
Nvidia CEO tells female raffle winner: “You don’t even know what a GPU is, huh?” - blackhole
https://thereisonlyr.com/dumb-widdle-girls-in-tech-c73647238dc4#.aajyudnga
======
kagamine
I watched the video linked below, I honestly don't see how his remark is
linked to gender at all.

The lottery was going badly with many ticket holders not being in the room so
they are calling out numbers with no response. Huang comments on how it is
going right before he makes his remark. When the winner is on stage, and the
2nd female winner too, he shows interest and appears impressed by what they
do.

Where's the drama? I don't see it.

~~~
csdigi
I agree, if anything I think the remark looks more like a joke targeted to her
young age than her gender in the context of the video.

~~~
dijit
I thought it was because she was moving slowly.

"time limit"

"hurry up"

"are you sure you know what you won!, I'd be running"

but I didn't attribute it to malice so I might be biased. :x

------
daenz
What's always the interesting to me about these kinds of unfortunate
interactions is how amplified they become as they are reported. The title of
the post is "Dumb Widdle Girls in Tech." A quote from the author: "It’s
impressive that you overcame the intellectually debilitating condition of
being female to understand the nuances of deep learning." To be fair, much of
the post was balanced, but those 2 things stood out to me.

I'm not defending what Huang said at all, but I do think that it's unfortunate
that the worst possible extreme sexism is always assumed at the slightest off-
color remark. Should remarks like these be career or position-ending? Let's
see what happens.

~~~
LyndsySimon
> I'm not defending what Huang said at all, but I do think that it's
> unfortunate that the worst possible extreme sexism is always assumed at the
> slightest off-color remark.

I've almost always been opposed to the forced cultural changes that our
industry has dealt with in the past few years - but come one. This wasn't an
"off-color remark", it was offensive and I can see no way it could have been
intended otherwise.

~~~
daenz
If that's not an off-color remark, tell me an actual sex-related off-color
remark.

~~~
tinco
How about: "Oh, I am surprised a girl won the raffle." That's off color (I.e.
why put emphasis on the fact that they are underrepresented) but not offensive
(I.e. there's no questioning the girls knowledge).

~~~
daenz
Not trying to be pedantic here, but that's not off-color at all. There's
nothing in poor taste about saying women are under-represented.

------
sleazebreeze
The article doesn't actually say this, but the comment starts around 42:30 in
the video [1]. It's as amazingly bad as you can expect.

[1]
[http://www.ustream.tv/channel/fWbQyaEMfbh](http://www.ustream.tv/channel/fWbQyaEMfbh)

------
anc84
Oh come on, if you watched the whole event there were TONS of low key,
prejudice jokes at the expense of everyone. The "deep learning" community was
insulted, the other speaker "can only count in binary", there was a Star Trek
speech. There was so much banter, you could get horribly offended and sick to
your stomach at least once per minute if you felt like it.

If you see her getting called on stage, the very next line was about their age
(the group of people she belonged to?), them having to do homework.

------
erdevs
Is there any response from the women in the video herself? How did she
interpret it?

I watched the stream. Definitely not a sensitive remark and frankly the guy
came off as a jackass across the board, from brushing off the research group's
description of their work just before the raffle, to this insensitive-or-worse
joke, to holding onto the second woman to win's hand for a creepy-long time.

Cool that both raffle winners were women and it was nice to see quite a few
women in the audience!

~~~
mekaj
I haven't seen any statements from her, but you can see her body language
following the remark (~42:53). Suddenly she stops walking, turns in his
direction, her mouth opens wider, she stays frozen there for a brief moment,
and then continues walking.

------
Cyph0n
I usually don't think too highly of PC in general, but this was simply
uncalled for. Why say anything, man?

~~~
tracker1
I think it was an off the cuff attempt at humor, and just wasn't good. Some
people shouldn't improvise. It was definitely offensive, though I also think
some of the reactions are over the top.

~~~
anc84
> Some people shouldn't improvise.

Are you saying that only improvisation-privileged people should be allowed to
improvise?

~~~
vorotato
yes.

------
agounaris
As always people being oversensitive about practically nothing. I think I will
not open again articles mentioning such incidents.

------
malcolmgreaves
Commentary starts at 62:20 here:
[http://www.ustream.tv/channel/fWbQyaEMfbh](http://www.ustream.tv/channel/fWbQyaEMfbh)

------
voidr
> “I am literally sick to my stomach,” wrote group member Carolyn Farino.

It was a stupid comment, how can a stupid comment like that induce sickness in
another human being?

Make a joke about typical male stereotypes, nobody bats an eye, make a bad
joke involving females, the feminist lynch mob goes into action.

Let's assume in a fashion show a women CEO would have made a similar stupid
comment to a male, would we see such a male outrage? No.

~~~
tehwebguy
Ok cool so Huang can tell women what they know, and you can tell them how to
feel.

~~~
tutts
She's claiming a physical reaction, not an emotional one. While we can't know
if she's feeling nauseous, it's perfectly reasonable to doubt her conclusion
that this is caused by Huang's statement.

~~~
corecoder
Do we know better than her how she feels and why?

~~~
daenz
Whenever you ask a question, I feel physically sick. Please stop asking
questions. And don't question me.

------
thesehands
what a daft remark, but let's not forget Hanlon's razor here.

