After GitHub CEO backs Black Lives Matter, workers demand an end to ICE contract - <AUTHOR> https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2020-06-12/github-ceo-black-lives-matter-employees-demand-end-ice-contract <comment><USER2> What a bummer that workers are publicly demanding this, and (presumably) seeking press attention on it.

I'm no fan of ICE – a very large percentage of my friends in the US are immigrants, and I generally want my country to be a welcoming one. ICE has certainly committed unethical and probably illegal acts (probably true of most federal agencies).

But to expect that a _federal agency_ will be denied service from a private entity, especially for essentially political reasons, is lunacy. It'd attract extreme negative attention from the rest of the government, and great fear from all paying customers that an internet mob could separate them from their code at any time.

We should absolutely be lobbying hard for changes to immigration law, the restrictions placed on ICE, and justice for their wrongdoings.

But I can't see how this helps improve immigration, and it certainly seems likely to cause a lot of negative consequences for GitHub. The employees are putting their employer in a "damned if they do, damned if they don't" situation.

EDIT: Just to clarify, I love the vision of a world where executives don't take actions their workers will protest. I think that in order to get there, the protests need to be reasonable, and I think this one isn't.

EDIT DISCLAIMER: I own a small amount of MSFT stock, which was not on my mind as I wrote this. I use GitHub's free service and have no other relationship I can think of with MSFT or GitHub.

<comment><USER3> > But to expect that a _federal agency_ will be denied service from a private > entity, especially for essentially political reasons, is lunacy.

Um, think you've got this backwards. Private entities shouldn't have to take on _anyone_ they don't want as customers (for whatever reason - do you have to justify who you do or don't want in your livingroom?), but publicly-funded institutions shouldn't be able to deny service on political grounds.

<comment><USER4> I am strongly against a private business being able to refuse service to a person/organization on political grounds, even when the "victim" may seem to be performing evil actions, as long as it is not breaking any laws. One should not discriminate on the basis of race, political orientation, gender, origin or religion. Refusing service is clearly a form of discrimination. When you aim that towards your own Government, it may look like a heroic action to your supporters, but to those who are not, you're performing discrimination on the grounds of political affiliation against an organization that is following, as it is obliged to, the law of the Land. If you think the ICE is doing terrible things, you should lob the Government to take action and bring them to justice, but given the Government is, as I understand it, actually mandating such terrible things, you're aiming your fury at the wrong place. You should be protesting against the Government who is mandating these terrible things.

Imagine for a moment that things change completely, and the ICE starts refusing to follow the orders of the Government - but now the Government is leaning towards the far-left, and wants the ICE to open borders to all. The ICE would no doubt have a lot of supporters, but disobeying the Government in such case would ALSO be wrong because in a democracy, the Government represents the people - by not following the orders of the Government, you're basically advancing anarchy. In both cases, the correct attitude is to fight for a Government change. It's not democratic for a Government organization to take its own stance on a topic despite the Government's policies.

<comment><USER5> >One should not discriminate on the basis of race, political orientation, gender, origin or religion. Refusing service is clearly a form of discrimination

It looks like you're trying to imply that discriminating based on political orientation is as bad as as discriminating based on race, gender, origin or religion, but that's wrong. At least when it comes to the law, political orientation isn't a protected class. Race, gender, origin or religion are.

<comment><USER6> You're correct regarding the law, but I wouldn't be so quick to claim it's not as bad. Suppose a business refused to serve union activists? Environmentalists? Feminists? Suppose many large businesses did so?

<comment><USER7> An example of this in the wild from the Democratic party is [https://dcccblacklist.com](https://dcccblacklist.com)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I guess this is the reason lot of corporates try to stay out of politics. Because once you set a precedence then people will use that as to push their own political agendas. I personally don't like the slippery slope argument since it's very lazy and justifies inaction in many cases. But at the same time when I see news like this, I just wonder how long it will take two different subgroups trying push their own conflicting agendas and how the company should react in such a case.

<comment><USER9> We are going through a very strange and extreme period in US History. Corporations are a huge part of the political landscape. Of course workers who are powerful will demand things of their workplaces.

All corporations are political. By accepting the ICE contract previously it was political. Now by reversing they would be changing sides. They were already in the political fray.

<comment><USER10> "By accepting the ICE contract previously it was political."

Just a reminder that government entities like ICE are executing the current laws of the land.

<comment><USER11> Demonstrably and rather obviously untrue. They're violating the law in many instances, including but not limited to the cases of asylum seekers and current green card holders; it's just they're following the evil, xenophobic whims of the current political leadership, who are failing to hold themselves or ICE accountable to the rule of law, so they are, for the moment, getting away with their lawlessness. I hope we can change this with voting in new leadership, but I fear it may be too late.

Aside and personal observation: it's interesting how the same people so vigorously crying for "law and order" are rather particular about which laws they care about enforcing, and which they're willing to overlook. Of course I'm not the first to make this observation.

<comment><USER12> Given that the pictures of kids in cages came from before our current president was in office, this is the first time I've heard anyone call president Obama both evil and xenophobic.

<comment><USER13> Every leader the country has had is trash. That doesn't detract from the fact that the current leadership has managed to lower and re-lower the bar. Consistently widening the window of what outrageous behavior is acceptable. At this point the office of the president is a no holds barred free-for-all and whoever occupies it next will be doing so with a precedent no near zero actionable oversight.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> _"Thank you for the question. Respectfully, we're not going to be reconsidering this," he said on the videoconference call. "Picking and choosing customers is not the approach that we take to these types of questions when it comes to influencing government policy."_

Sounds reasonable. Imo GitHub should be a neutral platform rather than trying to deny service to those they don't agree with. I'm sure electricity and internet companies have lots of contracts with the ICE, no one criticizes that because those are utilities which aren't expected to descriminate based on the views and actions of their customers. I think there is value in having platforms like GitHub with the same approach, you shouldn't have to worry about your code being taken down because it doesn't match the values of a private company. Once you start denying certain customers based on their actions, you implicitly support the actions of all of your other customers, which quickly becomes a very difficult position to be in.

<comment><USER15> I agree that making decisions like this puts the company in a bad position and is risky for them. But it's not like GitHub can suddenly pull the plug on ICE and instantly delete all their code; no data will be lost. There are plenty of alternatives to GitHub so ICE doesn't have to worry about their code being taken down, beyond the small cost of migrating to another service. You can't say the same about the traditional utilities which are normally granted a monopoly.

</comment></comment><comment> phoe-krk Doing cheap PR moves like blacking out logos or posting Twitter "support" posts from CEO accounts or announcing the end of default branches named "master" is, as I said, cheap. The real issue is dealing with the elephants in the room, such as the aforementioned ICE contract of GitHub.

It is about time that corporations, with GitHub here as an example, noticed that backing this or that or another minority or "trying" to solve some medial issue only where it suits them PR-wise is simply abusing that minority in yet another way; it is a means of using that minority, and all the people who constitute that minority, as a tool for public relation stunts and political "but we support X, see?" newspeak that brings no actual change.

I'm genuinely curious if GitHub does support Black and Brown people enough to actually make that support _noticeable_ for everyday lives of these folk.

<comment><USER16> While I may not totally agree with you on the politics, I _do_ totally agree that I have a large discount for words made by corporations _when it is the popular thing to do and when there are few negative consequences of them doing it_. Yes, words of support matter, and I see nothing wrong with wanting to rename blacklist->blocklist and whitelist->allowlist, but I also can't help but roll my eyes a little when I see a LinkedIn post about this terminology change with 40 responses commending how great an action that was. It feels like the ultimate in slacktivism to me.

For example, at an individual level, there is a lot of good research about how housing segregation is one of the largest continuing drivers in systemic racism in the US. So if you have a bunch of BLM posters in your yard, but at the same time fight tooth-and-nail against any increased density in your neighborhood that might actually lower housing costs where you live, well you should just STFU, or at least realize the underpinnings of your blatant hypocrisy.

<comment> phoe-krk > there is a lot of good research about how housing segregation is one of the > largest continuing drivers in systemic racism in the US

Could you link some of it? I'm alien to this particular issue.

<comment><USER16> Here is a good jumping off point: [https://www.facebook.com/NPR/videos/701877010588148/](https://www.facebook.com/NPR/videos/701877010588148/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This seems to be a consequence of the de-professionalization of corporate Tech. "Bring your whole self to work" and all that.

While it seems good natured in this specific case, it can very quickly turn into a small percentage of squeaky politically-minded wheels turning a non- political company into an monoculture activist one.

Personally, I wish we just went back to a professional/private distinction. Keep your politics out of the workplace. Otherwise, I don't see this ending well.

</comment><comment><USER18> Our medium sized company created a simple policy in early 2016 -

No religion - no politics in the office.

I never dreamed that policy would pay dividends so profoundly. The distraction of having activists within your company trying to actively pressure the company via public channels - I mean it's almost unbelievable that this is the new norm. ...an I am so very thankful we seemed to have sidestepped it.

<comment><USER19> Don't celebrate too early. It took less than 5 years for this 'thing' to go from college campuses to big companies... What will you do when a twitter mob comes for your company because you're "oppressing your workers ability to speak out about injustice and human rights" or "remaining silent, which is violence"?

<comment><USER20> This is the real threat we should all be talking about. It's so sad to me that it's barely discussed. These new religions and their witch hunts are great at silencing discussions out of fear.

<comment><USER21> The perceived overreach of political correctness is a vast area of discourse, especially on the right.

<comment><USER18> ...which means it's hardly mentioned in the MSM

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Is GitHub a hug part of what ICE ... does?

Personally I wouldn't want to work for a company actually detaining people, but call me terrible but I'm not sure I'd feel the same about letting them pay to host some code...

<comment><USER8> This is a genuine question. I want to immigrate to USA, but currently there is no easy way to immigrate to USA. On the contrary Canada has a fair immigration system that allowed me to stay, work and eventually be citizen.

Why don't people push for a fair immigration system in USA instead of abolishing ICE? What exactly am I missing here?

<comment><USER23> >but currently there is no easy way to immigrate to USA

The USA has the most immigrants than any other country in the world at almost 47 million residents. That's 4 times higher than the second place country. And the vast majority of them came perfectly legally. For every one person that immigrates to Canada, 6 immigrate to the USA. I don't really know what people are asking for here.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_d...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependent_territories_by_immigrant_population)

<comment><USER24> It's number 67 in the world, using immigrants per capita. Still, a pretty high rate of foreign-born population.

<comment><USER23> Per capita doesn't matter at all in this context though. If you were looking to immigrate to a country, you would have a better chance at getting in to the country that accepts 1 million people per year rather than the one that accepts 1,000 per year. The current population of each country is not a factor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Don't feed the political beast, because once fed, it's never enough.

<comment><USER26> That idea is hasn't been true for decades. You should see how many corps make political donations - what you see is a consequence of 2 things: "Corporations are people (my friend)" and "Citizens United (2010)/Money is free speech". Now that it exists, the question now is who gets control of the corporate megaphone

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Great! This seems like a perfect example of (employment) markets working in a good way. If the employees want the company to act a certain way or take a certain stance, or don't like a contract the company is engaging in, they can first lobby the company to change, and if enough are dissatisfied with the response they can vote with their feet and leave. I realize it's not always so simple, but I see this as a positive sign of workers using our market power.

</comment><comment><USER27> I would have thought that the workers at GitHub would know as much as anyone that restricting access to one Git service would have a negligible impact on ICE. The real impact would be on GitHub themselves, as they would lose any opportunity to help guide policy or technology at ICE or any other government agency.

It may feel better to watch and yell from the outside, and you may have the moral high ground in doing so. But change happens from the inside. We need more companies like GitHub working with agencies to reform their policies.

Also, change is slow. Protests are step one, but there are probably 235 more steps until change is realized. Slow and steady, my friends.

EDIT: To answer the questions about how a company influences policy. Companies influence policy all. the. time. Look at ALEC[1] look at PACs. Look at the fact that Microsoft is not going to be offering facial recognition tech until privacy protections are passed. Not saying ALEC is good, but it exists.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Legislative_Exchange_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Legislative_Exchange_Council)

<comment><USER28> The taxpayer/citizens should influence ICE/government. Not GitHub. Government should serve/fear the people, not corps.

And people wonder why there is a military industrial complex.

<comment><USER29> I don't think encouraging a security department to keep working with a corporation would necessarily help stop the military/industrial complex.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Employees who want to get paid by the company and at the same time trying to control whom their company should or should not do business with should re- apply for the job that matches their beliefs.

Company cannot and should not have to comply with myriad of conflicting opinions and/or try to satisfy wishes of different opinionated groups of different flavors.

This "let's please twitter mob" mentality is hurting our country.

</comment><comment><USER31> I don't understand the calls to abolish ICE. Open borders are simply not a realistic policy in the current world. We can barely keep things operating as it is in the US, what would happen when tens of millions of largely unskilled immigrants were to stream across the border? Do people actually think nothing negative will happen?

<comment><USER32> The specific incarnation of border controls as ICE isn't the only way to control the border.

I'm sure that some people are advocating for completely open borders without concern for consequences. But I think the larger call is saying that ICE as it currently is conceived as a paramilitary-style organization is not the way control the border and manage immigration.

<comment><USER31> >But I think the larger call is saying that ICE as it currently is conceived as a paramilitary-style organization is not the way control the border and manage immigration.

This seems like what people on the right do with Trump. He'll say some outlandish or indefensible thing on Twitter and pundits will walk it back and lay out some complex argument to support it. It's not convincing in either case. It's the same with abolish the police. The protesters seem to be very clear that's what thy want and people will go to great lengths explaining oh no what they really want is to divert funding to community groups and improve training they don't actually want to abolish the police. Like what? Is anyone stupid enough to believe this stuff?

<comment><USER21> What protesters? I attended a march in NYC this weekend and the protesters demands included shifting $1 billion of the NYPD budget to community, education, and social welfare programs, and a $500 million investment fund for black businesses. No one was screaming to get rid of all cops everywhere forever.

Are you genuinely seeking to understand, or do you hols these protesters in too much disdain to actually listen to them?

<comment><USER31> [https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/sunday/floyd- abol...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/sunday/floyd-abolish- defund-police.html)

Feel free to try and explain it away but to say no one is calling for this would at this point be willful blindness. I have complete freedom to think that many of the protests demands are dangerous, poorly thought out and outright foolish.

<comment><USER21> I didn't say no one is calling for anything. I said they weren't at the march I attended. I think you're arguing against a strawman here. Most protesters are not demanding we have zero police.

And yes, you have the freedom to think anything you want.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> There are only so many politically "inelastic" companies and organizations. Customers or employees are bound to have a political opinion that rubs against the company's line(s) of work. The only exceptions are large utilities (e.g. protesting the use of water and electricity in response to climate change) and small retail businesses (which often proudly display their politics and attract like-minded customers).

BLM platform explicitly calls for an "end to all jails, detention centers, youth facilities and prisons as we know them." So maybe GitHub CEO should have not said anything, but he did and its fair for the public (including GitHub employees) to drive accountability to the BLM platform.

And this says nothing of corporate political spending. From the perspective of a dissenting employee, what is the difference between having co-workers who demand an end to ICE contracts (in response to leadership public supporting BLM platform), and collecting salary from a company that donates to politicians who want to abolish ICE?

</comment><comment><USER34> Okay, suppose this works. And even turns out to have an actual impact, somehow.

What will be next?

Gas stations and steak restaurants (or whatever businesses are considered conservative/republican) refusing to serve democrat/liberal customers?

AT&T refusing Internet connectivity to abortion clinics?

<comment><USER35> > Gas stations and steak restaurants (or whatever businesses are considered > conservative/republican) refusing to serve democrat/liberal customers?

Having lived through a year long political crisis in Hong Kong, this is actively happening right now. There's even a whole "yellow economic" (meaning, protestors) where they support businesses who also support them. Some of these businesses refuse to serve customers who don't speak Cantonese, or even recently refused to serve customers who wear a government issued face mask.

Businesses who were considered "against" the protestors, got trashed or set on fire.

Whatever their political stance is, I personally refuse to go to any business who's actively refusing to serve customers based on their political stance. You wouldn't feel right refusing customers based on their skin color or religion, so why do it based on politics?

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> If you take a paycheck from someone, you're implicitly agreeing to carry out their instructions and their vision for their business. If, over time, you have a moral issue with that vision, the best thing for you and that company is to find work elsewhere that is a better fit for your values. It's unreasonable to agree to work for someone and then proceed to undermine their business because it doesn't align with your particular political beliefs.

This would achieve the same ends as protesting, but in a much more ethical manner. Unethical companies would eventually have a harder time finding qualified workers and would suffer accordingly. What wouldn't be happening, is a bunch of people agreeing to serve a business in exchange for money and then reneging on that agreement while still drawing a paycheck.

This is particularly true for higher skilled workers who have other options.

<comment><USER37> > If you take a paycheck from someone, you're implicitly agreeing to carry out > their instructions and their vision for their business

what makes you so sure?

<comment><USER36> That's what employment is. Someone has a bunch of stuff they want done, and someone else agrees to do it in exchange for money.

<comment><USER38> Yes, that's what unemployment means. This has nothing to do with shared values though. I could absolutely work for some company whose values I don't share if they pay me enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I'm starting to wonder if "politics" in english has a different meaning than in spanish.

"Everything is politic" is meaningless to me, in the same way that "everything is top priority" is. If everything is top priority, nothing is top priority.

<comment><USER40> The way they use it in english is more like "everything has a priority." Or "everything has a color."

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> "Alcoholics Anonymous has no opinion on outside issues; hence the A.A. name ought never be drawn into public controversy."

maybe github could learn a thing or two from AA and not get involved in outside issues.

</comment><comment><USER42> Yeah this is going over the line as ICE isn't purely used for evil purposes. They do need to protect boarders, what you need is to change some of ICE's policies. Is sort of like demanding To end all contracts with companies that does not have a have a good diversity policy

</comment><comment><USER43> I have no idea how these organisations can't see that their actions turn off vast swathes of those who regard what's happening in the west as a weaponisation of race in the furtherance of destabilising our (flawed but still the best) civilisations & by doing so, lose the trust of these folk forever.

It saddens me that we collectively rolled over & allowed our software to be politicised, by flagging or cancelling those that see through the narrative & dissented.

</comment><comment><USER44> Illegal migration is not enforced by race. Nobody has the right to live in another country, particularly if they have entered the country without permission.

This is more an indication of how political extremists use race-baiting to push forward changes they want.

</comment><comment><USER45> Why do people on the west coast actively try to conflate their employers with their personal politics? To everyone else in the world this is so utterly bizarre. This, in addition to the high cost of living, is why I refuse to work there.

</comment><comment><USER46> Are open source software licences immoral? Think about it, by making tools open source with MIT or GPL, you are basically allowing anyone (including known immoral actors causing great harm in the world) to freely use them.

By the logic in this thread, it would be more ethical to use a more ambiguous license that allows the creator of the tool to yank the rug out from under any of its users at any time.

</comment><comment><USER47> My question is not so much about ICE, who I personally feel would be reasonable to refuse to do business with in the current circumstance (caveat: I'm not an expert here and could be wrong). My question is about next "unethical" organization that GitHub has a contract with, and the next and the next after that. Do employees have veto power on revenue-generating contracts, generally? Or is ICE an exceptional case? Should new contracts undergo a vote among employees? What if 51% of employees _oppose_ ending the contract with ICE? Would the other side be satisfied then?

I don't see either approach being morally wrong (granting or denying to employees contract veto power), they're both just different ways of governing an organization. These seem like the underlying questions however, and it seems to me that those calling to end the ICE contract should be prepared to answer them.

<comment><USER48> Slippery slope is a logical "fallacy", just like _ad hominems_ or mistaking correlation with causation, to name two examples that, for reasons escaping me, are pointed out incessantly on HN while the former rarely is.

<comment><USER47> I'm not clear where slippery slope ends and generalizing a question such as "how does GH/MSFT determine who to do business with?" or putting a decision into context begins. I don't see this as being at "the top of a slope" as much as already being _on_ the slope. This was not an isolated request, from TFA: "At Microsoft-owned GitHub, _the parent company's concession only served to reinvigorate internal opposition_ to a controversial contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement." So this is not a one-off question, the question of ICE is already part of a sequence of demands/concessions.

To use a metaphor, Alice: give me a dollar; Bob: OK here's a dollar; Alice: Thanks but now I need five dollars; Bob: are you just going to ask me for $10 next? Where does this end? Alice: Aha! That's a _slippery slope_ fallacy.

Slippery slope says "if you do A then it will lead to B and eventually Z." At the moment, we're not at "A" we're already at "B," so I think asking about the rest of the sequence is reasonable.

If management is making concessions to satisfy the workforce's sense of ethics, I think it's reasonable for management to say "OK, after this concession will your sense of ethics be satisfied for the time being? Or is this part of a larger package of demands, and if so what are they?"

To ask a party making concessions to not consider the context at all, the lead up or the implied consequences ("if you did X you'd be a hypocrite to not also do Y") is unreasonable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Honest question and not taking sides on either aisle.

The incarceration and family separation started with the last administration. It's well documented so don't ask me to cite sources. Google is your friend.

Let's say November comes and we have blue in the White House, do those calling for their employer to stop working with ICE/Pentagon/FBI/etc, go quiet and things go back to normal in the news for them?

I think that's something that needs an answer because a lot of these companies have been working with the government prior to 2016.

<comment><USER50> It was wrong then and it's wrong now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> There are a few comments in here already decrying "politicization".

Guess what? Politics are interwoven in every aspect of our lives. You cannot choose to "avoid" them; even suggesting you can be politically neutral _is a political stance_ that comes from a place of privilege, because only the privileged can avoid experiencing negative political consequences inside their bubble.

Collaboration with ICE is collaboration with ICE, whether it's "just hosting code" or actually contracted by them to develop their systems. It's the same deal with Amazon or Facebook or whoever. If you work for them you need to admit to yourself that you are an enabler. Most people can't admit that to themselves, so they maintain an unhealthy cognitive dissonance to keep going.

And it hurts when that dissonance is shattered.

Comparing supporting ICE to a marriage is nonsense, and thinking you can somehow help them be better by keeping them as a customer? A totally naive concept that has been shown not to work in practice since the US 2016 election. (In fact, supporting the monster makes them stronger; if it made them weaker, why would they keep using your product?)

The reckoning we are seeing in tech is long overdue. As developers we are no longer seeing our actions as "politically neutral" and are starting to understand the power we yield collectively to make positive change to our industry.

Nat Friedman is on the wrong side of history here. These empty words are no longer sufficient. Hopefully he figures that out before his tenure at GitHub comes to an end.

<comment><USER52> >Guess what? Politics are interwoven in every aspect of our lives.

Yes, but also companies exist literally only to make money. Companies can't exist without workers. Once a company finds itself in a position of conflict of interest between political views of workers and point of existence of the company - where contracts bring money... we're going to see interesting things.

I wonder, who will break first?

The company will decide it's better to bend to political opinions of employees and end the contract == pay a lot of $money$ for breaking the contract early without delivery and set another precedent where employees decide how and with whom company makes money = uncertain company. Who will make future contracts with such company? Would you outsource your project delivery to a company where employees decide whether your project/office/political stand is good or bad?

Or maybe employees will decide they don't want to work for a company and risk unemployment? Who will risk employing a person who rebels against board members of a company and causes financial damages over broken contract?

I would like to see 100s of GitHub employees leaving GitHub and MS to prove their point, rather than working on the contract, being paid 10x salary of their immigrant desk cleaners and shouting how bad it is the contract exists.

<comment><USER53> > Yes, but also companies exist literally only to make money.

False.

<comment><USER54> Shareholders don't want to make money? That's not their primary goal?

<comment><USER53> "Primary" != "only."

"Shareholders" != "only people with a stake in a company existing."

<comment><USER52> Yes, I worded it completely wrong and people are responding me by concentrating on this word rather than message :(

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Quote: "What I've learned from her is that keeping technology from ICE actively harms those vulnerable populations," he wrote."

Let's assume Microsoft in general, and GitHub in particular will get their way and severe ties with ICE. Guess what's going to happen next?

a- Suddenly ICE is going to become a nice entity and everything going to be peachy

or

b- Chinese will supply the software instead, or worse, is going to be internally made by government, meaning NSA will have another wet dream come true

<comment><USER56> Added to that:

If Github/Microsoft start picking and choosing which agencies to host, I would say it's somewhat likely and understandable that they be blacklisted from future government contracts and contract renewals.

It's also somewhat likely that in such a case, as we have seen with the Huawei moves recently, the US government could halt sale/export of tooling to any other government.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I'm glad they aren't vetting who can use their platform based on arbitrary ideological whims, but I'm still salty about them caving to demands to change the default branch name to something other than "master".

We really need to stop this sort of mob thought policing that has taken over the internet and bullies corporations and individuals into conformance. This is not new, but it seems particularly egregious right now. But how do you stop/mitigate internet mobs without "streisanding" even bigger mobs?

> As Friedman spoke, dozens of employees expressed frustration and outrage in > a company Slack channel with more than 1,200 people, according to > screenshots reviewed by The Times.

We are letting small minorities (dozens out of thousands) amplify their outrage and impose their demands on everyone else. Same thing happens on Twitter, and I really don't like that. It's like that one xkcd[0] except instead of "the people listening" being rational and reasonable, "the people listening" are an angry minority on social media stirring up everyone around them into a blood frenzy.

[0] [https://xkcd.com/1357/](https://xkcd.com/1357/)

</comment><comment><USER57> I'm curious, if Github does decide to end their ICE contract, if this will follow the 'slippery slope' into then combing other companies ICE works with. Surely there's a bank ICE holds their money in, do they have a Github contract? ICE had a contract with Chef (they don't any more), but if they still did, would Github threaten to cutoff Chef's Github contract if they didn't drop them?

And that's all assuming ICE really is the worse Company/Organization that Github has a contract with. As soon as you open up this can of worms, how do you define the line? And even once you do define the line, there will always be edge cases. And once there's enough examples, companies are going to stop going with Github just to avoid the possibility of having to move forcibly later. After all, what Github provides not only has a large number of competitors, both paid and open source, but is a frontend for an already free source control tool (Git itself). Cancelling the ICE contract is an inconvenience at best, ICE's day to day activities wouldn't be affected in the slightest.

</comment><comment><USER58> GitHub has had its ICE controversy for a while now (if not years). Honestly, the leadership should've expected this.

</comment><comment><USER59> When people say they back Black Lives Matter, what does it mean? Is it real support for actual demands or symbolic and emotional support?

According to wikipedia these are BLM's policy demands:

Policy demands In 2016, Black Lives Matter and a coalition of 60 organizations affiliated with BLM called for decarceration in the United States, reparations for slavery in the United States, an end to mass surveillance, investment in public education, not incarceration, and community control of the police: empowering residents in communities of color to hire and fire police officers and issue subpoenas, decide disciplinary consequences and exercise control over city funding of police.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Lives_Matter#Policy_dema...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Lives_Matter#Policy_demands)

</comment><comment><USER60> Nobody commenting here seems to have any experience with ICE or their procedures or the criminal justice system, or the staggering difference between legal and illegal immigration.

Most of this seems to be driven by headlines on social media rather than any true understanding of the issues.

</comment><comment><USER61> I've said it before, and I'll say it again.

People always think unions are for benefits, pay, and safety. Tech needs a union that can fight for ethical coding. Workers need a way to band together and say no, we cannot in good faith work on a project.

</comment><comment><USER62> I'm part Native American, and while I support BLM, Native Americans are facing the exact same tragic societal problems and discrimination as black people. If GitHub supports BLM they should also support Native American Lives Matter.

<comment><USER62> I wish people didn't downvote this. I've spent time in the South Dakota Reservations, and if you've seen those, you would know what I'm talking about.

<comment><USER63> Usually downvoting here means that a comment is too close to the truth or that it deviates from the officially sanctioned topic, here BLM.

So some regard any deviance as an affront or "whataboutism".

Personal anecdotes are also often downvoted, since neither the salon socialists nor the monetarists want to hear them. It is crucial that one stays in one's own bubble.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> What does ICE (a big flawed but necessary federal border guarding agency) have to do with BLM (loose movement to ensure equal treatment of US citizens of color by local police departments and preventing horrible abuses)?

<comment><USER65> Left-side agenda.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> I see this as a parallel to deplatforming, but instead of working to silence a particular speaker by shutting off access to popular distribution channels, here we have calls to shut off a company/government's access to basic software development tools.

I think this is a particularly distinctive case, for example, by comparison to the recent news that Amazon is blocking law enforcement access to Rekognition (facial recognition). Facial recognition and AI in general is fraught with massive ethical concerns to the point where leading developers/researchers in the field are actively abandoning it (e.g. YOLO). There's no such concern about development of source control, certainly no more so than would apply to any business productivity software, or virtually any networking, infrastructure, or database projects. Interestingly, this may signal a developing rift between Open Source licensing ethos which strictly forbids limitation on use, running head-on with political agendas which would seek to limit access to software based on the user. Licensing isn't really a concern in Github's case, but will be a consideration that developers have to make when choosing a license in the future, namely... do I release my software as Open Source and give up my right to stop Bad People from using it for their own benefit?

For a company like GitHub (owned by Microsoft lest we forget) to cut off access to a branch of the Federal government would be extremely foolish, but I believe also not only counter-productive, but also ethically questionable and politically dangerous. I don't believe Github (or most any workplace) should be a political battleground for debates over border policy, and I believe that a vocal minority attempting to weaponizing neutral parties like Github leads to bad business outcomes (lost income, hostile workplaces) as well as bad political outcomes (breeding resentment and polarization).

As far as the particular issue of cutting off ICE from its source control software, I think a less political assessment would find that it's in the best interest of immigrants and refugees for ICE to have top-notch software custom built for the populations that they oversee. I'm not particularly familiar with the many tasks that ICE officers perform on a daily basis, but I know that things like trying to process hundreds of thousands of refugees applying for asylum, or trying to place ~50,000 unaccompanied minors in homes throughout the country is a truly massive logistical challenge, and we don't want a single child slipping through the cracks. Cutting off ICE access to software development tools IMO is actively harming these populations.

</comment><comment><USER67> With that kind of workforce I'd be reluctant to host private repositories there.

Who knows what a radicalized workforce will do in the search for compromising material.

Curious how Friedman will get out if that one. What goes around, comes around.

</comment><comment><USER68> How does the HN sorting algorithm work when this goes from top page to the bottom of the second page despite having by far the most points and is also a relatively fresh post?

</comment><comment><USER69> Seems rather cut-throat. If this type of thing becomes the norm, then the market will just end up with a conservative or apolitical github. Progress?

</comment><comment><USER70> Say you have a SaaS that companies can use, for the sake of argument let's say it's Dropbox.

One day a military company uses your product. Should you ban them?

Are all military companies evil? Or are weapons sometimes necessary?

Let's say you ban them. Where do you draw the line? FBI? Police? Private investigators? Political parties with messages you think are hateful? With messages you just disagree strongly with?

Struggling with this.

</comment><comment><USER71> I'm surprised we haven't seen more Balkanization of services. When IBM and others announced they're not selling facial recognition technology to governments, I have to imagine there are companies who are absolutely willing to. Maybe this is happening already and I am not informed.

Also this for social media like Facebook and Twitter.

</comment><comment><USER72> What is the relationship between GitHub and ICE? Is it ICE hosting their repos on GitHub or is it something more substantial?

</comment><comment><USER73> If working with ICE is so reprehensible, why are none of these employees taking advantage of their in-demand skillset and moving on to companies that better respect their values?

I'm sympathetic with those who point out that corporations typically have more leverage than individual employees, and that changing jobs is not so easy for those who are less privileged. That category, though, of "less privileged" with regards to employment flexibility simply does not apply to the average Github employee, at all, as sircmpwn frequently points out.

Furthermore, regardless of which side of this debate you stand on, it is definitely disheartening to see people so vehemently against this relationship yet do NOT back up their feelings with actions. I cannot help but scoff when I see people on Github with "stop ICE" profile pictures. It's nothing but a profound selfishness: wanting to be on the self-perceived "right side of history" but not so much so that you set your origin to Gitlab or SourceHut instead...

<comment><USER74> It seems weird to expect them to jump directly to the nuclear option of quitting. Making a demand like this is a first step, and it may turn out not to be necessary to quit if the employer caves.

<comment><USER73> Fair enough! Though, you do realize that the whole ICE thing has been baking for nearly a year now? The central question I think is: at what point does the employee realize that discussion is more for his/her sake than for the sake of actual change?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER75> Private companies should not be expected to play moral authorities in political issues. They are there to make a profit doing anything that is legal, giving into employee demands on political issues is a road they shouldn't take , it will set a bad precedent.

</comment><comment><USER76> Just food for thought:

If Github backed out, wouldn't someone else fill their spot by using Gitlab? And if so, isn't that transition cost paid for by tax payers?

I'm mostly wondering what's the material impact of Github backing out, outside of optics.

<comment><USER46> Yeah, but then GitLab will be pressured to back out, and then BitBucket will be too, then ICE will use Gitea, but then the pressure will come back to GitHub to boot Gitea off their platform unless they write ICE out of the license, etc. it's a never ending mess that will harm the software development community.

<comment><USER76> Gitlab is open source, right? Doesn't have to be done by Gitlab the company, could be a consultant.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER77> Wait till they find out their tax dollars fund ICE.

<comment><USER78> well its not like you get to decide where your tax dollars go.

</comment></comment><comment><USER79> Thanks for reminding me that I was still paying the pro subscription even though private repos are free now.

</comment><comment><USER80> Good, more workers should demand exodus from police and army related projects. Anything less is hypocricy

</comment><comment><USER81> Is there some way around the paywall I am running into, or are we all discussing this without having read the article, or are most of you LA Times subscribers?

</comment><comment><USER82> I fully support steps being taken to reign in police and ICE, however it's still painfully ironic that CHAZ currently has been prioritizing enforcing borders, has roaming groups (peaceful and otherwise) ousting dissidents or those deemed as dissidents and verifying "citizenship".

This kind of behavior in any form is troubling.

<comment><USER83> I went to the CHAZ to throw a frisbee with friends yesterday, and literally nothing you just said is true. Be aware that the Seattle Police Department is running an active disinformation campaign about the CHAZ, which is eagerly lapped up by people predisposed to believe the lies.

<comment><USER44> And, you know, videos of actual events in CHAZ.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER84> Never virtue signal if you are a CEO, unless all consequences are thought through. ;-)

<comment><USER56> Friedman made his bed years ago in this regard. I don't blame him though because the same people causing shit for him now will also pull the "silence is violence" or "remaining silent is being complicit" angle should he now tow the line.

And if he disagrees with them, well, look how quickly they ran to the LA Times with their private internal comms slack screenshots.

</comment></comment><comment><USER85> For anyone else wondering, ICE stands for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

</comment><comment><USER86> Corporations are people. If they don't act ethically, we can't expect people to act ethically.

Ending a contract with an agency that runs concentration camps is good. Better, though, is to not accept any contracts with any government that runs concentration camps.

Small steps are good. Big steps are better.

PS: great fear from all paying customers that run concentration camps that an internet mob could separate them from their code at any time -- sounds like a good policy to me. Not as good as "Don't be evil", but reasonably close.

<comment><USER87> Your choice of language by saying "concentration camps" is unproductively hyperbolic and reminiscent of Nazis killing Jews in WW2. People found to have been here illegally are being kept in detention centers until deportation or trial. Nobody is getting gassed or burned in ovens.

<comment><USER88> Merriam-Webster definition of concentration camp: "a place where large numbers of people (such as prisoners of war, political prisoners, refugees, or the members of an ethnic or religious minority) are detained or confined under armed guard —used especially in reference to camps created by the Nazis in World War II for the internment and persecution of Jews and other prisoners"

Japanese internment camps from WW2 easily meet that definition.

I think immigration detention centers easily meet that definition too: they hold large numbers of individuals whose only crime is being "the other".

<comment><USER89> I'm pretty sure that's it's criminal in every country on earth to violate the immigration laws of that country

<comment><USER48> No. And it almost isn't in the US:

"Being illegally present in the U.S. has always been a civil, not criminal, violation of the INA[Immigration and Naturalization Act]"

"Criminal violations of the INA, on the other hand, include felonies and misdemeanors and are prosecuted in federal district courts. These types of violations include the bringing in and harboring of certain undocumented aliens, aliens (INA §275), ..."

As can already be deduced from the above, illegal entry is a _misdemeanor_. Only the bringing in, harbouring, and certain specific aggravation conditions raise it to a felony.

(From [https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL33351.pdf](https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL33351.pdf))

<comment><USER60> It is absolutely a criminal violation. Also there are 2 different acts: the crossing of the border (which even a US citizen can be charged for crossing illegally) and being in the country without permission.

Also misdemeanors are still considered serious crimes. I don't get where this hand-waving "because it's just a misdemeanor" comes from.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER90> i wish someone of these workers quit. Tons of IT jobs even in covid.

If you are not quitting then you are also profiting form ICE contract.

<comment><USER26> > If you are not quitting then you are also profiting form ICE contract.

This is reductive, right up there with "Why don't you move to Canada?" Do you agree with every single action done by all entities you belong to: family, employer, HOA, neighborhood, city council, state/province, and country? If you disagree with the actions of a family member - is your solution to cut them off immediately without talking to them? We spend one third of our working lives with our employers - sometimes we like them well enough to entitle us to "interventions".

Additionally, in their quest to reduce churn/lower salaries, the employers are the ones who seek employee loyalty by convincing us that we are "like family", or show that they are humane (or at least not amoral). They can't have their cake and eat it - if you're an amoral company - _own it_ like Oracle does and take the hit on the type of employees you get.

<comment><USER90> > If you disagree with the actions of a family member - is your solution to > cut them off immediately without talking to them?

I don't think your employer is like "a family member", this analogy is too absurd to counter.

> family, employer, HoA, neighborhood, city council, state/province, and > country?

one of these is not like the other. you get to participate in decision making process via voting in HOA, country ect. Employment is purely transactional like getting coffee from a coffeeshop, you have no say in what kind of beans to pick.

<comment><USER26> It's not absurd at all for many people as their very _identity_ is quite entangled with their employer and the work they do as they spend the majority of their waking hours doing something work related.

Since employment-as-family was not relatable for you, how about: if you disagree with your HOA/neighborhood watch/city council, is your first instinct to sell your house and move away? Wouldn't canvassing support for your PoV be more reasonable, as an initial action?

<comment><USER90> employment is not consensus like HOA, yes you can get your voice heard in HOA by participating, its by design.

Correct analogy in this case would be HOA where all the decisions are made by chairman of HOA. In that case yes, packup and move.

you don't choose your family members by interviewing with them.

> Since employment-as-family was not relatable for you,

In my family we(adults) are all equals and make decisions that are agreeable to everyone.

In you family you have "head" who makes all the important decisions without checking with family members first?

I don't want to think of myself as a child family member at my employer who gets no say in anything major. I can't relate to that at all.

<comment><USER26> I think we are speaking across each other because we have fundamental differences in how we view the employment relationship. I do not expect consensus with employment, but I will not work at any organization that makes it blatantly clear that my voice will _not_ be heard. Oracle makes that abundantly clear - you don't hear many stories about activism from folk at Oracle at that reason.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER91> Mmmm, alternative: GitLab.com?

[https://about.gitlab.com/company/](https://about.gitlab.com/company/)

</comment><comment><USER92> If you are concerned about the business that your corporate employer engages in, there is a simple solution: quit your job and become an activist.

</comment><comment><USER93> Put your money where your mouth is.

</comment><comment><USER94> We should boycott Hacker News for letting people link to so many git repos that are hosted on GitHub which also hosts ICE repos.

</comment><comment><USER95> We should demand congressional investigations into the operations of ICE, CIA, NSA, FBI, etc.

</comment><comment><USER96> Just wait till the election is over and Trump is out. All this virtue signaling will stop because their preferred party is in power, and by definition everything that party does is virtuous.

Even if Biden continues the exact same enforcement with ICE, no one will care.

</comment><comment><USER97> > I think if the bar is "don't kill minorities"

Take this as my personal possibly wrong opinion, but this kind hyperbolic phrasing is only going to hurt your cause.

The same as people defending "punch a nazi" slogans.

They will give your tribe influence, but also steadily decrease your chance at long term victory.

Honestly I cannot understand how many people (I don't care about sides) can believe in progress via violence, promoting violence, or extreme polarization.

I cannot change your minds, but sure I hope it were easier to have a moderate to moderate conversation.

<comment><USER98> Please don't take HN threads on generic ideological tangents. They're never interesting and they never end well. Even in the context of the current thread, this subthread stands out as off topic.

[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20generic%20ideolog&sort=byDate&type=comment)

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

We detached this subthread from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23529671](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23529671).

<comment><USER97> Understandable, I should have at the very least left out the specific reference.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER99> Going woke isn't a great move for a company. And how many workers? Just the vocal "activists?"

In the near future companies will be wary of hiring people with a history of shrill woke activism. Better a quiet Nazi than a vocal Communist.

</comment><comment><USER100> ICE has done unethical things, but...they are also essential in many of their roles, and every country has a similar agency. Why not use the platform and power you have to push for changes instead of just severing ties? It doesn't really accomplish anything.

</comment><comment><USER101> Company leadership who don't understand the danger of politics are poisoning their own well. If you open the door to what is fundamentally not part of your core values and culture (in this case a programming/engineering platform), then expect the worse.

</comment><comment><USER102> Is the US the only country on _earth_ where the media is so hellbent on propaganda for opening the borders?

I can't think of another nation that does this. Not brazil, not bolivia, certainly not argentina, not spain, hell no japan lol, russia of course not.

What makes the US so special in this unique problem with the media?

<comment><USER46> Good question, tons of other countries are extremely racist towards immigrants (Japan, Italy, etc) yet only the USA gets lambasted.

I think a lot of people just focus on the USA because it's an easy target.

<comment><USER102> >USA because it's an easy target.

What makes the US especially an easy target?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER103> I keep forgetting to cancel my paid Github account because of the ICE contracts. Thanks for the reminder you're totally okay empowering fascism, Github.

(P.S. Much love for everyone inside Github who has thrown a shit storm or even quit over this shit)

</comment><comment><USER104> Corporations should remain politically neutral, and only act in profit maximizing ways. That does not make accepting a contract with ICE political, and it is disingenuous to make such a claim. Accepting the contract maximizes profit.

Every country has borders and reasons to limit immigration in various ways (for example, to certain skillsets). There is no blanket allowance to walk into any country outside of a port. This is plainly illegal. When laws are broken, someone needs to enforce the law, apply consequences, and do so as efficiently as possible. ICE is that agency for the US. I feel like those who think ICE somehow shouldn't exist are simply not being level headed and ignoring the reality of the fact that we are a nation that exists first and foremost to serve its _current_ citizens, just like all other nations.

Lastly, by taking political stances, these companies are discriminating against the silent cohorts in their employee base that do not align with those views. It is an especially big problem in tech companies, most of whom are headquartered in the SF Bay Area or Seattle, two progressive/far-left areas that have skewed politics. Other workers who don't have an issue with the company serving ICE don't have a voice. They have no psychological safety. It is irrational for companies to respond to employee pressure or social media outrage - they should take randomized anonymous polls of their employee base if they truly want a good signal on employee sentiment.</comment>


Mozilla CEO: Firefox Faced Advertiser Backlash Over "Do Not Track" Feature  - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/1739058/mozilla-ceo-firefox-faced-advertiser-backlash-for-do-not-track-feature

<comment><USER2> I'm unfamiliar with browser design. What parts of this need to be implemented by the ad networks, and what parts need to be done by the browser? I would have thought that clearing your cookies goes a long way.

Is it technically possible for a browser to activate a TOR service for a "Do Not Track" feature?</comment>


Map of Related Books for "100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People" - <AUTHOR> https://anvaka.github.io/greview/100-things-designer/1/ <comment><AUTHOR> The book was good - learned quite a bit from it. Easy to read and very insightful.

Made this map to see what else is around</comment>


Someday, A Tiny Subway Will Deliver Your Groceries - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/autopia/2009/08/someday-a-tiny-subway-will-deliver-your-groceries/

<comment><USER3> I have only five words and a link: The Alameda-Weehawken Burrito Tunnel [http://www.idlewords.com/2007/04/the_alameda- weehawken_burri...](http://www.idlewords.com/2007/04/the_alameda- weehawken_burrito_tunnel.htm)

<comment> s-phi-nl This one of the funniest things I've read all week!

<comment><USER3> Its really innovative, huh?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> First, according to <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prague_pneumatic_post>, the Prague system ended in 2002 when it flooded.

Second, the New York City post offices used to send packages to each other via pneumatic tubes. The system stopped in 1953, though, when it became rather impractical. I see that very much happening here.

And also, do we really _want_ this sort of thing? Are we just too lazy to get out of our houses to get a loaf of bread or whatever?

<comment> aka- Yes. Online grocery shopping with dedicated delivery services is huge here (in the UK). Imagine how much bigger it would be when you could order stuff in much smaller batches at more regular intervals? Loaf of bread and a pint of milk to home at 7am, and a sandwich to your office at 1pm?

If you include the postal system and all those little trips people make, we are moving stuff between various hubs and houses several times a day anyway, often with dedicated trips using our hugely inefficient, slow and polluting vehicles. We could really get the eco crowd onside with this one.

<comment><USER5> _and a sandwich to your office at 1pm?_

<http://twitter.com/deliciouslunch> did that for a few weeks, on a local scale. Tweet to them in the morning, have a sandwich delivered same day.

They stopped pretty quickly - but it looks like they might have plans to resume one day.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Tilleman acknowledges the idea sounds like a Tomorrowland attraction from > 1965, but says it's completely feasible _with enough funding_.

Really, most projects tend to be feasible with enough funding. Actually, the word feasible seems to be somewhat linked to whether or the idea would work with reasonable funding.

I think a system where packages are delivered via small, electrical driver- less trucks is much more feasible, since roads already exist.

</comment><comment><USER7> Any promise about massive new infrastructure are dubious, especially one that is met by pre-existing services.

<comment><USER8> You mean like ubiquitous fiber communications?

This is entirely plausible. The building of the infrastructure could be highly automated and done in parallel.

<comment><USER7> There is too much pre-existing infrastructure underground to automate it completely in a cost-efficient way. In general, almost all construction work other than heavy lifting is still done by people.

that said, I am looking forward to my flying car.

<comment><USER9> You missed a word, which I added in italics:

"There is too much pre-existing infrastructure underground to automate it completely in a cost-efficient way _today_."

I've said on HN a couple of times that robotics work is going to radically affect society, and this is the sort of thing I'm thinking of. If we had real robots that could be turned loose with nothing more than a layout of the desired network and the necessary resources, and could intelligently deal with most blockages and intelligently call in human help when needed (and _only_ when needed), then the cost equation of this idea changes a _lot_. (Also, robots to do a lot of basic maintenance without human intervention are probably necessary.)

Right now, it's a total pipe dream. Perhaps when we get such robots, it'll be more cost-effective to do something else instead, like an above-ground robotic bucket brigade for item deliveries. Or robotic delivery vehicles. But the tunnel approach may turn out to be feasible. (Or, more likely, a bucket brigade in some places, tunnels in others, and robotic drivers in yet others, where each makes most sense, freely intermixing delivery styles as needed.) So, bear in mind it is not that I am predicting specific results like "tubes in the ground", but that robots are going to radically change the cost side of many cost/benefit analyses.

<comment><USER7> "robots" (forever undefined beyond just that they're robotic) have been promised as the general fix-all to the world's physical labors since at least the 1950's.

Regardless of who does the labor, the reason robots have not spread further is that its still significantly cheaper to have people do things. So why spend the money replacing people with robots in this situation, all to build something that can be done already?

<comment><USER9> "general fix-all to the world's physical labors since at least the 1950's."

First, I'm not saying they're a "fix-all". I'm saying they're going to disrupt cost/benefit relations increasingly over the next few years. That's a much more defensible statement.

Second, part of the mental block that people are having with understanding this is that the promises that were made in the 1950s were _premature_ , not _wrong_. Look at actual research coming out of robotics right now, not from the 1950s. It's still early, but there's been a qualitative change in the past couple of years; things are moving again. We got used to "nothing happening" so much so that it became just part of the mental background of our lives, but that doesn't make that rational.

There's nothing stopping people from being part of the delivery network, either. The most likely outcome is that it simply becomes an outgrowth of today's Fedex and UPS, starting in the cities and spreading out as the economics make sense. It's not even as much of a discontinuity as you might think, as from what I've seen of photos of the inside of the hubs, the hubs are already building-sized robots with small amounts of human help. It's just an expansion of the already-robotic-core of the delivery system, not an introduction of a brand new concept.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It seems like it would be easier to use tiny robot zepplins instead. Much more CPU power would be required to control the robots, but that seems like it would be cheaper than setting up a nationwide network of tunnels.

Or in cities with footpaths, what about strapping a GPS and AI to a segway- like robot and sending that on its way?

<comment><USER11> Miniature Zepplins are great until the wind starts blowing. Most of the large cities are coastal.

Robots on segways are ok until someone decides they need another segway (or whatever it happens to be carrying).

Of course, I think the tunnels could suffer the same security problems, whether physical or virtual. Imagine hacking your neighbourhood tunnel to get free pizza!

<comment><USER10> Yes, wind might be an issue for miniture zepplins, though I wonder whether there might be ways to mitigate the effect of wind. It's not like they'd be flying very high.

Regarding robots on segways, the robots would not be _on_ the segways; they'd be self-balancing robots of approximately human dimension with a rack for carrying parcels. You wouldn't be able to easily ride one, and stealing one could be made quite difficult. For instance, you could have the robot automatically phone home along with it's current GPS position when it detects itself being "kidnapped". Or you could program it to emit an extremely loud siren. Or fry its own circuits so that it's useless to the criminals. Or snap photographs of the perps and email them to a remote location.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> aka- The only thing that prevents from thinking about this idea in the same way as flying cars is our water delivery network. if we could build that 100+ years ago (albeit at gigantic expense), perhaps we have finally reached the technology level where we can expand to an extremely high-speed automated 24-hour postal service.

When you think about it, society is already curving back towards more delivery services and less 'go and fetch' services - I know I now do more shopping online than I do in an actual shop, and those thousands of dedicated supermarket delivery trucks (and attendant drivers_ are a huge saving waiting to made, alongside the postmen.

What we need is for the government to step in and finance a really large scale trial in co-operation with the postal service and the various home delivery services. Mail, pizza and groceries would be enough of a tipping point I think.

</comment><comment><USER12> Ahhhh, yes. The tubes. I've heard of this internet before.

</comment><comment><USER13> _Tunnel paths will be pre-planned so as to avoid interfering with existing infrastructure._

I for one am skeptical of this. There is _a lot_ of underground infrastructure which isn't documented. Just think about all of the wiring, sewer lines, gas lines, which are in a typical urban environment. Most of this just has to be found by hand digging. That said, I'd love to be proven wrong.

</comment><comment><USER14> This isn't a prank? I find the claims dubious.

What are the energy costs of automating the burrowing of these tunnels to connect,say a small city like Boston? The Boston Sewer network is ~1500 miles ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Water_and_Sewer_Commissi...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Water_and_Sewer_Commission)) and I am guessing this would have a comparable edge length.

And then, how do you deal with breakdowns, logistically and financially? It will have more complicated machinery than mere plumbing, with finite half- lives that'll require switch-outs.

The Boston Sewer Commission charges 60 dollars per month per family unit, and I am guessing a significant fraction goes into upkeep.

Will anyone want to spend that kind of money for the slim marginal benefit of getting things a bit faster than Amazon?

<comment><USER15> seriously? Boston would be one of the more difficult cities to connect. Boston is old, has a very established infrastructure, and a pretty expansive underground infrastructure already. I would say doing this in a place like Minneapolis might be easier because its newer (more documented, less underground infrastructure) of course then you have weather problems.

<comment><USER14> True,Boston may be a bad example for those reasons, but I wanted an example mainly to get a handle on the numbers. Minneapolis might be a better fit, but will the tubing mileage needed and the problems change?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Apart from agreeing with all the reasons below why this won't work - <USER2> technical and the blazingly obvious - and still being an ardent lover of all types of tech... I think that in the 21st century where all our labour saving devices seem to take all our time to operate, control, log in/out, update, check and generally fiddle with so that we have next to zero free time.. isn't there a certain pleasure being missed here in taking a walk to your corner store, saying 'Hi' to a passing neighbour and grabbing a few groceries before getting back home in time to catch the latest episode of Family Guy? Isn't this just another reason for us to stay trapped in front of the computer never leaving the house? /me ducks under a flying car piloted by a pig

</comment><comment><USER17> Great idea and these guys have taken it pretty far already: <http://www.cargocap.com/>

In a couple of decades, our kids will be asking us: "... and you had heavy trucks deliver goods within the city? Nasty."

</comment><comment><USER18> There was a system like this in New York until the 1950s, when trucks killed it off. If you search google you can also get the RTF version which includes some grainy photos.

[http://www.usps.com/postalhistory/_rtf/PneumaticTubes2-09.rt...](http://www.usps.com/postalhistory/_rtf/PneumaticTubes2-09.rtf)

No doubt that such a network could be insanely useful (although why the empahsis on having it running to every house? Wouldn't one delivery point per block be adequate?). But I'm extremely skeptical about the autonomous tunnel boring machine. If it's so easy, buy some cheap land and do a demonstration, guys. Talk is cheap.

</comment><comment><USER19> For all practical purposes, this would be like the replicator on Star Trek. You select from a menu of offerings, press a button, and whatever you ordered pops out a little while later.

(sigh) Nothing that cool would ever happen in real life.

<comment><USER20> _Nothing that cool would ever happen in real life._

Perhaps not exactly like that. But in some cities, Amazon offers same-day delivery that is like $7 for Prime customers. (Sadly, not Chicago.) Order your new computer in the morning, it shows up at your office / home in the afternoon. Pretty convenient. No tubes required.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Automating our point to point transportation system would be a huge value. Seems like this would compete in some ways with self-driving vehicles (though a controlled rail system seems more energy efficient).

</comment><comment><USER21> Also on HN this morning: "The career choice that delivers", about a postman.

It's not unusual that I see articles here both on how some new device is going to save us from physical labor, and right next to that an article about how somebody discovered that they're happier when doing more physical activity.

I don't think I want a tiny subway to deliver my groceries. What's the point?

<comment><USER22> I can do plenty of physical activity and labor without going to a store (an activity that I very much dislike, with the exception of the grocery at 3am when I'm the only customer).

The point is I can now choose how to do my physical activity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Flying cars first, please.

</comment><comment><USER24> Chicago used to have an underground tunnel delivery system, using tunnels originally built to house telephone lines, used to deliver coal & remove ash:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Tunnel_Company>

</comment><comment><USER25> Reminds me of the 5th element.

<comment><USER26> Then, I bet you missed "Brazil".

Edit: I've watched The Fift Element three of four times, Brazil only once. But I can't help thinking in "Brazil" when I read about tubes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> The rats in my city will be very, very happy indeed.

<comment><USER28> New business model: design a pet carrier that can run in the cargo tunnel, and rent out cats....

<comment><USER22> Better gaming model: design a cargo box for the tunnel with web cams and laser turrets (or some other form of rat killing small arms). Working title: ratpocalypse, until something cooler is suggested.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> So anyone with a shovel is a hacker?

</comment><comment><USER25> Reminds me of the mail delivery system in the 5th element... So many creative innovations in that movie.

</comment><comment><USER5> "When Paris hosted the Exposition Universelle in 1900, it unveiled its vision for the future of transport. The trottoir roulant was a moving walkway that circled the fair in a 3-kilometre loop, its articulated wooden segments "gliding around like a wooden serpent with its tail in its mouth", according to one reporter.

Chicago's walkway, the brainchild of engineer Max Schmidt, consisted of three rings, the first stationary, the second moving at 4 kilometres per hour and the third at 8 km/h, an arrangement that allowed walkers to adjust to each speed before moving to the next.

In fact, the idea of high-speed walkways had been established in New York longer than anywhere else. Back in 1871, local wine merchant Alfred Speer patented the first "endless-travelling sidewalk", and promptly proposed an ambitious elevated moving walkway along Broadway. It would have zipped pedestrians along at up to 30 km/h

Undaunted, Schmidt proposed a flurry of similar projects around Manhattan - running down Broadway, along Wall Street, over the Williamsburg Bridge and across 23rd and 34th Street. To Schmidt, the advantages of the moving walkway were so compelling that he was convinced they would supplant some subways rather than supplement them. By 1909, he was pushing a massive $70 million scheme that would provide Manhattan with a network of subterranean moving sidewalks."

\- [http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20327200.200-how- the-m...](http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20327200.200-how-the-moving- walkway-nearly-overtook-the-metro.html?full=true)</comment>


KartMe.com - Share Your Lists - Gets Seed Funding - <AUTHOR> http://kartme.com/blog/kartme.com-funded-make-sure-you-never-lose-links-or-forget-recommendations

<comment><AUTHOR> let me know if you have any questions about the funding. happy to lend advice to this community if i can.</comment>


Using the Specification Pattern to Build a Data-Driven Rules Engine - <AUTHOR> https://blog.jonblankenship.com/2019/10/04/using-the-specification-pattern-to-build-a-data-driven-rules-engine/ <comment><USER2> There's a lot of interesting things you can build on top of these sorts of rules engines, like optimizations. I had to deal with a system that allowed users to enter arbitrary boolean expressions and we had to use them to filter out records from a very large stream of data, and optimizing for speed was very important. Thee's the obvious changes, like flattening out deeply-nested expressions as much as possible. You can sort sub-clauses in an AndSpecification so that the ones most likely to be false are first, so that you are more likely to short-circuit and cut down on evaluation time (and you sort in the reverse order for the OrSpecification). But you can actually do some more advanced optimizations. In my case, we knew that for a given expression provided by users the overwhelming majority of records would not match. So for a given expression A we would derive a simpler formula B such that A => B (and thus not B => not A) where B was cheaper to evaluate, then we would evaluate the expression as B and A. If B was false it means A would be false anyway, so we could short-circuit and skip the more expensive test.

<comment><USER3> If you look close at that article, what they describe is not a real "rules engine" but just a set of boolean valued functions.

Real business rules engines use something like

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rete_algorithm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rete_algorithm)

Production rules systems in the 1970s (when they were in vogue for "expert systems") did not use indexes and generally had poor execution performance compared to modern "business rules" engine.

Production rules are related to other logic-based methods of programming such as "logic programming" (which tends to progress backwards from a desired consequence to prove it is satisfied) or "theorem provers" that could demonstrate that a section of code satisfies certain invariants.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> In other words: an Enterprise Rules Engine [https://thedailywtf.com/articles/The_Enterprise_Rules_Engine](https://thedailywtf.com/articles/The_Enterprise_Rules_Engine)

If you see this pattern at work, just run!

</comment><comment><USER5> In Clojure-land, there are a few similar projects. I enjoy working with Clara: [http://www.clara-rules.org](http://www.clara-rules.org), [https://github.com/cerner/clara-rules](https://github.com/cerner/clara-rules)

</comment><comment><USER6> As soon as I saw "public class PriceSpecification" I got a creepy feeling.

Why shouldn't the specifications be more purely data, like {field:"price", operator:">", level: 150 }

Then you DON'T need to write new classes for DividendYieldSpecification and PeRatioSpecification - you just need to make sure those fields are available in the data, or write support to derive them when they are requested.

<comment><USER7> Things would work both ways, of course. For me the difference is a) the extent to which I want to make the domain model explicit, and b) how much I value build-time elimination of bugs vs run-time flexibility.

Data-driven approaches leave a lot implicit, meaning that it can be hard to answer the question, "What's really possible here?" And they can only be verified to the extent you have all the data, which usually means a lot of checks are deferred to run time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> So happy I did not have to work with Java for a long time. The amount of boilerplate and cognitive overhead is insane! The factory was really the cherry on the cake...

</comment><comment><USER9> Any other ML programmers look at this and see a very verbose discriminated union?

</comment><comment><USER10> So many simple good ideas seem to come from Domain Driven Design.

<comment><USER11> Feeling cranky today, lockdown and everything. This is an elementary interpreter, clumsily implemented because of all the object oriented cruft.

<comment><USER12> Indeed... in Haskell this can be implemented with a GADT and an evaluator which is really easy to express.

Still useful to know the "pattern" regardless of OOP cruft, Javascript prototypes, or Haskell data types.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Important to mention, but when I checked out the specification pattern. It's useful to know that it can only be applied if your programming language of choice supports expression trees ( eg. C# )

<comment><USER14> What is an expression tree? I've done this with arrays of structs in C as well as nested dictionaries in python, and sexps in both lisp and python. I could do it trivially in x86 if needed. Maybe sexps are "expression trees", but it seems almost any language can implement this pattern. It was much nicer with data literals than without, but data literals aren't a prerequisite.

<comment><USER15> Expression trees are a .NET capability to compile a series of expressions during runtime. It's not required for this at all; it's just an optimization. It allows the complex tree of Specification objects to be compiled down into a simple delegate function, rather than evaluating by walking the tree.</comment></comment></comment>