21 ms·

To be honest, I'm annoyed by the benign protestware messages when they start to get in the way of using the software, particularly on mobile. I was looking at t

• amelius 5y ago
  It's still better than ads, though.
  • rnd0 5y ago
    It's indistinguishable from an ad.
• gadders 5y ago
  >>Is a single person going to be persuaded to support either cause by seeing this banner on a relatively niche JS library that reduces readability of its documentation? The purpose of the banner is not to convert anyone, the purpose is to demonstrate that the author of the package subscribes to the correct opinions.
  • LunaSea 5y ago
    So basically virtue signalling
    • BaronVonSteuben 5y ago
      Yes but pointing out that the emperor has no clothes is mean, so we need to pretend not to notice. Despite our modern day knowledge that most human behavior is almost entirely incentive-based (the hard part is identifying the incentive), we're still supposed to pretend that it's altrusim.
      • mrtranscendence 5y ago
        I've experienced too much altruistic, generous, kind behavior to support this cynical view, unless you're defining "incentive" so widely as to be meaningless (sure, some people are incentivized to help others partially because they get good feelings by doing so -- I suppose Ayn Rand was right all along).
        • BaronVonSteuben 5y ago
          I don't think it's cynical at all, I think it's just accepting reality. Our advanced consciousness is just a very thin layer of abstraction on top of the same brain/mind that powers many other animals. Some of the best minds who study this, question if there's even any such thing as "free will" at all. I don't think recognizing that is conflicting at all with a positive outlook, or the choice to be optimistic, or a humanist, etc. You can choose to believe it or choose not to believe it, and still value human life and try to progress humanity forward. Also don't underestimate the value/incentive of following your conscience, acting out your beliefs etc. Cognitive dissonance (which results from not doing so) is deeply uncomfortable and a good motivator for being "altruistic."
      • blueflow 5y ago
        The good news, these people are easy to identify because their signalling is always in a very visible way. They want to be seen. And when you can identify them, you can avoid them.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• BaronVonSteuben 5y ago
  The Svelte banner looks ok on desktop, but yeah seriously problematic on mobile. I think this is an outgrowth of the "use whatever power you have to push for change" culture. It has been highly effective in the past, particularly with gay marriage, and I think those victories gave it enough gas to run for many years even without success. There's also the social points that one gets from it as well. I know of at least one project that added a BLM banner to their site because of social pressure, even though they felt that much of the protesting had gone too far (burning businesses, looting, blocking traffic, etc). The whole "not to take a side is to take a side" is a powerful social pressure to conform. I know of one other project that added a BLM banner so they could get on an "awesome list of BLM supporting software" or something like that which drove them a lot of traffic. Anyway my point is that there are lots of motivations for such, and I suspect many if not most aren't because the person has a deep and abiding passion for the cause (though without a doubt, some do).
  • iosono88 5y ago
• nonameiguess 5y ago
  That doesn't have much to do with open source, though. Corporations selling proprietary stuff are more than happy to slap slogans and hashtags all over it to promote their devotion to some political cause of the day. Unlike open source "as-is no warranty clauses," their licenses tend to come with a guarantee saying they can't just stop working or break the rest of your system on purpose, though, and if they do, you get a support engineer helping you until it's fixed. Really, even that doesn't have much to do with open source, since companies exist that develop entirely open source products but offer paid support and enterprise contracts with warranties and guarantees. What this really damages is the reputation of ecosystems that rely upon foundational libraries made by hobbyists and one-man operations as weekend side projects.
• celeritascelery 5y ago
  There was a package (that I won’t name) which completely removed their online documentation and replaced it with a BLM message for a period of time. I was floored at that unprofessional behavior. Now when I link to their docs, I always use archive.org to make sure other users don’t run into a similar issue in the future.
  • mpweiher 5y ago
    > I was floored at that unprofessional behavior. Profession - "A professional is a member of a profession or any person who earns a living from a specified professional activity. " If you want professional behavior, pay the person. If you want free, you get whatever the person wants to give you for free.
    • morpheuskafka 5y ago
      The term professional is clearly applicable to software engineers working on open source projects, just as it is for lawyers doing pro bono work, and just like a plumber fixing his neighbors' sink for free is still performing his trade and expected to do work that upholds its standards. No one is required to do any work for an open source project, but they are expected to behave in a professional manner and plenty of people have been rightly criticized here when they acted inappropriately as part of an open source team. Its debatable whether OP is right, but there's at least a case to be made that taking down documentation that was not costing any money to host for the sole purpose of making an unrelated statement (not one targeted at their customers, just society in general) does damage the professional reputation of the team and its product.
      • frumper 5y ago
        I would agree that doing stunts is likely to damage a teams reputation, but I think you cast way too large a net to say that software engineers working on open source projects are professional, or even acting as professionals. The OSS ecosystem is filled with everything from large well run organizations to kids posting simple tools that are filled with bugs and vulnerabilities. There are no good expectations beyond use at your own risk. Even large professional organizations kill projects and leave people hanging.
• cameronfraser 5y ago
  they're virtue signaling, not trying to create change
  • NoGravitas 5y ago
    Would you rather they signal vice?
    • prepend 5y ago
      I’d rather they do. Focus that energy into productive action rather than just signaling. It’s like those people who do 50 commits instead of one to look busy. Just put that mental energy into real stuff.
    • Inityx 5y ago
      Wow, why is that the only alternative?
    • stjohnswarts 5y ago
      Rather they signal nothing, to be honest. I mean it is their perogative but makes one think twice about the future of the software. So it's another data point. Not all or nothing. I hate all or nothing types from all sides. 99% of things are on a spectrum and I think that life should be the same. Sure some things are 0 or 1 but they are relatively rare.
• zzzeek 5y ago
  I took a look at the first site in responsive design mode and it looks like the "Branches" menu, which aims to be in a fixed spot, is getting pushed down by the extra content. the actual protest message scrolls up with the rest of it and does not get in the way of anything. Seems like a simple UX bug that could be fixed if you send the developers a bug report.
  • heavyset_go 5y ago
    > Seems like a simple UX bug that could be fixed if you send the developers a bug report. Something tells me that they don't want to actually fix anything and are just virtue signalling on HN.
    • baryphonic 5y ago
      https://github.com/sveltejs/sites/issues/319 https://github.com/sveltejs/sites/issues/319 https://github.com/isomorphic-git/isomorphic-git.github.io/issues/81 https://github.com/isomorphic-git/isomorphic-git.github.io/i... Please, tell me what else I am "virtue signalling on HN" about.
  • baryphonic 5y ago
    Thanks for the suggestion! I feel stupid in retrospect, but I've never thought to submit a bug report about docs being hard to use. Also, SQLAlchemy is badass, rockstar tech, but in a good way. Only DB abstraction layer I've used that doesn't feel like a leaky, kludgy mess.
• HWR_14 5y ago
  I feel that's because too many people still aren't seeing what their sites look like on mobile devices. I'm sure the perma-banner looked fine on desktop.
  • baryphonic 5y ago
    Not sure why this is downvoted. It was one of my personal hypotheses. It's a bit unusual to look at docs on mobile, or even the Svelte REPL (though using on mobile has helped me spot various UI/UX bugs with my own code).
• shadowgovt 5y ago
  What's the point of the thin black bar we put at the top of HN periodically? It sounds like the underlying issue is insufficient testing of the UI layout with the new content, not the fact that there is new content.
  • AQuantized 5y ago
    There's a difference between providing information ("Someone significant to many members of this community has died recently") and providing a (arguably very superficial) signal of support for a cause dear to some of the developers.
    • shadowgovt 5y ago
      I'm afraid I don't see the difference. Can you clarify?
      • lliamander 5y ago
        What HN does is less obtrusive, less likely to stoke heated division amongst its users, and more relevant to the content of the site.
        • shadowgovt 5y ago
          > What HN does is less obtrusive Agree. I often have to click around to figure out why the black bar has shown up. > less likely to stoke heated division amongst its users This is interesting. Why does #BlackLivesMatter stoke heated division among HN users? And what does that say about the community that has been built here? > and more relevant to the content of the site I'm sure I don't agree. As the world moves further into automation, machine learning, machine analysis, and sousveillance, the interaction between technology and minorities in our communities is of vital importance to what we do. Questions of interaction between minority developers, customers, users, and community members and the majorities in those spaces impact on questions like hiring policy, behavior analysis and prediction (and the benefits and drawbacks of those tools), unequal treatment laid bare when the cameras are in the hands of the many and not the few (and the consequences of that knowledge), software that only works for a subset of users optimally because it was designed with only those users in mind, and other topics. Software is growing to touch every part of human existence, and it's probably actually dangerous for hackers to traipse through life ignorant of that fact. We build things that impact people in a huge way, and if some groups are structurally invisible to the builders of those things, we really risk baking inequalities into the very engines of our society.
• relativeadv 5y ago
  I agree. I really do feel for these refugees and victims of social injustice. But when it mildly irritates me by having to scroll an extra inch or two to get to what i want to see i feel like their efforts are being misdirected. It makes more sense for these issues to simply solve themselves without inconveniencing me.
  • cimi_ 5y ago
    Do you genuinely think these banners help with anything?
    • relativeadv 5y ago
      You and I are here discussing it, right now.
• auxfil 5y ago
  These actions can be classed as slacktivism and as impotent virtue-signaling, sure, but I believe that the actors of these methods of protest are trying to do what the left calls "creating safe spaces" and genuinely feel that they are "showing their support" and therefore somehow...helping. The thing is, they may be achieving that first part - creating a safe space, perhaps unwittingly marginalising, demonising, and isolating the very people who can affect the most change (i.e. politicians, policemen, russian people, going by the examples of causes in OP's post alone), at a further cost of inconveniencing absolutely everyone - testing the resolve of existing allies, and likely creating new opponents out of those who were on the fence or apathetic.
  • BigJ1211 5y ago
    It's basically taking the "Thoughts and prayers" under a Facebook post to the next level. It would be fine if the banner was close-able or displayed once a day or something along the lines of that. The problem isn't that they're showing support. It's doing it a completely obnoxious way that's the issue. If you are one of the people doing this, look around you. Literally everyone slapped a BLM banner on their website, when everyone has done that yours literally adds nothing. Sure, put that message up there, but make it close-able. Not something that takes up valuable screen real-estate permanently.
• goodpoint 5y ago
  > noticed that their "#BlackLivesMatter #DefundThePolice" banner scrolls under the rest of the content, leaving this annoying gap People get killed and a HNer is annoyed by a gap around a banner.
  • joshcryer 5y ago
    The OSI article even encourages banners and other such thing in ones work. If code is speech, then speech shouldn't be frowned upon when the coder uses it in their project. The OSI is specially calling out an incident where someone actually put malware in their code which targeted Belarus and Russia. Totally unacceptable and not a form of protected protest at all, and arguably not speech.
    • baryphonic 5y ago
      I honestly don't care that much if people want to put political messages in and amongst their code. The maintainer of SQLite is a devout Christian and had "the Rule of St Benedict" from the 4th century.[0] Or the person known as "Ciro Santilli," who has a bunch of anti-CCP content in various repos.[1] (I've actually considered putting some of his content into my repos as a sort of "kill switch" targeting CCP theft and misappropriation of copyright.) I fully endorse both, even though they earn me no brownie points, nor are they likely to convert the world to the one true faith nor overthrow a murderous, totalitarian regime. The only differences are that my opinions are a minority among the community, and that I simply wouldn't let the hashtag activism detract from the product. I'd certainly let people opt out of the banner, and would probably set a cookie to remember the preference for a while. [0]https://www.sqlite.org/codeofethics.html https://www.sqlite.org/codeofethics.html [1]https://github.com/cirosantilli https://github.com/cirosantilli
  • jaldhar 5y ago
    The banner wavers have moved on to the next trendy thing and people are still getting killed. What was achieved by annoying HNers?
    • qsdf38100 5y ago
• jokethrowaway 5y ago
  The world is full of people who need to virtue signal even if they don't care or do anything else about the cause.