Every software developer is familiar with the site Stack Overflow, the 11-year-strong compendium of questions and answers. Part knowledge base, part social network, and wholly useful, Stack Overflow offers help with virtually every programming language and software package.
A reporter at Chicago’s Soldier Field for the Grateful Dead’s climactic last show on July 5 described the record-breaking crowd as a “rolling sea of graying beards and ponytails, flowing skirts, cowboy hats and backward caps, flower crowns and bandannas.”
I grew up in Baltimore. Specifically, East Baltimore, in a neighborhood called Ednor Gardens-Lakeside. My neighborhood was a bit better off than Freddie Gray’s–definitely working class, but bereft of boarded-up homes and businesses. My mother would tell me growing up that we were the working poor–poor, but at least we had jobs. I would call the way I grew up ghetto adjacent–we had tree-lined streets, but gang territory was just five blocks away. Some of our neighbors had nuclear families. If my mother sent me to the store to buy something, I would walk a mile to the shopping center (or a half-mile to the store in a better part of the neighborhood), rather than go to the neighborhood store a few blocks away. Sometimes my mom would make fun of that, but I think she secretly preferred it that way.
Over 31,000 users on LinkedIn are not using their most professional voice.
Apple CEO Tim Cook’s revelation in Businessweek that he is gay has elicited a generally positive response from around the web, garnered mostly praise from media journalists, and led LGBT rights watchdog group Human Rights Campaign to say that Cook’s “courageous step forward” is destined to “save countless lives.“
Facebook has begun vigorous enforcement of its “name policy,” requiring all users of the social network to provide their real names—those “listed on your credit card, driver’s license or student ID.” The policy is not new—Facebook has long asked for users’ “real names” at registration—but it has come under new fire after Facebook disabled the profile of San Francisco LGBT activist and drag queen Sister Roma last week, forcing her to post under her legal name “Michael Williams.”
US president Barack Obama recently said he would sign an executive order barring federal contractors from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation. While the order may not have much effect on the contractors themselves—24 of the 25 largest contractors already have nondiscrimination policies, and have since at least 2012—pro-LGBT activists, such as the discrimination watchdog group GetEQUAL, welcomed the move.
Marriott International launched its #LoveTravels marketing campaign on June 2, targeting lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender customers—as well as pro-LGBT consumers—with a campaign designed to “convey the company’s commitment to make everyone feel comfortable being who they are.”
Welcome to Occupy Inc.
This has been a rough week for the open web.
