Linked List: August 5, 2015

Wednesday, 5 August 2015

‘Made Recruiting Here More Difficult’ ★

New Reddit CEO and cofounder Steve Huffman, on the policy changes announced today that include banning the utterly racist “CoonTown” sub-reddit:

We didn’t ban them for being racist. We banned them because we have to spend a disproportionate amount of time dealing with them. If we want to improve Reddit, we need more people, but CT’s existence and popularity has also made recruiting here more difficult.

If they didn’t ban them for being racist — for god’s sake their name was offensively racist — but because they forced Reddit “to spend a disproportionate amount of time dealing with them”, well, I don’t know that that’s going to change Reddit’s recruiting problems. The message seems to be that they’ll host racist/sexist/whatever communities, just not troublemaking racist/sexist/whatever communities.

From the Department of Strange Bedfellows ★

Robert McMillan, reporting for the WSJ:

International Business Machines Corp. and Apple Inc. used to be bitter rivals, but lately they have been spending quality time together. More than 100 IBM employees occupy Apple’s Cupertino, Calif., campus helping build iPhone and iPad apps for IBM customers such as Citigroup Inc., Sprint Corp. and Japan Post Holdings Co.

Things are looking different inside IBM, too. Once a company of blue suits, Wintel personal computers and BlackBerrys, Big Blue is on track to become the world’s largest corporate user of MacBooks. On Wednesday, the company began to apply lessons it has learned, introducing a service intended to help other companies adopt Macs.

Every time I think about this growing partnership between Apple and IBM, I think of this photo. I’ll bet you know exactly what photo I’m talking about, too.

I don’t know if this IBM partnership in and of itself is a big deal, but I think the general trend toward MacBooks being the de facto standard laptop for any sort of professional use, across all fields, is a huge deal.

Back in 2007 I doubted the iPhone would ever gain traction in “the enterprise”. But for it to happen with the Mac? Unimaginable. Everyone knows new product markets move quickly. What I take away from the Mac’s continuing growth is that it’s worth remembering that even established markets can change in fundamental ways. It’s human nature to be blind to changes like this until after they’ve happened.

Update: Darth provides an updated photo for 2015.

It’s Our Duty to Support the Troops and the Second Amendment in Case We Ever Need to Kill Them All ★

“Russell Mandel”, writing for Clickhole:

These days, America faces its most troubling threats, both from the outside and the inside. Between terrorist groups like ISIS vowing daily to attack our citizens and our own government seemingly hellbent on infringing on our civil liberties, the American way of life as we know it is in constant danger.

That’s why I believe that, regardless of politics, it’s everyone’s duty to support the troops, and also to support the Second Amendment should the day come when we need to overthrow the government and kill those troops.

Brilliant.

Update: For those of you unfamiliar with the right-wing political fringe here in the U.S., here’s a news story today that provides some context.

The ‘Illegal’ Index: Which News Organizations Still Use the Term ‘Illegal Immigrant’? ★

Felix Salmon, writing for Fusion back in November:

This might well be the only article you ever read on Fusion that contains the phrase “illegal immigrant.” If necessary, we’ll quote individuals who use the offensive term. But we’ll never use it ourselves to describe people living and working in the United States without every necessary bureaucratic authorization.

The reason is simple: People who speed aren’t “illegal drivers,” nor are people who fall behind on their taxes “illegal filers.” Even soldiers fighting against the United States without belonging to a formal national army are generally referred to as “unlawful” rather than “illegal” combatants. The use of the term “illegal” to refer to a person is a usage which is confined to exactly one group of people: Migrants. As a result, “illegal,” when used as a noun, always means immigrants — people whose only crime is the victimless pursuit of liberty and prosperity.

Jeffrey Toobin, writing for The New Yorker (which has no policy on the term):

Salmon, and most others who abjure “illegal” immigrant, prefer to use the adjective “undocumented,” which I also used several times in my article. The term is clearly accurate, but also incomplete. The problem of the family in my piece is not simply that it lacks a document, like an American who, say, is kept from voting because he or she lacks a driver’s license or other photo I.D. The problem is that the law currently forbids the family from living in the United States. The family is not authorized to be here, which is different, I think, from simply needing a piece of paper. […]

An erudite friend, Michael O’Hare, a professor of public policy at Berkeley, pointed out that there are apt terms in French — sans papiers, and situation irrégulière — but I write in English. If we were being technical, it may be more accurate to describe these individuals’ status as “unauthorized” rather than undocumented or illegal. In the end, though, I think my third category is dispositive. There does seem to be a consensus against the use of the term by the people most affected by it, who happen to be a vulnerable minority seeking a better life, and that’s good enough for me. Personally, I’m dropping the use of the term “illegal immigrant.”