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by clearly 4414 days ago
I'm genuinely interested to hear you say that, why do you cringe? Because it doesn't affect you and you don't perceive there to be a problem?

This is clearly a technology story, and I'm interested to hear more from anyone at Twitter how their release process works in this regard. I saw Kent Beck talk at facebook a while back and he spoke about how when working on a site like FB, you literally do have peoples lives in your hands. Releasing that software is a very hard problem. The example he gave was if they accidentally allowed public access to someones private mail- it could literally lead to deaths.

2 comments

I'm genuinely interested to hear you say that, why do you cringe? Because it doesn't affect you and you don't perceive there to be a problem?

No, I cringe because I know there is a problem, and more sexism - which is rampant in these threads - doesn't help. HN as a whole is simply not capable of having a mature discussion about these topics.

I am hoping that with deliberate practice, HN will become capable of a mature discussion about these topics. It is important enough to keep trying, even though it is hard.
This
Because such stories are usually knee-jerk reactions, badly argumented, badly researched, un-objective, and assume some opinions that not everyone agrees with are facts. Furthermore, pointing this out can inspire rage and insults from a part of the online population. Finally, they induce a flame-war with no clear victors and no apparent benefits for the victors. They don't really encourage discussion, just as most static-dynamic do not.