Cities are allowed to leverage civil penalties which can also withold your drivers license. You'll get penalties from the city as well as the state.
9,624 karma · joined August 21, 2020
A lot of constituents in the south, from my experience, already use CBD, THC, or both. I'm not sure what actually holds the state back from legalizing it given that so many folks already support it.
Some other usecases:
- prevents hero worship in software (eg: I'm an x-Googler, believe me)
- might put a dent in bigotry based identity issues
Advertisers and platform monetization are definitely part of the problem, don't get me wrong. I just signalled that I'm willing to iterate on that problem. When my mother gets a call on her cellphone by a recruiter looking for me when we share zero relationships online it signals a pretty desperate issue in how data is being used, correlated, and exploited. The public side of these APIs is just an exacerbation of those issues, because they're the same APIs an advertiser uses.
You painting me as someone who is trying to avoid repercussions is interesting. Do you normally assume the worst about people when you debate them?
Prior to recent times there was a Freenode head of staff that was elected named Christel. Powers seem to have been delegated from her as she had control of the legal entity.
In 2013 Freenode was sold to PIA for undisclosed sums and terms. Supposedly this was to launch a conference called Freenode Live (why Freenode wanted a conference is beyond me.) It was stipulated that Freenode staff would be able to maintain strategic control of the network. At some point Mr Lee of PIA requested that the domains be transferred back under his control and some ads for shells.com popped up on the Freenode website. Between there and now is a mystery.
Freenode isn't really just FOSS, believe it or not. It's a lot of hobbyists, tinkerers, etc... The vast majority of users you meet on there aren't data scientists or software engineers. The culture is this very independent, almost Libertarian-esque ideals. My take is that Mr Lee came in and reminded them the buck stops with him and no longer honored Freenodes more democratic culture of voting.
It's worth explaining that Freenode got in this state because the original owner died and his brother tried to monetize the network. There's precedent in the idea that people (staff and users) do not want a for-profit network. It's viewed as a conflict of interest and a consolidation of power where power is "meant" to be distributed and already quite scarce. These users will often avoid Slack and object to open communities being run on proprietary for-profit platforms. The reason people don't get it, in my view, is a difference in cultural values that are fairly unique to certain areas of FOSS and Freenode, LiberaChat, and OFTC.
Basically you had an official system of authority enforced by legal means and one implicit system of authority which users were familiar with that ran the day to day operations of the network. Those came to a head, and the network operators put the problem on the users because they didn't know how to deal with it.
The problem is that an engineer, doing the same job, in a state that is wage suppressed can only retire in a state with even lower cost of living. When you have engineers in coastal areas on average making ridiculous sums over their counterparts in other states when nearly all the products are subject to the same taxes and distribution pipeline that begins to sound a bit problematic, don't ya think?
The problem largely lies in reward structure: coastal engineers tend to get a lot more in terms of RSUs but will get similar cash compensation. When you add inflation and home prices (which are savings vehicles) on top it compounds the problem into what we have today. As I said, some is on the state, some is on companies.
The net outcome is that an engineer retires from SF, can move anywhere they want but picks Texas. They buy a house in cash, most likely beating out native Texans and drive the cost of goods up while salaries remain low. They live like kings while the people who actually built up a community and contributed taxes to the state get priced out. This whole paragraph is just paraphrasing state-to-state income inequality though, feel free to read up on it's effects.
> Why would companies artificially push engineers to the areas where they command these disproportionately large salaries?
Because now that this paradigm exists it's rife for exploitation. Companies will pay engineers in Texas without giving them the same RSUs as their coastal counterparts. That's a savings. So sure, they pay people in SF more but they pay everyone else substantially less (beyond cost of living differences). Therein lies the rub.
Veteran here. Yes it is. It's identity politics, especially in hyper liberal areas. I'll express some thoughts I have around this.
Some veterans, especially campaign veterans which are a protected class, will struggle when being introduced to the workforce. When I got out, shortly after a year long stint in Afghanistan and subsequently more combat training, I was given a class called SEPS & TAPS. TAPS is an acronym here, but let me remind you foremost of what "taps" is.
Taps is the bugle song played every night at base. When taps plays you are under military order to stand at attention and salute the flag. Taps is a reminder of those who lost or sacrificed their lives that day. It is a daily reminder that your choices are often dangerous ones much less ones that don't just involve your life. For that minute, you are relegated to appreciating their sacrifices in utter silence.
In my course (SEPS & TAPS) the first power point we received covered a page filled with telemetry data about Marines you didn't want to be. The drunk, the drug user, the domestic abuser, the college drop out, the person with anger problems. I wish I had screenshot this slide because words cannot capture how uphill that battle would seem. When I finally did get out, I realized why all these shocking statistics make sense. I've heard people talk about "hero worship" and I'm from the South where veterans have a decent reputation. Where Southerners probably do give a lot of credence to the military because most of the military is generational servitude from the Midwest and the South, likely due to a perceived lack of opportunity in many areas. Hero worship is little more than lip service to veterans though. The real substantive outcome of me getting out was watching all my friends lives reset, facing a lack of opportunity (again), and more bills, pressures, and externalities like school all while trying to return to being a normal human being. It was immense and for a time my life would fall apart in one way while bounding forward in another. It felt like I was literally Flubber, and it was killing me.
If you've followed my posts on this forum life is okay now. But I can see why veterans may need a group at work where they can be veterans or talk about issues. What I don't agree with is if these groups tried to influence the work force. I wouldn't agree with them sending out lecturing messages about veterans or memorial day, even if they're right. I wouldn't be comfortable with them making statements for the veteran community. I wouldn't be okay if they set hiring parameters on top of what is required by law.
I also understand there are people who hate veterans. Some people at work I actively ensure that I don't bring up being a veteran, that I'm particularly good at marksmanship, that I've been to Afghanistan (or any sub-experiences thereafter). No amount of advocacy that a veterans group can do will change that person's mind. I cannot overcome people who equate military service with fascism, nationalism, or even the train of thought that leads people to believe all or most veterans are conservative. I can't fix a broken mind like that; only personal experiences that challenge the thinkers opinions will, which means likely, one day, some veteran will be on the other end of that. Maybe someone like me who can listen to a dissenting view that feels dehumanizing, but maybe not. That's just the way personal growth goes; thinkers don't really plan on who or how their minds will eventually be changed. I accept that reality as a fact of life. I embrace it to some degree and actively work to avoid it in another.
So, is that group political? Yes, but there are things they can choose to do that are decidedly more political and that is where you'll get disagreeance from me as a member of said group.
As I've grown older I've tried to resist the urge to marry myself to these stark beliefs. Following this thread there's a lot of good information on what those competing perspectives actually entail. In my current area, which is mostly liberals of varying degrees, unions are almost universally championed. If you ask about the downsides or present an example of how they can be bad you can face people who think you're some kind of oppressor, or that you must be conservative. Where I'm from, which is mostly various flavors of conservativism the mention of unions causes similar outrage but in the other direction. If you mention how a union could be useful or various implementations that are non-stock (such as unions that don't try to practice authoritarian control over pay and just maintain representation for working conditions) then you'll be demonized for being a socialist. I used to think, "these are bad people of varying variety" but I've come to understand they're just people without experience in each other's geography and problem set, so it becomes easier to speak dogmatically.
Sometimes a union can be good, sometimes it can be bad, sometimes it's a bit of both pending nuance and implementation details, but at the end of the day this is a truth: the only people whose opinion matters is the people whose lives it will directly affect.
This is where you and I diverge. I have worked with a lot of people that I think have had bad opinions. People that were leftists and people that were conservative. While I kept in my mind that this person had bad opinions I was usually able to get a beer with them, it didn't mean we'd be fast friends though. Would I draw a line? Probably, notice I left out far-right; because I'm probably not getting a beer with a racist or someone who believes in ethnostates.
I will get a beer with someone who is a devout socialist or communist whose ideals will inevitably end in a lot of bloodshed when property is ultimately seized. I'll still get a beer with someone who has a nuanced opinion on pronouns. Just because I disagree with them does not guarantee me alienating them, because I might be the opinion they need to hear for their views to be swayed, or more practically their opinions in isolation can only become worse.
What bothers me is this idea of enforcing camped friend-groups or work circles. From everything I've learned about Russia, this is exactly what they want you to be believing. Their attacks on US democracy weren't just trying to embarrass the right by giving their extremists power and influence; they were far more foundational. They invested in promoting discourse on the far right and the far left that made discourse seem impossible to a nation that by its own distinction was very friendly to a wide range of views. They attacked the very foundation of American culture.
My email is listed on my profile if you'd like to collaborate.
Edit: Abhishek has agreed to share the source for modification.
The answer, in my experience as a kid, is yes -- schools actively block all kinds of programming activity on school resources.
The reasons are pretty simple:
- Schools don't pay the best admins and much of their advanced capabilities come from vendors.
- The vendors often don't produce "secure" software like you and I (read: in the industry) would expect. A lot of this software has obvious holes. I have fond memories of exploiting the Novell boot process to mount Linux or implementing my own pass through proxy on my home server so I could browse the "real" web while at school. Another example, one of my best friends/colleagues/fellow students/future boss installed a Halo server on our 3D rendering server and you can bet I could join a game at any time from anywhere on the network.
- Schools don't implement zero trust (zero trust didn't even really exist back then, but I know this to be true to this day) and much of this is derivative of that simple fact.
- Software vendors are often limited by the OS. A lot of Novell's exploits were because of opaque API's provided by Windows that they didn't fully understand or that changed. This encourages further locking down of the environment.
So the problem is a lot more nuanced than Amjad and Paul make it seem, I suspect they know that are using this as a conversation starter. If that is indeed the case, I would prefer they just start this conversation rather than this ridiculous round about method that takes advantage of outrage and sensationalism.
Schools need help more than they need vague criticism.
My participation in the start up ecosystem has been strictly as an engineer and advisor. What I've observed of founders and early leaders over the years is that they don't live in reality and this often by necessity. What people see from the outside is these strong, pervasive, bulletproof personalities that are leading, changing our way of thinking, and changing our way of life - often in a meta-sense very rapidly. These people, like anyone else, doubt themselves and are quite often doubted by a majority of people they come into contact with. Ordinary people in the face of such doubt and opposition would likely fold to this feedback; thinking something along the lines of, "The majority of people tell me this is a fruitless idea" and move on with some momentary pause. Start up founders can't afford such a luxury. Peoples money, jobs, and futures lie in their hands and their continued interest of chasing this dream. Something has to fuel that mentality and when I read a piece like this it speaks to me in the way I observed what those founders had to tell themselves every day just to get through the day.
One of my mentors, who also came from the startup ecosystem, recently reflected, "Great engineers deal in reality because reality can be defined, measured, and acted upon but perception matters too. That is the struggle of every great engineer." Amjad isn't wrong, he's just a founder, and he deals in reality but also has to dabble in perception.
There are extremists, such as the woke-class of progressives, that probably will not change their minds about anything. The same probably goes for the alt-right and QAnon class of Trumpists. The only way for these kinds of people to change their minds is some event or accountability to be had.
The main body of California residents are pretty cool, free loving, hard working, and probably have a lot more in common with you than they'd let on if they knew you were different. If you talk about ideas without using labels (Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Liberal, Conservative) then their ears and minds are usually open. I observed the same thing with devout conservatives in Texas.
People adapt to the culture that surrounds them and unfortunately the culture in hyper liberal cities has hit rock bottom.
All that to say, nvidia doesn't really do the work to play ball in Linux with Wayland. There is no way to improve these drivers, you can only hope Nouveau can solve your woes.
If you don't like Debian, pick an open source distribution that is not backed by a business and begin sending the money you would've dumped into subscriptions as donations.
I end up focusing on the left because right now, no one is paying attention to the fact that there's a back and forth war going on here between extremists that is cultural in nature. I happen to be closer to the left in politics, though I don't ascribe to the culture. Who fights this war online is the idealogues, who fights it in the streets are normal people. It's disconcerting.
It's tiring to see, hence I even bother to say anything about it. That said, my energy is just about up. If this country wants to tear each other apart, have at it.
This is probably situational. I moved from the South to the West Coast and I've observed the behavior you described as well as people who exhibit a total breakdown of rationale as soon as they hear the word military. I'd say both perspectives are worthless.
> Decreasing military spending in US politics basically gets you labeled as a traitor and despite people voting for anti-war candidates, they don't vote for 'reduce military spending candidates'.
and
> Saying anything against the military is often interpreted as a direct attack on veterans and soldiers. Giving out metal before ever sports match is not exactly normal in most of the Western world.
Not quite. I served from 2009-2013 which means I got to witness "The Tea Party" and it's affect on the military by cutting DOD funding. [1] These efforts garnered some good support of Democrats as well, it was an unholy alliance of sorts. [2] Did they cut a couple planes, tanks, trucks, and programs? Maybe, but they also closed the Single Marine Program and our commissary on base. I was going to the range less and sitting in the field more. You likely didn't hear about this stuff in the news because the nature of a base is a bubble. I think taking a good honest looks at spending and decision making are worthwhile endeavors that should be reviewed constantly but the outcomes cannot be like when I served and all too often they are.
Spending decisions also play personally into the lives of troops, so I think it affects how they view someone who wants to take that money away. If you go down to Camp Lejeune to some random barracks room and ask to see their gear you might find some units with new gear but for the most part it's heavily worn, heavily used, heavily abused equipment that we try to replace before deployment. My plate carrier had some nasty fraying on my deployment that made it difficult to attach MOLLE gear but others have had to deal with. [4]
Even policy decisions play important factors in how veterans end up viewing people, motives, and parties. The notable rules of engagement change during Obama's presidency remains in a lot of peoples minds and was sparsely covered by news outlets who preferred putting lists of the dead on TV [3].
I think Republicans often are in a position where they're trying to do something beneficial for military members or veterans but it's often for show. If you want a good example of what "for show" looks like with veterans then simply examine how Veteran's Choice has evolved over the times. The problem was clear and yet it took us three different presidents to get it where it needed to be. What's too much is when they begin to use us as a political pawn and create some adoration culture out of it. I was personally shocked when I saw a veteran returning home used in a speech more than once and I think this sends a really terrible message to the American people. We can't descend into the 70's when liberals thought it okay to spit on military members but we can't be walking around thinking they're gods either. The latter I don't think is really happening outside of small circles but it's good to watch out for.
Democrats often don't realize their policy and fiscal positions with the military have impacts on troops which are seen and remembered when those troops are veterans. Having some empathy and understanding for these scenarios could totally be aided by teaching military history but I also think it necessitates some change in the anti-war constituent rhetoric. Learning to talk about and criticizing a war without insulting the people who fought in it or had their lives changed by it is a tricky business, but it's one you subscribe to when you get into the business of critiquing war. This rhetoric probably deserves it's own thread but it's one that I think can't be had online.
All the same, as a veteran and someone who falls on both sides of this debate, I understand your frustration.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/fe... [2] https://www.pri.org/stories/2011-08-05/trimming-defense-budg... [3] https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/nov/26/rules-of-en... [4] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/in-afghani...
Oh sure it is. I didn't graduate, I dropped out during a recession, did some time in the military, came back out and taught myself the necessities to code full time. It took years, but along the way through interviews and cohorts I've learned a lot about academics in tech.
Academics love to talk about their universities When people give talks in tech they often share a bit about themselves. I like to talk about things in tech that interest me, what I do in my spare time, and where I'm from. Academics always spend a significant amount of time, and will even visually timeline, where they went to school, how long it took them, what clubs they were in, etc. These are the same kind of people who put x-Googler, x-Lyft, x-Uber all over their Twitter bio. To this degree the author is right, this information is junk but also comes up when I interview people who think that'll appeal to me. Spoiler alert, it doesn't and talking to me about your school inside or outside of an interview is a total waste of my and others time.
What you call an unusual resume is a great rhetorical note. What's unusual to you? I've only heard that term when I interviewed at Facebook for an SRE position. They want people who can write OS level code and be a systems engineer. They, somehow, identified that academics don't usually perform very well in these jobs and look for "unusual resumes". I'd love to know the etymology of this rhetoric but I'd bet it's some bullshit. There are no unusual resumes in tech, just ones you don't understand, and that says more about you than it does me that you think it's unusual.
"Hot startup" is another red flag. I worked at a lot of startups because tech firms either low balled me or would give me algorithm problems that I was still learning that I'd go on to, again, never use. The "hot startup" is a myth. All startups are hot because the friction of flying through the atmosphere while trying attach rockets to this dismally close to the ground vehicle will always be high. If you don't see your startup as hot, then it's not a start up, it's just a small business. To me, work is work. I want to know about the salt of what you did there.
The fact that we keep referring to tech interviews with this language like "grinder" is a giant red flag. I don't think I need to spend extra energy expounding on this, it sucks. I'd love to see a day where instead of allowing academics to gatekeep we instead put the onus on them to teach within these companies rather than exclude. The people who advocate these high standards are rarely helping others get to them, it's a game of self-interest.
The fact that you can couple "low status" and "no college degree" is the final nail in the coffin of this little thread. I'm not low status for not having a degree or cutting my teeth at more traditional businesses. I did so because people like you spent time developing tests so that all that learning I had to do took place in my off time or OJT at those traditional businesses. You did that, and your "low status" comment explains exactly why.
A couple of my own stories, just from my current job:
- I was trying to help some colleagues solve a statistical problem when I was an SRE. It could more or less be solved by looking at the data in the form of a distribution. When I showed people how this worked on a graph and how we could implement it in code I was repeatedly asked where I got my masters. When I reminded them I'm a dropout they almost didn't believe me. They thought it was a joke. It was a really weird thing for me to see people laugh at.
- I used to work on Kubernetes and I went to a conference that was centric to such. I met up with some colleagues. They all drink, I don't, and they did what drinking dudes do. They got honest. It was mostly harmless stuff, but at some point people were talking about college. I clearly didn't have anything to share. College wasn't really a great time for me plus there's the obvious part that I didn't even finish. I informed them when someone probed me, likely trying to include me in the conversation, and when they found out they responded, "You don't look like a drop out". I laughed, but just examine the audacity of such a statement.
These people aren't bad, but recognizing the misalignment here will absolutely let us turn big corners in tech.
This probably comes off kinda salty, but I'm not. I made it, I work in big tech and I have lots of fun. I spend my time teaching people and trying to empower engineers as they come up the ranks. Some day I imagine big tech won't want me anymore and I'll retire. Hopefully then I can spend my days working in open source or small device work. Maybe it'll just be wood working though ;)
This platform is in constant competition with it's own capitalistic and identity-less values. I say they're identity-less because let's face it, it's almost guaranteed that Google/Facebook/Twitter/Reddit don't have enough people that are like you and your community on every team that touches stuff that you and your community interact with to give a proper shit about your values or how you will perceive something. I might even take this a step further and say they've developed their own culture for the internet and you either adhere or die. You can swap in and extrapolate any group that has some measure of depth to it in that statement and it'll still be true. That's why, in my mind, there's this desperate race for diversity and to reflect all things at all times. Don't get me wrong, I love to have a diverse workforce, and in my experience the teams that weren't all predominately one characteristic have always been more productive and fun. I'm just extrapolating why these things suddenly matter, almost ten fold, to companies that run platforms.
I've seen people here suggest that developing more tools will help suppression, faulty-auto-moderation, deplatforming, etc... but let's be real. It won't. Maybe you'll more accurately identify people who are violating your terms of service and can vomit up some reason as to why with explainable AI. I don't really view that as a win though and here's why:
Americans ran from King Henry because he was willing to chop peoples heads off and imprison them without having to answer to the public that he ruled over. We created The Boston Tea Party because of a relatively small tax. Some people laugh at that event, but it goes to show you that when you have the haunting memory of a tyrant in your past, the latest cut feels like open heart surgery without anesthesia.
In the end Americans decided that if even one person were sent to the guillotine without a fair trial it was one too many. Our laws have reflected that since, but we have also stripped many of those ideals away in favor of racist ones or convenient ones (at times). Now Mega Corporations are your new King Henry, and all the smaller corporations who buy services from them are their Dukes. They'll either do as the King says or as the saying goes, "Off with their heads!".