bit better than average.

(My wife is Chinese and has very good English, as do many of her friends. I by no means think Chinese people are generally incapable of learning English or anything.)

I thought my point was pretty obvious and simple.

There are sure a lot of people here with sticks up their butts.

She has better English than many foreigners I know who have been living in the US for >5 years, and better than the foreign language skills of many Americans I know who have lived overseas for that long.

I'm pretty sure you know this. Yes, in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, it is not uncommon. But go to a smaller city, and some people will treat you like a rare Panda. I was in 九寨沟 one time during 清明节 and a lot of out of town people were there on vacation, some of who had never met a 外国人 in person before, but after they heard me speaking, a lot of people kept coming up and asking to have a photo with me, offering too much praise for my terrible Mandarin, and intensely curious how I learned.

I'm glad to see so many people following in the footsteps of 大山， but we have a ways to go before the asymmetry is more balanced and a Westerner speaking Chinese is no longer surprising enough to be on a talent show.

China has no problem finding foreigners who speak good Chinese like they did in the 90s. Likewise, they are a bit unnerved when the American ambassador speaks fluent mandarin like Huntsman did, or like various prime ministers of austrailia are ought to these days. They definitely exist, and if some random white (or black or Indian, etc...) guy/gal breaks out mandarin in some random context, well, it really isn’t amazing anymore.

If you visit a tier 88 city in china, the fact that you are a foreigner at all is amazing, this has little to do with your mandarin skills. Now hit the bath house with them and it’s double amazing.