
You can now set your status on GitHub - saranshk
https://blog.github.com/changelog/2019-01-09-set-your-status/
======
sephoric
All sarcasm aside, this feature is absolutely the wrong direction. Github may
have some things in common with social networks, but it operates on a longer-
term scale. It's the difference between a book and a paragraph. People who
care about this sort of daily minutia can find it plentifully on Twitter and
Facebook. Github is great for finding out what people _have been up to_ ,
without caring about _what they 're doing this second_, and that's what was
great about it.

~~~
jesseb
My heart sank a little when I saw this appear on my profile last night. I
don't understand which demographic this is meant to target or what the point
of it is, I just can't think of a single reasonable use case for it.

~~~
aphextron
> I just can't think of a single reasonable use case for it.

MS didn't acquire GitHub because they cared at all about the technology. It
was the exact same strategy as LinkedIn. It's all about tracking us, the
developer community, and keeping their finger on the pulse of where things are
going. Generating more click event data to further profile your tastes for
future commercial use by Microsoft. What other possible reason could there be?

~~~
Blackstone4
MS cares about developer mindshare. Through GitHub they have access to the
worlds largest software developer social network (well it's almost a social
network). The large number of open source projects on the site provide a moat
and a network effect.

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rpeden
Now I just need a Winamp plugin that changes my status to tell everyone what
song I'm currently listening to, and I'll feel like I'm back in the 90s. :)

~~~
sephoric
I hate to say it but I feel like the 90s was a better time all around for the
casual computer user.

\- You had total customization over your computer, every app was skinnable
including Windows or MacOS itself

\- Linux was in a great spot, finally becoming usable as a desktop OS with a
ton of fun toys and UI/UX experiments that got a lot of us into Linux before
we knew about CLIs

\- Products were sold per-unit instead of *aaS, so when you bought something,
you knew you could use it as long as you needed to

\- Social networks didn't exist, so if you wanted to interact with people, you
had to learn something - which is what made geocities and later MySpace fun,
since people had to learn a little HTML in order to update their friends on
their current status, and could use that new skill to decorate their "home"
page

I miss the 90s. I want to bring that back. That's why I got my kids PICO-8, at
least it's a little taste of the good old days!

~~~
kaishiro
Oh man, you and I remember 90's Linux very differently.

~~~
sephoric
True, I may be thinking of 2000s Linux. Compiz and the wobbly windows examples
were fresh in my mind from the other day's HN discussions.

~~~
jzoch
Except those are rose tinted glasses youre wearing imo. Linux isnt worse today
than it was in the days of yore, it just hasnt kept up as well in your mind.
Computing as a whole has improved so much that linux couldnt keep up with your
higher expectations.

~~~
sephoric
Linux today isn't worse, but laptops are much more prevalent now, and they're
harder to support drivers for than desktops. Especially Apple laptops which
I've been using for a long time now, they're notorious for not being that easy
to get Linux running smoothly on. Some people can manage it but more people
have trouble. I've wasted dozens and dozens of hours trying to get Linux
working smoothly on this thing and I just gave up a few years ago. But when
desktops were king and the internet just started to become mainstream and
everyone was flooding into that new space, it was a great time for desktop
Linux.

~~~
tobmlt
Yep. I've been running dual boot OSX/mint for some time and god the hardware
has never been happy about it. Especially with regard to the GPU and multi-
monitor support but I suspect also with regard to battery usage and other
power issues. It always ran just cool enough that I did not do anything about
how hot it was. The display issues cropped up so that I could at least
anticipate when it would occur and try to minimize that. GPU computing... well
these old macbook pros with Nvidia chips were dogs anyway. Would a windows
laptop fair any better with Linux? Honestly asking because I really want a
solid Linux laptop for HPC/computational engineering development but not sure
what to do.

~~~
greenhatman
I've never hand multi monitor problems with Linux. I'm running Mint on my
MacBook.

The only thing that was difficult for me, was installing my webcam drivers.

~~~
tobmlt
Wow - that is interesting to hear. Let me toss in a caveat by saying that I
had 2 different multi-monitor setups that I transferred between while running
straight off the machine quite often as well. Typically problems would crop up
after shifting to or from the non-mac monitor setup. Never tested the cam on
the linux side.

------
underyx
I'm surprised everyone here missed the point by so much. This isn't a status
update in the Facebook or Twitter sense. It's akin to the same feature that
exists on Slack and GitLab already. It's useful to mark when you're on holiday
or otherwise not working like usual, so teammates know what to expect from
you.

~~~
azhenley
Looking at my GitHub to find out if I am on holiday seems very strange.

It makes sense on Slack, an application for communicating with people.

~~~
hombre_fatal
Almost all of my open-source collaborations on Github have been so informal I
wouldn't even tell anyone directly that I'm, say, away on vacation in the
issues section, but I could see myself setting this status or appreciating
that someone else set it.

Though I think HN is too old-hat to really understand how anyone could like
these sorts of social features, and it's to their own detriment.

~~~
geoah
Seeing someone's status when you mention them, assign them a ticket, etc is a
very welcome addition imo. The "taking time off my side projects" status
example is amazingly spot-on as well.

------
porphyrogene
Coming soon:

GitHub now reminds you what commits you made on this day last year.

~~~
basil-rash
You're joking, but I'd actually find that kinda fun. Every day / every commit
would be excessive, but maybe reminding you of large PRs/issues you closed
this time last year?

~~~
BucketSort
I'd like that feature. There's no reason why GitHub can't have a little more
pizzazz. A lot of us spend a great deal of time writing code, why not have
some fun with it? As long as the core features remain intact and unencumbered
with trivial things, I for one welcome the additions GitHub has been making
and look forward to their continuing development.

~~~
porphyrogene
Without getting into too deep a discussion of features, this development
attitude of “implement everything, let them use what they want” is
historically awful. The developers lose focus on what they are making, the
users lose focus on what they are using. Eventually a platform that does a
great job of any of the ten things that yours does poorly is a superior
product and its creators are praised for shipping such a clean and minimal
product.

~~~
BucketSort
It's a status update for your profile page, what's with the slippery slope
arguments here? It's not like they implemented a social feed where you can
post updates, making it more like a legitimate social network.

~~~
porphyrogene
What? I was referring to the development philosophy that I saw reflected in
the above comment. I even said that I was not referring to any specific
features, including this one.

------
gerdesj
Can I not simply wire it up to all the other bloody stupid status displaying
apps that pervade my life?

Set phone to DND. Set auto responder on email client(s). Set away status on
various desktop apps. Set away on various web apps. Set away on work mobile
(cell) apps. Go home.

Actually I don't bother with any of that. I don't answer the phone or any apps
when I'm not "there" or can't be arsed or am busy. It's what people have done
for millennia.

~~~
grimjack00
I guess we need SaaS: Status as a Service

~~~
ninkendo
Isn't that originally all twitter was? At least that's how I remember it being
described when it first came out: "It's a service to store your AIM-style
status messages"

~~~
dredds
2019: "send Microsoft feedback on Twitter about their Github blog post".

So Twitter became a Swiss army knife.

------
throwawaymath
I see a lot of skepticism in this thread. That was my _initial_ impression
too, but I actually think this is a good feature now that I think about it.

As one example: it will be nice to know if a coworker is out of office or on
extended PTO, like vacation. There are usually other "profiles" which display
the same information in an organization, but this is a useful place for it too
if you're about to e.g. tag someone in an Issue thread.

------
bbatha
Contrary to the opinions here, I find this to be a very useful feature for the
same reason I like vacation auto-responders in email. No I couldn't care less
if you're "feeling the groove" or some nonsense. But a friendly reminder to
someone assigning me a review that I'm in vacation, or swamped in meetings all
day would be very useful to me and my team.

~~~
manicdee
Preach!

Also as irritating as vacation mail can be, at least now I know that you
aren’t talking to me because you aren’t here, rather than you’re just giving
me the silent treatment because I made a disparaging comment about Tori Amos’s
latest album.

------
ilikehurdles
It’s pretty clear that public non-chronological, timelines, posts, profile
pages, and messaging will follow, along with a mess of spammy recruiters.
Then, leetcode style scoring so that employers who can’t interview their way
out of a paper bag know who to hire. Can’t wait to see where else they’ll
stuff “sponsored content”.

~~~
thinkingemote
They had, and removed messaging already

------
nerdponx
Who exactly wanted this feature? Are they going to try monetizing Github with
data mining? Mining commit history for personal metadata could be a
(thoroughly despicable) gold mine.

------
azhenley
GitHub Stories! Share screenshots of your app or source code and they
disappear after 24 hours.

~~~
gumby
I tried to reply to this with a single thumbs up emoji but HN wisely screened
it out.

~~~
henvic
Wow. Just now I noticed that I've never seen emojis here. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

~~~
gumby
It would have been a funny response to a funny comment, but in the balance
it's much better that they are all screened out.

------
jenscow
Is this "feature" due to the new ownership? I really don't like the direction
it's going.

Soon, we might not be able to make PRs without making our friends "help", and
people will be making accounts for their cat.

When my (non-coding) teenage daughter signs up, I'm leaving!

------
colemickens
This is a good reminder that I don't use GitHub the way they expect me to. I
don't use their notifications. I don't really ever look at my profile.
Certainly not enough that I would go to it regularly to (even think to) update
my "status".

I'm wary of "slippery slope" arguments but I do NOT want a(nother) social
network in my life. It's hard to imagine how this doesn't evolve into GitHub
Chat, etc, especially with GitLab buying Gitter, etc. No thank you. Thankfully
there are ever increasing (and OSS) forge platforms, it seems.

It is a bit amusing, however, to imagine hypothetical horrible, naggy, even
more self-promotional LinkedIn/GitHub integrations.

------
sjroot
The ONLY context in which this makes sense is allowing users to indicate
whether they are looking for work or projects to contribute to. Let's hope all
the excessive stuff (stories, timelines, etc) mentioned in these comments
never come to fruition.

If you dislike this feature then you need to take ten seconds out of your time
to submit feedback through 'set status' interface.

~~~
manicdee
Also:

\- maintainers are all on holidays, that PR is not getting touched this week
\- the person who accepted that issue has not been active for a week, perhaps
I can pick it up \- the person who accepted that issue is active today, maybe
there will be a PR to review later! Check with them to see howmit’s going and
maybe schedule some time tomorrow to review the PR

Heaps of use cases.

------
HereBeBeasties
Dear GutHub,

Please stop mucking about with pointless stuff like this and make your search
functionality not totally suck.

Yours faithfully,

All devs everywhere.

------
fourier_mode
Another place where I would need to update my status before leaving for a
holiday. Ergh..!

~~~
Corrado
Maybe they can make a plug-in for Slack. That way when I update my Slack
status it goes to GitHub as well. :/

------
rch
Status: Migrating to another platform

This is a really useful feature for indicating that an account is vestigial
despite occasional blips of activity. I hope they implement something similar
with LinkedIn.

------
mLuby
While we're griping about GitHub changes, why did they change the reaction
emoji style? They look flat and enervated where before they were vibrant and
visually distinct.

------
simplify
Is GitHub going to be Microsoft's way of getting their own social network?
Seems better than Google's approach I guess

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
That's what LinkedIn is for.

~~~
jenscow
They might merge the two...

------
LoveMortuus
Is it just me or is this like really stupid?

------
mandeepj
So, MS shipped their first feature in Github :-)

errrrr, actually - second (after unlimited private repos)

------
DrScump
This is reminiscent of the UNIX "finger" command usage from 30 years ago.

------
mawburn
...why?

------
Blackstone4
Will they provide end to end encrypted chat next?

~~~
drstewart
No, they weren't bought by Google

~~~
Blackstone4
GitHub is a social network of sorts. There's definitely a network effect and a
moat with the large open source projects on there.

It'll be interesting to see where Microsoft take this. GitHub is fundamentally
a collaboration tool so chat would make sense.

