slykat · HackerTrans

7 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

I agree that noise can impact change, but the problem here is we've already got this noise within the Blue states. In order to get a policy change you need to have majority of Congress which means the noise needs to be felt on the Red states. So yea, if this was happening in a corporation based in Texas, Florida, or Georgia, I'd believe this was an action. Right now this exposure is going into publications that target people who already share the same viewpoint as the protestors.

slykat

7 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

I actually don't think this is a short term action. I think of this as a non-action. If Github pulls the ICE contract they will just use a competitor (Gitlab has already gone on record saying they will not restrict customers based on moral viewpoints). And regardless of which cloud code collaboration tool ICE uses, they will still be locking kids in detention camps and trampling human rights. No behavior change will happen at all at ICE if they have to change their git cloud provider.

This is a non action move in my opinion. I see it as slacktivism, if Github pulls the contract, people will pat themselves on the back, and count it as a win. You could argue the exposure might have some effect, but given that ICE human rights abuses have been very well documented by the leading publications, I'm unsure if additional exposure will bring change. I do strongly believe that funding lobbyists is the a great short term thing we can do. From an exposure viewpoint, I think the best thing we can do is raise exposure and support in the blue areas of the country. However, these protests are not doing that.

slykat

7 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

What bothers me the most is how myopic people are about this. Does anyone not see how dangerous it will be if we have the world's largest companies choosing to do business based on their internal moral grounds? Do we really want tech companies to have moral councils that vet customers?

If you want to fix ICE, then by all means, attack the problem at its source! Take that well paid Github salary of yours and fund the ACLU and other lobbyists fighting the good fight. Write your congressman. Call your congressman. VOTE! Campaign for the correct congressman. Code for your congressman. Push for policy that makes ICE employees (and all government employees) more accountable for human rights abuses. All of these actions will be more effective than campaigning for ICE, who will just migrate to a different cloud code review tool if the contract is cancelled (gitlab, bitbucket, or whomever else).

slykat

7 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

I just wanted to see if dunstad would support such a ban. And they did, as you can see by their agreement. This shows how real that slippery slope is for many people...

slykat

7 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

You are right - I always forget that political affiliation is not a protected class within our legal system. However, I think it should be, because we've seen the whole ugly side of persecution and discrimination that came about during the McCarthy era and beyond where people like MLK, Chaplin, WEB Du Bois, and Linus Pauling were targeted for their political beliefs.

slykat

7 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

Ok so would you ok with a restaurant not serving republicans because the party currently supports ICE's actions?

slykat

7 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

Do you not see the negative repercussions for businesses serving the public to be allowed to make a moral judgement on who they do business with?

slykat

7 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

But how is Github's product enabling human rights violations? I can understand if Github employees were protesting a product that created human rights violations (for example if Github offered a security service for ICE detention centers that was abusing prisoners). Would you be ok if Github was a restaurant and it had a policy of not serving anyone who is an ICE employee?

slykat

7 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

I find it ironic that the same people protesting the contract would also protest a bakery that refuses to sell a product for say a same sex couple (or if you were in the 60s, restaurants that refused to serve blacks).

You either have a viewpoint that: 1) a business shouldn't make a moral judgement on its customers and be accessible to all 2) A business can make moral judgements on its customers and choose not to do business with customers considered immoral

If you are ok with #2 you are running into a slippery slope in my view. And if you are ok with #2 and you are one of the largest companies in the world, it is a very huge slippery slope.

slykat

7 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

> While what you say is true, does pushing the start time of class back 30 minutes or 1 hour make any difference? I'm skeptical.

Did you read the article? They have done several studies to show a significance difference in academic performance with a slight shift. That's the whole reason for this change.

"One three-year study (pdf, p.1) of 9,000 high-school students across three states, for example, found that academic performance, “including grades earned in core subject areas of math, English, science and social studies, plus performance on state and national achievement tests, attendance rates and reduced tardiness show significantly positive improvement with the later start times of 8:35 AM or later.”

slykat

7 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

Lol, there's literally no way for transport to work if they blocked the whole street. Market cuts through the middle of most of SF.

And yes it will make a huge difference. I have through market for several years and most of the problems are caused by drivers on the road.

slykat

7 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

Do you think top down strategy and control is important for large organizations? Most people idealize organizations that are grassroots drive so it's interesting to see how it didn't work in this case.

Also it sounds like Uber needs to fire it's CTO.

slykat

7 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

Different substances are regulated differently because they have different risks for the population. Nicotine is significantly more addictive and harmful than marijuana which is why it is regulated differently than marijuana: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Drug_danger_and_dependenc...

slykat

7 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

While that's the marketing view of most of the e-cig companies, we don't actually know if either of these claims are true.

#1 e-cigs are not as harmful as normal cigarettes It will take several decades to prove or disprove this point. However, early research points to this not being the case.

#2 e-cigs make it much easier to quit tobacco Again, early research doesn't indicate that e-cigs don't outperform other smoking cessation techniques.

The main concerns I've heard are from a public health perspective. Most tobacco researchers and public health officials are concerned that e-cigs are essentially a "better" product. "Better" meaning perceived as being less offensive, cooler, convenient, and less harmful. The concern is that since the youth perceive e-cigs as cool and safe, while cigarettes as uncool and harmful, it's seeing significant adoption in younger people which is undoing the gains from the anti-tobacco campaigns in the 90s. Essentially, the hypothesis is that e-cigs are a slightly less (but really the distinction is minute and trivial) harmful product that is significantly more compelling to people. The net effect is the threat of e-cigarettes is that it can do significantly more harm to humans that cigarettes (since more people perceive it as safe).

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