The Power of a Pronoun - <AUTHOR> http://www.joyent.com/blog/the-power-of-a-pronoun <comment><USER3> > while Isaac is a Joyent employee, Ben is not—and if he had been, he wouldn't > be as of this morning: to reject a pull request that eliminates a gendered > pronoun on the principle that pronouns should in fact be gendered would > constitute a fireable offense for me and for Joyent.

Am I the only one who thinks this is crazy? And how do you square it with calling someone an asshole in the next paragraph? That passes as professionalism and empathy at Joyent?

<comment><USER4> It's not so crazy if you put down your pitchfork for a sec.

1) Every employee is an ambassador of your company's brand, and Tech already has a sexism problem to begin with.

2) It's not about the pronoun so much as it's about Ben _re-rejecting_ a patch that Isaac, the project lead, had already accepted, solely on the grounds of pronoun genders.

#2 really has no other explanation than sexism; and when his behaviour is conducted in public on the internet, where the "Joyent employs bigots" meme has potential to go viral, that'd be cause for concern for any employer.

Now, I like to think that had Ben been a Joyent employee the author of this pieces would have had a standard "we have concerns with your conduct" meeting with Ben before reaching for the banhammer but we don't really have any way of knowing.

<comment><USER5> #2 has the alternative explanation of passive aggressive frustration, in addition to sexism. Sort of an irritable "you aren't going to tell me what to do" attitude. Not sure if that is better or worse than sexism, but it is a definite possibility.

<comment><USER4> Again, something you wouldn't want in a potential employee.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm as capitalist as the day is long, but some of the Can't Get Your Degree Without Learning Applied Marxism memories are getting pinged a bit by the naked use of economic power to punish thoughtcrime. This impression is further strengthened by the not insignificant detail that Capital is here asserting the right to punish Labor even though Capital has negative a billion desire to ever cut Labor a check.

Another thing reminding me of university: "The fights are so vicious because the stakes are so small" was originally said about academic infighting but could also be applied to drama over the social functioning of a commit bit.

<comment><USER7> Thoughtcrime is a great way to describe this.

I haven't seen any (comprehensive) explanation for why the original patch was rejected, but it might be as simple as that he wasn't interested in his project becoming part of someone else's fight. That doesn't mean he's sexist, it might be as simple as that he isn't interested in feminism's battle to redefine acceptable language. Reasonable people can disagree on that sort of thing without being women haters.

<comment><USER8> You might want to read up on the term "thoughtcrime."

Ben was an ass and very poorly represented the Node.js community. A "thoughtcrime" is a crime that is a crime because of the thoughts of the perpetrator.

<comment><USER9> Every country, essentially, has crimes based on your thoughts. It's called "intent to XXX", where XXX is some actual criminal act that you didn't do. "Intent to commit murder" is a crime for planning to kill someone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is a great response.

Like the article says, it's not that the original author was both sexist and sloppy with language, although they were. The problem is that the sexism was actively reinforced in a public forum, first by a dismissive comment and then by an actual reversion. It would have taken no effort at all to make the correction; it was actually more work to reinforce the sexism. That means it was willful.

If one of my employees was being willfully sexist in public in a way that reflected on my company, I'd fire them too. Node.js is a really important project, closely associated with Joyent, and they've already seen some backlash from this. This kind of behavior could have real implications for the company's bottom line, and potentially even legal liabilities. Being inclusive is good business.

To reiterate: the original sexism, while dumb, is not a fireable offense. To actually go out of your way to be an asshole and practice discrimination while representing a company: _totally_ a fireable offense. I'm not really sure why so many other commenters feel differently.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm happy to see that gender discrimination is radioactive at a big tech company, and more than happy to grammar-nerd about "they" versus "he".

But even I think this would be a silly reason to fire someone.

<comment><USER12> (Disclosure: I wrote the linked blog entry.)

Just to be clear, the use of the gendered pronoun isn't the issue -- it was the insistence on it, to the point of attempting to revert @izs's commit fixing the issue. To me, that transcends from rational position to unacceptably inappropriate, and it speaks well beyond a pronoun. You might say that reaction is extreme, but I would be willing to bet that you've fired people for less: I bet you have (or would) fire people for merely being an asshole. Firing someone for being such an asshole on such a small issue that in fact has broader consequences for the hostility of a work environment is actually a no-brainer.

<comment><USER13> I say this fully aware that it risks inviting a backlash, but as a female developer I applaud this move.

Misogynist assholes are insidious in that they are often hard to uncover, but brutal to any women in the office. All developers are not misogynist assholes; quite the opposite, the vast majority I've worked with have been pleasant and awesome. But when that one asshole sneaks in, and nobody sees his assholery but you, it becomes an office environment of "me or him, and he has more experience and I don't want to seem to be rocking the boat... nobody else has a problem with him, maybe it's me?", then eventually I left.

I could ramble about this for a while, but it may just not be one of those things which can be easily communicated. Now, as a manager, I look for examples like this which demonstrate a person's biases, and if they don't self-correct (with prodding) I have zero compunctions with letting them go. It keeps the family healthy.

<comment><USER14> The problem I have is calling someone a "misogynist asshole" on the basis of just one thing. It doesn't look like there's been any dialogue with this person, the blog post doesn't touch on past behaviour. What if the person in question was reverting to reasons other than the content? What if English isn't his first language and he didn't fully understand the implications? From here it just looks like "he's a witch burn him".

There is no question that people with negative attitudes can have a deeply destructive effect on a team and an industry in general, or that you and others have suffered because of them. But this seems to have kicked off on a real hair trigger.

How would you react to someone that writes a blog post at a moment's notice calling someone an "asshole" and saying "he should be fired", whatever the issue is?

<comment><USER13> In this particular case I notice he not only rejected the pull request, but then (after having the issue explained to him) [ _re-submitted_ ]([https://github.com/joyent/libuv/commit/804d40ee14dc0f82c482d...](https://github.com/joyent/libuv/commit/804d40ee14dc0f82c482dcc8d1c41c14333fcb48)) the change to revert.

That's where he (potentially) stepped over the line. If he were in the office it would at the very least precipitate a serious discussion. It's the refusal to acknowledge the feedback or policy which really screams out "asshole".

Again, I would need to have a relationship with him to be sure of it, but the OP did have that relationship. Assuming this wasn't the first issue, it would be even more inappropriate for him to go blabbing about that history on a random pull request, don't you think? That would just be character assassination.

<comment><USER14> As others have said, this might still have been the result of confusion. bnoordhuis clearly didn't realise that bert had signed off on the change already. There are apparently other issues, such as people making minor changes and sneaking into the contributor list, which maintainers have to deal with day to day. I don't know much of this, but it's detailed in other posts.

I think this isn't clear cut. Certainly not clear enough cut for all this uproar.

<comment><USER13> Since he's just a contributor, and has not been fired (nor could he be), in this case OP is describing a hypothetical situation in which someone in his office might exhibit similar behaviour and how that would be handled.

The situations are different enough that I consider his post one which uses the opportunity to make a hypothetical point rather than one which describes a real situation. (For instance, in an office setting a first step would be to _talk_ to the person in question. The second step would be to consider their holistic reputation in the office. Etc.)

<comment><USER14> I went back and read the article. Weasel words. Yes it's hypothetical situation but he is explicitly linking Ben and this hypothetical situation. He didn't have to use Ben's name and the word 'asshole' in adjacent sentences. It looks pretty deliberate to me.

I think a lot of people (Bryan, commenters in this thread, and the people abusing and bullying noorhuis on twitter) got hot under the collar and are retroactively trying to rationalise and explain their behaviour rather than apologising and saying "sorry we got caught up in the lynch mob". I've not seen a single answer to the question of "why are you ignoring the fact that he was following the procedure had no option".

Anyway, this has been talked to death. I'm interested in this because I empathise with the injustice of it, can't stand a witchhunt, and don't think that bullying should happen, in any of its forms. Everyone's drawn a slightly different conclusion about the people involved, we can all learn something about humanity and move on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Fuck Joyent. Seriously.

This is something that calls for dialogue, discussion and debate. I seriously hope Ben Noordhuis learns from this. But to say that you would fire someone over this is a sign that you are not a fit company for a reasonable person to buy from or work for.

<comment> brown9-2 Is there seriously an argument to be made for a pro-"he" side? I don't understand how people both say "there should be a debate" and also "it's one word in meaningless documentation".

<comment><USER16> Oh yes there is. He and She can only refer to people while They can refer to things, too. Take for example: "if a person wishes to rungle the querts, they need to configure them such so that they will be in the state indicated by the widget manager". A sentence like that, while ultimately understandable, does cause me mild confusion at first read, and I'm sure I can come up with a more natural-sounding, but more confusing example, if I weren't so tired.

From my point of view, English is basically fucked. You've ended up with third person pronouns that are irredeemably connected with the gender of the person they describe. They is really a cludge that sort of works, but isn't quite a drop-in replacement for good old She and He.

I'd use They when the text can flow naturally with it, but drop to She/He when it starts sounding ambiguous or use any other kind of description. If writing instruction manuals, I'd use You to refer to the user at all times, or just drop to passive form and not mention people's genders at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> What we really need here is some kind of blind poll, with results aggregated into two buckets: "Female developers who have worked in the valley." and "Everyone else".

I think the HN community might be surprised by the results.

As a female developer, I assert that you haven't a clue what you're talking about, and you don't understand what it's like to work in this industry as a woman.

First, try listening. Then, try observing your workplace and peers. Finally, consider what Ben's actions (particularly his refusal to accept feedback or accept reality) have unveiled about his biases and daily behavior.

<comment><USER17> So have you been using "they" in you comments from the very beginning, or have you used "she", or "he"?

<comment><USER13> I can't find any examples of a pronoun in my personal repository or work repository, but in a few bug submissions I say "she".

But if anyone ever challenged me on it, or suggested it was inappropriate, or rejected a pull request, I'd _totally_ understand. Just as if I accidentally said something which was accidentally racist or ethnocentric. It's not about the original "he", it's about the rejection of active inclusion.

edit: Scanned my whole code tree and ticket database, and found 7 "she"'s, 5 "he"'s and 8 "they"'s. The gendered pronouns were all referring to specific people, except for one "she", referring to a hypothetical external API customer. I've just patched it to "they".

Of course, my team works for a female CTO (me) and is ~50/50 m/f, so we are very much not representative. But since this was totally unplanned, this suggests a curious corollary that the absence of default-masculinity seems to be at least be correlated with gender equality in an office.

<comment><USER17> It's not that surprising that the presence of a diverse mix of people makes it likely for imaginary people to be less stereotyped.

I must admit as a non-native speaker, I am still not quite sure how to properly use "they". I wasn't aware of the possibility before this discussion occurred.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> _and that an engineer that has so little empathy as to not understand why the use of gendered pronouns is a concern almost certainly makes poor technical decisions as well._

Uuuuh, yeah, except for the little bit about the English language having notoriously poor support for gender neutral pronouns in the first place. TBH, blindly substituting "them" and "they" everywhere will result in sentences that are incorrect. It doesn't take a huge lack of empathy to suggest that it's better to write in a way that's grammatically correct while asking people to accept either:

a. the generic use of "he" OR "she" as a universal singular pronon

or

b. randomly switching between the two throughout the document as way of indicating inclusiveness.

<comment><USER19> except women and men aren't the only genders in tech/the english language, and just switching between "he" and "she" is still non-inclusive of them.

<comment><USER20> There are human genders other than male and female? Scientific or imaginary?

<comment><USER21> Gender != sex.

<comment><USER20> Gender is the grammar layer above sex. Sex informs gender. Gender is not a purely social construct out of nowhere. In English, there is the ternary, but it is defined as without the male/female. People generally don't like being called it though. Even if they have a special snowflake prounoun such as xer which they prefer the rest of the world can't know this and so it is fair and reasonable to call them what they look like they most identify out of the binary. Or we can just stop using pronouns altogether, even in industries largely of men, because we wouldn't want to make it seem like women can't take part in them (even when there is nothing stopping them). I'd be fine with that. Men don't exist anyway. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZAuqkqxk9A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZAuqkqxk9A)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_gender](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_gender)

<comment><USER21> You are confusing grammatical gender with gender identity. It is also informed by sex, but that is only one influence.

<comment><USER20> >It is also informed by sex, but that is only one influence.

Right, so it's not fair to say that gender != sex when gender is the grammatical expression of a sex within an environment's constraints.

>You are confusing grammatical gender with gender identity.

The grammar is the expression of masculine and feminine, which vary based on constraints, but still stick to the sexual binary. Going beyond that is special snowflake territory where people invent their own thing to be unique while expecting to be taken seriously. Complaining that people don't use your preferred pronoun is a perfect case for first world problems.

My original comment you replied to "There are human genders other than male and female? Scientific or imaginary?"

All else other than male (primary masculine) and female (primary feminine) are imaginary, and not based on biological reality. Those things do not merit being taken seriously no more than any religion or superstition. Male and female based sexes will always be re-expressed in very similar ways, as they have all over the world in varying civilizations, while others will never be the same. I'ts the same as religions or ideologies. It is complete fabrication of the mind. If people want to invent new identities fine, but white washing away him and her so that all of the other newly minted pronouns don't feel left out is ridiculous.

>Hi, I'm Caramelkh. I'm demisexual, polyromantic, fat positive genderqueer (neutrois, femme presenting), sexual assault survivor (7 times), native American, Muslim neuroatypical with OCD, cotard delusion, trimethylaminuria, social phobias, depression, post traumatic stress, anxiety issues and I can't walk very far. On my blog I will NOT tolerate any form of oppressive bullshit language and I will not hesitate to call you out on it. My preferred pronouns are ze/zy/zo/zum. After reading my about me section above, you still know nothing about me other than that the long list of labels means I get to have experienced nearly every type of kyriarchy oppression and so I can call people out on anything and say it triggers and offends me. If people get bored, I invent new oppressions. I'm triggered by the color teal.

Or better yet the new thing of people insisting to be called only by the pronoun brony.

<comment><USER21> Gender _identity_ is _not at all_ the "grammatical expression of a sex within an environment's constraints". It is 'a person's sense of self as a member of a particular gender.' — [http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/gender_identity](http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/gender_identity)

> All else other than male (primary masculine) and female (primary feminine) > are imaginary, and not based on biological reality. Those things do not > merit being taken seriously no more than any religion or superstition.

Complete and utter bullshit, evidenced by how the ideas of "masculine" and "feminine" vary between and even within societies. These ideas are hardly the same "all over the world in varying civilizations". Please, please read the Wikipedia article on Gender Identity, especially the section on non-western gender identities. It is _such_ a different concept than classifying nouns.

* [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_identity#Non-Western_gen...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_identity#Non-Western_gender_identities) * [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_gender](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_gender)

Even grammatical gender is hardly consistent or strict with its being informed by sex. In Spanish, a man's shirt would still be "la camisa", a feminine noun. A female cheetah would still be called "el guepardo". This insistence on adhering to biological sex — which itself isn't even always binary — as a strict basis for gender makes no sense.

<comment><USER20> Grammar is how an idea is communicated. If a person has an identity they want to share then the pronouns they use communicate their identity, but if they use an uncommonly used pronoun then their identity is not understood, not communicated, and if gender neutral pronouns are used then no identity is communicated, or it's just completely confusing as is the case with using xer. I'm fine with people inventing identities outside of the binary, I'm fine with cultures having outliers to the natural occurring roles the constraints of reality offer, because all cultures and languages developed in different environments with different forces pushing and pulling. What bothers me is the white washing of the binary male/female him/her in an attempt to represent everyone when people invent their own identities which did not occur naturally as a consequence of environment. If a culture has some instances where definite articles are sometimes out of what is naturally expected from the basic grammar then that's cool, but it's still not the norm. You mention because they are exceptions not because they are everywhere.

>, evidenced by how the ideas of "masculine" and "feminine" vary between and even within societies

I did say that they did vary in an earlier comment, but they still follow the biological binary. They are a product of biology. I'm talking from experience of being around different cultures and I have never been in one where men are not generally male and women are not generally female. The same gender roles also still exist, because the dimorphic nature of humans make different behaviors more advantageous for each sex to do.

I'm aware of things like XYY syndrome, but expression wise they are still male.

>third gender

Transpeople exist, yeah! Like in an earlier comment I also said that there is a third option in English the it, but transpeople don't like that word as far as I know because it has a history of being derogatory as is illustrated in the wikipedia page as people being seen as without gender. They are people with gender dysphoria, because they generally would have rather been born the other gender. For whatever reason, as they developed their hormones were not at the male/female ideals and so they expressed in different ways outside of the male/female ideal ranges, and their behavior expressed in ways not common within their natural sex, so they become outcasts being not really attractive or useful to either natural sex in traditional societies. I empathize with their suffering, but I still see it for what it is. There is no plethora of varying genders divorced from sex. There is a lot of made up stuff though with no basis in science. "Social science" isn't.

In English we do have a grammar with gender, and I know that there are generally assumptions about gender/sex which people want to change, and many I do not agree with. How far away is that from real human suffering? How serious should we really take a person who looks like a male within our culture and is offended with a person calls this person a him?

>It is such a different concept than classifying nouns.

Why reply at all to my original post then when the person I was replying to was talking about pronouns, and I was clearly using the word gender defined as an attribute of sex.

If you can make the world a better place with less human suffering then good luck. I see it all as being biologically informed and so useless to even bother with. This dialog is useless too. You've not given me any new information and I already have reflected on it all and I see it as another way. It's not worth either of our time to continue, so, good day to you, xer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I clicked the comments to write "Joyent is going to get a lot of hate mail from Hacker News woman-haters", and indeed, with 21 comments so far, that seems to be true.

Good job, Bryan Cantrill and Joyent. One small step forward.

(And now I see this posting getting flagged down the page rapidly, like anything else on the topic of Silicon Valley's disdain for women. Has dropped from #3 to #35 in roughly 3 minutes.)

<comment> vezzy-fnord Pointing out a complete overreaction is now woman-hating, it seems.

It's almost as if being a misogynist doesn't take any effort whatsoever anymore. It just becomes another mundane everyday action. It shouldn't be, but you're redefining it to be.

<comment><USER23> "misogynist doesn't take any effort whatsoever anymore"

You mean it ever actually took effort? The truth is that our entire society is misogynist. I'm a woman, and I do my upmost to not be, but /because society itself is screwed/, even I can't avoid being misogynist occasionally.

In this particular case, you're thankfully calling the actions of men "overreactions", but that EXACT word is used to belittle women the world over, in exactly this same way. Wanting people to be decent human beings is "overreacting". Wanting people to check for consent before buying them drinks, or walking them home, or coming into their house... overreacting.

And that's not even going into the gender aspects of calling a man that.

<comment> vezzy-fnord If our entire society is so pervasively misogynist that you can basically do it all the time just by going through your daily routine, then why is misogyny even notable at all? Misogyny is supposed to be an abnormal thing.

How do you define misogyny?

Yeah, the word "overreaction" can be applied to many contexts. Who would have known?

 _Wanting people to check for consent before buying them drinks_

I wish someone bought me free stuff.

 _or walking them home_

That one I can agree with, but how exactly does someone walk you home without your consent? I mean, if they don't have it, then by definition it's following or stalking.

 _coming into their house_

As in, they knock and come in uninvited? Politely send them away. If they come in forcefully, that's a different issue entirely.

<comment><USER24> > Misogyny is supposed to be an abnormal thing.

I'm not sure why you think it has to be necessarily. By analogy, would you say that racism is supposed to be an abnormal thing? We have plenty of examples of societies where racism is or was the norm.

<comment> vezzy-fnord In contemporary Western society, misogyny is considered abnormal.

But like I said, I'd require a more thorough definition of what the OP considers "misogyny". Because for some people I've noticed that all minor annoyances and socially awkward situations are misogynistic and sexist.

<comment><USER24> > In contemporary Western society, misogyny is considered abnormal.

That's... a terribly rosy view of Western society you have there, I'm afraid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I can't be the only one who seriously doesn't even understand this article.

Don't get me wrong, I'm _all for_ gender-equality, but say what about languages like Spanish? Do those have to be gender-neutral, too? Should we fire people because their culture _dictates_ that gendered pronouns (which, by themselves, offer little to the conversation except perhaps a passing thought, at best) be used?

Really? Is that what it's come down to?

Of the millions of things that could be argued and put down due to gender inequality, we're _firing people over pronouns_.

Congratulations. I'll give you that.

</comment><comment><USER26> I take it Joyent employees will live in fear of being fired for not being politically correct from now on, if they weren't already.

<comment><USER27> As a Joyent engineer, I feel qualified to field this one.

tl;dr: you couldn't be more wrong.

The long version requires a crucial observation: this wasn't one simple mistake, made in haste, ignorance, or confusion. This was a deliberate action to revert to exclusionary language. Speculating on the precise motivation strikes me as pointless; it's the action itself that is problematic.

At Joyent, I have room to make mistakes, and enough respect among my colleagues that I can take corrections without misgivings. Deliberate and repeated "mistakes" on my part would have consequences (but surely that's the literal definition of a problem employee).

In case you aren't already one step ahead of me, here is the corollary: I am protected from the deliberate and repeatedly hostile actions of others.

So: the ability (even _obligation_ ) to speak your mind, listen to others, and be protected from bullying, exclusionary behaviour?

That, my friend, is what you call security.

<comment><USER28> The fact that you don't see Bryan Cantrill's public shaming as deliberately and extremely hostile is _astounding_. It was misleading, it was predicated on a straw man that wasn't remotely supported by the evidence, and it was mind- boggling aggressive. The permanent social and business ramifications for everyone involved are substantial, and if Bryan Cantrill were my employee, __I 'd have him posting an apology or submitting his resignation __.

I'm not sure what sort of culture you have there at Joyent, but if it's a monoculture that fully supports this sort of grossly disproportionate public escalation and aggressive behavior from _anyone_ , _especially_ under the company's name, then I'm happy to keep Joyent off the short list of companies I'd consider working for or with.

Surveying the facts, I'm far more inclined to believe that this event simply provided you with a convenient self-righteous excuse for Joyent to stretch the truth enough to hang what you considered to be a troublesome contributor (and competitor) with his own rope.

[edit] On top of all this, I've had to fire a number of people over the years, and always, regardless of how justified it was, I did so with a heavy heart. The fact that Bryan Cantrill would speak to gleefully of firing _anyone_ is, if nothing else, a testament to the myopia of self-righteousness.

<comment><USER29> speaking of monoculture: [https://twitter.com/bcantrill/status/407228751731101696](https://twitter.com/bcantrill/status/407228751731101696)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This to me sounds like a company terrorised that the political-correctness police is coming after them, and going way too far in the opposite direction just to prove their PC credentials. While on first read I was as surprised as anyone at the magnitude of the over-reaction, on second read, I'm starting to think how bad things have become, i.e. the environment of fear, to lead companies to react this way.

<comment><USER31> "the environment of fear"

This, exactly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> This should be a reminder to everyone that your public actions on public code repositories can carry consequences.

That said, I personally approve of the work that people like Ashe Dryden, Coda Hale and others have been doing to help the tech industry grow up. We need to move beyond the time when mastering this weeks hot skill entitles you to act like a jerk. And if making it known that acting like a jerk in public will get you fired from the places where you'd like to work is one of the things that it takes to effect that change; that is a positive development.

</comment><comment><USER33> Is political correctness more valuable than technical ability these days?

My personal opinion is to make "he" gender neutral again. According to Wikipedia, "he" used to be gender neutral[1].

1\. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-specific_and_gender- neut...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-specific_and_gender- neutral_pronouns#Generic_he)

<comment><USER34> It seems like though it was used as gender neutral only for undefined gender. So if one knew for a fact that a given person is female, "he" would not be appropriate anymore.

<comment><USER35> But when writing documentation, you are unaware of who it is for, so it would be a valid use of gender neutral he, correct?

<comment><USER34> Yep. But the gender undefined pronoun would be the male pronoun. So while semantically it would be gender neutral, from an overall perspective it's still male-centric. And we might want to have a way to refer to humans in a completely gender neutral way without ever having to explicitly specify it. But still, I guess using 'he' as a universal pronoun would be the most elegant solution. Although you can imagine some not liking it's historical baggage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I applaud Joyent for their brave stand in theoretically firing someone who does not work for them. The legal issues they would theoretically face are daunting.

<comment><USER37> This. Talk is cheap. Pull his committer status at least before all the bluster.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I scanned the comments here to see if anyone has brought up data about the underlying linguistic issue. I call baloney on the silly idea that "gendered pronouns" make life better or worse for anyone in actual society as contrasted with "nongendered pronouns." What is my evidence? I speak the world's most- spoken language (the only language that arguably has more speakers than English, namely Modern Standard Chinese) and it has totally nongendered pronouns. There is not a distinction in spoken Chinese[1] between "he," "she," or "it," as the language has just one third-person singular pronoun, namely _tā._

But my wife, who grew up in Chinese-speaking society and has since lived in English-speaking society, and I, who have lived in both places, think it is ludicrous to suppose that Chinese-speaking society is "less sexist" in any systematic way just because of the pronoun system of Chinese. Pronouns appear to make no difference at all. The map is not the territory. On this issue, languages appear to vary arbitrarily with no particular influence on social custom, and not much influence from social notions of male or female superiority or inferiority. Gendered pronouns don't matter for anything important. It is an extraordinary claim to say that they do. People who make extraordinary claims should bring along extraordinary evidence to back up those claims.

[1] Under _Western_ influence, after extensive contact with speakers of Indo- European languages and translation of books from those languages into Chinese, the Chinese writing system has sometimes distinguished written forms '他,'她,' and '它' for "he," "she," and "it," but all are pronounced /tā/ in speech and this distinction has to be painstakingly learned by Chinese children in school, with many native speakers of Chinese confusing the pronouns of English as to gender for years after learning them. For example, I have heard plenty of Chinese-language conversations in which someone describes a situation involving men and women and then starts speaking about individual persons in the situation as he/she did this or that to him/her, and sometimes a listener breaks into the conversation with "male or female?" to keep track of who is whom. And I've heard plenty of Chinese speakers talk about "my sister . . . he is" or "my brother . . . she is" and so forth, making clear that their brains don't distinguish pronouns by grammatical gender in any language.

</comment><comment><USER39> I'm aware that singular they is attested all the way back to the 16th century, but it still doesn't read right to me. Particularly in the case where the pronoun definitely refers to one person, albeit of unknown gender, rather than where it could refer to either a singular or plural antecedent. I'd actually prefer the awkward 'he or she'.

 _De gustibus non est disputandum_ , but to claim that preference for the generic he, or even the kind of indifference that could lead one to reject such a patch as a waste of time, can only come from a deep wellspring of misogyny, is absurd.

<comment><USER40> He didn't quote Strunk & White to justify rejecting the patch, nor did he bring up the grammatical argument at all when reverting it. He just said "this is not worth spending time on" and closed the ticket. (And if it was truly not worth spending time on, he wouldn't have contramanded one of his fellow maintainers to revert the patch, then rewrite the repository's history to cover himself.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> This insistence on political correctness is harmful to the cause of gender equality, is harmful to the state of our society and harmful to the technology sector.

It is the construction of thought barriers, the creation of solely accepted behaviour and arbitrary creation of anormal behaviour, by redefining what is normal and not discriminating in any way (to use he in a normal sentence) as discriminating and bad and as a cause to lose an existence (i.e. getting fired).

It is morality not for creating good, but for appearing moralic, one of the lowest kinds of behaviour on an ethical level.

Damning someone who seemingly tried to hinder those artificial norms getting a foot into a project is a mistake.

<comment><USER42> > This insistence on political correctness

It isn't "political correctness" \- the phrase implies that the language has no real effect and changing it is merely for show, or as a political statement.

Using male pronouns as gender neutral has a _measurable_ effect on comprehension that has studied and reproduced repeatedly. Using "he" pronouns as generics does in fact lead both men and women to exclude women in their comprehension of the sentence a statistically significant fraction of the time. See for example [http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/27784423?uid=2&uid=4&s...](http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/27784423?uid=2&uid=4&sid=21103091639063).

Revising language not a "thought barrier", it's an actual real benefit.

Your entire premise is false.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> >to reject a pull request that eliminates a gendered pronoun on the principle that pronouns should in fact be gendered would constitute a fireable offense. ... the insistence that pronouns should in fact be gendered.

So what. The request was rejected on the principle of it being trivial:

> Sorry, not interested in trivial changes like that. [1]

I can find no mention in the discussion of anyone arguing against the change on the grounds that gendered pronouns are preferable.

We can still argue over wheather this is a good reason to reject a pull request. Personally, I think that trivial requests should be accepted if for no other reason than to be welcoming to newcomers who are testing the waters before becoming active. However, accepting pull requests takes time, and one might not want to encourage a community to spam oneself with minor corrections. Furthermore, in this particular example, the proposed changes were grammatically incorrect, as the object itself is the singular "user", while the new pronoun is the plural "they/them". This could easily be resolved by making user plural, or avoiding the pronoun altogether, but this still takes more of the maintainers time.

Notwithstanding that, it seems completely dishonest to frame the original dispute as Ben Noodhuis objecting to removing gendered pronouns on principle.

[1] [https://github.com/joyent/libuv/pull/1015#issuecomment-29538...](https://github.com/joyent/libuv/pull/1015#issuecomment-29538615)

</comment><comment> vezzy-fnord Where exactly was an explicit insistence on using gendered pronouns ever stated?

How would an insistence on using gendered pronouns automatically equal a belief in an inextricable link between software and masculinity?

Don't you realize that considering empathy as an engineering value is offensive to sociopathic engineers? (joking on that one)

</comment><comment><USER44> >But while Isaac is a Joyent employee, Ben is not—and if he had been, he wouldn't be as of this morning: to reject a pull request that eliminates a gendered pronoun on the principle that pronouns should in fact be gendered would constitute a fireable offense for me and for Joyent.

Sounds like a fun place to work!

</comment><comment><USER45> Lol. Joyent, the people who tried to optimize their whole product around nodejs because it was hip is now creating excessive coverage with pretty extreme language to paint themselves as the "White knight" of the tech world.

Lame company is lame.

</comment><comment><USER46> I'm afraid some will look at this as an issue of the fickle HN crowd never being satisfied, but it really is more about exercising rationality. Firstly, nobody really had to publicize this ridiculously miniscule episode, as it was sorted out responsibly without the attention. It's great for women to see how many people rally to their inclusion in tech, but there's a not-too-fine line between displays of inclusion and Joyent's response. This sort of response is polarizing and inasmuch works against the goal of equality, safety, and comfort of men and women in the industry. Also, has anyone considered language barriers in this discussion, because if that was a factor, it would be an even worse reason to start a public shaming and loss of a contributor.

</comment><comment><USER47> For context, here is the entirety of what Ben Noordhuis has publicly said on the matter thus far:

"Sorry, not interested in trivial changes like that."

\- [https://github.com/joyent/libuv/pull/1015#issuecomment-29538...](https://github.com/joyent/libuv/pull/1015#issuecomment-29538615)

"@isaacs may have his commit bit but that does not mean he is at liberty to land patches at will. All patches have to be signed off by either me or Bert. Isaac, consider yourself chided."

\- [https://github.com/joyent/libuv/commit/804d40ee14dc0f82c482d...](https://github.com/joyent/libuv/commit/804d40ee14dc0f82c482dcc8d1c41c14333fcb48)

"Hi all, let me try to clear up a few things.

Why I rejected the pull request. Us maintainers tend to reject tiny doc changes because they're often more trouble than they're worth. You have to collect and check the CLA, it makes git blame less effective, etc.

That's why the usual approach to such pull requests is 'no, unless' \- in this case the 'unless' should probably have applied. To me as a non-native speaker, the difference between 'him' and 'them' seems academic but hey, if it gets us scores of female contributors, who am I to object?

Why I reverted the commit. In hindsight, I should have given Isaac the benefit of the doubt because I don't doubt that he acted with the best of intentions. On the other hand, if another committer jumped the line like that, I would have done the same thing. We have procedures in place and no one is exempt from them.

To the people that felt it necessary to call me a misogynist: I volunteer in a mentorship program that gets young people - especially young women - <USER2> in technology. How many of you go out and actively try to increase the number of women in the field?

I'm probably going to step back from libuv and node.js core development. I do it more out a sense of duty than anything else. If this is what I have to deal with, then I'd just as rather do something else. Hope that clears things up. Thanks."

\- [https://github.com/joyent/libuv/pull/1015#issuecomment-29568...](https://github.com/joyent/libuv/pull/1015#issuecomment-29568172)

</comment><comment><USER48> Firing someone because he uses "he"? That's really fucked up.

P.S. What's with the trend of obsessively using "she"? Is that a widespread phenomenon or specific to IT community? Am I the only one who finds it awkwardly forced?

<comment><USER5> _P.S. What 's with the trend of obsessively using "she"?_

Self-consciously overcompensating, and in-group signaling.

You're communicating to other people that you are not one of the _Bad, Bad Sexist Men In Tech_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> If you maintain a flagship open source project for you company, you are not just a programmer. You are a public representative of the company.

So as a company representative it seems reasonable to be fired for either directly going against a known view point of the company, or being ignorant of view points you are supposed to representing(after reasonable opportunity to learn what they are.)

It seem reasonable to fired for not representing a company the way it wants to be represented when part of the job is to represent that company.

</comment><comment><USER50> Ben is not a Joyent employee, but a Strongloop employee/cofounder. I Cannot say I am terribly surprised. Strongloop has rubbed me the wrong way from the very beginning. Since they have launched, they have displayed all the integrity of a used car salesman. I know they have some very strong core devs, and I know they are not all like this, but their public image has been max- sleaze ever since they started marketing in shady ways suggesting that they were the creators of node.js.

</comment><comment><USER51> Would the commit have happened if the offending pronoun was 'she' instead of 'he'? This is speculation but it seems clear that the pronoun 'she' would have been allowed to remain, because it is as a sign of progressiveness and inclusiveness, but 'he' is a sign on retrograde patriarchal medievalism that must be combated with our every waking breath, if you don't agree you are clearly a misogynist bigot.

</comment><comment><USER52> It's shocking for many reasons that Joyent thinks its reasonable to fire an employee over something as trivial as that pull rejection.

Not correct him first, but fire him.

Not stand behind him, as in "sometimes we all make errors", but fire him.

This is callous, abusive, shocking behavior.

Is it a lack of training and sensitivity on the part of Joyent, or their fear of retaliation from the Tech Feminism?

This statement of Joyent's should be condemned by anyone who has ever held down a job.

</comment><comment><USER48> > we believe that empathy is a core engineering value

What?? That's pure BS. Is empathy a political value? Or a filmmakers' or writers' value? And what about honesty or team spirit? Are they core engineering values?

</comment><comment><USER23> Putting aside gender theory, there is a much simpler issue here. This is the same issue that affects wikipedia.

Writing that deny took more effort than just allowing the change. If it really was trivial, then there is no harm in accepting it. Denying it is shouting down someone's effort to improve the project. It destroys community rather than builds.

</comment><comment><USER53> Obviously Node.js isn't a community project, it's a Joyent project and this is a clear confirmation of it.

<comment><USER54> Oh, I wouldn't say that. The clear confirmation came from the introduction of the CLA. Regardless of how free the license is (or which type of freedoms you want from a license) once you make one party more equal than all others the pretense of "community project" goes out the window.

That's not to say people outside the company can't be highly involved and feel like they have an ownership stake in productive way. Just that when push comes to shove they find out they don't have an ownership stake. See: The Hudson/Jenkins split.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Not a motivation for non-native speakers to contribute to English dominated open-source.

<comment><USER56> Your argument apparently being that non-English speakers are just incurably rude? The problem wasn't the minor doc change but how it was handled – less capable speakers might make a mistake but a simple "oh, thanks for the correction" avoids any problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> That seems....excessive

</comment><comment><USER58> I read some of the comments on the pull request and the commits. This is the worst part of Github, these kinds of public massive flame wars, complete with animated gifs. I think Github should have moderation features for situations like this. Even though they're not common, they're damaging the constructive atmosphere that's usually present.

</comment><comment><USER59> I haven't the slightest idea what the commit was over but I'd like to point out that

~(non-gendered pronouns are mandatory) =/= (gendered pronouns are mandatory)

The authors would still be free to use their own choice of pronouns.

</comment><comment><USER60> Isn't using "them/they" in the singular to avoid gendered pronouns still considered grammatically incorrect?

If gendered pronouns are such a big issue why is there no effort to make a lasting official solution by updating the standards of English? I know most of my school teachers would not have let me written "they/them" in this situation. Have things changed and "they" is now acceptable?

I think the only correct solution available today which sounds decent at all is to say "the user".

<comment><USER24> > Isn't using "them/they" in the singular to avoid gendered pronouns still > considered grammatically incorrect?

No. Singular they has never been grammatically incorrect. The frequency of its use has simply varied throughout the years. For what it's worth, singular they seems to predate gender-neutral 'he' in written English.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> I suppose discriminating on sexuality is just fine at Joyent then? [http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=bGkVM...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=bGkVM1B5NuI#t=3059)

</comment><comment><USER23> Because no-one's posted it yet, Tom Scott has a great video on grammatical gender that is worth a watch: [http://youtu.be/46ehrFk- gLk](http://youtu.be/46ehrFk-gLk)

</comment><comment><USER62> It's 2013. Some people in the open source community seem to still live mentally in the 1950s.

</comment><comment><USER63> makes me sick to see the mob get its way.

</comment><comment><USER64> The commit itself, and the events around that were already discussed on another thread, but about this blog posting specifically - this is a little extreme.

I would have hoped at this point, an official posting, on the corporate pages would have a more sensible and calming approach. I guess not.

All in all, no one comes out of this looking well.

<comment> brown9-2 Not so sure about that. I had no opinion about Joyent before but now they sound quite positive in my book.

<comment><USER18> OTOH, I had no opinion about Joyent before, and now have a lower'ish opinion of them. This seems like a combination of over-reaction, obsessive "PC" thinking, and an attempt to mask a potential PR gaffe.

If Joyent cares so much about gender equality, I imagine that there are more concrete actions they could take to encourage that, than threatening to fire somebody who isn't even an employee - over a pronoun.

<comment> brown9-2 It's not the pronoun, it's the bad attitude and commit reversal.

<comment><USER65> Calling people asshole and "firing" them instead of initiating a discussion is also bad attitude.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> This isn't good. The title should be "The Power of Gendered Pronouns" — it's about gendered pronouns and our intentions/perceptions around their use, not about pronouns in general.

Here's my simple argument against pronouns (even gendered ones) in documentation. Too often you hear, which can often be the turning point of a "polite" discussion to a "heated" discussion:

        Don't talk about me as if I'm not here. My name is ----.

Refering to someone as "they" or "them" is an even worse offense.

I want to say further that pronouns do a disservice to the "organic conversation" that is Source Code just as pronouns do a disservice to polite discussion. Pronouns may be common in usage, but their use turns a discussion into something informal. Their "power" in general is a question of emotive/suggestive language, as vagueness implies, versus explicit/shareable/re-useable language.

<comment><USER23> 'Refering to someone as "they" or "them" is an even worse offense.'

I've actually tested this. Or rather, I live by this - I default to gender neutral pronouns for everyone. I have done this for many years in customer facing call centres, dealing with 30+ callers a day and working alongside 100+ support staff, and communicating across all levels of business, from shop floor to CEO.

I have had people comment on singular they. Mostly LGBT+ people who understood gender issues and actively had a preference. Everyone else? NOT A SINGLE COMMENT.

You may personally have a preference about people's use of pronouns for yourself, and that is actually a wonderful thing - knowingly having a gender identity is awesome! :) But, at least in the UK, there is nothing offensive about gender neutral 'they'.

<comment><USER67> This does have the, ah, interesting consequence that essentially _any_ policy you could have about when you use gender-neutral pronouns will either offend or involuntarily out at least some trans or genderqueer people. (Even if most of the gender-binary cis populace won't notice.) Using gender neutral pronouns for everyone unless they object seems especially likely to do so though.

<comment><USER23> Generally most trans people have commented during QUILTBAG events or private company. I've found that in a formal office environment, they tend to welcome, or at least not notice, gender neutral defaults

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> We never even heard the back story on that one...

I suspect it's not so much about the gender of pronouns as about being patronizing, which people tend to resent.

<comment><USER68> What do you mean "never heard the back story"?

The post linked to a pull request and commit that _are_ the back story...

<comment><USER17> How are you sure about that? For example I don't know if the people involved ever communicated before and how they relate to each other.

<comment><USER68> I suppose. But do their personal interactions before matter?

<comment><USER17> Of course - the reverted commit seems to be much more likely the result of personal differences rather than sexism. At least to me.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


What You Eat Affects Your Genes - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2011/09/21/what-you-eat-affects-your-genes-rna-from-rice-can-survive-digestion-and-alter-gene-expression/

<comment><USER2> The title of the Discover Magazine article is link bait bullshit. It suggests that what you eat affects your genes. What the authors of the Science paper really found is that plant microRNAs can survive digestion in mammals. These plant microRNAs where subsequently found in mammalian cells affecting expression of genes and cell chemistry.

<comment><USER3> I don't understand how what you said is different than the title.

Could you please explain the difference between "affects your genes" and "affecting expression of genes."

<comment><USER2> A process of genes expression is when information from your genes translates to the proteins which are primary regulatory entities in cells. "Affects your genes" implies that somehow your genes are changed permanently. MicroRNAs affect the process of gene expression not the genes itself. What the authors found is that microRNAs from rice can appear in cells of mammals if they eat a lot of rice. But if they stop eating rice the effect of these microRNAs will be lost.

<comment><USER4> If a miRNA alters the expression of transcription factors, chromatin remodeling agents, or other epigenome modifiers, the effect could last long after a person stops eating the miRNA-containing food.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What You Eat Affects Your Genes (Expression)

</comment><comment><USER6> The formatting of this article is AWESOME. There are so many articles that I'd love to read, but I simply don't have the time to parse through a gigantic wall of text. An outline with bolded text and bullet points is exactly what I love to see.</comment>


Load-balancing Docker Containers with Nginx and Consul-Template - <AUTHOR> https://tech.bellycard.com/blog/load-balancing-docker-containers-with-nginx-and-consul-template/

<comment><USER2> Thanks for sharing. I really like Consul, by HashiCorp, it provides a really cool distributed key–value store and service discovery layer.</comment>


JavaScript, isn't it a standard yet? - <AUTHOR> http://tbergeron.com/post/33751919249

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for checking out my article, do not hesitate to discuss about it!</comment>


Jumpstarting WebGL - <AUTHOR> http://christianostman.com/sthlmjs/

<comment><USER2> This is just mindblowing and I wonder why it wasn't on the front page.</comment>


Ask HN: How much is known (with certainty) about the Moche culture? - crypto-jeronimo <comment><AUTHOR> The civilization in modern day Peru 2000 years ago?

[https://www.reddit.com/r/AskAnthropology/](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskAnthropology/) or [https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/) might have more experts on that topic.

<comment> crypto-jeronimo Yes, that's what the question was in reference to - thanks!</comment></comment>


Why is there only one Elon Musk? Why is there so much low-hanging fruit? - <AUTHOR> https://guzey.com/why-is-there-only-one-elon-musk/ <comment><USER2> I think it's much simpler.

There is a set of people with the capacity to be a Musk (or at least to take a visionary approach to things).

There is a set of people who become wealthy enough to try at an early enough age.

The absolute numbers of both sets are small but still there are many people in each group.

The intersection is however, extremely small.

This is a problem.

<comment><USER3> Boom ([https://boomsupersonic.com/](https://boomsupersonic.com/)) was started by a software engineer without lots of wealth -- he just raised VC funds

<comment><USER2> What does linking to this this even mean? How is it relevant.

All kinds of people raise funds. Most of them don't get results.

One reason may be that they just aren't as capable as him, but the other is that they are beholden to the people who funded them and aren't really making their own decisions.

One way to think about the difference is to consider whether Boom's CEO would be allowed to start 3 other companies while Boom is still a startup? The answer is no.

Musk is in a very different position from just 'someone who raised money'.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > 99th percentile of energy 99th percentile of persistence 99th percentile of > raw mental power and creativity 99th percentile of ambition 99th percentile > risk and pain tolerance 99th percentile of long-term planning and vision- > making

They forgot also the 99th percentile in dishonesty.</comment>


How to Create a Full Width Bootstrap 4 Responsive Carousel - <AUTHOR> https://bootstrapcreative.com/create-full-width-bootstrap-4-responsive-carousel/ <comment><USER2> Internet Archive cached version: [https://web.archive.org/web/20170630103741/https://bootstrap...](https://web.archive.org/web/20170630103741/https://bootstrapcreative.com/create- full-width-bootstrap-4-responsive-carousel/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Has anyone here AB tested a carousel vs not a carousel, and had the carousel the winner?

<comment><AUTHOR> Here are some usability and conversion studies: [https://conversionxl.com/dont-use-automatic-image-sliders- or...](https://conversionxl.com/dont-use-automatic-image-sliders-or- carousels/)

[https://unbounce.com/conversion-rate- optimization/conversion...](https://unbounce.com/conversion-rate- optimization/conversion-killing-tactics/)

[https://www.nngroup.com/articles/designing-effective- carouse...](https://www.nngroup.com/articles/designing-effective-carousels/)

Unfortunately clients or designers have these because they look nice, add some drama to a page, or because a competitor has one. So it really comes down to the goal of page (conversions, branding, SEO dwell time, etc.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> cached:

[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:adjZ1a...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:adjZ1aVWsPUJ:https://bootstrapcreative.com/create- full-width-bootstrap-4-responsive-carousel/+&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

</comment><comment><USER5> Another mirror:

[http://web.archive.org/web/20170630103741/https://bootstrapc...](http://web.archive.org/web/20170630103741/https://bootstrapcreative.com/create- full-width-bootstrap-4-responsive-carousel/)

</comment><comment><USER6> Bootstrap is so 2015.

But seriously, are they even going to release BS4?

<comment><USER7> It has been in alpha for like 3 years now and still no clear sign of a release. However, I still find Bootstrap highly invaluable for knocking a quick idea together. The best thing about Bootstrap is its grid, it's easy and quite powerful (especially in BS4).

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I apologize for the page being down. Obviously I need to upgrade my hosting :/

</comment><comment><USER8> The site is down, saying "Resource Limit Is Reached"</comment>


Why we built Align: the only extensible video chat platform - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/align-chat/why-we-built-align-164db8cc53be <comment><USER2> Cool concept! What language is your sdk in?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! Our SDK is written in Typescript and we're starting with support for building apps using React, but we plan to support other frontend frameworks as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> nice - this is exciting!</comment>


Apply HN: Startup Timelines - <AUTHOR> Currently in private beta:
http://www.startuptimelines.org/
We're building a wikipedia-like platform for startup founders to help them study the success of other companies.
Right now, our site shows screenshots of successful startups and how they evolved over time but we're working on adding new kinds of publicly available information such as SEC filings, press coverage, founder interviews, and growth/traffic metrics.
To see a sample preview of what this could look like check out the Airbnb timeline:
http://startuptimelines.org/startup-timelines/airbnb
this is just a fraction of the total amount of information out there on this company.  We think with more money we could get the runway we need to more comprehensively profile companies like Airbnb.  We're also working closely with 4 entrepreneurs to learn more about what kind of information would help them out most in their background research.
Our goal is to give founders a single timeline with as many data points as possible so they have a dedicated resource when doing background research before starting their own ventures.  Eventually, we'd love to open up the platform so anyone can contribute content to Startup Timelines.
Some success we've experienced so far is that we've added companies to our site at a 20% weekly rate in the first quarter of this year, we've also had 60,000+ visits, and 2-3K shares on social media.  We've also been featured in TechCrunch, Product Hunt, and Entrepreneur magazine.
YCF will give us the runway we need to keep the lights on and continue executing on our ambitious mission.  We've been working on this project for about a year now, so, please consider upvoting/commenting as we could use any support we can get!  Thanks for reading :) <comment><USER2> Hey!

I dont know if this would get funded, but its a great idea. I did something like this, but it was a little bit deeper into individual experiences. ie. instead of getting public information, interviewing individuals who worked at these companies/with the founders, then compile for others. Something like Founders at Work as a website.

If you are looking for collaborators, shoot me an email!

rememberlenny at gmail

<comment><AUTHOR> Reaching out to you right now!! Would love to hear about how it went for you :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Really, really like this. Been promising myself I'd build something like this eventually, other projects always got in the way. Glad you did it.

</comment><comment><USER4> Curious as to the size of the market and the ways it might be monetized.

<comment><AUTHOR> We're focused right now on building an audience - ideally founders and employees at startups who are looking up information everyday on Startup Timelines (funding rounds, screenshots, news snippets etc).

With enough data points and a daily community looking up stuff everyday, we actually think it'd be cool to help unknown startups raise money (equity crowdfunding) through our platform. Ie. we track information about them and changes to their product (not just the homepage) from the day they launch.

I found a few market size numbers around the crowdfunding market floating around [0] but it is already multi billion dollar market

At the moment though, we're just focused on helping founders research startups better and getting them the information they need to be successful.

[0] [http://www.forbes.com/sites/chancebarnett/2015/06/09/trends-...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/chancebarnett/2015/06/09/trends- show-crowdfunding-to-surpass-vc-in-2016/#17ff3e5c444b)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Feel free to ask any questions!! Would be happy to answer</comment>


'I Fundamentally Believe That My Time at Reddit Made the World a Worse Place' - <AUTHOR> http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/04/dan-mccomas-reddit-product-svp-and-imzy-founder-interview.html <comment><USER2> Personally I am most worried about the coordinated rhetorical push against "toxicity". It seems far too vague and exploitable and promotive of a centralizing agenda and increased control. There are complete assholes of course but everything about the solutions seems like a pretext for control akin to "think of the children" while their spending and other efforts make it clear that they aren't something they are interested in helping or protecting but in use as a shield.

It brings to mind YouTube's issues with advertisers and their clients being fools. People head away from the stale inoffensive mass market of television and then they start complaining about their brand being associated with it. Rather than realize that is where the traffic is try to reshape things to what they already left.

<comment><USER3> I'm not really worried for a couple of reasons.

Your worries about the rise of _think of the children_ excuses, well, there are a lot of children there. Maybe we should think of them...

The big reason I'm not worried is that no change is ever permanent. If the rules turn out to be too restrictive, then do another pass at them. Today, Reddit is a shitty place that I think is a net-negative for the world. If they were to change the rules and turn it into some kind of milquetoast site that was neutral or mildly positive, I think we would be better off.

I think the sad truth is that all that toxicity is making the few people running Reddit a lot of money and that's all they care about.

<comment><USER4> What about the many times in history where that was effectively not the case ? I mean, say, take a Russian living in 1905 under the Tsar. Odds are very slim indeed they would have lived to the point when times/rules got better again. Or a Chinese living in the 1920s ?

Rules relaxed again in both cases, but those people would have died long before the rules changed back.

<comment><USER5> I see where you're coming from, but you're talking about a governmental and cultural shift to restrict liberties compared to booting some people or organizations from a virtual platform.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I fundamentally believe that outside of niche hobby & technical subreddits, Reddit is making society a worse place and allowing major non-organic manipulation of ideas through their API.

<comment><USER3> Reddit is a site that I feel absolutely no guilt about visiting with an ad- blocker running.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Good interview and he illustrates at least two problems that are not unique to Reddit: 1. Cancerous "growth at all costs" as the single metric/goal, and 2. Inability to make decisions, leading to always running defense against the press and competitors. Who hasn't seen one or both of these in their own companies?

</comment><comment><USER8> Off topic but Reddit is extremely addictive. Removed the app from my phone and I have suddenly so much time at hand. Not even facebook is so addictive.

</comment><comment><USER9> I see the internet as different levels of hell. At the bottom is 4chan. In the middle somewhere is Reddit and Twitter. In a free and open platform, you have to take the good with the bad. It can never be fully contained, and I think the dream of a harmonious, engaged, happy social community is a pipe dream. Reddit's main problem are the mods, and their uneven, disparate treatment of groups and individuals, and management, for not have the courage to set a standard and stick to it. Nothing will ever be perfect.

</comment><comment><USER10> Looks like all the giants, including FB and Google, are focused only on growth, at the end each decision is measured by how many new users it will acquire, no matter the content. Shame.

</comment><comment><USER11> So sick of this. Trump wins an election and now reddit and all of social media made the world a worse place?

Was this guy a PR guy for reddit like the former google PR woman lambasting google?

What's with the childishness of these former tech people? Just because things haven't gone your way, you whine all day?

Reddit and social has made the world a lot better place. LGBT people are better accepted in society because of reddit and social media. People from religions like mormons are better able to separate themselves from the tyranny of their religion. Atheists are more accepted. A black president, something almost unthinkable, was elected partly because of reddit and social media.

I'd rather a world without nymag and journalists than a world without HN, reddit, etc.

Ever since trump's election, we've had nonstop propaganda from the useless agenda pushing journalists and their media organizations.

I wish these children would grow up already. The point of elections and life is that you win some and you lose some.

Instead of giving preference to useless news and magazines, social media companies should simply ban then just to give them a taste of their own medicine.

And what made reddit, twitter and much of social media so toxic isn't social media, it's journalists and media companies pushing their way into social media.

Reddit became toxic when it succumb to media pressure to give journalists and media companies special preference. And when major default subs like politics, news, worldnews, etc got handed over to the media and the democratic party.

<comment><USER12> Perhaps this view of social media was naive during the Obama era. There was lots of hope about Obama using social media to get elected, the Arab spring using social media to democratize, etc. But in the end, we saw that social media has a major flaw and this flaw has been since exploited in very damaging ways by both corporations and nation states. This so-called flaw isn't a big, it's a design problem for which there's no effective mitigation other than applying moderation on a massive scale.

<comment><USER11> > This so-called flaw isn't a big, it's a design problem for which there's no > effective mitigation other than applying moderation on a massive scale.

You are against corporations and nation states exploiting social media so you want corporations and nation states to moderate it? Doesn't make much sense.

Odd that you aren't calling for the moderation of traditional media.

All the wars, the arab spring issues and even trump isn't a social media issue, it's a traditional media issue. If you are truly worried about corporations and nation states exploiting something, you'd be up in arms over traditional media.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Reddit's efforts to combat toxicity has made it so much less entertaining. r/all was so fun back in 2012/2013 but now it's all left-think agenda pushing articles or extremely tame content.

I still haven't been able to cut it out of my daily reading habits, but that's a lingering effect of how good it was 5+ years ago. The current state of it errodes that each passing day.

<comment><USER14> Pray tell, what did Reddit change to make r/all less fun for you? Considering the complete meltdown that occurred when r/fatpeoplehate was banned, I can't imagine much of value was lost.

For those who don't remember the meltdown I'm referring to, for a few days after FPH was banned, its users brigaded every big sub and upvoted photoshopped pictures of Ellen Pao's face on to the body of a morbidly obese person. It was possibly the most childish form of acting out I'd ever seen.

<comment><USER13> r/all was a place to check the pulse of the online community. News rose to the top FAST.

Now there are so many rules in place due to over moderation that Reddit feels like the last online community to know about breaking news.

The general consensus has shifted to be much less like the pragmatic tech community (value in free speech and rights along with being a good person) to a virtue signaling group that values feelings over anything else.

Well, that all probably sounds like I'm a disgusting person full of hate, but I'm really not. I want everyone to be able to have a fair shot at achieving their dreams. I just think we're going to be able to make healthy progress with such censorship and handholding.

<comment><USER14> > r/all was a place to check the pulse of the online community. News rose to > the top FAST.

A pulse that has always depended on upvotes and downvotes, and thus has always been susceptible to being gamed. The reason subs like r/t_d were blocked from r/all was because they did this exact thing; their posts would receives thousands of upvotes within minutes of posting, yet the upvotes-to-comments ratio was always very low, meaning real people weren't engaging with the content as much as the bots were.

> The general consensus has shifted to be much less like the pragmatic tech > community (value in free speech and rights along with being a good person) > to a virtue signaling group that values feelings over anything else.

I hear this a lot, without much in the way of concrete examples. Each time the free speech issue gets raised, it results in angry redditors creating their own "virtue signaling" offshoot subs like "r/uncensored_news". Unsurprisingly, it attracts the most toxic members of the community until it consists almost entirely of hate speech, and the site admins are forced to ban it.

And I say 'forced' because that's what it is; just because r/whiterights and other subs have been banned doesn't mean there aren't hate subs on Reddit still operating freely. The admins to this day still allow for a live and let live approach UNTIL a real-world event forces them to take action. r/incels was a growing community until the Toronto van attack for example.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Microsoft Is Open-Sourcing Windows Calculator on GitHub - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-is-open-sourcing-windows-calculator-on-github/ <comment><USER2> Great, maybe it will finally follow the order of operations.</comment>


Ask YC: Any Updates on the Basic Income Project? - <AUTHOR> Last time we had an update was on May 31:
https://blog.ycombinator.com/moving-forward-on-basic-income/
I was wondering if there are any updates that could be shared with the community. <comment><USER2> We've started giving money to a small pilot group. We're still working out the kinks but expanding it slowly.

The plan is still to run the pilot until we're confident everything is working well (especially with issues like making sure no one loses eligibility for income-based benefits) and then start the full-scale study.

<comment><USER3> What is the status of the MOOC? When can we expect additional details?

YC should consider writing the occasional blog post about the projects it's working, it would be interesting to follow and the feedback from HN might be useful.

<comment><USER4> Would YC really be upfront about the success or failure of this experiment? Most people are shy enough about failures in professional contexts where impacts are isolated to the company itself. The outcome of this pilot has real potential political ramifications, further disincentivizing those who're committed to basic income (as YC obviously is) from revealing any serious flaws or difficulties experienced, beyond the typical already-pretty-strong impulse to keep failed experiments under wraps (and when they are discussed, to generalize and gloss over the more painful/sticky parts).

I know we all admire YC here, but let's be practical about it. They're not going to drum up any more bad press for themselves than necessary.

<comment><USER5> _It 's all about the feedback loop._ Failure analysis (where necessary) is more than a bumpersticker obituary. And we also need to catch lessons learned along the way, both the microfailures we learn from and the assumptions we tested and proved correct/incorrect. Last, it's vital to turn periodic recaps into more organized and systematic bodies-of-knowledge so it's fast/easy to learn from the history we're writing together.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is a great question. And 6 months after the last update is a good time to be asking it.

It's much less efficient for both YC and individuals if every interested individual started emailing and asking for updates. Much better this way - after all that's why broadcast or pub-sub systems exist. HN is kind of a curated broadcast system.

It often happens that people who're working on the project might not find 'right now' to be the ideal time to share updates. This could be either because they're immersed thinking through a particularly challenging aspect of the problem/solution, or they feel a little lost (which is a normal feeling in the middle of ambitious projects). Sharing an update at that point makes you feel vulnerable, but that's exactly what you need to do.

Or it could be that they have a really promising angle and want to see more data before writing something up. The 'more data' approach is usually a mirage (promising approaches start showing potential even at early stages/small scale) and sharing progress helps the project even in that case. (For example, you might learn that a similar approach has been tried before, and here is what someone learnt).

</comment><comment><USER7> There would need to be at least ~50-60 years before evaluation of the results

There needs to be at least 2 generations that have had UBI for their entire life. UBI affects the motivation to work on skills, so the subject would need UBI for their entire life.

The parents of the subject also needs to have UBI for their entire life because the parents could transmit the scarcity, pre-UBI mindset onto the subject. There is a still chance that the pre-UBI mindset of the grandparents could be transmitted to the subject. Ideally the subject would be at least 3-4 generations removed from the start of UBI

<comment><USER8> I came to the same conclusion when thinking about this too. It might even make sense to counsel people too about what they can do with the extra time/money. There are a lot of amazing things to do in the world, but most people will always try to emulate their immediate environment.

For some people, I would expect they would end up getting hooked on something unwholesome (drugs for example) with their newfound free time. You could probably make a huge difference in this just by suggesting the right things at the right times.

<comment><USER9> > hooked on something unwholesome (drugs for example) with their newfound free > time

Based on what the "Rat Park" studies show about the natures of addiction, that seems very unlikely: People get addicted when their lives suck, not when they have free time.

Having money enough to eat is going to go a long way to making peoples' lives suck less.

Not to say that helping people direct their energies wouldn't be useful. It may take a few months of vacation or longer before people can recover enough drive to do anything with their time that they can make themselves do anything other than relax. When you've spent your life being told what to do and driving yourself with fear of losing your job, it may take months or even years of recovery before you can be self-motivated effectively. Telling them _that_ too might be useful.

I think the government _should_ offer "jobs" that don't add a huge amount of money over the basic income, but that provide some public good, to help people who are just terminally uncreative direct their time, but should also offer free education in how to start their own businesses for those who _do_ want to create something, build something, or provide a service. Or alternately they could learn new professions in their now-free time and get higher paying jobs.

So yes, I agree with your conclusion (education and guidance is important). Just not the reasoning that got you there. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Maybe sending emails to the researchers and posting their answers here could be more efficient.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm not sure what there is to update. I'm guessing they chose some "interesting" people (as in whose outcomes will most likely to advance their agenda), and doled out a monthly "income" for them -- as in, they literally handed them cash for 6 months (personally, I would've just kept on working full-time). Nothing magical to report back on there, right?

This doesn't really show the economic effects of "basic income" on a macro scale though (I claim that they are so drastic that they are actually worth understanding first, but can't personally think of a better "experimentation platform"). Also, I doubt the project will really do much to actually influence public policy in a way that would favor UBI.

It's also probably shocking to a lot of people that Uber's self-driving cars really weren't as good as they were supposed to be, so now it makes YC look like they _really_ just jumped the gun.

Call it "Basic Income," but really, it's "giving money to people" on a small scale.

</comment><comment><USER12> I don't work on YCR Basic Income, but the early steps of any experiment are pretty time consuming and not particularly interesting (e.g. logistics, experiment structure, etc...) I'd guess we can expect an update early next year with some of those details and a reflection on existing progress.

In their blogpost, they provide an email for feedback: firstname.lastname@example.com

They're likely very consumed by all the work they need to do, so I'd reach out if you have some specific suggestions/asks. Otherwise, you can join me in eagerly waiting for more updates when they're ready to share them :)

<comment><USER13> I expect there are quite a few people here who would find logistics, experiment structure, etc... fascinating. Which is not to say it's necessarily the best use of their time to update us on it.

<comment><USER14> Agreed tenfold. YC has absolutely no obligations to us regarding these issues but there is not a single detail in the whole enterprise that would not be fascinating to me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> anyone know how to sign up for participation in the pilot and/or the eventual wider rollout?

</comment><comment><USER16> I think the limitation of UBI experiments is that they are inherently microeconomic, they might measure the individual effects of the program, but not measure the resulting macro issues of what 'Universal' would really imply across broad strata of society.

<comment><USER17> One must start somewhere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> _" Please don't post on HN to ask or tell us something (e.g. to ask us questions about Y Combinator, or to ask or complain about moderation)"_

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER19> I think in this scenario it seems fair to post a question. What's the alternative, write a blog article asking the same and post a link to that instead?

I'm also interested in a status update given some recent news posted on HN about Finland experimenting with the same ideas.

<comment><USER20> Alternative would be emailing them "Are you able to share any progress on the BI project? I'd bet more on HN would be keen to hear too." Project then writes a blog and someone submits to HN.

However, I can appreciate that the slight public pressure of an Ask YC making the front page might encourage quicker movement or at least a response that didn't otherwise warrant a blog post.</comment></comment></comment>


LIFE on Europa? NASA to announce major news in breakthrough press conference - <AUTHOR> http://www.express.co.uk/news/science/712852/LIFE-on-Europa-NASA-alien-jupiter <comment><USER2> Sensationalist.

From the article:

>Astronomers will present results from a unique Europa observing campaign that resulted in surprising evidence of activity that may be related to the presence of a subsurface ocean on Europa.

Suggest the submission title be changed to something like "NASA to Hold Media Call on Evidence of Surprising Activity on Europa" which is what NASA's media page[0] titles it.

[0] - [http://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-to-hold-media-call- on...](http://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-to-hold-media-call-on-evidence- of-surprising-activity-on-europa)

<comment><USER3> Yes, this is wildly overblown.

Even better would be to wait for the actual press release.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hasn't it been accepted as pretty much fact that Europa has a huge ocean for a while now?</comment>


Freedom vs. Function: Why I Hate Jailbreaking my iPhone - <AUTHOR> http://mojaveblues.com/blog/2013/2/10/freedom-vs-function-why-i-hate-jailbreaking-my-iphone

<comment><USER2> "I actually narrowed the problem down to a tweak I was using that prevented the landscape view of album covers in Music"

I'm responsible for that—NoCoverFlow wasn't compatible with iOS 6.1 until the update was submitted earlier today.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey Ryan, I'm a big fan of your work on Cydia. Thanks for responding about NoCoverFLow.

Hope you understand my gripe wasn't with NoCoverFlow itself, I was referring to a larger problem I've found with jailbreaking since around iOS 2.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Note that with jailbreak tweaks, which critically depend on hooking various random internal functions of closed-source binaries (and coexisting with any number of other tweaks that may be hooking the same functions) to do their magic, it's not so much "sloppy code" as "not extremely meticulous code".

Then again, this doesn't matter at all to a user - broken code is broken code. (And there certainly is some true sloppy code.)

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right, and I understand the difficulties that involves, especially since I'm _not_ an iPhone programmer.

However, as a user, you're right, broken code is broken code. There are those, like RyanPetrich who commented below, who turn out tweak after tweak and are known for high quality work.

That said, there are _many more_ tweaks without the same level of skill and care taken in their coding. And one of my biggest problems with this system is the lack of any real overseer.

But that would be difficult to achieve without an authoritarian, or making the system closed, like Apple.</comment></comment>


Nimbus Tech Stack (2019) - <AUTHOR> https://paul.copplest.one/blog/nimbus-tech-2019-04.html <comment><USER2> Thanks for posting @stephth.

I'm guessing you found this through PostgREST, which was at the top of HN recently. We use PostgREST extensively, happy to answer any questions</comment>


Handsfree Off-Road Wheelchair - <AUTHOR> https://omeotechnology.com/ <comment><USER2> This is certainly cool tech, but I don't think they'll sell many of these.

I worked on advanced mobility products for over 15 years and with hundreds of quadriplegic folks in wheelchairs and listened to all of them.

Over those years I saw a lot of very cool products designed for them that they didn't want, need, or have any interest in using.

A wheelchair that goes off road is one of them. Most of those folks have no interest at all in that, and most will tell you, if you get to know them well enough, they're afraid of it.

There's good reasons for that too. We're talking about people that cannot pick up a sandwich or open a can of soda. They cannot lean back and forth much, or turn side to side. They don't have the muscle or muscle control to handle the shocks of bumps of going off pavement.

Now I have met some paraplegics that would love those. Not many, but a few. They were all "Type A" personalities who loved risky behaviors even after braking their backs.

<comment><USER3> I think you might be overemphasizing "off road." This doesn't look like the wheelchair version of a quadbike. It looks more like a wheelchair that can handle backyards, beaches and broken footpaths.

Besides that, handsfree control sounds nice. You don't need hands to operate legs and the wheelchairs do legs' job.

<comment><USER4> >It looks more like a wheelchair that can handle backyards, beaches and broken footpaths.

It won't handle them very well until at least a month or so from now when "mud season" is over in the parts of the world that have a winter in which the ground freezes. That rim and tire package is worlds better than a normal wheelchair but still not very good for not sinking in the soft stuff.

<comment><USER5> Even worse are 'mobility schooters'. Tiny wheels, many of them are front wheel drive, they get stuck very easily when tehy are not on a hard surface.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> My wife, who is a wheelchair user, and I tried it a couple years back (when it was still named Ogo). She said that it was really nice to be hand free and while the prototype was still rough, she really liked it.

Plus the inventor is super nice and does this for all the right reasons.

We wrote a small review about it back then : [https://www.iwheeltravel.com/en/ogo-wheelchair-new- zealand/](https://www.iwheeltravel.com/en/ogo-wheelchair-new-zealand/)

<comment><USER7> Cool. It looked like a good idea and I'm glad it's usable in practice. We need more innovations like this in society.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Instead of a wheelchair try a trackchair [http://actiontrackchair.com/](http://actiontrackchair.com/). When you are off road wheels are not the best idea.

I'm friends with the inventors son who was paralyzed some years back. Designing something so that he could do all the outdoor activities he enjoyed before the accident was their goal. I have been watching their iterations for years, and seen pictures of him doing more and more things that I'd consider normal. (our lives moved in different directions so we haven't got together)

</comment><comment><USER9> On a completely separate note, why on earth have you used able-bodied people advertise this product?! I mean really, were there no quadriplegic available? My email address is in my bio!

/Rant

(PS. It looks really cool and I would really like one!)

</comment><comment><USER10> Note they specifically disclaim this as a medical device at the end.

This isn't a 'wheelchair' as I would understand it.

And the hands free element seems to rely on whole body movement, so wouldn't be of use for people without the use of their muscles.

<comment><USER11> Probably because medical device classification is expensive and might not allow for "fun" wheelchairs like this one. The upshot is that health insurance probably won't pay for this.

<comment><USER10> Yes I'm in 2 minds on how to interpret the lack of official certification, For the reasons you describe. Additionally I would guess these would face different laws to wheelchairs, I don't think they'd be allowed on pavements in my country for example, they would basically be classed as scooters / hoverboards.</comment></comment></comment>


Update Your Logitech Wireless Dongle Right Now - <AUTHOR> https://lifehacker.com/update-your-logitech-wireless-dongle-right-now-1836382167 <comment><USER2> There's no point in updating, apparently. Not yet, anyways -- well, unless you haven't installed the firmware updates that fixed the last round of vulnerabilities (2016).

Fortunately for Logitech customers, _one_ of the three vulnerabilities should be getting fixed in a future firmware update -- possibly as soon as next month.

The other two have been deemed WONTFIX because " _thise would negatively impact interoperability_ ".

Luckily, you can easily protect yourself against these other two -- just don't ever let anyone touch your computer or come within 10m (30ft) of it and you've got nothing to worry about.

> _Two of them relate to extracting the encryption key that secures the > communication between the Logitech device and the Logitech Unifying USB > receiver. The third one relates to overcoming the barriers to keystroke > injection between the device and the USB receiver._

There's plenty of downplaying the vulnerabilities (three of them, four CVEs) in this advisory -- several times they claim that only a sophisticated hacker with "special equipment and skills" would even be capable of exploiting these vulnerabilities -- even though the first comment here linked to a PoC.

Also, this link might be a bit more appropriate for the HN crowd: [https://github.com/mame82/UnifyingVulnsDisclosureRepo](https://github.com/mame82/UnifyingVulnsDisclosureRepo) (a "summary / overview" from the security researcher).

</comment><comment><USER3> And if you wanted a proof of concept[1] to scare the pants off of you, I'm here for you.

[1]: [https://github.com/insecurityofthings/uC_mousejack](https://github.com/insecurityofthings/uC_mousejack)</comment>