> Probably as a thank you for my 25 years of #OpenSource work, someone called the police on me and had be #SWAT'ed & #handcuffed while live-streaming t2 #Linux development on Twitch!

In the video description, apparently it happened in Germany. The streamer posted that he is leaving Germany, as they dont feel safe anymore.

He should hire a good lawyer and sue the state. Suing for moral damage rarely works in Germany though.

I know YouTube comments are a cesspool, but my god it is amazing how so many comments are immediately saying "Rust devs did it," including some using slurs to do so.

I noticed that as well. Is there actually any reason he might've pissed off bunch of rustbros or are these just more baseless accusations?

Also, everyone should know if you have some type of online exposure or receive threats you should be able to contact you local law enforcement, inform them of the situation, and warn them someone might try to have you SWAT'd. I couldn't guarantee all police would respect a heads-up call but I've heard it has worked for many in the past.

I wonder if they would worry about that being used as cover though. Make that call for a place you’re about to do something illegal in so the popo stays away.

They won't stay away, but they're more likely to not smash your front door in and cuff you immediately, preferring to just have a look around instead.

> Is there actually any reason he might've pissed off bunch of rustbros or are these just more baseless accusations?

His stream from 2 weeks ago does not appear Rust-positive:

¡ The Rust & Cargo ecosystem is so BROKEN, even Debian AGREES it is IMPOSSIBLE to maintain STABLE ?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdMQwDtumJ8

We have very different definitions of cesspool.

While it is finding humor in a horrible situation, a Rust joke is not attacking race, creed, gender, etc as is so common from the internet dregs.

Edit: the above has now been edited to note slurs which was not previously present. At the time the quoted joke was only “Rust devs did it”

> Rust joke is not attacking race, creed, gender

I know it isn't worded that way and you didn't mean it that way but if you look at the stats it technically is https://blog.rust-lang.org/images/2024-02-rust-survey-2023/w...

Only 1300 answers though, so that's a very small percentage of rust users

1300 is a nice sample size if you're sampling randomly.

If 1/3 of people have a trait, you'll get a good sense it's common after asking 300 people, even if the total population is a million. Surveying more gives diminishing returns as the result quickly converges on the real proportion.

The real problem with all surveys is the sampling isn't truly random, which skews results.

That's a 2.7% margin of error (1/sqrt(1300)).

No it's not. It's "attacking" behavior (real or imagined) that's specific to the subgroup of "Rust developers".

If I say "murderers suck", and 85% of murderers happen to be men, am I "attacking" men as a group?

>If I say "murderers suck", and 85% of murderers happen to be men, am I "attacking" men as a group?

No, but what's disgusting is that both sides of the argument will come up with different reasons why it's not.

I would consider that statistic meaningless without seeing the question.

For starters, I don't see "I don't consider myself a member of a minority or under represented group".

A THIRD of all Rust devs are trans?

Transitioned from C.

The percentage is greater but few will admit to it.

Nonsense. People are born to use only two kinds of programming languages: either those which everyone complains about, or those which no one else uses. Never the twain shall meet.

Even TypeScript Exclusionary Rabid FORTRAN coders have 'experimented' with Haskell after dark.

Yes but that mostly includes those who've attached themselves to fashionable identity groups, and not just the much, much smaller number of those medically diagnosed, the latter of whom aren't just following a trend.

It's still striking. The national average of people self-identifying as trans/non-binary is only 1.6%: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/06/07/about-5-o...

Even if you only compare with the 18-29 demographic, where the prevalence is higher at 5.6%, it's still 6x as high in the Rust community.

No, only 5% (31% out of 17%) out of people who participate in DEI surveys, see full post https://blog.rust-lang.org/2024/02/19/2023-Rust-Annual-Surve...

The guy that tried to SWAT me was extremely enthused about Rust: never shut up about it.

I'd say its the language most likely, right now, to attract the "opinionated" people who cannot tolerate any difference of opinion, and think that SWAT raids are a valid means of addressing disagreements.

Sorry, what? Are you saying someone sent the SWAT team to your door becaus you had a disagreement about a programming language? I find that incredulous.

No, we were making game mods and shared a discord channel. As far as I heard, his actual problem with me was that I made and published a mod to make all the characters in the game into lizards, and he found that racist.

That person was also a very vocal Rust and VSCode advocate. That fact I use emacs was an issue for them, too.

> VSCode advocate

talk about cheering for the overdog, sheesh

Why?

People who are the most impassioned are going to be the ones who are willing to take the more extreme action.

Every organization has their extremists. Some organizations attract more extremists than others.

> "opinionated" people who cannot tolerate any difference of opinion, and think that SWAT raids are a valid means of addressing disagreements.

I believe they call that the "paradox of tolerance."

Pity you can't just flag/downvote the wrongthink away like you can on HN.

anyone knows why? Can someone just call the police on you and they come and arrest you??

Pretty much yeah. SWAT'ing is doable pretty much anywhere that you have a functional PD, and all you have to do is call in a credible threat - "I shot someone, I have hostages" etc.

It's unfortunately common, and most PD's also don't have any way or system in place for you to inform them that this is likely to happen ahead of time. In fact there are people who get SWAT'd multiple times a week, and the PD shows up every time all gung ho. In one case I know of, the police started threatening to charge the victim for all the false calls.

But yeah. Someone can just call the police on you and they come and arrest you.

functional is not what i would call a PD that can be easily used for a criminal purpose.

Absolute nonsense, you would use a tablespoon for a criminal purpose if you wanted to.

> and all you have to do is call in a credible threat

Doesn't even have to be credible. Working as a paramedic, I saw first hand several SWATings that were the furthest thing from credible:

"I'm standing in front of the house and they have a family lined up and kneeling with their hands on their heads and men in balaclavas standing behind them with guns, upstairs" (the house in question is one story). "What color is the house?" "Brown" (it's actually blue). How do you see people kneeling in the middle of a room upstairs from the street - what, do they have the lights on, and all the curtains and blinds open? And that sounds more like "something I saw on a movie once".

Basically yes.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatting

Someone sent an email to the police saying he had killed his partner and was going to suicide. Guessing that German police has little experience with swatting.

I can understand sending cops based on a phone call - better safe than sorry - but being handcuffed and hauled away should require the cops to have seen something when they got there. No one should be detained solely based on an anonymous tip.

I thought I recognized him:

https://youtu.be/IXBC85SGC0Q?feature=shared

I recognized him from an interview with Brodi Robertson. https://youtu.be/8lvKw4Iced8?si=yfUSAmgxTdZuLaor

If it is not already, swatting someone should be considered a serious offense, like calling in a bomb threat. Baiting emergency police services to handle personal disputes is absolutely ridiculous.

I suppose it's easy to get people swated in Germany since every personal blog must have that person address clearly visible https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impressum

Never was a good idea, but here we are.

That's really terrible. I'm surprised this kind of law survived Germany splitting and then reunification. I would have thought that it would have gotten lost in the wash somewhere along the way.

Such a notice is not required for personal blogs..

Oh wow, it was exactly who I thought it might be, René Rebe.

rust devs did this

> Fortunately, René Rebe and his loved ones are safe in the aftermath of this incident,

Considering that anyone could do this again at any time, “this is obviously some strange usage of the word safe that I wasn’t previously aware of.”

> though they likely won't feel totally safe for quite some time.

Quite a well-founded feeling, I would say.