TeochewThunder: Year Five (Part 2/2)

It was a dismal year for readership, to tell the truth. I suspect this was in part largely due to the shutting down of Google Plus, which contributed maybe 10% of my usual hits. While the year started out reasonably well, readership went down after Chinese New Year, and hasn't picked up appreciably since.

Getting kinda lonely here, guys.

Luckily I'm not doing this for the attention, because that would suck.

Strangely, I think the quality of my work has gone up; though without readership stats to back up that assertion, it's an empty boast at best.

There were some things I could have written about. The year sure wasn't short on tech news. I could have written about Cloudflare and their decision to abandon 8Chan, the same way I wrote about a similar decision taken by their CEO Matthew Prince back in 2017. I even started ruminating over the new Code of Conduct at Linux and sabbatical of Linus Torvalds, before abandoning that train of thought altogether. The thing is, I'm sick to death of the USA and the never-ending online presence of their identity politics. Conservatives? Liberals? Fuck all of them. They should sort their shit out and I'm certainly not giving them any more air-time than I need to. My little pieces on Patreon and Twitter earlier this year was as far as I cared to go.

Sure, writing about stuff like that attracts the attention of even non-techies. But I shouldn't lose sight of what this blog is for.

The biggest hit of 2019...

One blogpost stood out among all the others when I did some investigation - the two-parter Women Can Code, Get Used To It! This had the second biggest number of hits in the entire history of TeochewThunder, almost matching the current record-holder, 2018's Ten Principles of Adult Learning Applied to Software Development. I suspect a huge part of its popularity was because I shared this with several female friends, not all of whom are from technical disciplines, and they pretty much did the rest by re-sharing.

Gorgeous geek girls?

Interestingly, the second part of Women Can Code, Get Used To It! was far more popular than the first. I guess people were more interested in my declaration that tech is not a gender-specific profession, rather than what I felt was more interesting - examples of pretty ladies that don't conform to the geek girl stereotype.

On further review

It appears that a web tutorial from 2017 has suddenly gotten a lot of attention - way more attention than I think it deserves. It was basically a BMI Calculator written in AngularJS, and the first ever AngularJS tutorial on this blog. Again, yes, don't look a gift horse in the mouth... but damn if it isn't suspicious.

Future Plans

The road map for this blog features a lot more reviews that I never had time to write - books, apps and my ongoing writeups about the TV series Silicon Valley, which, sadly, looks about to end its run soon.

I'm also trying to keep to the basics, because I've always been all about the basics. There's a lot to cover. Fun or boring, they all have a place on this blog. 2020 looks promising. There's so much to write about, and the list looks to be growing all the time.

Thunderously,
T___T

Pay Platforms: Provider or Police?

What's this I've been hearing about Patreon? Since December last year, people have been leaving Patreon. Accounts have been closed, are being closed as I type this, and the rot does not appear to be stopping.

Patreon is a crowdfunding service that ties content creators and subscribers together to facilitate donations towards the content creators. And lately, Patreon has been behaving more like the Moral Police instead of the service it's purported to be.

Carl Benjamin, a content creator, got his account shut down just last month. The reason given? He was guilty of using some very offensive words... on YouTube. YouTube, not Patreon. On someone else's YouTube channel, not his own. In essence, he had supposedly violated the Community Guidelines on Hate Speech. An excerpt is below:

"Patreon connects creators to their patrons all over the world. We are a global platform built on promoting creativity, which makes us a very inclusive group. Therefore, there is no room on Patreon for hate speech such as calling for violence, exclusion, or segregation. Hate speech includes serious attacks, or even negative generalizations, of people based on their race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sex, gender, sexual orientation, age, disability or serious medical conditions."

However. When you take context into account - he was trying to illustrate via negative example why it's not OK to use those words - and then do a search of those words on Patreon itself, you get a ton of results where those very same words are used... and in the original context!

What gives, Patreon? When you can't even enforce your own rules consistently and professionally, you lose the right to be taken seriously.

To me, this is a symptom of a larger problem. Tech service providers are using their power to shove their own subjective moral code down the collective throats of their users. That's not a good thing. That's never a good thing. Remember what happened with CloudFlare back in 2017? CEO Matthew Prince, by his own admission, arbitrarily banned The Daily Stormer because they pissed him off. I'm shedding no tears for The Stormers. What concerned me, at the time, was the concept of due process and a properly thought out set of guidelines for such cases.

Wherein lies the difference between Matthew Prince and Jack Conte, CEO of Patreon. Prince had the class to admit that it wasn't the right thing to do. Conte merely doubled down, and is still trying to worm his way out of any admission of wrongdoing for Carl Benjamin's banning. Check out his response to journalist Tim Pool below.

"...we examine behaviors on and off Patreon, and you are correct to point out that there is language that makes it seem like only content on Patreon is reviewed, which is not a constraint that we apply for all categories of the guidelines… we need to make that clearer."

This is basically double-talk for: we have rules, and you need to trust us to enforce them when or if we see the need to. News for you, Conte... trust has to be earned and Patreon, as of now, is a long, long way away from that. It's really friggin' hard to trust folks who establish rules and then enforce those very same rules selectively, sometimes using different interpretations for different people!

There's a hilarious video clip on YouTube that pretty much sums up what's happening here. Though portraying Jack Conte as Hitler, no matter how much of a weasel I think he's being at the moment, seems a bit much. Still, it's funny as all heck. Enjoy!

Who cares about Carl Benjamin anyway?

Not me. I barely knew who he was before this whole saga started. Then I went to watch one of his videos (he's known as Sargon of Akkad on YouTube) and almost got put to sleep. This dude is boring.

But there are people who think he's trash and are glad he was de-platformed. Because they find his opinions repulsive, or some crap like that.

Just gonna say this - it doesn't matter who the victim is. It's a matter of principle. We need to break out of this childish mentality that bad things are good when done to bad people. If we accept objectively bad things when they happen to people we don't care for, then we can't complain when they happen to people we do care about.

If there is no consistency to your principles, you have no principles, period.

More exits!

Jordan Peterson and Dave Rubin have declared their intention to leave Patreon. Sam Harris has elected to take his business elsewhere. And these are just the big hitters. Who else has to leave before Patreon starts to wake up?

Let's be crystal-clear on something. Patreon is not a Free Speech platform, and therefore not obliged to avoid censorship. Patreon was completely within their legal rights in de-platforming whoever they wanted, with or without an explanation. Patreon can act as unprofessionally as they please as long as they don't break the law.

That does not make what Patreon did, either right or sensible. Tech service providers need to realize that they exist at the pleasure of their users, not the other way round. The moment they stop being credible, the moment people stop trusting them, they've lost. Patreon might have been one of the most popular and well-known crowdfunding services on the Internet. Well, they're still well-known now, albeit for the wrong reasons; one of them in a nutshell - they got too big for their goddamn britches.

The USA is engaged in a culture war right now, a war of clashing political ideologies. And that war has escalated. Now if somebody gets offended at your words, they don't just flame you online. They pressure people to take away your livelihood. That's intolerance taken to new, dangerous levels. What's the next logical step? Gunning people down because those people drew cartoons they didn't like?

In Conclusion

Tech service providers are supposed to provide a service within the boundaries of the law. They're not the enforcers of political ideology, nor should they ever aspire to be.

To be Conte-nued?
T___T

Where To Find Work (Part 2/3)

When we talk about tech companies, names like Google, Microsoft and IBM come to mind. But tech companies cover a wide range - from infrastructure to software. They also come in a large variety of sizes and service models. It's best to examine your planned career path and make your decisions based on those.

Tech Start-up

Companies that have yet to turn a profit or arrive at any kind of critical mass.

Company Size. These are typically really small, numbering less than ten employees, though large startups (such as Uber) aren't unheard of. We're, at this moment, speaking of the really tiny operations.

Service Model. B2B or B2C.

Pros

Experience. If you're starting out in your career, this is an excellent way to get your feet wet. The ungodly working hours and the tendency of the employer to throw everything your way will ensure that - as long as your attitude remains positive. Also, mentioning that you've survived "startup culture" is almost always a positive with potential employers. If nothing else, you've proven you can weather storms.

Importance. Companies like to say "everyone is important in our organization". This is bullshit. There's always dead weight in corporations above a certain size. But in a tiny startup, this is true because there's no way for it to be false. Every person actually matters. It's a minimal headcount. This is a huge chance to make a difference.

Sauntering to
work like this!

Informal. There's little to no red tape because it's more trouble than it's worth at this point. Sure, there are rules... but also a great amount of flexibility. If you need to take urgent leave or even just a couple hours off, there's generally little to no paperwork and the approving party is more amenable to it. And the lack of a dress code basically means you can waltz in rocking your shorts and slippers every damn day.

Cons

Pay and benefits. Typically not great. It's a startup and they're surviving on raised funds. This means belt are always tightened.

Environment. Along with belts being tightened, being in a startup also typically means that your office is going to look like somebody's storeroom.

Workload. If you're a fan of coming in on time and leaving on time, don't count on it with a startup. Here, due to lack of manpower, everyone gives way more than the prescribed eight working hours a day, bosses included. Working in a startup is hell for your work-life-balance.

Stability. Or lack thereof. A company that is in danger of going under anytime due to lack of funding, isn't the safest bet in the world. You've been warned.

Verdict. Try this at least once in your career. Especially early in your career. If the start-up fails, you'd have gained valuable experience. If it succeeds (and that's a tremendous if) you can take a healthy chunk of credit for bringing it past startup stage. Either way - much to gain, fuck-all to lose.

Software Vendor

These are small companies that make software or websites for other companies. They may have gotten past the startup phase, but survival is a constant struggle.

Company Size. Small or medium.

Service Model. B2B

Pros

Responsibility. Everyone manages clients and builds software at the same time. This is really good for leveling up different aspects of your game simultaneously.

Informal. There are rules. Those rules are also negotiable, because at this point, the company hasn't grown large enough that making occasional exceptions on a case-by-case basis would pose any sizeable problem. That said, it really depends on who's in charge. Some SMEs have a serious case of Chinese Towkay Syndrome and like to act like they have a few thousand employees under them.

Domain Knowledge. Doing work for several different clients, all from different industries and backgrounds, can make the developer well-versed in a large variety of industries. This is always useful, particularly in the event that you want to consider being a software developer in that particular industry.

Direct contribution to profits. Since the profits come off doing lots of low-margin work, your value is determined by how many clients you manage to bill on your watch regularly.

Cons

Repetitive work. Doing different versions of the same thing day in, day out, can make you feel like you're stuck in a Hamster Wheel of Doom.

Standard of work. By that same token, doing work for so many clients invariably means that the projects are small. And simple. Things you'll eventually outgrow.

Pay. The pay is not that much better than that of a startup. The company can pay more, but you have to constantly prove yourself because your performance is directly linked to profits. This can prove exhausting in the long run.

Like a very leaky boat at sea.

Stability. They're more stable than the average startup, which doesn't mean much. A bit of upheaval in the tides of the economy will see them scramble to cut the dead weight.

Verdict

A decent (but entirely optional) training choice early or in the middle of your career. Don't stay beyond a few years. Get the experience you need and move on.

Tech Multinational Company

These are typically the big players whose head office is often not in Singapore.

Company Size. Large. Sometimes huge.

Service Model. B2B or B2C.

Pros

A great environment.

Environment. Big spaces, janitorial services, posh business locations.

Pay and benefits. Your remuneration is likely to be competitive. You may even get dental.

Professional visibility. Google. Facebook. Microsoft. These ring a bell? They should, because they're B2C and just about everyone has heard of them. If they're purely B2B, like Cloudflare or Atlassian, then maybe not. But those in the tech industry would have heard of them, and that's no small thing. Working in a tech MNC opens new doors.

Stability. Big tech companies tend to be big for a reason. They've weathered storms, and in all likelihood, will probably be around long after you're gone.

Cons

Politics. At any large corporation, you get people jostling for position and all that juvenile shit.

Your expendibility. Again, in a large company, your contribution doesn't have as much impact. Their attitude is more along the lines of "you're lucky to be working for us" rather than "we're lucky to have you on board". There are small companies with the same attitude; then again, we aren't talking about those wannabes, are we?

Red tape. A company of that size doesn't have the luxury of making exceptions for extenuating circumstances. Everything will be strictly by the book, unless you're personally very important to the organization.

Verdict

Move on when the time is right, but this makes a great addition to any resume. If you do decide to stay for the long haul, there's always the chance of a promotion and increased benefits.

Next

Now for the non-tech companies...

A Storm Without A Cloud

Following the tragic outbreak of violence at Charlottesville a week back, web security company Cloudflare removed White Supremacist website, The Daily Stormer, as a customer, leaving it open to cyber-attacks. This is significant because up till then, Cloudflare had, quite admirably in my estimation, steadfastly refused to impose a moral stand on The Daily Stormer's hate-filled content. Before that, other vendors like GoDaddy, Google, SquareSpace and Twitter had already moved to deny The Daily Stormer their services. As of now, the site has moved out of the mainstream internet and may be accessed only on the dark web. No, I'm not going to provide a link - if you must read their filth, do a web search.

I took a special interest in this case because of the situation between Shopify and Breitbart News Network earlier this year. Back then, I observed that tech was becoming increasingly partisan and that vendors are being forced to take sides in the escalating political war of ideals between the Liberals and Conservatives. And my stand then, was that technology should serve all voices within the boundaries of the law. That has not changed. Cloudflare's sentiments appeared to echo mine, until unceremoniously dropping The Daily Stormer.

What caused the change of heart? Now, this in itself is noteworthy. Unlike the likes of Google and Facebook, Cloudflare's objections were not on moral grounds, nor were they pandering to the Leftists. They found the content of The Daily Stormer as repugnant as many other people, me included. No, in the words of CEO Matthew Prince, he'd had enough of their crap.

This was my decision. Our terms of service reserve the right for us to terminate users of our network at our sole discretion. My rationale for making this decision was simple: the people behind the Daily Stormer are assholes and I'd had enough.

While, he, like myself, believes that service providers should not morally police the Internet, The Daily Stormer finally pushed him too far. According to an explanatory blog post by Prince, The Daily Stormer had been proclaiming that Cloudflare were on their side and were "one of us". Already disgusted by them, Prince made a decision that even he acknowledged as arbitrary - he flexed those CEO muscles and pulled out.

Looted from Washington Post.

For some context, this is what went down in Charlottesville. White Supremacists marched to protest the taking down of Robert E. Lee's statue. There was a counter-protest by Leftists and violence broke out. No, I don't want to talk about who started it. That's not the point. The point is that one of the White Supremacists, James Alex Fields, Jr., drove his car into a group of Leftists, injuring 19 and killing a woman by the name of Heather Heyer. And if that wasn't bad enough, The Daily Stormer started posting insulting content about Heyer, and expressing satisfaction at her death.

Yep. That level of disgusting. Christ, man. Someone died. Show some goddamn decency.

Still, no matter how revolting I found their content, according to the law of the land, they still had a right to publish it. Hey, don't look at me. It sucks, so change that stupid law.

Shopify CEO Tobias Lütke noted back then, that morality is subjective and it wasn't the place of Shopify to impose their moral standard on any party. Matthew Prince seems to agree, and he noted that although he had the power to drop The Daily Stormer and actually exercised it, it was a problematic decision and he remains perturbed by it to this day.

And the dude makes a very compelling point.

Look, just because he could do it, didn't mean he should. He basically got pissed off and cut The Daily Stormer off. That would be like Sundar Pichai denying me service to my Google Blog just because I insulted his mother! It was unprofessional, and could come back to bite them. No, not in terms of The Daily Stormers seeking retribution - those little pukes have enough troubles of their own, and Cloudflare was hardly the first to axe them - in terms of maintaining tech neutrality. If he could drop The Daily Stormers because he found them objectionable, it's easy to turn it around and say that whoever he hasn't dropped must not be objectionable to him. And that is a slippery slope. It sets a dangerous precedent.

Get a load of this douchebag.

I mean, let's say for example I create a platform for people to listen to music. Even Justin Bieber's music. What if people used that to accuse me of being a Justin Bieber fan? A Justin Bieber fan, for crying out loud.

That being said...

I've developed a great deal of respect for Matthew Prince. He behaved unprofessionally (albeit in a very extreme situation), but he owned it. He could have justified it by taking the moral high ground, and he'd be in good company. But no, he didn't. He acknowledged that his actions compromised the principles upon which he had based Cloudflare, and left us with these words.

The issue of who can and cannot be online has often been associated with Freedom of Speech. We think the more important principle is Due Process. I, personally, believe in strong Freedom of Speech protections, but I also acknowledge that it is a very American idea that is not shared globally. On the other hand, the concept of Due Process is close to universal. At its most basic, Due Process means that you should be able to know the rules a system will follow if you participate in that system.

Due Process requires that decisions be public and not arbitrary. It's why we've always said that our policy is to follow the guidance of the law in the jurisdictions in which we operate. Law enforcement, legislators, and courts have the political legitimacy and predictability to make decisions on what content should be restricted. Companies should not.

Due Process. What a concept.

Censorship! You're impinging on their First Amendment rights, the Rightists protest.

What's the big deal, come the predictable cries from the Leftists. The White Supremacists are Nazi pieces of shit who don't deserve a platform to air their hateful views. We have the moral high ground!

Boy, a lot of people sure are obsessed about moral high ground these days. Go figure. The Left and Right are missing the point entirely, but that's OK. They're laypeople, and missing the point is practically an obligation.

You see, this isn't about what The Daily Stormer does or doesn't deserve. From a tech point of view, the moment one party exercises their legal right to deny technical service, this has larger implications on the rest of the Internet. It's rather more clear-cut when the violation is of a legal nature, but when it isn't, and the service provider has to make a judgement call, things get tricky. You generally want to be consistent, and the only way to do that is not to let your personal biases affect your judgement. Yes, morality is a form of bias. What a shock, huh?

Following that, the best way to not let personal biases affect your judgement, is to have a greater authority make the call. A standard due process that lets the offender know - this is not personal. These are the rules, motherfucker. You pull that shit, we're done!

When Cloudflare dropped The Daily Stormer, The Daily Stormer was left defenceless against cyber attacks from online hacktivist groups such as Anonymous, and to this date has trouble staying up. You may consider it justice, but when said justice is dispensed via illegal means and you think that's OK, you've probably been watching way too much TV. No tech worker in his right mind would endorse such a thing. We ply our living within the framework of the law. We've got a code of conduct and shit!

Being a professional.

A lawyer is professionally bound to defend his client to the best of his ability (and again, within the framework of the law) even if his client is the sleaziest lowlife on God's green earth. A surgeon is required to do his utmost to save his patient's life, even if that patient just gunned down his entire family. The Hippocratic Oath. Heard of it? Tech service providers operate in a similar capacity - while technically they have the power to dump whomever they please for whatever reason they specify, all of them try to refrain from passing any sort of judgement on the weird shit people do on the Internet. And that's really all we want to do - work on the tech, and leave the policing to the authorities.

I mean, do you really want an Internet where you can be denied service just because the geek in charge didn't like your face? Or, if you do without the protection of Cloudflare, have your website be vulnerable to any hackers who don't like your content? If we're not careful, that's where we're headed. Anarchy.

These are extreme circumstances!

I agree. Extreme circumstances call for extreme measures. Sure. You'll find no sympathy from me with regards to the neo-Nazis. Those witless bastards can rot in hell. If it were up to me, they wouldn't even have fingers to use keyboards with, much less the Internet. (The Leftists may cheer at this, until I remind them that my antipathy extends itself to Antifa and other extremist groups who use violence and illegal means to get shit done.) But thankfully, it's not up to me. Because I'm a severely flawed human being with limited perspective. Just like, whether they choose to admit it or not, everyone else.

What Matthew Prince is really saying, and I don't think that's at all an unreasonable concern, is where do we draw the line? And who draws it? Where are the checks and balances? Arguably, the entire mess in Charlottesville stemmed from people not knowing when to stop. Being unable, or unwilling, to regulate themselves.

Our Internet's as free and open as it's ever going to be. Don't take it for granted.

I bet The Daily Stormers did Nazi this coming, eh?
T___T