skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Here's what I do not understand:

Every last tool I have ever worked with has trade-offs. I don't have any problem with that; I've sometimes even gone as far as phrasing it as, "If you don't hate your tech stack, you aren't really using it." I can tell you all kinds of things that C#, the .NET CLR, IIS, Apache, Mercurial, Git, elasticsearch, Redis, Gunicorn, Python, Celery, and SQL Server do that make me livid, because I've used them heavily. But that's because I use them heavily. I've never had any of these tools bite me in the butt early in the process, and definitely not had any of them bite me in the butt in unexpected ways down the road. They bite me when I push them incredibly hard, right to their limits, and, due to well-understood design constraints that I'm frequently anticipating hitting ahead of time, they fall down. That's normal and fine, and handling those situations is just good software engineering. Your tools will have limits, and that stinks, but handling those limits is part of what your job entails, and you need to deal with it.

I do not use MongoDB. But here's what I see: about once a month, I come across an article where something incredibly fundamental to Mongo does not work properly. Not only does it not work properly: the way it doesn't work properly is exceedingly bad. In this case, Newsblur can't shard, which removes one of Mongo's best benefits, and the way it fails isn't to tell you early on that you will not go to space today, but rather to segfault and die after six hours of replication.

That's not predictable. That's not documented. And that's not something you can anticipate. As a developer, that concerns me, and it should concern you, too.

I understand that 10gen is an awesome, responsive company, and they have always been there to help. I don't want to malign that. When the Trello team had Mongo-related issues the other week, they were trying to help them out, too. But I genuinely do not view as paranoia my belief that the frequency and severity of stories like this mean that MongoDB is still not a good technology choice.
done - www.stripenight.com/racer
>I would feel really uncomfortable if I was in the same room as this person. What if I accidentally say something that she finds offensive? Am I next?

Next to what? Adria didn't fire anyone...
> but it looks like they cave to blackmail

I'm sorry, but there is zero reason to believe this over other plausible explanations given in this thread.
"Blacks cannot be racist against whites" does not logically follow from "racism can only come from the oppressor who has the power".

The group in power can be black, as, for example, more or less is the case in the current South Africa, and may be the case in some subcultures (rappers? Basketball players? Some prisons?)
So, here's the problem with your little fantasy:

These guys were actually making sexual jokes. This wasn't a single mis-heard phrase.
No. Nobody outside the tight-knit developer / tech community cares. This hasn't exactly hit the front page of the NYTimes.
Normally you negotiate with the first one while hardening everything to take them on if it is attempted in the future. That's why the fledgling USN got the Constitution-class, or in this case, harden, develop better HR policies, and get cloudflare or prolexic.
" ... I hope they reconsider, bring you back on ..."

She didn't fire the guy. The most she could say is that she doesn't think he should have been fired over this, and I read that part of the quote (repeated above) as reflection of my point.
While that may be strictly true, we've now created an environment where if you don't deal with something as quickly as humanly possible, you get crushed with negative publicity. So the company could either sit back and seem to condone sexism or fire him and hopefully come out the moral victor. Clearly a false dichotomy, but one of our own creation. Twitter is routinely used as a tool for bullying (for good causes or bad) rather than reasonable discourse. The 140 char limit and ease of retweets makes the former trivial and the latter all but impossible. I routinely think we'd all be better off if it just went away.
this is exactly why I dont use any social media in my real name, and I especially dont ever reveal who I work for. the moment you stick your company name on your twitter/fb profile you are now their spokesman and they can legally fire you for just about anything.

media will make this a womens rights false argument and she will get a book deal plus her 15mins.

glad my 3 contractors i hired are remote, degenerate neckbeards who dont use anything besides degenerate filled IRC channels. media doesnt give a shit about IRC
"I routinely think we'd all be better off if it just went away."

I fully agree that Twitter has done a disservice to our discourse.
Video Tutorial: Build a "Kirk or Picard?" app for iOS,Android, Web
"real harassment" I agree, but this is not harassment when she over hears a comment not directed at her. I agree with your point that women might feel less inclined, but frankly they should feel less inclined to overhear a conversation, take offense, take a picture, and post it to twitter.
The same one she sent this joke about sexual humiliation from:

https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/312265091791847425

And the company she was envangelising for on that twitter feed thinks that a visual joke about photocopying your genitals is not inappropriate for their jobs pages:

http://i.imgur.com/uWc8P39.png

I understand that speaker and context make all the difference, but she made a joke about sexual humiliation, and then, at the same conference, got offended by a joke comparing dongles to genitals.
I'm honestly curious what this even has to do with women. That's what puzzles me most about this whole incident.

Maybe I'm insensitive or ignorant. I'll admit it if that's the case and learn. Right now, though, I just don't get it. I just don't see how a dongle joke is sexist. It's anatomical. It might have some mild sexual undertone, but there's a huge difference between sexism and a sexual undertone--they aren't the same thing at all.

Maybe if I heard the exact joke it would help. But I've heard just as many penis jokes from women as I have men.
I don't anticipate him replying to you in a public forum... he's a marked man!
> pop over to Zim

I don't know what this means. But please elaborate what's wrong with that statement. Please understand that a word's definition is not necessarily it's meaning.
> If someone famous snaps a photo of you, calls you a pedofile, and throws it on Twitter, what are the consequences?

A published false statement that damages someone's reputation? That's libel. Whatever harm is done as a result of the malicious tweet would be repaid to you as damages in court.
touche.

Now I remember why I don't have TV.
It's possible that they will remove that "tell" now that it's been publicized.
Sorry I wasn't making my point across.
Lets put it this way, taking a photo of two guys (probably geo-tagged) and uploading on internet because they said something you generally don't like.

_That is what happened_

How does she know those two guys aren't on protected identity, or have issues with being online on social media?
I don't have Facebook because I don't want to be tagged on anything.

She had no fucking right to do so. And it's incredibly offensive. Some asshole turns around and takes a photo of you and uploads it, even though you had _NOTHING_ to do with that asshole.

There was no bi-directional communication between them. No argument. In fact, there wasn't even a path of communication between them. She heard words that triggered her and decided to act on it.

Not to mention.... it was not an insult towards her or about her. It was an immature joke. I personally _LIKE_ immature jokes, so does my partner. I don't say them about other people.
I have a penis, and I reserve the right to make penis jokes.

You can move to a different chair. Or you can tell him to stop for a moment.

She fucked up, not a little, but big time. She's the fucking "villian" here.

I am OK with her getting fired, but not the other guy. He seriously did nothing wrong and got hatched for something as trivial as a fucking joke.

I can't post this enough: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gciegyiLYtY

You have no fucking right to upload a photo of two people that LITERALLY did nothing to you.
This has confused me. As a European the idea that making dongle jokes is specifically sexist or worse harassment seems a bit odd.

Its childish, its in bad taste, and not very funny. Its also against pycon rules so they got their wrists slapped like naughty children which is all fine.

However the idea it was anything more serious is kinda confusing to me.
The internet does a lot of good but times like this it can be scary – or just plain wrong.

Once the wheels of motion are turning there is nothing anyone can do, even the way Hacker News behaved with it's mob mentality was absurd – two people got fired, SendGrid was brought offline, some poor lady received death threats, everyone was humiliated in some capacity, and by the looks of the comment thread on the SendGrid facebook page, equality in tech has been notched back a few decades.

Talk about blowing something out of proportion: some guy made a dongle joke to a friend of his at a conference. It's kind of terrifying if you think how easily you could have been one of the characters in this. You see so many times when some poor person has his personal details spread over the internet based on a rumour. What do you even do when this happens?

Mountain. Mole hill.
They want her to apologize for inappropriately publicly shaming them, and the actions that resulted from that.
Shamed publicly, slandered, etc.?
That's how the feds do business.

I was amused by the entrapment bit. They always try that. I think of this poor black guy who got recruited into a fake islamic jihad gang and how they gave him a fake bomb and rented a synagogue for him to leave it in and he got jumped by 50 cops on the way out the door, yelling "Allah Akbar"

On some level I feel bad for him, but you've got to be a dope to fall for that.
> Next to what? Adria didn't fire anyone...

Being slandered on Twitter is far from non-trivial. I too would walk on eggshells in the company of someone with a track record of over-reacting like this.
The UK is no stranger to similar, ridiculous situations. Remember the BritRuby fiasco?

https://gist.github.com/seanhandley/4106776
Good safe reply. ;)
I was responding to "Her role is to speak for the company"

But yes, you do point out something strange about her tweets. Unfortunately, many people approach this issue with a double standard
When the dust settles, all that will have really changed is male workers being even more overly-sensitive to every syllable they utter when a female colleague is within earshot.

I've personally said "Just fork her" many times at work in front of my female co-workers without an afterthought. While I will continue to do so, if a new female employee starts after today I may just wait for her to make a penis joke before I feel comfortable enough to suggest copying someone's repository to their personal one for the sake of code contribution and/or modification.

Sweet cake-frosting-Christ - this all could have been avoided with a head turn and a "Hey, do you guys mind not speaking like that here? It's making me uncomfortable".
We're All Just Folk. There's no force making them any more competent than anybody else.
No, actually they don't have that right. They have the same rights as everyone else, which are to say as they please within acceptable limits and at acceptable volume and thus possibly hear other people exercising those same rights. That is the tricky thing with rights.

As far as anyone has commented everything he said was well within the acceptable rights people lazily call "freedom of speech" (I hesitate to even use the phrase in such contexts for fear of cheapening it). Possibly he was talking while a speaker was talking, which is rude but again does not infringe anyones rights and while that might result in an apology to the speaker or some staff that is pretty much as far as it should ever have gone, had people been mature.

Your understanding of rights appears naive at best I'm afraid.
A national security letter (NSL) is a demand letter, which differs from a subpoena. It can be used by US government agencies, mainly the FBI, when investigating matters related to national security.
> But it wasn't inappropriate for the event.

It was absolutely inappropriate, even if not expressly specified so in the (since amended) CoC. It's easy to know that it was not appropriate to the event: mob justice never is an appropriate first-order response.

And no, it was no more appropriate a response to Adria's behavior. The whole clusterfuck is a direct result of recursive mobbing.

> Adria notified the goons [or whatever pycon calls them]

"Staff". Because that's what they are: https://us.pycon.org/2013/about/code-of-conduct/harassment-i...

Also, as I understand how things happened Adria first tweeted the picture (and comment), then notified staff. Your comment seems to imply it happened the other way around and she was essentially forced to tweet due to PyCon staff inaction.

> they came by, talked to everybody, and then nothing happened.

Eh? The guys who had made the inappropriate joke were temporarily removed to a private space, discussions happened, they agreed it was "in poor taste" and apologized, then were sent on their merry way: http://pycon.blogspot.be/2013/03/pycon-response-to-inappropr... Seems enough happening for an inappropriate but rather tame joke in an overhear-able private conversation.

> And the CoC is pretty obviously directed at presenters

You're high as a kite. Here's the third paragraph of the CoC:

> To make clear what is expected, all delegates/attendees, speakers, exhibitors, organizers and volunteers at any PyCon event are required to conform to the following Code of Conduct

emphasis mine. Note that "speakers" are a separate category from "delegates" (company presence) and "attendees" (private individuals). And the text repeatedly notes all attendees are expected to follow the CoC and may be removed upon breach.
Next to have my picture posted on Twitter and blogged to thousands of people.

Next to be told I'm sexist and I'm the reason women don't enter the technology field.

Next to have my public shaming celebrated over a private remark I thought was tame.

Next to be involved in an asymmetrical Twitter smear campaign I can't respond to because I don't command thousands of followers.
You're completely missing the point, her actions are what caused the person to be fired.
One of the minor side-problems in this story: social media blurs the line between "personal" and "professional"/"company" communication. If you use your twitter account to network with people working at other companies, in your role as a developer evangelist, your personal account somehow turns partly into a company account.

Side note: She also tweeted "SendGrid supports me", which is a direct claim that her behavior is in line with company policy.
> If someone famous snaps a photo of you, calls you a pedofile, and throws it on Twitter, what are the consequences?

You're basically fucked.
A bunch of sexist loons attack somebody, and the right thing to do is fire her because it proves she isn't a good evangelist anymore? Seems to me that's awarding a really dangerous amount of power to sexist loons on the Internet.

... I suppose I should defend the "sexist loons" label. It would be one thing if people were attacking PlayHaven. They're the ones who made the decision to overreact to Adria's post and fire the guy - a decision she apparently disagreed with. That people got mad at Adria, rather than the folks with hiring & firing power, is, well, weird at best. And if you read the comment threads (like the one on SendGrid's Facebook post), it becomes clear that the explanation for a lot of the weirdness that a bunch of men have deep-seated grievances against "feminists". For people who are saying she deserved to be fired because she linked John Scalzi's post - http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/05/15/straight-white-male-th... - this is clearly not about free speech or privacy. And the rage level against Adria would be way lower without those people.
If she was merely a developer or other non-public-facing employee, there would be no reason for her to lose her job. But she was a developer evangelist -- someone who should know that everything she says and does reflects on the company -- and even if you agree with her actions you can't deny that the storm surrounding them would make it nearly impossible for her to effectively work in a job which involves meeting and working with developers.
That's all a bit silly. We have a common understanding or definition of what racism is and it connotes something immoral. _Some_ sociologists define racism as something else which also connotes something immoral. The common thread is that both definitions connote immorality, and so if something falls under either definition, it's still bad and so the whole arguing over which definition to use is moot.

For example, if an organized group of American Asians began touting their superiority over other races and advocated and lobbied for more Asians in positions of power because they're superior, wouldn't you still consider their actions to be immoral?

People can use whichever definition they like, but they need to be open about it, and they need to realize by using another definition they're not also redefining or constraining the connotation -- that's begging the question.

So, black people cannot be sociologically-racist-therefore-immoral against white people, but they can be common-usage-racist-therefore-immoral against white people.

(I should also note that labeling something with a word that connotes a negative or positive affect isn't much of an argument for the applicability of that connotation to that something. It's a heuristic more than it is an argument.)
Huh?

Yeah, I'm counting on e-mailers to send mail to the address I give them. No, I don't expect folks to send me spam unsolicited, or sell my address when I give it to them. I don't consider my name or e-mail address to be secret, and I'm also counting on anyone who sells my contact info to be doing it in bulk, not paying enough attention to strip out +tags, and by passing the address to spammers unaltered (or losing control of their database), give themselves away when I start receiving spam at that address.

Honestly I don't use the feature very often and I had not considered it to be a security measure before. Maybe novelty is the right word.

If I give myaddress+dropbox@mydomain.com to Dropbox, and they mail me from different addresses, I would be able to catch them all and put the "Dropbox" tag on them all, rather than having to make a filter for *@dropbox.com or some other extraordinary measure for classifying their mail.

It's part of the RFC, and supported by every mailer that I know. What part of this technique seems like obfuscation?
Ooh, if you're open to suggestions, my number one frustration with IRC goes like this: I'm connected and happily chatting, but then my Wifi blips and I'm disconnected. There's no chat log, so I don't know what I missed. And on crappy connections, this can happen pretty frequently.

I know there are programs that'll keep you online and collect chat logs even if you disconnect, but it seems ridiculous to have to set up a server just so I can chat.

If you fix this problem, I'd happily fork over at least $10/month, maybe more.
I'd be a little surprised.

The photograph doesn't seem to really be the issue, just an obvious thing that Adria did "wrong" for people to seize upon.

It seems like the exact same situation could occur if she had simply reported them through their names rather than through photography.
"Some sociologists have defined..."

I guess "some" is the keyword here.
List of new features in PHP 5.5
Ahh, good call. Editing my post.
Going Beyond Django ORM with Postgres
To compete with Square I assume?
If they didn't like being publicly outed for saying this stuff, guess what? All they had to do was shut their mouths.

Well if it makes you feel any better, I'm willing to bet that going forward more male developers will in fact be "shutting their mouths" when there's a female around.
God claimed deep water horizon. Who the FUCK ARE YOU!
Fucken crashed a helicopter into MI6.

Run!

----

God says...
exists tide scarcely treasures chastenedst condemns tcosa10a
master's hundred wasted justify cared water-brooks receives
abated court Congo watchings rais'd Robert deafness steered
perverse preserved opened knocked fledged bestowed who_are_you_to_judge
90 world no blissful temple fictions drawn hallow Senegal
-anger preacher torments human possessest relation wishful_thinking
deep-seated damages thing PRINT sort unfailingly Edward
surprises cup resumed Tajikistan flashing seeing injurious
fable a_screw_loose amazing liar sounded EVEN Redemption
interior acknowledged enforcement Humble atheist justice
you_never_know superfluously Luxury Peru belongs over
contacting lied captain lowering art folk false-named
fruitfully due None contritions mountain discover array
reputed convert come_and_get_me patience Afterwards piece
sated BRB Rhetoric well-ordering loss storing
If I said, "If you let your toddler play in a tiger cage, you are crazy." would you ask me "Why do you want toddlers to get mauled by tigers"? Maybe I wouldn't want it to happen, but it would regardless of my desires. I was just stating a fact about what will happen, whether you or I agree with it or not.
" the actions that resulted from that."

The actions that resulted from that were the employers' fault. If she claimed they molested her (which is illegal and can result in jail time) when they didn't, then you have a point. But the comment they made was uncontested and the employer decided, for a multitude of reasons including the recent matter, to let the guy go.

What if the employer was ready to fire him already, and this was the straw that broke the camel's back? Is it her fault that he was on thin ice to begin with?
Two-step verification for Apple ID
http://www.eeoc.gov/
Funny enough, I was reading about this last night. There are so many extraordinary claims in the Wired article [1], that I found it all hard to believe. It'd require sci-fi technology to actively mine and decrypt every electronic transaction around the world. Imagine decrypting just all of the weakly-encrypted data --- sure, one communication stream is trivial. Billions at once? That's insane -- I'm not sure if there is enough energy on this planet.

I also don't understand the cost-benefit ratio associated with actively spying on every transaction in the US. The vast majority of adversaries are outside the US, clustered in a handful of countries. I know that the US ran massive domestic anti-communism operations during the Cold War, but that would have been far cheaper than setting up a data center capable of capturing, storing, and processing every electronic transaction. (And even those Cold War operations didn't focus on every American.)

It reminds me of clients who think I can predict basically anything if I have enough data and computational power. Most of them seem to think that I can automate the process, that they don't need to be involved, that it doesn't take weeks of gut feeling analysis, and that it'll basically give them God-like omniscience.

I spend a lot of time educating customers about the limits of "big data". If the federal government is running such a program, they need to hire a consultant for education's sake.

Edit: Also, reading the post about NSL's [2], I get the impression that the NSA is still at the same level of tech as the general public. Why wouldn't they just use Stellar Wind?

[1] http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/ff_nsadatacenter/

[2] https://www.noisebridge.net/pipermail/noisebridge-discuss/20...