skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It's about training. Were failing is usually good.
> There is horrifying sexism in the comments that have been posted over the past 24 hours,

So long those posts get down voted, the community is actually dealing with the bad comments.
" following this stupid Internet drama"

You know why you should pay attention to this? One day, you may find yourself in the same situation that the SendGrid CEO is in today. At that point, knowing how to react stands between a momentary headache and a multi-million-dollar business-crippling headache.
Same. I am also very curious about any legal consequences Sendgrid may be subjected to, even though I COMPLETELY support their actions (and the ability for business managers to have more power over terminating employees).
1) free speech is a guarantee that the government will not pass laws preventing you from expressing yourself. it has nothing to do with your private employer.

2) Adria Richards acted in a way contrary to what her employer was paying her to do. If your job is public relations, but you generate animosity instead of good will you are incompetent at your job. That is grounds for termination in the old fashioned sense, having nothing to do with free speech or anything else.
Anyone else seeing all the 'f' characters on sendgrid's site as some strange punctuation character?
It would be weird to fire someone over other people's criminal activity. That reason would be akin to what Eugene Volokh has referred to as the "heckler's veto": when you e.g. cancel a controversial speech because thuggish opponents have threatened to cause trouble (call in fake bomb threats, etc.), and you blame the speaker for having drawn the thuggish behavior, rather than the people actually engaged in criminal activity.

That said, they may have had legitimate reasons to fire her, but "people are illegally attacking us in order to get at her" is not one.
I think you are overlooking the fact (clearly elucidated by SendGrid) that her position as Developer Evangelist makes her the face of their company at conferences. Reaching out to her hundreds of Twitter followers to bring public shame to decent people runs perpendicular to the ethics of her company, her position, and (I hope) to the tech industry.

It is truly "ironic" - a word I shall borrow from you - that you attack SendGrid on the grounds of Free Speech, when in fact, the men in question in the incident were having a private conversation themselves.
I doubt that. It is explicitly against the PyCon Code of Conduct to photograph attendees without their permission. Adria Richards did just that, on company time.
Ask HN: Big Data organizations for the Common Good
Hi,
I would like to work for Big Data organizations(e.g. non-profit) which use data for the common good. This could be improving government,education,basic health etc.

Could this post be a compilation of such organizations(or any online resources). Also, where can I hang out(online)to learn more about this?

I ask because most big data ventures are commercial and geared towards sales,marketing,advertising which does not interest me right now.

Location Independent(so that it is useful to all HN readers)
Why is that? She lost them a lot of business, as he said she was not good PR, it seems pretty reasonable to fire her.
Since you're honestly curious and not just trying to argue: pervasive anatomical/sexual jokes are sometimes (not always) part of a hyper-sexualized environment that some (not all) women find intimidating and alienating and is generally considered to be a form of harassment.
Poorly worded. One person, identified as "Andy Reid", was not fired but the other person was.

Editing parent to reflect the clarification
I think Adria could have avoided this if she apologized not for reporting the offenders to pycon, but for publicly identifying them. She was given the perfect opportunity for this when one of the offenders apologized for their own misstep in a hacker news thread that she herself commented in (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5398681).
Your analogy seems to reverse about halfway through. Not being able to make lewd jokes because the majority would find them offensive doesn't seem to apply, here. If, instead, you mean that being offended is, itself, something that you can't do without causing the majority to feel offense, if you're in the minority (as Adria was), I think that this analogy may be stretching too far, or going too meta, or something. :)
Why do you think this? Most employment in California (at least from my personal experience) is "at-will". Either party can terminate at any time with no notice and with no cause.

Also in this case the reasons have nothing to do with her gender, but more that she failed at her job at being a developer evangelist.
There was a chance to turn a two sided error into a stronger community. Now both trenches are dug even further.
Well he didn't agree with what she said or how she handled it, why would he stand behind it? She brought them a lot of bad PR and a lot of trouble, he did what anyone would have.
"How the hell do we measure a police department's effectiveness?"

A good question, I would not base it on arrests though, that is like measuring developers by bug reports.

Start with the purpose of a police department, law enforcement and in carrying out that duty a mitigation of unlawful activity. So in terms of achieving their goals one would start with comparing unlawful activity in their jurisdiction vs a similar jurisdiction with a different agency. Compare per capita costs (hence the tax burden) and compare customer satisfaction (the citizens).

In a squishy way, do the citizens feel safe? Do they engage in activities that would not be possible if they felt danger? And How much do we spend compared to other cities with similar economic demographics ?

So we reward arrests that accurately convict the perpetrator responsible in as short as time as possible. Always finding your crook, but taking on average 14 - 18 months to do so, not good. Solving 90% of your caseload in under a week is good; Having more than a 1% false positive rate is bad. Citizens trusting/partnering with the police is good, people who can't trust their police is bad.

That's one of the reasons I have pushed for the 'civil treason' sort of crime for violating the public trust. In order to trust the integrity of a police officer, I need to know that the risk they would face of violating that integrity is so high they don't do it. Life in prison for a police officer that commits perjury for example. Not regular citizens, but someone entrusted with enforcing the law. Similarly for judges that take bribes. In order for democracy to work you need a justice system that is harder on itself than it is on criminals.

I would be more comfortable with the surveillance request if I knew that if the officers were lying about the need for it they could be sentenced to life in prison. That makes them less likely to lie.

"This just seems like a no-win solution for honest departments and civil rights."

My thesis is that the root of the problem is that its a "no lose" solution. There isn't any penalty for being a bad cop, you might get a reprimand for misstating that surveillance was the law but that's it. If the penalty, the 'lose' part, was there, then the conversation changes.
I'm questioning whether she was offended at all. She certainly has the right, but her actions before and since (ie at previous speaking events, comments on her twitter feed, mishearing an innocent comment as a sexual one) beg the question.

And yes, sadly this is relevant, because, as much as we all have the right to decide when we are offended and not, there will always be people, consciously or not, who will game the system.

And you aren't offended by people who walk slowly in front of you - you are annoyed.
I consider that to be fluff and nonsense.

48 hours is not the right interval to be making that judgment. And firing her in response to correct the situation was about the worse and most extreme of actions.

(And please note, I think Richards made a mistake and showed terrible judgment.)
In the end we have two people out of a job.

It is a sad outcome but Adria's position had simply become untenable.

Personally I know who seems the more employable of the two. I do hope Adria gets the time to step back and learn something from this sorry incident.

There are no winners here.
As commenter mr-hank, supposedly the person making the dongle-joke, posted yesterday, the other developer was the one who talked about forking a repo, which was not sexual at all, and only sexualised by Adria Richards.
You live by the sword, you die by the sword.

Social media is an incredibly powerful tool - especially when you are good at "it" and you wield influence. Trip up on your own shoelaces and you run tremendous risk of social media backfiring on you.
Feedback also can be entered @ http://discuss.emberjs.com/t/ideas-for-improving-the-getting...
"The problem is probably that most good 3d modelers do not need your service."

How so? Don't 3D modelers need a platform to show their work just like graphic artists?

There is totally a place for this on the web, just because you use 3D models on the desktop doesn't mean they dont belong on the web in interactive form.

Have you ever been on a 3D modelling community site? There are amazing models, but you have to ask to download another artists work to really see it, and they likely wont give it to you. Imagine if all those artists (yes there are thousands of them) were given a platform to share their work in 3D??
According to this article[1] this was not a single mistake, but a pattern of how she handles things.

[1] https://amandablumwords.wordpress.com/2013/03/21/3/
I also think it is very important for their reputation in general so developers and the community feel confident in choosing Sendgrid for future projects. Not always about there here and now...
Sorry, usernames are not identity providers, they do not cross system boundaries. Perhaps we are discussing different problems.

Facebook is one identity provider. I'm not comfortable having all of the Internet, to use a reduction to the absurd, dependent on Facebook. Persona is distributed, which is, for me, a primary requirement for an identity system.
MRI Fingerprinting: the 12-second scan and a whole lot more
Perhaps a better solution would have been to ask Ms. Richards to take a different position at the company, perhaps one that was less public? The crux for SendGrid was that Ms. Richards was a developer evangelist, and, as Mr. Franklin pointed out, if a majority of the community which she serves is upset and/or against her, how could she actually do her job?
Except that she caused the criminal activity to happen because of the way she acted, and it is now costing the business money hand over fist. It gets expensive fast.
So she was actually fired because of the DDoS: “In the end, the consequences that resulted from how she reported the conduct put our business in danger. Our commitment to our 130 employees, their families, our community members and our more than 130,000 valued customers is our primary concern.”

Firing someone because of the criminal activity of someone else seems very weird.

At least he is opening himself up to that interpretation. Maybe the “consequences” are just disgruntled customers deciding to take their business elsewhere or the loss in trust in her, resulting in a reduced ability of her to do her job effectively, but in that context also talking about the “130,000 valued customers” is very weird. I can only assume that he was at least also referring to the DDoS when talking about the consequences.

To me it’s pretty clear that if the DDoS played any role in their decision, then it’s at least partly based on immoral cowardice.
Lean Analytics
ابراج اليوم - ابراج يوم الجمعة 2013/3/22 حظك ليوم الجمعة 2013/3/22
What a tough day for Sendgrid, Playhaven, and the developer community as a whole. I've been following this story the last 24 hours and I'm already fatigued. Let's pick up the pieces and work together to unite once again.

Our role as technologists is to build technology. Let us not forget that.
I honestly believe we had no social tool to soothe the viral effects of this story. Without a downvote or obscure button in twitter, hacker news, facebook, reddit, the only thing you can do is promote. In this case, the agents of sensationalism completely swept the story out of the publics hands, and we're left with remorse at an unfortunate incident that was made way worse though the internet.

both parties have had time to inspect their actions, both appear to be sorry, i believe that adria owes the developer an apology for an internet level attack - because thats what it is. she does not owe an apology for objecting to the comment and mr hank has made it clear he's seen his error.

i hope we all learn from this, and move on. our profession might be younger than most white collared professions, but have to be better than this, we all have to be.
I don't see why. Especially given the role of developer relations. It seems an incident like this is sure to effect her in that role.
>I have seen people casting aspersions on the guy who was fired

I hope you don't include me in that category. It was never my intent to disparage the dev; I simply found the statement that we don't know the whole story behind his firing to be a compelling one.
Her job was developer-oriented PR. Her actions resulted in a loss of trust in SendGrid by proxy, as well as direct negative impact on SendGrid's operations.

By any reasonable measure, that's grounds for termination; her actions harmed the company's reputation and cost them financially. If you can't fire someone for that, I'm not sure what you could fire for.
It's obvious that she had to go, because in her primary job -- popularize SendGrid -- she now has negative value.

If you believe she was blamelessly in the right, that's an argument for giving her a massive severance package. Even at that kind of expense, however, the severing was necessary.
What in particular do you think makes them vulnerable to a lawsuit? I am not a lawyer, but my understanding is that in the US, it is legal to fire most non-contract employees at any time, without any notice, and for pretty much any reason (or even lack of a reason) other than outright discrimination based on nationality/gender/religion/etc.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At-will_employment and specifically the "Statutory exceptions" section.
In the sense that you don't think it was a valid conclusion, or in the sense that given that conclusion, it was a nonsense reason to fire her?

This aspect of the situation seems exceedingly clear to me.
A very thoughtful article on a very horrible mess.
Re-inventing reporting of Google analytics - The Visual.ly infographic GA report
I'm sure there are jobs out there for her, though I'd be shocked if her title at her next employer is "developer evangelist."
Okay that font is terrible, not rendering correctly prob due to some JS error.

:(
"[...] talk to eachother. Assume people are reasonable until they are not."

As simple as that.
If you make a big mistake that costs a lot of money a company is allowed to fire you in most cases.
You can always outsource your iOS work to me :)
Where have all the grown-ups gone? What ever happened to those people who didn't have to make a scene of things that should have just been ignored?
That blog post is the single most reasonable thing I've read on the entire subject. Good on the author.
Looks like the same thing from a different angle.
No, the criminals caused the criminal activity. If I publish a book, and you engage in criminal retaliation against my publisher for having published it, I am not the person causing crime. Not even if your excuse was that you really hated the book. And it is no credit to the publisher if they give in to the thugs.
Most private sector employees in the US are employed at will, which means that they can be fired for any reason or for no reason. There’s a specific set of reasons that you can’t fire an employee for, including some kinds of discrimination (race, sex, religion, and a few other categories). You don’t necessarily need to violate an employee handbook, although if there is a risk that the employer is accused of discrimination, a violation of company rules could help the employer in case there’s a lawsuit.
I don't think it was a valid conclusion, and I think the CEO had other actions he could take that would be better for everyone involved.
I'm still missing something.

Although it's obviously the right conclusion that she can no longer function a evangelist, I find it hard to believe that she now has zero value for the company. You don't completely discard a previously valued employee over one fuck-up. Unless either that person is utterly useless in any other capacity, there is previous history or they are completely unwilling to accept that they made a mistake.

But even in those cases you would normally give someone the option to resign. Or the customary "mutual decision to part ways".
Same here. You might want to consider making the "try it now" button/link more prominent and above the login form. My 1st instinct was "Oh I have to sign up, forget it."
This is totally correct. I actually really love at-will from both points of view because it promotes freedom for all parties involved. Hate your job? Quit. Hate your employee? Fuck 'em, terminate them.
That's ridiculous. Not only is it completely legal (assuming the people don't have a reasonable expectation of privacy), it's enormously common. Half the photographs on Twitter would violate the social rule you're suggesting.
She didn't just make a "dick joke" on twitter, but a joke about creating a hostile working environment for somebody she doesn't like (TSA-agents in this case) by the means of sexual harassment.
Whoa, whoa. I'm not disagreeing with your sentiments, but an off-color joke does not equal hate speech. Let's keep unnecessary hyperbole out of this, please.
Maybe they did, and she refused?
At will employment does not protect against wrongful termination due to discrimination or retaliation[1]. It's obviously going to be up to a number of lawyers to figure out if there's a strong case for that to be made here.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At-will_employment#Statutory_ex...
At the end of the day no one really cares. They could rehire her once everyone is consumed by the next big distraction. A couple people will make noise but the majority of people won't care. People make mistakes everyday and usually learn from them. Now if you had someone habitually doing this kind of thing then it would create a problem.
I wouldn't give it up.
Absolutely agree. I'm glad there are finally people out there who are bringing the level on this incident back down to earth.
What do you do when you meet a woman at a party who makes an offhand comment about her "worthless son"? Nothing, right? Maybe "That's really rude" and walk away? Certainly no crusade will be mounted. Because: she's simply a bad person[1], and nothing you can say will do anything, you won't change her mind or shame her, and you certainly won't help the son's case, and anyone who knows the woman in question will know she's a jerk already. There's no point. Jerks are jerks. They come in both penis and vagina versions. Many of them are famous.

As for the guy who wouldn't talk to you, here's what you do:

"Excuse me. I'm over here. I run the business." Then smile.

I once did this to a guy who was trying to sell my boyfriend a car… when I was the one shopping. ("Excuse me, I'm the one with the money.") It solves the problem immediately. It causes temporary embarrassment for the lunkhead, he'll stop, and believe me he'll "get it" because he will stop trying to get the handy local man to explain why you/he are there, and you can all move on instead of silently steaming for ages.

It also works when somebody is at a dinner and saying "Women do this" -- you can simply say "I don't." And if that person is a prominent woman tech blogger, and you are me, then she'll shun you for the rest of the event, which works out just fine!

Like I said -- jerks come in all genital varieties.

[1] or maybe this angry mother isn't a jerk, maybe she's "just having a bad day," and "made a mistake," and makes a comment to a bunch of people at a party instead of photographing her son asleep during a test and using her position of power on Twitter to get him kicked out of his university… luckily for her, she's a woman, so she has the option of making a mistake in airing out family dirty laundry and being forgiven(?).
V8 is about 100 times (seriously) faster than IE6's JS engine. So, yes, "backward compatible with IE6" doesn't really mean anything.

After executing 5 million statements, IE will ask you if you want to continue. It will ask you many times. You'll probably sit there all day long clicking the whatever button.
No, she was fired because "she can no longer be effective in her role at SendGrid". Which makes sense, considering her role was to strengthen developer relations...
Who didn't see this coming?

And when she pulled SendGrid, her employer, publicly into the fray via her twitter feed, who didn't know it was simply a matter of time?

I mean, what else could SendGrid possibly do? She basically forced them to fire her. Her value to the company is being a public face to developers. She very publicly destroyed that value. Further, she pulled SendGrid in with her tweet about them "supporting" her. Had she not done that, she might have had a fighting chance, but it almost seems like she wanted to get fired.

Not to mention that a company wants to employ people with impeccable judgement, particularly for public facing positions. She showed incredibly horrid judgment in how she initiated the situation and continued to display horrid judgement in her handling of it. Do you want someone with horrible judgement being your public face and voice?

I don't put much stock in the DDoS talk, FYI. No reputable company fires someone b/c they are being blackmailed. Though, perhaps I'm giving too much credit here, I don't know.

Either way, it should not comes as a surprise to anyone that this is the outcome.
There are no winners here.

Most powerful statement I've seen yet about this issue. Literally no one can walk away and claim "victory" on this issue.

The worst part is that 130,000 customers + 2 job holders were impacted by something so insignificant in the whole grand scheme of things. Ah, the power of social media....
So on the latest version of Ubuntu (12.10), if I run "apt-get install rails" I get Rails 2.3. That was originally released over 4 years ago. There have been (nearly) 4 major releases since then. How do you work around that, or do you not?
The whole point of employing her is that she is public. They hired her specifically for her social presence. That lost a lot of value in the last 48 hours.
The most stupid b * tch ever. Seriously. Freedom of speech much? If you're not comfortable, speak up, and move your *ss to different seat. I'm not sexist, but I don't want to tolerate crap like this. "Oh you have a potty mouth, let me snap a photo of your mugshot and post on Twitter". Childish.
I thought it was totally spineless.

Compare: http://braythwayt.com/2013/03/21/evangelism-pr.html
One of the riskiest thing, probably by an order of magnitude, the average American does every day is get in their car and drive to work. In fact, it's probably the most dangerous thing they do all year.

The problem with your statement is that it's impossible to know what every single person around you will find offensive. It's not a solution, because it's assuming the impossible. And when you go reductio ad absurdum, it basically boils down to everyone never saying anything to anyone for fear of offense, which is clearly not the desired goal.
there is a might big difference between one "fuck-up" and one royal of a "fuck-up". This falls in the later camp.

Perhaps they were hoping the person in question would have realized they should have taken that action on their own. Considering the past activities of this person I highly suspect they will feel wronged on many counts.