Notepad++ v8.9.6.4 Tiananmen Massacre Commemoration | Hacker News Reader

Notepad++ v8.9.6.4 Tiananmen Massacre Commemoration

notepad-plus-plus.org

65 pointschao-22 comments

Context: Notepad++ was compromised last year by a PRC state-sponsored group: https://notepad-plus-plus.org/news/hijacked-incident-info-up...

This is not purely a cosmetic release, as it does contain a few fixes.

This is not the first time a Notepad++ release has supported human rights causes in China.

For example, here is "Notepad++ Stand with Hong Kong Edition":

https://notepad-plus-plus.org/news/v789-stand-with-hong-kong...

And here's "Notepad++ v7.8.1 : Free Uyghur":

https://notepad-plus-plus.org/news/v781-free-uyghur-edition/

In the latter (earlier) case, the Notepad++ issue tracker was bombarded by Chinese spam in response.

The Notepad++ releases have supported other causes too like "Je Suis Charlie", so special releases aren't confined to Chinese topics. Seems like they are concerned about free speech causes especially.

https://notepad-plus-plus.org/news/v674-je-suis-charlie-edit...

Also worth remembering that all of us had to deal with China attacking Github and taking it mostly offline for quite a while 11 years ago. China used the great firewall of China to inject a malicious script into Baidu analytics javascript files. Every website outside of China that used Baidu analytics wound up serving those infected file to every visitor. All of those visitors were then reloading two Github projects over and over. The two projects were designed to allow Chinese citizens to view uncensored news from the NY Times and from the greater internet.

Never incorporate third party Javascript, CSS, images, etc served from a server within China through their great firewall in anything you do.

That image (and moreso the video) is interesting in how much people read into it. Hard to really know the man's intentions tbh.

So many in the software world pretend to care about human rights for some kind of credibility that they're good people. I've seen Ukrainian flags all over GitHub on many profiles or repos but the same people will be silent on the atrocities happening in Gaza, Lebanon, etc. Notepad++ left a sour taste in my mouth when they did the same and now they're "commemorating" something that happened decades ago rather than call attention to what's happening now.

Edit: here comes the Hasbara brigade with the downvotes.

You can care about some issues more than you care about others, or only speak out against some of them. I don’t think anyone is (or can be reasonably expected to be) speaking out about every single atrocity happening in the world. That doesn’t mean they don’t care about human rights. People are nuanced. It’s not all or nothing.

just now seen one such comment in this thread get flagged/removed but the Gaza genocide is always conspicuous by its absence in these discussions; conspiracy of silence on this needs to end if we are to entertain the notion that we're serious about the other human rights issues being brought up otherwise the hypocrisy just gives you whiplash.

the selective outrage is just so galling.

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