The Obtain: tech’s gender hole, and the way Gen Z handles misinformation

That is right this moment’s version of The Obtain, our weekday e-newsletter that gives a day by day dose of what’s occurring on the earth of expertise.

Why can’t tech repair its gender drawback?

Regardless of the tech sector’s nice wealth and loudly self-proclaimed company commitments to the rights of girls, LGBTQ+ individuals, and racial minorities, the business stays principally a straight, white man’s world.

A lot of the burden for altering the system has been positioned on girls themselves: they’re exhorted to study to code, main in STEM, and grow to be extra self-assertive. However self-confidence and male-style swagger haven’t been sufficient to beat structural hurdles, particularly for tech staff who’re additionally mother and father. Even the pandemic’s shift in the direction of distant working hasn’t made workplaces extra hospitable to girls.

It wasn’t all the time this fashion. Software program programming as soon as was an nearly solely feminine career. As not too long ago as 1980, girls held 70% of the programming jobs in Silicon Valley, however the ratio has since flipped solely. Whereas many issues contributed to the shift, from the tutorial pipeline to the tiresomely persistent fiction of tech as a gender-blind “meritocracy,” none clarify it solely. What actually lies on the core of tech’s gender drawback is cash. Learn the total story.

—Margaret O’Mara

Google examines how completely different generations deal with misinformation

The information: Youthful persons are extra seemingly than older generations to assume they might have unintentionally shared false or deceptive info on-line—typically pushed by the strain to share emotional content material shortly. Nevertheless, they’re additionally more proficient at utilizing superior fact-checking methods, a brand new research from Poynter, YouGov, and Google has discovered.

What they discovered: One-third of Gen Z respondents stated they observe lateral studying (making a number of searches and cross-referencing their findings) all the time or more often than not when verifying info—greater than double the proportion of boomers.

However, however: The research depends on contributors reporting their very own beliefs and habits, which is a notoriously unreliable technique. And the optimistic figures about Gen Z’s precise habits distinction fairly starkly with different findings on how individuals confirm info on-line. Learn the total story.

—Abby Ohlheiser

The must-reads

I’ve combed the web to seek out you right this moment’s most enjoyable/essential/scary/fascinating tales about expertise.

1 Amazon desires to start out providing teletherapy 
The e-commerce big is quickly increasing into healthcare. (Insider $)
And it’s increasing its palm print-reading cost system into dozens of Entire Meals shops. (Ars Technica)

2 The US has rejected Starlink’s broadband provide bid 🛰
The FCC stated it had didn’t display that it may ship on its promise to produce rural America with broadband. (TechCrunch) 
Who’s Starlink actually for? (MIT Know-how Overview)

three Large Tech desires to construct information facilities on US battlefields
However Civil Battle preservationists are combating again. (New Scientist $)

Four China’s financial disaster is birthing a brand new wave of tycoons
However they’re making their fortunes in sportswear and skincare, not tech. (Economist $)

5 Silicon Valley’s boy genius founders are becoming a member of the Nice Resignation
Their money-losing companies need skilled management throughout a tricky time for the business. (NYT $)
+ Why Steve Jobs was so keen on his turtleneck. (NYT $)

6 Air-con is horrible for the planet
Higher constructing air flow and greener models are only a few various options. (Vox)
+ The legacy of Europe’s warmth waves might be extra air-con. (MIT Know-how Overview)
+ Large Tech’s engineers are leaving legacy companies for climate-focused startups. (Protocol)

7 Social media actually desires buying stay streams to take off
Reside ecommerce is already enormous in China, however takeup has been slower elsewhere. (FT $)
+ China desires to manage how its well-known livestreamers act, communicate, and even gown. (MIT Know-how Overview)

eight The rise and rise of the ebike ⚡
Amid rising gasoline costs, electrical bikes are a less expensive various to vehicles. (WSJ $)
+ Lithium, which is important for electrical automobile batteries, is briefly provide proper now. (WSJ $)

9 Millennials are bonding with their children over Pokémon
After 26 years, the franchise has mass-generational attraction. (WP $)
+ Fewer persons are gaming now than on the peak of the pandemic. (Reuters) 

10 Jobhunters are paying $1,000 for the right LinkedIn headshot
In an image-obsessed world, they’re hoping it’ll give them the sting. (WSJ $)

Quote of the day

“Cyber criminals have been consuming our lunch.”

—Chris Krebs, former director of the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Safety Company, thinks the federal government has been blinded to the specter of on a regular basis ransomware assaults as a consequence of its give attention to monitoring subtle abroad attackers, experiences PC Magazine.

The large story

That is the rationale Demis Hassabis began DeepMind

Demis Hassabis

February 2022

In March 2016 Demis Hassabis, CEO and cofounder of DeepMind, was in Seoul, South Korea, watching his firm’s AI make historical past. AlphaGo, a pc program educated to grasp the traditional board sport Go, performed a five-game match towards Korean professional Lee Sedol and beat him 4-1, in a victory that modified the world’s notion of what AI can do.

However whereas the DeepMind group was celebrating, Hassabis was already serious about a fair larger problem. He realized that his firm’s expertise was able to tackle probably the most essential and complex puzzles in biology, one which researchers had been attempting to unravel for 50 years: predicting the construction of proteins. Learn the total story.

—Will Douglas Heaven

We are able to nonetheless have good issues

A spot for consolation, enjoyable and distraction in these bizarre occasions. (Received any concepts? Drop me a line or tweet ’em at me.)

+ 8glitchorbit’s digital artwork is weirdly soothing.
+ Prey, the brand new Predator prequel, sounds prefer it may simply absolve the franchise’s previous few horrors.
+ All hail the rise and rise of the emo main man.
+ That is attention-grabbing: investigators are utilizing DNA to combat again towards unlawful tree loggers.
+ Turtles are returning to the Mississippi mainland for the primary time in 4 years.

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