Researchers have found that code written by women—submitted to the software repository GitHub —was approved at a higher rate than code written by men, but only if the submitter’s gender was not disclosed (download and read the study here (PDF)). We discuss this topic, and alot more, on this week’s podcast.
Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott and Phil Wilson.
Music: Basic Jazz Blues by J. Simon van der Walt under a Creative Commons License
The Podcast
Podcast: Download (Duration: 42:08 — 24.7MB)
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Story Links
Past Week’s Top Minnesota Stories
- DevFest recap
- Twin Cities angel investor group wants to help Vegas startups hit the jackpot
- SPS Commerce feels the squeeze of a tightening labor market
- Parking in downtown St. Paul? Feed meter with mobile app
- Gravitational wave detection used supercomputing system of Burnsville’s Nor-Tech
Other Top Tech Stories
- The First 100,000 Funded Kickstarter Projects in 100 Numbers
- UK politicians green-light plans to record every citizen’s internet history
- ‘Internet of Things’ an Absolute Goldmine for Big Brother, Admits Top US Spy
- Full text of Clapper’s testimony (PDF)
Cool Thing of the Week
- Phil: Quartz News App
- Tim: Fitbit Alta
- Steve: Visual Hunt
Upcoming Events
- The Complete List of 250+ Tech, IT, and DevOps Conferences in 2016
- Enterprise Rising 2016, February 15, 2016, 8:00 am to 6:00 pm, University of St. Thomas
- Mobile Twin Cities: Overcoming the Gender Gap in Mobile Tech, February 16th, BuzzFeed
- MinneDemo 22, Thursday, February 18th, Depot, Minneapolis 6pm. Tickets (TBD)
- IoT Fuse, April 22, Univ of St. Thomas-Minneapolis
- MinneWebCon U of MN McNamara Alumni Ctr April 25-26
It is with equal measure of sadness and deep appreciation that we say “so long” to Graeme Thickins (
Dinosaurs being resurrected by pulling DNA from a mosquito 
TIP: SECURE YOUR BABY MONITOR! Just-plug-‘em-in baby monitors are one super-simple way that hackers can watch your baby—or eavesdrop on you in your home—with video and audio. Most people just buy them (and webcams too) and plugin them in. No password…or a weak one.
As 2016 ramps up we have a few important stories to cover and we do. During the Security Tip of the Week our buddy Tim Elliott chimes in with another method to ensure data is wiped on your solid state drive (SSD) before you sell your computer or drive: 
TIP: How to really erase your hard drive…especially if it’s an SSD. 
Hosts: Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins, Phil Wilson and Julio Ojeda-Zapata (Steve Borsch is off).
Big week with the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in full swing with twenty-two Minnesota companies in attendance showing their wares, one of which is a Burnsville company 
It’s our annual predictions show and, while we cover a handful of Minnesota and other top tech stories this past week, we focus on our “hits and misses” from predicting 2015 and then jump in to our 2016 prognostications.
Apple’s new iPhone battery pack has received a bit of design dissing this week. Many have said it “looks like a hump” and we think it sort of appears as though the iPhone swallowed a sheep, like an anaconda (see: 
Our discussion about: Should government have a ‘backdoor’ in our encryption? Should we be able to protect our communications?
Phil: 
Flash will be the missing superhero soon since even Adobe says not to use it anymore and confirms that the open standard, HTML5, has “won”. Learn more in this week’s Security Tip of the Week.