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growupkids

482 karma · joined September 2, 2013

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growupkids··on Ellen Pao Is Stepping Down as Reddit’s Chief
Perhaps I'm missing something. How would you know if someone is an excellent censor (I.e. They only censor "bad" speech, and not "good" speech) if then intent is to shield you from the "bad" speech. Wouldn't you then not know what they censored?

Specifically, it seems to me that if you're shielded from seeing that they censored, then they could also be censoring "good" speech too. So the only way it seems you could ensure they weren't do this poorly or deliberately would be to allow everyone access to what they've censored. Which inversely seems to defeat the purpose of having a good censor. Now essentially nothing in censored.

Again, perhaps I'm missing something but if I'm not then I don't understand how you resolve this conundrum.

Edit: Unless you're referring to ex post facto censorship, where everyone sees the "bad" speech, and the speaker is banned for violating "community standards" To pre-emptively ban future speech. But this too still allows "bad" speech, and I suppose you also have the problem of deleting the bad speech. If it's gone, then what substantiates the ban/censorship? Because again, what if the action was either done in error, or maliciously to ban "good" but unpopular speech/speakers how would you know?

growupkids··on Why the US federal employee record breach is worse than others
I think you're missing the point, and would mind if we all went through your financial, medical and personal records. These records are made available to OPM under what are supposed to be strict privacy controls, because it's very very personal information. Everything from divorces, psychological counseling, drug history, you name it. You open up every secret in your life to scrutiny to demonstrate that despite all that you can be trusted. None of that is anyone's business, and it supposed to be protected and only available to a small number of people for a period of time to determine if you can be trusted.

Everyone has things in their lives they'd rather not have made public because it's nobodies business, and this compromise just betrayed the trust all those people put in the US government.

growupkids··on Why the US federal employee record breach is worse than others
With FISMA no one builds even remotely secure systems, nothing anyone here would even want their name associated with. And this is because under FISMA government executives can "except risk", and they don't have to justify why.

So when your agency needs an application to do X, and you will face consequences if it doesn't get spun up, and to do so requires you cut a lot of security corners, but you won't face any consequences for doing so, you're going to cut those corners. Especially if not cutting those concerns means delays in rolling out that system, or spending a ton of money to fix all those security problems. The state of information security in the government is atrocious for this reason. It's not that complicated. There is no real incentive to secure systems, and very real insentives to not do so. You just issue the ATO and accept the risk. It's up an running and everyone is happy. If it's not and running people are pissed. It gets owned, people shrug and say "well nothing is totally secure".

Until this changes, compromises will continue.

growupkids··on Why I Defaulted on My Student Loans
Indeed. This is what's led to the skyrocketing costs of college degrees, the irrational belief that without one you're financially doomed. So any degree is presumed to be better than not having a degree, which is pure bunk. So everyone "knows" you have to get a degree, no matter what.

Meanwhile kids aren't told about other options or what the reality is about degrees. Trades pay very well, different degrees have a much higher likelihood of getting you a job or a better paying job, and of course only having a degree is no guarantee of even getting a job at all.

We need to reset expectations so kids don't get sucked in by the marketing machine that is today's higher education. Your masters degree in foreign languages does not guarantee you a job. Do your research and understand, really brutally understand the field you are trying to get work in. Don't listen to the hype, ask normal people in that field how they got that job and be skeptical. Find out how many people get degrees in that field annually, and how many new hits exist in that field. You might be surprised to find out it's a small field that simply doesn't support all the graduates produced, or that a degree alone won't get you that dream job.

growupkids··on Why I Defaulted on My Student Loans
Then no one will issue loans to those students, who have a very high likelihood of never paying it back. You're right back to cheap schools and only issuing loans for degrees that will pay a very high salary. The whole point is to make it possible for people who can't get loans otherwise to get them, the inverse is that they have to pay them back. It's a fair trade, you want to borrow 100k for something that isn't tangible. You have no income, and a very high likelihood of defaulting, and the thing that was purchased can't be resold by the lender. That's a pretty awful deal for any lender. So if you make it possible to default then you won't see those loans being made anymore. Why issue the loan?

If you don't want a loan you have to pay back, then don't get a student loan get a personal loan which you can default on. Sure it won't be as much, but that's all you can get when you have a low likelihood of paying it back. Or enlist in the military and earn the money to pay for school. Or get a job and pay your way through school. Or go to a cheaper school, and get a more practical degree.

There are other options.

growupkids··on Kleiner Perkins seeks legal fees or dropped case from Ellen Pao
In reality bad culture hires stick around because most people are polite and assume it's just them, and They give difficult people second chances, they put up with them for a long time because they're not used to being around people that are that "off".

So you can't assume just because someone isn't dismissed quickly that they automatically were a good hire. I've seen plenty of bad hires kept around because people were unable to grok why this person was difficult. They give them lots of second chances and it took time before everyone finally gave up. I'm not saying that's what happened here, what I am saying is you can't jump to a conclusion that because someone wasn't fired that means they were a good fit.

growupkids··on Serving All Your Heroin Needs
As Elvis Presely used to day: these aren't drugs, these are pills see I've got a 'script from my doctor. Psychology is everything, prescriptions aren't drugs, pills are safe, needles are scary.
growupkids··on Why do Americans not drive diesels?
Simple, diesel costs more per gallon, it's not as widely sold compared to gasoline (not every station may have it), and there are less car models availavle with diesel as an option. Therefore, even if you just look at it statistically there will be less diesel cars on the road in the USA.
growupkids··on Any stories of employees with equity successfully taking home over $1m? $500k?
The first startup I worked for, after taxes, made me over 1m and I was employee 42.
growupkids··on The Impact of “Blind” Auditions on Female Musicians (1997)
Which is why I'm always puzzled as to why job applications ask for information that has no bearing on the process of qualifying an applicant, such as age, gender, nationality, race and so on. Unless you are specifically looking for someone of particular age, gender, nationality and race why ask for this information?
growupkids··on “Your monthly rent .. shall increase from $2145 to $8900”
Your on to some thing here. In some resort communities, with high housing costs and large "seasonal" residents, you'll find rent controlled properties for just the reason you mention: local labor. For example, aspen colorado has a "lottery" for these rent controlled properties, and has duplex housing right outside of town for local workers. An average home in town is in the millions, which is clearly outside the price range for a service or municipal worker, so they have some rent controlled properties. I've seen this in other sky towns as well.
growupkids··on “Your monthly rent .. shall increase from $2145 to $8900”
I don't follow, privately owned housing is a normal good. It's a Textbook case, as average living standards rise, the total demand for housing expands, as does the demand for more expensive properties as people look to move "up market".

I am misunderstanding your point?

Edit: I think I understand, my degrees in economics so I assumed you were using the term as its used in economics. Apparently you were not.

growupkids··on Clinton ran own computer system for her official emails
I'll probably get down voted for this, so be it. I worked in the Clinton whitehouse in the mid-90s. Every time you sent an email, which was on a cluster of VAX servers, you got a full screen notification about the presidential records act, and you had to agree affirmatively if something was, or was not an official record. If you said no, it still got archived, it just got flagged so a FoIA might not be valid against your email. We simply backed everything up to tape, and sent it to NARA. My first week there we got subpeoneDed. I remember being asked to volunteer to go up to greenbelt Maryland to help restore tapes for records requests.

There is absolutely no way she or anyone else that worked woth here didnt know your needed to archive emails. Subpoenas happened regularly, and everyone knew Emails = record. Years later after I left I landed a contract with a government contractor to recover thse tapes, against federal lawsuits, emails are records and the courts want them. Par for the course. I'd argue the Clinton whitehouse was the first administration to truly face electronic records retention effects with the courts. Nixon maybe being the first with audio tapes, the clintons got email Subpeonas.

So when I hear she was running her own email server and staying outside federal records retention requirements, I both nodded knowingly that I would expect nothing less from the wife of a man that learned first hand: keep no records, and then shook my head ruefully knowingly why she did it:

Keep no records.

When public leaders avoid record keeping requirements, this prevents public scrutiny, and that means they no longer work for you because they aren't accountable to you. Maybe you agree with her, but you'll never know what she did in your name. Hillary knew what she was doing. I have no doubt of this, as I said I would expect nothing less. I would be shocked if she didn't do this. Stunned really. I'm still paranoid about what I put in written form (text, email, etc.) to this day.

This was calculated, to keep her unaccountable and off the record.

growupkids··on “Citizenfour” Awarded Oscar for Best Documentary in 2014
A 90 minute delay by immigration because someone didn't bring the right paperwork is not the same thing as being imprisoned.
growupkids··on Harvard and M.I.T. Sued Over Failing to Caption Online Courses
Neither MIT nor Harvard are public schools, they are both private.
growupkids··on Join the U.S. Digital Service
Most ROTC cadets do not have scholarships, and for their first two years they recieve no money. Of those students, only during their 3rd and 4th years do they recieve any funding at all, which is a stipend of approx. $300-500 a month and only once they have signed a contract to commission.
growupkids··on The Internet of Gas Station Tank Gauges
Its DHS that is responsible for protecting critical infrastructure, not the NSA:

http://www.dhs.gov/homeland-security-presidential-directive-...

In the NSAs charter, the term "National security information" refers to classified information and "sensitive but unclassified" information, and the scope includes those systems. The scope does not include protecting all systems that might have national security implications, the NSA has no regulatory authority or requirement to do this.

growupkids··on A Maze of Murderscapes: Metroid II
Minor point, Hicks is a private in Aliens.
growupkids··on Hackers Who Shut Down PSN and Xbox Live Now Attacking Tor
Or they're just sociopathic and sadistic and actually enjoy what they are doing. Wouldn't be the first time a DDOS was done just for the lulz.
growupkids··on The world is not falling apart: The trend lines
Doesnt use of natural gas have an adverse impact on climate change?
growupkids··on CIA agents who tortured are vulnerable to prosecution in any country
There were trials for crimes committed in Vietnam, and the commanding officer was found guilty:

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Lai_Massacre

growupkids··on Comments on the Sony Hack
And he's wrong. The loss isn't just 1 million, and calling a certainty a risk is just baffling. If we assume the legacy system actually needs 10 million in enhancements to be adequately protected, I think it's safe to say it's a train wreck security wise. For that, and other reasons (Sony assume they will get owned) then it's afe to assume the system is going to get compromised. So its not a risk anymore, it's a certainty.

So with that said, if the cost is report is 1 million, and the system is vulnerable, and they expect to get compromised then it's not just going to cost them just 1 million. It's going to cost them at least 11 million, or more.

Further, the "don't dix, just accept the risk" costs also won't just be 1 million, it's going to be 1 million every time it's compromised until they fix it. Since he's only accounting for the cost to report the breach, and the box is STILL owned and STILL vulnerable, it's going to keep getting compromised. So its 1 million times each event, which is a potentially infinite since nothing's changed to stop the next event.

To stop that infinite cycle, he has to pay to fix it, or keep paying to report. Either way he's paying more than 1 million. And since Sony I'm sure isn't that stupid, let's assume someone with common sense will order him to stop accepting the risk and the bleeding, then his real risk cost is 1at lesst 1 million to report and fix once that decision is made (and fixing is probably going to cost more now that the original 10 million since the system is now compromised too).

I'm not sure if he realizes this or not, or if it was a clumsy attempt to explain risk, but at least in the statements reported that's a critical flaw in his reasoning. And that's why what he said isn't just unconvincing, it's wrong.

If that's how Sony makes risk management decisions I have a Pinto to sell them.

growupkids··on Powerful, highly stealthy Linux trojan may have infected victims for years
How would you recover if the intent of the attack was to ex filtrate something, say payment information?
growupkids··on How to nuke a submarine
What's your point? That anecdotally you've heard that someone in the military used a term that's offensive, and you then therefore conclude that the military is just as racist now as it was then?

You're wrong. The US military used to be segregated back then, now it's not and actually desegregated before the rest of the country. As proof of a watershed change, the former chairman of the joint chiefs was African American, there are many minority generals and admirals in the US military, the military has a robust EEO program and outright quotas for leadership positions, including for officers. And much more.

It's not helpful to assert nothing's changed based on an anecdote, clearly a lot has changed.

growupkids··on Federal law enforcement documents about Aaron Swartz, released under FOIA
I'm sure you realize people are handcuffed for the officers safety. Not to dehumanize them. First offenders, even so called non-violent ones have been know to panic under the stress of an arrest and have been known to attack officers or attempt to flee. I'm not suggesting Aaron would have done this, but the officers don't know him, and these procedures dont just exist to treat someone poorly.

I'm not sure what your proposed solution is, assume the best until someone does attack an officer or tries to escape? I agree it would be nice to assume the best, but it doesn't seem practical. With regard to what Aaron was accused of, I'm not sure why they required an arrest anyway. Shouldn't this have just been a civil case? It seems a bit excessive to arrest and book someone for an alleged copyright violation.

growupkids··on Google Takes Over Operations of Moffett Airfield from NASA
You are in the google village number 6.
growupkids··on Texas Man Arrested for $4.5M Bitcoin Ponzi Scheme
Deterrent.
growupkids··on The Berlin Wall fell 25 years ago, but Germany is still divided
Don't forget the crushing secret police state, the high cost of the soviet focus on war production that redeployed commerce across the soviet empire to make weapons, instead of consumer goods, centralized planning, failed communist economic policies, gulags, and the decades of communist education that wiped out generations of entrepreneurs.
growupkids··on TXT Record XSS
Regardless, the judge is going to look at intent and knowledge. You knew this was a paid service, and your intent was to not pay. You understood this was a way to avoid payment, and you understood that someone else had paid for access.
growupkids··on Hidden message in Google Maps?
Space spiders and their moon bases.
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