HexagonalKitten

> For the sake of argument: I would perhaps argue that the skepticism itself, which is held by many in tech at the moment, could be collectively considered institutionally racist.

Well, if all racism is, is some deserved skepticism then I guess it isn't at all important. Or, is that not the message you're trying to send?

You aren't steel-manning Gebru's points, you're weakening the entire argument until what you hear she's said could be made to fit.

> you had issued what you viewed as an entirely reasonable ultimatum

That's 100% incompatible with asking for the identities of your anonymous reviewers. Even if you were to demonstrate a problem with a anonymous you do it with the label 'Reviewer 1'. That's how it's been done forever and it should be obvious why.

> "we should re-evaluate people in a race-neutral manner"

Cough, no. This is where I know that's not even a rough paraphrasing because racially-neutral or sex-neutral hiring practices are not okay these days. They lead to a meritocracy and that's also not okay. That's how we got where we are. In fact, in hiring now resumes more often have pictures and HR tells us that people are intersectional and to try to hire them. They try to be subtle but they fail. (They don't tell us what intersections.) All interviewers are given the racial statistics and we're told that it's a very serious company priority.

> if a company has had racially-biased hiring and promotion processes, there are unqualified people who benefited from the bias just as much as there are qualified people who lost out because of it

This only stands to reason if the company had racially-biased hiring policies.

Instead big SV companies seem to reflect the later years of tech fields in school. And if we look at sex, not race, we can see that the gender-equality paradox from scandinavian schools suggests that not all groups may be equally interested in all things. Perhaps this is society telling those groups not to be, or natural consequences of their upbringing in different areas and circumstances.

We should definitely try to stamp out any racism we find, but let's not cry wolf and label everything racist. Let's actually try to make sure first.

American racism, in housing for example, didn't creep in. It came in a bang with slavery and has been going away, in fits and starts ever since.

How do you get from there to:

> racism creeps into all of our institutions. Instead of thinking of racism as a yes/no binary with intention, I think it's more useful to think of it as something like "fairness."

All? I think you should consider "I'm not racist, there are much better reasons to hate people." Even if you find unfairness somewhere, and even if it's intentional, how do you know a priori that it's because of skin color?

> It's like starting the game of Monopoly when a bunch of the players have had dozens of turns of head start.

Right. American Descendants of Slavery (ADoS) really have a shitty position. Worse off from the start and sometimes still facing the racism.

> So this can't all fall on tech companies, of course, but as major pillars of modern society, they bear some responsibility of fixing the problems that persist.

If it's our society's responsibility to fight slavery, have you hunted a pimp? Or do you expect your tax dollars to fund the police who do such things? I expect Google to not try to make things worse, but I'm fine if all the good they do comes from taxes.

> I have no doubts that she has experienced institutional racism at Google

I think Google saw a black female PhD and jumped to hire her. All the boxes, and a well respected PhD. So it's hard to imagine how they'd be racist against someone they head hunted and desperately wanted. It's not like they hired her from behind a curtain and only found out who they hired once they said yes.

> Based on conversations with managers ... nearly an explicit policy HR holds ... that ultimatums would never be tolerated and could result in termination.

Yes, but it's would not could. And especially quickly when the demand could never be fulfilled.

I've heard of only one ultimatum that worked, but it was for the benefit of both parties. A senior engineer said they'd be leaving at the end of the quarter if the company didn't let them hire a team around them, including a peer. They gave two choices, fold the project and move me into a supported team, or support this one.

> one would hope that a company would trust an established ethicist about whether it were appropriate to issue an ultimatum

If she'd said "stop, don't release that AI, it's got a critical bug that will hurt people" then they probably would. That's the role they hired her for.

But I imagine they'd think she's a bit too close to her own situation, and out of her area, to take her word here and tell her the names of the anonymous reviewers for great justice.

All of which is caused by her going public with vague accusations. Had she not fought with her boss, and made the unreasonable demand of knowing who her anonymous reviewers were, she'd be able to have a nice quiet talk with a lawyer while still on the payroll, and eventually write a well sourced article about it once she left calmly and under her own power.

So no. You don't get slack once you make heinous public allegations. You'd better have your ducks in a row before attempting to tear someone down.

I think this is it (OP feel free to comment):

IBM has made white people into a minority by moving the main work to countries where white people are a minority. This is okay.

Minorities are, by definition, less frequently encountered in a population sample and by the simple nature of this, aren't going to be in every position. This is okay.

Do you go out of your way to listen to the internal communication and writing of all the groups? Because otherwise what you've heard only indicates who you pay attention to. For a quick intro, google Rachel Dolezal and skip the news articles and look for forums. You'll find everything you need, and you can then follow those people to see what else they discuss through the lens of CRT.

> "mandatory firing of over-represented groups," a ridiculous and awful suggestion that nobody wants

Poe's law strikes again then because if you follow Gebru's crowd on Twitter you'll see a lot of talk of cleaning up and making room for new hires. That's a coded racist dogwhistle for exactly what Hintymad was joking about.

This is the problem with platforming extremists.

I've had jobs where every little thing required a bunch of back and forth. Integration, and spinning up a new product. Slack (or IRC if you aren't hooked on giant emojis) work well for this.

But for the rest of my work there are questions but you can batch them if you think ahead, and write a good email. Or, just put the questions in the ticket and use the right collaboration tool.

I find that all chat-derived information needs to be rewritten (ideally) or being cut&paste into a document because chat is either ultimately ephemeral, or lives in an entirely different system from the rest.

> Perhaps read the source I linked you?

The redacted Japanese one, or the Wikipedia article?

The Wikipedia article doesn't contradict me. It says "serious explosion", but nothing about kilotons, and says "would eject more material" but nothing about a large area. That's a reasonable estimate.

> you don't need a containment vessel to create a large steam explosion.

You said a "kiloton level" explosion. That does require containment.

> If you drop gigawatts of thermal energy into a body of water

Before it melted entirely through, the concrete it was melting would be hot enough to boil the water on the other side. That steam would have been uncontained and would have vented out of the entrances to the basement, blowing doors open if needed. Based on how slowly the molten core was progressing downward this likely would have removed a fair bit of water before it actually melted through and began boiling the water rapidly.

And then, have you ever seen someone stick their hand (quickly) in liquid nitrogen or molten lead (done with a wet hand)? The Leidenfrost effect limits the contact with a layer of steam. You can't transfer those gigawatts straight into the water all at once. And while you're waiting, the steam is venting up through the new hole in the ceiling.

Without a sudden, contained, steam generation event the further core ejection would be limited if it happened at all.

> I posit that it's more about a lack of knowledge/education around good software security design/implementation than spec changes or scope creep.

It probably depends on what your team is good at. I tend to work in fairly security conscious teams. They check the length of buffers, don't rely on anything from the user, etc. So most of our issues tend to be from our architecture being drastically changed to integrate our solution into something else, or vice versa. Stuff is dropped on us, opaque libraries and internal code, and entirely new goals created around the big stuff, data persistence, key management, and so on.

But when I had an actual stable product that could not get spec changes (it was custom hardware) we knew from the beginning how the project would go and how all of the pieces would fit and it went together cleanly. But, it turns out many embedded engineers don't (didn't maybe, it was a while ago) program as defensively because they're used to owning the entire scope. If they put a value somewhere they expect it to be there, unmolested, when they want it. That project was full of buffer overflows and bad crypto.

> If good security design practices were stressed when teaching software development (and/or included in resources for autodidacts)

Yeah. I'm not sure how but it does tend to be lacking. Everyone probably needs a different hook. For me it was quality. How could I say my software does X if you have a way to break it?

Show me a single project where the functional specs were complete when given to the developers and external concerns didn't dictate any implementation details. All of the projects I've been on have had changing specs, right up to and through release.

I love the architecture weenie role. It's tons of fun. But eventually you need to build something and only with experience do you discover the first set of complications, then marketing starts promising features and you've got the next, and management refuses to allocate more time.

Did you do something wrong at step 1 by building a prototype before knowing it would be perfect? And if so, how could you know that and what would you do to get there?

I write the code, and tag releases, but I don't determine what ships. I, and 95% of us, are not engineers and even those who are have abrogated their responsibility to make the bridge stand - we're all just building individual struts because someone told management that things done in a vacuum will all fit together properly in the end.

So I agree I guess, but don't at the same time.

It sounds like you're saying that to avoid drowning you merely need to swim upstream carrying all your workers. Anyways, by rich I mean the 3%, not the 0.001%. Those who are very comfortable, but who aren't captains of industry. Professionals vs business people.

Can't they (and this is an honest question) do well by locking their income into things that will get more expensive, when measured in currency? Sure their purchasing power will fall, $ for $ with everyone else's, but by selling that real property when needed they'll have more of those $s than people who rode the currency into the ground. Right?

I wanted to step back to the beginning and ask why you felt that you needed to jump into a conversation with someone who was obviously much more deeply involved that you. In no way did I criticize trans people, or otherwise attack anyone other than SJWs who fight for people who don't want them.

Don't you see the issue of people claiming to fight for others, but really just stirring up trouble?

I'm honestly interested because I see many communities attacked and turned into a hollow shell, leaving the original members as the primary enemies. Transexuals are literally hated on Twitter despite being the group who fought for the freedom that the current justice warriors are using against them. And people like yourself, who seem to sincerely be trying to help, are helping the attackers. What about the transgender message to you justifies death threats and insane hatred of transexuals? Because that's what you're supporting if you back these pronoun bullies. All anyone different needs is just for everyone to let them be. Fighting in their name is directly counterproductive.

Real LGBTQ+(everything) people don't want to force the public to do anything, they simply want to be equals! Everyone who fights for this "must use pronouns" or "must say 'cis'", etc, fight must hate actual LGBTQ people or they wouldn't try to pick a fight for them. Do you and everyone else not understand how hard it is without people making it harder?

I mean, it is a way for you (the generic you, but also the personal you) to virtue signal. But do you really think this justifies the damage?

How, and why? This stuff is crazy!

Twenty-five year ago that would fool people. Now things are complex enough that you can't help but leave clues even as you're trying to plant them.

The DPR was caught in part from a post on Stack Overflow where he was asking a question unique to his platform. Imagine how hard it would be to write the Flame malware. Now imagine the NSA and CIA hunting for traces afterword. Building that malware required deep information on many system that would likely require badges or intensive social engineering to access, both of which leave traces. Do you really think you could hide?

I'm an expert (of sorts) and I'm not sure that I could buy drugs on the dark web 100% securely if those resources were hunting me.

It's the hardware that's the problem so we should have an fpga cloud so you can run whatever hardware you want.

What would make that 600MB of javascript secure would be to auto-generate a random CPU architecture and recompile your server to run on it!

What it means is that MS is no IBM, in the sense that you may very well get fired for buying MS.

> the most egregious offenders are software developers

Blame always rises. Management knows that any product without extensive review is going to be bad. They push it out the door without that review because quality costs. Stockholders know. Software is bad because you can't sue the companies that made it.

Do you have any idea what time window they had to generate collisions in?

The MS article on the collision says the attack required knowledge of, among other things, the predictable serial numbers. They could have had as little as the usual inter-cert issuance time, or in the worst-case scenario with entirely predictable numbers could have had months or more.

Depending on the window the funds required would change dramatically.

I've seen the same in discussions of many things from programming to cars.

For instance, FP vs Imperative, where a simple example (map for instance) is being shown and someone always compares it to a for loop, and then disses garbage collection. They're obviously thinking of their existing language (we know from the GC comment) and not of whatever point the OP is trying to make about composability or whatever.

To some degree, examples are to blame. They often aren't good and don't show, to the actual audience, what the author intended. In my FP example, you need something that can't get stuck in a syntax-level debate and is complex enough for the benefits to show through. Like doing something that would take a 50-level deep stack of for loops in an unnested fashion.

It gives you more respect for great teachers who can pull examples out of the air that both illustrate and refuse to misdirect.

Can you (because I certainly can't) write a good post or blog about the minimum useful deep learning project that can't be done equivalently via any other methods?

> Capitalism is about free market trade.

A sort of freedom. Not free from taxes, free from interference. But that's really never the case.

Say you buy something from a store, and you expect their use of your data to follow the terms on the loyalty card. They've got a bunch of commercial-code laws that protect them. You can't pay with counterfeit money, or give yourself a 2-for-1 discount. If you use credit and don't pay, men from the state with the right to use violence come and collect for the store. They're totally legally protected. But how are you protected? Only at the end of a hugely expensive court case in the best outcome, but probably not at all.

The potential risk to the store from you is limited to the cost of goods, the risk to you is almost unbounded. You might lose healthcare coverage, or your boss might buy your data and use the store to link your id to your pornhub usage and fire you. Minimal, limited risk for them, huge unbounded and unprotected risk for you.

But then you discover after buying your gallon of milk, that they (knowingly) sold your data to someone who then sold it to, let's say an insurance company, in direct violation of the words on the back of the card. Now, how do you get made whole?

So, no. I don't actually feel that the free market meets that description for 99% of transactions. Between two citizens over a used lawnmower, yes. Between Warren Buffet and Bill Gates, yes. But between you and the supermarket - not even a little.

Petrodollars will stop mattering when tanks and rockets stop burning hydrocarbons.

Petrodollars are backed by the ability to apply force.

And a vast majority of BTC is owned by the Bitfinex criminals who created Tether. You can't win against the bank and in this case the bank is the Ponzi schemers themselves.

Actually, all you have to do to dodge inflation is dump your idle currency into literally anything else. Rich people hang in the circles where these plans are made so you'll never take them by surprise. (It'd be interesting to look at Cyprus' banking records and see who would have been impacted had the haircut happened suddenly, two months earlier.)

So inflation is irrelevant for the little guy, and easily dodged by the rich, leaving the middle-class to get shafted.

It seems that this should be great cover for new ventures.

No, I think only those who try have any chance.

Is your rudeness caused by a disability?

> In law, everything is textualism

Everything should be. But 95% of everything is really people decrying textualism and actively choosing their ideology.

> it's nonsense used by people to make themselves think they are smart

What nonsense did you use?

"Fixes" that are moral hazards often don't fix anything.

The schools wasted everyone's time and money, from inflated rates to useless courses. If anyone should eat the debt, it's them.

I'd be all for university debt cancellation if it was in the form of universities not getting paid. Because as you say, they provided a shitty product. And as a parent poster said, if they get paid they'll just keep or raise rates so this is the best way to correct the root problem as well.

But I'm against debt cancellation if it just means that we get to pay for their shitty schooling, and we both know this is what they're pushing for. Increasing the tax burden on those who didn't get loans and didn't go to fancy schools.

Why shouldn't they just be allowed to go bankrupt? Then people who made bad loans would suffer. And they wouldn't be able to buy TVs and other crap on credit for a few years which for this specific demographic, might be a lesson.

> It's important to understand that a majority of the violence was initiated by folks that were seeking to take advantage of the protests to carry out violence:

Yeah, all of Antifa and a lot of BLM. And yes, a lot of unaffiliated looters.

> www.washingtonpost.com - who-cause-the-violence (it wasn't antifa)

The WaPo article you mention clearly has TDS, and it supported Biden who said Antifa didn't exist. It probably won't be that accurate in this regard. I'd suggest looking for streams from people at the protests.

Videos of Antifa violence are everywhere, and there are comparatively few (and minor) videos of right-wingers. Considering how social media is left-dominated, it doesn't seem to be censorship related, leaving you to just conclude that Antifa was much more violent.

And from reports from friends who were at various rallies, the level of potential violence was incredibly lop-sided. The worst Proud Boys protest in Portland had the PBs shooting people with paintballs if they tried to block or attack vehicles. The worst Antifa violence was straight-up unprovoked murder. Second-worst was throwing molotovs at counter-protestors and cops. Or maybe trying to burn down residential high-rises with people in them. And with 190+ night of it, there were a lot of runners-up.

> Does that change your reasoning about the situation at all? An overwhelming majority of peaceful protestors turned out to protest police violence and racial inequality, and a very, very small minority carried out the bulk of meaningful violence.

There were a few days where the majority seemed to be sincere, but once the big crowds left it was just anti-society vandals. All the statue-removal fights, for instance, were entirely warriors and no poets. Portland doesn't seem to have ever had a single sincere protest, and there are now articles about actual black BLM members telling Portland Antifa off for ruining their credibility.

> Does that invalidate the movement?

No, not at all. But you can't reasonably claim huge turnouts of mostly peaceful people because there were months of violence. The majority, by far, was unreasonable and violent. People were killing in the first day of looting in Minneapolis. The days of protest in Kenosha were violent from hour one.

But what does invalidate BLM is that the organization has known scammers for leaders, supports nonsense such as marxism and ending the nuclear family, etc. It supports black disempowerment through rhetoric that calls hard work and good fathering 'White'. It actively supports looters, both in words and money, even when they burn down black areas. It decries all personal responsibility. (Read many of the black voices who say this.)

When protestors/rioters in Minneapolis burned the first police station it was a good target. Nobody lived there, or did business from there. Nobody's life was destroyed and the cops had to work out of an ugly warehouse for a while which is a stinging rebuke in a way a few days off with pay isn't. Good target selection, good effect. And most people recognized it and they didn't get a lot of flack for that burning.

Later that night blocks of the city burned, where people lived and did business. Many lives were destroyed and some lost that night. And BLM came out strongly in support of the violence, most of which was against black people.

> I only ask that you empathize with those who have been at the receiving end of institutionalized violence themselves.

Sure, but you wouldn't wish BLM on your worst enemy. They aren't actually focused on anything that will help, they just push the lies about Breonna, Floyd, Blake, and others.

> Textualism is pure nonsense, used to present a false sense of rationality

No. You're just saying that people have biases and thus everything is a lie.

Textualism is a thing, and exists outside of law. Textualists think that the authors specific words are important. "Why did Tolkien say X? It must matter, he's a careful author."

I value it in the field of law because legal disputes caused by textual confusion can be avoided through careful writing and textualism leads to the type of thinking that is capable of that. And if nobody cared about the words, how sloppy would the thinking also be?