I love what they're doing, but last time I clicked a link for asahilinux on hacker news I was taken to a pop up that specifically said that readers from Hacker News are not welcomed on their site and couldn't read their content.
From what I've seen people post here, I can totally get that they don't like HN people. It's sad, because HN is how I found out about these people and their amazing skills, but I would've done the same thing in their place.
Many people, especially in the LGBTQ+ community, hate being featured on here. Some have asked the admin not to be linked but the HN doesn't blacklist websites.
There's a flood of negativity from the tech bros every time something makes it to the HN front page, both here but also on HN link aggregators. This is especially true for the people whose talents bring them to the HN front page every month or so, receiving the same flack and abuse every time.
Last time someone tried to block HN abuse by checking the referer header and redirecting visitors away, HN altered the link HTML to not send the referer header rather than listen to their wishes. First for a specific post, then for all posts. That's a pretty clear sign to me that the HN admins care more about their links and the fake internet points generated by discussions than about the people and projects being discussed.
If the admins are actively working against your wishes, why would you want to tolerate that platform?
Granted, I'm just massively struggling with the idea of excluding a whole radically diverse community (with some of the most civilized and self-moderating discourse on the internet) in the name of inclusiveness. To me, it's as ironic as it gets.
On that end, I can't find any fault on HN's end enabling their 99.99% of their interested readers who didn't do any wrong to be included in the discourse around these ideas, on the free and open web.
> the idea of excluding a whole radically diverse community (with some of the most civilized and self-moderating discourse on the internet) in the name of inclusiveness. To me, it's as ironic as it gets.
Not really more ironic than almost every non-trivial societal discussion, à la "if you want peace prepare for war". Anything non-trivial is multifaceted, and anybody who has an absolute opinion is probably missing most of the argument.
Very quickly for this specific case: one can easily argue that excluding people is hardly inclusive, but one can also easily argue that a niche community with its own subculture _needs_ some sheltering from the rest of the world, or the subculture gets lost very quickly (so the sheltering is good for diversity in that it preserves the existence of the subculture).
(I'm not pretending to present a fully-fledged argument here, just a taster to challenge absolute opinions, entire books could be written on this and probably have)
Re your specific argument, see also under “Cultural appropriation” (IV.6) in Scott Alexander’s essay “The ideology is not the movement”[1]. On the other hand, the argument that is actually, literally written down in Asahi discussions usually paints the whole HN readership as a group with specific coherent opinions that are specifically bad, so I’m not sure to which degree I ought to judge them by the strongest argument they could be making as opposed to the one they actually are.
(OK, there’s also the argument that HN will engage with people whose opinions the usual Asahi folks consider reprehensible—even if not necessarily often—and should thereby be treated as equally reprehensible unless they kick them out[2]. But, I don’t know. I’m a couple decades too young to have seen organized ostracism at the meetings of the Komsomol, but still, the only reaction I have when these kinds of social-isolation penalties are proposed is base animalistic terror. This includes people a decade younger in my own social circles proposing it, which is not even rare.)
A few commenters on HN were giving Hector Martin shit and trying to dox Asahi pseudonymous contributors (who clearly did not want to be ID'd). Maybe the popup should have included a bit of detail on that so people such as yourself who aren't aware or involved aren't put off the project. But the animosity they have is understandable.
I think what you're missing is that a tiny minority of toxic users (as perceived from your viewpoint) can easily be perceived as a high concentration of harassment from those that are on the receiving end of abuse.
This asymmetry of harassment is a dynamic worth thinking about more broadly; for example, if only one in a thousand men cat-calls women, you might not even have any male friends that have ever cat-called, and yet that might mean a particularly attractive woman might pass a cat-caller many times per day. Small differences in the rate of cat-calling (1:1000 vs 1:2000) won't be detectable to you, but can represent a huge difference (once a day vs twice a day, say) to those sampling far more frequently from the distribution than you are.
More specifically to the thread here, the question is not whether HN is well moderated, or whether toxicity is quite low-frequency from your perspective. The relevant question is whether the base-rate of anti-trans harassment is higher than in the general population.
It's entirely possible (I think it's true) that people in this community are in general more civil to each other than on most of the internet, and I think the thoughtful moderation is a big part of that. But it's also possible (and I don't have any direct experience to claim whether it is or not, so this is just numbers to illustrate what's possible, not a claim of how things are) that at the tails of the distribution there's 10x more anti-trans harassment in the community too, and we'd simply not be in a good position to observe or measure it unless we were on the receiving end of it or auditing lots of comments very closely. Honestly, based on the tenor of responses when this specific topic comes up (quite different to the normal HN vibe IMO), that wouldn't surprise me either.
I think what you're missing is that a tiny minority of toxic users (as perceived from your viewpoint) can easily be perceived as a high concentration of harassment from those that are on the receiving end of abuse
I didn't miss it - that was partly my point; the the quantity of abuse is possibly a matter of perception which will necessarily be very influenced by the psychology and experiences of the victim; I agree that without being in that position it's not possible to have the same viewpoint, and certainly not the same raw hurt and related experiences. But it doesn't follow from being on the receiving end that there is a clearer, more neutral view of the percentages.
In my opinion, HN comments/users skew heavily towards cynicism/negativity. It may be a tiny minority, but I don’t think it’s a tiny minority of the most vocal users.
That latter (more subtle) point is a possibility I suppose but even if it were the case it would likely reflect the unpleasant side of normal online psychology rather than anything particular to HN; and there is still a significant difference between cynicism/negativity and the bigotry and hostility claimed by the "harmful" comment and linked context.
If all such reflex internet-negativity is being wrongly interpreted as representative bigotry by an external party that's still not a HN issue; and the moderation complaint is still very misjudged.
I imagine since they're on the receiving end, they'd know. Also if even one HNer tried to dox me I'd ban the lot of you, and I'm a relatively cantankerous straight white guy.
I get it. I guess i find it so exceedingly bizarre to dox someone, especially when known for being brilliant people - it probably doesn't register properly.
Doxing is an exaggeration of what it is. They have a very public online presence in the first place and made it pretty obvious, and they self-promote. It's just putting 2 and 2 together. The "block" on HN seems to have more to do with their gripes about inaccurate or negative comments than about attacks, unless I missed something.
Most of the harm of "doxing" isn't revealing information, which in many cases can be found online for people like software engineers who have public CVs, but rather targeting of those individuals in communities that are predisposed against them and willing to take action be it through emails, comments, etc.
There's a lot to be said about any number of people privately or publicly spamming you, intimidating you, or threatening you on a _personal_ level.
I agree, but I don't think there's any harm in being honest about in this case, since it's pretty on-brand for their public persona. It just seems like a weird hang-up, which ironically fuels the rumor mill. "Hey, isn't this Twitter account run by the same person as that Twitter account?" is pretty harmless as far as "doxing" goes, and when you've let it slip a number of times, what's the point? It's naive to expect total anonymity and zero negative attention with a flamboyant public persona (not meant to be derogatory), especially when you're making money from it, and if you add fuel on the fire on top of that...
"Half" is hyperbole, but it's a sizable minority that's obnoxious and persistent enough that nearly every trans hacker I follow has a gripe with HN. (Which is a greater number than you'd think; not that long ago I found out it's a meme in the transfemme community to refer to striped thigh-highs as "programmer socks")
> I have never seen anyone on this website [...] even transphobic at all.
These kinds of comments are here, but are are usually quickly downvoted/flagged to death. If you really want to see them, turn on showdead and look down the bottom of threads somehow related to trans people. It's not nearly as common as ohgodplsno implied though.
As I said, I haven't seen them. If they get downvoted immediately so they are hidden then just don't enable showdead... And you cut out the 'violently' part.
Frankly I don't think someone's views on whether it is possible to change gender is relevant on every topic that tangentially related to a transgender person. But if someone disagrees, and disagrees that it is possible, that doesn't make their comments "violent". This is reminiscent of the "trans genocide" conspiracy theory.
You're not in charge of what things mean. Here's Wikipedia:
> Doxing or doxxing is the act of publicly providing personally identifiable information about an individual or organization, usually via the Internet.
This would include publishing PII about Asahi Lina, like her "real" name, as it personally identifies her.
It's no wonder the Asahi Linux project doesn't want to talk to people with your attitude. Maybe take some time to do some introspection on why you feel so strongly about this issue, which seems to impact you not at all.
Publishing someone's real name online isn't doxing when his real name is already publically available online. It just isn't personally identifiable information when it is already public. Is it doxing to say that "rms" means Richard Stallman? Grow up. He is one of many people online that sometimes uses a pseudonym, and pointing out that he contributes to the project as himself and also contributes while creepily pretending to be a female child on Twitch (not at all disturbing, no way) is not doxing.
I don't "feel strongly" about it at all. Save the pop psychologising for someone else. Awful tactic to try to use.
> Publishing someone's real name online isn't doxing when his real name is already publically available online.
You're being deliberately obtuse. It's the connecting (obviously) that's the issue. It's like saying, "publishing someone's address online isn't doxing when their address is already publicly available online." Yeah I only care if you say it's my address.
> I don't "feel strongly" about it at all.
> also contributes while creepily pretending to be a female child on Twitch
> Grow up.
Insults, condescending remarks, yeah I believe you don't feel strongly about this.
I usually try to be cooler on HN than this, but this is super toxic. You've obviously got some kind of beef--regardless of what you say--and I think it would probably behoove you to get to the bottom of it.
>I usually try to be cooler on HN than this, but this is super toxic.
I am responding in kind, based on the way you are talking to me. If you were polite, there would be no issue. Instead, you make nasty psychologising comments and then pretend that you're a victim when someone responds in kind.
>You're being deliberately obtuse. It's the connecting (obviously) that's the issue. It's like saying, "publishing someone's address online isn't doxing when their address is already publicly available online." Yeah I only care if you say it's my address.
Publishing someone's address online when it's already publicly known what their address is isn't doxing! Everyone knows that Marcan is a vtuber in his spare time, it's been public knowledge since about day 2 of him doing it.
> I am responding in kind, based on the way you are talking to me. If you were polite, there would be no issue.
I've yet to insult or condescend to you, whereas you've condescended to me ("Grow up"). I'm not "psychologising" you, I've said that you're pushing an issue that affects you not at all but is harmful to others, and that you should probably figure out why you're doing that (or, why you refuse to accept you're doing that). Maybe me being polite while pointing it out makes it seem like I'm "psychologising" you, so let me rephrase: you clearly can't keep yourself from harassing people who live life in a totally harmless way, that's real weird, and you might not know how weird it is.
> and then pretend that you're a victim when someone responds in kind
Again I've not insulted or condescended to you so you're not actually responding in kind, but that aside I don't at all feel like the victim here.
> Publishing someone's address online when it's already publicly known what their address is isn't doxing!
This analogy doesn't fit, because--again--the connection isn't publicly known. How do I know it's not publicly known? Because I didn't "know" and I looked. I went to marcan's various social media sites and his website, to Asahi Lina's various social media sites and her website, and came up bupkis. So to be honest, I can't corroborate your claim based on what I've seen, and it's not for lack of looking. Could I probably find something? Sure. Do I care to? Not even a little.
Basically your argument boils down to: "someone already doxxed this person, so it doesn't matter if someone does it again". I think any reasonable person would think that's wrong.
These receipts foot with my own observations. Transphobia does tend to eventually get flagged, but often it only happens after the comments section has dropped off the front page, and all it takes is browsing with "showdead" to reveal things that range from obvious "groomer" and "mentally ill" dog-whistles to being downright scary.
In the meantime, anti-transphobic comments or people complaining about the lack of moderation of transphobic comments are usually downvoted or flagged, and all you have to do is look at the root comment of this thread for evidence of that.
> There is nothing wrong with any of the comments linked to by him in that thread, in my opinion.
Then there is no meeting of the minds that can be had.
> In my experience, this is always arrived at by some sort of absurd logic that goes "he denies that I am really a woman, and when you do that you make transgender people more like to kill themselves, therefore it is genocide" which is obviously nonsense.
What is happening right now in America is much, much worse than your strawman.
If you are trying to draw a distinction between murder and using rhetoric to encourage stochastic terrorism, criminalizing existing in public, destroying social support systems, blocking access to health care, and in some cases forcible detransition, IMHO you're drawing a distinction without a difference. Both the dog-whistle _and_ the fig leaf fallback positions are horrendous injustices.
Half of the average HN users spends their their either trying to dox Asahi Lina, or to be violently transphobic towards Rosenzweig. The other half is horribly pedantic assholes.
Also, if you donate before 6PM you'll receive a free NPR mug and a t-shirt.
(I predict this year's funding drive will be less successful than last year!)
Hm, strange, HN seems to set referrer-policy to 'origin', which seems like it should send a referer header when going to external sites[0]? But clearly it does not. So I guess I'm just misunderstanding how that header works.
Asahi and a few other websites blocked HN traffic (because of the aforementioned problems) and then HN added special nofollow/noreferrer for only these domains to prevent this. and then the sites responded with more assertive measures.
This is incorrect. These sites (or at least the Asahi one) are not being "assertive" - they are being hypocritical and toxic.
Additionally, nobody has the right to selectively block links to their website. You get two options: you either let your site be publicly-viewable, with all the benefits and drawbacks, or you make it members-only and require a login. You can't have your cake and eat it too.
They were rude to say a group disproportionately responsible for spreading falsehoods, personal attacks, doxxing, and anti-trans harassment wasn’t welcome?
They were wrong to narrowcast everyone here as part of that audience, yes. It's their site, but they invite the controversy when they take such ridiculous measures to drag readers into drama most are unaware of.
Please link to the objective, empirical evidence that you have on hand for this claim that HN is "disproportionately" responsible - you can't be disproportionately responsible if you don't know the proportions.
Yes. They chose to come to the threads and focus on the trollish, downvoted comments and then outright block every member of the mostly decent community from even reading the blog.
They may be fine people (Asahi) but I thought it was an overreaction, yes.
The Asahi devs taking the worst comments/individuals on HN and then using that to stereotype the entire site is...not exactly an indication of integrity. More like extreme hypocrisy.
Dang is a far better person than any of these people, given that despite the amount of vitriol he's had directed at Y Combinator, HN, and him personally, he's still orders of magnitude more patient than anyone affiliated with Asahi.
Right - the Asahi Linux project specifically does not want attention from HN. I flag every Asahi-related submission here, and I encourage you to do so, too.
Depends on what you precisely mean by "this". The user space part can easily be used from macOS. That's how the author first developed it without a working kernel driver.
> But wait, how can she work on the user space driver without a kernel driver to go with it? Easy, she did it on macOS! Alyssa reverse engineered the macOS GPU driver UAPI enough to allocate memory and submit her own commands to the GPU, and this way she could work on the user space part without having to worry about the kernel bit. That’s super cool! She started writing an M1 GPU OpenGL driver for Mesa, the Linux userspace graphics stack, and just a few months later she was already passing 75% of the OpenGL ES 2 conformance tests, all on macOS!
Intel did. Obviously there is more to it than just setting a different target and hitting compile but it's also not a ridiculous question because of that measure alone. It'd require enabling reduced security mode to load kexts or a custom kernel as well as a good amount of additional code for interfacing it with the macOS kernel interfaces but the majority of the code would be reused. Not trivial by any measure but also not an unreasonable approach in terms of total effort to get a working driver.
I'd be very surprised if anyone was interested in doing all that work given the security limitations and ability to just use Linux.
Edit: I forgot Metal is actually a userspace driver, you don't need to mess with the kernel side... though I can't remember if you still need to lower security to poke the right areas.
intel's linux driver is completely different from the windows driver. it also has been open since the start (well, since the start of the rewrite in 2010 or something) actually before AMD did theirs.
If you look the other way around (which is more relevant anyways), you can compile Mesa for Windows. However I'm pretty sure only the software renderer is available because Mesa is not capable of interfacing with the Windows kernel driver, as all the other drivers are coupled with Linux driver interfaces, iirc. (At least I'm quite certain this is the case for AMD.)
I'm also quite certain the proprietary NVIDIA driver shares a ton of code between Windows and Linux.
To add on, just because it's cool, there is a 3rd category in play with Mesa of layered drivers. Microsoft worked on and officially supports running OpenCL and OpenGL on devices which only have a DX12 driver via Mesa this fashion. Still all user space of course but not software rendering. More akin to MoltenVK from the blog post, except fully supported and maintained by the OS provider.
The Github link there goes to marcan, who leads Asahi, but I want to primarily support this driver development. Is that an option? If so, where do I do that? If not, I'll just use this later today.
In Asahi Lina’s guest post[1] on the Asahi Linux blog she mentions “If you want to support my work, you can donate to marcan’s Asahi Linux support fund on GitHub Sponsors or Patreon, which helps me out too!”
So yes, donating to Marcan helps driver development too.
Apple themselves are not conformant to OpenGL® ES 3.1.
So this is literally the first conformant OpenGL ES 3.1 drivers for M-Series, for any operating system (Apple or Non-Apple).
Hence why the call to action to donate to the team.
https://asahilinux.org/support/