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Hedy Lamarr (2018)

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Re: Hedy Lamarr (2018)

#31

Post by neilv »

anonym29 wrote: post #18
HL33tibCe7 wrote: post #3

Like many stories of this kind, the idea that this person "pioneered the basis" of these technologies seems massively overblown. What she and Antheil patented was a system that used frequency hopping to help guide torpedoes, using a piano roll to switch between the frequencies. They did not "invent" frequency hopping, which had been discussed in the literature for 30 years already.

[flagged]

> I know several extremely competent women in technical roles - like, better than 99% of others in their field regardless of gender. None of them EVER self-refer as "women in tech", or "women who code".

FWIW, I know some excellent engineers, technologists, professors, etc. who are women, and who also participate in programs to address sexism.

We have a long history of really stupid and unjust sexism, and that's a lot to dig out of. Different people tackle that different ways.

Sometimes I hear of approaches that I don't understand. If I tried to make snap judgments of them, I'd hope I'd usually be right, but I suspect I'd often be wrong.

In general, I think I'm best off focusing on support of things that seem positive.

Re: Hedy Lamarr (2018)

#32

Post by nonrandomstring »

anonym29 wrote: post #18
HL33tibCe7 wrote: post #3

Like many stories of this kind, the idea that this person "pioneered the basis" of these technologies seems massively overblown. What she and Antheil patented was a system that used frequency hopping to help guide torpedoes, using a piano roll to switch between the frequencies. They did not "invent" frequency hopping, which had been discussed in the literature for 30 years already.

[flagged]

I agree that to put someone on a pedestal simply by dint of their gender, race or sexuality does a disservice to that group. Would love to see a version of this story in which her "just happening to be a fabulously beautiful film star" is a marginal remark.

But isn't it the same when we lionise sociopathic, charismatic men [0] who "never cared about norms" but end up enshitifying the world with their reckless engineering and cocaine addled moral ambivalence?

As a "man in tech who eschews the norms" I'm a little uncomfortable that my fellow computer scientists might hold up Hank Asher as an example of anything but a criminal whose mindset is the exemplar of everything we should seek not to be as ethical hackers.

Is there a double standard when a woman with talent, charm and beauty is seen to succeed _despite_ those qualities, whereas a man who is a "lovable rogue" is claimed to succeed because of them?

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37612750

Re: Hedy Lamarr (2018)

#34

Post by motohagiography »

The story of Hedy Lamar was an amazing piece of hacker lore to discover before the web when culture was mostly confined to paper and scarce. I often think makers form a parallel culture with its own thread of history. Hacker history like this shows that breakthrough technology is the effect of individual minds and desire.

Re: Hedy Lamarr (2018)

#36

Post by peoplefromibiza »

nonrandomstring wrote: post #32
anonym29 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I agree that to put someone on a pedestal simply by dint of their gender, race or sexuality does a disservice to that group. Would love to see a version of this story in which her "just happening to be a fabulously beautiful film star" is a marginal remark. But isn't it the same when we lionise sociopathic, charismatic men [0] who "never cared about norms" but end up enshitifying the world with their reckless enginee…

> But isn't it the same when we lionise sociopathic, charismatic men

Yes.

Steve Jobs myth is completely overblown.

Elon Musk is far from being a great entrepreneur, on the contrary he's a malevolent reactionary who's greater achievement is making people believe that a company that profits from selling carbon credits is a car company or a tech company or a software company or a battery company, depending on who you ask.

Jeff Bezos normalized new more subtle forms of exploitation of US workforce.

etc. etc.

Re: Hedy Lamarr (2018)

#37

Post by teh64 »

anonym29 wrote: post #18
HL33tibCe7 wrote: post #3

Like many stories of this kind, the idea that this person "pioneered the basis" of these technologies seems massively overblown. What she and Antheil patented was a system that used frequency hopping to help guide torpedoes, using a piano roll to switch between the frequencies. They did not "invent" frequency hopping, which had been discussed in the literature for 30 years already.

[flagged]

The man who "wrote" the code disagrees with your take on Katie Bouman:

"While I wrote much of the code for one of these pipelines, Katie was a huge contributor to the software; it would have never worked without her contributions and the work of many others who wrote code, debugged, and figured out how to use the code on challenging EHT data."

Btw lines of code != amount of contribution, sad to see this kind of take on a supposedly programmer focused site.

https://www.foxnews.com/science/internet-trolls-discredit-ka... https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/438617-white-m...

Re: Hedy Lamarr (2018)

#39

Post by lemper »

nonrandomstring wrote: post #32
anonym29 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I agree that to put someone on a pedestal simply by dint of their gender, race or sexuality does a disservice to that group. Would love to see a version of this story in which her "just happening to be a fabulously beautiful film star" is a marginal remark. But isn't it the same when we lionise sociopathic, charismatic men [0] who "never cared about norms" but end up enshitifying the world with their reckless enginee…

> But isn't it the same when we lionise sociopathic, charismatic men [0] who "never cared about norms"

who is this "we" are you referring to? to me, assholes are assholes. be it a man, woman, it, or anything in between. especially if this person works in adtech and adjacent industry.

> my fellow computer scientists might hold up Hank Asher as an example of anything but a criminal

seems like a problem with your education system. I think there's this thing called ethics, not sure if they teach it there.

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