(Photo: Heated Forest)

It's simply a part of life: sometimes, when you emerge from the depths of the Internet to refill your Star Trek mug with Stumptown coffee, you accidentally encounter a real live girl. You know, that genre of human being that has boobs and always keeps a copy of Lean In on her desk. Your heart might skip a few beats as you're forced to pass by her, dreading having to interact with someone outside of your favorite IRC channel. A wave of relief hits you as she keeps her eyes glued to the floor and doesn't acknowledge you: you're safe. For now.

Luckily, if you are a grown ass man and women still terrify you, there is a community you can turn to voice your concerns. Hacker News, which is like Reddit but somehow worse, has your back. In a thread called Hugs vs. Handshakes, HN commenters swarmed to discuss a post by Contently CCO Shane Snow about whether or not to hug or shake the hand of ladies in the workplace.

Mr. Snow, a "married dude," is still unsure how to act around lady people:

But with females, I feel like I’m trapped between two walls of a deep-space garbage compactor. On the first meeting, we shake hands. Easy. But the next time we cross paths? Is a handshake now too formal (especially if we got along well in the first meeting)? Will a hug be awkward? What if the answer to both is “yes”?!

Hacker News commenters can totally relate. The problem with shaking hands, of course, is that you might fracture our brittle bones with your manly monster shake. But the problem with hugging is that you might accidentally touch our delicate lady areas. What's a dude to do?

One commenter wants you to define hugs:

"Are the hugs being discussed in this thread actual hugs? Or going in close as though to kiss on the cheek, but not actually touching cheeks? Or more like the way male athletes embrace each other?"

Another can barely contain his longing:

"My general rule of thumb is – if I'm comfortable with the person and she's a woman, it's a hug. If I'm not comfortable, it's a handshake and a small inner sigh at the inadequacy of it."

Yet another thinks you should get more creative:

What's wrong with just saying "hi"? Or a friendly fist-bump if you want to do something more fun?

Such a tough decision! To treat women like human beings or to run away terrified from them because they might give you cooties? You might want to refer to this WikiHow on How to Hug a Girl, just to be safe. Good luck out there.

Ms. Richards (Photo: twitter)

It all started at a conference devoted to Python. Developer evangelist Adria Richards heard a couple of guys behind her making sexual cracks about big dongles and "forking repos," and, in a moment of frustration, called them out on Twitter, posting their picture and CCing the conference organizers.

One of the guys was shortly thereafter fired. Today, after an Internet uproar that spilled over into a DDOS attack on her employer SendGrid, Ms. Richards has also been fired--publicly.

And so begins accountability in the age of the creepshot, where you can be called out in public by thousands for something snarked to the dude next to you--and where the person who did the calling out gets called a jerk too.

so basically, welcome to the Foucauldian panopticon, where you will get fired for talking in public. even worse when Google Glass arrives.

— Mike Isaac (@MikeIsaac) March 21, 2013

Almost everyone who stuck their hands into the muck came out looking dirty. Ms. Richards looks like an overreacting vigilante; the dude who lost his job looks immature; both employers look chickenshit and Orwellian. (They also might want to start prepping now for the wrongful termination lawsuits.)

PyCon, meanwhile, has updated its Code of Conduct with clear procedures for contacting staff in the event of inappropriate behavior. The new police notes: "Public shaming can be counter-productive to building a strong community. PyCon does not condone nor participate in such actions out of respect."

Updated (3/22/13): Since Betabeat first saw the new code of conduct, PyCon deleted the language about public shaming. It now says, “PyCon staff requests that they be your first resort so that they may enforce the Code of Conduct and take quick action toward a resolution.” However, the code still tells attendees, “please do not disclose public information about the incident until the staff have had sufficient time in which to address the situation.”

Meanwhile, developer Amanda Blum has posted an account of her own dealings with Ms. Richards and her tendency to take disputes public rather than seek resolution. Ms. Blum acknowledges sexism within the tech industry, but argues that Ms. Richards strategy of dealing with conflict is counter-productive: “when Adria is offended, she doesn’t work within the community to resolve the problem, and how ultimately,it actually harms female developers because it forms the perception that we are to be feared, we are humorless, that we are hard to work with.”

Ms. Blum concludes that everybody lost here. It’s hard to argue with that.

The swagsters at TechCrunch even thought this called for a Gandhi quote: “We win justice quickest by rendering justice to the other party.”

But of course, the tech community has no code of conduct when it comes to disagreeing with someone–especially a woman–in a measured, rational manner. Hence the hordes of Internet monsters who've weighed in. Think the flap over Violet Blue's cancelled BSides sex talk, or the shouting match that ensued when someone tried to bring up race, except worse.

Let's be clear: The movement against sexual comments and content at tech conference isn't necessarily about the comments themselves. It’s about an atmosphere that’s often unfriendly at best and hostile at worst, which people like Ms. Richards are attempting to correct, one incident at a time if necessary. And if you want to understand why she felt the need for public shaming, just look at the Internet backlash.

There’s this Hacker News comment thread, which starts with a “philosophical Marxist” calling Ms. Richards’ allegations of sexism a “false positive." Soon after, the mens’ rights trolls started spewing nonsense like, “I’d like her to justify:- in what way her accusation is not the moral equivalent of a false rape claim.” Then there were comments like this:

This woman is bad news, and she's making all women look bad. Option 1 - Hire a guy Option 2 - Hire a woman, and out of nowhere she'll cause me trouble with some random harassment charge.

You know how it is with women and all those random harassment charges.

Sure, the usual suspects from the deep Internet emerged from their bolt holes to vomit filth all over this. The Daily Dot, which has reported extensively on the response to Ms. Richards, says someone emailed Ms. Richards a picture of a woman bound and beheaded, with the comment "when Im done." Meanwhile, 4Chan's /b/ board, in all its foul glory, mobilized to get her fired.

But it's probably too much to expect trolls to be anything more than trolls. We do expect more from Hacker News, though, against all odds. The site is directly tied to one of the most powerful forces in Silicon Valley. And yet:

Why does Y Combinator prefer a violently misogynist Hacker News community that violates its own guidelines? 2.dashes.com/14eJi42 @paulg? — Anil Dash (@anildash) March 21, 2013

Tech blogs will blame "Anonymous" and 4chan and whatever for this. NOPE, it was fucking Hacker News news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5391667

— Christina Xu (@Chrysaora) March 21, 2013

Yeah, Ms. Richards overreacted initially, and in the process, some poor guy lost his job. (And even in the booming tech economy, that's terrifying.) But the controversy just proves her larger point, and it goes to show why so many women within the tech community are on hair-trigger alert.

So we were delighted to see this parody pop up, spotted by PandoDaily and sent out by the folks behind Hacker School on their email list. It's a pretty accurate depiction of the front page of Hacker News. Lots of ideologically opposing ideas clashing against each other, rants about flailing startups and non-news about HN sensation Elon Musk. Our favorite has to be "A Story About Sexism in Tech Filled with Sexist Comments Denying Sexism in Tech," because... yeah, been there.

Below is a screencap. You can see the entire parody here.

(Photo: LinkedList)

(Photo: Status Chart)

A few weeks ago, a piece of porn for self-quantifiers shot up to the top of Hacker News. It was created by NYC's very own Chris Kennedy--a Betabeat poachable--and was intended to remix and remaster the traditional boring résumé layout. The Hacker News crowd went so crazy for Mr. Kennedy's invention that he promised to launch a version for others to use as well.

Today, just two weeks after he publicized his own Status Chart, Mr. Kennedy and backend dev Richard Owens have opened up the platform to other engineers and designers.

Status Chart allows you to display a more holistic portrait of who you are to potential employers, including hackathons you've participated in and websites you've designed. "I felt that these item are what really make me who I am, not necessary the 'jobs' I have had, although important," Mr. Kennedy told Betabeat over Gchat. "It is just not projects that make us who we are, it's the hackathons where I have personally gained the most information about different parts of my job, and the events where I learn so much more about those things."

"Status Chart is an enhancement to the resume for those that can't fit everything on one page," he added. "And it also acts as your professional dashboard."

The first iteration of Status Chart launches in invite-only beta mode today and will be two-pronged: users can either sign up for a free "Spectator" account that allows them to view and follow other people's dashboards, or they can pay for a "Personal" account that allows them to create their own Status Chart. Users can register for an invite today, and Status Chart will be slowly rolling out membership over the coming weeks.

"We are still trying to decide on the pricing point, but from all the feedback and surveys we are thinking $5/month. Or if you do a year, we will give you 50% off, [so it's] $30/year," Mr. Kennedy said.

Since Status Chart hit number one on Hacker News, Mr. Kennedy said the site has received 30,000 unique visitors and over 850 responses to a survey he posted about the site. Ninety percent of those survey respondents said they would be willing to pay for the service. "I think it is safe to say that this project will be on going with the hopes of turning it into something more then just a project," he said.

Mr. Kennedy has been working so hard that he said he strained his eye from looking at the computer screen too much, and currently can't wear his contacts. "I guess it's a tiny battle scar," he laughed.

"It is pretty crazy how much we have completed in two weeks," he added.

SPACE, YOU GUYS.

Maybe, despite a week of SPACE FEVER, you still aren't sold on the idea of NASA. Maybe sexy mohawk-rocking scientists and sick panoramic images of an alien planet leave you cold. After all, it's not like we're sending real-life human astronauts anywhere anytime soon.

Well, oh ye of little faith, behold wtfNASA, a single-serve site devoted entirely to answering the question, "What the fuck has NASA done to make your life awesome?" Merely one example of many: inspired the design for your Speedo bathing suit. You're welcome.

However, it appears the creator of this entertaining little site has neglected a very important contribution to American pop culture for which NASA is at least tangentially responsible: I Dream of Jeanie. We demand more Major Nelson.

Betabeat gets fontBombed.

It's pretty rare that a "Show HN" post actually makes it to the top of the front page of Hacker News, as a lot of them are just half-baked startup ideas. Not so with fontBomb, a delightfully fun plugin that lets you blow up the text on your favorite (or least favorite) websites.

fontBomb is an HTML 5 plugin by Canadian programmer Philippe-Antoine Lehoux. As one commenter put it, "So awesome. Spent 10 min blowing the hell out of hn. Now instead of raging against trolls I can simply blow them up."

The video is worth watching, too: the bombs blow up on Hacker News, the Apple page and The New York Times in time with "Waltz of the Flowers" from The Nutcracker.

Mr. Basch (Photo: LinkedIn)

If anyone is familiar with the Valley's success method du jour, it's Diego Basch. Mr. Basch founded IndexTank, a hosted search tool that was acquired by LinkedIn in 2009. Today, he hit the front page of Hacker News with a post about how to exploit Silicon Valley "for profit (and maybe fun)."

Mr. Basch's parable is a familiar one: An average Joe goes to Silicon Valley, raises money even though he doesn't really agree with the VC's philosophies, builds a company with the express intent of getting acquired by a larger company, sells the company and makes bank. Only then does he finally have enough money of his own to build something he actually cares about.

Mr. Basch's tale of Joe Founder exposes some key flaws in the Valley's current culture. Aside from the founders just looking to spit out a one-off product, sell it and retire at 25, there are people out there who want to build something meaningful but can't corral the capital or resources to actually do so without first engaging with this cycle.

The discussion on Hacker News is pretty spirited, though the following comment did make us almost spit out our coffee: "$6m really isn't that much these days. Might get you a nice house in the Silly Valley and a few years of living expenses, but that's not "set for life" money if you're in your 20s." Ugh.

Anyway, at least we're not alone in our jadedness here at Betabeat. "Here's to cynicism and hustling," Mr. Basch closes. Indeed.

Mr. Atwood, probably yelling at you for wanting to learn a new hobby. (flickr.com/pepez)

The "learn to code" meme probably reached its pinnacle around the time Mayor Bloomberg announced his dedication to the initiative, but it has now begun the inevitable slide into backlash territory. Who would have thought that a fluffy gesture of commitment to a burgeoning New York industry would tip over into controversy? This is why we can't have nice things, Internet.

In a post published today on his popular blog Coding Horror, Stack Exchange founder Jeff Atwood publicly decried programming newbies' hilarious attempts to learn the art of code. As if you pathetic wannabes could ever know as much as he does about coding.

According to Mr. Atwood, Keeper of All Code:

Look, I love programming. I also believe programming is important … in the right context, for some people. But so are a lot of skills. I would no more urge everyone to learn programming than I would urge everyone to learn plumbing. That'd be ridiculous, right?

See, there's this thing called hobbies, and sometimes people like to do stuff in their free time because they think it's interesting, not because they want to "learn code just for the sake of learning code," or for the "fat paychecks." We get it: Yours is an elite circle filled with only the most logical, intelligent Python slingers around. But isn't it possible that some people are just interested in the Internet, and learning how to make it work?

Plus, even if it's not intended as a hobby, wanting to learn how to code is still not equivalent to wanting to be a programmer. Considering how prevalent computers have become in our society, acquiring basic programming skills is beneficial for all kinds of professions (including Betabeat writers, though we never went so far as to make a resolution).

Seems like many of the folks on Hacker News also disagreed with Mr. Atwood's controversial blog.

"If tomorrow you want to learn to cook, how would you feel if a master chef told you 'No, don't. You'll never be as good as me. If you're hungry, come to my restaurant instead'," wrote one commenter named shin_lao.

"Jeff has interpreted 'learn to code' with 'become a programmer'. They're not the same thing," concurred jkahn.

Look, we agree that the whole 'learn to code' thing probably jumped the shark. But it's kind of hard to see what's really going on from all the way up there on your pedestal.

Mr. Miller, pimp. (linkedin.com)

The "I'm moving to New York" letter has become quite a genre as of late, and recent UT-Austin graduate Mike Miller decided to hop on the bandwagon with a post outlining the reasons he's packing up for the Alley instead of the Valley post-college. Sure, there's more diversity and less of a commute, but you know what Mr. Miller is really looking forward to in New York? Meeting all you single ladies!

A direct result of the lack of diversity is that there are very few women in Silicon Valley. A highly unscientific study found that the ratio was about 3 males : 2 females. Settling down isn’t on my immediate horizon, but I want to be in a place where going on dates is a reasonable possibility. NYC has much more favorable odds: Census data pegs the ratio at roughly 52% females : 48% males.

It's certainly true that there are more available ladies in New York than men, but we've rarely seen anyone get so...logical about it. Census data and ratios? Be still, our hearts.

It seems like Mr. Miller isn't alone in his quest for the perfect balance between a rigorous work environment and lots of boobs. His missive hit the front page of Hacker News, with many commenters chiming in to voice their agreement.

"NYC has so many women," wrote one commenter named tstegart. "Beautiful women. But if you're looking to have kids, settle down and move away to where your kid has his own lawn to play on, your odds drop close to zero. So many people date in NYC, so few commit for the rest of their lives."

Looks like tstegart hasn't done his required reading on the plight of New York's single women.

But really, we applaud Mr. Miller on his highly engineerish approach to the post-college relocation quandary. It's nice to know that he fact-checked what his dick was telling him with mathematical equations.

And ladies? He's taking a job at Palantir. Ya know, just in case you were interested.

image from David_Saracino

Don't play with matches in a dry wooded area. Don't put a detailed rant on Hacker News unless you're prepared to start a fire.

An anonymous pastebin post from this weekend slammed the MongoDB database architecture and in particular the support from 10Gen, the AlleyCorp company with deep ties to MongoDB. It quickly raced to the top of Hacker News and from there around the developer community.

The screed got a ton of attention, to the point where 10Gen CTO Eliot Horowitz jumped into the comments on Hacker News and addressed the complaints point by point. Mr. Horowitz conceded that a lot of the issues where known complaints about MongoDB, but also highlighted the fact that many details from the post didn't match up to any of what 10Gen offered or any of their customer records.

In fact, deep in the comments on the Hacker News post, the "originator" of the pastebin post appeared to claim he was just a troll testing the masses to see who were sheep. "My intention was to troll as many hipsters as possible and make them a little more aware of how easy to manipulate they are, without even providing the slightest bit of evidence. It cracks me up that there are startups out there right now, making foolish architecture decisions based on the FUD i'm spreading. Start thinking for yourself!"

This begat a new cycle of finger pointing and skepticism, as the comment board rushed to determine if the troll taking responsibility truly was the original offender or simply an anon seeking attention. Meanwhile folks like Harry Heymann from foursquare and Wedge Martin from badgeville posted about their personal experiences with 10Gen.

"I run engineering for foursquare," wrote Mr. Heymann. "About a year and a half ago my colleagues and I and made the decision to migrate to MongoDB for our primary data store. Currently we have dozens of MongoDB instances across several different data clusters storing over a TB of data and handling 10s of thousands of requests per second (mostly reads but the write load is reasonably high as well). Have we run into problems with MongoDB along the way? Yes, of course we have. It is a new technology and problems happen. Have they been problematic enough to seriously threaten our data? No they have not. MongoDB is a complicated beast (as are most datastores). It makes tradeoffs that you need to understand when thinking about using it. It's not necessarily for everyone. But it most certainly can be used by serious companies building serious products. Foursquare is proof of that."

Eventually a post appeared on Read Write Web wondering what the damage to 10Gen and MongoDB's reputation might be. This seems a bit much, given the poster was only pointing to known issues and had several inconsistencies in their story. The powerful reaction does point to a very real debate about MongoDB and where the future of database architecture is headed. But the community knows a troll when they see one, and rallied to push 10Gen CTO's Eliot Horowitz's response to the top the Hacker News thread.