n00shie

Great article, always happy to see my home country featured abroad.

Just to nitpick, however:

> Got independence from the USSR in 1991 and had some power struggles until a Soviet guy took over in 1994 and then won a brutal civil war against a coalition of Islamic extremists and has been running the country ever since

Calling it Islamic extremists is a bit reductive. The coalition (United Tajik Opposition) was with the Islamic Renaissance Party, a couple of pro-democracy parties which were supported by the majority of the intelligentsia, and also included a party for Pamiri Autonomy. The most common thing among them is they were all united against the Communists.

Source: I am Tajik and was born around the Soviet Union collapsed. Also studied the history of the civil war

I always considered it looked like a rabbit!

everyone that matters...

Why are we so OBSESSED with getting more women into the programming business, and creating an artificial population balance when the natural tendency shows otherwise?

We just need to make sure that there aren't active forces PREVENTING a group of the population from getting into the field.

Providing extra rewards and incentives for minorities to do the same job as the majority is fundamentally discriminatory towards the majority, and at the same time, further promotes gender, racial and other biases towards the minority (which I believe these rewards and incentives intended to diminish in the first place). Thoughts like "oh, she only got this job because she is a woman" will inevitably surface in the minds of other workers, even if they don't say it out loud.

Here is the only solution: drop all rewards that are based on race, gender, or other non-merit based makers. Level the playing field. Make it exactly the same for everyone to ensure a fair assessment of their skills. Then we can have real equality.

I am very disappointed to see this. I have been using BufferBox since the beginning, and it provided immense convenience for both myself, and all of my friends who used the service as well. I was worried that something like this would have happened when they were acquired by Google, and now it has :(

Because they are all Chinese?

Ha, well I was giving credit to where it's due. As a novice coder I find myself always wondering about the bigger picture, and so I can always derive value from a step-by-step process of how someone more experienced than myself has achieved their current status.