6 ms·

Arch Linux Mirror Loli.forsale Removed After Name Complaint

43 points by Famicoman 9y ago

JadeNB 9y ago
Is this anything but a fit of pique on the part of the maintainer of the mirror? It seems that the maintainer is mainly saying "because I have done many good things, no-one is allowed to complain about anything I do." It seemed that the notification was polite and professional, and made very clear that it involved no personal judgement, only a response to user demand. (The free-speech issue seems to be a red herring; no-one is, as far as I can tell, denying his right to name his mirror as he pleases. As the saying goes, "free speech is the right to say whatever you please, but not the right to have anyone listen.")
- zimpenfish 9y ago
  To be honest, if I was the Arch people, I'd boot him from the project just for the ridiculous self-preening nature of that email. And also for calling himself "Alucard". (This is why I'm not in charge of things, mind.)
  - microcolonel 9y ago
    You'd be making a huge mistake, and if I were at a higher station than you when you did that, I would be very close to booting you if could be argued as a net good or neutral to do so.
    - zimpenfish 9y ago
      Why would I be making a huge mistake? They are clearly incapable of behaving professionally and, since the whole thrust of that thread is "Arch wants to behave professionally", booting them would align with that perfectly.
      - microcolonel 9y ago
        Maybe the laid-back, results oriented nature of Arch Linux is what got it here. The IRC and mailing list are openly hostile to people who do not read the manual, and yet it has consistently been the best goddamn Linux distro on the planet earth for the solid five years I've used it. It is on the backs of people like this that Arch Linux was built, and if that laissez faire atmosphere deteriorates, I suspect the productivity will deteriorate with it.
        jrimbault 9y ago
        (I am a full time arch user and occasionally read some of the mailing lists) I don't see how the RTFM mentality and what you call "laid back" mentality are compatible. Imo, Arch is one of the more severe/strict distros and communities. Guess it's all perception.
        microcolonel 9y ago
        I know what you're getting at, and that's fair from one perspective. To people who are socially sensitive it can be very stressful to work with these folks. When I say laid-back I figure I mean that it is more tolerant/friendly to autistic behaviour. The low standard for social skills brings in a lot of people who do productive work, at the expense of the perception of people who don't work well with autistic types. More men and boys are autistic (or close to it) than women and girls, so you'll see an even bigger split here than usual. Basically, this domain name is typical autistic weeaboo trash (in keeping with the weeaboo handle). It's obviously not a literal endorsement of child trafficking; probably a morsel of dark humour which is more offensive than humorous if you're sensitive; or perhaps it's a tool for his work at NCMEC. Emotional sensitivity is effectively a cancer to these communities, because a large portion of the members are incapable of it. If it takes hold in the Arch Linux community, it could collapse almost entirely. HN has a lot of sensitive/agreeable people, so (understandable) outrage in this thread has cost me ~50 karma. It's a matter of personality, whether you see this as a sign of a healthy community, or possibly the end of an era. Seems like this guy has a history of being a grade too abrasive for different communities. I understand why he sounds so upset in his response here.
    - kw71 9y ago
      When your goal is to have a wide audience as possible it is a good practice to avoid bad taste. We could have the same scenario with smart alecks committing code that has "fun" var and function names.
  - Foxboron 9y ago
    It's a random person offering to host a mirror. He isn't affiliated, and havent contribute in any other way to the project. There is nothing to boot here.
- microcolonel 9y ago
  I think the point here is that a) he did everything right b) he did nothing wrong and c) it doesn't really matter what characters go into the name. I think the complaint is quite petty, and it doesn't really solve any problems. Approximately nobody is going to have a worse opinion of Arch Linux because of the content of a url in /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist, and it's basically a waste of time to address this as an issue.
  - scrollaway 9y ago
    > it's basically a waste of time to address this as an issue. It's just as much of a waste of time to defend it. Arch has hundreds of mirrors and dozens come and go every month. Dropping one takes less time than it took me to reply to you here.
    - microcolonel 9y ago
      > It's just as much of a waste of time to defend it. If by "defend" you mean "not spend more money on registering yet another domain", then I'd say it's worth defending. A hundred dollars is worth at least a few emails, especially if it is at the expense of a productive community member, on behalf of some anonymous whiner.
      - viraptor 9y ago
        Domains don't cost hundreds of dollars if you really don't care about the name. You can find some for $5 a year for one which nobody needs to remember/type.
      - scrollaway 9y ago
        Nobody is forcing the person in question to host an arch mirror. Being included in the official mirror list does not come without rules and if one of these rules is "don't have a shitty domain name", I don't see the problem. PS, domain names on non-egregious TLDs are 5-10 bucks a year.
        9y ago
- viraptor 9y ago
  I'm tempted to say it could've been a provocation planned for some time. The original name for the mirror was cuntflaps: https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/51870 https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/51870 and only changed after a request.
  - zimpenfish 9y ago
    And my "they are clearly incapably of behaving professionally" gets a +1 buff.
- konart 9y ago
  > involved no personal judgement, only a response to user demand So it is okay to remove stuff just because somebody was offended? Why nobody is banning Rammstein concerts then? I'm pretty sure many people will find band's name offencive.
  - smhost 9y ago
    > So it is okay to remove stuff just because somebody was offended? Yep.
    - konart 9y ago
      So... do you mind answering the second part then? Will they change ycombinator.com to something else if somebody is offended? Or will you change your "smhost" if I'm gonna tell you it offends me?
      - viraptor 9y ago
        > Why nobody is banning Rammstein concerts then? Because they choose not to. Each venue, organisation, or city which lawfully has influence over such events has the right to refuse. Neither case is "banning".
        zimpenfish 9y ago
        e.g. Rammstein have been refused on safety grounds before now. 2001: "Rammstein were unable to play their show yesterday at the Astoria in London due to significant restrictions to their stageshow and pyrotechnics. The band feel it would be unfair to their fans, to see a show that would have become highly compromised. If these issues can be resolved the band promises to return to the UK later in the year for live shows. Rammstein apologize for letting their fans down due to a problem which was out of their hands"
        majewsky 9y ago
        That's entirely irrelevant to this discussion.
medokin 9y ago
Please remove also Arch from your name, because it offends my identification as an arch.
ddavis 9y ago
What is offensive about the domain name? Just curious.
- kw71 9y ago
  "loli" is a 4chanism for a sexual target who is underage
  - konart 9y ago
    It has nothing to do with 4chan though
    - kw71 9y ago
      My fault, 15+ years or so ago some kids who were interested in /b/ explained it to me, and this was a while before it was widely understood.
  - Theizestooke 9y ago
    not 4chan but japanese manga & anime culture.
    - konart 9y ago
      The origin is russian though.
      - chii 9y ago
        The term is indeed from a russian book named lolita, but the term 'loli' has evolved via anime to mean something a bit different than the original.
      - lmm 9y ago
        Not really; Nabokov was born in Russia but left at 19, and wrote Lolita in English while in the US.
konart 9y ago
Another CoralineAda?
Famicoman 9y ago
Via detectives at reddit, Here is the original complaint, https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=227998 https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=227998 And here is the admin's original request to use a mirror with the name mirror.cuntflaps.me where the loli.forsale mirror was ultimately accepted, https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/51870 https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/51870
scandox 9y ago
> like working for the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children Am I right in saying that this guy works for the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (presumably in Portugal)? Because for some reason it seems particularly weird to me that someone in that organisation would find that domain name amusing. Maybe it is some kind of professional gallows humour?
- mmjaa 9y ago
  Maybe he sets up and operates honeypots. Alas, what is in the domain but words, and what is in a word but that which we pour in?
jakobegger 9y ago
some people who contribute to open source projects are really nice and considerate people, and some are dicks. When someone makes significant contributions, people tolerate a bit of dickish behavior and shrug it of as the behavior of a slightly eccentric genius. But for everyone else, people won’t put up with your shit. If you want people to accept your contributions, be nice, and don’t be a dick.
- ioquatix 9y ago
  > some people who contribute to open source projects are really nice and considerate people, and some are vaginas. When someone makes significant contributions, people tolerate a bit of vaginaish behavior and shrug it of as the behavior of a slightly eccentric genius. But for everyone else, people won’t put up with your shit. If you want people to accept your contributions, be nice, and don’t be a vagina.
  - ferbivore 9y ago
    We typically use the word "cunt", since "vagina" doesn't roll off the tongue as nicely.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - ioquatix 9y ago
      If you are looking for an inclusive gender-neutral variant, "ass" is probably the best. Although I tend to avoid such language in general as it comes across as immature and detracts from an otherwise valid argument. I'm all for freedom of speech, but I'm also for inclusive language. My satirical response was really just to draw attention to that.
      - PrimHelios 9y ago
        "Cunt" is pretty gender-neutral. I don't think I've met a single person who uses it exclusively for men or women.
sigi45 9y ago
Good decision.
jchw 9y ago
Personally I could care less. It's a gag that I'm sure some people do find amusing. But their response is what gets me. Boo hoo, free speech is dead because you don't want ostencibly-pedophilic jokes associated with your software. I say if you're committed to an off-color joke or gag, this is a terrible attempt to save face. Just apologize with authenticity and go more subtle. Don't turn it into another *gate or whatever the hell. Of course, I'm only indifferent because nobody got hurt. A similar but genuinely terrible situation would be the Python Pantyshot debacle...
- buttcake 9y ago
  That's just a type of response the author could come up with based on leftist social currencies. He needs to respond in a matter which reflects values of the people who are currently opposing him.
- jhanschoo 9y ago
  Well, I guess such a response is somewhat expected from someone who chooses to name a mirror that in the first place.
- msimpson 9y ago
  > I say if you're committed to an off-color joke or gag, this is a terrible attempt to save face. Just apologize with authenticity and go more subtle. Don't turn it into another *gate or whatever the hell. Exactly, and this is so obviously a troll. Look at the original feature request to even add the mirror: https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/51870 https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/51870 You can see Pritz's hesitation at using "cuntflaps.me" as a mirror and his request to use a different name. To which Alucard suggests "loli.forsale", instead. So excuse the Arch maintainers for not allowing you to politicize their distribution, thereby polarizing their user base...
  - fakerobotgamer 9y ago
    alucard.... is dracula spelled backwards..............
- jkg78i689 9y ago
wvh 9y ago
I can't make up my mind how much this is freedom of speech (and offend, which is never a reason for censorship in my book) and how much this is just being annoying.
- JadeNB 9y ago
  > how much this is freedom of speech I argued in another thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14846562 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14846562), but hope you won't mind my repeating here, the (tried but true) trope that free speech guarantees only the right to say what you want, not to have anyone listen. Not disseminating someone else's speech is not the same thing as suppressing it.
RaleyField 9y ago
The email of the author comes from a domain where one can find this gem on one of subpages: "Unless its some illegal faggot shit, I will always store your loli pics, anon."[1] I don't appreciate people putting their personalities (whether I generally appreciate their personality or not) into software. The project you are creating is, or should be, an intellectual endeavor and it serves no technical purpose to push your personality onto users. What's more, it lessens your credibility - if you don't understand not to put your personality into your project then I question what bigger mistakes you are making as well. It's the same reason I wouldn't trust savings to a banker wearing a clown costume, it's not about me hating clowns, they can be a clown in private all they want, just don't make a clown out of your own software. [1]https://safe.moe/faq https://safe.moe/faq
- snvzz 9y ago
  >The project you are creating is, or should be, an intellectual endeavor and it serves no technical purpose to push your personality onto users. Plenty will find that attitude offensive. Like, who do you think you are telling people what their project should be.
  - RaleyField 9y ago
    I'm not saying that you shouldn't put personality in it, just that intrinsically the product doesn't need it so if you strive to make it great then don't burden your users with noise.
- loa_in_ 9y ago
  It serves a purpose if it's to cater to a user who appreciates that. You could argue that software displaying "Good Morning, <name>!" every first run of the day serves no technical purpose, and judging by the tone of your comment, it makes that software inferior and the developer who decided to include this feature - to be of ill mind and immature. I like to say that seriousness, like fear, will make us do and say stupid things if we let it take over us.
  - RaleyField 9y ago

43 points by Famicoman 9y ago

Is this anything but a fit of pique on the part of the maintainer of the mirror? It seems that the maintainer is mainly saying "because I have done many good things, no-one is allowed to complain about anything I do." It seemed that the notification was polite and professional, and made very clear that it involved no personal judgement, only a response to user demand. (The free-speech issue seems to be a red herring; no-one is, as far as I can tell, denying his right to name his mirror as he pleases. As the saying goes, "free speech is the right to say whatever you please, but not the right to have anyone listen.")

zimpenfish 9y ago
To be honest, if I was the Arch people, I'd boot him from the project just for the ridiculous self-preening nature of that email. And also for calling himself "Alucard". (This is why I'm not in charge of things, mind.)
- microcolonel 9y ago
  You'd be making a huge mistake, and if I were at a higher station than you when you did that, I would be very close to booting you if could be argued as a net good or neutral to do so.
  - zimpenfish 9y ago
    Why would I be making a huge mistake? They are clearly incapable of behaving professionally and, since the whole thrust of that thread is "Arch wants to behave professionally", booting them would align with that perfectly.
    - microcolonel 9y ago
      Maybe the laid-back, results oriented nature of Arch Linux is what got it here. The IRC and mailing list are openly hostile to people who do not read the manual, and yet it has consistently been the best goddamn Linux distro on the planet earth for the solid five years I've used it. It is on the backs of people like this that Arch Linux was built, and if that laissez faire atmosphere deteriorates, I suspect the productivity will deteriorate with it.
      - jrimbault 9y ago
        (I am a full time arch user and occasionally read some of the mailing lists) I don't see how the RTFM mentality and what you call "laid back" mentality are compatible. Imo, Arch is one of the more severe/strict distros and communities. Guess it's all perception.
        microcolonel 9y ago
        I know what you're getting at, and that's fair from one perspective. To people who are socially sensitive it can be very stressful to work with these folks. When I say laid-back I figure I mean that it is more tolerant/friendly to autistic behaviour. The low standard for social skills brings in a lot of people who do productive work, at the expense of the perception of people who don't work well with autistic types. More men and boys are autistic (or close to it) than women and girls, so you'll see an even bigger split here than usual. Basically, this domain name is typical autistic weeaboo trash (in keeping with the weeaboo handle). It's obviously not a literal endorsement of child trafficking; probably a morsel of dark humour which is more offensive than humorous if you're sensitive; or perhaps it's a tool for his work at NCMEC. Emotional sensitivity is effectively a cancer to these communities, because a large portion of the members are incapable of it. If it takes hold in the Arch Linux community, it could collapse almost entirely. HN has a lot of sensitive/agreeable people, so (understandable) outrage in this thread has cost me ~50 karma. It's a matter of personality, whether you see this as a sign of a healthy community, or possibly the end of an era. Seems like this guy has a history of being a grade too abrasive for different communities. I understand why he sounds so upset in his response here.
  - kw71 9y ago
    When your goal is to have a wide audience as possible it is a good practice to avoid bad taste. We could have the same scenario with smart alecks committing code that has "fun" var and function names.
- Foxboron 9y ago
  It's a random person offering to host a mirror. He isn't affiliated, and havent contribute in any other way to the project. There is nothing to boot here.
microcolonel 9y ago
I think the point here is that a) he did everything right b) he did nothing wrong and c) it doesn't really matter what characters go into the name. I think the complaint is quite petty, and it doesn't really solve any problems. Approximately nobody is going to have a worse opinion of Arch Linux because of the content of a url in /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist, and it's basically a waste of time to address this as an issue.
- scrollaway 9y ago
  > it's basically a waste of time to address this as an issue. It's just as much of a waste of time to defend it. Arch has hundreds of mirrors and dozens come and go every month. Dropping one takes less time than it took me to reply to you here.
  - microcolonel 9y ago
    > It's just as much of a waste of time to defend it. If by "defend" you mean "not spend more money on registering yet another domain", then I'd say it's worth defending. A hundred dollars is worth at least a few emails, especially if it is at the expense of a productive community member, on behalf of some anonymous whiner.
    - viraptor 9y ago
      Domains don't cost hundreds of dollars if you really don't care about the name. You can find some for $5 a year for one which nobody needs to remember/type.
    - scrollaway 9y ago
      Nobody is forcing the person in question to host an arch mirror. Being included in the official mirror list does not come without rules and if one of these rules is "don't have a shitty domain name", I don't see the problem. PS, domain names on non-egregious TLDs are 5-10 bucks a year.
      - 9y ago
viraptor 9y ago
I'm tempted to say it could've been a provocation planned for some time. The original name for the mirror was cuntflaps: https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/51870 https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/51870 and only changed after a request.
- zimpenfish 9y ago
  And my "they are clearly incapably of behaving professionally" gets a +1 buff.
konart 9y ago
> involved no personal judgement, only a response to user demand So it is okay to remove stuff just because somebody was offended? Why nobody is banning Rammstein concerts then? I'm pretty sure many people will find band's name offencive.
- smhost 9y ago
  > So it is okay to remove stuff just because somebody was offended? Yep.
  - konart 9y ago
    So... do you mind answering the second part then? Will they change ycombinator.com to something else if somebody is offended? Or will you change your "smhost" if I'm gonna tell you it offends me?
    - viraptor 9y ago
      > Why nobody is banning Rammstein concerts then? Because they choose not to. Each venue, organisation, or city which lawfully has influence over such events has the right to refuse. Neither case is "banning".
      - zimpenfish 9y ago
        e.g. Rammstein have been refused on safety grounds before now. 2001: "Rammstein were unable to play their show yesterday at the Astoria in London due to significant restrictions to their stageshow and pyrotechnics. The band feel it would be unfair to their fans, to see a show that would have become highly compromised. If these issues can be resolved the band promises to return to the UK later in the year for live shows. Rammstein apologize for letting their fans down due to a problem which was out of their hands"
        majewsky 9y ago
        That's entirely irrelevant to this discussion.

medokin 9y ago

Please remove also Arch from your name, because it offends my identification as an arch.

ddavis 9y ago

What is offensive about the domain name? Just curious.

kw71 9y ago
"loli" is a 4chanism for a sexual target who is underage
- konart 9y ago
  It has nothing to do with 4chan though
  - kw71 9y ago
    My fault, 15+ years or so ago some kids who were interested in /b/ explained it to me, and this was a while before it was widely understood.
- Theizestooke 9y ago
  not 4chan but japanese manga & anime culture.
  - konart 9y ago
    The origin is russian though.
    - chii 9y ago
      The term is indeed from a russian book named lolita, but the term 'loli' has evolved via anime to mean something a bit different than the original.
    - lmm 9y ago
      Not really; Nabokov was born in Russia but left at 19, and wrote Lolita in English while in the US.

konart 9y ago

Another CoralineAda?

Famicoman 9y ago

Via detectives at reddit, Here is the original complaint, https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=227998 https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=227998 And here is the admin's original request to use a mirror with the name mirror.cuntflaps.me where the loli.forsale mirror was ultimately accepted, https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/51870 https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/51870

scandox 9y ago

> like working for the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children Am I right in saying that this guy works for the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (presumably in Portugal)? Because for some reason it seems particularly weird to me that someone in that organisation would find that domain name amusing. Maybe it is some kind of professional gallows humour?

mmjaa 9y ago
Maybe he sets up and operates honeypots. Alas, what is in the domain but words, and what is in a word but that which we pour in?

jakobegger 9y ago

some people who contribute to open source projects are really nice and considerate people, and some are dicks. When someone makes significant contributions, people tolerate a bit of dickish behavior and shrug it of as the behavior of a slightly eccentric genius. But for everyone else, people won’t put up with your shit. If you want people to accept your contributions, be nice, and don’t be a dick.

ioquatix 9y ago
> some people who contribute to open source projects are really nice and considerate people, and some are vaginas. When someone makes significant contributions, people tolerate a bit of vaginaish behavior and shrug it of as the behavior of a slightly eccentric genius. But for everyone else, people won’t put up with your shit. If you want people to accept your contributions, be nice, and don’t be a vagina.
- ferbivore 9y ago
  We typically use the word "cunt", since "vagina" doesn't roll off the tongue as nicely.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - ioquatix 9y ago
    If you are looking for an inclusive gender-neutral variant, "ass" is probably the best. Although I tend to avoid such language in general as it comes across as immature and detracts from an otherwise valid argument. I'm all for freedom of speech, but I'm also for inclusive language. My satirical response was really just to draw attention to that.
    - PrimHelios 9y ago
      "Cunt" is pretty gender-neutral. I don't think I've met a single person who uses it exclusively for men or women.

sigi45 9y ago

Good decision.

jchw 9y ago

Personally I could care less. It's a gag that I'm sure some people do find amusing. But their response is what gets me. Boo hoo, free speech is dead because you don't want ostencibly-pedophilic jokes associated with your software. I say if you're committed to an off-color joke or gag, this is a terrible attempt to save face. Just apologize with authenticity and go more subtle. Don't turn it into another *gate or whatever the hell. Of course, I'm only indifferent because nobody got hurt. A similar but genuinely terrible situation would be the Python Pantyshot debacle...

buttcake 9y ago
That's just a type of response the author could come up with based on leftist social currencies. He needs to respond in a matter which reflects values of the people who are currently opposing him.
jhanschoo 9y ago
Well, I guess such a response is somewhat expected from someone who chooses to name a mirror that in the first place.
msimpson 9y ago
> I say if you're committed to an off-color joke or gag, this is a terrible attempt to save face. Just apologize with authenticity and go more subtle. Don't turn it into another *gate or whatever the hell. Exactly, and this is so obviously a troll. Look at the original feature request to even add the mirror: https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/51870 https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/51870 You can see Pritz's hesitation at using "cuntflaps.me" as a mirror and his request to use a different name. To which Alucard suggests "loli.forsale", instead. So excuse the Arch maintainers for not allowing you to politicize their distribution, thereby polarizing their user base...
- fakerobotgamer 9y ago
  alucard.... is dracula spelled backwards..............
jkg78i689 9y ago

wvh 9y ago

I can't make up my mind how much this is freedom of speech (and offend, which is never a reason for censorship in my book) and how much this is just being annoying.

JadeNB 9y ago
> how much this is freedom of speech I argued in another thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14846562 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14846562), but hope you won't mind my repeating here, the (tried but true) trope that free speech guarantees only the right to say what you want, not to have anyone listen. Not disseminating someone else's speech is not the same thing as suppressing it.

RaleyField 9y ago

The email of the author comes from a domain where one can find this gem on one of subpages: "Unless its some illegal faggot shit, I will always store your loli pics, anon."[1] I don't appreciate people putting their personalities (whether I generally appreciate their personality or not) into software. The project you are creating is, or should be, an intellectual endeavor and it serves no technical purpose to push your personality onto users. What's more, it lessens your credibility - if you don't understand not to put your personality into your project then I question what bigger mistakes you are making as well. It's the same reason I wouldn't trust savings to a banker wearing a clown costume, it's not about me hating clowns, they can be a clown in private all they want, just don't make a clown out of your own software. [1]https://safe.moe/faq https://safe.moe/faq

snvzz 9y ago
>The project you are creating is, or should be, an intellectual endeavor and it serves no technical purpose to push your personality onto users. Plenty will find that attitude offensive. Like, who do you think you are telling people what their project should be.
- RaleyField 9y ago
  I'm not saying that you shouldn't put personality in it, just that intrinsically the product doesn't need it so if you strive to make it great then don't burden your users with noise.
loa_in_ 9y ago
It serves a purpose if it's to cater to a user who appreciates that. You could argue that software displaying "Good Morning, <name>!" every first run of the day serves no technical purpose, and judging by the tone of your comment, it makes that software inferior and the developer who decided to include this feature - to be of ill mind and immature. I like to say that seriousness, like fear, will make us do and say stupid things if we let it take over us.
- RaleyField 9y ago