Tag: technology

SJWs rewrite the Reddit narrative

It’s Silicon Valley 2, Ellen Pao 0: Fighter of Sexism Is Out at Reddit

Ellen Pao became a hero to many when she took on the entrenched male-dominated culture of Silicon Valley. But sentiment is a fickle thing. Late Friday she fell victim to a crowd demanding her ouster as chief executive of the popular social media site Reddit.

Ms. Pao’s abrupt downfall in the face of a torrent of sexist and racist comments, many of them on Reddit itself, is quite likely to renew charges that bullying, harassment and cruel behavior are out of control on the web — and that Silicon Valley’s well-publicized problem with gender and ethnic diversity in its work force persists….

More than 213,000 people signed a petition demanding Ms. Pao’s resignation. After her departure was announced, Reddit users celebrated in an over-the-top fashion. “Rejoice internet brethren,” wrote one. “The great evil has been slain.”

Why are the SJWs at the New York Times lining up behind Ellen Pao and trying to rewrite the narrative? For the same reason the media lies about GamerGate and lies about the Puppies. They are terrified at the resistance being shown by the broad spectrum anti-SJW movement. As I told GGinParis last night, without #GamerGate there is no Rabid Puppies. Without #GamerGate, Ellen Pao is still running Reddit into the ground.

And the SJWs are right to be terrified. They are not only meeting resistance now, but they are being actively pushed back from territory they’d previously claimed. This is only the beginning; eventually we will drive them entirely out of the various industries and being identified as an SJW will be as totally unacceptable to most people as being a Nazi, a Communist, or a KKK member.

A public service announcement

Don’t update iTunes to 12.2:

I just installed iTunes 12.2 and turned on iCloud Music Library and my library is getting corrupted, song names are getting swapped and then marked as duplicate, only the artwork for the original song remains.

I would also advise against using Apple products for reasons both technical and ideological, but I realize few who are already caught in the throes of Apple addiction are going to stop now.

So very unconcerned

The First Law of the Social Justice Warrior: SJWs always lie.

The Second Law of the Social Justice Warrior: SJWs always double down.

As you’d expect, both of these things are seriously in effect in the Gallo affair. The latest SJW incoherence is this:

  1. Mocking the prospective boycott of Tor Books as being numerically trivial and ineffective.
  2. Declaring that they are buying books published by Tor Books today in order to preemptively counteract the effects of that trivial and ineffective boycott.

Based on their actions, the SJWs are just a little more concerned about it than they affect. Quelle surprise. The fact is that I don’t know how effective a boycott of Tor Books will be. I don’t know if it will inspire Macmillan to actually pay attention to the unprofessional behavior of the senior employees at their subsidiary. The point is that I am simply not going to support an organization that employs an individual who so openly hates me, my readers, and various authors that I support, and who publicly lies about us.

The organization is certainly free to ignore me and continue to not sell books to me. The organization is absolutely free to employ anyone they like, including ludicrously unprofessional people who can’t even bother to disguise their hatred for all of their customers to the right of Bernie Sanders. I can’t dictate anyone’s actions but my own.

Even so, it appears there are either an awful lot of people who are interested in my actions today or just a few SJWs who are concerned enough to launch a DDOS attack to try to disrupt the anticipated announcement this afternoon. This is a screen shot of the current Sitemeter traffic at VP as of 10:15 AM this morning. I suppose it could be a Sitemeter bug, but I find the timing rather suspicious, especially considering that AG’s sitemeter is operating normally and the Google traffic is indicating normal traffic of between 45-50k pageviews today. My guess is that it’s an attack being deflected by Google somewhere between Sitemeter picking it up and it interfering with Blogger’s operations. But regardless, UP TO ONE MILLION DAILY PAGEVIEWS isn’t bad.

The broad-spectrum SJW attack

If you think the SJWs will ever leave you alone anywhere, in any industry, you are wrong. Even if you volunteer and provide your time and skills somewhere for free, they will attack you and try to remove you.

CoralineAda commented Jun 18, 2015
Elia Schito is publicly calling trans people out for “not accepting reality” on Twitter. His Twitter profile mentions that he is a core contributor to opal. Is this what the other maintainers want to be reflected in the project? Will any transgender developers feel comfortable contributing?

meh commented Jun 18, 2015
If you want him removed, start working on Opal and contributing as much as him to everything he did for Opal so we have a replacement that’s more in orientation with your morals and views. Protip: you won’t because you can’t.

strand commented Jun 18, 2015
As a queer person this sort of argument from a maintainer makes me feel unwelcome. The ignorance which @elia shows by claiming that transfolk are “not accepting reality” is actively harmful. I will not contribute to this project or any other project which @elia maintains.

aredridel commented Jun 18, 2015
Damn. I found out about this project thanks to this issue, and it’s super relevant to my interests. But not going to come near it with a thousand foot pole if these are the people I’d have to interact with.

bhaibel commented Jun 18, 2015
@meh You’ve said that you’re committed to creating a welcoming environment for new contributors. Saying that is easy. Doing that is hard. You’re failing at it: right now, as a queer woman, I do not believe Opal would treat any contributions I might make fairly. I do not believe that I would be welcomed onto the project.

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it. Notice that none of them actually use Opal or have contributed to it, they just want to execute a drive-by disqualification. This is why SJWs have to be methodically ignored when they run their usual game and removed as soon as they are identified in your organization. They don’t give a quantum of a damn about the project, the job, or the company, all of it is mere grist for their ideological mill.

Macmillan has learned that its SJWs are more concerned about denigrating those who won’t kowtow to their insane ideology than promoting authors or selling books. It would do well to jettison them in their own self-interest, regardless of what we do, because SJWs cannot be rehabilitated and are always focused on furthering their agenda at the expense of their employers.

I was able to attend Representation Beyond Characters and Creating Comics. The former’s panelists were primarily people of color; the latter was all-female, including several women of color. Both talked about sneaking small but relatable details into worldbuilding, the difference between work-for-hire and creator-owned comics, and how publishers have responded to calls for greater diversity. Though the panels took place at different points during the con, they presented a refreshingly diverse lineup talking about real issues in modern storytelling.

However, Bennett cautions, while people are talking about how inclusive and wonderful it’s going to be in the future, they can’t take it as a given. “While I appreciate the optimism, that’s a trap I don’t want to fall into,” she said. “You have to remember that it takes active participation from every single person to make sure we keep this momentum going.”

Read that part again: “active participation from every single person” is required. Translation: they regard totalitarian thought-policing as not only desirable, but necessary.

All ur SSN are belong to us

It would be amusing if they start thieving government identities now that they have all the data they need to produce them:

Hackers stole personnel data and Social Security numbers for every federal employee, a government worker union said Thursday, saying that the cyber theft of U.S. employee information was more damaging than the Obama administration has acknowledged.

Perhaps the federal government should have abided by the wisdom of the Founders, and respected the Fourth Amendment.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

No citizen should ever be required to give any information to the government, barring a Warrant. They might as reasonably be required to post it on the front door of their house for anyone passing by.

The principles of Agile

I’ve never been much impressed with any of the “best practices” concepts, from Six Sigma to Agile. They strike me primarily as a way for midwitted bureaucrats and technical workers of modest talent to cover their asses and claim failure can’t be their fault because they are Doing Everything The Right Way:

The Twelve Principles of Agile Software

  1. Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.
  2. Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer’s competitive advantage.
  3. Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale.
  4. Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.
  5.  Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done.
  6.  The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.
  7.  Working software is the primary measure of progress.
  8.  Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.
  9. Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility.
  10. Simplicity–the art of maximizing the amount of work not done–is essential.
  11. The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.
  12. At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly.

My thoughts on each point:

  1.  Sounds good in principle. In reality, the customer seldom knows what he really wants. The good designer has to anticipate his user and provide him what he doesn’t know he wants yet. “Early and continuous delivery” sounds like more ass-covering stuff. “It’s not our fault, he approved the deliverable” is what this sounds like to me.
  2. Bullshit. That’s fine in the early stages. In the middle to late stages, this is what is known as “mission creep”.
  3. Good for testing, but against, strikes me as more CYA, especially if it is going out to the customer.
  4. No. Hell no. While the biggest failure of which I’ve been a part was the fault of the chip engineer failing to listen to the marketing guy, I did talk to him on a bi-weekly basis. Talking to him daily wouldn’t have helped. The key is that the technical people must LISTEN to the business people, not see their faces on a regular basis.
  5. Yes.
  6. No. I run into this problem frequently. Most companies would rather have an inferior employee they can talk to face-to-face than a better one who is external. This makes no sense, especially if they then leave the position vacant because they can’t find anyone local who is good enough.
  7. Yes.
  8. Dubious. Sounds like snake oil to me.
  9. True, but obvious to the point of being tautological. “Program good code that works properly!” Okay….
  10. True. But I prefer “don’t reinvent the wheel”.
  11. No. A certain amount of flexibility is desirable, but there must be someone who is accountable for the vision and someone to make the hard decisions. Which is to say a designer and a producer. The best designs most certainly do NOT emerge from self-appointed committees.
  12. Yes, this is reasonable.

Overall, the entire concept stinks of being little more than client-marketing to me. “Hey, we’re AGILE-CERTIFIED, obviously we are much better than those guys over there who don’t have CREDENTIALS. All they have is a proven track record of delivering successful products, and we all know how little that means.

Testing Brainstorm

UPDATE: We’ve hit the 100 registrants max, so we won’t need anymore volunteers.

This is the test of Brainstorm Alpha
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.

This is going to be a short test of the system I’m considering. If you want to help out by seeing if it works, register and we’ll give it a shot. Please keep in mind that I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing with the software.

In totally unrelated news, a member of the Ilk is looking for a church near Chicago. If you have any suggestions, comment below.

“Hoped I’d found a good church very close to my location (Lemont IL). 
Went yesterday, on Mother’s Day.  The pastor began by focusing on women.  Fine, a “topical theme”, there’s no shortage of good topics.

But, you can guess how things went.  Had he pointed out any responsibility of a Christian lady, even one,
I’d not be writing you.  Instead, after a few Scriptural verses, he
turned gleefully to some book titled “Christ Feminist”.  And so on ad
nauseum.”

SJWs attack Open Source Software

Paging ESR… paging ESR… ERS, please report with your weapons loaded. We have an SJW breach in OSS. #OSSGATE operatives, please report to your activation nodes.

8 May 2015 Eve Braun (eve.t.braun@gmail.com) wrote: Two other things we implemented which aided the recruitment
process:

We followed advice which is quickly becoming the industry
norm. Never look at someones Github profile until you have made the
decision to hire or not hire them and do not let it influence you.
Github profiles tend to favor CIS White men over most minorities in
a number of ways. CIS white men often have more spare time or chose
to pursue building up an impressive portfolio of code rather than
women or minorities who have to deal with things like raising
children or instiutionalised racism. Some in the SocJus community
have even said that technically companies could possibly even be
breaking discriminatory law by allowing peoples github profiles and
publicly available code to influence their hiring decisions – watch
this space.

(More info: http://www.ashedryden.com/blog/the-ethics-of-unpaid-labor-and-the-oss-community)

We used Randi Harper’s (https://twitter.com/freebsdgirl)
blockbot to assess applicants twitter profiles for problematic or
toxic viewpoints. This may sound a bit extreme but some of the
staff here suffer from Aspergers & PTSD and our top priority is
to ensure that they don’t get put in triggering situations.Making a
wrong hire could present a scenario where the employee could be
triggered on a daily basis by another employee with an oppressive
viewpoint. Other than from a diversity standpoint, from a business
standpoint these sorts of negative interactions can cost a company
a huge amount of time & money in employees taking off sick
days. When all the employees are on the same page the synergy in
the office aids productivity.

Still think the anti-SJW crusade is an overreaction? There is only one answer to them, only one cure: relentless rejection. Look to #GamerGate and #SadPuppies for inspiration and ideas on how to push them back.


Notice that the SJW Eve Braun is trying to make a corporate virtue out of saving company time and money by not hiring “CIS white men with “problematic or toxic viewpoints”. Of course, SJWs always lie.

Dev vs dev

Another one for the “SJWs always lie” book. For some reason, an Ubisoft creative director, self-identified SJW, and anti-GG game designer decided to comment on the fact that Mark Kern, another game designer, had retweeted one of my tweets, the one about American McGee:

Palle Hoffstein @Palle_Hoffstein
So Mark Kern is getting chummy with Vox Day? I suppose it was only a matter of time.

University Watch ‏@UniversityWatc1
@Palle_Hoffstein So if you are going to say spiteful things about @voxday & @Grummz #Sayittotheirface Palle #GamerGate
 
Palle Hoffstein ‏@Palle_Hoffstein
I have spoken to them many times. Settle down.

Vox Day ‏@voxday
When have you ever spoken to me? I am afraid I don’t recall.

Palle Hoffstein ‏@Palle_Hoffstein
Twitter. A while a ago. Not that memorable for me either.

Vox Day ‏@voxday
So once on Twitter is “many times”? Look, if you’ve got criticism, that’s fine. The line is over there.

Palle Hoffstein ‏@Palle_Hoffstein
I wasn’t the one who tagged you. I was talking about Kern. If I feel the need I will address you directly, I assure you.

Vox Day ‏@voxday
No, you were talking about me. And you have not talked to me many times. So you’ve lied and now tried to dissemble. Why?

Palle Hoffstein ‏@Palle_Hoffstein
Look Vox. I didn’t tag you. I didn’t want to talk to you. I can’t imagine anyone ever wants to talk to you. Buzz off.

Vox Day ‏@voxday
No, you wanted to talk ABOUT me. I would think as a game designer, you would get how this “social media” thing operates.

My favorite part is the way he shamelessly contradicts himself in a futile attempt to claim the status high ground. First he claims we’ve spoken “many times”, then after it’s clear that I don’t recall ever speaking to him, he tries to claim the one time we did communicate was “not that memorable” for him either.

The funny thing is, I did initially stop and wrack my brain to figure out if I knew him, because I do know several people at Ubisoft in Europe at the higher levels. But what can you do? Gammas gonna gamma. Even very smart ones with very impressive jobs can’t surmount their socio-sexual instincts when pressed.

Tech spying cutting US economic throat

This could bring a rapid end to the continued growth of the global data-mining business:

The European Commission has warned EU citizens that they should close their Facebook accounts if they want to keep information private from US security services, finding that current Safe Harbour legislation does not protect citizen’s data.

The comments were made by EC attorney Bernhard Schima in a case brought by privacy campaigner Maximilian Schrems, looking at whether the data of EU citizens should be considered safe if sent to the US in a post-Snowden revelation landscape.

“You might consider closing your Facebook account, if you have one,” Schima told attorney general Yves Bot in a hearing of the case at the European court of justice in Luxembourg.

When asked directly, the commission could not confirm to the court that the Safe Harbour rules provide adequate protection of EU citizens’ data as it currently stands. The case, dubbed “the Facebook data privacy case”, concerns the current Safe Harbour framework, which covers the transmission of EU citizens’ data across the Atlantic to the US. Without the framework, it is against EU law to transmit private data outside of the EU. The case collects complaints lodged against Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, Microsoft-owned Skype and Yahoo.

Schrems maintains that companies operating inside the EU should not be allowed to transfer data to the US under Safe Harbour protections – which state that US data protection rules are adequate if information is passed by companies on a “self-certify” basis – because the US no longer qualifies for such a status.

Fortunately, we can be certain that the federal government would never sacrifice economic growth for centralized regulatory power, right? This could prove a rather serious problem if the one of the proposed engines of US economic recovery turns out to be intrinsically illegal in most of the rest of the world.

I’ve noticed that between Russia’s move away from SWIFT, the support for the Chinese alternative to the IMF, the fall of Yemen, and the complete lack of European support for the USA’s adventures in Ukraine, the world appears to be increasingly disinclined to follow the US lead. This does not bode well for the US if it indicates that the global perception of its effective power is on the decline.