![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Actions have consequences (or: why I'm not fixing Intel's bugs any more)
Edit: About two months after this was written, Intel committed to a large scale diversity initiative. Actions speak louder than words, and this was an effective repudiation of the behaviour described below. I've happily worked on Intel-related issues since then.
A lot of the kernel work I've ended up doing has involved dealing with bugs on Intel-based systems - figuring out interactions between their hardware and firmware, reverse engineering features that they refuse to document, improving their power management support, handling platform integration stuff for their GPUs and so on. Some of this I've been paid for, but a bunch has been unpaid work in my spare time[1].
Recently, as part of the anti-women #GamerGate campaign[2], a set of awful humans convinced Intel to terminate an advertising campaign because the site hosting the campaign had dared to suggest that the sexism present throughout the gaming industry might be a problem. Despite being awful humans, it is absolutely their right to request that a company choose to spend its money in a different way. And despite it being a dreadful decision, Intel is obviously entitled to spend their money as they wish. But I'm also free to spend my unpaid spare time as I wish, and I no longer wish to spend it doing unpaid work to enable an abhorrently-behaving company to sell more hardware. I won't be working on any Intel-specific bugs. I won't be reverse engineering any Intel-based features[3]. If the backlight on your laptop with an Intel GPU doesn't work, the number of fucks I'll be giving will fail to register on even the most sensitive measuring device.
On the plus side, this is probably going to significantly reduce my gin consumption.
[1] In the spirit of full disclosure: in some cases this has resulted in me being sent laptops in order to figure stuff out, and I was not always asked to return those laptops. My current laptop was purchased by me.
[2] I appreciate that there are some people involved in this campaign who earnestly believe that they are working to improve the state of professional ethics in games media. That is a worthy goal! But you're allying yourself to a cause that disproportionately attacks women while ignoring almost every other conflict of interest in the industry. If this is what you care about, find a new way to do it - and perhaps deal with the rather more obvious cases involving giant corporations, rather than obsessing over indie developers.
For avoidance of doubt, any comments arguing this point will be replaced with the phrase "Fart fart fart".
[3] Except for the purposes of finding entertaining security bugs
A lot of the kernel work I've ended up doing has involved dealing with bugs on Intel-based systems - figuring out interactions between their hardware and firmware, reverse engineering features that they refuse to document, improving their power management support, handling platform integration stuff for their GPUs and so on. Some of this I've been paid for, but a bunch has been unpaid work in my spare time[1].
Recently, as part of the anti-women #GamerGate campaign[2], a set of awful humans convinced Intel to terminate an advertising campaign because the site hosting the campaign had dared to suggest that the sexism present throughout the gaming industry might be a problem. Despite being awful humans, it is absolutely their right to request that a company choose to spend its money in a different way. And despite it being a dreadful decision, Intel is obviously entitled to spend their money as they wish. But I'm also free to spend my unpaid spare time as I wish, and I no longer wish to spend it doing unpaid work to enable an abhorrently-behaving company to sell more hardware. I won't be working on any Intel-specific bugs. I won't be reverse engineering any Intel-based features[3]. If the backlight on your laptop with an Intel GPU doesn't work, the number of fucks I'll be giving will fail to register on even the most sensitive measuring device.
On the plus side, this is probably going to significantly reduce my gin consumption.
[1] In the spirit of full disclosure: in some cases this has resulted in me being sent laptops in order to figure stuff out, and I was not always asked to return those laptops. My current laptop was purchased by me.
[2] I appreciate that there are some people involved in this campaign who earnestly believe that they are working to improve the state of professional ethics in games media. That is a worthy goal! But you're allying yourself to a cause that disproportionately attacks women while ignoring almost every other conflict of interest in the industry. If this is what you care about, find a new way to do it - and perhaps deal with the rather more obvious cases involving giant corporations, rather than obsessing over indie developers.
For avoidance of doubt, any comments arguing this point will be replaced with the phrase "Fart fart fart".
[3] Except for the purposes of finding entertaining security bugs
Re: Confused now.
(Anonymous) 2014-10-02 09:12 pm (UTC)(link)But I think this just confirms it for me: There's a social media fight. One side is saying ethics. The other side is saying equality. Both are pointing fingers. No one here looks like the civic minded feminist types I met in university. (And what's a gamer supposed to be?)
Maybe these people would be more sensible in the real world. Maybe the internet is just making them sound like they're crazy. But if the stuff came up in my 9-5? I'd just be like "This has nothing to do with me. I keep the lights on. My job isn't politics. I want to be as far from it as possible. This is bad for business."
If I knew this woman (the developer not the blogger) maybe it'd be different, but how the heck are you supposed to know if any of this is true or in the right context or what?
This is exactly why I swapped from psych / econ to engineering: So I'd be in touch with reality. This viral stuff... who the heck knows?
I'd hate to be Intel's marketing people. Bet they could use some of MG's spare gin right now. Yikes.
Re: Confused now.
"Fart fart fart fart"
and as such has been screened for irrelevance.
Re: Confused now.
(Anonymous) 2014-10-03 01:53 am (UTC)(link)Because bashing someone by pretending that they're a radical feminist is an easier sell than bashing them because OMG! they thing that maybe it would be nice if the gaming world were a little friendlier to women.
Re: Confused now.
(Anonymous) 2014-10-07 01:08 am (UTC)(link)