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ta76567656 | 7 years ago

My guess is that you’ll rarely find this as it’s not a protected characteristic under the law (and, as far as I can see, CoCs essentially follow discrimination law).

Whether that's the law wasn't my point. And actually some progressive states do have laws prohibiting employment discrimination based on political opinion. They probably came from the Hollywood Blacklists, and are now amusingly ignored and irrelevant as a moral principle now that the shoe is on the other foot.

But Eich wasn’t fired, he stepped down and resigned of his own volition. Both he and others at Mozilla maintain this version of events, and it’s — as far as I can see — uncontested. You seem to be saying that you want a code of conduct that explicitly prohibits protest against political opinions. Good luck with that.

The progressive demanded he lose his job and conducted a campaign until he did. Potato potato.

his is a myth: “Deplatforming” is neither exclusive nor even more prevalent on the left.

"They both do it" does not imply "the left doesn't do it". My point was just to introduce the tactic, which is relevant.

Fighting against such nonsense seems eminently more sensible (and more winnable!) than fighting for the prohibition of political protest in codes of conduct.

It is not winnable. Look at recent events, eg redis. And allowing codes of conduct that don't protect unrelated, out of scope, and otherwise politely expressed political opinions makes it even less winnable.

ta76567656 | 7 years ago

Whether they are a good or bad idea, maybe not, but whether they should be supported, opposed, or ignored, it is relevant. The group of people actively pushing for codes of conduct and the group of people making decisions like the one above have significant overlap, and empowering one empowers the other. It's kind of like the police. We need police and I want to like the police. But until they can police themselves and keep police abuse to an absolute minimum, supporting them should not be a foregone conclusion.

ta76567656 | 7 years ago

Whenever I see a code of conduct I check if "political opinion" is a "protected class". Then I ask, "Could Brendan Eich have been excommunicated under this code?".

I rarely find the first. The second is less clear cut, as far as I can tell the new Linux contributor code of conduct would not have directly applied to him.

None the less, the harm is in that it empowers exactly the same group of people who got Eich fired in the first place.

Much like progressives try to "de-platform" conservatives, these codes of conduct "en-platform" progressives. And while some of their points are valid, it's hard to endorse their camp when they go around hit and run blackmailing others under the threat of shouting Racist! Misogynist! Shitlord! to force them to do things like changing master/slave database terminology or even more insane, changing blacklist/whitelist terminology.

ta76567656 | 7 years ago | on: ProtonMail Hits 5M Accounts

Parent doesn't seem to be arguing that these providers are anonymous, just that you get what you pay for in customer service. They explicitly say that end to end encryption (ie client side PGP) is required for privacy.

ta76567656 | 7 years ago | on: Ask HN: Deleting HN comments

In practice it matters, I think, even if in principle you can't undelete something from the internet. If someone is not explicitly looking for it, or not looking very hard, then the fewer places it exists the less likely it is that they'll run into it.

ta76567656 | 7 years ago | on: Taking back control of my digital life

The main issue with this approach for me is that Google et. al. clearly have much better physical security than my apartment. In exchange for in-principle privacy improvements and possibly forth amendment protection you take on a huge risk of burglaries, fires, floods, power outages, etc, plus of course the workload of being your own sysadmin.

Also, if you're paranoid, your data is more exposed. You can turn off all your devices with disk encryption when they're out of your control (usually) but if you turn off your NAS while your away from home it's useless. And if it's on, physical access, and therefore your data, is easy to obtain by the moderately motivated.

Google is like a feudal lord: they might own you, but they'll protect you from everyone else weaker than them.

ta76567656 | 7 years ago | on: The Bhikkhu Diet (2003)

In my experience of having lost fifty pounds and having kept most of it off for a year or two now, "move more" is significantly less important than "eat less". (For overall health I'm sure it's very important, here I'm specifically talking about losing weight.) I increased my activity only a little bit, by adding a 10-30 minute walk.

And while "eat less" is important, it's secondary to "eat what". My rule of thumb was (and is) "It's almost impossible to control how much you eat. Controlling what you eat is merely very difficult." In other words, your primary target is changing your diet from unhealthy foods to healthy foods, and you will "eat less" in calories as a result. If you keep eating junk food and try to control exactly how much junk food you eat you will have a much harder time.

ta76567656 | 7 years ago | on: 150-Year Green Card Wait for Indian Immigrants With Advanced Degrees

Conservatives (the politicians) pretend to want to deport illegal immigrants to get votes. They don't actually want to do it because a lot of businesses depend on them for cheap labor. You don't even need to deport anyone, just start actually enforcing laws that require employers to check employee eligibility. Fewer jobs for illegal immigrants would mean less incentive for them to come. That nobody has tried this shows IMO that nobody (in power) actually wants it. They just want a few examples to grandstand about for votes.

pay a penalty, and stand in the back of the line for American citizenship while they are provided recognized status so they can live in the country legally in the meanwhile.

This is basically amnesty/open-borders. Not arguing for or against, but it is. There is no "line" for citizenship, after five years of permanent residency anyone qualifies. The "line" is for the permanent residency (green card), and you have to qualify to even get in the line, that's why people come illegally. So what's the new qualification? "already in the country"? Then what about the people here 20 years from now? Is it a rolling admission? If not then you have the same problem as before. If yes, then the policy is 'open borders' possibly with a qualification of "can avoid getting caught for X years".

If you don't find open borders acceptable the only reasonable compromise I can think of is a capped category that anyone can apply for, where the cap is adjusted as needed. Somewhat ike the current Diversity Visa (Green Card lottery) which is capped at around 50K per year, though that cap rarely changes.

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