null0pointer

VPN + DNS-over-HTTPS (DoH) is a very potent combo turning your internet connection into an opaque pipe, as far as your ISP is concerned. DoH hides your DNS requests from your ISP, and a VPN service (basically glorified proxies these days) hide the IPs of site you're visiting. If you are concerned about this issue then I urge you to use that combo. The more people doing that and the more normal that kind of traffic becomes the less able law enforcement is to use it as probable cause or similar.

AFAIK Mullvad is a non-US VPN service that does not require personal info for sign up and accepts cryptocurrency payments. Though I haven't used them myself so I can't speak for service quality. For DoH, I'm only aware of Google and Cloudflare offering that. However they are both US companies so if anyone has a non-US recommendation I would appreciate it. At least using them is one step removed from your ISP, making it a little harder to get your records.

Please correct me if I have anything wrong.

Could you elaborate please? Not looking for a debate, just want to understand what you mean by "entirely regressive".

This is one of the reasons why, in my somewhat radical opinion, all taxes should be some form of sales tax. No income tax, etc. If you live in a country, you spend money in that country, and so you pay taxes in that country. No workarounds, no loopholes, no tax returns, no cognitive load, just extremely simple tax law.

(I know it's not quite that simple, but I think it's interesting to think about.)

Minor correction: Radical publicity is not inherent to all blockchain-based currencies. Take Monero as a counter-example. AFAIK in Monero no one can query the balance of any address except the key holder for that address, and no one can see the sender, recipient, or value of a transaction except those party to it.

You just described every market

That is cool! I've been thinking about building a site that lets you explore a big graph of math proofs for a long time, since doing my pure math degree. Glad to see someone else has done something like it.

Settle down. They're not comparing COVID-19 to the Flu, they're using the Flu as an example to talk about transitive infections.

I agree with you, we have much more in common than the current online zeitgeist would lead you to believe. Many of my Chinese friends are genuinely lovely people just trying to do what's best for them and their families. Just like the rest of the world.

Unfortunately a lot of this attitude comes from the Chinese themselves when we see the knee-jerk reaction to any criticism of China with "you just don't understand China". Maybe so, but this attitude is not helpful. Though I definitely understand that reaction when I think about how I would feel if some foreigners started criticising my country.

I think there are 2 important things I'd like people to take away.

1) You are not your government, especially when they are not elected. Criticism of a country's government != criticism of that country's people.

2) The people doing the criticising should take more care to specify the target of the criticism, and to understand the collateral damage it may have.

I agree that criminals will use secure communications regardless of the law. I don't understand what you mean when you say it will increase crime though.

Regardless, I feel like there's a deeper motive from governments/law enforcement. It would allow them to claim that anyone using secure comms must have something to hide and is thus a criminal. Combine that with mass surveillance and anyone you see sending encrypted traffic can automatically be assumed to be a criminal. I'm not saying this is right, it's certainly not right. But I'm sure that's the argument that will be used by those trying to push it.

The only way to fix this is secure-by-default comms, such that all traffic looks the same and you cannot make any claims of criminality based on that alone.

I feel like as soon as someone uses a "think of the children" argument they immediately invalidate any point they may have had. It's a total cop out argument. I wish more people could see through it.

While sub-pixel sampling provides little benefit for diffuse surfaces, sampling the same pixel multiple times does provide better smoothness across the surface of the object.

Since it's not much more computationally expensive to do sub-pixel sampling than to repeatedly sample the same point within the pixel you might as well just use sub-pixel sampling.

Additionally a pixel has no knowledge of its contents until you cast a ray. And even if the ray did hit a diffuse surface you would have to do more math to determine if the edge of that surface lies within the boundaries of that pixel. Might as well just use sub-pixel sampling.

I don't it's fair to call it pretentious if from a human but beautiful if from a computer. You even said it yourself

> ... anyone pretending otherwise only believes so because they know a priori that it is generated by ML.

To me, a large part of an artworks beauty comes from its ability to make me feel something. These works make me feel nothing at all. So I cannot call them beautiful.

Actually, I agree with you that as a species we are not cognitively equipped to handle an unrelenting torrent of information. I also agree that well researched and well presented (though not necessarily authoritative) arguments should be held to much higher credibility by the voting populace than random twitter posts. Those more credible arguments should be inherently more convincing for readers.

What I think actually needs to happen is to teach people the appropriate critical thinking and reasoning skills to make that distinction for themselves, rather than force the platforms to make that distinction on their users' behalf. Societal change is a very slow process that happens over generations. Every point in history is locally noisy but on a larger timescale that noise diminishes compared to the underlying trend. I don't think it's necessary to make changes based on the locally noisy timescale as I believe we will eventually reach equilibrium between the volume/quality of information in public discourse and the way the population digests it.

> That's not something that I think.

Sorry, didn't mean to put words in your mouth.

I am saying they should be allowed to exercise _zero_ editorial control. Unless they specifically want to, like a newspaper. If you want to create liberal-Facebook or conservative-Facebook then go right ahead. At the moment Facebook is intended to be a neutral platform exercising as little editorial control as possible (though whether that is the reality is up for debate).

And btw, I couldn't care less for Facebook or Twitter, I don't use either personally.

That is such an odd comparison to draw. Oil drilling is inherently destructive to the environment. Social media posts are not, although you do try to make that argument. The solution to oil drilling destroying the environment is less drilling. The solution to misinformation is _more_ information.

You seem to think that these platforms govern our interactions. When I am specifically saying that they should do as little governance as possible. They are merely the channels by which we communicate.

Edit: Actually I'm saying they should be allowed to do as little governance as possible. I think they should still have to option to filter however they like if that's their intention.

So how can any new social media platforms or startups ever be able to support all that additional staff/infrastructure?

I hold the complete opposite view. The individual that uploaded the content should be held solely responsible for the publishing of that content. Should the platform receives a request for removal then by all means the onus would fall to them to make that decision. If the content is illegal then the platform should aid law enforcement with whatever information they have on the uploader. I don't believe it makes any sense to pre-filter content unless you're deliberately trying to create an opinionated platform (which btw is fine if that's what you want to do, but it shouldn't be a legal requirement).

> U.S. officials say it remains a minuscule percentage of overall travellers — 0.007 per cent, or roughly one per 13,000. The Department of Homeland Security says it's necessary to combat crimes like terrorism and child pornography.

I'm sick of hearing this argument. Either it's a small percentage of travellers or it's necessary to combat those crimes, but you cannot have both. The only way to have both of those is if you already have some probable cause or a reason to search particular individuals, in which case there's no need for it to be warrantless.

> And I think they should do so by raising concerns with employing of Australian tech workers

As an Australian tech worker... that would hurt. But I don't really see any other way to get them to listen either.

Yes, there's an option to have your phone auto-wipe after 10 failed unlock attempts. However, I'm not aware of any way to have it auto-wipe by itself after n-days. Getting a new phone and signing into your Apple ID has no effect on the data stored on your old phone.

One day I'll forget to charge my hat

TDD is a great approach for a raytracer. They can be absolute nightmares to debug when a minor error in some calculation causes subtle artifacts in your image.

Is 'mid-level' really senior or higher? You are probably right about the authors assumptions.

Interesting that mortgage brokers consider it part of your income. Though I guess it makes sense. I didn't realise exactly how high compensation was in the Bay Area. People always throw out numbers but I've always struggled to find any actual data. Perhaps I should head to the 'mines' for a bit...

But you can't use your options until they vest right? Maybe I don't understand exactly what you mean

The author specifies living alone

> $5,500 a month at market rate, which is affordable to a mid-level programmer at a large tech firm living alone

I understand what you mean that roommates are the only way it could make any sense. But I'm trying to understand where the author is coming from.

At $5,500 per month is that to rent or buy?

I currently spend about 25% of my after-tax salary on rent and I consider it too much for me.

$66,000 => $264,000 after-tax. Californian marginal income tax bracket for $52k - $268k is 9.3% So $264,000 after-tax => $291,000 pre-tax (I know that's not how tax brackets work but I'm just estimating)

And that must be base salary since you can't pay rent or buy food with stock options.

On Glassdoor a SENIOR developer at Google in SF shows as only $170,000.

So can someone either tell me where can I get a $300k job as a MID LEVEL developer or tell me how on earth the author considers $5,500 per month an affordable housing cost?

Side note: My marginal income tax rate in Australia is 37%... I feel absolutely robbed looking at these California tax rates

What would it take for you to quit? Citing data collection practices as your reason.

Don't have to answer, I'm just curious as it seems your morals are at odds with your companies.

I would say it's critically important. You may be a good self learner, but even then you may not know _what_ to study. It's the whole unknown unknowns situation.

Another thing I would point out is that your peers offer more than just textbook-style knowledge. They can offer concise, intuitive explanations tailored for someone at your level. They can demonstrate the things they're teaching. They can provide immediate responses to any questions you may have.

In Australia I noticed my downloads from some sources were much slower than others.

I have two examples:

1. YouTube vs Netflix. When I would try to watch YouTube in the evenings it would not buffer fast enough for continuous playback. While Netflix would. I assumed that my ISP was prioritising Netflix traffic. When I turn on my VPN YouTube plays much smoother in full quality.

2. Steam downloads. When I would download a game off the automatic download server is would start at full speed (Blistering 100mbps on NBN...) and after a few seconds drop down to single digit kbps. When I switched the download server to the Singapore one I would get constant full speed downloads. Could either be throttling that specific server, or there is something wrong with that server.

I switched ISP and now both of those issues are gone.

From my understanding that points pretty strongly towards throttling. Though admittedly my knowledge may be lacking.

Note: This is for a wired connection. But I thought it was relevant anyway.

Why is it hard to tell between throttling and congestion? Maybe my understanding is wrong but they are still sending the same amount of data. But when it's encrypted traffic from the VPN the ISP can't sniff and throttle.

My previous boss had a single letter last name. Turns out most airline ticketing system have a 3 letter minimum so he just entered his single character name 3 times to purchase the ticket. But this meant that every single time he got to the airport he would get stopped because his ticket didn't match his passport.