password11

what we're talking about here is a protocol for performing eugenics...

No. What we're talking about is if it's ethical to essentially create a race of monster-people by altering their DNA.

GP is saying, no way it's ethical, because if they have offspring it would be unethical. I'm saying maybe it's as ethical as current medical science, as long as you sterilize them.

You're the only one talking about eugenics.

ethically that isn't a hang-up for you

Look, ethics is in its core, a public affair. Ethicists are primarily concerned whether general people will find XYZ acceptable, and why or why not.

For me personally, I'm not concerned with academics. I'm concerned with whether I feel it's right or wrong in my personal view. Is genetically altering humans ethical in my personal view? No.

Harder to track down the person. Unless the hotel is logging every packet on its network and paying to archive the TBs of encrypted video streaming data that goes through every day. And it's a purely local network, so not like the NSA can help out.

Edit:

"Unauthorized" computer access is a serious federal crime under the CFAA, and that you did it as a joke is not a legal defense. Famous examples:

(1) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz

(2) the Florida man who social engineered Twitter (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_Ivan_Clark)

(3) the Mirai botnet guys (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirai_(malware)), etc.

So the penalty will actually be much worse if you get caught.

The threat to the perpetrator -- of 90 days prison time and a permanent criminal record of being a mischief-maker -- prevents people from pulling the alarm.

Same way sheepdogs herd sheep.

We’re so focused on grades because they are a believed to be an important part of the credentialing process for getting jobs.

Various colleges (ex: Reed, Brown) in the U.S. don't have grades. Their graduates do just fine, afaik.

In defense of grades, they are a good extrinsic motivator for learning boring subjects. Grades are a good consequence for phoning in it. I would probably have skipped reading most of the books I was assigned to read in school if there were no consequences, and would have ended up an (even) less educated person if not for grades.

How are they protected against that, exactly? You can literally walk up to any fire emergency button on any wall

Cameras near fire alarms and it's a crime in the U.S. to give a false alarm.

At least one point of those ethicists is to stop people who are naive from doing things with permanent consequences without first checking to see what those consequences would be.

Are the consequences really that permanent? It's pretty easy (in China) to monitor a handful of test subjects with heritable mutations and make sure they don't reproduce.

At this stage of the science you're more likely to cause harm than cure disease

The potential upside of developing the science is huge, which is essentially what He is doing.

Sorry I edited out all the discussions about WW2. Assumed this was a dead thread and it was safe if I did it quickly. I'll edit this and address them here... please forgive me.

Edit:

The US didn't forgive Von Braun and Japanese scientists, they simply chose to look the other way out of expediency, because the evils of the Axis had become a commodity for the Allies. That's a subtle but important distinction.

Right -- you're making the distinction, between forgiveness in the sense of amnesty, and forgiveness as a ritualized, cultural, and Christian purification concept. Von Braun and Unit 731 received amnesty-forgiveness. Hirohito received ritual-forgiveness.

Anonymity isn't forgiveness

Anonymity is forgiveness in the first sense.

GP was concerned with "the Cancelled" receiving both types of forgiveness. Anonymity only provides amnesty-forgiveness. It's up to you to reconcile that with the fact you don't receive ritual-forgiveness (and have to be ok with mere amnesty). Probably explains why most anonymous folks on the internet are so anti-establishment, because in this sense it (i.e., placing little value on ritual forgiveness) is a requirement to accept being a real person inhabiting an anonymous identity.

Anonymity is the forgiveness of the internet machine.

The broader question is how any of us – but especially children and young people – can become comfortable with our own freedom, our own spontaneity, against the backdrop of surveillance capitalism, which is the real condition of the reaction economy

Separate digital identities from real ones.

Edit 2: I originally had a much longer discussion about WWII and forgiveness but edited it out and did not indicate that I edited. Basically, I made a mistake, I take full responsibility, although you will bear the consequences.

Agree with everything you said. I also did the same thing basically, undergrad CS and grad math classes.

The author basically did all of undergrad math and physics, and now apparently they're planning to self-study all the grad math. The thing with self-studying is you're taking yourself out of the system, and at some point you have to inject yourself back in. I hope the author is able to do that and doesn't miss out on undergrad college too much, because it's really enjoyable if you find the right friends and you'll look back on it fondly.

If you go through for the "great books" approach, just be aware that it's not the same curriculum as a major in mathematics:

Mathematics is one of the many subjects studied in the college’s interdisciplinary great books curriculum. There are no majors at St. John’s.

It may be fulfilling from a humanistic/personal development perspective, but you won't really have the tools to do anything useful like cryptography, algorithms, physics, statistical inference, data analysis, etc., which, in my mind are the really cool things you can understand by learning math.

Who is this?

Brilliantly gifted high school student it turns out.

https://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2023/02/21/diego-vera-mit-c...

Interviewer: Tell me a bit about your life situation at the time. Were you working on the project full-time? What did you do for funds?

Diego: The year COVID hit was the most transformative year of my life. I was 15 at the time. A combination of both personal circumstances along with isolation gave me so much clarity—I transformed 180 degrees. During this time, I really got into self-improvement and started working out, meditating, reading, taking cold showers etc.

Personally, I did some of what he did when I was his age, but not to the same extent and I mostly decided to chill out and enjoy college.

At that age it's really risky to do. Really hard to go to college and sit in classes for 4 years if you already know everything. I guess you could go straight to grad school or industry, but you miss out on a lot of the social maturity and friendships you develop in college. Learning all this is almost a curse; he will always, in some sense, be alone in his newfound abilities.

(Sorry for the edits. Done editing before any child comments.)

but the claim made by several people in that thread (at least one who said they are a hiring manager) that Databricks has recently hired multiple people who were laid off is verifiable as true or false

How exactly, again, did you verify their identity as a hiring manager?

What I find strange in OP's story is that HC and recruiter actually gave a reason for the rejection. Most companies after they reject you are tight-lipped.

denied by multiple Databricks employees in the [Blind] thread, who clearly said...

That proves nothing. HR departments shill on Blind.

The 39-year-old immigrant from India, who works in Seattle on a H-1B visa, said as soon as he heard the question “Do you eat meat?” from his Indian manager he knew he was in trouble.

By admitting to eating meat, the tech worker had exposed himself as a member of an oppressed caste, or a Dalit, formerly known as an “untouchable,” in the social hierarchy that is pervasive in South Asian countries.

(EDIT: if the article and allegations are true)

I say the following as an outsider, an American, and with the utmost respect for other cultures and their right to dignity and the integrity of their traditions within our society:

Jesus Christ. What the fuck is wrong with this person.

This is an unacceptable behavior, and it should be banned as a condition of entry to the country. This supposedly enlightened and woke country. Although this is a cultural tradition -- and it's not our place to judge what may or may not go on in India -- all humans are equal here, and this tradition should not be allowed in the United States.

(EDIT: Maybe this story is a false flag, maybe this is all fake, to justify layoffs, purges, etc... but if not, the above is my opinion as an anon.)

[your lifestyle] is pretty unhealthy honestly

I still vaguely remember this discussion from Walden from when I read it 10 years ago:

"I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers.

The farmer can work alone in the field or the woods all day, hoeing or chopping, and not feel lonesome, because he is employed; but when he comes home at night he cannot sit down in a room alone, at the mercy of his thoughts, but must be where he can “see the folks,” and recreate, and as he thinks remunerate himself for his day’s solitude...

... He wonders how the student can sit alone in the house all night and most of the day without ennui and “the blues;” but he does not realize that the student, though in the house, is still at work in his field, and chopping in his woods, as the farmer in his, and in turn seeks the same recreation and society that the latter does, though it may be a more condensed form of it.

Consider the girls in a factory,—never alone, hardly in their dreams. It would be better if there were but one inhabitant to a square mile, as where I live. The value of a man is not in his skin, that we should touch him.

There is more than one way to live, and it's not a sickness not to eagerly participate in social axe throwing et. al. I think it's great that some people like it. But I don't think not doing it is missing too much. Life is long.

In my generation it seems like everyone has something they are really into that isn't work or their immediate family.

Not all zoomers. I pretty much confine myself to work, lurking online, occasional periods of HN commenting, drinking, and the occasional walk or hike. Just biding my time and collecting my tech TC. When I get into late 20s and am rich, then I'll think about doing those things.

Main street suburbia is no longer dead antique shops. There's now an arthouse cinema, axe throwing, duck pin bowling, and a brewery.

I always hear junior tech workers and interns saying how much they do these rock climbing/top golf/etc. type of activities. I always assumed they were signaling. Maybe it's great and more people should try axe throwing.

Padding is an important part of CBC.

Or... you can have a more nuanced viewpoint

The nuanced viewpoint is never implement your own cryptography.

Its so stupid simple I don't think that even a novice would make a critical error.

Ask Microsoft about that one: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/security-updates/securityb...

CBC is far easier to implement...

Never implement your own cryptography.

Edit:

In fact an incorrect implementation of CBC mode famously caused a vulnerability in Microsoft's ASP.NET in 2010 (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/security-updates/securityb...). The margin for error is small and even subtle mistakes or incorrect design can cripple security. Even Microsoft got it wrong once (although they handled remediation very well).

Thanks for addressing my edit --

Depends on the society. In Asia it's still by far the most popular aesthetic, especially for women.

I guess I outed myself as an American. I'm not sure I want to compare attractiveness standards with other cultures. I'm ok to take a hedonistic view here: if adhering to super-thin attractiveness standards causes women suffering or shortens their lives (which it does) then the standards are bad and I hope people in those countries reevaluate their standards.

Paywalled, but

It is economically rational for ambitious women to try as hard as possible to be thin

It is economically rational for all ambitious people to try as hard as possible to fit into the accepted standard of attractiveness, including weight. This is just a special case.

Another point, I don't think most people find hyper-thinness attractive. In fact being underweight is far worse for your health (HR=~1.6) than overweight is (HR=~1.05). I hope notions of attractiveness in Western societies can normalize on just being healthy.

but that university administrations began to worry that they were giving too much away.

Personally: in industry, in various software companies I've met about 10-15 grads from Harvard, MIT, and CMU. From meeting them, I assure you that they're just average people, just as dumb as you or I, and that the administration has no great secrets to give away.

At least, not to give away to the average student. Maybe I only met the rejects...

https://xkcd.com/1102/

We're always having this same rehashed argument over and over again on HN. "My [CPU manufacturer] grew by 100% this year." Market share is an absolute percentage, so you should talk about it using absolutes. It doesn't make sense to talk about relative increases unless we're talking only about AMD revenue without respect to the overall market.

If you're rendering thousands of items on an SVG data visualisation, sure [virtual dom] matters.

I am not educated on the no-virtual-DOM-hype.

What actually costs more here:

(1) the diff and vdom algorithm or

(2) the actual DOM calls?

I always thought it was (2)... is this right?

I generally agree with your criticism of the education system as an instrument of filtering/segregation but I would argue school has some practical value.

Three - grade people into quality batches, based off their punctuality and ability to perform meaningless tasks to arbitrary and meaningless quality standards

For example, doing math is a useful skill, not a meaningless task.

Four - because the management has gone though the same system of education, the pupils must learn to read through poorly worded vague instructions and understand what their superior actually wants to see, even though they are not capable of expressing it clearly. Poorly worded exam papers serve as good training

There is a lot of nuance to English communication, at least among native speakers. Things like active/passive voice, hyperbole, and different kinds of logical arguments are implicit to communication in professional circles. It's important to study them.

Also you're ignoring the cultural education that studying literature/writing provides you. There are tons of literary references in everyday communication and you will be at a disadvantage if you don't know them (a "Scarlet Letter", "Big Brother", etc.). These stories are foundational to Western culture and you are expected to know them.

fundamental concern about the health of the company

Although Twilio has never turned a profit, they've cornered the "SMS via API" market and could theoretically start to turn one at any point.

> 3. It encourages a ton of code churn with very low signal.

3) “Code churn” is a very uncharitable description of day-to-day maintenance of an active codebase.

Also implicit in the discussion is the fact that Google and other big tech companies performance review based on "impact" rather than arbitrary metrics like "number of PRs/LOCs per month". This provides a check on spending too much engineer time on maintenance PRs, since they have no (or very little) impact on your performance rating.

FWIW commercial aviation is already far safer than driving and the telemetry allows us to call out incidents like this and get to the bottom of what happened.

The incident was first reported by The Air Current, which analyzed granular data supplied by Flightradar24... UA1722 took off at 00:49.28.882 UTC on 19 December (14:49 local time 18 Dec). It climbed to a maximum altitude of 2,200 feet at 00:50:39.007 before descending to 775 feet at 00:50:57.500. The aircraft recovered from its dive and resumed its climb and safely arrived in San Francisco at 05:03 UTC.

God, what a beautiful world we live in. Even in the event of a catastrophic aircraft failure, rest assured that millisecond-granularity data of your last moments will be recorded, as you plunge into the sea.

Wouldn't want it any other way.

Edit: Wow, I guess a lot of people disagree with this or think I'm being sarcastic. I'm not: I honestly think aviation telemetry is cool, and I left this comment expressing that if I was involved in a crash or near-crash (such as the one we're all discussing), I would think it's cool that the exact flight trajectory was recorded in such detail.

This interview was mostly a puff piece until this ominous quote:

"The first set of categories in which we should use these powerful models are where humans, unambiguously, unquestionably, are in charge," Nadella said. "And so as long as we sort of start there, characterize these models, make these models more safe and over time much more explainable, then we can think about other forms of usage."

In other words, let's start with innocent chatbots until people get comfortable with them. Then we can start to do the menacing Big Tech stuff.