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notdonspauldingon Google Can't Seem to Tolerate Diversity

He's saying that he would keep those of his employees who, when presented with a viewpoint which they consider offensive, would punch their coworkers in the face from having to be in any kind of a working relationship with someone because of the viewpoints which they hold.

He's very clearly siding with the face-punchers.

notdonspauldingon Martin Shkreli is found guilty of securities fraud

Did ALL of Madoff's investors get paid off, or just the "got-in-on-the-bottom-floor" investors? If it wasn't all it's not the same argument as Shkreli's defense.

notdonspauldingon Linus: Don't bother with grsecurity. Their patches are pure garbage

I think the gold in the parent's analogy is Linus's criticism. And people want it wrapped up in kinder words.

> Ones attitude in contributing that code is another large part of what makes the work "gold".

Even if the analogy meant we were talking about the code being the gold, this wouldn't make sense. The machine only executes code, regardless of the attitude of who wrote it.

notdonspauldingon Network Protocols

I love Gary Bernhardt's stuff.

I love this article because of the depth and detail which can be expected of his work, but also because you get all the way to the last sentence before he reveals the question which inspired him to do the deep dive.

notdonspauldingon Government auction of wireless airwaves will shape the future of the Internet

Unless you're paying for dedicated internet access, you likely don't "have a 130Mb connection at home". Or, at least you don't actually have full access to all 130Mbps all the time. Try using 100% of the capacity of your connection for an entire month and see if you don't get a call from your ISP.

Your basic home internet package of anywhere from 10-200Mbps is priced at a level which is consistent with a usage profile typical of most home users. A fiber drop to a cell tower has a much different usage profile over the course of a month.

notdonspauldingon I’m Not “Black Enough” for Inc. Magazine

First off, thanks for being a woman and staying in our industry, in spite of the flack you get!

Secondly, you say "This man's experience is not the norm." but I'm wondering what you base that on?

notdonspauldingon I’m Not “Black Enough” for Inc. Magazine

It's not as misleading as you suggest. I read that statistic and thought to myself "I would've assumed it was closer to 50%". He's challenging the popular notion in white America's mind that most blacks are poor. He's not wrong either in restating the figure to emphasize the non-poverty percentage, or in his assessment that Inc. magazine is only interested in furthering the notion that most blacks are poor.

The statistic (even as you restated it) supports his general thesis of the perceptions of black people that media outlets want to promulgate really well.

notdonspauldingon The Only Thing, Historically, That's Curbed Inequality: Catastrophe

Inequality != Injustice

Imagine a society where the poorest person had a standard-of-living on par with Warren Buffet, but where the richest person was richer than the poorest by a factor 100-times greater than we find in our world today. Does anyone argue that such a society is worse than the one we find ourselves in? Wouldn't everyone jump at the chance to live in that society, regardless of which strata they found themselves living in?

Another thought experiment: Imagine you could wave a wand today and redistribute everyone's wealth such that everyone had exactly equal wealth. Further assume you could find a set of laws which guaranteed nobody would exploit anyone else, and dictate and enforce them perfectly on this utopic society. Would you allow trades in your society? If so, how long would it take before some people had more wealth than others? Would it just never happen? If not, why not?

Inequality is no great evil to be banished. Even if it were, you couldn't do it and maintain the freedom of different people to value different goods/services at different amounts and to make trades based on their values.

Fighting Poverty is a worthy goal.

Fighting Injustice is a worthy goal.

Fighting Racism is a worthy goal.

Fighting Inequality is tilting at windmills.

notdonspauldingon Manifestos and Monopolies

You were, I had no trouble picking up on it at least.

It seems to me that this battle was really lost several years ago when Google unsuccessfully tried to maintain the ability to "export your social graph" from FB. What's your feeling on how things would have played out differently if at that time FB lost its control over people's social graphs?

It seems to me that if you have to legislate a solution here, writing a law that guaranteed you could export your personal data from any company would be a good place to start. What do you think?

notdonspauldingon Starting an Internet Service Provider

For reference, in the unlicensed Ubiquiti gear that I've used, the point-to-multipoint latency is variable with the signal quality of the connected stations.

If all client stations have good, clear signals, the latency is around 1-2ms. But that can spike quickly if you're dealing with interference or other causes of low SNR.

notdonspauldingon Starting an Internet Service Provider

Not the OP, but doing something similar. For fixed wireless broadband in rural areas of the US, it's actually not too onerous. The FCC designates certain frequencies as licensed or unlicensed, and the hardware options for running an ISP in the unlicensed bands have increased dramatically in the last 10 years.

The process is basically:

    - The FCC designates certain rules, including power limits, for each band.

    - Hardware manufacturers build to the rules, get their gear FCC-labeled.

    - WISPs (Wireless ISPs) buy name-brand FCC-labeled gear.

    - WISPs maintain CALEA[0] capabilities (so 3-letter agencies can spy on you).

    - File form 477 with the FCC [1].

...and that's about all it takes from a regulatory standpoint. There are of course numerous other obstacles which must be overcome in the process, but red tape currently isn't the biggest one for our industry.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Assistance_for_...

[1]: https://www.fcc.gov/general/form-477-resources-filers

notdonspauldingon Redash – Connect to any data source, easily visualize and share your data

We're hosting on our own EC2 instance using the docker image. Setup was mostly smooth. We love the integration with Google Apps so our entire organization automatically has access.

We primarily use it to connect to Amazon's Redshift and pull some data out for quick visual analysis. It's a very good combo. We're at the early stages of using it but it seems like a very solid product.

Kudos to the dev!

notdonspauldingon Ask HN: What inspires you to persevere through adversity?

    My hope is built on nothing less,
    than Jesus blood and righteousness!
    I dare not trust the sweetest frame,
    but wholly lean on Jesus name!
    
    On Christ the solid rock I stand,
    all other ground is sinking sand.
    All other ground is sinking sand!

notdonspauldingon Just how smart is an octopus?

You argue that the definition of faith is to (trust, believe, have faith) in something despite not knowing.

We agree in the main. My point is one of where we put the emphasis.

My counterargument, if it is one, is simply that when humans actually have faith in something, it's almost always "trusting what I don't know is going on, because of what I know of this object in other circumstances".

The husband "trusts" his wife to be faithful, not because he has a tracker on her and so knows where she goes at all hours, but because he knows who she is when she's with him.

A soldier "has faith in" in the general's battle plan because of the general's past victories.

I'm just arguing that all the really useful definitions of faith imply that the trust is actually rooted in knowledge and past experience, not merely blind, hopeful, stick-your-fingers-in-your-ears-and-sing-la-la-la ignorance of reality.

notdonspauldingon Just how smart is an octopus?

Thank you for taking the time to understand my comment in its best interpretation!

Taking your reply in reverse order:

    > Am I actually a moral absolutist, but misunderstanding 
    > the terminology?

I could be misunderstanding what you mean by "absolutist", because the terms I'm used to seeing in this context are Objective Morality vs. Subjective Morality. I'm assuming you're arguing for Subjective Morality (aka, moral relativism, aka "morality is a human invention, we decide what's right and wrong for ourselves"). If by Moral Absolutist you instead mean "there's a finite list of rules and regulations by which all humanity in all situations at all times should be living by," then I'm not arguing for that at all. So, I'm assuming you don't mean that, and that we're actually talking about Objective vs. Subjective Morality when we talk about relativism/absolutism.

I think as soon as you use terms like "should", "ought to", "right", "wrong", "good", "bad", and "evil" that you're making an objective statement about an ideal state to which you think the world should conform, ought to conform, etc. From a theistic point of view, those words make sense, but from an atheistic point of view, every time you use one of those words to refer to someone else's behavior, I'm going to ask, "Why?". Basically, if you try to effect any moral change at all in anyone, you've proven that you actually think there is at least one thing which you consider to be "right" for the other person to do, regardless of what they think about it.

    > I do think that everyone should behave with empathy 
    > because all humans have an equal capacity to suffer, 
    > and from that conclusion you get obvious things like 
    > "rape is bad", "murder is bad",

You may think it's bad, but you haven't really got a strong argument there for why it's true that murder is bad at all. You may not like murder, but why should the murderer care what your preferences are at all?

Here's what I think is a stronger, more formalized version of your argument:

    Premise #1: All humans have an equal capacity to suffer.
    
    Premise #2: Suffering is a specific electrochemical impulse in a human's brain.
    
    Premise #3: Every human dislikes the "Suffering Impulse"
    
    Premise #4: Human beings *ought* to reciprocate their dislikes.
    
    Conclusion: Therefore, everyone *should* behave with empathy.

Note that even in that argument, I couldn't even come up with a good premise for #4 that didn't use the word "ought" (and again, I'm trying to come up with a good atheistic argument for why anyone should behave in any particular way at all). And you need #4 for the argument so that the conclusion will follow from the premises.

    > I feel that a moral hierarchy exists, but it does not 
    > exist independently of the (collective) human mind.

To see where this idea logically leads, I'd encourage you to read some articles by John Gray[0]. He's an atheist who writes a great deal about the implications of atheist worldviews on morality. He's a clear thinker, and not afraid to ruffle feathers.

Also, I highly recommend that atheists read Frederich Nietzsche's "Parable of the Madman"[1]. It's another take on the moral implications of atheism.

[0]: https://www.theguardian.com/profile/johngray

[1]: http://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/mod/nietzsche-madman.asp

notdonspauldingon Just how smart is an octopus?

This worldview is fine, so long as you keep it to yourself.

The trouble with this worldview comes when someone who holds it thinks anyone other than themselves ought to behave this way. Once you say people should treat others a certain way, you've crossed the line into moral absolutism. You think other people should live by some standard which you find better than the one they live by. Why should they?

In the morally relativistic worldview, where do the terms "wrong", "bad", and "evil" find their roots?

Put another way, why shouldn't I go around raping people? Isn't that good for the survival of my genes?

notdonspauldingon Just how smart is an octopus?

I find your lack of [a good definition of] faith disturbing. -- Darth Webster

Seriously though, I think the "blind faith" usage of the term faith is its weakest form. "Trust" and "confidence" are good synonyms. Because as a rule, humans have faith in a great many things, and the vast majority of those faiths are not characterized by a lack of knowledge or evidence. Consider the following statements:

- The astronauts had faith in the laws of physics.

- My husband was unfaithful to me.

- I've lost my faith in humanity because FooBar was elected.

- Have you no faith in me?

- The war started when our allies broke faith with us.

- You should always negotiate in good faith.

- My dog has been my faithful companion for a great many years.

Think about the faith being represented by those phrases. Does the person who had the faith have it without intimate knowledge of the object of the faith? No! The faith existed because of what they knew about the object, not in spite of it.

notdonspauldingon Elon Musk, Travis Kalanick, Indra Nooyi to Join Presidential Advisory Council

I don't disagree with the main point of your post, but I do disagree on this minor statement here:

    > electric car subsidies go to car owners,
    > not manufacturers

I don't know the specifics of buying an electric car, but most tax-break subsidies like this do in fact end up going to the manufacturer, just indirectly.

How? Say it costs $10K to make an electric car, and the manufacturer thinks the market will support a 50% profit margin, so they price the car at $15K. Now the government wants to induce consumers to buy this car, so they offer a $5000 tax rebate if you purchase one. The goal is to incentivize customers to think "Wow, I can get this car for 2/3 of what it would otherwise cost me." And if the only two actors in the scenario were the government and the consumer, it would work that way. But the manufacturer is not naive. If they thought consumers were willing to purchase it at $15K outright, they'll still be willing to purchase it at $20K (less the $5K tax rebate). In effect, the price of the subsidized good goes up by some amount close to the subsidy.

I'm not merely theorizing here. I built a house in 2011 and was pricing out HVAC solutions. My subcontractor said conventional heat+AC would cost me $7,000. Geothermal (the energy-saving option) would cost me $21,000. The hard costs of a geothermal system are twice as much as a conventional system (it costs the HVAC subcontractor ~$3,500 in materials for conventional and ~$7,000 for geo), yet the cost to me was 3X! I got similar quotes from multiple subs.

I questioned this price difference, and all the subs said, "Yeah, it's 3X, but there's currently a 30% tax break if you buy the geo system, so it's like it's really only $14K, or 2X".

There should be an economic proficiency test that all legislators are required to pass. sigh

notdonspauldingon Homeschooling as a right, and a needed practical alternative

It's entirely possible to pay your property tax (and thus fund public schooling), home-school your children, and be elected to your school board or be otherwise involved in your local education system.

None of those are mutually exclusive activities.

notdonspauldingon Homeschooling as a right, and a needed practical alternative

You're right, I shouldn't have imported motive to those parents. And I can empathize with parents in this situation. I don't think it's necessarily easy to go the single-income route.

Still, in my calculus, the benefits outweigh the risks. Here's another anecdote:

Once a week my kids get together with several other home-schooled families. In one of those families, the father is a math professor at the local community college. He's smart. He could work at any of a number of universities and make better money, but he's chosen to work at a community college because it gives him a more flexible schedule to be around to raise/educate his children.

His family of 7 lives in an 1000 sqft home. His decision to take an active role in educating his children required sacrifices, and he's chosen to trade off the career benefits for home life benefits.

(BTW, when people talk about "diversity", this is the kind I think that matters most. Diversity of viewpoints on how to live your life and raise your children. I'm glad in the US we don't have to all agree on the best way to do these things.)

notdonspauldingon Homeschooling as a right, and a needed practical alternative

I went to public school through grade 7, and my parents pulled me out to home-school me through high school.

It worked out really, really well for me. Most immediately, it relieved a bunch of social pressure to "fit in". My curriculum was self-paced so I was able to work through the material I already knew at a fast clip. I did grades 9-12 in 3 years instead of the typical 4, and was able graduate the same year as my then-girlfriend, now-wife (hold the jokes please, she's not my sister).

Beyond my personal experience being home-schooled, I'm now a father of 5, and I think the biggest thing missing from the other comments in this discussion is the concept that the education of children is just one of the many responsibilities of parents.

As a parent, it's your personal job to make sure your children are fed, clothed, bathed, socialized, educated, moralized, understood, and secured. Everyone worries about the "socialization" of home-schooled kids. But the parent who is taking an active interest in the education of their child is almost certainly also taking an active interest in their child's social development.

I think it's rather more likely that parents today are all too happy to abdicate and outsource those responsibilities to whatever institution is willing to take them on.

Don't get me wrong. That we have freely available public education is undoubtedly a great thing. The capacity to read and write effectively and to think critically is an amazing economic mobilizer. There's a reason slave-owners in the deep south wanted to keep their slaves from learning to read. But having that education available is supremely preferable to having it mandated by the state.

notdonspauldingon Homeschooling as a right, and a needed practical alternative

Since you don't know anyone personally who was both home schooled and accomplished, here's a list I found for you.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_homeschooled_people

notdonspauldingon Homeschooling as a right, and a needed practical alternative

Your "penalty tax" is called "property tax" in most localities in the US.

I pay around 7% of my upper-middle-class income each year in property tax. The vast majority of that money goes to my local public school district. 3 of my 5 children are home schooled. In effect, I pay both for the private education of my own children as well as the public education of others. Sure feels like a penalty to me.

This is what makes the GP comment so off-base. There's no "salt lake" effect from a funding perspective. This is the whole point of the recent political rumblings to institute voucher systems that let parents take their tax dollars and spend them on alternative schooling options.

notdonspauldingon Dan Rather: Now, More Than Ever, We Must Stand Up for Science

    > They're ignorant, sure, but it's hard to see things 
    > from another perspective if you've never really been 
    > exposed to anything else.

Are you sure they're ignorant?

Could they not be intelligent, rational individuals with the personal agency to have looked at the same facts as you and come up with different conclusions?

notdonspauldingon Ask HN: Have you ever thought of leaving programming for something else?

    > if you have the mental fortitude and cast-iron gullet
    > to specialize in cleaning up other people's messes. 
    > There's a lot of money to be made that way.

How does an individual or a consultancy go about finding these messes to be cleaned up? I feel reasonably-qualified to go in and take the necessary steps to get engineering projects back on track, but I'm not sure how you would get started doing that?

notdonspauldingon Why a federal high-tech start-up is a money loser

> "Perhaps we should try to help the "ordinary" person keep their servers secure?"

Security wasn't the goal, evasion of oversight was.

Even if it was granted that security was the goal, you would expect the private server to be at least as secure as the @state.gov mail servers, otherwise you're wasting your time. Furthermore, James Comey's statement in July made clear that the private server wasn't as secure as GMail, the kind of email server an "ordinary person" might use. GMail may be centralized, but it's supported SSL from its public release in 2004. The server Hillary Clinton used didn't support SSL until the spring of 2009, months into her tenure as Secretary of State.[0]

The truth is we actually know very little about the operational security of the server because all but one of the IT folks in charge of running it plead the 5th before congress and only spoke privately with the FBI under conditions of immunity. Justin Cooper was the only one to actually testify regarding the specifics of the server, but his role was more administrative than technical.[1]

There's no credible defense for the SoS running a private server to provide email accounts which are less secure than the standard accounts used by the rest of the State Department. The diplomatic role of the SoS inherently requires a high level of OPSEC to carry out its most basic function of communicating with international leaders. Hillary Clinton avoided using the security available to her in order to thwart federal regulations regarding the preservation of public records. That action is no example that any member of the public should be holding in high regard as something worthy of emulation.

[0]: http://www.thompsontimeline.com/191/2009/03/29/for-the-first... [1]: http://www.thompsontimeline.com/tag/justin-cooper/

notdonspauldingon Show HN: Run your own OAuth2 and OpenID Connect Provider

Is OAuth2 back in the good graces of the dev community? I thought one of its creators considered it a dead standard?

https://hueniverse.com/2012/07/26/oauth-2-0-and-the-road-to-...

(Genuinely asking because I've been thinking I might use a centralized auth store in a project recently and I wondered what the state of the art was.)

notdonspauldingon New 'Dead Sea Scrolls' Revealed

What "contractually belongs to them" is exactly what they agreed to work for when they were hired. If that included health benefits exclusive of any particular medication, that used to be a consideration between them and their employer. You may think it better to live in a place where the terms of those contracts are stipulated by the government.

The reason for the U.S. having enumerated powers where states could pass such laws but the federal government couldn't was that if you disagreed with your state's world-view, you could leave that state for one more aligned with your beliefs.

notdonspauldingon Python 3.6 dict becomes compact and keywords become ordered

Ordered kwargs is in a PEP[0] that is in "Final" status, meaning it's been accepted and implemented and is making its way into the language proper.

[0]: https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0468/

EDIT: On rereading, I see that the parent and GP aren't specifically talking about the kwarg-ordering benefit, but the general dict-ordering benefit. I would be surprised if dict did not become a synonym for OrderedDict in the spec in the near future.

The only potential disadvantage of dict==odict is performance, as anyone relying on the current arbitrarily-ordered dict behavior by definition isn't worried about the underlying implementation moving to a deterministic-by-insertion-order dictionary.

notdonspauldingon Python 3.6 dict becomes compact and keywords become ordered

At least with respect to ordered kwargs, the spec is changing:

https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0468/

I believe it's an implementation detail that in cpython 3.6, dict and odict are essentially equivalent now, but it's an implementation detail which is there to support an official feature of the language.

If your project can sustain a minimum version of (the as yet unreleased) Python 3.6, I don't see why you shouldn't begin to rely on this feature straightaway.