Santa hat removed from VS Code after complaint | Hacker News Reader

Santa hat removed from VS Code after complaint

github.com

243 pointsdrak0n1c157 comments

No one did a reverse image search to find out Christian Shiffer probably doesn't exist - this was trolling https://tineye.com/search/f8144058b180a1d4df439745cfea4b1c8c...

It's like Nassim Taleb said, "The most intolerant wins":

https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict...

Besides, if anyone's connecting the "red winter hat with a white puff" image with Jesus, Jews or anything of the sort instead of Coca Cola, their marketing department is not doing a good job.

I think we're past the point where it's easy to limit the scope of a message to a specific group, and any message that concerns personal life is just doomed to be an issue in some way.

Nassim Taleb seems to be about companies giving in to the most extreme groups, but I think there will be less and less clear cut cases where a decision can emcompass all groups. For instance for his take on Halal food, some people do choose to not eat Halal. They might be arguably more intolerant that any other group, but not in relevant numbers for any food company to care about them.

I don't think we're going far from the traditional marketing approach of defining a market and playing the trade-off games around each segment's inclinations. Religion and culture just got added to the mix.

See, I think of Macy's.... but when I see a panda bear, boy do I crave some Coke.

>The Santa Hat on vscode insiders and pushing of religion is very offensive to me, additionally xmas has cost millions of Jews their lives over the centuries, yet even if that was not the case, pushing religious symbols as part of a product update is completely unacceptable. Please remove it immediately and make it your top priority. To me this is almost equally offensive as a swastika.

This guy should be banned from the project.

Slap a couple of lawsuits in different jurisdictions for promoting hate speech (for him equating an established religious symbol to the swastika).

Do you know why the United States put "no establishment of a religion" in the Constitution?

Because without it, you get holy wars. Eventually, the kind in which people die.

When a non-religious organization starts getting involved in religion, they run into similar problems. The best course of action is to stay out of it.

Point of information: that’s not the reason or at least not the primary one. Many of the colonies had an established Church and the framers did not want the Federal government impinging on states rights. Eventually all the states did disestablish but the last of those did so years after the constitution was ratified.

I don’t know what any of that has to do with Santa hats. Anecdote time: We are as I mentioned in my other comment Hindus. When my kids were little they were into Christmas as much as any other American children and we followed certain traditions but my daughter in particular was peeved that we never had a Christmas tree. (No ideological reason I just couldn’t be bothered.). Recently she mentioned this to her friend who then gave her a small tree as a present. That friend? A hijab-wearing Algerian Muslim.

Established churches lead to oppression of minority viewpoints.

What do you want to do, fight over it?

I think you left out “can” before lead. I was born and brought up in England where Elizabeth II is, as the coins say, “By Gods Grace Defender of the ((Protestant) Christian) Faith” and I don’t recall anyone including myself being particularly oppressed by the state church. Even the plentiful Atheists where I lived didn’t feel the need to acknowledge it let alone fight.

In 1533 Henry VIII decided he wanted to be head of his own church. The first war about that started the next year.

Protestants and Catholics fought for the next five hundred years, including the English Civil War and the Irish Rebellion.

Around 30% of Ireland's population died or emigrated, which is why there are so many Irish-descended people in North America, Australia, and elsewhere.

There has only been peace between the UK and Ireland since 1998, the Good Friday Agreement.

The religious war is directly responsible for a major issue in Brexit.

Either you lived through this or your parents did.

My parents arrived in the U.K. in the 1960s so no.

Nevertheless I get your point though I must quibble with your specific historical examples. One can argue that it was the King deciding once and for all “This is the way we’re going to worship and the rest of you can all shut up” is what finally (though not immediately) put an end to the religious turmoil. And if the UK had colonized Ireland for secular reasons would it have been any less brutal? Would the Irish have fought back any less?

A swastika is an established religious symbol btw. Yeah I know in the West it has unfortunately developed a more unsavory meaning.

It’s almost like people should evaluate the context of a symbol, be it a swastika or Santa hat, before deciding to be outraged but it would be a true Christmas miracle if that ever happened.

To be fair the symbols are a bit different.

A Swastika was used as a "good luck" symbol since ~3000 BC, in both Asia and Northern Europe. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastika_(Germanic_Iron_Age))

While i personally don't take offense at seeing a Swastika "out of context", i know many people do. This however is the first I've heard of people taking offense because of a red top hat, but i guess that's what today's society has come down to. It's almost like people are looking for things that offend them.

Not in red, white and black, and with the specific orientation and details as the Nazi one.

Naming it "xmas" is probably more offensive to far more people, but the irony will be lost in someone like him.

And that is equally silly:

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Xmas

(I'm christian.)

Most people need to think a lot harder about the things that offend them.

Are Santa hats (or Santa) even religious symbols ?

Isn't it just ancient superstition that happens to clash with a christian holiday (that happens to clash with pre christian winter solstice celebrations) ?

At least in scandinavia, xmas is called "Jul", and it just happens that the old norse religion had a winter solstice celebration called Jól, which translates to "Yule" in english, but back then there was no Santa involved.

>Are Santa hats (or Santa) even religious symbols ?

Only tangentially. It has some reference to Saint Nicolaus (a gift bearer), but it was been changed beyond recognition, to a modern half-pagan/nordic, 100%-commercial-soapy tradition.

I mean, christianity might believe in several things, but it doesn't believe in little elves working in South Pole or flying reindeers...

Have you seen Klaus ? Makes santa totally linked more to Norse than Christian origins... very good cartoon though...

As an atheist who received a Catholic education, I think calling a Santa hat a religious symbol is a stretch - Saint Nicholas is generally not depicted or described as wearing a "Santa" outfit. It's really more of a Western culture symbol rather than anything.

I agree with the assessment of some of the other posts that the guy who opened the issue is either trolling, or has made an attempt at satire that was taken too seriously.

If you want to analyze it that way, it's a secular Christian symbol, not a Western symbol. There's plenty of westerners that don't do the Christmas.

Santa's red outfit was designed as part of a Coka Cola promotion. So I think the GP is more actuate saying it's a western symbol.

Whether some westerners choose not to celebrate Christmas is kind of moot. I don't celebrate Halloween but there's still no disputing some of the traditions are modern regional twists.

The marketing was aimed directly at the group described by secular Christian, I don't see how the fact that it originated as marketing changes anything.

Santa is more of a US symbol really, other countries have different represenations (Germany for example has baby jesus, literally, and the only reason we have santa is lazy US companies not wanting to reprint)

I don't think they should have backed down, but I understand Microsoft not wanting confrontation or a storm. But if this person is so offended, I imagine that they are constantly and persistently offended while walking the streets, full of similar symbols and seasonal displays.

I'm a staunch atheist but I still appreciate a beautiful mosque, cathedral or fun display.

(And I do find the money that could have been spent on helping others that was used to build cathedrals and palaces to be obnoxious, it's not that I have to have complete respect to accept their existence).

This story frustrated me because it seems like a needless censorship, where it ultimately just stops managers from allowing easter eggs, which used to be such a wonderful part of much software.

Hahahahahaha probably Easter eggs is also going to offend. Ok I'll call them "Cody surprises":-p

This is from a while ago, but Microsoft once banned software easter eggs. See https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/larryosterman/2005/10/21/wh...

My favourite ever easter egg story

https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/405783/why-does-man...

Trigger warning: contains Abba reference

Balanced thing would have been to add a config parameter to enable disable this stuff. Can't imagine a lawsuit from something that is user customizable. Some want Easter eggs and others don't.

Of course if your easter eggs slow performance via bug then insta-disable.

Yeah, that's arguably the most reasonable solution. Although off by default would make me sad. Would have to be the other way.

It can show up a non intrusive notification to inform you about turning it on/leaving it on vs turning it off just like the data collection notification popups.

That still leaves the chance someone would complaind bout being forced to read "Christmas" when trying to write code

Sounds like sarcasm and snark, but even so "decorations", "easter eggs" and/or "holiday" is sufficient to convey what would be enabled/disabled.

But "Easter eggs" are even more religious so that phrase would need to be banned if we are banning everything some random person on the internet finds offensive. Even "holiday" is borderline because it implies a holy day which is also religious. If you give me a few minutes, I can think of a few reasons to ban "decorations" on religious grounds too. I'm an atheist so don't give a fuck if they are banned but I think that should indicate the absurdity of this situation and of even acknowledging the "issue." That's what the close issue is for.

As someone who vehemently despises a colleague named cody, I'm remarkably offended you'd dare to associate the wonderful surprise of an unexpected event with such a devious and foul colleague of mine.

I second the motion to remove the GP for offensive language associations.

To me this is almost equally offensive as a swastika.

From now on I will use this whenever anything unconsequential slightly annoys me

I totally agree, I'm agnostic, I don't believe in deity but not sure we go into total oblivion after death, afterlife can exist without a God in charge of it.

Wife's religious and we have two little ones, I try to focus more on Santa, and still love me some old school Rudolph the Rednose Reindeer and A charlie brown christmas special.

People need to stop with being offended just to 'make a point'. I doubt that he's really as offended as a swastika. I mean there's a major difference between Santa and Nazi's. He's basically a commercialized cartoon character more than a relgious symbol.

The world is full of people who actively want to be offended. Who LIKE to be offended.

If Christmas is so offensive why is it on every media channel constantly this time of year?

They have a bubbling sense of righteous indignation ready to trigger.

These are trolls no different from any other.

The right way to handle this troll would have been to first get Christmas taken off some mainstream tv channels first.

The problem is they are not actually offended.

They like the power that pretending to be offended gives them. They need that validation, or rush at making the world bend to their unreasonable demands. They is the only "joy" they have in their miserable lives

> Please remove it immediately and make it your top priority.

Jeez, the entitlement.

> To me this is almost equally offensive as a swastika.

and the stupidity.

I hadn't noticed the "make it your top priority" part. This makes me more inclined to think it's a troll.

If I were this person I would invest my time fixing the HTTPS cert on my site[0], instead of focusing on the trivialities of commercial-backed festivities, passing them as religious offences.

[0](https://www.servicelayer.no/)

I noticed the same. What a waste of time.

I had the biggest hate-laugh of the year when I noticed this trying to determine if this guy is a troll or not.

> The Santa Hat on vscode insiders and pushing of religion is very offensive to me

Well, If it is "offensive" to you, find the settings button and turn it off. To find everything that you see "offensive" and to demand everyone to cater to your needs sounds like a sense of entitlement if not very draconian.

I had high hopes for Microsoft to resist this nonsense and close politically correct issues like this, but once again, they capitulated to the minority.

> I've also deleted the discussion that does not belong into our issue tracker.

Well done! /s Now the whole context of parts the discussion has now been lost.

Reminded me of https://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?t=96539

Jean-Baptiste Kempf's answer was perfect in that regard, you don't like it that way? Fork it, you have that freedom, or don't use the insiders' version, as far as I know, the public release doesn't have the offensive svastika-like Christmas hat.

at least on mac, the public release of VLC does have it (but it can be turned off in settings).

My comment wasn't clear as I've mixed VLC and VSCode, what I meant was that the public release of VSCode doesn't have the hat, the complaint was about the insiders' version.

I understand being annoyed by religious symbols, but "it's almost as offensive as a swastika"... that's just immensely callous. Especially from a Jewish perspective.

I’m not a huge fan of Christmas. I say ‘happy holidays’ to try and be more inclusive. I’m atheist and use it as a time to spend time with family and friends.

I’m 100% with you.

Santa is not a religious figure any more, if ever. Is Thor a religious figure?

This guy is a troll or just a ridiculous person.

Looks like MS fell for an individual troll. I think the real story is how companies, as risk averse as they are respond to such cases - I would probably weight the risks and do as MS in such cases.

VLC gets dressed up for the holidays (the traffic cone wears a little hat), but it can be turned off in the settings. Surely making this configurable (even via some arcane non-GUI switch) would have satisfied all parties? Instead the devs of VS Code, who no doubt felt this would be a cute and generally appreciated little token to brighten a dev’s day, will be less inclined to do fun things in the future. Everyone loses.

I think it should be an opt-in not an opt-out. The better way to distribute some holiday cheer would be to release an official VSCode Christmas theme. That way my editor it’s changing its appearance for no reason every year

I must say I'm amused by the reactions here. I realize that the reporter displays a strong reaction to something that seems irrelevant to most people here. Comments then go on to raise concerns of rationality and objectivity.

Yet most discussions I read on here are the exact opposite. They quickly dissolve into unnecessary rabbit holing about some particular niche topic a commenter particularly cares about. Few people complain about these, and many people participate. Most people participating also claim to be "rational" and "objective", yet often know very little of the topic.

I feel this here is the same. People complain that people have feelings, because they feel they are superior by being all "rational". Yet when the next technical discussion comes around, all of this is thrown out of the window because "curly braces go on the next line!!1"..

As a result his repos' issues are being trolled

https://github.com/Christian-Schiffer/servicelayer.chat/issu...

Even a pull request:

https://github.com/Christian-Schiffer/servicelayer.chat/pull...

People have been using all sorts of excuses to visit evil upon another for all of recorded history.

Dig deep enough in history, and you can condemn almost any tradition.

It is senseless to consider ancient history when evaluating modern traditions. What people did hundreds or even thousands of years ago is of historic interest, sure, but it does condemn Christmas today, any more than the slaughter of the Canaanites condemns jews today.

And today, Christmas is a celebration of goodwill and peace to all. That should not offend anyone.

So in that spirit, merry Christmas

So the objection is against a symbol that is vaguely related to a festival that ties together an enormous number of various otherwise unrelated celebrations (that all happen at or around the winter solstice). The main objection to most of them being that they aren't Jewish (conveniently ignoring the Jewish festival of Hanukkah that occurs at around the same time).

Curiously the article linked that feebly attempts to tie this all together in a coherent narrative fails to mention how the red hat is related to Christmas.

The linked article starts by presenting Saturnalia as a murderous celebration of human sacrifices, for which there is no evidence at all, so it makes me doubt the historical accuracy of the whole piece.

Ya, I browsed through the article and zeroed in on Christmas caroling being related to drunken people running nude through the streets and singing. Was hoping for a fun little anecdote next time someone brought up going Christmas caroling.

But turns out that all seems to be bunk. Caroling seems to be related to the early practice of going door to door as peasants singing and asking for food/gifts from feudal lords... "... so bring us some figgy pudding, and bring it right here."

I honestly don't understand why people like this have to be entertained.

Current US culture seems to consider how someone feels/perceives an action as a strong indicator that something wrong was done. (Eg: I didn't feel safe in that meeting, I felt uncomfortable by the remark, etc.)

Combine that with a touchy subject like Judaism and the Jewish history (the article linked also throws in mentions of Hitler to invoke some strong reactions) and viola

I don't think anyone necessarily jumps to the conclusion that "something wrong was done". But we have so many professional victims out there (just seems exhausting to have to stay so 'woke' about everything that might offend you) that I think everyone just picks their battles.

Oh, a Santa hat offends you? K, fine, no one really cares if a santa hat is there or not, get rid of it so they can shut up and start looking for something else to be offended by.

They don't. Ultimately, it's Microsoft's fault for giving in

They should've just added a star of david next to the santa hat... or maybe a menorah?

I'm about 99% sure that this was a joke, mocking the people who complain about menial stuff like this. It's sad that it was taken seriously.

I mean, the reporter seems to be literally called Christian, even if he's Jewish, I'm sure he's learned to live with the association.

I insta lolled when I saw his name and read his report. How can he live with himself then?

Clearly a deity of commercialism has no place in a product made by ...checks notes... Microsoft.

60% of the user base didn't know it existed. 25% could have liked it, 14% could have been indifferent. But this one guy is "offended" because Christmas (the celebration of the birth of a Jew named Jesus of Nazareth) "killed the Jews" and poof, it's gone.

Tyranny of the minority.

This reminds me of Google so many years ago setting Father's Day reminder in people's Gmail.

At some scale, a product can't just be whimsical, or not in any cultural or personally touching way. Boring and impersonal becomes an important virtue.

There's no way this kind of fun initiative won't hit a nerve in some community or some group around the world, and if there's no logical backing behind it's just a PR hell.

The thing is, I don't particularly want things that I use every day to "surprise" me with whimsy. I want them to be boring and reliable.

How ironic his name is "Christian".

This guy is obviously just a troll.

However it's important to note the unsaid political point. That society has gone "too far" in being tolerant. Bad-faith actors like this will try to weaponize attitudes of good-faith people to try to turn back social progress.

Bad faith fucking with people that are exercising good faith isn't taken seriously enough.

Should have offered a switch via popup (on startup of the new update) and/or configuration setting to disable holiday theming and etc.

Would seem to balance between sensitivities and cultural appreciation of different people, but I guess it is easier to just remove it.

Unsurprisingly, there are related (for want of a better word) issues appearing:

https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/87341

https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/87348

https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/87342

The issue janitors have an interesting day ahead.

https://github.com/Christian-Schiffer/servicelayer.chat/issu...

He is just a troll!

wow that's awesome!

The linked Sefaria blog post is also complete hogwash! Lord Misrule is a mediaval tradition, it didn't involve brutal murders, "rape and other sexual license; consuming human-shaped biscuits" wtf?

It deeply offends me that people in professions that require a degree of logic and rationality can actually believe in a magical sky wizard.

Um did you read the “logic and rationality” of the person reporting the bug? It’s all about his feelings.

Plus I would argue that Father Christmas is a cthonic deity.

Anyway, this Hindu would like to wish all HNers who celebrate (however you celebrate) a merry Christmas.

It deeply offends me that people who think they peddle "logic and rationality" can sum religions as "magical sky wizards" and summarily consider their role as detrimental, without understanding their social, cultural, historical, and evolutionary role and development.

I read that as Magical Sky Lizard and... I want to believe.

...and they replaced the icon with an actual snowflake. This is like an Onion article.

I'm a somewhat a proud sjw myself, and this is just silly. It smells like a deliberate attempt to make us look bad.

> "It smells like a deliberate attempt to make us look bad."

This individual is in Norway and so it seems unlikely that he has anything to do with the culture wars in the US. "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." as they say.

There's always someone more sjw than you and maybe one day you'll even be labeled alt-right for no reason and taste what you did to others.

What do you think I have done to others?

> replaced the icon with an actual snowflake.

But I live in the southern hemisphere and it is summer now. Today it was once of the hottest days in my country's recorded history...

Should I be offended that they are using northern hemisphere iconography? Are Microsoft anti-southern hemisphere?

This reminds me of the Windows Fall Creators Update two years ago, which they are calling the Autumn Creators Update outside of North America, including in the southern hemisphere where it was Spring. Also, no apostrophe. A marketing fail on so many levels.

> Should I be offended that they are using northern hemisphere iconography?

I'm not sure the snowflake is (primarily) meant as a seasonal marker: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowflake_(slang)

> It smells like a deliberate attempt to make us look bad.

It's not very nice having done to you what your lot frequently do to others, is it now...

Are you implying that "your side" wouldn't look bad without help from "my side"? That's a rather amazing claim.

I don't want decoration on my tools. On the other hand, I prefer tools where the personality of the maker to can still shine through. Today it's just a Santa's hat for which they can't take responsibility. And tomorrow?

I feel like this was really intended to be harmless (it's really not pushed into your face also), people need to be able to let things go. edit: wait, multiple people is saying he's a troll, is that true?

The person who filed the complaint really needs to change his first name - I find it offensive.

You can open an Issue.

I didn't pick up on that. How ironic!

If you look at bottom right of his included screenshot, you'll see he has tab size set to 4 spaces.

Is this really the type of person we should be taking demands from?!

I picked up 4 spaces from ruby/rails when I first started coding...then switched to 2 spaces a few years back..my god it's so much better...

I don't believe Ruby has ever endorsed 4 spaces...

I swear back in 2012 it was the norm/style to use 4 spaces in Rails...

Edit: Maybe it's PSR2? Or maybe it was one of the dev teams I worked for.. honestly I can't remember why I used that lol. I'm getting senile at 40, I swear.

Offensive? Poor man has to live with his self-oppressing name. Daily reminder how his people were oppressed by evil outsiders.

He deserves nobel peace prize.

And of course the opposite issue: https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/87291

Seems they closed it within 12 minutes...

This issue is so over the top that South Park could make a gag out of it

The justification linked in the issue is very weak.

The only issue I can see a level hypersensitivity that would find fault with any tradition, including the one (potentially) being offended.

> To me this is almost equally offensive as a swastika.

Seriously ? Christmas didn't cause the holocaust. Christian idiots who don't know who Christ is or what he taught definitely caused millions of deaths but that's more on their leadership/organized religion.

I'm exmormon, ex-christian. Agnostic, but seriously people need to take a chill pill. Santa's more like Mickey Mouse than a religious figure at this point. Hardly a religious symbol imho. If anything he's a symbol of xmas than christmas.

For me I just treat Christmas like it's Festivus, while my wife and other family celebrate Christmas because that's what they believe. Tolerance goes both ways. This person is as much a hate monger as a Christian hating on Muslim's. It's only offensive because he chooses to be offended by it, just as the religious right chooses to be offended with a transgender person goes into what they deem is 'the wrong' restroom. It's all perception, people need to stop it with being so offended, while at the same time accepting others for who they are obviously.

How did our world get so toxic... Why can't we all just get along?

It would have been funny as hell is they added a Menorah as well, just to troll him...

Why am I directed to github and not an onion article?

My explanation is we are all dead and in a level of hell that looks just like the life we left. And the Devil is slowly changing things to fuck with us until we realize we are in hell.

I believe the person who started this is just a bad actor. Surely he must have known that this will only lead to more outrage and hatred. Now we need to have the whole "war on xmas" and "political correctness gone crazy" debates, just because there is one idiot out there that people decided to listen to instead of ignore.

Pathetic display of ethnic privilege.

Is the complainant related to Titania McGrath in any way? I think we should be told.

https://youtu.be/yEGv6CT7kz4

I really hope this is just a troll.

Shouldn't he find his own name offensive ?

Living in constant self-offence would explain his astounding levels of grouchiness. That's assuming he isn't blatantly trolling, of course.

Interesting that he decided to post this using his real name and surname. You can find him and his employers on LinkedIn.

Genuinely curious why this post was flagged.

Lol. PC police FTW!

Judging by the thread on /g/ 4chan will have a good day with this guy

What does Santa have to do with religion, it's like the tooth fairy or Bigfoot ??

I almost wonder if it's not a troll account given most of his repos are forks and his profile links to a website that doesn't load.

And the one who closed the ticket is Erich Gamma from the Gand of Four fame.

I don’t think the Santa hat belongs in VSCode, but not for the reasons outlined in this issue. I don’t want my editor changing its UI every for the holidays

Yikes. I'm Jewish, non-religious. This guy is absolutely crazy.

Do I personally like Christmas? No. Do I like having it shoved down my throat every time I go to get groceries? No. Do I like it when some people seem to get offended when I tell them I don't celebrate Christmas? No. But to compare it to swatztikas and the Holocaust is ludicrous. (And as a person with grandparents who went through the holocaust, this is deeply offensive- don't cheapen the memory of the holocaust with BS.) Calling Hannukah "Jewish Christmas" is pretty offensive,but a little hat which has it's origins in a Coca-Cola commercial is not.

IMHO this looks like a classic agent-provocateur move, very well written to trigger identity-politics divisiveness. Flag flag flag.

Do you say “Merry Christmas”, “Happy Holidays”, or just “Happy New Year”? Is there a “safe” greeting this time of year?

This is why we can’t have nice things!

Microsoft has done the right thing here. The non-issue could be created an issue of. Who'd want the negative PR.

That being said, it's prudent not to add the most common religious or cultural symbols for a global product. If you cater to one, you'll be expected to do the same for other cultural rituals.

I will never buy another Microsoft product because they are spineless.

... His name is Christian.

> To me this is almost equally offensive as a swastika.

This seems quite ignorant of history coming from a Norwegian. The red "santa hat" was a symbol of resistance during WWII, so much that it was actually banned by the Nazis/collaborator government for a time.

Wikipedia article in Norwegian, try an automatic translation service if you're interested in reading: https://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nisselue#Nisselue_som_norsk_sy...

Pathetic.

Stupid

> we're sorry we hurt your and other's feelings. We'll remote the Santa Hat.

wow.

If 4chan were to make an image about a fictional interaction like this, people would call it exaggerated.

edit: this has to be a troll. I cannot believe someone would actually write like that

Maybe he meant that they will host the icon remotely, so he can block it in his hosts file if he really doesn't like it.

What?! This has to be a joke... what happened to good old program settings to disable things?

Yes it's a joke, he almost certainly meant remove.

Imo that's the best reply they could have given. Certainly not a pleasant reply but it is accurate.

...actually 4chan regularly runs things remarkably close with this. Sometimes they _accidentally_ turn a previously innocuous symbol into hate speech (see: "okay" gesture, welcome to 2019, where seeing someone making it makes you go and check if they're just not extremely online or actually a nazi), most of the time they just announce to the world they hang out on 4chan. The examples of less successful would be several spoof LGBT rights campaigns for, uh, unpleasant things.

Yeah, I'm still not convinced if this guy is for real. But that's besides the point - them caving in to this insane demand on the spot is incredible. What's next - a word filter so I can't type "sjw" in VSCode? Seriously rethinking my decision to switch to this. This screams instability.

Don't panic. They're sheltered developers in a megacorp, it's most likely it's the first time they've encountered a 4chan psyop (or whatever tf this is), if they'd hear the term "nazbol" they'd probably think it's something about sports. And honestly, consider how that would go if this is a 4chan psyop: next time someone on the team says or does something genuinely horrible and gets fired, they'll have a few hundred cloned accounts calling them hypocritical antisemites.

It's almost certainly not 4chan imo. It's a real dev, with a name, profile pic, website, contact info and repos.

One does not exclude the other, in my experience.

It may or may not be a troll, but that is irrelevant as to what makes this situation interesting: the fact that Microsoft caved in to such an incontrovertibly unreasonable request.

And it kinda seems to be blowing up. They removed a shitton of comments, closed several related issues and now new bugs are being made because of this. I can only hope there is massive resitence against this.

I'm going to waste an inordinate amount of time today finding things I find offensive in VScode and ticketing them for removal.

Definitely time to run some keyword searches across no just the VS Code base but every Microsoft Project

Any word that is even slightly offensive anywhere in the world should be reported

>4chan

It didn't take long for /g/ to take the person's avatar and put a Santa hat on it.

I'm enjoying the fun people seem to be having in the github issues. My favorite:

> "Light themes" section comes before "Dark themes" in settings dropdown which is very offensive to me (87345)

edit: Also how is this only on page 3 with 100+ points in less than an hour?

Because it's a sensitive subject. I posted the very same submission a few hours before and it got flagged in no time

I don't know what's more pathetic—that somebody will go out of his way because of a santa hat, or that the project actually removed the hat.

What a clown world we live in!

Swastika is a religious symbol for us hindus .. whats so offensive about that ???

While I agree with some points made here in comments, I wonder what would be the reaction of people calling this "pathetic" if they added a crescent moon for muslim holidays?

Christmas isn't really a Christian festival any more. I mean technically it never was (Yule is a pagan thing) but even the later amendment of the Christ metaphor has nothing to do with Santa and nor does the modern depiction of Santa have any relation to the original heritage of the character (we have Coka Cola to thank for that).

That all said, I'd welcome a crescent moon and any other imagery too. I don't see the issue in celebrating festivals -- which themselves are intended to be a celebration. Tolerance should be about acceptence other festivals not censorship of them.

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