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Though I initially sympathized with the name change from master to main (cause I don't care what it is called), I am now more of the opinion that this kind of w

• mlazowik 6y ago
  At the risk of being cpt obvious: <= 10% of plastic has ever been recycled + AFAIK there’s a pretty low limit on how many times you can recycle. https://text.npr.org/897692090 https://text.npr.org/897692090 > Plastic also degrades each time it is reused, meaning it can't be reused more than once or twice.
• robin21 6y ago
  It’s more about creating a new enemy in the people who still use master branch. Some people always need someone to hate on.
• myspy 6y ago
  I think such a change generates awareness. A lot of problems linger in the tech sector I'm not really aware of. The write up of the article author sheds light again on biased recruitment in the tech sector. Something that appears to be a fundamental problem with the education sector in the US being broken.
  • emteycz 6y ago
    True, it generated awareness - but also hate, possibly much more than not.
    • XorNot 6y ago
      If someone decided they don't care about bias in the tech sector because the default git branch name was changed, they weren't going to and didn't care to start with.
      • gopiandcode 6y ago
        This feels like a strawman - the issue isn't people deciding they don't care about bias because of this change, but rather that if tech companies are bending over so much as to make such an insignificant change to avoid seeming biased against minorities then how could bias in the tech industry exist at all?
        • read_if_gay_ 6y ago
          Also, this kind of change might increase cynicism.
        • cforrester 6y ago
          I'm confused by this question, aren't you essentially asking, "how can a problem exist if some people are presently taking actions that try to mitigate that problem?"
          • emteycz 6y ago
            No, they're asking "what even is the problem if the solution is this?"
      • morlockabove 6y ago
        I wonder how many friends that attitude will win you.
    • bregma 6y ago
  • slightwinder 6y ago
    But it is good awarness? The major awarness people get from this cases is not about actual problems, but about very questionable wording-problems and behaviour of certain people. Not sure whether this at the end not creates more hate&blind eyes than important awarness.
  • Dirlewanger 6y ago
    The only awareness it generates is awareness to do the same language policing in other places that never asked for it.
• lcrz 6y ago
  I have to separate my plastics for them to be recycled. It has actually made me realize how much plastic a small family throws away every single week.
  • emodendroket 6y ago
    The majority of plastics aren't even accepted by my town's recycling program.
    • warmwaffles 6y ago
      I have the same issue and it's frustrating, but I understand. Last time I checked we don't even recycle the plastics here in the US. They get packed up and sent over seas which is even worse.
      • emodendroket 6y ago
        Less so since many of the target countries stopped accepting it. But the issue is that the stuff you could make by recycling these categories is of such low quality that nobody wants to buy them.
• zimpenfish 6y ago
  > as it distracts from addressing the root cause. This would imply that people are capable only of doing one thing at a time and, potentially, that they're only capable of doing one thing full stop. I would honestly be amazed if a single person, anywhere[1], looked at this change and thought "yep, I don't have to think about slavery now". > think of themselves as somewhat environmentally responsible. Well, I guess they're more environmentally responsible than if they weren't recycling plastic. It's better to do something, however small, than nothing, surely? (And I doubt their environmental footprint even registers in the grand scheme of things - it's industry we need to shame, not individuals for the moment.) [1] Who wasn't already heavily invested in ignoring the repercussions of slavery, etc., I suppose.
  • twic 6y ago
    > If we can do both, why do we never do both? https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/perhaps-we-cannot-do-both https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/perhaps-we-cannot-do-bo...
  • wraptile 6y ago
    > This would imply that people are capable only of doing one thing at a time No, but it certainly makes you care less. Human attention is not linear.
  • caseyross 6y ago
    > I would honestly be amazed if a single person, anywhere[1], looked at this change and thought "yep, I don't have to think about slavery now". Surprisingly, human minds do seem to work that way. After doing a "good" deed, we're liable to believe that we've done our part, and owe society no further action. Even if our good deed didn't actually change anything. This effect is often called "moral licensing".
    • zimpenfish 6y ago
      > After doing a "good" deed, we're liable to believe that we've done our part, and owe society no further action. Yet people keep on recycling and switching their lightbulbs after they do the first one (a "good" deed.) People keep protesting even after they've succeeded in one protest. etc.
• pietrovismara 6y ago
  > this kind of window-dressing might actually be harmful as it distracts from addressing the root cause The root cause can't be addressed by the same people who reap the benefits of this system, because it's so deep in its core that it would require substantial change, possibly breaking the system itself.
• globular-toast 6y ago
  > For the record, I do recycle plastic. You don't. Nobody does. The plastic you "recycle" gets turned into lower grade plastic and so on until it gets landfilled. For plastic, the only way is down. Steel, aluminium and glass are examples of materials that are recyclable.
  • tda 6y ago
    You are correct, let me rephrase that: I separate plastic so it can be either burnt together with my other trash, or shipped to Turkey where god knows what environmental crime is committed with it. An extremely small percentage might be melted into some low grade park bench. Absolutely zero plastic will be turned into high quality plastic pellets for industrial as a substitute for new plastic. It does not make me feel good, but not doing it makes me feel worse. I just voted today for real change. Voting matters, plastic "recycling" doesn't* * if you live in a place where you have meaningfully different options, not just two flavors of the same
    • anticensor 6y ago
      > or shipped to Turkey where god knows what environmental crime is committed with it. We Turks just produce a lower grade of plastic out of it. Source: my father works in plastic industry
• vishnugupta 6y ago
  > I am now more of the opinion that this kind of window-dressing might actually be harmful as it distracts from addressing the root cause Came here to express similar opinion and your articulation has succinctly and perfectly captured it so I'll just add to it. Over the years I've come to realise that effecting real change to address the root cause is hard. It almost certainly won't be done by private corporations; the changes need to be enforced by (and at) institutions that are answerable to communities e.g., right to quality education, a humane law enforcer. Not only is change going to be hard but slow as well. However with more and more institutions getting privatised (private jails, contracted police force etc.,) whose sole motive is to earn more profits I don't see how anything is going to improve in the near future. So what ends up happening is every atrocity against oppressed community gets hijacked by these private mega-corps as they sense PR opportunity. To take another example; Diversity & Inclusion. We do all the song and dance at the workplace to make it more diverse. But when you actually see the process from the inside you see how optical and ridiculous it is. The entire program is a joke. No matter what one does the top of the funnel is so ridiculously non-diverse that it's excruciatingly difficult to hire a diverse person. The reasons are obvious, the entire education system (and society to an extent) is so rigged against oppressed community that it takes a miracle for one of their community to even make it to resume-writing stage. Instead of addressing the problem at the root cause (make it easier for them to get high quality education, lead a decent life) every corporation makes a big PR-noise around D&I while in reality the work place continues to be non-diverse. Net result is we end up having debates like "why should we reduce interview bar", "it's unfair to the deserving candidates" while completely being blind to the root cause of the problem. /rant
  • systemvoltage 6y ago
    D&I is a coverage against lawsuits for discrimination. It’s a dog and pony show.
  • munchbunny 6y ago
    > But when you actually see the process from the inside you see how optical and ridiculous it is. The entire program is a joke. No matter what one does the top of the funnel is so ridiculously non-diverse that it's excruciatingly difficult to hire a diverse person. I agree based on my personal experiences. One of the concrete suggestions by the author of the blog post really strikes me as a step that we could implement, but we don’t: drawing from non-traditional backgrounds. And it’s because it’s an uphill battle. Much easier to do some low hanging fruit. I’m not a minority in tech, but coming into my current job I had a semi-traditional background. Even getting first rounds was a struggle, only ameliorated by having a professional network of tech people, which is very much not something that you can expect a non-traditional candidate to have. Seriously, my “get to phone screen” rate without network referrals was around 2-3%. With referrals was about 60%. That’s how bad it gets. So now when it’s in my direct control I go out of my way to look for non-traditional backgrounds in the pipeline and give them the benefit of the doubt during resume screening, paid for in hours I spend interviewing instead of programming
• edbob 6y ago
  Off-topic, but I really enjoy products whose packaging I can dispose of well because it's all paper and/or metal. I buy Celestial Seasonings tea because there's no foil, and I can compost the tea bags. But there are still plenty of products that I only find in plastic, like frozen fish. I mainly shop at Wal-Mart because I'm poor. Does anyone have any tips for someone on a low budget?
  • adamcstephens 6y ago
    It doesn’t matter where you shop, plastic and food are constantly used together.
• ivanche 6y ago
  > Though I initially sympathized with the name change from master to main (cause I don't care what it is called) It seems you don't have any bash/zsh/fish scripts which assume that the most important branch is named "master"...
  • cforrester 6y ago
    For smaller scripts, this is trivially resolved. For larger scripts, this is a bug, and the script should be updated with a more flexible solution that doesn't rely on hardcoded branch names.