Do bad actors get to hold good actors to the good actors principles? This seems unsustainable and a recipe for disaster, ie tolerating the intolerant whose objective is to gain power and stamp down on dissent and impose their own values.
Similarly If you do not believe in open source can you hold anyone else to account by the principles of open source? And if you are committed to open source do bad actors need to be given the same privileges that are extended to everyone else? Do they get to play the 'principle' card that they themselves do not adhere to?
Cloud providers are profitable and the work of these app developers arguably has a role in their growth and profits. AWS, GCE and others are solving all their business problems. Why should it be so difficult for them to build a mutually beneficial relationship with open source projects? Or the pipeline of projects they can use breaks down.
If they just want to take without adhering to the spirit of open source, then playing the open source card whenever confronted seems too self serving.
This puts to rest all illusions and fantasies of 'free markets', competition, choice and free trade. Markets are political constructs and there is nothing inherently free or fair about them.
There is clearly one set of rules in operation for a chosen few whose companies get access to global markets without fearmongering and thus can grow uninhibited and then the real world where evidence-free scaremongering, demonization and sanctions are used to limit market access, sabotage others and destroy competition before it forms.
And citizens of the former get the privilege of articulating a set of free market values in a depoliticized context free world that don't hold in the real world. But its better this happens than it doesn't so the rest of the world can see through the self serving hypocrisy and plan accordingly. Those with this mindset will always find a way to limit others.
This is a bit curious. The large number of contractors can be seen as the victims here. They don't have power or privilege as other employees and yet those who see nothing wrong with it are not arguing their point but claiming persecution and victimhood on Google's behalf.
Its troubling to see this immediate rush to claim persecution and victimhood by those who have power.
Presumably it's because some people aren't simple-minded enough that they need to desperately cram every possible statement about any topic into the same tired framework of victims and oppressors.
Try and imagine having the ability to be concerned with the plight of disposable labor in the modern economy and yet still (gasp) capable of noticing and commenting on other facets of the situation, like how the press chooses to frame their coverage: that's what's happening here.
> It's simple minded to think there are not victims and oppressors in the real world.
I'm sure it is. Good thing nobody here is claiming that (I'm certainly not).
My comment was about the fact that your upthread comment is a complaint about someone discussing any other facet of the issue than focusing on the power dynamic between the employer and the employed. Not everyone is afflicted with this obsession to the point that they're unable to see anything in the world but through this single lens.
If anyone is convinced what they are doing is good for end users they would let them make the choice. But expending time and energy to design and code deceptive dialogs with misinformation and avoid transparency betrays the opposite. You don't need an ethics course for this, it's willful fraud and deception.
Our societies are shaped as much by technology as by the incessant greed of a few often couched in euphemisms like 'innovation' and 'drive' to justify their value but these only accrue to a few. Behavioral targeting and surveillance have negative externalities for everyone not making money from it, and even for them in the wider societal and long term context.
If this is the behavior we are incentivizing then either we provide strong regulations to counter greedy and unethical behavior or accept these as our fundamental driving values without fabricating a 'feel good' alternative reality as a fig leaf or feigning shock at mercenaries in our midst.
There is a replication crisis [1] in the social sciences and most studies are not being replicated. [2]
Here is a study that is not able to replicate the most referenced study on subsaharan and Africa iq [3]. The tests were done on uneducated people, handicapped people, people in remote areas and in poor conditions ie under trees which is not the recommended test procedure. Higher scores were also intentionally dumped in favour of poorer scores for vague reasons with evidence of data massaging.
This kind of 'science' is extremely damaging especially when cherry picked results and sweeping conclusions that these kind of studies do not and cannot support are widely cited outside the scientific context by bigots and racists to construct a narrative that dehumanize others. The nobel laurette James Watson expressed 'gloom about Africa' on the basis of these studies.
There are a lot of well known funds like the pioneer fund [1] and volker fund that have spent tens of decades on 'race' science and that formed a lot of basis for Charles Murray's bell curve. There are not hundreds of heavily funded organizations in Africa and Asia trying to prove others are somehow lower iq or 'inferior'. This effort has been ongoing for over 250 years, first it was brain size and now its iq and evolutionary psychology. What exactly is iq measuring, can we measure something that we don't understand?
This is dystopia, but this is not just any dystopia, this is dystopia with 'justification', this dystopia is 'legal' and for many that word somehow makes everything ok, but for the rest of us trivializes everthing of value.
There is so much cognitive dissonance and denial in the tech community and their role not just in building but also defending and whitewashing narratives that its becomes difficult to see movies and read about surveillance dystopia and be expected to feel creeped out and then return to current reality where its sort of normalized and ok.
This is undoubtedly shady behavior. dstat is a widely regarded and mature tool. Looking at its repo for 'activity' without context - maybe nothing needs to be changed and its working as designed - is completely disingenious.
Why should repo activity without context be used as an indicator of anything in discussion instead of focusing on what Redhat has done?
This is openly hijacking an open source project by a billion dollar company because it can and makes a mockery of not only open source colloboration culture but basic professional behavior. Has Redhat reached out to the author, made any requests, tried to work out some way forward, offered to pay for the brand name? Cmon this is simply indefensible.
>Looking at its repo for 'activity' without context - maybe nothing needs to be changed and its working as designed - is completely disingenious.
>Why should repo activity without context be used as an indicator of anything in discussion instead of focusing on what Redhat has done?
"Activity" doesn't just refer to commit traffic. People were filing issues and making pull requests and not getting any responses for more than a year. And furthermore it was a Python 2 tool and the Python 2 EOL date is fast approaching.
I agree that the packagers should have at least left a note on GitHub (even if they thought it would go unread) - but clearly it was not a "maybe it's just mature and nothing needed to be changed" situation.
This is muddying the waters. Surely if you have gone through the trouble of looking at the repo and finding these pull requests you would also know the context and should then share it to give others here a context. Without that you are just here making 'vague' charges given dstat is a well known, highly regareded and mature tool. The Python3 port was already done by the author so the python2 eol seems a complete non sequitor. Again a rush to condemn without good reason.
Are you saying anyone running a Python2 project can expect to have Redhat reimplement it in Python3 secretly and have people defend it on HN? This kind of behavior is simply indefensible.
It's obvious there is a culture clash of open source developers sponsored or working for corporates conflating heavy activity on Github that they are paid to perform as their day jobs as the only open source model. But open source was traditionally about people having other jobs and using their spare time to develop open source without profit motives because they believed in the movement. They certainly did not face corporates and paid developers analysing their frequency of contributions to dismiss their efforts and justify an unethical takeover.
"dstat is a widely regarded and mature tool. Looking at its repo for 'activity' without context - maybe nothing needs to be changed and its working as designed - is completely disingenious."
Its based on a entire language which is about to go EOL (Python 2)
There were actually many commentators on HN at one time claiming the US doesn't want Assange and the whole thing is made up by 'paranoid Assange supporters'. We now know that not only did they want him, they want all his stuff and are going to go to any underhanded length to get it.
What is the value of dissent and all the prestensions around democracy and human rights when people are being openly persecuted, it seems only dissent in non western countries is valid at which point europe, the free press, ngos and academics will line up with drums and megaphones to lecture everyone on the importance of 'freedom, democracy and dissent'. This is a fall and complete loss of moral highground to continue these kind of charades in future.
What message does this persecution and demonization of Assange, Manning and Snowden send to future dissentors? This virtually guarantees that even those with the tremendous courage that it takes to stand up to power may need to think twice as they are simply not safe in democractic regimes and the law and process will be used against them while the public are indifferent and others cheer on.
>it seems only dissent in non western countries is valid at which point europe, the free press, ngos and academics will line up with drums and megaphones to lecture everyone on the importance of 'freedom, democracy and dissent'
I just want to point out that this is really about the UK here, since this is where this is happening, and the UK really isn't like the rest of Europe at all, something they made quite clear when they voted for Brexit.
That's BS: the British people are the ones who elect those British politicians "who want to jump into bed with the US". If the people really didn't like this, they'd vote differently.
And unlike here in the US where the Presidential race is so important and that position has excessive power compared to the legislative branch, yet is determined with an archaic method that lately awards the post to someone who didn't win the popular election, in Britain there's multiple parties sharing power (I guess you guys have approval voting?), and the PM is elected from the party in Parliament with the most seats. I really don't think you can make a valid claim that the politicians don't represent the people.
And finally, with Brexit, that was voted for with a popular referendum, and a (narrow) majority chose to leave.
The people of Britain are getting the government they deserve, and that they voted for.
There is a homeless epidemic. Anyone who lives in the US can see it. But these issues are being closely tracked and discussed widely in political problem solving contexts, and HN is more of an observer reacting to the most extreme examples that make news usually with very little empathy focused mainly on the consequences to others, so the discussions are weirdly 'disconnected' and stuck in 'first principles'.
Look at every single homeless discussion on HN over the last 5 years, its homeless people are bums, weirdoes who enjoy living in poverty without homes or people who are 'choosing this lifestyle' based on anecdotal evidence mostly focused on how they negatively impact the commentators life, untill the next article. Is having this same discussion over and over again helpful to anyone?
The software community used to be associated with freedom, liberty and not being jerks, more connected to the human experience and with empathy. Now they build surveillance systems, are increasingly authoritarian in their outlook and are snarky about others suffering. There may be a serious problem of homelessness but it seems this absence of empathy is a much more serious problem for any society leaving it unequal to any social challenge.
It’s easy to preach empathy from a leafy suburb. I certainly used to. When you are actually inhaling piss, stepping over feces, and weaving through tents every time you go outside, the situation is a bit different. Much of HN lives in urban SF and moves around the city without a glass and steel cage. In that light, homelessness moves down Maslow’s hierarchy from a moral reasoning problem to a visceral disgust/fear, a threat to the safety and dignity of home.
It’s one thing to be “against” mass incarceration and the criminalization of the poor, another to be okay with zero police response to your own assault/burglary. It’s one thing to be pro legalization, another to be okay with street dealers on your block. One thing to believe homeless people have a right to go where they please, another to stay committed when they decide to camp at your doorstep.
Maybe I am the only fake/uncommitted liberal but I get the sense that this kind of right-shifting after a few years in SF is not uncommon.
You're not the only one. The daily grind of dealing with this shit on the streets and homeless/muggers on muni is giving me a noticeable rightward shift from my typically progressive politics. And I used to BE homeless!
My homeless friends in Berkeley pine about the good old days before the nuts, tweakers, dope fiends, and dirtbags started to multiply and swarm the community. If HOMELESS people are complaining about the homeless people in your city, you have a big problem.
Anecdotally, a crazy homeless lady was stabbing random people with scissors in my neighborhood last year, and I just checked up on what happened with her. Charges reduced to misdemeanors and set loose back on the streets. Meanwhile uppity rich liberals complain about police treatment of the homeless, and launch anonymous opposition to shelters and new housing development when they come to their neighborhoods. That basically sums up everything going wrong here from my perspective.
Indeed, I feel the Bay Area has made me more hard-hearted and conservative when it comes to the homeless over years. I'm happy to donate to local charities that try to give them the help they need, but it's best for me to keep my distance from street folks day-to-day, as they produce in me a deep instinctive threat response with their smell and unpredictable behavior.
My local camp is great: no drug use, good structures, waste disposal and a portapotty provided by the city. And because there are always people around, we have less crime otherwise.
The problem comes when there aren't better options for people: neighborhoods break down and rather than get to know the people of their community, the haves come to see their neighbors, many of whom were here before the haves moved in and jacked up rents, as somehow less than human. When someone's very existence is seen as a threat, yeah, you'll end up opposing the effective policy solutions and instead look to ineffective punitive solutions that further destroy the basic bonds of society.
You can always move to Walnut Creak. San Francisco has always been thus (or worse), and the expectation that it's going to transform into your shiny polished city of glass and steel is a remarkably clear description of the entitlement behind gentrification. This was their city: you are the interloper here.
So the rough sleepers I see are the people whose city it was - people with jobs and households, relationships and support networks. They got renewal offers they couldn’t sign, and had nowhere to go / no money to relocate when their leases expired.
Jesus. For like $3,000 I can buy someone a plane ticket to a more reasonable market and a few weeks of temporary accommodation there. That’s all they would need to have permanent normal lives again, and our government is somehow not doing this? Who even cares, if this is real I’ll do it myself starting tomorrow.
Or could it be that our social services agencies are not actually stupid, and the homeless population has extensive special needs that are incompatible with the modern world for deep-seated reasons unlikely to change this century?
> I get the sense that this kind of right-shifting after a few years in SF is not uncommon.
I'll believe it when it shows up in voting behavior. Nothing is going to improve until you change who you elect. Nothing at all.
FYI; someone camps out on my doorstep they're gone with one call; no debate. Your "homeless" problem is not a nation wide phenomena. This is you; the government you chose, the policies you voted for. No one else is at fault for this. It's you. Look around at what you made.
Its easy to label those who advocate for more empathy as 'leafy liberals' or hypocrites. But this this just a ruse to justify the lack of empathy for those who make this argument.
The immediate shift of the focus from those who are homeless and suffering to the consequences just confirms their priorities. They don't care about anyone else, they just feel entitled to a life without homeless people and that's what bugs them about homelessness. But no one promised you that. 100 years ago poverty and suffering was widespread but this got solved, not by complaining about their existance but with better policies and concern. Thats why modernity is associated by a more humane caring society compared to the past.
Dehumanizing others carries a great cost, you are just dehumanizing yourself and a society that has no value or concern for human beings is not a civilization. Homelessness cannot force anyone from left to right, these people were nowhere near left or liberal to start with. These are not labels for your personal living convenience, they stand for values and ideas.
Hats off to anyone who truly empathizes and engages with deepest suffering of the world each time they go to buy groceries. I really mean it. I thought I would do that, I said things like you’re saying here, and when push came to shove I couldn’t. If the price of living in a city is to be some kind of monk, it’s not for me.
What I won’t respect is people who have simply chosen a different way of excluding the homeless from their community - car dependence - being sanctimonious about people in higher density environment wanting the same things.
Empathy is the first step to action. if you were born 100 years ago this would be a fact of life, child labour, poverty, racism and homelessness was rampant. And economic downturns like the great depression brought these right back. How do you imagine these problems were solved?
Talking about liberals, hypocrisy and inconvenience is not going to solve anything and is not designed to. How is talking about car dependence going to solve the problem of thousands of homeless people in cities? This just highlights how without empathy the only problem people can see is how their own life is impacted.
But widespread homelessness is simply an early warning system telling you there is something broken in your society. Those without empathy will keep complaining about how their lives have been ruined by the existance of homeless people like HN has been doing for the last 5 years without any engagement with history, economics, policies or inequality and those with empathy will solve this like they have done multiple times before.
Rule of law, democracy, free speech and dissent are at odds with secret courts, secret processes and secret orders. A democracy is about transparency and accountability which cannot happen in secret.
A democracy loses meaning with these kinds of laws, and the freedom act is a classic example of Orwellian doublespeak.
There are obviously many people who care deeply about democracy but given how long these activities have gone on and get passed without strong public push back betrays a serious lack of organization in the public sphere. Unless a million people are on the roads this won't stop.
Similarly If you do not believe in open source can you hold anyone else to account by the principles of open source? And if you are committed to open source do bad actors need to be given the same privileges that are extended to everyone else? Do they get to play the 'principle' card that they themselves do not adhere to?
Cloud providers are profitable and the work of these app developers arguably has a role in their growth and profits. AWS, GCE and others are solving all their business problems. Why should it be so difficult for them to build a mutually beneficial relationship with open source projects? Or the pipeline of projects they can use breaks down.
If they just want to take without adhering to the spirit of open source, then playing the open source card whenever confronted seems too self serving.