ElectronConf postponed until a “more diverse slate of speakers” can be delivered • Hacker News Board

Re: ElectronConf postponed until a “more diverse slate of speakers” can be delivered

#321

Post by concede_pluto » Mon, Jun 05, 2017, 5:51 PM UTC

pseudalopex wrote: post #306

concede_pluto wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If my code sucks, I have exactly the same experience fixing it that a black woman would have, because the arbiter of correctness is a computer without any opinions about the author. Diversity in skill comes from having worked in different kinds of software and languages and frameworks, not going out and collecting fifty shades of node hipster.

Sometimes code sucks because the programmer doesn't realize names work differently in other cultures.[1] Sometimes it sucks because it outs LGBT kids.[2] Sometimes it sucks because nobody noticed what the team called something was also a racial slur. [1] https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-... [2] https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/ne...

[1] is part of the basic domain knowledge that makes one competent. E.g., any programmer who deals with US PII should also know that social security number collisions exist even though nobody on the team has struggled with it. Your coworkers' personal experiences are not the only or best way to learn about users' problems, because not only are they a very small sample but they are self-selected nerds and inherently unlike most users (unless you sell programming tools).

[2] is a product design decision, not a programmer's ignorant error. "A product should side with a child against their legal guardian who actually paid for the product" is by no means the consensus across all cultures.

Re: ElectronConf postponed until a “more diverse slate of speakers” can be delivered

#322

Post by sctb » Mon, Jun 05, 2017, 7:03 PM UTC

SilverSlash wrote: post #145

legostormtroopr wrote: post #28

It seems that most people are crediting the cancellation with this tweet - https://twitter.com/fox/status/870761439094489088 "Congratulations @Github for hosting an all male conference!"

Ah! The good old: rabid feminist complains about misogyny - company gets nervous - too chicken shit to stand up when they have done nothing wrong - cancels what could have been a great event. I think this was an insult to all the speakers who no doubt dedicated time and effort, and made changes to their schedule for their talk, and got a slap in the face instead.

The guidelines ask that you make your point substantively and without calling names. This is even more important on controversial topics which come near their boiling point right out of the box.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: ElectronConf postponed until a “more diverse slate of speakers” can be delivered

#323

Post by Myrmornis » Mon, Jun 05, 2017, 8:47 PM UTC

vemv wrote: post #131

Will we ever accept the fact that women tend to be less inclined to do nerdy stuff (like developing Electron plugins instead of doing your actual coding job)? That doesn't imply that women are worse or unable, it's simply a matter of proportion. It's like saying men are underrepresented at yoga classes.

I'm someone who rants about PC culture so much that I'm sure I'm very boring. However, are you sure that's nature not nurture? And if it's nurture, why should we "accept" it, instead of helping our culture evolve? Certainly, the "nurture" part comes from some pretty fucked up history when it comes to gender roles and treatment of people other than white straight males in western society.

Re: ElectronConf postponed until a “more diverse slate of speakers” can be delivered

#324

Post by Myrmornis » Mon, Jun 05, 2017, 8:54 PM UTC

DeusExMachina wrote: post #45

As a European, I keep getting baffled about how out of hand these things seem to be in the USA. I live in the Netherlands, a very open-minded country with same-sex marriage, equal rights and were women seem to me to be even slightly more dominant over men (but this is just my perception). All this without safe spaces, forced quotas at conferences, codes of conduct and people that police every word you say. There are…

Yeah it is out of control in America. Perhaps it's partly that young middle-class people are less wordly (less experience of other cultures) and thus more inclined to juvenile, over-the-top views. Perhaps it's a pendulum swinging a bit too far currently; it's a pretty huge change to have the degree of support for a socialist presidential candidate that we saw with Bernie Saunders.

> This is one of the big reasons that always kept me away from the USA, even for short trips at conferences.

That's just silly. The first bit of your post was good, but now you sound like someone who really needs to take themselves less seriously. You don't have to avoid going to a continent because you don't like the tone of their culture wars currently. There are plenty of people who think all sorts of shit there, and if you really can't find any people who live up to your European standards then how about going for the natural world etc? (European speaking here)

Re: ElectronConf postponed until a “more diverse slate of speakers” can be delivered

#325

Post by Myrmornis » Mon, Jun 05, 2017, 8:57 PM UTC

huffmsa wrote: post #148

catenthusiast wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

*your

No, it's you're. Conjugation of "you are". As in > No I get you, YOU ARE saying.

*contraction

(Um, also, maybe we should stop this HN tradition of making copy-editing changes to other people's posts? What does it actually achieve? Especially as we've no idea whether we're writing our first language)

Re: ElectronConf postponed until a “more diverse slate of speakers” can be delivered

#326

Post by rufus_2 » Mon, Jun 05, 2017, 8:57 PM UTC

bmpafa wrote: post #210

MicroBerto wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's social engineering meant to divide and weaken us, and a large portion of the country has fallen for it. Especially in Academia. We are becoming crippled by our own will. It's sad to watch and the pendulum response was the 2016 election.

My problem with claims like these is that they imply intent, which implies a coherent (and nefarious) effort behind large social trends. Who precisely is it that's doing this?

My first guess would be those involved in the trillion dollar diversity and inclusion industry.

How many departments of government, academia, and business are there today which depend on a continued societal belief in postmodernism's collectivist explanation of oppression and victimhood?

If humanity achieved the goal of absolute equality, would those currently employed in the diversity and inclusion industry simply find new careers or would they continue to find new ways to segment humanity into oppressors and victims in order to retain the power and salary they are accustomed to?

Re: ElectronConf postponed until a “more diverse slate of speakers” can be delivered

#327

Post by mst » Tue, Jun 06, 2017, 1:04 AM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #245

mst wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's equality of outcome though, which is often terrible. I want a society where everybody gets an even shot, at which point I find it highly unlikely we'd end up at 50/50 - given programming has been both male-majority and female-majority over time I'm damned if I know in which direction it'd fall, but 50/50 usually means "you have forced people to be here who would've been better/happier somewhere else" and my fe…

The equality of outcome versus equality of opportunity distinction is a cop-out. If you have real equality of opportunity then you should expect equality of outcome,[1] unless there is biological reason why women/black people/etc want to be left out of well-paying secure careers, or can't hack it in those careers. Maybe that's true, but it's an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary proof. The fact that prog…

> When people say equality of opportunity they really mean something well short of that

I don't.

Re: ElectronConf postponed until a “more diverse slate of speakers” can be delivered

#328

Post by thrillgore » Tue, Jun 06, 2017, 1:27 PM UTC

Two thoughts on this matter:

* If not for the increasingly inescapable fact that a lot of OSS projects are moving to GH, just as they lived on SourceForge a decade ago, I would have zero use for GitHub to either submit patches, access, or publish software. I'd be content on Bitbucket alone.

* This is a conference about yet another front-end technology.

Re: ElectronConf postponed until a “more diverse slate of speakers” can be delivered

#329

Post by drjdog » Tue, Jun 06, 2017, 2:09 PM UTC

MagnumOpus wrote: post #310

rayiner wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If green eyed people had been systematically oppressed until recently and still made a fraction of the money brown eyed people do as a result, you'd see statistics about eye color at conference presentations.

Define "recently. Neither women nor blacks nor catholics nor jews have been systematically oppressed in the US in my lifetime, or yours, or most of the potential presenters. If you are conservative about it you can claim discrimination up until the 1960s - which is 50 years ago, hardly "recently".

> Neither women nor blacks nor catholics nor jews have been systematically oppressed in the US in my lifetime

If you are ever so slightly open-minded about it you could consider black Americans to still be systematically oppressed by the criminal justice system. Read a bit about the criminalisation of marajuana, sentencing procedures, the industrial prison complex etc..

Re: ElectronConf postponed until a “more diverse slate of speakers” can be delivered

#330

Post by will4274 » Tue, Jun 06, 2017, 5:09 PM UTC

nojvek wrote: post #235

TeMPOraL wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally. Were I accepted and later dumped like this, I'd feel I was subject to actual gender/race discrimination. The whole thing is ridiculous. To fight perceived discrimination, those people are doing even more direct and overt discrimination.

I see this from another point of view. Suppose a female new grad goes to Electronconf and sees all male speakers. Suppose she goes to other conferences and it's the same story. She feels there's no way she'll be able to break ground and be recognized as successful. She slowly drops out and leaves the industry and goes somewhere where she can make friends like her. Now suppose she sees plenty of female speakers and sh…

You've proposed a false choice - between a conference with male speakers and a conference with female speakers. As the article shows, the choice is between a conference with male speakers and no conference. In the first case, most attendees learn Electron and the community expands and maybe a small subset of people are turned off by the demographics of the speakers. In the second case, nobody learns Electron and the community doesn't grow. Everybody is turned off because the place to which they wanted to go to learn about a cool new technology is not available.