Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit | VSTN's commentslogin

This is because there is a massive confusion of the political spectrum which is better divided as 4 parts rather than 2.

The NYT isn't left at all when it comes to its views on how the economy should be run. But on social issues it certainly is a left rag. In fact, in what kind of environment but the leftomost extremist side could one tolerate the presence of an employee like Sarah Jeong who said such nice things as "white people are only fit to live underground like groveling goblins"? Not only did they not fire her but they even came to her defense.

The NYT is the poster child of the new generation of leftists, whose core obsessions are not whether the proletariat earns enough to make a decent living but whether they can dye their hair blue and still find a job.


Arguably, the kind of environment in which one elects a President who generalises an entire nationality as criminals and rapists except for "a few, [who] I assume, are good people." If you want to find how low the bar has fallen, understand that one side of the political divide lowered it long before Jeong got there.

Your final assertion is not worth addressing.


Sarah Jeong's anti-white, anti-male, anti-cop tweets date back to 2013, long before the election.

https://archive.fo/7m0Tz

I don't agree with you that "they did it first" is a valid defense for this behavior, but if it were, it would be a defense for Trump, not for Jeong.


By "one side of the political divide" I'm not referring to Trump specifically, but the online subcultures that dovetailed into the alt-right, which most certainly existed before Jeong's tweets.

EDIT: To further clarify, I'm not saying "they did it first" is a defence. I'm explaining that this is the context that Vox article going around is saying is missing when people want to condemn those tweets -- the tone and vocabulary of a certain part of Twitter. Jeong's mistake was posting those tweets with a particular audience in mind - one that understood the touchstones of these conversations (e.g. "kill all men" being obviously not a serious rallying cry to murder males) - when, although Twitter can sometimes feel like a clubhouse, it's still a public forum. At the time, I, and many other people situated within that context, understood Jeong's meaning perfectly, and even as a white man I empathise with what she's saying. Others may not be aware of that context, or choose to ignore it, which is where the fraughtness of her comments lay, not the content itself.

I'm certain the response to this will be along the lines of "Then why are white men persecuted for making racist jokes?" and the answer is because young Asian-American women have a lot more to fear from young white men than vice versa, which is the power dynamic at the heart of why Jeong's comments can only be called "racist" in the strictest definition of the term, disregarding the present situation. But this is all getting too complex to outline in a comment unambiguously, so I hesitate to say even that much.


Then don't use "the kind of environment in which one elects a President..." (in 2016) as a defense.

If you must use the "they did it first" defense, at least use specific examples from 2013 to defend her.


I've edited my comment to reflect that that is not actually what I'm trying to do here.


In response to your edit, I don't agree that white men should be expected to endure such racist abuse just because "young Asian-American women have a lot more to fear from young white men than vice versa". It's worse for some than for others but it's bad for everyone.

But I doubt I'll change your mind about that.

The left mostly seems to want a selective silencing of right-wing voices. They defend Sarah Jeong, but the NY Times fired Quinn Norton under similar circumstances. Alex Jones is being silenced without a word of protest from the people defending Sarah Jeong. Twitter suspended Candice Owens for rephrasing Sarah Jeong.

If the NY Times wants to be left-wing publication, that's fine, but we should recognize it as such.


"some people did it first" is not worth addressing either.


[flagged]


>Do you really think that she was being serious when she said "white people are only fit to live underground like groveling goblins"?

Yes. The fact that she has many other tweets that disparage white people shows that that wasn't just a one off.


The only joke here is the fact that you were gullible enough to fall for her "I wasn't serious" excuse.

https://archive.fo/7m0Tz

Hundreds of racist tweets over a period of years. That's just good old fashioned racism, nothing humorous about it.


Some companies have already dropped future support of the mac version of their software based on Apple making it official that OpenGL is truly dead.

https://apple.slashdot.org/story/18/07/29/1939212/autodesk-d...

"According to a note posted on Autodesk's support website, while older Alias versions can run on High Sierra or earlier, "no versions of VRED will run on that operating system due to the OpenGL deprecation."

While openGL is not going to stop working on Mojave, it has served as a good excuse for autodesk to stop bothering with the work of developing mac versions and refusing to provide any support or patching of any future issue that might arise on current releases being run on mojave.

Apple is working very hard at killing the mac both because of what they've done to the hardware and what they're doing to their OS for any user that's not some grandma that does nothing outside browsing facebook on a $1500 macbook..


>Google glass was shelved because of consumer resistance?

This might not be the only reason for shelving Google Glass as a consumer product, but there was indeed a heavy consumer resistance the sort that could absolutely destroy the potential of a technology to become a consumer product : through multiple assaults, public insults and so on on whoever dared to walk in public with those.

https://www.businessinsider.com/i-was-assaulted-for-wearing-...

"The aforementioned colleague and I were on our way to the 16th Street BART station — I'll note that I wasn't using any device at the time — when a person put their hand on my face and yelled, "Glass!" In an instant the person was sprinting away, Google Glass in hand. I ran after, through traffic, to the corner of the opposite block. The person pivoted, shifting their weight to put all of their momentum into an overhand swing. The Google Glass smashed into the ground, and they ran in another direction."

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jan/16/my-week-i...

"fellow train passengers seem visibly distressed by what, to them at least, seemed like something that could invade their privacy – a head-mounted camera that could be recording them without their knowledge. A few even asked me to take them off despite my insistence that their fears were unwarranted – constantly recording video and snapping photos would destroy the battery in a matter of minutes."

If the company has to issue social advice on how to not stick out like a sore thumb in a crowd that wants nothing but to rip your glasses and smash them, the product is obviously not going to be successful :

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/feb/19/google-gl...

"Google has given some official advice on what to do and perhaps more importantly, what not to do, while wearing the company’s Google Glass smartglasses to avoid being a “glasshole”. Early adopters of Glass, derogatorily called “glassholes”, have come under fire for using it in socially unacceptable conditions where mobile phones aren’t allowed, for being creepy filming people without their permission and for being rude, staring off into the distance for long periods of time."

https://nypost.com/2014/07/14/is-google-glass-cool-or-just-p...

"In April, a techie war erupted when East Village restaurant Feast kicked out Glass-user Katy Kasmai after she refused to remove her device. Kasmai vented online, and hundreds of Glass groupies rallied against Feast on Google, accusing the eatery of discriminating “against people who are into new technology.” Feast co-owner Brian Ghaw is unapologetic. He says Feast’s no-Glass policy is for guests’ peace of mind. “They just felt uncomfortable about having somebody who could potentially videotape them,” explains Ghaw. “If someone were sitting at a table with their smartphone constantly pointing in a certain direction and you didn’t know what they were doing with it, you’d feel pretty uncomfortable as well.”"

Similar events happened to someone who wore home made glasses that are similar to Google Glasses :

https://www.theverge.com/2012/7/19/3169889/steve-mann-cyborg...

"Dr. Steve Mann, human cyborg, says he was assaulted by staff at a Paris McDonald's who ripped off his attached device. McDonald's has denied the claim, and Mann has released a new photo as further evidence."

Do you truly believe that consumer backlash had nothing to do with Google Glasses essentially disappearing from media and refocusing on professional use?

Google Glasses was originally marketed as something you'd wear all day like a smart watch and occupying much of the same functions (check your notifications, email, weather prediction, record voice memos.. the only major difference being the ability to record video and photos), if you can't wear it in public without being constantly bullied into removing them, what's the point?

>I was under the impression the project was still under development.

It's still under development but focused on professional uses rather than a potential future consumer product the way it was originally going to be. https://www.cnet.com/news/google-glass-2-goes-for-enterprise...


>Ok, next question: Why do you need window handles the size of interstate freeways on devices without touchscreens? It's not like it's impossible to detect the current hardware configuration.

Because options run counter to the gnome dev philosophy. That can be traced back to the original Havoc Pennington rant to defend Gnome 2.0 (which was actually a controversial release just like every major gnome release since 1.4) : https://ometer.com/preferences.html

>Preferences substantively damage QA and testing.

>As someone who reads dozens of bug reports per day, and occasionally fixes a couple, I can tell you that it’s extremely common to find a bug that only happens if some certain combination of options are enabled.

>Upshot: more preferences means fewer real features, and more bugs.

Of course, what you propose isn't a preference but automatic detection, but the point still remains valid in terms of their philosophy.

>One of the hardest lessons of GUI programming is that hard coding behavior can be the Right Thing. Programmers are taught to make everything generic and infinitely flexible. The problem is that the more generic and infinitely flexible your UI is, the more similar it is to a programming language. Lisp is not a good user interface.

These are the same reasons why they canned anything related to screensavers and the likes. Gnome should not be customized, should have brand identity, should not have options whether they are user selected or automatically configured. The UI should be recognizable no matter which device Gnome is run on. Anything that changes confuses the user. If the user installs gnome on a laptop with a touchscreen, what should an automatic configurator the likes you suggest do? make everything tiny so that it's friendliest to screen space since it's a laptop and touchscreen is only sparsely used? or make everything big?


A touchscreen is a different device than a desktop computer. Would windowing make sense on an iPad? Probably not. So why make people use them? Same goes with a desktop - they are designed for the mouse, so design it to use a mouse and do t treat it like a touchscreen.

This often means UI preferences. And I’m afraid you cannot satisfy everyone’s preference. Havoc Pennington was right to a degree, but they have tended to take it too far.


Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: