Posts by Michael Wojcik

Re: "Twitter appears to have dropped the ball on tackling hate,"

Since "insulting" is a subjective quale, any term can be intended (by the writer) as an insult, or inferred (by the reader) as one. For example: only an utter rutabaga would complain about being referred to as "cis".

So citing an example wouldn't prove anything; for it to be relevant you and LR would have to agree on an insulting interpretation, and one example isn't significant.

What LR's post does demonstrate, not that we needed more examples, is that many people are happy to take offense at just about anything if doing so confirms their worldview.

Re: Use another platform (sic)

The sentiments are not exclusive. I have never been a Twitter user myself, but if I were, I would include both complaining about abuse and considering a move to another platform viable options. In fact both can be exercised: I could file a complaint and then move, or file complaints while in the process of moving.

And it would be equally reasonable for me to suggest both responses to someone else unhappy with the platform.

Re: What type of "hate speech"?

Unfortunately we can't seem to find his email address.

Re: What type of "hate speech"?

So just drive all the users away, and the problem is solved.

Hmm. Perhaps this is Musk's secret plan?

Yeah, I always assumed the only reason to buy TP-Link was to run OpenWRT. Though I take the point someone else posted – it can be tough finding a compatible device.

Re: Yes! Yes!

For most things. There are a few things which I've had difficulty finding elsewhere. Even if I find a manufacturer site, it just rolls over to Amazon for purchasing.

But I've been avoiding Amazon as much as I feasibly can (and I prefer to buy locally anyway where possible). And I've never signed up for Prime. Yes, I recognize the "sign and cancel immediately" wheeze, but I don't want to give them the satisfaction.

Another thing I hate about Amazon: They'll rarely say how something will be shipped. We don't have USPS delivery to our home, and package services can't deliver to the Post Office, so I have to guess which address to provide. Often enough it's the wrong one and the item gets returned.

Re: There is a way to sign up for Prime in two clicks?

This is Yet Another reason to use virtual cards for online shopping. When each merchant has a dedicated card, canceling one is basically zero cost to you.

(I use privacy.com, but no doubt there are other providers. They block a few merchants, such as the gift-giving site my UK colleagues use for people's leaving gifts, but it works with most.)

Re: no backup strategy, SMH stupidity

We have a fully mechanical doorbell – actually just a bell mounted outside the door – but in practice I don't believe anyone's ever used it anyway. When it's cold and the door's closed they knock; if it's warm and the door's open, they just call out. (I generally suggest to friends and neighbors that they could just let themselves in, as folks used to do, but in this era of ridiculous dangerism people seem reluctant to do that.)

Re: What, no backup strategy?

"I have a smart home, and my primary means of interfacing with all the devices and automations is through Amazon Echo devices via Alexa."

That's an odd way to spell "stupid home".

Oh, well. If this guy wants to make his living space an enormously overcomplicated, fragile engineering disaster with a huge attack surface, I suppose that's his prerogative. Personally I have better things to do with my time and money than go looking for trouble in the name of "convenience". (Particularly since "convenience" in this sense often primarily means less movement and thinking, in my experience, so you pay a price in health as well.)

Re: 1 out of 280k

What? The article cited three times as many successes (eeeevil Chinese hackers targeting "an infrastructure company"; eeeevil Iranian hackers who were going to totally due a ransomware, dude; and getting some of Colonial Pipeline's money back, lest they learn an important lesson). That's better than 1%!

I believe the FBI's motto is "hey, we commit a lot of malfeasance, but occasionally we get results (of a sort)!".

Re: as did his aide Walt Nauta

You ask that as though you think it's a bad thing.

Sometimes good people go to prison. Sometimes they're innocent. Sometimes the laws they're convicted of violating are stupid or outrageous – the US has certainly had no shortage of those. Sometimes someone spent a term in prison and then reformed.

Conversely, many very bad people have never been to prison.

Using a prison sentence as an excuse to remove civil rights or as a proxy for mendaciousness is naive, foolish, irrational, and unethical.

There are many, many reasons why Trump should not be in a position of power. A future prison sentence, should that come to pass, does not change that; and making it do so by law (which would require a Constitutional amendment and Ain't Gonna Happen) would be an injustice.

Re: as did his aide Walt Nauta

even if they didn't really specify what they meant

Yes, and they failed to give everyone magical unicorns, too.

The science of creating an unambiguous text in natural language has yet to be perfected. Honestly, some of you people live in a fucking dreamworld.

Re: "He wasn't so much indicted by the GJ, as he pretty much indicted himself."

Yes, she should; but by the same token Cannon will have to tread carefully, as in effect she's already on notice, and scrutiny will be intense.

Re: Not a flight risk?

Indeed. If he goes to trial, and is convicted, and is sentenced to some prison term, then he might come back. If he flees the country, he won't, unless some jackass future POTUS pardons him.

Re: Some people work better WFH

Not only have I worked from home for decades, so has my manager. Hasn't been a problem.

Managers who subscribe to return-to-office policies are poor managers. That's all there is to it.

I was wondering how far down in the comments I'd have to scroll before someone played the autism card.

It's a floor wax and a dessert topping!

Re: Gold mine

"low quality nonsense" may be an overestimate.

Re: Performance isn't free...

Yeah. Duplicating OS userspace is inelegant and wasteful. It's a lazy solution to a problem that wouldn't exist if library maintainers were more careful about compatibility, and application developers didn't feel a need to 1) bring in every bit of functionality they've ever heard of, and 2) use libraries for every trivial thing.

Re: It does depress me

Sanders was hardly "shouted down". He had a credible run for the nomination. He also made numerous mistakes and did not make much of an attempt to broaden his base. He's not actually a terribly adept politician.

That's not to say the Democratic Party regulars aren't conservative. Biden won the nomination in 2020 largely because he was a familiar face who rode Obama's coattails, particularly with southern Democrats, and because of the perennial fear that a woman can't win the US Presidency.

Frankly, I'm not sure I'd describe anything Sanders was seriously proposing as a "major policy change". At least not more major than, say, getting the US out of Afghanistan or removing the right to abortion, or some other things which have happened without him in charge. And the POTUS is not an absolute monarch, either; there's not much a radical one can do against Congress and the courts. Carter tried to take on Reclamation and Congress – including his own party – walked all over him.

Re: It does depress me

Sigh. Eternal September is eternal.

I suppose it's good to know that there's no shortage of sophomores, in case it turns out they're useful for something.

Re: It does depress me

But what it actually does, the FBI is no different to the Stasi.

Frankly, this is complete bullshit and quite offensive.

I'm by no means a fan of the US police and surveillance state, as I think I've made clear in other posts. I think the myriad policing and surveillance branches of both the Federal and state governments need to be sharply reined in. I think the FISA court is a joke. I'd like to see the entire PATRIOT Act tossed out. (I'd say I'd like to see the fairly dreadful Department of Homeland Security broken up, but the expense would be huge and I don't think it'd actually achieve anything.)

But without excusing any of the malfeasance of US policing at any level, it is nothing like what went on on East Germany, and to suggest that it is diminishes the awful experiences of people living under that regime, and is breathtakingly disrespectful to them.

You really need to learn to think critically.

Re: How close does code have to be?

Is one line of code copyrightable? How about 2? What amount of code, which is effectively just rewritten from the documentation of that language to achieve outcomes as documented, makes code copyrightable?

Gosh, if only similar questions applied to other works which are subject to copyright, and were discussed in both statute and jurisprudence.

Oh, wait, they do, and have been. In the US, some of those cases specifically regarding software are quite famous, such as Lotus v. Borland and Oracle v. Google.

Re: How close does code have to be?

I honestly have no idea what point you're trying to make with this argument, which seems pretty naive from the perspectives of economics, psychology, and aesthetics.

Software patently has both use-value and exchange-value.

As a non-physical, non-exhaustible, non-rival good, it has no unique-object value, sure. So what? Walter Benjamin pointed out almost a century ago that such "auratic value" no applies to most creative endeavors. Welcome to modernity.

People associate the experience with the product, and the qualia engendered by the experience attach to the product. We see that with video games, for example, which are definitely software and which many people form definite attachments to that go far beyond the experience of creating the game. (I haven't looked, but I'm sure there's plenty of Aeris/Tifa slash out there.) For more mundane software, there's certainly ample evidence of people making emotional investment in their preferred packages – just as they do for other tools.

Re: Lost in translation does not equate to a disturbance in the force and source ‽ .

I would have expected ChatGPT to remember the apostrophe in "papers" [sic].

"there's no question that working together in the same room makes a positive difference" means "DO NOT QUESTION IT".

It's the sign of religious doctrine, which is not surprising coming from the head of HR. People are notoriously variable and Taylorist scientific management breaks down quickly when those people aren't largely-fungible manual-laboring bodies. So HR at these big tech corporations can either be an art of acknowledging all of that difference and trying to find flexible systems for balancing corporate and human requirements; or it can be fierce adherence to an ideology with no acknowledgement of empirical data.

I think we know which is the case at Google, and many other tech firms. I'm not even convinced by the "middle management panic" explanation; I think it's almost entirely ideological.That's why we see these sweeping claims from the C-suite.

Re: That explains why productivity has fallen off a cliff due to "W"FH.

In some jurisdictions timesheets are useful for corporate-tax purposes. They're not necessarily just an invention of management.

Not saying that should make you love them or anything, just that the organization may have financial incentive to make employees fill them out. (Accurately or not.)