I disagree with using "debanking" as an example. At least in the US, banks are required by law (the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA), et al) to not divulge certain information. As far as I'm aware, YouTube et al are not under such a legal requirement.
10,031 karma · joined March 4, 2016
I have a blog: https://karl.kornel.us/
My HN handle is also my Twitter handle.
My work email is a!k!kornel@stanford,edu (with ! removed and , corrected).
I switched from an Intel Mac to an Apple Silicon Mac a few months ago, and have been trying to do as much stuff as possible on ARM.
One thing this should do, is make people think more about switching their cloud-based workflows to ARM CPUs, which are generally less expensive.
Publisher's page: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780805083293/thewhitecascade...
WorldCat page: https://search.worldcat.org/title/150384796?oclcNum=15038479...
Stanford Research Computing (https://srcc.stanford.edu) is a collaboration between University IT and the Vice Provost and Dean of Research. We operate HPC environments for researchers, we do one-time consultations on projects (from software and pipelines, to data management, to physical building design and fit-out), and we provide contract support for individual Labs, Departments, and Schools.
We have two open positions:
• GPU Cluster Sysadmin: We are working on the go-live for Marlowe—our 1SU NVIDIA DGX H100 SuperPOD with DDN Intelliflash and DDN NFS storage—and have decided to hire an additional sysadmin! You'll be working with the latest AI/ML/Deep Learning/LLM software & frameworks, getting them to work in an HPC environment. You'll be keeping the environment up-to-date, and working with NVIDIA/DDN when there's trouble. You should also expect to interact with users & PIs a lot. More info: http://phxc1b.rfer.us/STANFORD8mESql (or, if you're very experienced in the field, go to http://phxc1b.rfer.us/STANFORDrWNSqm).
• Research Computing Manager: Our current IC:Manager ratio is 7, which is too high, so we're hiring another manager for our group! You'll oversee a number of ICs, help them plan & prioritize their work, make policy decisions, and contribute to Research Computing's strategic direction. You'll also be interacting with groups throughout the University, as a service provider and as a policy maker. More info: http://phxc1b.rfer.us/STANFORD0_zSLT
If you don't already live in the Bay Area, we provide a relocation incentive. Depending on where you live, we provide free transit passes. Unfortunately, if you drive, you will have to pay for parking for the days you're on-site. There is some on-call around the holidays. We get a 403(b) match, good healthcare, and 30+ days off per year (holidays + vacation). All Benefits are all publicly documented at https://cardinalatwork.stanford.edu/benefits-rewards. If you have questions, feel free to reply here or email me (the info is in my profile)!
I wonder why they didn't do this in the first place.
Stanford Research Computing (https://srcc.stanford.edu) is a collaboration between University IT and the Vice Provost and Dean of Research. We operate HPC environments for researchers, we do one-time consultations on projects (from software and pipelines, to data management, to physical building design and fit-out), and we provide contract support for individual Labs, Departments, and Schools.
We have two open positions:
• Research Computing Manager: Our current IC:Manager ratio is 7, which is too high, so we're hiring another manager for our group! You'll oversee a number of ICs, help them plan & prioritize their work, make policy decisions, and contribute to Research Computing's strategic direction. You'll also be interacting with groups throughout the University, as a service provider and as a policy maker. More info: http://phxc1b.rfer.us/STANFORD0_zSLT
• Research Storage Consultant: We have lots of storage environments (both on-prem & cloud); it can be confusing to identify which is the best for a given purpose, and how to take full advantage of it. Your job will be to help Students & Faculty figure out what storage is best to use, and get them started on using it! More info: http://phxc1b.rfer.us/STANFORDWvaSLS
If you don't already live in the Bay Area, we provide a relocation incentive. Depending on where you live, we provide free transit passes. Unfortunately, if you drive, you will have to pay for parking for the days you're on-site. There is some on-call around the holidays. We get a 403(b) match, good healthcare, and 30+ days off per year (holidays + vacation). All Benefits are all publicly documented at https://cardinalatwork.stanford.edu/benefits-rewards. If you have questions, feel free to reply here or email me (the info is in my profile)!
RStudio Server[0] 1.3 and older hard-coded a number of paths, such as the path for storing temporary files: Instead of looking for the TMPDIR environment variable (as specified by POSIX[1]), R Studio Server would always use /tmp. That is extremely annoying, because we set TMPDIR to a path on fast local storage (SATA or NVMe SSDs) that the job scheduler cleans up at the end of the compute job.
We do have a last-resort mechanism using pam_namespace[2], such that a user going to `/tmp` actually takes them to `/namespace/tmp/${username}`, but that is per-user, not per-job. If a user has two R Studio jobs, and those two jobs landed on the same host, there would be trouble.
So, we used PRoot to wrap R Studio, with /tmp bind-mounted to a directory under TMPDIR.
[0]: https://www.rstudio.com/products/rstudio/download-server/
[1]: https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/basedefs/V1...
> All processes using a database must be on the same host computer; WAL does not work over a network filesystem. This is because WAL requires all processes to share a small amount of memory and processes on separate host machines obviously cannot share memory with each other.
The presence of the `-shm` file is one of the signs that the database is currently operating in WAL mode, and must only be accessed from the machine hosting the database file.
Looking at the list of journal modes supported (https://www.sqlite.org/pragma.html#pragma_journal_mode), you should see if the problem happens with the default `DELETE` journal mode.
Also, see https://www.sqlite.org/atomiccommit.html#_broken_locking_imp... for warnings about the SQLite that ships with macOS.
I trust that the maintainers of the Python language & the Python Standard Library are not going to change their tuple-using APIs in a breaking way, without a clear signal (like a major-version bump).
I do not extend that same trust to other Python projects. Maybe I extend that same trust to projects that demonstrate proper use of Semantic Versioning, but not to others.
Using something other than tuples trades some performance for some stability, which is a trade I’m OK with.
There is standardization within all precincts of a county. And from my past experience as a poll worker, I can tell you why precinct reporting times can vary wildly within a county.
(Note things I say here are specific to the county where I worked.)
Anyone in line to vote by 8PM is allowed to vote. We (the other poll workers and I) could not start closing the polls until every voter had voted. If the local community did not trust vote-by-mail, then that polling place will likely see delays in closing due to lines.
One polling place often covered multiple precincts, so you'll see multiple precincts delayed simultaneously.
After that, boxes go from one queue to another, with multiple queues consolidating into one or two. So, a one-minute delay in dropping off your box to a collection point, may mean a two-hour delay in that box being processed.
> if you can interfere with just tallying
First off, that would require a remarkable amount of fraud. Second, that's why there are observers. It doesn't matter if it's 2AM on the Wednesday after election day: If tabulating is happening, you are allowed to observe.
> “Governor Youngkin has been clear: every eligible Virginia citizen who wants to vote can do so by Same Day Registering through Election Day—that’s what our law says,” said Youngkin spokesman Christian Martinez.
> A “final failsafe,” Martinez added, is the ability for residents to use same day registration to vote early or on Election Day.
[0]: https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/02/politics/us-citizens-caught-i...
Which is one of the reasons why the Help America Vote Act[0] was passed two years later.
> The one time a recount actually would have been useful…
I understand things are stressful, but please avoid resorting to hyperbole. There are other times in American history when a recount has changed the result. For example, see the 2004 Washington State gubernatorial election[2].
> Not only that, with the full-on cult of Trump and the perceived victimhood of his supporters, I'm not really sure to what degree hand counts can always be trusted.
> tl;dr: it's all pretty fucked no matter what.
Be an observer.
Seriously: Be an observer. For example, Orange County (California) has their public notice[2] inviting "the public" (that's you!) to observe election operations. Tomorrow, assuming you're in a place that allows early voting, go to a polling place or vote center (or whatever they're called there) and observe. On (and after) Election Day, go to your county's registrar of voters (or whatever they are called where you are) and observe the tally. Learn how to call out when something is wrong, and learn how to "observe the observers" to call out if they say something is wrong (assuming you think their call is BS.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help_America_Vote_Act
[1]: https://ocvote.gov/sites/default/files/elections/gen2024/Pub...
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Washington_gubernatorial_...
You'll know what to do.
I worked a total of eleven elections, from primarily elections to general elections. I even worked a special recall election where the recall was the only thing on the ballot. I was a volunteer for all of them. I worked as a "Polling Place Inspector", which means I was 'in charge' of a single polling place: I did the setup & teardown, reached out to the other polling place's poll workers to confirm they'll be there, and scheduled breaks etc..
I worked in Orange County, California, which is the county between Los Angeles and San Diego. At the time, it was very right-leaning. It may be so today, but that doesn't matter for this post.
Fun fact: In Orange County, poll workers are the only people who are allowed to question (or "challenge") a person's right to vote. The general public are not. How do I know that? Because it's one of the things I was taught during training. You can see it mentioned in [2], on page 11, under "What Are Observers NOT Allowed To Do?". (In the document, "precinct board" means "the poll workers".)
Now, three situational "pop quizzes" related to the situation from the article. In all three, you are a poll worker. Note that I will refer to procedures that were in place in Orange County, CA, not Fairfax County, VA:
Pop Quiz #1: Someone has arrived to vote, and you do not believe they are eligible to vote, what do you do?
Answer #1: You are challenging a voter. You have the voter vote provisionally. Their ballot would be sealed in the envelope, and their information (plus an explanation of why you're having them vote provisionally) would be on the envelope. The challenged voter would take a receipt with them, giving them a phone number to call, should they want to check up on the status of their vote after the election.
Fun Fact: Challenging a voter without probable cause is a felony in the State of California. How do I know that? Because it's in the instructional handbook that every poll worker gets, when they go through training. You can find Orange County's handbook for the 2018 election at [1].
Pop Quiz #2: Someone at the polling place, who is not a poll worker, is challenging peoples' right to vote. What do you do?
Answer #2: Call the dedicated polling place helpdesk, letting them know about the incident. Depending on the person's behavior, you may ask them to leave, or you may skip directly to calling the police. Your polling place inspector would have already looked up the phone number of the nearest police station, or you could just call 911.
Fun Fact: As part of polling place supplies, I received a county mobile phone. I was specifically instructed to charge it up in advance of election day. They were always chunky Nokia phones, which felt like they could be used as a weapon in an emergency.
Finally, to address your question…
Pop Quiz #3: Another poll worker is challenging a voter, and you believe the challenge is unlawful. What do you do?
Answer #3: If you are not able to dissuade the poll worker into allowing the voter to vote normally, then you have them vote provisionally. The most important thing is to get the voter through the process, and their provisional envelope into the box. Once that is done, you reach out to the polling place helpdesk, letting them know who did what.
Indeed, quoting from the article you linked, "After the [polling place] manager intervened, Burrell-Aldana was allowed to vote." The article does not say, but I expect the polling place manager was already planning on how to communicate the incident back to headquarters, and was keeping an eye on that poll worker.
If you had volunteered for this election, and you happened to be in the situation from this article, then you would have known what to do. :-)
[1]: https://ocvote.gov/fileadmin/user_upload/elections/gen2018/T...
[2]: https://ocvote.gov/election-library/docs/Election%20Observat...
Indeed! I've volunteered at polling places where this is done.
I think one reason polling places have gravitated towards the "use paper ballots for everything, which are then scanned" option is because you're likely going to have something like that anyway, for mail-in ballots. It does bring problems, but you still have the paper to fall back to.
Ref.: https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/hand...
(Side note: I also believe that hand-counting of ballots can be tedious, and humans performing tedious, repetitive tasks are prone to error. See [1].)
[1]: https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/hand...
I think that's a very big leap to make, that the ballots are going to where they're going because of fraud. Hanlon's razor applies.
> ballot box stuffing
Ballot-box stuffing happens when more ballots are cast than there are people who voted. This is difficult to do when voting by mail. Indeed, from the article:
> LeVan Hodson told KING 5, "Even if someone gets a second ballot (or more), whether under their name or someone else’s, we’ll only ever count one ballot per registered voter with their matching signature."
When you receive the envelope, you check the signature against what's on file. You also check records to see if the voter had voted elsewhere (such as at an early-voting location). You can check to see if the voter reported not receiving their mail-in ballot. You can do all these checks before opening the envelope. And once you do open the envelope, it's easy to see if multiple ballots had been included in the envelope.
As I understand that article, BIOS access requires two passwords, and the list only provides one of the two passwords. So, instead of "password list" I would say "partial-password list".
The list also misses "There is 24/7 video camera recording on all election equipment." Of course, you can raise concerns and failure modes about video recordings, but that all brings up the question "Were those recordings compromised?" You should not assume that they were.
Stanford Research Computing (https://srcc.stanford.edu) is a collaboration between University IT and the Vice Provost and Dean of Research. We operate HPC environments for researchers, we do one-time consultations on projects (from software and pipelines, to data management, to physical building design and fit-out), and we provide contract support for individual Labs, Departments, and Schools.
We have three open positions:
• Research Computing Manager: Our current IC:Manager ratio is 7, which is too high, so we're hiring another manager for our group! You'll oversee a number of ICs, help them plan & prioritize their work, make policy decisions, and contribute to Research Computing's strategic direction. You'll also be interacting with groups throughout the University, as a service provider and as a policy maker. More info: http://phxc1b.rfer.us/STANFORD0_zSLT
• Research Storage Consultant: We have lots of storage environments (both on-prem & cloud); it can be confusing to identify which is the best for a given purpose, and how to take full advantage of it. Your job will be to help Students & Faculty figure out what storage is best to use, and get them started on using it! More info: http://phxc1b.rfer.us/STANFORDWvaSLS
• Data Center Engineer: We hired a Data Center Engineer nt too long ago, You'll be based full-time at our primary research data center in Menlo Park (on the SLAC campus). This position includes everything from racking and cabling to maintaining and troubleshooting power distribution (415v Starline bus), UPS (spinning-mass), generators, VFDs, air handlers, chillers, PLCs, and the like. More info: http://phxc1b.rfer.us/STANFORDhRmSLU
(For those curious: Yes, we did hire a Data Center Engineer recently, but this posting is different: One of our existing Engineers was prompted to Data Center Director, causing a new Engineer position to open up!)
The data center position is onsite; the others are hybrid. If you don't already live in the Bay Area, we provide a relocation incentive. Depending on where you live, we provide free transit passes. Unfortunately, if you don't commute, you will have to pay for parking for the days you're on-site (except at the data center). There is some on-call around the holidays. We get a 403(b) match, good healthcare, and 30+ days off per year (holidays + vacation). All Benefits are all publicly documented at https://cardinalatwork.stanford.edu/benefits-rewards. If you have questions, feel free to reply here or email me (the info is in my profile)!