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GitHub, fuck your name change

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Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#461

Post by kilroy123 »

TrackerFF wrote: post #255
3saryHg6LP2e wrote: post #54

Christ, I agree with this article so much it hurts. I am convinced future people will find this whole saga quite an interesting anecdote of how, for a period of time, _appearing_ to be "anti-racist" was far more important than doing anything positive. As an aside I find it highly amusing watching the proponents of such changes eat themselves (see Twitch: womxn debacle).

I think fighting against racism and sexism is a good fight, and absolutely worth fighting for. With that said - those are quite low-hanging fruits, if someone wants to engage in virtue signaling. And many companies do. I also think that classism is an equally big problem in certain "elite" sectors. The diversity there is good, but most of the people - diverse in race or gender - still hail from the same socio-economi…

Yes, I wish classism was discussed more. That's a huge issue, especially in other countries.

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#462

Post by leg100 »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #11

I would agree "slave" seems a weird choice of a word but I can see nothing wrong in "master". Not a single moment in my life I thought about slavery when hearing/seeing the word "master". Should we also rename master degrees perhaps?

Once you agree that one word is apt for removal then you agree with the agenda that the article author roundly rejects.

By going down the road of agreeing to some words to be removed you're then imposing a presumption of guilt on anyone who refuses to remove said words. If I maintain some software that uses the word slave or blacklist and I don't accede to making the changes to remove it, or agree to approve a PR that does the same, then it's presumed I am stubborn or worse still, racist. Despite the usage of the word being completely innocent.

Of course, context is everything, which only proves the point. You cannot systematically ban certain words.

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#463

Post by tikiman163 »

prepend wrote: post #441
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…

> which not too many black Americans are doing, BTW It’s pretty hard to measure such a statement, but I noticed that Trump won 8% of the black vote in 2020 and 6% in 2016. [0] And it seems Romney won 6% in 2012. [1] It’s not smart to extrapolate some trend from these three data points, but I don’t think its accurate to dismiss claims that this isn’t happening. Comically, dismissing the claims of a literal black perso…

These numbers require more context to be meaningful. First, this was for his second term, which typically sees an increase in support. Second, Biden was instrumental in quite a few policies over the years that were generally bad for black Americans, and he was extremely critical of the BLM and police reform (de-fund) movements. Third, the percentage of black Americans which don't live in poverty has increased, and middle class black Americans are more likely to be fiscally conservative for the same reasons that all middle class Americans are more likely to be fiscal conservatives than those who live below the poverty line.

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#464

Post by simiones »

jlokier wrote: post #294
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've seen similar happen in London - black people stopped and seeming to be harassed by police for no obvious reason. But the main anecdote for me is when I was crossing the Swiss-French border near Geneva in a car with my girlfriend. She is black; I am white. She was told to get out of the car and required to present various paperwork, then they checked up on the paperwork, holding her for maybe 10-20 minutes, makin…

I've also heard a similar style of tale from Switzerland, from a friend who has lived there for 30 years.

She went to report her son's bicycle being stolen. She is white, but when the police heard her name (it is an Eastern European name), they instantly became less polite, making remarks such as "it's probably one of your country mates that did this, you know?". She got a little bit of comeuppance when she handed them her ID - her Canadian passport - and they suddenly became very polite again.

While the color of your skin makes you a much bigger target for harassment, xenophobia even for people who's skin is white is a pretty similar thought process for those who perpetrate it, and extremely widespread.

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#465

Post by jimmies »

jansan wrote: post #103
sunaurus wrote: post #4

I feel like this topic has been discussed a lot already, but I think it's important to keep pushing back against useless wasted man-hours like this effort is. I live in a country that was almost entirely enslaved by foreigners for ~700 years. I've discussed this rename with dozens of engineers in my country. Without exception, every single one of them thinks it's completely ridiculous. We need to keep voicing these t…

GitHubs decision is a form of cultural imperialism. That's what it really is. Only because the US want's to somehow deal with a dark part of it's history, the rest of the world should not be foreced to adapt their views.

>dark part of it's history

Oh hey you offended me by implying my skin color means bad.

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#466

Post by neronero »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #405
neronero wrote: post #158

EDIT: For comparison: * "Common Mistakes of New Engineering Managers" (5hrs ago, 110 points, 30 comments) -> rank 2 * this post (2hrs ago, 1000 points, 500 comments) -> rank 20 Why is this post being penalized? Too many black folks commenting and up voting? (/s) ----- Amazingly well written. I'm going to say some things. You'd guess wrongly if you infer that I'm bitter - since I'm personally very lucky. Having been b…

>> Here's a litmus test to know whether you're likely disconnected: As a techie/doctor/engineer did you become by far the highest paid person in your wider family by your mid 20s? If the answer is "NO", then you would be disconnected by default - unless you consciously invested effort to educate yourself. As the article hints at, many people who come from er, non-traditional tech backgrounds, enter the tech industry…

I think you're using "indiscriminately" as if it meant "if I personally don't like it".

But you're right, my litmus test is very sloppy and it could be phrased much more precisely. I hope most people will understand the spirit of it though.

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#467

Post by dgellow »

otikik wrote: post #250
vmception wrote: post #47

I’m a black American and agree with everything that this person in London wrote. It is also a common criticism of the American “left”, and is entirely accurate. For everyone perplexed about black Americans and other people of color walking away from the left, its because you/they don't see us as equals that can be bothered by the exact same things that other Americans can be bothered by: being told what to think, wat…

> the American “left” I like that you quote it there. I don't understand why aren't there more real left (no quotes) organizations or parties gaining traction in the US. It seems as if it should have happened "naturally" one or two generations ago.

Maybe because the country is blocked in a two-party systems? In other democratic countries, you do not have "the left" represented by one single entity. You instead have a multitude of political parties that can negotiate with each others to push for their political goals. That makes the political landscape dynamic, new parties are created, reorganized, disbanded all the time.

In the US, if you are generally more aligned with the democratic party but see some changes you disagree fundamentally with, you either suck it up or give up your ideals and switch to the complete opposite (republican party).

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#468

Post by MongooseMan »

iamflimflam1 wrote: post #104

This topic has been done to death. If you're offended by the name change from master to main then you really need to be asking yourself why you're so upset about it. And you need to be answering that question honestly.

People aren't offended by the change; they're irritated.

I'm irritated because it was an unnecessary change based on unsound reasoning, made by people who claim to represent a minority while not belonging to the minority or understanding its members.

I'm irritated because I can't give instructions to junior developers as easily: no longer can I rely on all of my instructions working, and documentation now requires clarifications and caveats which used to be unnecessary.

I'm irritated because it appears that GitHub has made it intentionally difficult to change the main branch in the "new repository" page; while it shows an option to change the default branch name, this requires refreshing the page and losing the repository name and description which you've already written.

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#469

Post by varispeed »

simonw wrote: post #421
xroche wrote: post #237

> “Meritocracy!”, I hear you cry. “They pick from the most talented students. The ones that worked the hardest to get into the most elite schools. The black students should have just worked harder” Crazy idea: if companies that do virtue signaling on inclusivity were paying their taxes, decent schools could be funded and we would not have so many of those issues. But instead, those companies are actively lobbying to…

I don't think companies paying their taxes - in the USA at least - would help much on the education side of things, because much of the USA has a stunningly bad system of using property taxes to pay for schools. So schools in rich areas get more money than schools in poor areas. Charging companies taxes and simultaneously reforming how schools are funded could work? I imagine changing the funding mechanism would be e…

There is another problem regardless of how good education you get chances are you'll become a wage slave. The harder you work, the increasingly more tax you have to pay, so making effort does not pay these days. Then you have things like illegal drug market teasing the youth, as the margins are high and tax free. I thing just making the schools better will not have much effect, because young people have no motivation to do better as they'll have mediocre lives regardless of how much effort they put in education as the system is designed for the poor to stay poor.

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#470

Post by AzzieElbab »

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…

“ s. 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.”

I don’t think the person you are replying to would agree with you about affirmative actions being a good thing. Other than that, the left is super repressive of free speech which is the only civil right left to win , detrimental to wage growth and worker rights by supporting unlimited immigration, bad for education by siding with teachers unions, manipulative when it comes to voting to the point when half of the country does not believe in elections. The right simply does not exist in the institutional level at this point, all they can do is whine about excesses of the left

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