BC TECH
Saved by @zmbnski

The first area to focus on is diversity. This has become a dogma in the tech world, and despite the fact that tech is one of the most meritocratic industries in the world, there are constant efforts to promote diversity at the expense of fairness, merit and competency. Examples:

 USC's Interactive Media & Games Division cancels all-star panel that included top-tier game developers who were invited to share their experiences with students. Why? Because there were no women on the panel.
https://t.co/6vXSMt6B9N
ElectronConf is a conf which chooses presenters based on blind auditions; the identity, gender, and race of the speaker is not known to the selection team. The results of that merit-based approach was an all-male panel. So they cancelled the conference. https://t.co/TVSQRbnfTP
Apple's head of diversity (a black woman) got in trouble for promoting a vision of diversity that is at odds with contemporary progressive dogma. (She left the company shortly after this incident.)
https://t.co/avEPxSGC3y
Also in the name of diversity, there is unabashed discrimination against men (especially white men) in tech, in both hiring policies and in other arenas. One such example is this, a developer workshop that specifically excluded men: https://t.co/N0SkH4hR35
The creator of the hit video game Assassin's Creed stated his position on hiring developers: "If the candidate has a dick, he’s not hired."
https://t.co/x0Cu1v9bQb
Of course, the biggest story showcasing SJW's influence in regards to the tech world is Google's firing of @JamesADamore, who shared a few scientifically based, reasonable ideas about how to improve diversity which disagreed with the progressive dogma. https://t.co/XkTYjsfPZQ
Another area that has seen inroads by SJWs is insistence on "Codes of Conduct" (CoC) rules in open source projects. While they sound fine in theory, the reality is that it lets certain activists police the kind of people who are involved in a project. https://t.co/UWOlb6AIiw
This CoC trend has disturbed so many people, it's even pushed some top developers to leave projects that they have been heavily involved with from the very beginning.
https://t.co/aCrZR20eac.
Here's a related controversy, where some Linux developers are threatening to pull their code from Linux due to objections to a CoC (scroll down to "The Controversy").
https://t.co/JrdVMPClSq
More on the Linux Code of Conduct controversy here: https://t.co/H4lNs8EYjc
A controversy over the Code of Conduct and accepting pull requests from people of color erupted on the Django project: https://t.co/u2MULvY7x9
An example of how Codes of Conduct are used to enforce ideology: GitHub removed a repository because the word "retard" was used: https://t.co/8KaLqMlhi3
SJWs have often tried to get people dismissed from speaking engagements at conferences. When that doesn't work, they try to get the whole conference shut down. Here's one example where they tried to get a speaker booted, labeling him a misogynist: https://t.co/rQWojetz4g
They also tried to shut down LambdaConf because they didn't approve of a speaker's politics (his talk wasn't going to be about politics, purely technical topics). When the conf organizers didn't agree to boot him, they went after the conference itself:
https://t.co/wwMVoNbxnB
They had actually succeeded the year before in doing the same thing to him at a different conference:
https://t.co/CmnyFVCv3g
Another area of influence is in how games are designed, with SJWs not approving of sexual imagery in games. A character in Overwatch had to be modified due to complaints that she was too sexualized:
https://t.co/EtKinifoTH
A trivial example, but still illustrative of how the tech world is so sensitive to SJ concerns: Google actually changed the name of a new file compression format - the .bro format (short for 'Brotli') - because of complaints that it was offensive:
https://t.co/c1sU6drpMn
Another trivial, but instructive example: Apple and Adobe come under heavy criticism for doing an image manipulation demo at a conference that changed a picture of a woman to have a smile. https://t.co/UzN5yHjSyu
A more serious example: Two developers at a conference sharing a private joke about "dongles" end up being fired after a woman overhears them and complains:
https://t.co/qMOiVzMaLm
Here's a story of a woman who faced the wrath of feminists for disagreeing about how best to help young girls who want to learn to code. She wanted to teach them programming, they wanted to teach the girls gender politics. https://t.co/LIhwWxLn0J
We can also see just how far reaching SJWs influence in tech are from the fact that high level decision making bodies are supporting their nonsense: https://t.co/CjOpCEZ20a
Another idiotic grant supporting SJW nonsense: https://t.co/EST1l4moE7
There is also the very concerning issue of social media companies censoring and demonetizing figures who are saying things that go against the progressive dogma. @joerogan discussed that here: https://t.co/QOb0SzQ8mr
Some more examples of tech companies blacklisting those who disagree with progressive ideas: https://t.co/czPmXjZKIp
An ad supporting a pro-life candidate was banned on Facebook: https://t.co/gfuOQaYbEH
Discussion with sex researcher demonetized: https://t.co/vnv0GPpWtA
Here's another noteworthy case: a leading Drupal developer was kicked out of that community due to people discovering that he has some weird sexual kinks, even though not a single person within the community ever reported any misconduct from him. https://t.co/9L4fXJSRRz
Underlying so much of this is the constant demonization of men in tech (it's actually an underlying thread within all SJ ideology, not just here). Here's a story of an active campaign to smear a tech luminary bec he doesn't conform to contemporary norms. https://t.co/88vzytWFdc
Regarding how social media companies have taken the side of SJWs in the culture war, @marcorandazza at @Popehat spelled this out very clearly 3 years ago. It's only gotten worse since, IMHO. https://t.co/JtanHbJSGQ
On a lighter note, check out this award granted to Google for all the resources they've put into promoting diversity. https://t.co/ap0cWJcgpl
Reader responded to this thread saying that hes now required 2 comment his code with gender neutral pronouns. Reminded me of this: tech reporter replaces industry standard term "man-in-the-middle attack" with more inclusive "person-in-the-middle". https://t.co/aimXB5Npd8
I'm reluctant to take anything related to emoji seriously, but even that topic shows the influence of social justice trends, as there are constant efforts to make emoji that are more diverse and inclusive. Consider the issue of skin colors in emoji: https://t.co/bRlLM8ZXC2
And then there's this effort at inclusivity, which may or may not be a joke. I'm really not sure. Poe's Law applies. https://t.co/ikvVYgcbWa
And apparently, some women are really upset that the women's shoe emoji, and others depicting women's clothes, are totally sexist. https://t.co/xhorAY60ID
Some more examples of anti-male sentiment openly expressed at a tech conference a few months ago: https://t.co/2NqCe8lUo5
Another blatant demonstration of anti-white/male prejudice expressed by a prominent software developer. https://t.co/eJTCU4bEfZ
That respected developer also railed against an author of a programming book because the subtitle of the book had the word "craftsman" in it. https://t.co/GSUR5LRjzF

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Jessie @ Chicago
Jessie @ Chicago
@jessiedotjs
Why did I leave Google? A thread.

This thread is going to include quotes from Wired's "Three Years of Misery Inside Google, the Happiest Company in Tech" because I'm not a professional writer

When I joined Google, I fell in love with the company immediately. I was excited to come to work, not just for the technical challenges, but because I really felt I was making a difference and working for the good guys.

I spent 20% of my week working on an app that helped people find lost loved ones after natural disasters. I spent more free time speaking to students about technology and diversity. For an entire school year, I taught CS classes twice a week at a local low income high school.

The company was open. We had a weekly meeting called TGIF where anyone in the company could ask questions of, and raise concerns with, the execs. We got real answers.
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Jared Spool
Jared Spool
@jmspool
A common misunderstanding about Agile and “Big Design Up Front”:

There’s nothing in the Agile Manifesto or Principles that states you should never have any idea what you’re trying to build.

You’re allowed to think about a desired outcome from the beginning.

It’s not Big Design Up Front if you do in-depth research to understand the user’s problem.

It’s not BDUF if you spend detailed time learning who needs this thing and why they need it.

It’s not BDUF if you help every team member know what success looks like.

Agile is about reducing risk.

It’s not Agile if you increase risk by starting your sprints with complete ignorance.

It’s not Agile if you don’t research.

Don’t make the mistake of shutting down critical understanding by labeling it Bg Design Up Front.

It would be a mistake to assume this research should only be done by designers and researchers.

Product management and developers also need to be out with the team, conducting the research.

Shared Understanding is the key objective


Big Design Up Front is a thing to avoid.

Defining all the functionality before coding is BDUF.

Drawing every screen and every pixel is BDUF.

Promising functionality (or delivery dates) to customers before development starts is BDUF.

These things shouldn’t happen in Agile.
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Neil S W Murray
Neil S W Murray
@neilswmurray
1) Looking back on my "career" with @TheNordicWeb over the last 5 years, in retrospect it's easy for me to join up the dots and make sense of the journey:

#cphftw #sthlmtech #helyes 🇩🇰🇫🇮🇮🇸🇳🇴🇸🇪

2)

- Join & start community initiatives to meet people
- Learn from these people about how special the Nordic tech scene is
- Share this with the world through The Nordic Web
- Realise the real value is in the data, particularly in building network
- Use network to raise a fund

3) In fact, it looks all very strategic, but the reality is anything but.

My lack of vision and goals during this 5 year period was _criminal_

Any movement from one step to the next was never pre-planned and was instinctive, or worse, accidental.

4) While I am embarrassed to think of my headless chicken self, there's also part of me that thinks that none of this would have turned out where it did if I had of been deliberate and strategic about this.

5) In fact, I think my genuine love for the Nordics and the ecosystem is the MAIN reason to explain how I raised my fund & managed to move from step to step.

My story is a good example of how passion can be more powerful than strategy in the early stage of an idea/company.
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Paul Matzko
Paul Matzko
@PMatzko
The New York Times article about SlateStarCodex is finally out and it is...bad. There's a lot I could parse, but let me just walk you through one paragraph that is so misleading as to be

Take the first sentence of this paragraph. Now, technically the clause--"who proposed a link between race and IQ"--could simply modify "Murray" and have nothing to do w/ SSC.


But 99% of readers are going to assume that the clause actually defines SSC's alignment with Murray. In other words, the author is strongly implying that SSC shares Murray's racist beliefs.

And that would be big(!)...if it were at all true. It is not. Indeed, if you go to the hyperlink, you'll find that SSC's purported "alignment" has nothing to do with Murray's "Bell Curve."

What SSC & Murray agree about is that poverty is partly hereditable and thus very sticky, so much so that the proposition job retraining programs will meaningfully address mass economic disruption is a pie-in-the-sky fantasy.
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Stian H\xe5klev \U000100cf intertwingling Roam graphs
Stian Håklev 𐃏 intertw...
@houshuang
For people curious about the Roam API and confused by the syntax, or interested in why Conor went with Datomic/Datascript and not a traditional database, this older talk by Roam developer @mark_bastian is a great overview.

He gives great examples using Spiderman of how even modeling something fairly trivial in SQL is much more complex than in Datomic. But the real kicker is when you're trying to interrogate the data to find recursive relationships.


Right now the Roam data model (at least that's exposed to developers) is just about pages, blocks, and children with tags. Already you can see how finding the page containing a block with a certain tag etc is useful.https://t.co/jWJnuKu1RG


But imagine when attribute relationships are fully represented

You should be able to model the entire Spiderman story in Roam.
Page title: Peter Parker
Child of:: [[Richard Parker]] [[Mary Parker]]
Aliases:: [[Spidey]]

etc, and do these kind of queries.

"Show me quotes about operational efficiency in books by authors who used to be in the military"
"Show me companies in Boise, Idaho, founded by women, whose evaluation is lower than 10X ARR"
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Alathiyur Hanuman Temple
Malappuram, Kerala 🚩
#keralatemples

One of the Powerful Anjaneya Temples in Kerala. Hanuman temple is adjacent to Shri Ramar Sannidhi. Here Hanuman's head is tilted towards the left to hear Shri Rama's words. Shri Rama is entrusting Hanuman👇


Task of locating Mata Sita in Lanka.

Prathishta of Hanuman is done by Sage Vasishta. Eventhough this is Shri Ram Temple, importance is given to Hanuman
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Big companies can take months/years for even the smallest of pivots.

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Then you only have one thing to do: scale, scale, scale.

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1 of 16: WE ARE ALL JEWS HERE: THE STORY OF RODDIE EDMONDS

One of the most moving and relevant stories of the Battle of the Bulge, or any American Soldier in any war, is that of Master Sergeant Roddie Edmonds, a Knoxville, Tennessee native, who served with the 106th Infantry.


2 of 16:

Roddie was captured early on in the Battle of the Bulge, on December 19th, when Panzer forces plowed through his unit.

He, along with almost his entire regiment, was forced to surrender.


3 of 16:

The men were transported to the Stalag IX-A POW camp in Ziegenhain, Germany.

Roddie was the senior enlisted American Soldier at the site. As such, he was the conduit between all American Soldiers and their German captors.


4 of 16:

In late January, the camp’s commandant, Major Siegmann [pictured here], ordered Roddie, a Christian, to identify all Jewish Soldiers and order them to stand in formation by themselves the next day.

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5 of 16:

Throughout WWII, captured Jewish Soldiers were often tortured and then killed by their German captors.

In fact, Jewish Soldiers had been told to bury their dog tags before capture. The dog tag identified Jews with the letter “H” for Hebrew.
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