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asploder

156 karma · joined May 24, 2011

Tampeña in Vancouver
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asploder··on Florida revokes permits for license plate readers on state highways
I’m sure they’ll clarify this, but wouldn’t that include SunPass toll-by-plate facilities?
asploder··on Florida revokes permits for license plate readers on state highways
Has there been any reporting into whether Florida’s Turnpike Enterprise has adequate data access controls around SunPass? They have ALPRs to operate the toll-by-plate system on bridges and toll roads across the state.

In my view, that’s one of the better reasons to have ALPRs at all, but you do need strict controls to prevent misuse.

asploder··on Htmx 4.0, the first JavaScript library to release exclusively on the Game Boy
This is too funny, how could I not?
asploder··on Choosing a Public DNS Resolver
For my fellow Canadians, CIRA operates public resolvers over IPv4/IPv6/DoH/DoT.

https://www.cira.ca/en/canadian-shield/configure/summary-cir...

asploder··on Green card seekers must leave U.S. to apply, Trump administration says
I first entered Canada with my spouse as a visitor, then got a work permit as a NAFTA intra-company transfer, then became a permanent resident – all without having to return stateside for immigration reasons.
asploder··on Toyota’s hydrogen-powered Mirai has experienced rapid depreciation
I like the false equivalence between reducing air pollution and not doing hate crimes against Jewish people. I haven’t asked them all individually, but I’m pretty sure my Jewish friends all enjoy breathing clean air.
asploder··on Lynn Conway has died
I’m one of those many who owe her a debt of gratitude. May her memory be a blessing.
asploder··on B.C. looks to standardize multiplex designs as latest fix to housing crisis
I couldn't agree more with your enthusiasm, but it's worth noting that Senakw is the name of the development, and the Squamish Nation are the people backing it.

More details on the Senakw development are available from the Squamish Nation's website: https://senakw.com/

asploder··on Why American construction costs are so high (2019)
Thanks for linking these past threads.

Alon has continued their work on this subject with a team of other scholars as the "Transit Costs Project": https://transitcosts.com/about/

asploder··on 70% of surveyed Americans say they can't do their job without internet
I found this terminology confusing for many years, hope this clarification is helpful:

- “Coaxial” refers to the design of the physical cable (Wikipedia has a better explanation than I can offer)

- CATV refers to “Community Antenna Television”, the first cable systems in the USA, which fed the signal from a shared “community antenna” to homes in areas with poor broadcast reception.

- “Cable” is the generic term for pay-TV and ISP services over coaxial cable

asploder··on Is Fry’s Electronics in trouble?
Another positive review for Central Computers. I was sad to see their Pleasanton store close, presumably due to rising rents, but the Sunnyvale store just reopened in a new location, so hopefully they’ll be with us for years to come.
asploder··on Is Fry’s Electronics in trouble?
It would be nice to see them enter (or re-enter) the Northern California market now that Fry’s has imploded. It seems like they have the niche figured out, and apart from Central Computers’ handful of good-but-small locations, they’d have the market to themselves.
asploder··on Making a racist AI without really trying (2017)
I'm glad to have kept reading to the author's conclusion:

> As a hybrid approach, you could produce a large number of inferred sentiments for words, and have a human annotator patiently look through them, making a list of exceptions whose sentiment should be set to 0. The downside of this is that it’s extra work; the upside is that you take the time to actually see what your data is doing. And that’s something that I think should happen more often in machine learning anyway.

Couldn't agree more. Annotating ML data for quality control seems essential both for making it work, and building human trust.

asploder··on Where Are the Brave Military Voices Against the Forever War?
Well, Chelsea Manning just got out of prison for leaking the collateral murder tape.
asploder··on Living on Mars: The Stuff You Never Thought About
What exactly would a Mars colony need to dig tunnels for?
asploder··on HTTP Error Code 418 I'm a Teapot is about to be removed from Node
As a transgender woman who literally changed her name to include “teapot”, in part because of this status code, seeing this issue come up in the same week as the James Damore manifesto is a deep disappointment.

Why is it so hard for some technologists to have a basic level of respect for their colleagues? What motivates them to take actions that demonstrably harm their colleagues, whether it be asserting their biological inferiority or removing their trivial-but-meaningful whimsy?

When I was a closeted teenager, tech was a respite from the pointless cruelty of the rest of the world - or at least it felt that way. What happened?

asploder··on The Full 10-Page Anti-Diversity Screed Circulating Internally at Google
It’s interesting that the author considers the conceptual framework of microaggressions spurious, while describing his negative experiences as a conservative Googler in terms of what a feminist might describe as microaggressions. To further undermine his own point, he asserts that several harms against conservatives have been caused by these microaggressions.

The difference between effective negative feedback and harassment/microaggressions is the former encapsulates a desire for the person receiving the feedback to succeed. Or, in the feminist lexicon, empathy.

asploder··on Suburbs rethink mass transit to court millennials
The various public agencies involved are restarting a project to bring commuter rail service to the area: http://www.greencaltrain.com/2015/02/dumbarton-policy-commit...

The project was originally intended to connect Redwood City Caltrain to Union City BART in the East Bay, but the (partial) funding was redirected to the San Jose BART extension. There was no real chance of the project being built before now anyway; rebuilding rail bridges is pretty expensive.

asploder··on N.S.A. Foils Much Internet Encryption
Humorously, the United States Army lost both Battles of Bull Run to the Confederates.