Tag: technology

SJWs define “good community”

The dubiously named “Geekess” explains the process of social justice convergence in open source projects:

There’s been a lot of discussion in my comment sections (and on LWN) about what makes a good community, along with suggestions of welcoming open source communities to check out. Your hearts are in the right place, but I’ve never found an open source community that doesn’t need improvement. I’m quite happy to give the Xorg community a chance, mostly because I believe they’re starting from the right place for cultural change.

The thing is, reaching the goal of a diverse community is a step-by-step process. There are no shortcuts. Each step has to be complete before the next level of cultural change is effective. It’s also worth noting that each step along the way benefits all community members, not just diverse contributors.

Level 0: basic human decency
In order to attract diverse candidates, you need to be known as a welcoming community, with a clear set of agreed-upon social norms. It’s not good enough to have a code of conduct. Your leaders need to be actively behind it, and it needs to be enforced.

Level 1: on-boarding

The next phase in improving diversity is figuring out how to on-board newcomers. If diverse candidates are only 1-10% of newcomers, but you have a 90% fail rate for people who try to make their first contribution, well, you can’t expect many diverse newcomers to stick around, can you? It’s also essential to explain your unwritten tribal knowledge, so that diverse candidates (who are more likely to be afraid of upsetting the status quo) know what they’re getting into.

Level 2: meaningful contributions

The next step is figuring out what to do with these eager new diverse candidates. If they’ve made it this far through the gauntlet of toxic tech culture, they’re likely to be persistent, smart, and seeking a challenge. If you don’t have meaningful bigger projects for them to contribute to, they’ll move onto the next shiny thing.

And it just gets worse, until the whole thing is run by non-white women, food served at conferences is vegetarian, drinking is banned, and the code of conduct explicitly acknowledges the spectrum of privilege. And while she left out literal self-flagellation, there is no doubt that the metaphorical form will be expected of any white male contributors that remain.

I am beginning to wonder if Microsoft and the other software vendors are behind this open source code-of-conduct campaign, because nothing short of special ops assault teams could destroy their OSS competitors more effectively.

There is no diversity crisis in tech

Repeat it, understand it, grok it, live it. There is no diversity crisis in tech.

Repeat after me: there is no “diversity crisis” in Silicon Valley.
None. In fact, there is no crisis at all in Silicon Valley. Silicon
Valley is doing absolutely gangbusters. Apple has $200 billion in cash reserves and equivalents — and a market valuation of about $630 billion. Amazing. Facebook now garners a billion daily users. This is a nearly unfathomable number. Google is worth nearly $450 billion and has $70 billion in cash on hand.

This is not a crisis. Silicon Valley is swimming in money and in
success. Uber is valued at around $50 billion. Companies like Airbnb are
remaking travel and lodging. Intel is moving forward into the global
Internet of Things market. South Korea’s Samsung just opened a giant
R&D facility in the heart of Silicon Valley. Google and Facebook are
working to connect the entire world. Netflix is re-making how we
consume entertainment.

Silicon Valley is home to the next phase of the global auto industry.
Fintech and biotech are transforming banking and medicine. The success
of Silicon Valley is not due to diversity — or to any bias. Rather, to
brilliance, hard work, risk taking, big ideas and money.

Want to be part of this? Great! Follow the example of the millions
who came before you. Their parents made school a priority. They took
math and science classes, and did their homework every night. They
practiced ACT tests over and over. They enrolled in good schools and
focused on English, Political Science and Humanities.

Okay, that last bit is not true. They took computer programming,
engineering, chemistry — hard subjects that demand hard work. They then
left their home, their family, their community, and moved to Silicon
Valley. They worked hard, staying late night after night. They didn’t
blog, they didn’t let their skills go stale, they didn’t blame others
when not everything worked out exactly as hoped.
Are you doing all of these? Are you doing any of these? Do them!

The “diversity crisis” is a fake crisis manufactured by SJW parasites who want to leech off the success of others. Tech doesn’t need more women. Tech doesn’t need more blacks, American Indians, Eskimos, walruses, penguins, or meerkats.

And, as the Impossibility of Social Justice Convergence predicts, as the observation of previous diversity crises will demonstrate, the continued success of tech actually depends upon IGNORING those who are attempting to sell the diversity crisis scam and actively RESISTING all of their “solutions”.

The collapse of Star Citizen

Derek Smart contemplates the inevitable end game of a project that appears to be in severe distress:

Last week, The Escapist magazine wrote a scathing investigative report (follow-up podcast) into this project. Something that no other media outlet had done before regarding this project. As they have said, I was not
their source. In fact, only an incompetent media person would use me as
a source. Given how close I am to all of this, the fact that I could
not be regarded as an unbiased source even if I swore on a stack of
Bibles to be unbiased etc.

For the purposes of full disclosure: What I did do, as I’ve been doing since July, was made contact with some mainstream (names withheld as per legal) media sources, trying to get them to investigate this project. This was as per my July 10th blog, Interstellar Discourse
in which, right at the top, I had called for the investigation of this
project and all its creators. This was because I had already been made
aware of most of what is now coming to light as portrayed in The
Escapist article.

As part of that effort, I gave them some of my credible sources,
along with an overview of what I had uncovered and why I simply wasn’t
the one to investigate this any further, due in part by information that
I had access to and which was better off being in the hands of those
same people (the media) who helped hype this project to what it is
today.

I was wrong in making this decision and thinking that anything would come from it. They all chose to bury the story….

My question is that, with all the numerous articles out there,
interviews, visits, face time etc. Why is it that nobody wants to ask
the tough questions about this project? Primary question being, where
did ALL this money go? We have pretty much nothing to show for it – four years later.

In response to the article, Chris Roberts, in continuing the downward trend to disaster, wrote a scathing diatribe
that, on the face of it, looks like you’d have to be high to unleash
that sort of tirade into the public domain. From the CEO of a $90m+
company no less. And clearly it wasn’t vetted by legal (LOL!! that would
be Ortwin). It’s a Gold mine of actionable legal liability. And all it
did was lend credence to some of the things being said behind closed
doors about him, and which were now coming to light via these sources
talking to the media.

The gist of it was that “Derek Smart is bad, this was all his fault, and he was the puppet master”.
Oh, and GamerGate. He mentions me a total of 20 times. The author of
the article got a single mention. And I didn’t even write the damn thing.

Sound familiar? Yes, that’s the blame game.

I was concerned about Star Citizen about a year ago, but I wasn’t half as convinced that the project was on the verge of collapse by Derek Smart as I was by Chris Roberts’s disastrous and very poorly considered response to Derek’s questions. What Chris should have done, what I advise him to do, is to invite Derek to visit and see how development is going for himself. Give him a personal tour. Explain to him how well things are going and how good the game is going to be. Then do the same thing with Lizzy and anyone else The Escapist is willing to send.

This is a GOLDEN opportunity to show off and sell Star Citizen. Instead, Chris and his team have reacted if they have something radioactive to hide. They have reacted as if they are on the verge of being caught red-handed. There is absolutely no reason to react with anger, lengthy diatribes, and legal threats to someone who has doubts about how your project is going.

Whoever is advising Chris is going about it the completely wrong way. I know both Chris and David, and when I get the time I’m going to give them a call and urge them to rethink RSI’s response to critics and doubters, because this simply is not the way to reassure anyone, not even the most sincere Star Citizen supporters and true believers.

And #GamerGate? Seriously? Derek Smart isn’t #GamerGate. I am #GamerGate as are many others who wish both Chris and Star Citizen well. I don’t know what that is supposed to be, other than an ill-advised attempt to dog-whistle corrupt game journos who didn’t do their job covering Star Citizen in the first place.

Derek is correct. None of this has ANYTHING to do with him. Like him or loathe him, his opinions and his history are irrelevant. All that matters is the very relevant observations he has made and the very pertinent questions he has raised. And for RSI to engage in argumentum ad impertinens hominem is not merely self-defeating bad public relations, it tends to call their own credibility, as well as the future of Star Citizen, into serious question.

Ultimately, Star Citizen may well prove to be another painful lesson in “Beware the Awesome” ala Homefront:

Dave Schulman was a really good salesman at telling THQ what we could
deliver, and turning back to us to say, ‘Hey, sky’s the limit. Just pack
more features in. Make it great. Put as many bullet points as you can
on the back of the box.’ When Kaos turned that into a demo to show THQ, the ideas
practically sold themselves. THQ executives loved it, and gave Kaos a
green light to complete the game. “Now beyond that initial preproduction phase,” said one producer,
“then you actually have to pay your dues. You have to actually make the
thing you’ve been promising. I think that’s where Dave Schulman’s
expertise fell short. He had promised so much that there was absolutely
no way we could deliver.”

The damning phrase: “We spent about a total of eight months of our production time making a
five minute demo that was … not an actual game. It was a very nice demo.
But it was all smoke and mirrors.”

Linux SJW assault turned back

Led by the meritocratic example of Linus Torvalds, the Linux development community successfully defeated an attempt by an SJW entryst to impose “civility and professionalism” i.e. a weaponized code of conduct, on the community:

A prominent Linux kernel developer announced today in a blog post that she would step down from her direct work in the kernel community, saying that the community values blunt honesty, often containing profane and personal attacks above “basic human decency.”

Sarah Sharp, an Intel employee who until recently was the maintainer of the USB 3.0 host controller driver, wrote that she could no longer work within a developer culture that required overworked maintainers to be rude and brusque in order to get the job done. She continues to work on other open-source software projects, but says that she has begun to dread even minor interaction with the kernel community….

Sharp has publicly locked horns with senior Linux kernel developers including Torvalds in the past over issues of civility and professionalism, and has, arguably, been more responsible than anyone else for pressing the community to consider those issues more critically in recent years.

But even relatively minor moves to curb bad behavior have met with angry resistance from some kernel devs – a meekly worded “please be respectful” policy adopted as a kernel patch earlier this year provoked furious commentary on mailing lists and Reddit discussions, even if Torvalds himself lent the policy some cursory support.

Good riddance. That is exactly what a successful anti-SJW defense looks like. If the entryist is whining and crying and angrily decrying the mean antediluvian neanderthals who won’t cater to her feelings, you can be sure that the community she is attacking – and which she only cared about insofar as she could attempt to control it – did the right thing by refusing to give in to her.

This is good news for Linux, as the flipside of the Impossibility of Social Justice Convergence suggests that those organizations that resist social justice incursions will be considerably more likely to remain focused on their primary functions.

Peeple is fair play

I’m very amused by the widespread fear of this new app that will permit people to be rated being expressed:

You can already rate restaurants, hotels, movies, college classes, government agencies and bowel movements online.

So the most surprising thing about Peeple — basically Yelp, but for humans — may be the fact that no one has yet had the gall to launch something like it.

When the app does launch, probably in late November, you will be able to assign reviews and one- to five-star ratings to everyone you know: your exes, your co-workers, the old guy who lives next door. You can’t opt out — once someone puts your name in the Peeple system, it’s there unless you violate the site’s terms of service. And you can’t delete bad or biased reviews — that would defeat the whole purpose.

Imagine every interaction you’ve ever had suddenly open to the scrutiny of the Internet public.

Congratulations, world. Now everyone online will discover what my life has been like since 2001. And to be honest, it’s really not a big deal as long as you don’t have a problem with people not liking you. You’ll soon find that you are defined by your enemies as well as by your friends, and the more idiotic your enemies are, the better you look to the sort of intelligent, open-minded individuals whose opinions actually matter.

I welcome Peeple, as I’ve never been a fan of the cowards who think they can attack you because you are a public figure, but then start whining that it is unfair and you are “doxxing” them by posting links to their online, publicly accessible posts the moment you strike back at them. But lack of an audience is not synonymous with privacy and the moment you post anything online about anyone, you are a fair target for their online reprisals.

LibreOffice turns 5

I’m a big fan of LibreOffice. I’ve used it to write everything from A THRONE OF BONES to SJWs ALWAYS LIE and it’s been a big help in preparing the works of others for formatting into ebooks. If you’re not using it yet, you really should take a serious look at it, because whether you need to replace all the italics or kick out a PDF, it just works.

While I’ve been experimenting with Scrivener for A SEA OF SKULLS, I still find myself returning to LibreOffice for short stories like “Amazon Gambit” and pretty much everything else. And, let’s face it, it’s impossible to beat the price.

The schizo is back

As some of you know, I have some high-level contacts at certain technology companies. It occurred to me that this is a good opportunity to convince them that some changes need to be made to their comment system, so for the time being I’ve removed the Name/URL and Anonymous commenting options. This means you will have to be registered in order to comment. We may eventually go to a system where you will have to be a member of the blog in order to have commenting privileges.

The advantage of this is that trolls and schizos will no longer be able to pretend to be other commenters. My hope is that I will be able to take the evidence and convince Google to make some of the changes I have been recommending to them that will permit us to go back to a more open commenting system, albeit one that gives the moderators more precise and targeted moderation abilities.

Facebook moves into speech policing

I don’t even use it, but I’m shutting down my Facebook account. This is why:

Facebook pledged Monday to combat racist hate speech on its German-language network amid an upsurge in xenophobic comments online as Germany faces an unprecedented influx of refugees.

The US social media network said it would encourage “counter speech” and step up monitoring of anti-foreigner commentary, as company representatives were due to meet German Justice Minister Heiko Maas later Monday.

Facebook said it would work with other organisations in Germany “to develop appropriate solutions to counter xenophobia and racism and to represent this online”.

It also urged users to report offensive postings and announced a partnership with the group Voluntary Self-Monitoring of Multimedia Service Providers (FSM).

As Germany faces a record influx of refugees and a backlash from the far right, social media such as Facebook have seen an upsurge of hateful, xenophobic commentary.

Big Brother being corporate rather than government doesn’t make it any better. This is Orwellian in the extreme.

More social justice convergence in action

SJWs have all but killed Gnome:

Until July at the earliest, the foundation behind the GNOME desktop environment will be freezing all expenditure deemed not essential to its running will be frozen, as the foundation has run out of cash reserves.

“The issue has been caused by a number of factors,” wrote GNOME Foundation board member, Ekaterina Gerasimova in a post to the foundation’s mailing list.

“These include increased administrative overheads in the last few years due to the increased turnover which has been caused by to the Outreach Program for Women, and the associated payments going out while the associated income has been slow to come in.”

To rectify the situation within a few months, the GNOME Foundation intends to invoice, and chase up, outstanding monies owed to it.

“By keeping expenditures to a minimum while some delayed revenue is regained, the board aims to have things back to normal within a few months,” said a FAQ on the freeze.

It doesn’t sound that bad, until you look at the numbers and realize that the Women’s Outreach Program, which didn’t exist in 2010, rapidly grew to soak up 45.8 percent of the foundation’s entire budget by 2013.

Karen Sandler was, for three years, the foundation’s executive director. She made Women’s Outreach the open source software’s top priority, and quickly turned what had been a financially healthy tech foundation into one that was $80,000 in the hole. In 2013, the most recently reported year, Gnome spent $275,000 of its $600,00 budget (and $512,000 revenue) on Women’s Outreach.

In her outgoing statement as Gnome’s Executive Director, Ms Sandler described the Outreach Program for Women as an “ongoing success”. She was also elected to Gnome’s Board of Directors.

“The more an institution converges towards the highest abstract standard of social and distributive justice, the less it is able to perform its primary function.” 
– SJWs Always Lie: Taking Down the Thought Police

The end of air supremacy

ESR called this one in “Battlefield Lasers”, which appeared in Riding the Red Horse.

If history teaches us anything about military technology, it’s that cheap systems scale up faster than expensive ones do. It is already easy to imagine an up-gunned version of Rodriguez’s laser pointer slaved to a radar with a couple of bog-standard servomotors. Off-the-shelf parts, incremental cost less than $3K each, with most of it the development budget going for the targeting firmware. Cost per shot, effectively free.

Call it the PlaneZapper. You could sit it on a roof, power it off wall current, and it would blind every pilot it can see. Including drone pilots; even if there’s a peak-clipping filter between a drone’s sensors and its pilot’s screen, the effect will be like whiteout. Altitude and cloudy skies might save pilots from the early versions of the PlaneZapper, but for anything that has to fly low and slow this could already be a death knell. Close air support and medevac are obvious vulnerabilities.

Apparently someone at Boeing was reading Raymond:

Wednesday morning, the company showed off its Compact Laser Weapon System for media in Albuquerque, New Mexico. It’s a much smaller, significantly more portable version of the High Energy Laser Mobile Demonstrator (HEL MD) Boeing demonstrated last year. This setup looks like an overgrown camera, swiveling around on a tripod.

In the demo, Boeing used the laser to burn holes in a stationary, composite UAV shell, to show how quickly it can compromise an aircraft. Two seconds at full power and the target was aflame. Other than numerous safety warnings to ensure no one was blinded by the two-kilowatt infrared laser, there was no fanfare. No explosions, no visible beam. It’s more like burning ants with a really, really expensive magnifying glass than obliterating Alderaan.

Instead of a massive laser mounted on a dedicated truck, the compact system is small enough to fit in four suitcase-sized boxes and can be set up by a pair of soldiers or technicians in just a few minutes.

This means that the battle for air supremacy is going to have to move higher, which is to say, space.