GitHub is undergoing a full-blown overhaul as execs and employees depart • Hacker News Board

Re: GitHub is undergoing a full-blown overhaul as execs and employees depart

#941

Post by err4nt » Mon, Feb 08, 2016, 2:00 AM UTC

sanctus wrote: post #680

rjzzleep wrote: post #633

Earlier quoted context omitted.

except that because of the original remote nature of Github the first thing you saw was their work and then the person. by changing the culture they are increasing a bias that may have been less prevalent or even non existent in such a work culture. Trying to apply normal social dynamics to a play where you have a completely async environment(meaning they don't even see each other), is a little bit of a stretch. A lo…

> except that because of the original remote nature of Github the first thing you saw was their work and then the person. Unless their name is in their username. Or they have a profile picture of themselves. Or they have their real name on their commits. Or their username or picture is something stereotypically masculine/feminine. I searched for 'things' on Github and looked at the most recent committer of the first…

Because everything name people use online must match their govt issued ID.

I can still remember the first time I uploaded a masculine avatar I had to get a medical exam to prove I was the same gender people seeing my picture assume I am.

Its a hard world, if only we could communicate online with a total identity of our choosing! We could all pick fake names, like a pen name, or a 'pseudo' name thay wasn't real. Wjat a crazy world THAT would be @sanctus.

For bonus points, consider the gender and racial connotations entrenched within your own username - sanctus - based on the language (latin) I'm guessing you're a white roman from antiquity!

Re: GitHub is undergoing a full-blown overhaul as execs and employees depart

#942

Post by rtpg » Mon, Feb 08, 2016, 2:07 AM UTC

malandrew wrote: post #882

rtpg wrote: post #537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's say we all started ignoring everything you're talking about today. Currently a black family making $100k will live in roughly the same area as a white family making $30k. This family is also much more likely to have family that has gone to prison due to previous racist institutions, and less likely to have had 3 generations of parents having gone to Stanford. So sure, race gets ignored, but do you think people…

Currently a black family making $100k will live in roughly the same area as a white family making $30k. I've heard this figure several times and no one using it has yet cited a source for this. Could you please provide a citation for this figure and any secondary sources that study primary sources attempting to explain this disparity. I don't doubt this figure could exist at some time pre-1990, but I don't understand…

>Patrick Sharkey, a sociologist at New York University, studied children born from 1955 through 1970 and found that 4 percent of whites and 62 percent of blacks across America had been raised in poor neighborhoods. A generation later, the same study showed, virtually nothing had changed.

>Sharkey’s research shows that black families making $100,000 typically live in the kinds of neighborhoods inhabited by white families making $30,000.

(From http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case...)

Re: GitHub is undergoing a full-blown overhaul as execs and employees depart

#943

Post by malandrew » Mon, Feb 08, 2016, 2:10 AM UTC

kyrra wrote: post #797

exstudent2 wrote: post #678

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tweets in this article are militant. A Github employee actually said this: http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/56b3d2f12e526555008... That would not be possible if it wasn't a dominant culture (without him getting fired).

As someone else here pointed out, that tweet is out of context. It was part of a 10+ tweet rant about politics and social medicine. (It still is a bit offensive, but less so than the article makes it out to be) https://twitter.com/_danilo/status/690601512813367297

The larger context goes beyond a 10+ tweet rant. The larger context is @_danilo's general attitude in many other tweets and even HN comments. This isn't a first or even isolated example of racism and bigotry from him.

Re: GitHub is undergoing a full-blown overhaul as execs and employees depart

#944

Post by malandrew » Mon, Feb 08, 2016, 2:19 AM UTC

beatpanda wrote: post #437

malandrew wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elaborate.

"Racism" is a system where a racial group with a monopoly on power in society arranges the rules of that society to continue priveleging their own racial group. "Bigotry" is when you dislike someone because of their race. And the comments that everyone on HN are getting all in their feelings about are neither bigoted nor racist; they are basic, uncontroversial observations from people who have been doing anti-racist…

"The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words." - Philip K Dick.

Re: GitHub is undergoing a full-blown overhaul as execs and employees depart

#945

Post by err4nt » Mon, Feb 08, 2016, 2:22 AM UTC

audessuscest wrote: post #134

morgante wrote: post #124

Serious question: why can't someone make a good Github replacement that is anywhere near feature parity? I've tried both Bitbucket and GitLab, but their UIs continue to be leagues behind Github. It takes twice as long to do something in them (ex. find and blame a file) than it does with Github. If they could just get the UI right, I'd migrate in a second. Hosting providers should enforce political opinions (beyond de…

You could help gitlab getting better... It's open source.

I have checked Gitlab out in the past, and fully intend to mirror my stuff from Github over to there soon.

How do we know that Gitlab, as an open-source project, can't be infected with the same ideological virus? Should I just start by self-hosting Gitlab so I never have to migrate again?

Re: GitHub is undergoing a full-blown overhaul as execs and employees depart

#946

Post by raquo » Mon, Feb 08, 2016, 2:35 AM UTC

proc0 wrote: post #848

raquo wrote: post #839

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your argument, the way I see it: "People say lies about race[0]. So let's not talk about race anymore" . This is, appallingly, the current state of the art of racial discussions in the west. Try to apply that logic to any other subject however, and the insanity will reveal itself. "People say lies about used cars. So let's not talk about used cars anymore" "People say lies about the mistakes of The One Party. So let'…

That's not the argument, granted it's very subtle and hard to see. The argument is "race as used in the U.S. is a social construct that is incorrectly correlated with some physical traits. So lets avoid bringing up someone's race when trying to explain their behavior and/or intentions." Just because someone has dark skin doesn't automatically mean they are "black" because black is more of a cultural thing than a race…

> So lets avoid bringing up someone's race when trying to explain their behavior and/or intentions

Normal people already do that most of the time, because most of the time race, ethnicity, or culture does not matter for whatever you're talking about.

However, a blanket statement that such things never explain anything is false. A person's upbringing and environment influences them tremendously, and it does correlate with ethnicity, nationality, country of origin, socioeconomic status, and many other variables.

For example, an average russian doesn't like gays. That's a fact. There are cultural reasons for that, it's not just something that happened randomly. If I want to explain to someone why my russian friend doesn't like gays, I will tell them that it's because he's from Russia, where it's normal.

Here, I've used ethnicity to explain someone's actions. In America this would cause hysteria, and I would be branded a racist, because in America every statement that involves race is racism thanks to the argument you're promoting.

However, there is no racism in my statement. It's factually correct – if my russian friend was raised in Canada, he probably would have internalized the normalcy of varying sexual preferences long ago. But he was brought up in Russia, where casual racism, sexism, and other assorted intolerance is the norm. My statement is also not judgmental. I'm just explaining the probable reason for a person's behaviour using information available to me.

But again, for the sole reason that it involves ethnicity, in America this valid statement is widely considered racism. Not to mention that if my statement was similarly correct, but involved blacks or mexicans or whatever other ethinicites are conversationally popular in America, I would be in even bigger trouble for no reason other than the reader / listener's prior experiences with racial issues, which are, I might add, dependent on the reader / listener's race, ethnicity, and country of origin (and here we go again...).

Re: GitHub is undergoing a full-blown overhaul as execs and employees depart

#947

Post by spopejoy » Mon, Feb 08, 2016, 2:49 AM UTC

droopybuns wrote: post #494

The current dominant themes in certain feminism & diversity cliques in our community are openly hostile towards me. I'm a male. I'm white. I'm middle class. I'm heterosexual. I'm also a leader. I'm a parent of two daughters. My mother had to fight sexism issues in her career. I am supportive of inclusion & diversity. I am trying to raise my girls to be empowered, confident & curious. But the dominant themes in curren…

Adapt or die. Integrated workforces are more successful.

And with that I take my leave of this whiny white bastion called HN. Enjoy your caves, suckas

Re: GitHub is undergoing a full-blown overhaul as execs and employees depart

#948

Post by cooper12 » Mon, Feb 08, 2016, 3:15 AM UTC

dang wrote: post #932

cooper12 wrote: post #590

They targeted programmers. Programmers. We're a group of people who will sit for hours, days, even weeks on end performing some of the hardest, most mentally demanding tasks. Over, and over, and over all for nothing more than a successful build saying we did. We'll punish our selfs doing things others would consider torture, because we think it's fun. We'll spend most if not all of our free time min maxing the runtim…

Good grief. Please don't, and please, no more "shitposts" ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11050922 ). We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11050478 and marked it off-topic. (This on the other hand was great: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11050562 )

Yeah sorry dang, won't happen again. I usually come to HN for serious discussion but that thread was just ridiculous.

Re: GitHub is undergoing a full-blown overhaul as execs and employees depart

#949

Post by striking » Mon, Feb 08, 2016, 3:48 AM UTC

bmh_ca wrote: post #936

striking wrote: post #911

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't think that first quote was your argument, I just thought it was the dumbest thing you said. I think it's silly that you believe that past wrongs can be rectified and that future wrongs are definitely going to happen, and that that invalidates the argument you presented about discrimination against white people not existing. Theory or argument, that's pedantry. > Not all discriminations are equal. Never said…

As a matter of interest, the school of thought you are describing is the Deontologists. In "Capitalism and Freedom" Milton Friedman captured this as: > [Antidiscrimination] legislation involves the acceptance of a principle that proponents would find abhorrent in almost every other application. If it is appropriate for the state to say that individuals may not discriminate in employment because of color or race or re…

Thanks for the well-reasoned reply, and for the excellent link. I apologize for having lost my cool.

Could you link me a paper describing the perspective you mentioned in your earlier comments? I'd like to try challenging my own beliefs.

Re: GitHub is undergoing a full-blown overhaul as execs and employees depart

#950

Post by davesque » Mon, Feb 08, 2016, 3:55 AM UTC

chrisan wrote: post #673

davesque wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed about Bitbucket. I've used it for a long time and haven't found it to be substantively different from GitHub in either functionality or reliability. The major downside, as I see it, is that it's just not as popular.

> The major downside, as I see it, is that it's just not as popular. Has anyone really thought of this? Do people just happen on to a github project because "it is on github" or because someone linked their work and people liked it and wanted to contribute? Would React, D3, Rails, Bootstrap etc not get what they do now simply because "oh I don't have a bitbucket account, I'm not going to bother" To me at least this k…

Right, and, just to be clear, I actually wasn't trying to suggest that this downside is really justified (and I think you understand this). Mind share is important, however.