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natestemen

155 karma · joined December 11, 2017

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natestemen··on The Great Offline
Just to clarify, from their about page (https://reallifemag.com/about-real-life/) they have the following

> Three years ago, Snapchat offered to support the work I do as a sociologist, primarily applying social theory to social media. In these past three years, the company has also paid for the venue for a conference I co-founded and chair called Theorizing the Web, without asking for any editorial input or control. Snapchat is now funding Real Life, and we have editorial independence as well. The support means we can focus on writers and writing rather than clicks and shares. At the same time, there are inherent complexities attached to being funded by a company in the field of what we’re publishing about, sometimes critically. But the content will have to speak for itself. We believe in this project, and we’re doing this because we think and care about the things you’ll see discussed on the site: identity, power, privacy, surveillance, relationships, beauty, to name a few.

natestemen··on Zoom Acknowledges It Suspended Activists' Accounts at China's Request
I know this website has a penchant for anti-China everything, but it's funny because every terms of service I've ever read has something in it about complying with law enforcement about giving up data and terminating service. If you're against zoom doing this, I would expect you to be against every other company having this clause in their TOS.
natestemen··on Google deletes “communist bandits” from comments on Youtube
people read/write chinese outside of China though...
natestemen··on Abstreet: Traffic simulation game written in Rust
in nyc it's quite common (maybe even required) to run simulations of changes of infrastructure before making them to see how they will effect traffic.

source: my partner helps run these simulations as part of their job/their company gets contract work from the city all the time to check changes of bus routes/etc.

natestemen··on 8chan Is a Normal Part of Mass Shootings Now
this is such a bad take on the real issue which is the radicalization of these men by website like the *chans.

saying "this is largely a mental health problem" completely ignores the problem of large scale violence the far-right is committing, and only perpetuates thinking of these people as "lone wolves". they may seem like that from the outside, but seeing how much destruction they've done over the past few years makes it clear they are not. they are organized.

treating fascism and nationalism as a "mental health problem" is a scapegoat so as not to talk about the real issue.

natestemen··on Two women programmers played a pivotal role in the birth of chaos theory
i think the author probably wanted to draw attention to their gender, not their sex. hence female is off the table.
natestemen··on Foreign Minister Taro Kono to ask media to switch order of Japanese names
wrong could be contrary to your preferred style. that's just how it goes. just because you don't care if others misspell you name doesn't mean that applies to all others.
natestemen··on Dehumanization of cyclists predicts self-reported aggressive behaviour to them
> I know if I hit them I'll probably be spending time in prison

lol cyclists are dying left and right and barely anyone is going to prison. the privileged class (drivers in this case) will always protect their own.

natestemen··on Dehumanization of cyclists predicts self-reported aggressive behaviour to them
there are cases when you should treat a cyclist like a pedestrian and others where you should treat them like a car.

i don't think any driving teachers are doing a good job at teaching this, but as soon as you get on a bike you realize how silly it is to make a full stop at a stop sign, both from a safety point of view as well as a physics point of view.

natestemen··on Clarifying the Future of Firefox Screenshots
i respect that though. happy devs is a precondition for happy users.
natestemen··on Karen Uhlenbeck, Uniter of Geometry and Analysis, Wins Abel Prize
mathematics research is typically very social. if you look at the mathematics research community as a whole you will find a very small percentage working completely in isolation.

also i would add Grigori Perelman to your list of mathematicians working primarily by themselves.

natestemen··on Report examines origins and nature of 'math anxiety'
As someone who majored in math/physics I'm going to heavily disagree. I was quite poor when it came to multiplication tables, and monsters like long division, but was a pretty good student through university. I never felt like I needed any of those things through any higher level maths, and making those a requirement to learn (or at least drill as much as they do) seems counter productive.
natestemen··on On Building an Instagram Street Art Dataset and Detection Model
on the one hand, id think the police have enough money and time to build a detection system like this. on the other, we have people building surveillance system for free in their spare time
natestemen··on Ask HN: Improving the world as a software developer
i have a hard time believing fintech startups targeting developing countries are going to help improve the world. or any fintech startup for that matter.
natestemen··on Non-Euclidean Worlds Engine [video]
I could imagine something like this being an amazing tool for teaching people about non-euclidean geometries and how things like distance can be so contorted in other spaces. In particular I'm thinking teaching people about special and general relativity where things can very quickly become very hard to visualize.

Really cool.

natestemen··on Ask HN: What skills to acquire in 2019?
I'm glad someone has mentioned this here. It's something our industry is really not taking seriously at all and needs more people pushing for.

As you mentioned company decisions have real racial effects, and those decisions are often made by homogeneous teams that lack diversity and perspective.

If anyone wants a recommendation for reading to build up some knowledge about these issues I would recommend reading "White Fragility" by Robin DiAngelo. She does a great job breaking down lots of common misunderstandings white people have about race, and why those misunderstandings are created in the first place.

natestemen··on Lawmakers fed up with Zuckerberg
im going to take this a step further and say connecting accounts means sharing _no more_ data than is required for the integration.

I don't understand why netflix gets to see all your DM's when all you want the connection to do is send a message to a person you choose. The connection doesn't need to give netflix literally any data besides maybe the fact that a message was sent. why do they need to know who it was too, and any other messages surrounding it?

natestemen··on NYC subway and bus services have entered 'death spiral', experts say
i dont think it's really that simple. even it was i don't think the decision is that easy anyway.

it's important to think about who your decisions affect, even if they may be a minority (which is bigger than 0.1%). why is it okay to put more burden on the people who already have the most burden as it is?

natestemen··on Tell HN: Amazon now owns 3.0.0.0/8
anyone have any good explanations of the image linked? like what are ARIN, RIPE, why is some unallocated, what is multicast?

that sort of thing would be cool to learn

natestemen··on Alex Stamos: Asking tech companies to police hate speech is “a dangerous path”
speech is dangerous. hate speech promotes and incites violence.
natestemen··on What you can't say (2004)
to me, action matters more than intent.

i understand sometimes people make mistakes, but sometimes those mistakes could've been avoided if they spent any time learning about current issues. in not spending time learning about these things they are putting themselves up to say some dumb shit.

obviously its hard to say what should happen in these cases, and i do think we should try and educate people when they want, but its also not the job of marginalized people to educate others on how what they said was offensive.

natestemen··on What you can't say (2004)
im completely fine with getting rid of people who want to dress up as nazis for halloween.
natestemen··on What you can't say (2004)
could you give some examples of people being fired for "relatively minor violations"?
natestemen··on LOLWUT: a piece of art inside a database command
> If it doesn't enhance readability, speed, etc.

I disagree. Having terminology that is clear (which master/slave is not) decreases the time needed to spend to get an understanding of whatever it is you're working on.

Also related, if someone is offended by terminology then that will slow down their progress in understanding because they first have to process those feelings in order to continue.

natestemen··on Theorists with a Swamp, not a Theory
care to share some of the inaccuracies?
natestemen··on Ask HN: How to get web development career on track from being homeless?
im curious to know how many emails you get from this. just want to know what kind of people we are dealing with here on hn.
natestemen··on Hair Ice
but its not really random is it? its just a wikipedia page that the HN community finds interesting. how is it any different from a blog post that the community has voted to the top?
natestemen··on Hair Ice
i love seeing wikipedia articles making it to the front page. no opinions, just a cool wiki article that probably most people have never heard of.
natestemen··on Show HN: A site that makes Spotify playlists of bands coming to town
May have been suggested but would love to be able to toggle all venues in a certain city so I don't have to go searching for venues that I may be interested in.
natestemen··on Zuckerberg hits users with the hard truth: You agreed to this
To be completely honest, I don't think many people outside the tech bubble have realized the extent to which facebook used and collected users data.

I just don't feel like it's fair to say everybody has known for years. Maybe in your circle, but certainly not in every ones.

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