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Lynn Conway has died

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Re: Lynn Conway has died

#331

Post by wrycoder »

DonHopkins wrote: post #4

Lynn Conway, co-author along with Carver Mead of "the textbook" on VLSI design, "Introduction to VLSI Systems", created and taught this historic VLSI Design Course in 1978, which was the first time students designed and fabricated their own integrated circuits: >"Importantly, these weren’t just any designs, for many pushed the envelope of system architecture. Jim Clark, for instance, prototyped the Geometry Engine an…

I took a one week industrial course at MIT back in ‘79, I think it was. Sussman, Knight, Batalli, the whole amazing crew. We started from scratch with gates and progressed to finished layout designs by the end of the week. Most everything had been coded in Scheme, including the test simulation software. I walked out with a five inch binder of instruction and a vastly overloaded head. It was one of the most amazing experiences in my life. Shortly thereafter, they did the Scheme chip using those tools.

Re: Lynn Conway has died

#332

Post by verticalscaler »

mylies43 wrote: post #318
verticalscaler wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no thesis, we're just talking. I don't understand why I got called names and hostile responses. Meh. The second part of your reply is great, I figured this would be the place to ask somebody who knows about it. I wish you'd have started and ended with that. I'm one of those very nerds who never cared about who wants to sleep with whom. I must note that on occasion trans techies are aggressively hostile to non…

[flagged]

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Re: Lynn Conway has died

#334

Post by amysox »

canucker2016 wrote: post #324
Aloha wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also Same.

Wikipedia is now using https://news.engin.umich.edu/2024/06/the-legacy-of-lynn-conw...

There's also now a story from the Los Angeles Times via Yahoo News: https://www.yahoo.com/tech/lynn-conway-leading-computer-scie...

Re: Lynn Conway has died

#335

Post by amysox »

SpaceManNabs wrote: post #262

lots of progress in transgender issues since then because of people like lynn conway. Because of people like her, fewer people will lose their careers (or have to rebuild) or kids just because they corrected their gender.

Indeed. I certainly didn't lose mine when I transitioned in July 2017. In fact, I helped my company's HR department figure out how to handle it, as I was also a support group facilitator and had access to information that could help.

Literally, I took a Thursday and Friday off (Thursday being the day my name change was granted) and came back as Amy on Monday. My cubicle nameplate had already been replaced, and someone had taped a "WELCOME AMY!" sign over one of my monitors. There were some bobbles with getting all my accounts changed, but those were quickly resolved. (I left that company two years later, and now work somewhere where I've never been anyone but Amy.)

Re: Lynn Conway has died

#336

Post by amysox »

canucker2016 wrote: post #323
steveklabnik wrote: post #2

Is there a citation for this, or an announcement somewhere? The Wikipedia page was changed, but with no link backing it up, and I can't find any. EDIT: ah, found it: http://www.myhusbandbetty.com/wordPressNEW/2024/06/11/lynn-c... RIP.

Wikipedia has updated to use the following U.Mich announcement: https://news.engin.umich.edu/2024/06/the-legacy-of-lynn-conw...

There's also now an article from the Los Angeles Times via Yahoo News: https://www.yahoo.com/tech/lynn-conway-leading-computer-scie...

Re: Lynn Conway has died

#337

Post by canucker2016 »

ksenzee wrote: post #128
tibbydudeza wrote: post #36

I hope that at some point she could reconnect with her kids from her prior marriage.

She did. This was from 2000: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2000-nov-19-tm-54188...

Some more of Lynn's recollections with her kids/nieces at https://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/Retrospective5.html#..., https://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/Retrospective5.html#..., and https://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/Retrospective6.html

Re: Lynn Conway has died

#338

Post by amysox »

tylersmith wrote: post #267
dannyobrien wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without wishing to categorize all of these important woman into the same story, another key trans figure in early personal computing is Sophie Wilson[1], who co-designed the ARM instruction set (and, as important for many, designed the OS for the BBC Microcomputer, including the font). [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophie_Wilson

It's so cool how so many important women in computing are trans women.

We have our own set of giants to stand on the shoulders of.

Re: Lynn Conway has died

#339

Post by yawpitch »

poszlem wrote: post #186
yawpitch wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> sports, etc Just going to keep pointing out that human beings have very little sexual dimorphism compared to the other great apes, and that any difference is any sport that does not actually employ the genitals is probably more down to food access and/or training disparities than actual “significant” biological factors.

I'm sorry, but this is demonstrably not true. We would not have this in the year 2024 otherwise: https://boysvswomen.com/

Of course we would have and expect exactly that same (extremely cherry-picked, confirmation bias serving) result if it were true that female athletes had similar innate physical capacities — and they do, sexual dimorphism in humans is quite minimal compared to the other great apes, especially the gorilla and the orangutan — but were neither as well fed nor as well trained as male athletes.

In other words the (very circular reasoning) chart your source provides doesn’t obviously show sexual dimorphism when confounding variables of food and training (and the funding and social incentives that provide both) exist.

Re: Lynn Conway has died

#340

Post by yawpitch »

InitialLastName wrote: post #182
yawpitch wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> sports, etc Just going to keep pointing out that human beings have very little sexual dimorphism compared to the other great apes, and that any difference is any sport that does not actually employ the genitals is probably more down to food access and/or training disparities than actual “significant” biological factors.

> probably more down to food access and/or training disparities than actual “significant” biological factors. I'm not really going to defend the other side here because sports are (by definition) fundamentally arbitrary, but is this really borne out by reality? To use an easy comparison, elite adult womens' track and field athletes might be competitive against high school boys, but not at any higher level. Compare, f…

You’re asking the wrong question… what we’d need to do is take a girl with the same height and muscle mass as a boy and give them both the diet and training (and societal and economic incentives and rewards) of a Usain Bolt from birth, then look for sexual dimorphism’s effect on their sports performance. Looking for support for your confirmation bias in stats that already are influenced by thousands of years of your confirmation bias doesn’t exactly make decent scientific inquiry. Again, when compared with the other great apes (never mind less closely related primates) we humans have relatively minimal sexual dimorphism, and no obvious biological reason to simply assume that two adult peers that had the same dietary and exercise and skills training regimes would have vastly different athletic performance characteristics, especially across a wide range of sports.
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