wcummings (u/wcummings)

wcummings commented on I Bought a Book About the Internet from 1994 and None of the Links Worked motherboard.vice.com/en_u... · Posted by u/slyall

kyledrake · 9 years ago

IIRC the old webrings had a CGI backend that would collect the addresses and then you would click "next" and it would take you to the next site. But yeah you could just make a vanilla one. You could also just make one outside of the context of Neocities.

But if the next site went down or didn't link to the next site correctly, you couldn't proceed. That was always my problem with webrings. They depended on each site to embed the ring code properly, and usually they didn't, so you were stuck trying to find a working one. It was a pretty lousy UX overall.

wcummings · 9 years ago

That's interesting the ones I remember were literally rings of static links, coordinated by the webmasters, presumably over email. I see what you mean now.

wcummings commented on Ask a Female Engineer: Thoughts on the Google Memo blog.ycombinator.com/ask-... · Posted by u/cbcowans

dang · 9 years ago

Would you please not poison the discussion like this? Regardless of how correct your underlying points might be, it amounts to arson in a fire zone, and we ban accounts that do it.

Plenty of other users are able to express similar views to yours without violating the site guidelines. Please follow in their footsteps and post only comments that make the forum better, not worse.

wcummings · 9 years ago

Duly noted

wcummings commented on Ask a Female Engineer: Thoughts on the Google Memo blog.ycombinator.com/ask-... · Posted by u/cbcowans

rpiguy · 9 years ago

Again, only if you believe a line was crossed, or whether he wrote a well-intentioned memo with the goal of supporting and increasing diversity that had some dubious conclusions based on controversial research.

He is also young and just starting his career. If this had been addressed calmly maybe he could have learned from this situation. Zero tolerance for a young man's folly instead turned him into a sympathetic figure and an alt-right star. It has reinforced the perception that the PC left is oppressive and reactionary. And worse of all he will never learn from his experience because the reaction confirmed his natural bias.

I guess there is no cutting people a break anymore in this era of shouting into the ether, virtue signaling, and political hellfire.

wcummings · 9 years ago

Hopefully hes just ending his career now.

Google shouldn't be soaking up all these ignorant young college boys if they're not mature enough to handle a workplace.

wcummings commented on Ask a Female Engineer: Thoughts on the Google Memo blog.ycombinator.com/ask-... · Posted by u/cbcowans

bufbupa · 9 years ago

Are you arguing we should spare factual discourse for the sake of someones subjective feelings?

wcummings · 9 years ago

Not much about that memo was "factual", whatever that means.

wcummings commented on Ask a Female Engineer: Thoughts on the Google Memo blog.ycombinator.com/ask-... · Posted by u/cbcowans

rpiguy · 9 years ago

I really enjoyed the well reasoned discussion. I think a lot more constructive dialog is happening now that people have calmed down.

Of all the sentiments expressed in the article, I mainly disagree with the comment that Damore did the company harm.

He posted his thoughts on an internal discussion board and someone else leaked this internal document to the press. The leaker did harm to Google not Damore. In fact, I think the memo had been posted for a week or two before it was leaked. If your argument for firing Damore is that he did the company harm, you should look at the person who took an internal company document and made it public.

There are many people who believe he should have been fired anyway for offending his female coworkers and perhaps making them feel unsafe, but that is a different argument all together with its own merits and faults depending strongly on your stance on what constitutes tolerable speech.

wcummings · 9 years ago

If you distribute material like that, it will get leaked. That should be taken foregranted. If I got that memo I probably would have leaked it to the press, too.