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probinso

483 karma · joined April 2, 2012

Github => https://github.com/probinso Resume => https://github.com/probinso/resume/raw/master/resume.pdf
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probinso··on Ask HN: How would you steel-man censoring social media vs. freedom of speech?
Freedom speech in a library context, may mean providing access to mein kampf but putting it in a hate speech section. Just like when sharing a security vulnerability, there is a world for responsible disclosure. Responsible disclosure is censorship to a purist of free speech

If however this question relates to recent events.

If you're concerned with platform censoring, then I would say the concern is misplaced. There needs to be a new definition for information monopolies. If any one platform decides to censor you, and you can realistically interpret that as a freedom of speech violation, then that is actually an antitrust problem. You can look at how this plays out in federated networks. The gap social network, try to join the activity pub federated Network. Each individual community in activity pub was able to make their own decision as to whether they had to listen to what gab was saying. Gab was effectively silenced, but not by the hand of a dictator. Each individual community had their own rules, gab decided it wasn't worth continuing to participate in activity pub because they weren't gaining traction. This reflects how free speech behaves in auditorium. Free speech does not guarantee free audience

The reason that freedom of speech is used to protect you from your government, is because your government is guaranteed several monopolies over your life in some very consequential ways.

As a third answer, freedom of speech as a context has not been tested at scales like this before. There are some very interesting ethical questions to be studied and grappled with. A downside to using politically correct terms, is that it's very often nothing is actually being said. However, when you deviate from politically correct terms, the opportunity for your words to be misinterpreted significantly increase. The use of things like dog whistles, even if unintentional have an effect on the population. So let's say that you are giving a typical speech but use words that are not precise and not politically correct. If 001% of your audience interprets your words as the most radical interpretation, this used to mean nothing. Megaphones weren't large enough to reach a radicalized population. Those population members had no coordination infrastructure that They could organize along. And as I said, none of this has to have been intentional by the speaker. Because of scale ethics and network effects the resulting consequences of the words you use scale (Little C) exponentially with your audience size, when edges are provided for free

probinso··on Ask HN: Why does it seem like Rust is always on the front page?
People keep leaving it in the rain
probinso··on Ask HN: Are there any complex lifeforms which don’t inflict harm upon another?
I hate this question. this question is unable to take an ecological perspective. There are plenty of organisms that cause harm to a subset of a population under circumstance or temporarily, they then inevitably feed an orthogonal population. It does not even make sense to say "oh this X just cause harm".

It is not a realistic understanding of systems. I would suggest reaching out to an ecologist, or if you want someone to relate it to humans, somebody in "social ecology"

In before "Google Bookchin"

probinso··on Ask HN: Is working for FAANG as big of a deal in Europe as it is in the US??
As far as I can tell, it's not that big of a deal in the US. It might be a big deal in southern California. The US is much bigger than that
probinso··on Ask HN: What are decentralized Twitter alternatives?
Paper and pencil has historically been very useful
probinso··on Ask HN: How do I make technical contributions to a meaningful cause
NLP seems easier to find the overlap of pay and good work.

NLP on medical texts for instance is a very lucrative space that has enormous value to end users and society

NLP for interpretation and foreign policy as well

NLP for legal discovery

NLP for education

These are all spaces where you are ability to contribute meaningfully is very high, and the training time is surprisingly low for utilities. Theory it becomes very high, fundamentals it becomes very high training times

In any sub industry you'll still have to avoid corporate chatbots or their equivalents

probinso··on Ask HN: How do I make technical contributions to a meaningful cause
Look for jobs in NLP. There's a lot of interesting work to be done there. NLP for medical text s, NLP for intelligence encounter intelligence, NLP for lie detection. It's the space for your most likely to find work that is good
probinso··on Ask HN: How do you manage and budget your monthly income
Becu for washington, 1st tech for oregon. I'm sure others too. I only use credit unions
probinso··on Ask HN: JS++ ? Why not make a new, strongly typed JavaScript ?
It exists and it's called Elm. it's not work backwards compatible, but it's a really solid language
probinso··on Ask HN: How do you manage and budget your monthly income
my bank automatically sorts all of my expenses and I review them and update miss characterizations. It has done through a phone app, it is effectively zero work

I keep all large expenses small my rent has never been more than $800 a month. I do this by living with people.

probinso··on Ask HN: What are possible career paths in cybersecurity policy?
You can also find companies that do policy related work. Companies like Free and Fair better dedicated to policy and technology for online voting.

I know of others that are in engineering and policy, but not off the top of my head for security as well

probinso··on Ask HN: What are possible career paths in cybersecurity policy?
https://www.techcongress.io/congressional-innovation-fellows

this is an annual position to influence policy in technology

probinso··on Ask HN: Where are the best cities to live in the US if you work remotely?
I would choose any small town with a medium-sized college. college towns have food and culture and stimulating conversation. typically they're very good schools and libraries. typically also relatively cheap.

Ithaca New York and Bellingham Washington are very fun cities for this type of layout. there are a lot of them that fit this criteria though

probinso··on Ask HN: Can non degree-holder use the title Software Engineer?
you can use absolutely any title. you have to be able to justify the skills.
probinso··on Ask HN: Best “Big Data” Course?
Chris Mattman has a good series online
probinso··on Ask HN: Does this algorithm for increasing audio quality exist?
this is a white noise machine.
probinso··on Ask HN: How do you find jobs to apply for? What's your main pain point?
honestly, at this point it's not hard. when I was younger the hardest part was developing a reasonable list of places to apply. my strategy for developing a reasonable list was to watch conference talks over technologies that I enjoy and document any company being represented. the biggest pain point to the strategy is you don't have very much control over region. when your first out of school, it might make sense, but if you've got a family and are intending to be regionally bound it may not. I really loved the strategy because I definitely had something to talk about during the interviews, and every company I interviewed with was interesting
probinso··on Ask HN: Would you rent an office cabin?
I would love to have more destinations be office-focused.
probinso··on Ask HN: I just became a father, what is the only book I should read?
manufacturing consent
probinso··on Ask HN: What comes after social media? What's out there already?
hiking
probinso··on Ask HN: I just became a father, what is the only book I should read?
A brief history of time
probinso··on Ask HN: Documentation and diagrams versioned with code – how to handle diagrams?
I use graphvis, I'll probably be looking into mermaid after this though, I had not heard of that
probinso··on Ask HN: What's that Game that predicts your choices?
Stanley's parable
probinso··on Ask HN: How to figure out if someone is smart during a casual conversation?
when you use somebody as a resource in casual conversation based on your knowledge of their domain expertise and they provide information that you had not considered. That's about it
probinso··on Ask HN: Why does HN hate humor?
I understand you're pretty funny as a dee-jay and, well, comedy is kind of a hobby of mine. Well, actually, it's a little more than just a hobby, Reader's Digest is considering publishing two of my jokes.

Yeah. And perhaps some night we could maybe get together and swap humorous stories, for fun.

probinso··on Ask HN: Burned Out Data Scientist – Switching to Back End SWE?
be sure that it's a data science and not startups that you're burnt out on
probinso··on Ask HN: What startup/technology is on your 'to watch' list?
sail drone

drone seed

amira learning

free & fair

anyone doing probabilistic programming languages

thresher

anything from Disney research or Pixar research

kiwico

textio

probinso··on Ask HN: Are there good reasons to not open-source voting machine software
no
probinso··on Ask HN: What did you buy this holiday season?
gave to mutual aid groups, went to local artists for gifts, shifted as many purchases as possible to local businesses
probinso··on Ask HN: How do I learn mathematics starting from almost no knowledge?
if you're doing it on your own, it helps to have a motivating story. there are a category of math book that is historically driven. you can pick a topic and typically find a really strong and well-written book on the history of that topic, or just pick up a book on the history of mathematics. these will give you solid examples that you can relate to, give you the motivating story of the persons who discovered the mathematics, and give you enough information to decide whether you want to explore that topic independently
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