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Re: Drop Dropbox

#961

Post by drivingmenuts »

burntroots wrote: post #879
bguthrie wrote: post #699

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think about what it means to the HN culture to have a subject that normally would have been flagged out of existence as overtly political suddenly be featured front and center It means that a bunch of people who once thought they were somehow above or apart from politics find that they are not, and that the things that happen in the world constitute news of real interest to hackers. That's growth. It's also misleadin…

And Brendan Eich gave $1000 to an organization people don't approve of. A guy made a joke at a convention about dongles and got fired. A whole lot of Sci-Fi authors were prevented from publishing at Tor because they identify themselves as politically conservative. This particular pattern has been growing over the last decade or two. The politics in question are growing more extreme and the required level of political…

I won't disagree with you - more and more, people wear their politics on their sleeves and have their ears plugged to any view to which they don't agree. This isn't restricted to leftists going after conservatives, nor conservatives going after leftists. It's everywhere.

I think it's one of the side-effects of living in a society where so much information is available. In the past, we could know the politics of people in our immediate surroundings, but we also had to take our relationship into account. We might be acquainted with politics on a larger scale, but the people behind it were much more distant.

Now, we can be exposed to any and every political viewpoint out there, frequently whether we were looking for it or not. The kinds of politics we can be exposed to aren't just local and we're surrounded by a sea of strangers, all clamoring for our attention.

The natural reaction is to filter out the things we don't agree with and with so much political noise, we have to do it vehemently, just adding more noise. Or we can take another route, which is just to let someone else do the thinking for us, and there are people all too willing to step into that role.

Even though I lean left, I don't think Eich was the wrong choice for CEO. His religious beliefs didn't really have much to do with the job. I could probably work for the guy and disagree with him all the same, but it wouldn't matter - that would not be the nature of our work together.

Dr. Rice is another matter entirely. Her entire legacy under the Bush administration disgusts me. I would gladly chauffeur her to the doors of the World Court for her involvement in what I thoroughly believe are war crimes. Furthermore, her beliefs on privacy and security being subservient to the needs of the state are almost equally as disgusting to me.

I really hope Dropbox will reconsider adding her. I'm sure they can find someone else to fill their needs to work with foreign governments who is far less engaged with the state apparatus destroying our personal liberties.

Re: Drop Dropbox

#962

Post by rasz_pl »

grellas wrote: post #538

Think about what it means to the HN culture to have a subject that normally would have been flagged out of existence as overtly political suddenly be featured front and center in the apparent belief that ideological purity is now a litmus test for who can serve on a board of directors in the startup world. In a free society, people can unite in their business ventures even though they might be far apart in how they v…

Lets Godwin this bitch right up.

Would you like Hitler on board of directors? Sure, he invaded half of Europe, Asia and Africa, then there is holocaust.

On the other hand he will guarantee mad money for your company. We are talking IBM money, Hugo Boss money, VW/Mercedes/Bosch money.

  SCREW the dead, we are rich baby!

Re: Drop Dropbox

#963

Post by yp_all »

supersystem wrote: post #899
EliAndrewC wrote: post #839

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Debates on Brendan Eich and Condoleezza Rice seem to boil down three separate questions: 1) Is there any belief or action not directly related to someone's job that should disqualify them from their position? 2) If the answer to #1 is yes, does this specific issue cross that threshold? 3) Does the answer to #1 change based on their position within a company, e.g. a regular employee vs a CEO? I've seen well-reasoned a…

> Since grellas' post was an argument about question #1, I hope people are able to recognize that and tailor their responses to the argument he is actually making, in the spirit of "colleagues trying to reason out the truth together". I think grellas comment was tactless. He used his karma to publish a largely meta argument, ignoring the debate as well as the link and not responding to anyone else afterwards. This is…

I think it's worse that tactless; it's brainless.

Customers of a business care about who sits on the Board and exercise their right to take their business elsewhere.

The horror!

It sounds like the whimper of someone who stands to gain from a Dropbox IPO.

"There is only one boss-the customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else." - Sam Walton

Yes, he can fire Board members too.

s/customer/user/

Re: Drop Dropbox

#964

Post by darkarmani »

forrestthewoods wrote: post #554
grellas wrote: post #538

Think about what it means to the HN culture to have a subject that normally would have been flagged out of existence as overtly political suddenly be featured front and center in the apparent belief that ideological purity is now a litmus test for who can serve on a board of directors in the startup world. In a free society, people can unite in their business ventures even though they might be far apart in how they v…

People are increasingly incapable of living and working with people with whom they deeply disagree. Quite frankly I consider that behavior childish and immature. Unfortunately it appears that we are living in a world full of children. I am not looking forward to the future where no one shares any opinion they may or may not have due to this type of blacklisting.

>People are increasingly incapable of living and working with people with whom they deeply disagree.

You mean like people that complicit with the death of thousands of people and don't get the benefit of the doubt because they were lying to everyone all along?

Re: Drop Dropbox

#965

Post by quaunaut »

mjolk wrote: post #298
tomasien wrote: post #52

Dropping Mozilla because Eich is anti-gay-marriage made sense to me because Mozilla is the beacon of open source. Mozilla belongs to us in a very personal way, many of us have contributed code to Firefox personally. But Condi Rice joining a completely private Dropbox as a board member - this is a non-issue. I'm as strongly anti-Bush administration and anti-war in general (especially the Iraq War - good grief) as anyo…

Eich also created JavaScript and I don't see a massive push to drop it everywhere. I think these sort of things are an outrage-economy with no serious or lasting effect.

Because that's just unfeasible. Removing him as CEO is one thing, we can't even get another language on the web anymore as it is.

Re: Drop Dropbox

#966

Post by jkelsey »

don_draper wrote: post #387

What's a good sync solution for 1Password that doesn't use Dropbox?

iCloud is the other featured cloud provider that AgileBits proclaims on their website, although I wouldn't recommend it. Not a knock against Apple, but I prefer to diversify my technology and not get locked-in into any one service.

I just switched back to 1Password from LastPass, and I'm just syncing between my iPhone and my MacBook (my only computer ATM) using wi-fi sync, and backing up my 1Password data on my MacBook to tarsnap.

I've seen someone else say they sync their 1Password data using BitTorrent. Haven't tried it myself, but that seems interesting.

Re: Drop Dropbox

#967

Post by quaunaut »

fennecfoxen wrote: post #412

Allow me to quote (gay rights activist) Andrew Sullivan, via The Economist, over the Eich issue. I think it mostly applies here -- http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2014/04/to... "The ability to work alongside or for people with whom we have a deep political disagreement is not a minor issue in a liberal society. It is a core foundation of toleration. We either develop the ability to tolerate those wi…

> Postscript. Oh, of course I'm going to be modded down for this. Civil conversation has been replaced with culture war. Well, maybe not culture war, but a close analogue. :P

Lets not get into that.

However, to your point: This is one of those areas where I'm forced to wonder just how strongly everyone felt. Did I like Eich representing me, as an open source contributor? No, certainly not. Did I feel that strongly about it? No, not really. I wasn't going to boycott anything, I wasn't going to speak out against Mozilla. I'd be mildly disappointed he was their choice, then I would move on.

I sincerely have to wonder how many others would have felt the same if not worked into a lather.

Re: Drop Dropbox

#968

Post by coldtea »

theorique wrote: post #952
EliAndrewC wrote: post #839

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Debates on Brendan Eich and Condoleezza Rice seem to boil down three separate questions: 1) Is there any belief or action not directly related to someone's job that should disqualify them from their position? 2) If the answer to #1 is yes, does this specific issue cross that threshold? 3) Does the answer to #1 change based on their position within a company, e.g. a regular employee vs a CEO? I've seen well-reasoned a…

Rice is a war criminal who happens to have not been prosecuted. That's a pretty serious claim, and more a matter of opinion. Depending on the situation, one could point such a charge at any person who was in a position of authority in a government of a nation that was fighting a war, if one were so inclined. Shouldn't a person's status as a war criminal depend on whether they've actually been charged, tried, convicte…

>Shouldn't a person's status as a war criminal depend on whether they've actually been charged, tried, convicted, and sentenced?

No, not really. After all most war criminals are never tried, especially if they are on the winning side.

People can have and state their opinions. It's not like recent history is that obscure for someone not to be able to come to a conclusion.

Re: Drop Dropbox

#969

Post by yypark »

stormbrew wrote: post #959
yypark wrote: post #922

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might sound tactless because it breaks down the illusion of moral superiority that most sides in a political battle believe they have. In general, people don't like being told they may in fact be wrong, they want to believe their side is unique, superior, and the other side is committing crimes against humanity/unborn children/whatever it may be. When a huge proportion of the broader population (not necessarily HN…

> If we used a boycott at every opportunity, at every disagreement, where would we be? If we used a slippery slope argument at every opportunity, at every disagreement, where would we be? Would we be able to buy milk for fear of the veritable avalanche of milk we may end up buying in the future? Could we stand the idea of going to work one day under the contemplation of spending the next thousand years, every day, go…

The point is not the slippery slope of "all boycotts are bad" or "boycott everything!" but rather that we've become too trigger-happy and insular in boycotting non-tech political opinions that while mainstream outside of Silicon Valley, are not inside.

The entire debate is on when a boycott is appropriate and grellas is arguing to draw the line farther than the current one that's solidifying in tech. Cynically, it just has to do with fitting in with your group politically, be it SF tech or Southern Baptist (no Planned Parenthood donations there) and the point is - what happens when you're in the moral minority? Because Rice chose to enter an SF tech company rather than a random American one, there is way more backlash.

Ultimately, the Rice situation/backlash has a far stronger business case rather than a pure political boycott, due to objections of surveillance/digital security for cloud providers (hence the entire host outside of America movement). Here I mainly focused on the meta-debate about boycotts, and I suppose grellas decided to comment on the broad pattern given the original article's major headlines about the Iraq War.

Just like war is not universally wrong, neither are boycotts - it's just the degree to which we ask whether they are justified. Vietnam, Iraq, Gulf War, Korea, they were all controversial - and not in a "0.1% of the crazy population controversial", but rather "front page of TIME, Economist, BCC" controversial

Re: Drop Dropbox

#970

Post by [deleted] »

vacri wrote: post #913
ryguytilidie wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"But I don't know that I can go on the same kind of crusade for which I faulted the Eich lynch mob." This is so insanely hyperbolic I don't even know where to begin. We're now using the term "lynch mob" for a situation where people a) boycotted the product and b) wrote a lot of things about how what Brandon did was wrong and how he is the wrong choice for CEO. So, lynch mob, which means, "a mob that kills a person fo…

There is an irony in accusing someone else of hyperbole, but demanding that the literal interpretation of their terms be used.

[deleted]
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