Silicon Valley’s On Going Existential Gender Dynamics Crises: Ellen Pao vs Kleiner

It is a bit of a “he-said she-said game” in the Ellen Pao case against Venture Capital Firm Kleiner – Silicon Valley’s most recent gender discrimination case. Silicon Valley, over the past decade, has become notorious for it’s patriarchal corporate culture, a place where women are constantly at odds with it’s male dominance. The Valley has become analogous to a fraternity scene, but for grown men. A culture where the movement for egalitarianism and the push for moving women out on the “second class citizen” in corporate cultures has perhaps been an agenda placed on the back burner.

Ellen Pao, a previous partner of Kleiner, had sued the V.C. Firm under allegations of unprofessional gender dynamics in the work environment. Her attorney argued that although Pao had many successful efforts in the firm, including investments with RPX – the patent company – along with twitter investments, she had little-to-no traction for upward mobility, hitting a lower than normal “glass ceiling”. Although Pao’s case shines light, once again, on how women are still minorities in Silicon Valley, faced with blatant discrimination due to a product of the culture’s lake of exposure to gender diversity, the Venture Capital firm, in the end, was cleared by a California Jury for all claims brought against it. Even claims that involved more personal matter of Pao being terminated from her position at the firm – thought to be a result of a retaliation against Pao for her suing the firm in 2012 – was also cleared.

Although there was no major triumph for Ellen Pao personally, there is some pay off. With the more gender inequality cases brought out of the wood-work in the V. C culture, perhaps there will be a larger, more sustainable push for equality and integrity within Silicon Valley corporate world.

Unfortunately, the scene got a little messy for Pao’s case when the jurors brought up the affair Pao had with former Kleiner partner, Ajit Nazre. Pao claimed Nazre used business trips as opportune courting situations, arguing that she was more of a victim of his habits than a romanic interest. Whether or not it was appropriate for her to get involved with a married business partner who she was told had already separated from his wife, is news for the tabloids. I believe the coverage on this case is most important in the fact that it is not the first, and most likely will not be the last given the culture’s history. Therefore, it is a symbolic slap in the face for the Silicon Valley to wake up and get their act together when it comes to gender dynamics. Or perhaps I live in a fantasy world believing everyone to be educated about gender politics, human rights and to have read Simone’s de Beauvoir’s 1949 book “The Second Sex”. But no, in fact I’d be lying to myself if I said I truly believed this was reality.


Kayleigh Stack

Tech Blogger and Marketing Assistant

Don’t make it Happn

A few weeks ago I wrote an article about the lack of privacy we are facing this days. Today I came across a blog post that that talks about a new dating app, and it made me so furious that I may just get a casting call to be in the next Vin Diesel movie (I’m a fast driver by nature).

Don’t worry, I’m not turning this into a three-page essay, I would just like to say that there is an app out there called Happn that you should never use. Why? I’m so glad you asked!

 This is a dating app. Basically it’s Tinder, but it shows you profiles of people that “you cross paths with”. Let me give you an example to make things a bit clearer. You are at the supermarket and see a person you like. You now have 3 choices:


1- You do absolutely nothing (most opted choice in history).

2- You talk to that person.

3- You use your stalker app.


If the other person has the app, you can let them know you like them. You can track every-time you cross paths with them (when and where). Creepy right? It is essential simply an excellent stalker tool.

What you may not realize, especially if you use the app, is you are being stalked by the app itself. This app has to constantly run in order to track others, therefore, it is always tracking….you. Where you go and when you were there. I would assume all your daily habits are being tracked and probably used to sell things tailored to you that you probably don’t want or need. I’m sure the peeps at Google maps are very jealous of Happn.


I’m just going to print my life schedule (including bathroom breaks) and staple it to every light post in SF. This way you guys know where I am 24-7.

If you have no love for your own privacy, at least have some love for your phone. The poor bastard has to run this app in the background all day long.

See you guys (along with everyone else that runs this app) around!

Federico Pisani.

Tech Blogger.


Note: This is only my opinion since I have never used the app nor have any intentions of doing so (I prefer to stalk people the old-fashion way, with binoculars).


How public is your Wifi?

When we go to an internet cafe, sign into a free network and access our accounts, we generally assume that most people in the building are there using the internet for similar reasons. Although this may often be the case, it is not true all the time. Internet cafes and places that offer free internet access to paying customers are seen as lucrative havens for the unethical hacker. Unethical hacker meaning – those technology nerds that use their expertise of knowing all the bugs and loop holes of systems, programs, and devices for personal gain. So why preface hacker with a negative value proposition of “unethical” when the term “hacker” in itself is generally loaded with connotations? Because, nowadays there are “ethical hackers. Since the internet has become somewhat of its own sovereign country, they are similar to that of a travel agent who, once upon a time, helped to devise one’s trips, giving travels tip on how to travel safe and smartly – the “Ethical” Hackers do the same for the internet. Ethical Hackers are consultants for safety, or maybe the better analogue here is, they are like the Sex Education teachers of the internet. They show people how easy it is to get in trouble, and what one can do to stay protected – if you get my drift.

How is there even an outlet for an Ethical Hacker career? With over 1.43 billion smartphone users world-wide, among other personal devices, it is very likely that many of those users have at one point in time used an open WiFi sources to sign into programs with sensitive information about themselves or their company, leaving them vulnerable to hackers with malicious intent. In 2013 alone Risk Based Security reported that more than 822 million records were exposed – records of which every detail of one’s identity was accessible. And although most educated technology consumers are aware of the privacy risks they take when signing into unsecured networks, it is often forgotten, or inadvertently ignored out of necessity – hence the need for ethical hackers to reinforce to people, and businesses alike, just how easy it is for someone with a little skill, a half of brain, and the right tools, to gather all the information one needs within minutes to ruin an anonymous person’s life. This is the reality of the world we live in these days, and we need to get serious about wearing protection.

Here are just three, out of the many things, internet users can do to prevent themselves from being a vulnerable target.

1) Encryption:

It is best to make sure, and double check a few times over, that the network for which you are signing into is encrypted. Encrypted networks are there to protect users from unwarranted surfers– i.e. hackers. However, it is important to also make sure that, even though a network says they are encrypted, the network you are signing into in the public space is in-fact the network it says it is. Hacking trolls redirect traffic to networks of their own that they create for open source settings with a few tools and tricks of the trade. Often times a personal smart device will scan all the networks available and connect to the first readily available option. Hackers generally label their networks something benign, like a fictitious cafe name, to come across as safe to the user. If your device ends up connecting to a less-than-trusted source such as this type, it is even more vulnerable to be hacked, with or without decryption software.

2) Keep Operating Systems Updated:

It is easier for hackers to find bugs in the system of outdated operating systems, these bugs providing loop holes making them more at risk. While it is a simple form of protection to update your system, often times it is easier said than done since most people don’t keep on top of their updates, due to time, money, or laziness. However, those annoying reminders on our smart devices that pop up every two weeks innocuously telling us our systems needs to be updated, might just be able to save our virtual lives.

3) Not Using Internet Cafes

Now, I’m not saying that we shouldn’t log onto to any network outside the iron fence on our fancy office building or the isolation of our four-walled home, but rather I am suggesting to not do all your bills, emails, and SSN juggling on an open source WiFi network. However, if you are just wanting to plop yourself down next to a big cup of your favorite local coffee and get into a raging game of virtual scrabble with a buddy halfway across the world, I think that should be fine, although I would use an alias.

To get a little smarter about the reality of digital identity fraud, Read Maurtis Martijin’s article on ethical hacker Wouter Slotboom on Matter.

By Kayleigh Stack

I once was young, and a VP (Part 1)













  1. You get money to build your business
  2. You hire a bunch of new talent
  6. New talent may not have actual experience building stuff
  7. You’ve run out of money
  8. Ask for more money
  9. Repeat until there is no more money

Stay tuned for the second part of this article…

Federico Pisani.

Technical Blogger.

I Was Once Young, and a VP (Part 2)










Fede Pisani (Age of 30).

Technical Blogger.


Is Texting Contributing to a Bidialectical Culture?

When reflecting on the history of literacy and its advancements, one might reference poetry, koans, or sonnets – Rumi, Shakespeare, maybe Sinclair Lewis or Ernest Hemingway – all of which had a distinguished nature to their writing, making it less a form of dry, solemn communication and more of an art of high resonate notes. Their writing was often a vehicle to discuss ethics in politics, societal morals, or human’s idiosyncratic nature. Most literary laureates are given great praise over their ability to use language as an artist would use a paintbrush – masterfully coloring in the world with their gifted narration abilities, one pen stroke at a time.

Individuals who consider such literary accomplishments as major advancements to the written word and furthering our communication style, may scoff at the way the current generation is utilizing – or not utilizing – writing in text messages, seeing it as a form of abuse. Some may even consider the shorthand, so often found in text messages– such as LOL, JK, & NVM – as degrading the artistry of language, giving children bad habits, and making it difficult for them to have intellectually rich and verbose conversations with their peers. However, most of the distrust circulating around the texting culture are people opinionating, with their hypotheses not really grounded in any sound research, just mere speculation, and perhaps a pitch of nostalgia for the past.

In a recent TEDtalk on communication, linguist John McWhorter discussed a less popular angle of texting and its effects on literacy, debunking the very premise of texting being damaging to the written language. Rather than creating a generation of subpar writers, he believes that it is actually helping people become better communicators, as it serves a similar function in the brain to that of a second language. Texting is now being seen as a new form of second language – with all its shorthand, slang and brevity- making it difficult to understand for those individuals who are unfamiliar to the nuances of the code. Studies have shown that people who are bilingual are cognitively nimbler, quicker, and even able to resolve conflicts better. Therefore, if texting is now seen to have similar advantages to that of being bilingual, then our generation might just be experiencing, as McWhorter mentioned “a linguistic miracle”.

McWhorter discussed that through texting we have mastered ways of communicating empathy with the challenge of not physically seeing a person’s body language or facial features. The LOL or LMAO texters are generally not literally “Laughing Out Loud”. Rather the LOL conveys resonances, showing how one relates to the other, just as someone who has a face-to-face conversation may demonstrate this emotion through locked eyes or a cocked head. We are now using additional methods to convey our physical reaction and body language through emoji, written slang and acronyms.

Remember, in the history of humanity, the written word, compared to the spoken word, has been around for a minuscule amount of time. Therefore, perhaps every ounce of development we have contributed to written language is expanding our written repertoire, whether high-brow or not. From this lens, no slang or alternative dialect can ever be degrading the english lexicon, rather it makes it even more meatier, subtly advancing our culture, one LOL at a time.

So go ahead “Text up” and be apart of the growing bidialectical generation of english speakers, pigeon, ebonics, shorthand, and LOLers.

DeepMind and Machine learning

Google has been on the cutting edge of A.I development for some time and recently had a major advancement. Google’s DeepMind research center, consisting of a team of machine learning researchers, computational neuroscientists, and software engineers based in London, recently crafted a program that, without feeding any information to it from a human brain, learned how to play Atari games.

Machine learning has been ground breaking since its development- the ability to teach technology how to operate and learn. Educating machines has been akin to that of an infant; we have “raised” them to adopt our language, and learn from patterned experiences. Inputting information into machines over a long period of time enables the machine to pick up on patterns to eventually be able to execute on its own. But the “on its own” part has, up until recently, only been possible with human help – programing the machine with information in the effort for the technology to create relevant algorithms. However, Google’s DeepMind labs has crafted a type of machine learning program that does not require excessive inputted data from humans to effectively learn.

How is this possible?

Combining machine learning and systems neuroscience to produce general algorithms, DeepMind’s A.I. Program, coined “Deep Q-Network” (DQN), recently taught itself  how to play arcade games on its own.  Not only did DQN teach itself, the program was also able to  established farsighted strategies. It was reported that the A.I agent was capable to function right out of the box, given only “raw screen pixels, the set of actions available, and game score.”

DQN works from a combination of deep neural network and reinforcement learning – through seeking to find the familiarity and balance between the unknown, and that which is known. Reinforcement learning, inspired by behaviorist psychology, is unlike most supervised learning in that it does not correct weak actions or define the right input or output pairs. Rather, it allows software and machines to find the best context specific behavior automatically, to exploit its performance. It is trained in a way similar to how our brain experience and realize dreams and flashbacks – trained from stored samples of information taken directly from the learning phase. DQN is the attempt to create a supercomputer, a program that replicates the human brain.

Future of Machine Learning

DeepMind was initiated out of concerns over the future dangers of AI. It prioritizes the importance of human nuances, which are believed to be too complex for technology to ever understand entirely. However, the evolution of machine learning currently serves as an excellent asset to numerous fields.

A.I. has proven beneficial for certain diagnostics, especially in the medical world, where opinions and outcomes drawn from a large pool of continuously updated, world-wide data has been a great tool for providing the most relevant up-to-date information to patients. It generates global statistics from analyzed data that can then referenced to support a patient’s diagnosis. Perhaps machine learning will eventually be replacing the scientific method.

What lies ahead for machine learning is still unknown.  Perhaps leading machines will be replacing the researcher – learning as they go, coming out with the most relevant information that further helps in an endless amount of fields (stocks, economics, academia, health, etc..). Providing not only data, but data along with solutions. However, the emotional decision making and illogical tendencies of human choices is still too abstract to be captured in a program. The more advanced machine learning  that researchers are looking to develop would require complex algorithms and memory span that is, at the moment, unimaginable.

The Connectivity of The Internet of Things (IoT)


What is the Internet of Things (IoT)?




How does the IoT work




IoT at a quick glance

What Has Enabled the IoT?

  • Broadband internet  becoming increasingly more available and accessible
  • Decreasing costs
  • More devices
  • More built-in censors and GPS
  • Increase in Smart Phone sales

How will the IoT effect the future

  • By 2020 over 26 billion “things” will be connected

Some Opportunities with the IoT

  • Reduces the need to multi-task on menial activities
  • New job opportunities
  • Provides endless opportunities and connections.

The Challenges of the IoT

  • Increased security issues
  • Privacy and data sharing problems
  • An overproduction of Data
  • Data storage challenge



By: Kayleigh Stack

Tech Blogger & Market Researcher