
Ask HN: Reliable alternative to Tech Crunch? - Red_Tarsius
After reading yet another race drivel from <i>Tech Crunch</i>, I decided to vote with my eyeballs and switch to another news source. Where can I find an <i>a</i>political source of tech and business news? Most English websites promote gender&#x2F;race&#x2F;identity war and call it &#x27;raising awareness&#x27;.<p>I&#x27;d really appreciate your suggestions.
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smt88
In the US, businesses are some of the most powerful (if not the most powerful)
political actors. An apolitical site is also one with poor journalism.

As far as gender/race/identity, it is again not a luxury for many of us to
ignore those issues, and businesses have a huge role to play there, as well.

You aren't (and can't be) a person unaffected by political issues, so I'm not
sure why you'd want to ignore them.

~~~
Veratyr
There are a lot of people outside the US, for whom US political issues are a
minor (and definitely ignorable) concern at best and not something that should
frequently come up while reading tech news.

~~~
smt88
They shouldn't come up on American sites about (mostly) American companies
with American writers? These things affect the journalists and the other 330M
people who live here. It's not like we're a small, uninfluential country.

~~~
Veratyr
Food, the weather, transportation, the latest TV show and sports games also
affect the journalists and 330M people who live in the US. Those things belong
in general news outlets, not tech news outlets.

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bb88
People have created their own news sites that read a bunch of sources (reddit,
hn, tech crunch) and then only the stories they're most likely interested in
are promoted.

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sfaf
I count these as the more respected tech new sources:

Recode Verge Wall Street Journal (paywall)

and surprisingly enough BuzzFeed's long form content is actually quite strong.
They had some excellent investigative journalism on Zenefits this last year.

Techmeme is the best aggregator I've found.

~~~
smt88
Recode[1], Verge[2][3], and WSJ[4] present facts about gender/racial
discrimination, which fail OP's requirements. I personally don't believe any
valuable, reliable journalism outfit is going to ignore these issues (perhaps
by definition).

1\. [http://www.recode.net/2016/4/12/11586072/pay-gap-women-
men-s...](http://www.recode.net/2016/4/12/11586072/pay-gap-women-men-silicon-
valley)

2\. [http://www.theverge.com/2016/3/29/11327036/north-carolina-
bi...](http://www.theverge.com/2016/3/29/11327036/north-carolina-bill-lgbt-
discrimination-letter-google-apple-tumblr)

3\. [http://www.theverge.com/2015/12/10/9885826/airbnb-guests-
dis...](http://www.theverge.com/2015/12/10/9885826/airbnb-guests-
discrimination-race-study)

4\. [http://www.wsj.com/articles/a-year-after-ferguson-black-
live...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/a-year-after-ferguson-black-lives-matter-
still-wields-influence-1439143426)

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singularity2001
Best news site on the web: [http://hckrnews.com/](http://hckrnews.com/)

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boredprogrammer
Tech Crunch is a news source? When did that happen?

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sp527
I happen to agree with this. I think the tech industry is the wrong place to
make the discrimination argument for a number of reasons.

First of all, expecting profit-maximizing entities to deviate from a purely
meritocratic hiring process is a fool's errand - why should they act against
their own best interests? A number of people argue in favor of race/gender-
blind hiring solutions, but I have not seen any compelling evidence (i.e.
scientifically-backed studies) to indicate that tech industry minorities have
been passed over in favor of White/Asian males of equal or inferior merit in
any statistically significant way (I'm sure outliers exist, as with anything
of this nature). I'm also not sure how a system like this can be implemented
in the first place in any sane way. I've conducted my share of software
engineering interviews and I would never consider hiring someone I haven't
interacted with face-to-face.

I have however seen much of the opposite behavior, where tech companies I've
worked for (Google, Facebook) have given preferential treatment to candidates
of inferior quality purely on the basis of race/gender. This is where you
create actual problems, because rational people understand that a profit-
maximizing organization is the wrong context in which to attempt to re-balance
the scales. As an Asian male (who furthermore doesn't fit the introvert
stereotype), it personally makes me feel like I'm being inadvertently
discriminated against and expected to perform that much better up to and
within the interview process to earn my offer.

So where should we be having this discussion? Around urban culture and the
educational system. In their militant quest for culture reform, hyper-
progressives have rocketed well past the point in the stack where we can
actually (and fairly) address this problem. You need to level the playing
field to the furthest extent possible, prior to individuals competing on the
open market for employment. Anyone who's unable to empathize with the
situation of minorities (that Black and Hispanic people are predisposed to
tremendously disadvantageous circumstances or that women are raised in a
culture that's overtly hostile and detrimental towards their personal
ambitions) is a fool, willfully blind to reality, and possibly bigoted.

And lots of things have been tried without success. Zuckerberg attempted to do
his part in donating to the Newark public school system and failed
spectacularly (arguably on account of corruption and misappropriation courtesy
of Booker/Christie). They're not the first to try either. So, why did they
fail? Because the stronger factor is the context surrounding a child's
education. I once volunteered to tutor gifted urban children and the problem
was almost immediately apparent. Outside of school, these children face
destitution, are often fatherless, have exposure to gang culture, and have few
to no peers or role models interested in promoting educational aspirations. So
you end up realizing we have to go even further down the stack and correct the
fundamentals. How we do that is something worth entire novels of exposition.

Bottom-line: stop expecting tech companies to be the platform for resolving
this discrepancy.

