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I Love MDN, or the cult of the free in action

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Re: I Love MDN, or the cult of the free in action

#171

Post by CarelessExpert »

outime wrote: post #151
CarelessExpert wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Please stop these kind of assumptions - it just feels childish. It was a genuine question, not an assumption. I was just challenging the way you were positioning your opinion. I thought my comment was phrased in a way that was polite and direct. I don't see how that warranted an insult. I won't address the rest of your comment as I think bccdee did a fine job of saying what I would've said.

>I thought my comment was phrased in a way that was polite and direct. Well, I said I wouldn't want a NGO to use my money to take any stance unrelated to their original apolitical goal and your follow-up questions is along the lines of "oh so would you be ok if they aligned with your political stance?". Don't say thay's a genuine question because it's not, it just feels like a bait.

> Don't say thay's a genuine question because it's not, it just feels like a bait.

Well, I guess you can believe what you like. It wasn't intended as bait, but if you read it that way and refuse to believe me when I say I had no ill intent, I certainly can't change your mind at this point.

Re: I Love MDN, or the cult of the free in action

#172

Post by dang »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #169
dang wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used the word "degenerate" myself the other day ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24041589 ) and assure you it wasn't any kind of dog whistle. Obviously the GP should have ommitted that flamebait ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24160738 ), but a comment like yours also breaks the site guidelines—specifically this one: " Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a…

It's absolutely clear what the commenter meant, since the whole controversy with Brendan Eich was about gay rights issues. It's not a stretch in any way to understand that "degenerate" meant "homosexual" or otherwise "immoral." Downplaying that interpretation really stretches "good faith interpretation" into the realm of "denial." Perhaps the commenter does not have English as their first language, in which case I'd…

(edit/p.s. I agree completely with your last sentence, except that the Eich flamewar should just be retired.)

It's not "absolutely clear what the commenter meant", and that is the problem. Internet users are a thousand times too quick to assume they know "absolutely" what "the commenter meant" and then react reflexively to it. This is how the internet becomes optimized for outrage. That's why we have that guideline, and commenters here need to follow it. Note this guideline also: "Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead."

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

Edit: I'd like to add some positive thoughts. This is off topic, sorry, but it's been a while.

Edit 2: I'm going to move them to a reply so I can link to it later.

Re: I Love MDN, or the cult of the free in action

#173

Post by micv »

monksy wrote: post #154
dang wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> degenerate That breaks the site guidelines against flamebait calling names in arguments. Casual bomb-throwing leads to flamewars, and you started numerous flames with just that one word. We're trying to avoid that here, so please don't. You don't need that to make your point, so please stick to the rules. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I completely agree where you're coming from however, in the case of Mozilla I believe that the reference is relevant. If you see that the company is producing a good product that you're donating to support. Would the "customers" (supporters) want to support the time and cost associated with kicking out the CEO over personal+(believed to be) private activities? (Context: Brandon Eich donated 1k of his personal money t…

What part of being heavily opposed to homophobic organisation is degenerate in your opinion?

Re: I Love MDN, or the cult of the free in action

#174

Post by jonas21 »

Defunding MDN seems like an enormous strategic blunder on Mozilla's part. Its existence and popularity help ensure that developers are writing to the standard, and not just Chrome's implementation of the standard.

This is good for everybody, but in particular for Mozilla because it reduces the chance that people will write things that work on Chrome but not Firefox and then just call it a day.

Re: I Love MDN, or the cult of the free in action

#175

Post by RcouF1uZ4gsC »

marcinzm wrote: post #152
therouwboat wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was wondering about this, what else do they do than just go to Google and sell the search spot?

They oversee how to spend the $500 million which involves managing a lot of people, projects, etc. Which includes preventing people from funneling the money to their friends.

> Which includes preventing people from funneling the money to their friends.

Wasn’t the whole Pocket debacle exactly this. The people behind Pocket had friends at Mozilla who signal boosted them and later acquired them?

Re: I Love MDN, or the cult of the free in action

#176

Post by dang »

micv wrote: post #173
monksy wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely agree where you're coming from however, in the case of Mozilla I believe that the reference is relevant. If you see that the company is producing a good product that you're donating to support. Would the "customers" (supporters) want to support the time and cost associated with kicking out the CEO over personal+(believed to be) private activities? (Context: Brandon Eich donated 1k of his personal money t…

What part of being heavily opposed to homophobic organisation is degenerate in your opinion?

Please don't start this again. HN is a site for curiosity, not repetition (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...) and particularly not flamewars (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html), which are the most destructive form of repetition.

The GP should not have posted flamebait, and the repliers should not have taken the bait.

Re: I Love MDN, or the cult of the free in action

#177

Post by 1propionyl »

zo1 wrote: post #158
shirakawasuna wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bigoted dog whistle borrowed from literal Nazis. Edit: interesting that there are so many downvotes. Consider yourself lucky that this seems absurd to you, because it's borrowed directly from Nazi "degenerate art" and "degenerate music" and used like this almost exclusively in modern alt-right contexts to mean those falling outside of their ideal (bigoted) worldview.

That's quite a stretch, even though it has historic tie points. Right now on the right, it's used to refer to behavior and culture that is really abhorrent. That's at least my take on it, and how I use the term personally. 99% of the time the usage of the term is definitely not about race and eugenics which is what you're implying with the Nazi reference. I leave 1% because I don't preclude possibility of the rare ex…

You and the GP commenter are both simultaneously correct.

However, I think your estimate of 1% is far too low. Hang around in seedy Discord chats, IRC channels, or Facebook groups (or on second though maybe don't... it's an interesting but inadvisable hobby.), and you'll see "degenerate" thrown around as a synonym for "Jew", "Muslim", "homosexual", "transexual" constantly. These usages are fully normalized, even among those who aren't professed neo-nazis but just identify as alt-right and trade in crusader and viking memes and spam "DEUS VULT" in chat.

The adoption of the traits of the crypto- prefix (you can infer what the suffix that usually goes with is...) are a defining characteristic of the modern internet right. They are very savvy to what they can or cannot say in "polite company" or in public, and will deliberately muddy words with multiple connotations (because the in-group can distinguish which is being connoted by context, even if you can't).

In a high visibility context you'll get "it was just a joke bro" or "I just meant like gangster rap and sexualizing minors, do you have a problem with that?". But as soon as they return to more insular spaces, "degenerate" is common currency for referring to races, religions, and sexualities seemed inferior.

Re: I Love MDN, or the cult of the free in action

#178

Post by [deleted] »

gowld wrote: post #160
bccdee wrote: post #113

> I Love MDN hinges on the expectation on the part of web developers that this sort of information ought to come for free — the expectation we’re entitled to this sort of free ride. I think people should be entitled to a free ride. Important infrastructure can, paradoxically, be both free and expensive. We've committed, for instance, to spending a whole lot of money on maintaining all of our roads, but access to the…

> street is still free for everyday pedestrians No it's not. It's governed by free motor vehicle law. Pedestrians are often punished by law for walking in the street.

[deleted]

Re: I Love MDN, or the cult of the free in action

#179

Post by renewiltord »

Interesting. So the browser-compatibility section is not crowd-sourceable. I never read it, though. It does appear that there is no incentive for a browser engine to report that they are incompatible with something, only that they are compatible with something, but perhaps doing the latter implicitly implies through omission those for whom they are incompatible so that degenerates to "browser vendors will not report compatibility".

So be it. I think the rest is standards translation plus examples.

For this sort of thing, content isn't king, content is pawn. Back to w3schools or whatever, I suppose. Not the end of the world.

I think if it came to it, this could be BountySourced (or whatever the acceptable solution is now) and just suck up the fact that we won't have compatibility. With Evergreen browsers that's a moving target anyway.

Re: I Love MDN, or the cult of the free in action

#180

Post by CarelessExpert »

cmiles74 wrote: post #138
CarelessExpert wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, as long as there is a guarantee that my money will go towards actually paying people who update the documentation rather than CEO salary, degenerate activism or doomed web startups. Interestingly, this same sentiment is a huge part of why charitable giving runs into problems. A lot of people are willing to give, so long as they get to decide what is done with their funds. Of course, these same people have no i…

In my opinion, this is both unfair and simplistic. It implies that people will only donate to a charity if they have control over where the money is spent. I disagree with this vehemently; those who give likely do not want to micro-manage the funds. Rather, they want to ensure that it forwards the goals of the charity and is not spent on unreasonably large executive compensation payrolls or expensive private jet flig…

> In my opinion, this is both unfair and simplistic. It implies that people will only donate to a charity if they have control over where the money is spent.

To be clear, I didn't meant to imply everyone does this.

I'm just saying that many people do, and it's challenging for charities. It's one of the reasons I find charities provide options to direct giving to specific efforts, as it offers the donor some measure of control while still allowing the charity to manage things at the macro level.

> We later found out that maybe 25% of the funds donated actually made it to the country.

I think you've misread that headline? It reads:

"Red Cross Spent 25 Percent Of Haiti Donations On Internal Expenses"

Further, in the article, we see:

"But Grassley's office found that 25 percent of donations sent to Haiti — or nearly $125 million — were spent on fundraising and management, a contingency fund and the catchall category the Red Cross calls "program expenses."

What that says is 75% of donations did go to Haiti, and 25% did not. This is the opposite, I believe, of how you described the article?

Nevertheless, the American Red Cross doesn't exactly have the... best reputation in the world, which is why I'd probably not give to that organization at all, but rather would direct my funds toward organizations that are better managed (and then trust them to allocate those funds appropriately).

> People are asking charities to be more accountable because such accountability is direly needed.

Accountability != micromanagement.

My comment was about individuals micromanaging their giving, not about demanding transparency about how the organization is allocating those donations.

The latter is just basic due diligence, and is something we should all expect from NGOs.

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