Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

GitHub, fuck your name change

mooseyanon.medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

521–530 of 1001 posts

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#521

Post by timvisee »

PretzelPirate wrote: post #485
timvisee wrote: post #445

> Either do some real shit or stay silent. Stay the fuck out of our way and don’t pretend you care. Then we can all get on with our lives. Yes! Also, I think that if you see 'master' for a git branch as a problem, there is something seriously wrong with you.

Disclaimer: I work for Microsoft. I’ve seen many Microsoft employees internally comment on how they don’t like the term “master branch”. I believe Microsoft’s renaming (this is my personal belief) was somewhat influenced by that internal push. It may not mean much to you, but if it made some people feel more comfortable it’s a good change and has very few downsides.

Thanks for your comment. Though I don't agree with it, it does give a refreshing insight.

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#522

Post by throwaway0a5e »

eyko wrote: post #416
Symbiote wrote: post #222

> Out of curiosity I asked my manager, who is like 20 yrs older than me, if he had ever been stopped and searched, he said not once in his life. I had a similar conversation when a black colleague was late for work, having been stopped and searched by the police in London. The other 10 (white) developers were all shocked, but he said it as casually as someone might report they'd missed the train, or had a puncture on…

As a black guy in London, I've not been stopped and searched in over a decade, so I do think that profiling tends to happen more the younger you are (and fit a particular profile).

Yup. Police have the high crime demographics memorized. If you check more boxes you get more attention.

(I shouldn't have to say this but obviously I'm describing things are they are, not endorsing them).

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#524

Post by nnvvhh »

zozbot234 wrote: post #514
pron wrote: post #429

Saying that the left spends too much effort on rhetoric might be valid criticism, but focusing on it as reasons to "walk away from the left" (which not too many black Americans are doing, BTW) is disingenuous. Sure, the left talks about rhetoric, but it also fights for higher wages, civil liberties, healthcare, affirmative action, investment in education, workers' rights, and voting rights. It's fine not to like ever…

> Sure, the left talks about rhetoric, but it also fights for higher wages, civil liberties, healthcare, affirmative action, investment in education, workers' rights, and voting rights. And the right pursues many of these things as well, albeit in very different and sometimes polarizing ways. But we should not pretend that leftist policies are not just as polarizing.

The word "pursue" is doing a hell of a lot of work in your idea of the American right "pursuing voting rights." They're pursuing them like a hunting dog pursues a kill.

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#525

Post by spiralx »

Symbiote wrote: post #222

> Out of curiosity I asked my manager, who is like 20 yrs older than me, if he had ever been stopped and searched, he said not once in his life. I had a similar conversation when a black colleague was late for work, having been stopped and searched by the police in London. The other 10 (white) developers were all shocked, but he said it as casually as someone might report they'd missed the train, or had a puncture on…

I'm 43 and white and have been stopped and searched once - late at night when it was raining and I had my hood up and was walking fast to get back to my friend's place - apparently I was "acting suspicious". I'm pretty sure that if my hood had been down it would never have happened..

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#526

Post by at_a_remove »

nlitened wrote: post #336
Narann wrote: post #33

> So while the tech community was rushing around, trying to do their best impression of a black square post on Insta I remember thinking, “oh for fucks sake, they’ve completely missed the point”. Why? They forgot to talk to people who are actually members of the black community. In practice, big techs don't care about POC, they care about mobs. "Inclusive" words is just what make mobs happy and it's cheaper to do tha…

Is “person of color” an okay thing to say in US? It really rubs me the wrong way (as a non-native English speaker). To me it’s kinda like calling people with long noses “people of nose size”.

It is the currently accepted term on the Euphemism Treadmill. In my lifetime alone I have seen it go through colored people (perhaps the original source of your discomfort? and the "CP" in "NAACP"), Negro, black, Afro-American (which was brief but it doesn't mean I didn't have to rename a lot of anchor texts when the academic departments changed names to ...), African-American, then back to black, people of color, now finally capital B Black, with "people of color" apparently now a broader term of usage.

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#527

Post by pragmatic8 »

PretzelPirate wrote: post #485
timvisee wrote: post #445

> Either do some real shit or stay silent. Stay the fuck out of our way and don’t pretend you care. Then we can all get on with our lives. Yes! Also, I think that if you see 'master' for a git branch as a problem, there is something seriously wrong with you.

Disclaimer: I work for Microsoft. I’ve seen many Microsoft employees internally comment on how they don’t like the term “master branch”. I believe Microsoft’s renaming (this is my personal belief) was somewhat influenced by that internal push. It may not mean much to you, but if it made some people feel more comfortable it’s a good change and has very few downsides.

I’m not sure pandering to their comfort is the right thing to do here. Why are they associating “master branch” with slavery in the first place?

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#528

Post by thatguy0900 »

pw6hv wrote: post #516
is-ought wrote: post #492

When can I downvote posts?

HN is not about downvoting things one disagrees with but rather posts that do not add anything to the discussion. Same holds for upvoting, many times I upvoted posts I did not agree with but that raised interesting observations on the topic discussed. This is what makes HN great in my opinion.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16131314 both dang and pg disagree with you, for the record

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#529

Post by e79 »

I generally think of it as “cheap” inclusivity. Companies looking to cast the biggest virtual signal with the smallest amount of capital. On paper it looks nice enough, but dig a little deeper and you realize that it’s everything under the sun minus the most important part: training and hiring more women, people of color, and other minority groups in tech.

I’ve worked for companies that do this with mental health too. Everyone is burned out and unhappy? We’re bringing in a professional on workplace happiness! We’re partnering with non-profits! We’re doing everything! Except, you know, addressing the actual cause of the burn out and unhappiness. Because that requires a hard, sober look at our own behavior and wrongdoings. It’s so much easier to look outward instead.

I don’t identify as a minority in tech, so I won’t even pretend to understand exactly what that’s like. But it seems like being gaslit constantly. It sounds so painful and invalidating and exhausting and outright maddening to be told to look at all of this progress when you know they know it’s all the cheapest version of it and it’s mostly just for show.

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#530

Post by wiremine »

Disclaimer: I'm a white engineer who is now a VP. I also have a black daughter. I can't speak for the black experience(s) because I'm not black, but I'm also acutely invested in seeing things get better in terms of race relations and opportunities for all people.

A few thoughts:

1. Words matter. They aren't the most important thing per se, but they shouldn't be ignored. Over time, all these little changes do add up.

2. What is the most important thing? Authentic relationships. As I've gotten to know more people of color over the last decade, relationships are what grounds my perspectives and shapes my thinking. Truly understanding someone, and having yourself understood, is critical to overcoming the long-term race problems in America (and beyond).

3. Alongside relationships, doing the hard work of educating yourself is critical. White people in America tend to only see the dominate white culture as the _only_ culture. You need to educate yourself to understand this isn't true. But this is where relationships come in: "Black" culture (or Asian culture, or Latinx culture) is not monolithic, so the relationships create the commentary to understand the broader trends. Both the right and left in America tend to not do this part well.

A final thought: it starts in the schools. Those of us with authority and decision making power need to be investing in spending time mentoring the next generation of engineers.

Post reply on HN