skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> What if we polled all conferences for all language that some attending population feel is off the table? Should lawyers plan to vote to ban all lawyer jokes, even if said by insiders?

The problem with slippery slope arguments is that they have a simple solution of stopping the slope, or at least considering each new idea separately: don't make sex jokes, but do (or not, whatever) make lawyer jokes.

I can think of at least four reasons that making sex jokes at tech conferences might be significantly more problematic than making lawyer jokes, such that we should think much worse of people who do the former. Honestly, I'm surprised you didn't think of these.

* Women are ~51% of the population and lawyers are ~0.3% of the population, so we might pay a little more attention to the common actions we perform that hurt women.

* We already have a problem with women feeling excluded and unwelcome from our tech communities, due to past and current sexism.

* Making sex jokes around women when they're surrounded by a large group of mostly-guys means they have to start worrying more about whether someone might assault or sexually harass them soon.

* Making sex jokes at a tech conference can encourage the objectifying idea that women are there for their sex appeal, and not their technical skill. This is a cultural idea that already exists, so it's easy to contribute to and requires significant effort to combat.

> in denial about what living in a society is (it does not mean we get to proscribe other's behaviors in minutiae).

Following a code of conduct that you'd previously agreed to follow seems exactly like what living in a society is to me.
+1! But.. how it compares with xtreemfs?
Or, to be more straightforward, she sexualised the comment.
Just reiterating what others have said, its reasonable because he took time to think about it. I know if I was in his position and woke up to find out my servers were being DDoS'd to hell because one of my employees had caused a stir, I may have just stayed in bed.
"thorough legal review, and actually speaking to the employee in question."

Absolutely. Acting too quickly without fully understanding the situation could lead to a lawsuit
In my opinion he's a coward that doesn't stand behind his employees and that goes for PlayHaven too. They've set a terrible precedent for the industry.
> There's not really anyone that comes out of this looking good.

In my opinion, the PyCon organisers handled things well. They acted on the complaint, explained to the jokers why it was inappropriate, got an apology, and left it there, without publishing names.

Unfortunately for them, popular perception of PyCon is probably somewhat tainted by this whole messy incident anyway.
How do they get other web pages, given cross-domain constraints? Are they downloading the page on the server into a headless browser like Phantom JS, and then delivering the result to your browser to be manipulated using WebGL and Javascript?

I get that there are capabilities like drawWindow() to turn parts of the dom into raster images programmatically, but how doe they suck the web page into your browser in the first place, given cross domain constraints???
The Only Two Types of Legally-Recognized Sexual Harassment
I have little to no knowledge of laws in this area. However my gut tells me that Sendgrid is opening themselves up to a hell of a lawsuit. Can anyone who actually does know about such matters comment?
Not withstanding the upshot, I'm always wondering about the ill effect of technology on society. This is a painful example. Take it easy everyone!
I don't think the PlayHaven dudes were in the wrong, but you sure as hell are.
> So, why are we so powerless to stop things like this, the Aaron Swartz tragedy, PATRIOT Act, etc?

Personally, I think it's because we buy into the idea that an individual should be given the authority to "rule" people by fiat in the first place.
I only wish PlayHaven had released something this thorough as well. Maybe a lot of this could have been avoided, or at least less vitriolic.
Given how haphazard DDoS attacks (especially those in the 'hacktivism' category) tend to be, I'd be surprised if they targeted anything beyond SendMail's public-facing website. I would hope that their application servers wouldn't be on the same network as their web server.
The information they have is getting rather noisy though. People are liking and sharing all kinds of random stuff nowadays. Wonder if they can mitigate for this.
And I've always found that self-proclaimed feminists are _always_ offended and loud about it when they are. A few I know go to the point by saying females are better and that all masculine references should be eliminated. They need to vote with their pocketbooks: don't pay for a ticket, and don't attend.

I went to a 'con recently: The Midwest RepRap festival. I heard no references to sex, sexuality, race, or anything of the sort. One sales person came around, got argumentative once we said we were not interested, and started to try to argue religion. That was perhaps, 10 minutes tops. Everybody else stayed absolutely professional about everything.

Now, the last thing I want to hear at a tech conference is another tiring sex joke. It may be funny, but that's not why I'm here.
Yes, actually, of all the actors in this weird online play they did seem to behave reasonably and decently throughout.
> except by going through one of the shittiest intermediate languages you might imagine.

Visual Basic?
ok. fair enough. this is a good response and now the community is eager to see the update on this.

it would be fair to say that there are a number of developers out there who DO want to try EmberJS (myself included) and that's why there are so many passionate people commenting and discussing on the topic of difficulty in getting started with EmberJS.

So I'd say this is a good problem for EmberJS team to have. And hope you guys deliver, because imagine the sheer number of people who will be behind this project when that happens. :) Good luck! I plan to come back to it when I can get my brain around it!
Even if I agree with the decision, this is incredibly hard to read. I hate to see someone lose their job over something like this. Yet I can't disagree with anything he wrote.

I personally hope she will learn from this and another company will give her a new chance. The odds of that are slim given how big this has become--it's front-paging repeatedly on HN and /r/programming. But I'd hate to see her whole career ruined over a mistake she could learn from. (Though, to be fair, she has not seemed too eager to admit to any mistakes online so far.)
IMHO, sexualized epithets are sexual.

It's more productive not to muddy the waters though: it's not like there are only a handful of ways to insult someone.
Not sure what the point of hoisting/copying your comment up is? Now all of our replies must be duplicated as well?

Original replies are under the original post, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5419154
Apparently it's ok to post offensive jokes/sexual innuendo if you're a woman (http://www.flickr.com/photos/adriarichards/sets/721576169418...) or (https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/312265091791847425), just like you can only be racist if you're white (https://twitter.com/adriarichards/statuses/6039856858)
> Doesn't explain why the other gentleman was canned.

Which other gentleman got canned?
Oh, the MVC pattern again. Here, take one of these: http://me.veekun.com/blog/2013/03/03/the-controller-pattern-...
A very thoughtful response by SendGrind in a trying and complicated situation. Good work.
I agree with that. The initial statement was lacking in empathy.
PlayHaven implied strongly that:

(a) mr-hank did or said something sexually inappropriate. (He lost ground by admitting some degree of guilt on HN. Otherwise, it'd all be hearsay and he could say he was just talking about a literal dongle.)

(b) mr-hank's conduct was so bad that there was no choice other than to fire him: "having to let this employee go". It wasn't we decided to fire him. It was we had to fire him. Important distinction, and quite likely, technically false. They probably fired him to save face, not because of an objective violation of any law or ethical principle that left them no other option.

It's not a clear-cut case, and it's less so in the light of his HN admission, but he can certainly argue that the press release (a) misrepresents his behavior, (b) in a way that will damage his reputation and future employability.

He has a lot of options here. He may settle for an amazing reference and introductions to investors. Or he might get a six-figure sum out of it. Or he might walk away. Depends what he wants.

PlayHaven fucked up big time. These companies (especially PlayHaven; SendGrid has more of a case) should be more embarrassed than the people involved.
Thank you for writing this. You said about 90% of what I've been thinking about the web development community, and especially the client-side JS community for a while. So many of these problems have been solved, and a lot of them were solved with Cocoa, the iOS SDK and it's approach to building rich, complex user interfaces.

But, a lot of the js community is simply childish about it's approach to web development. They don't like static typing, they don't like the obj-c syntax, they're OBSESSED with micro -- they hate a framework (just use backbone!). Yet, as you point out in your post, so many of the problems we solve over and over again on the web were solved years ago by cocoa. But you know, they don't need all that "complexity". Please.

I'll stop now before I get a little too hand-wavy :)

The modern js developer is something akin to the antithesis of the architecture astronaut -- the architecture minimalist, or maybe the astro-hipster ;)

Thanks for writing this man, looking forward to see what you build next at Google. Thanks for your contributions to Cappuccino and other open source.
It's also possible that writers start out really excited to make a book to help people, and then in the end all they have left is the self-promotion out of it once their publisher didn't do anything to promote it.
Technology has nothing to do with it. Activity that does not involve trade is not commercial. Trade that does not cross state lines is not inter-state. Non-commercial (no selling, no trading) private activity that never leaves your property is not interstate commerce. The sky is still blue even if the Supreme Court says it is yellow.
I'm not saying that getting offended is the right response, I'm just saying she has the right to be offended. I get offended by people walking slowly in front of me. They're not doing anything horribly wrong, I'm just annoyed. Again, I understand her being offended, but do not excuse it, as you say.
It is never appropriate to distribute photographs of people without their permission, in any context. I think SendGrid is justified in their decision.
I am curious what you make of this portion of the response in particular:

"A SendGrid developer evangelist’s responsibility is to build and strengthen our Developer Community across the globe. In light of the events over the last 48+ hours, it has become obvious that her actions have strongly divided the same community she was supposed to unite. As a result, she can no longer be effective in her role at SendGrid."
Some people are just surrounded by constant drama...mostly drama created out of thin air. Its a useful trait to have if your surname is "Kardashian".
It'll be interesting to see if the relevant party here is going to seek legal action against SendGrid for the firing. Without commenting about whether there is any legal basis (I have no idea), it seems like doing so would seriously hinder any efforts to find another job in the tech field in the future.

Yet it wouldn't surprise me to see it happen, given this individual's seemingly extreme reactions to perceived slights (themselves minuscule compared to actually being fired, justified or not).
> And then; then I shall buy.

This is why it will not crash long enough to give you the opportunity. That's the nature of the market. Everyone else is going to be doing the same thing, especially speculators. It will probably crash soon enough, but some negative event will need to trigger it.

And it'll have to be worse than a website getting hacked or a hardfork, which were the kinds of things that caused crashes years ago when the market was younger.
"Just because you're offended doesn't mean you're right" -Ricky Gervais

This is one of those situations where a word was used with proper english definition and was taken completely out of context for the sake of argument. To trace that to a racist undertone is the fault of the reader and a lack of reading comprehension (taking tone and context is important).
In the past, I've tended to follow a '48-hour rule' when it comes to responding to emotionally-heated emails.

Yes, 48 hours can seem like an eternity in the tech world, but it prevents accidentally exacerbating the situation by acting with good intentions yet without a clear head.

This isn't even taking into account how long it takes to check with HR, legal, etc. All of which were probably necessary here.
I can't agree with this. It's not a question of speech, it's a question of responsibility: She was present in a professional capacity and, as stated in the post, behaved in a way that subverted the goal of her position.

That's pretty open and shut. She said what she believed, and did exactly what she wanted to... unfortunately, she did not do so in line with the best interests of the community or her employer, and that's who she was supposed to be representing during this series of events.

You don't have to disagree with freedom of speech to find some speech harmful to your business, and there is no unconditional right to employment without regard to personal conduct.
It's kind of a shame that two people got fired - but I did think it was weird when the person having a private convo was fired but not the person who used their corporate position to launch a public attack on the former was not.

But for the record I'd have preferred that no one lose their job.
Just think of all the things you could be doing with your time that don't involve following this stupid Internet drama. Now go do one of those things. Seriously this is such a waste of time.
Wrong.
http://pycon.blogspot.co.at/2013/03/pycon-response-to-inappr...
" The comments that were made were in poor taste, and individuals involved agreed, apologized and no further actions were taken by the staff of PyCon 2013. No individuals were removed from the conference, no sanctions were levied."
Inkfold is a news experience designed to spark conversation, for iPhone and now iPad. Please check it out in the App Store and feel free to leave your feedback there or by writing direct to us at hello@inkfold.com. Thanks #inkdifferent
Which HTML5 features used by this demo are not supported by Firefox?
not to mention piping those tty's...

(I just had to, I'm sorry guys)
Minitest is horribly coded. Wouldn't go near it with a nineteen foot pole.
I would say it's worth reading even completely outside of this whole circus; "Assume people will be reasonable until they are not." is very wise.
She acted as a developer evangelist, there is absolutely no way she could do her job. I would go so far as to say no company will EVER employ her for a job with that title ever again.
With most firms, when you join you are required to sign an agreement. In that agreement, usually it is stated that you agree to comply to a certain employee handbook or standards of conduct.

If she violated the standards of conduct, since employment is conditional on compliance, they can fire her and will most likely win any lawsuit on the matter unless a court deems that the standards themselves are illegal.
He is standing behind his employees; by protecting the jobs of those not involved in the drama. Any CEO who would stand behind an employee to the death of their company would not be CEO for very long.
Re-read the post. The reason she was fired was not because of what she said but because her actions resulted in the shitstorm today when her job is specifically to foster good relationships between sendgrid and the developer community. Basically, she failed at her job, so was fired.
FUCK THE NAZIST MODERATORS IN THE ASS!

AND IN CASE THEY LIKE THAT, MAY THEY GET FORCED TO EAT SHIT FOR ETERNITY!
This guy went from 3500 visitors/day to 100 000+ visitors/day
Human Intervention as a Competitive Advantage
The email gateway (smtp.sendgrid.com) and HTTP API endpoints were also down during the same outage period. Seems like it went beyond the public facing site.
Aside from the personal stuff between her and Adria, I think she has a good grasp of the situation. (i.e. I agree with her) However, I find one thing troubling:

> Adria reinforced the idea of us as threats to men, as unreasonable, as hard to work with… as bitches.

(From here addressed to Amanda, should she be unlucky enough to stumble upon this thread) I don't believe you should be worrying about whether what you do reinforces someone else's preconceived notion of your gender. Do you really think someone who already sees women as uppity b-tches would suddenly change their tone just because you don't adhere to their stereotype? No, they're going to write you off as an exception. "No no, you're not like them! You're one of the good ones!" But as soon as you do something they don't like? "What a fucking b-tch. This just proves women don't belong in tech. etc etc"

However, I'm a guy. I don't really have the right to tell you how you should think about your own oppression, much like how no one has the right to tell Adria how she should have handled calling those two guys out— aside from doing something illegal, which posting a photo on Twitter most certainly is not.

I guess what I'm saying is that I agree everyone lost, but one person lost a hell of a lot more than anyone else. That guy whose name we still don't know? He's gotten job offers. Play Haven, the place that actually fired him? Unscathed. Adria? Constant harassment, rape and death threats, and now presumably fired from her job while her former employer is being DDoS'd. All because she posted a picture of some guys on Twitter.

Think about that the next time a thread comes up about the sexism women face in the programming community. You can't write it off as a bunch of trolls this time, because a lot of the backlash was directly from HN.
She is a PR person.

When the dust settles, SendGrid, PlayHaven, affected developers, women in tech as a group, and our industry as a whole will end up with some reputation damage and setbacks in the struggles on equality front.

But Adria personally will probably benefit from her newfound celebrity status in one way or another. There's no such thing as bad publicity, that's the most likely lesson to be learned [again].
It's better to be a coward than have thousands of people on the internet actively trying to destroy your business and all 130 employees.

This shit was only getting worse by the minute and it wasn't going to stop unless the company did something to show they didn't approve of it.
Except that the power of Congress to "regulate Commerce ... among the several States" does not mean that Congress has the power to regulate an individual's commercial activity. It means that Congress has the power to forbid a state from interfering in commerce taking place across state lines.

The problem with Raich and Wickard (et al.) is not that they extend federal power, but rather that they invent it of whole cloth.
Should I give up part of my online identity?
Should one role over part of your online identity because of a companies unfortunate marketing choice?

I took on the moniker e14n (some time before 2009) as it was the shortest representation of my name that wasn't already widely used. Its a play on the contraction of internationalization to i18n, which has come up a bit in the 10 years I have worked in Japan.

Like a few passive narcissists I have on occasion searched for my various identities online.

Today I received a polite letter asking me if I would consider role over my twitter account. I am a business owner and I know how much we really struggled with branding so I would really like to help, but a number of issues don't sit well with me.

1. It is likely to confused people because we are both involved in open source, and most of the people following me are connected through this association.

2. I don't think it serves the other company well. There doesn't seem to be a strong connection with the company (it is being used as a contraction of ephemeralization).

3. Having had to deal with the stupid real name only bs in social networks it really offends me someone trying to take away my nic.
I know there are a lot of people who think "Obviously this was the right response to the situation..what the heck was she thinking?", but have been silent because of the massively feminist-dominated media these days.

Hypothetically, a female can now overhear a dick joke between two gay men, twitter their photographs, and get them fired from their jobs because the company that employs them does not have their backs.

If you want this situation to improve, and not live in fear any more, there are a few things you should do immediately. Here is the thinking person's guide to how to navigate the murky waters of our industry. I say person because I know both gay and straight women who hate the massively PC dominated atmosphere of most software companies these days:

1) NEVER hire a woman to fill some sort of quota, or because of some abstract objective like "We probably need more women in the company." You will end up attracting this sort of extreme feminist "female evangelist" who runs around with a chip on her shoulder constantly complaining about sexism.

2) NEVER say anything sexual at a conference to anyone. DO NOT speak to females who are attending the conference beyong absolutely professional matters. For heaven's sake, do not ask a female if her boyfriend is the one attending. DO NOT reveal any personal details about yourself.

You probably earn enough as a software developer, so if you want sexual intercourse, get a call girl (just being honest and practical here). It is not that expensive. Remember that prostitution is legal in Canada.

3) Avoid all social contact with women in your company. Date outside the industry if possible.

4) If you are forcefully pulled into a discussion about sexism in the industry, pretend to agree with their points ("Yes, women often face blatant sexism in the industry"), etc. and politely CUT the conversation as fast as possible. NEVER show a men's rights perspective because you will be labeled as weird. Just stop talking to that person. If you want to show your perspective, show it through your vote the next time there is an election.

5) NEVER engage in dialog with male feminists like Matthew Garrett. Follow point 4) if they start talking to you about sexism in the tech industry.
There are probably few high-level things EVERYONE must know, I'd focus a bit lower. A pro must know how to/understand:

- read/write english

- type (mentioned)

- parts of a computer & what they do, GUI

- exposure to Windows, OSX, and Unix

- networking, tcpip, internet basics

- unicode, i18n, L10n

- use of a web browser

- how to search (google) effectively

- email, office suite, edit photos

- command line

- script repetitive tasks

- make backups, version control

- security basics

- troubleshooting

- planning, testing procedures,
i.e. make one change at a time, staging, production

- SDLC

Then move to the requirements for your discipline, such as developer, qa, or admin... which get highly specialized quickly. I could list some but this post would get too long as I'd have at least three lists.

I believe regexes are overused, and wouldn't recommend them to most.
Meet the new Kippt
Basically, they are talking about their corporate operations and ignoring the actual resources consumed during their products' lifecycle from manufacture->distribution->sale->use->recycling/disposal. Hence my comment that they are green-washing.