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I think I found a Mac kernel bug?

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Re: I think I found a Mac kernel bug?

#51

Post by lambdawitch »

freehunter wrote: post #39
dang wrote: post #83

I've edited 'he' to 'she' in the two otherwise fine comments that made this mistake ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16251566 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16251562 ) and grouped several empty replies and one lame off-topic subthread under this one. It's rare that we do something like this (and I've emailed the author), but it seems fairer than to penalize their original posts, which were otherwise i…

[flagged]

I am not sure if you have ever been on the other side of this, but having people constantly assume you are a man because you know how to program and you're on the internet gets very old, very quickly. You can either accept being constantly referred to as a guy, which becomes flat-out alienating, or you can speak up for yourself, in which case you get responses like the one you just wrote.

I get that the gender of the author doesn't matter to you, and it may not even matter to the author of the article, but it does matter to a lot of people. No one is suggesting mistakes are a grave sin—even if her blog does say "Julia Evans" in giant letters right at the top. If someone makes one though, the correct response to people pointing it out is to accept the correction and keep it in mind for next time, not to accuse them of spam.

Re: I think I found a Mac kernel bug?

#52

Post by braderhart »

st3fan wrote: post #40
icebraining wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ubuntu still doesn't let me change my IP address to a static one via the UI What do you mean? It doesn't get applied?

That is right. I fill in the fields, then submit the change and nothing happens and it jumps back to DHCP. Always have to just edit the network settings manually.

Sorry, but Ubuntu and Gnome NetworkManager issues do not equate to issues with Linux. They are very distro and window manager specific.

Re: I think I found a Mac kernel bug?

#53

Post by nxc18 »

st3fan wrote: post #28
madaxe_again wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Qualitatively, it feels like apple’s software quality has been on a slide for several years. What attracted me to move to Mac OS in the first place some 15 years ago was the sheer quality. It was thrilling to use a computer that Just Worked, with no BSODs or the endless dependency hell that was Linux at the time. It doesn’t feel like that any more, across either OSX or iOS - it feels fragile. Things crash, behaviours…

Thank goodness that Linux is consistent and has no bugs :-) Ubuntu still doesn't let me change my IP address to a static one via the UI and video drivers still crash or result in hours of googling and reading contradicting articles on how to change xorg.conf Software has bugs. Operating systems are hard. It doesn't matter where you will go, you will most likely deal with similar issues. Whether it be Linux, Windows o…

The difference is you pay a huge premium for Apple products, Linux distros are generally free (unless you want enterprise-style support).

The same criticism applies to Windows - give it away for free and I might care less about crashes and the huge slide in quality over the last ~5 years.

Re: I think I found a Mac kernel bug?

#54

Post by Nexxxeh »

lambdawitch wrote: post #51
freehunter wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I am not sure if you have ever been on the other side of this, but having people constantly assume you are a man because you know how to program and you're on the internet gets very old, very quickly. You can either accept being constantly referred to as a guy, which becomes flat-out alienating, or you can speak up for yourself, in which case you get responses like the one you just wrote. I get that the gender of the…

Ironically, we're not supposed to assume gender based on someone's name either.

Re: I think I found a Mac kernel bug?

#55

Post by aspaceman »

Nexxxeh wrote: post #54
lambdawitch wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure if you have ever been on the other side of this, but having people constantly assume you are a man because you know how to program and you're on the internet gets very old, very quickly. You can either accept being constantly referred to as a guy, which becomes flat-out alienating, or you can speak up for yourself, in which case you get responses like the one you just wrote. I get that the gender of the…

Ironically, we're not supposed to assume gender based on someone's name either.

You're perfectly allowed to use "they" since you weren't sure.

It's not nice to assume "he" to always be the default - that is what was being corrected. One did not have to know that "she" was correct, but it was easy to find out that "he" was probably wrong. Let's keep discussion on topic, rather than venturing into talking about what you're "allowed" to do.

Re: I think I found a Mac kernel bug?

#56

Post by skrebbel »

stevenh wrote: post #44
freehunter wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Failing to correct these people feels like a large step backward, though. We shouldn't let anyone get away with misgendering transgender women under any circumstances.

This comment made me laugh. There's a bunch of charitable explanations as to why it was written, most notably "honest mistake".

But there's also very uncharitable explanations! For instance, I'm sure I'm not the only one who's noticed that hard technical IT blogs written by women are disproportionally often written by women who were born men (disproportionally wrt the general population of transgender women). Just like the one starting this thread might have assumed that "it's deep tech, so it must be a guy", I can imagine that stevenh assumed that "it's deep tech, so she must be trans". This is beautifully similar to the sentiment of his comment in general, to not under any circumstance let anyone get away with getting gender stuff wrong.

So it looks like even the people who have a strong opinion about being hard on each other about gender stuff, can do it wrong. Maybe the lesson is that we should be slightly less hard on each other about it?

I propose we politely point out mistakes and assume the best intentions (even though of course sometimes that assumption will be wrong).

Re: I think I found a Mac kernel bug?

#57

Post by aspaceman »

freehunter wrote: post #39
dang wrote: post #83

I've edited 'he' to 'she' in the two otherwise fine comments that made this mistake ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16251566 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16251562 ) and grouped several empty replies and one lame off-topic subthread under this one. It's rare that we do something like this (and I've emailed the author), but it seems fairer than to penalize their original posts, which were otherwise i…

[flagged]

The parent comment did not bring up their gender. They simply corrected the poster who erroneously thought they were a man. This was an error, and we should hold ourselves to a standard that corrects mistakes. If anyone "brought up their gender" it was the poster that used masculine pronouns as a default for some reason.

Re: I think I found a Mac kernel bug?

#58

Post by __david__ »

tambourine_man wrote: post #42
st3fan wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank goodness that Linux is consistent and has no bugs :-) Ubuntu still doesn't let me change my IP address to a static one via the UI and video drivers still crash or result in hours of googling and reading contradicting articles on how to change xorg.conf Software has bugs. Operating systems are hard. It doesn't matter where you will go, you will most likely deal with similar issues. Whether it be Linux, Windows o…

>Software has bugs. Operating systems are hard. Sure, but it doesn't help when you are rewriting fundamental parts of the stack like the window server, for instance. And I'm very glad that they did, the move to Metal shows they are committed to the Mac and not standing still. Just don't treat us as involuntary beta testers.

Except their window system rewrite actually slowed everything down. Every single os release has added bugs to the graphics layer. I've been maintaining a simple little screensaver since Mac os beta (almost 20 years old now) and the last 3 or 4 releases there's always something that breaks it. Bug reports go unheeded.

Re: I think I found a Mac kernel bug?

#59

Post by aspaceman »

skrebbel wrote: post #56
stevenh wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Failing to correct these people feels like a large step backward, though. We shouldn't let anyone get away with misgendering transgender women under any circumstances.

This comment made me laugh. There's a bunch of charitable explanations as to why it was written, most notably "honest mistake". But there's also very uncharitable explanations! For instance, I'm sure I'm not the only one who's noticed that hard technical IT blogs written by women are disproportionally often written by women who were born men (disproportionally wrt the general population of transgender women). Just li…

> I propose we politely point out mistakes and assume the best intentions (even though of course sometimes that assumption will be wrong).

It's possible to politely point out peoples' mistakes while giving them no room to purposely misgender, which is exactly what this thread does. Let's examine the course of this conversation:

"He said..."

"It's a she" (In my opinion a polite response. This is where any discussion should have ended.)

"Why does that matter?"

"You can't let people get away with misgendering a trans person"

If you only respond to the final comment, then your point makes sense. But the the act of politely pointing out the mistake already happened - now we must justify why it matters.

Re: I think I found a Mac kernel bug?

#60

Post by 1024core »

freehunter wrote: post #39
dang wrote: post #83

I've edited 'he' to 'she' in the two otherwise fine comments that made this mistake ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16251566 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16251562 ) and grouped several empty replies and one lame off-topic subthread under this one. It's rare that we do something like this (and I've emailed the author), but it seems fairer than to penalize their original posts, which were otherwise i…

[flagged]

Referring to her with the wrong gender is no different than using the wrong name of an author. She is a woman. Anyone who glanced at the blog would see a giant, honking "JULIA" on top of the blog.

Getting the obvious gender right is a matter of courtesy.

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