skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> This all seems like such a trivial issue

It should have been, but Adria decided to take the fight to the Internet when she made that blog post and posted the tweets. She chose to do this instead of talking to the guys behind her. If you take a small issue to the online masses it always ends wrong.
If you're going to take such a dogmatic stance in your writing then you should be prepared for the criticism. I don't think anyone is interested in rehashing the debate about the value of ideas on this thread. Suffice it to say there are plenty of very well informed people who have built companies and believe that ideas are valuable and worth protecting. So when you demean your audience by suggesting otherwise you can expect people to take offense, dismiss whatever else you have to say, or both.
A true Pythonista would not be offended by a dongle joke. The following link has a penis song from Monty Python's The Meaning of Life http://youtu.be/p9PiqCeLEmM
I don't believe that "if I can hear it, it isn't private". On the other hand, if I'm saying something that I know could be overheard and offensive, I usually choose my words a little more carefully, especially when I will be in close proximity to others for a while - like when I'm sitting at a conference, in a movie theater, etc. On the third hand, I recognize that everyone's filter is calibrated a little differently and that some people have no filters - which is why we have written codes of conduct. Yes, learning social boundaries is a skill that could go un-exercised - which is another reason for the codes of conduct.
> Warren Ellis: Dear Google: why launch Google Keep when you've just proven you'll shut off productivity services when you get bored with maintaining them?

It probably doesn't make a whole lot of sense to assume that services introduced after Google announced that they were going to start trimming old offerings that didn't warrant support and increase the focus on what they do introduce are likely to be closed just because Google is closing services introduced before that effort was announced.

The whole point of that effort is to kill the existing zombie offerings and stop creating new ones.
A terrifying precedent for all women in tech.
No they don't. I've run a ton of usability tests for clients walking through this very issue. Almost no one will even consider using it.
Seems this youtube clip here is totally inappropriate too then? See 1:45 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAG39jKi0lI
Was the comment really that inappropriate? Dongle jokes are a no go?

I feel like this whole incident did more damage to female right then good by making them appear small and fragile.
What happened to CTO Edward Wu?

He seems to have been part of the original founding team and CTO but no mention of him in the past ~1 year.

[edited, linked to previous post from Inovia]
http://inoviacapital.com/2011/11/inovia-capital-is-proud-to-...
Probably will.... just a little curious, no?
Given the threats at http://pastebin.com/ubmznGhn I think this is clearly the right explanation.
Discovering Drug Side Effects with Crowdsourcing
Looks awesome. I love containers/lxc. github id: wkharold
> These machines will know more about you than you do. These machines will decide what you eat, the kinds of clothes you buy, the books you read, the television shows you watch, and the kind of person you are.

While I very much applaud your interest in data analysis, this is very much an overreach. Even assuming that facebook has as much information about you as you think, there has been no service which is better at predicting what you like than you yourself. Furthermore, I have yet to come across a music discovery service which can predict music that I like when I specifically give it songs that I like.

Furthermore, I would like to point out that facebook only knows as much about you as you tell it. I dont use foursqare, checkins, status updates, instagram, photo uploads, etc; not because of some ideology for privacy, but rather because I simply dont find them useful. I know that I am not the only one like that. Facebook has relatively little information about me. I also do not stay logged in to facebook so the link tracking is also nearly useless.
No. Looking at her Linkedin profile the person is a women-in-tech evangelist. This incident - especially posting the photo of the offenders on Twitter and the subsequent penis joke - served to make the news to give her visibility. The PyCon code of conduct serves to provide a pleasant atmosphere at the conference, it isn't a weapon or a means to make the news.
Awesome. As a fluxbox user since ~2003, it's nice to see the little guys get some HN love.

Fluxbox does everything I need, and quite a few things I don't, or need only rarely.
Exactly. The web is a very agile place. We don't all sit in cubicles and have weekly meetings. Some people just want to get things done, quickly.
Abandoning Rubygems
If anything this entire situation made me realize how something as seemingly benign as using your smartphone can result in such rampant chaos. 'Oh the times they are a changin...'
Note: Im not in support of either side here, just stating an opinion
I had a quick look and cappuccino apps are not crawlable, at least the demos aren't. Sorry, but it doesn't look like cappuccino gets what the web is about.

As somebody who uses text interfaces primarily I don't think desktop apps are amazing anyway, even if I see that they are better for some tasks.

The web browser is the only graphical tool I use daily, I don't need things inside to look like desktop apps. shudder
It is often not reasonable to ask people who feel intimidated or harassed to confront the people intimidating them publicly.

She could have spoken to a con rep without making a public stink about it, though.

She certainly did act on it.

The firing is up to PlayHaven and SendGrid (and the corporate culture which they share)
No. Instead of posting someone's photo (and other's along with that) on the web confront them. If they do not apologize or shut up in shame, move to authorities. Authorities at Pycon did help her, didn't they?
Once, sat in the audience at OSCON with people I knew, a particularly inappropriate joke occurred to me that I thought the friend sat next to me would appreciate.

I sent it to him via private message using my laptop.

That way, the conversation was -actually- private, rather than 'private plus whoever else sat near me overheard what I said'.

This is not a difficult concept for me, though my primary motivation was 'not distracting the people around me' rather than what they might have thought of the content.
Perhaps irrelevant counterexamples:

>Since when did it become ok to vilify someone for a private conversation?

* Having a private conversation during a movie or play is generally considered the action of the worse sort of villain.

* Plenty of people have been vilified and sent to jail on the basis of statements made privately.

* Just because something is private doesn't mean it isn't disruptive to people within earshot.

>A private conversation in a public area is still private.

* You don't generate a cone of silence by addressing a statement to a particular person. It is likely that people around you can still hear you.

* Furthermore in a public venue you have no expectation of privacy.
I believe this is the study: http://www.library.ca.gov/crb/08/08-007.pdf

Summary of results:

• Neither cameras in Jordan Downs nor Hollywood Boulevard had any significant effect in reducing violent or property crime rates within the target areas;

• The monthly rate of violent crimes fell in both the Jordan Downs and Hollywood target areas; however, the Nickerson Gardens control site and the Hollywood Box matched pair experienced similar reductions and the results were not statistically significant;

• The monthly rate of property crimes decreased in Hollywood, and increased in Jordan Downs, but the results were not statistically significant in either case;

• The evidence on the displacement of crime is mixed; in both locations, some crimes increased at a faster rate in the adjacent areas, indicating that CCTV may displace crime,
while other types of crimes decreased relatively more in the buffer areas, though results were not statistically significant;

• CCTV had no statistically significant effect on arrest rates for misdemeanor quality-of-life infractions in Jordan Downs or on Hollywood Boulevard
I guess it hinges also on the definition of "private".

Is it always the offended party's prerogative to claim offense if, "in passing", they hear something that upsets them but which was (1) not intended for them to hear and (2) not directed at them?

That appears to be the case here - the jokes were not directed at the (now-fired herself) Ms Reynolds.
> Google has a well established record now for abandoning projects.

Google has a well-established record for closing services that were introduced before they announced that they would be closing services that were languishing and working to stop introducing services that would languish that way.

I'm not sure how that warrants suspicion about closing directed at services introduced after that focus was announced.
How to Buy Bitcoins Quickly
I hope she sues the shit out of them and gets enough money to spend the rest of her life advocating for women in tech without fear of retaliation.
Out of curiosity I just looked at the Cappucino website... the controls look modern to me, not like "old, outdated, Windows.. Swing" apps.
> Thirty years ago these people would have had no options other than to be passive consumers of software other people made.

Not exactly: https://groups.google.com/group/comp.sys.mac.hypercard/brows...

(That was 26 years ago, and HyperCard was far more accessible to non-computer scientists than the web is or has been).

It's a mistake to think that because the web is popular, that one can draw directly from it axioms regarding how technology should be implemented.
The end objective of web development is to bring desktop like experience? I wouldn't blame the failure of Cappuccino on the emergence of micro libraries. Cappuccino simply does not sound like what the web needs.
Effective immediately, SendGrid has terminated the employment of Adria Richards
>>Richards and DeltaBlue aren't exactly ideal.[1]<<

I didn't find anything on the blog page you linked to that talks about why Richards or DeltaBlue are or are not ideal.
A few more steps and we can wrap it up as a Shakespearean tragedy
The problem with this is that it gets into dueling fallacies. Your opposition is arguing from induction (judging the whole based on the actions of a few), with a generous helping of Black Swan (deliberately ignoring counterexamples in favor of personal experience). But you're going on No True Scotsman (excluding people from a group based on factors that don't actually have anything to do with group membership) with a side of the Fallacy Fallacy (assuming that a fallacious argument must therefore be incorrect).

Public shaming is a very powerful thing, and not inherently good or evil. Some people need to be shamed for what they've done, and others need the threat of shaming to keep them in line. But shaming's power makes it dangerous, and not to be used without very careful, independent verification that it's warranted: that wrongdoing was indeed committed, that it was committed by the target, and that shaming is both appropriate and necessary as a consequence of that wrongdoing.

The "independent" part of that is important. Even if we discount the possibility of malice, there are too many ways for things to go wrong. Definitions can be unreasonable, identities can be mistaken, memories can be faulty, evaluations can be based on incomplete information, and so on. The involved parties are, in all but the most egregious cases, not qualified to make those decisions unilaterally: they're too close to the incident. In all but the most egregious cases, the involved parties are too close to the incident to be qualified to make these decisions unilaterally. Even in the most egregious cases, the very things that make one side qualified to make some of those decisions also disqualify that side from making the others, which is why we have courts in the first place.

I think PyCon's actions here are quite appropriate, and a marked improvement from the earlier code of conduct. There's room to improve even further -there should be some basic outline of a process for reviewing and investigating incidents- but this is still a step in the right direction.
And didn't take delays in account, half a second used to be my ping on dial-up.
guess this thread is also gone from the front page now.
And this is relevant here because of?
And female devs who disagree with Adria.
Period. Full stop.

Not. There are also issues of fabricated evidence and due process involved.
This is a good point, and unfortunately it means that most of the advantage of using _.defaults() goes by the wayside. It just becomes a matter of personal preference. Thanks for the tip.
The Slot Machine Theory of Paper Submissions
Non-swipe: http://www.artofmanliness.com/2013/03/20/7-tips-for-successf...
My thoughts exactly. What a soap opera. Everyone needs to take a deep breath.
This has to be one of the most bitter and condescending posts ever. Rather than sucking up the fact that a project he has been putting his heart and soul for some reason isn't gaining traction (and trying to adjust so that it can), he blames "the web community" for all his issues. The community doesn't have a centralized decision making system, instead, people support things that make sense. In this case, they didn't support Cappuccino, because it didn't make sense to them. Rather than blaming themselves though, they blame the masses. The conclusion "screw you all, I'm joining Google" is really abrasive and arrogant. It would have been much better if this post was phrased as: for some reason our platform didn't work, here's what we learned.
The facebook announcement was already on the front page, but then magically vanished,
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5416021
The word "dongle" itself is hilarious. No sexism intended.
That's not even remotely close to what vidarh said. Try reading it again.
It's called Socratic Method.
Either offensiveness is completely subjective in which case it is sole, entirely and complete the concern of the individual claiming to be offended.

Or there is some standard for offensive remarks, in which case you absolutely do get to tell people that they aren't offended by that.

Note that if offense is subjective you don't get to complain about others making you offended -- that is by definition your own feelings.
I'm self-publishing my graphic novels. If I could get a publisher to handle the editing, marketing, distribution, and sales of my stuff, I would be totally delighted. Sure, I might not get as much per unit sold - but they'd be able to place it in a LOT more stores than me, and make print runs large enough to get a better per-unit price from the printer.

We do, in fact, have companies doing this sort of thing in the space of modern comics. They evolve out of groups of web comics creators pooling their resources for the stuff that's not about making comics, and starting a small business to fulfil orders. Topatoco is the most prominent; go to a major comics convention and they'll have a pretty good-sized booth full of the creators affiliated with them.
What a bunch of melodrama (on all sides, but the anti-Adria faction is definitely uglier). These are adults? Glad I never got into Twitter, what a waste of time and energy.
Neither her nor the other person should have been fired for this. People calling for them to be fired have been acting irresponsibly.
Note that I explicitly called out the hyperbole of the statement. If the argument is that he got fired because he made this joke rather than because Adria posted about the joke, then surely it should follow that any alternative consequence could be subbed in, right? His employer was mad enough about his joke to fire him. Is it not possible that, in a hypothetical world someone else could be mad enough about the joke to cause him physical harm? And since it's his fault for making the joke, then it's his fault he got injured. Adria did nothing wrong, because he didn't get fired because of her tweet, he got fired because of his joke.

The idea is to point out that his private conversation would never have been made public without Adria, and Adria as a media figure should be able to see the negative consequences of her actions. There are better ways of handling the taking of offense.
From the beginning, this whole story has been one overreaction followed by another. It's just getting uglier and uglier as time goes on.

The whole thing has set back gender relations in tech by 20 years, IMO.
It is not a scam per se; unless you deem investing, or taking risks a scam.
I disagree, I think too much of this has got wrapped up in male/female terms.

People making off-colour jokes at a conference is unacceptable (perhaps not a firing offence).

Posting pictures of fellow attendees from a conference, while your work is paying you to be there, with insulting messages about them, is also unacceptable (but perhaps not a firing offence).

No-one involved here comes off particularly well, but I truely believe if if Ardia had done any (or all) of:

* Talk privately to the people
* Talk privately to the organiser of PyCon
* Talk publicly about the issue, without giving out pictures or names

She would not now be having a problem of anywhere near the same size, or now be fired.
I think that this guy does not really understand how the web works. I mean, emulating desktop on the web has been tried many times and failed each time. He's right about some things (like people considering 49KB to be a lot) though.
Methods of Proof - Induction
That's the point. Loudness defines the address.
Noted, thanks! Btw, you can also use the feedback widget within the editor to give quick feedback like this. Its on top right corner.
While I agree with the main thrust of the article, in my opinion what killed Cappuccino was that it was big, weird, and rather opaque. Did it ever occur to you that maybe it was just too much? One thing I liked about jQuery was that my webpages didn't have to become applications, they could just be webpages with behavior. It worked within the paradigm, you might say, and that's what I wanted and it's what my clients wanted too. SproutCore didn't see heavy adoption either. GWT probably had more than both, but it wasn't the #1 or #2 Java framework.

I wanted to love Cappuccino, but I didn't know Cocoa or Objective-C. Your team was spread so thin I remember wondering--how much time are they putting into Objective-J, how much into Cappuccino, how much into 280 Slides? When 280 Slides shut down, it looked to me (as an outsider) as the beginning of the inevitable cascade of plug-pulling that happens when a small team realizes they bit off more than they can chew. Imagine what it would have done to Rails adoption if Basecamp had been shut down. It was the flagship product.

It's hard to imagine jQuery being shut down, but suppose it did. With Zepto and everything else, it wouldn't be the end of the world for me--my investment in it is safe. Imagine if I had written tens of thousands of lines of Objective-J. Does this blog post make me feel like I made a safe investment? We like light libraries over massive frameworks because light libraries really can't take our applications down with them. You may have brought an impressive engineering mindset to this problem, and this is a problem that deserves it, but we're still talking about 4 years from start to finish. If you want me to go "all in" on something that could take years of my work down in a ball of flame, forgive me if I'm distrustful of three kids doing a startup and trying to reinvent the world.
what a fucking mess.

this has made everyone look bad.
User generated content sites should share revenues with users
This has gotten so, so way out of hand. There's better things to be doing and there are better, more deserving battles to be had (happy to direct that at all parties involved).
Same for a venturebeat article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5416301

I assume this one is next, but why? Is the information false? (perhaps the social accounts are compromised?)
Emotiprompt
>>benchmarks done by the Debian<<

No. Not "done by Debian". Alioth is a project hosting service like sourceforge or savannah.
When an overreaction is met with an overreaction, does the threat of mutually assured destruction solve anything?

Is this the nuclear option in the war of the sexes?
As a result of a tweet, two people are now without a job. Incredible how technology is changing everything. The bad tweet is now the equivalent of saying "fuck" on the air in your local news broadcast, except a bad tweet can happen at any time.
> it only reinforces the 'tech world systematically suppresses women' meme.

No it doesn't. It actually reduces it. She is being treated as a complete equal here, in being called out and held accountable for her actions. It would be a setback if she were protected purely because she was "speaking out" about sexism.
This has officially been blown entirely and utterly out of proportion, not a single soul should've been fired over this.
Yes. What a debacle. We're all going to regret this.
> People make mistakes. Couldn't SendGrid have offered the guy a job and apologized profusely.

That sounds like it'd be really awkward for both Adria and the guy and eventually make it worse for SendGrid. If you've followed Adria's comments on her blog post, you'd realize it'd be a serious about-face to back down. The guy would probably have to grovel, and personally, in this case I'd rather be out of a job.

> You could argue that her job is to be an advocate for SendGrid, and this incident has done the opposite. But I assume she was just fired so the ddos would go away.

Why not both? It didn't give me a terribly negative view of SendGrid, but certainly warned me to steer clear of ever working for / with them for fear of stepping on overly-PC toes.
Even if it wasn't a professional conference, as another poster said, it was "professional-for-them" if their badgest identified them as being affiliated with one of the conference sponsors. I wouldn't have responded as Adria did, but I do believe they should have acted more professionally, which would include recognizing that their private conversations could be easily overheard.
There's a difference between reading someone's Twitter stream and hearing someone's joke while sitting in the audience at a convention.

I've pondered this myself and, at least in this situation, I disagree. How can it be a fireable offense to make a penis joke in a room where a few people may overhear it, while it being completely ok to tweet the penis joke to the whole room?

I know you would only receive the joke if you follow her, but most people are following her because of her status in the tech community, not because she has great dirty jokes. In my eyes, this makes her joke an even worse offender than Alex's. They were both made in a professional environment but one was a private conversation that happened to be overheard, the other was a public broadcast to a portion of the tech community.
These articles keep disappearing from the front page. I wonder if they're being caught up in some sort of upvoting-too-fast detection or if it's manual intervention?
> It is often not reasonable to ask people who feel intimidated or harassed to confront the people intimidating them publicly.

I generally agree, but what Adria did was public and did confront them -- albeit indirectly. I don't think she felt intimidated, I think she saw the situation as an opportunity.

> The firing is up to PlayHaven and SendGrid (and the corporate culture which they share)

Again, I agree. I just think three people getting fired over "big dongle" is fucking ridiculous.
Awesome vintage speech diagrams from a 1963 Bell Labs textbook
What a monster cockup that all turned out to be. Instead of some minor embarrassment for saying something silly two people are now out of work.