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kamkazemoose

260 karma · joined November 17, 2012

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kamkazemoose··on Netflix never used its $1M algorithm (2012)
You can think, how much would their marketing team have to spend to get the same results that the algorithm contract gave. I'm not a marketing expert, but I'm sure they have metrics like consumer sentiment, name recognition, number of users visiting the site, google search trends, etc. There could also be benefits in recruitment, and that can be estimated based on how much you'd have to pay an external recruiter to bring in candidates the applied, or other things like that.

It was in the news a lot, and was discussed on a lot of tech sites. Plus it gets people talking about their recomendation algorithm, and makes people thing Netflix subscription is more valuable becasue it recommends good shows. It wouldn't be cheap to get the amount of media that they got through more traditional marketing.

kamkazemoose··on Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce
My company is actually hiring senior/staff Clojure devs.

https://grnh.se/08cec3bb4us - Senior Engineer https://grnh.se/5c028b554us - Staff Engineer

You should take a look and let me know if you have any questions.

kamkazemoose··on Governor vows criminal prosecution of reporter who found flaw in state website
Say you are invited to your friends apartment in an apartment building, but none of the apartments have locks. So you decide to open up some other random apartments and look through their things, who is responsible?
kamkazemoose··on Apple blocked the FlickType Watch keyboard then announced a clone of it
One solution would be to force Apple to break up into seperate firms. So you have Apple App Store, and Apple app maker as seperate firms, and Apple app maker is required to be treated as any other app developer in the app store.
kamkazemoose··on Vaccination Should Be Compulsory
You could turn the argument around. Seat belts pretty much only protect the person wearing the seat belt, while vaccines protect the population in general by stopping the spread of Covid.

So people should have the freedom to harm themselves by not wearing a seat belt but vaccines should be mandatory to stop covid from spreading everywhere.

kamkazemoose··on GitHub Copilot is ‘unacceptable and unjust,’ says Free Software Foundation
> This is exactly what I was thinking about. If Copilot is fair use, it means that all proprietary source code, as long as they're publicly available to read, will be free to use as training materials for a hypothetical free and open source machine learning project, which I think would be a good thing. An example is a proprietary program released under a restrictive "source available" license, you can read it but not reuse it under any circumstances (and I believe these projects are already included in Copilot's training data). This is why I said fair use can be a good thing and a ruling to reduce the scope of fair use can potentially be used by proprietary software vendors against the FOSS community.

FWIW this seems to be the current interpretation of copyright laws when it comes to machine learning, at least in the US. The only questions I've really seen about the legality of Copilot is about it reproducing code and whether that reproduction is fair use or not. But few are arguing that training the model itself on any available source is violating fair use.

kamkazemoose··on SpaceX installed 29 Raptor engines on a Super Heavy rocket last night
In a little over 100 years we've gone from the first powered flight to flying a helicopter on Mars. We might not be mining asteroids in 5 years but it isn't unreasonable to think it could happen in our lifetimes.
kamkazemoose··on The rise of never-ending job interviews
Part of the problem is that Manton the interview panel do feel like they're wasting their time. It is valuable to the company but for the engineers, they want to get back to coding or whatever else they are working on.

It isn't fair to the person applying because they didn't pick the people on the panel, but if the one doing the interviewing doesn't hide their feeling it's obviously not great.

kamkazemoose··on Mapbox Employees Have Unionized
In a union, the leadership is negotiating for you. So the person in charge of your employment that the union is replacing is you, not management. They could negotiate things like more PTO, better conditions, or a larger bonus instead of a straight base pay. But as the employee you might want straight up higher base pay. Or maybe the union gets a promotion process that values seniority more than performance. It might save you from a political process or having to play the game, but can hurt other people.

The idea is that unions help the collective and will get a generally better deal then you might get on your own. But again the isn't going to get everything from management and they have to decide what to prioritize. So if your priorities are different than union leadership your wishes might get left behind to help more other people.

kamkazemoose··on What’s it like hauling nuclear weapons across the country?
I think there's one other possibility. It could be stolen to study and reverse engineer. You're probably looking at state actors instead of random third parties, but enemies of Russia would probably want to see the level of technology they're using. And states trying to develop their own nukes might be able to learn a lot from having a first hand example.
kamkazemoose··on Amazon has acquired Facebook's satellite internet team
The starlink satellites are traveling a little bit faster than your average car though. They complete an orbit about every 100 minutes. So your 8000 satalites are covering much more ground than the same 8000 cars.
kamkazemoose··on A Look at Overnight Stays at US National Parks
I'm not sure if I totally understand your point. But from what I'm seeing on the graph, the temperature coloring is only present when the average temperature is above 70 (in red) or below 50 (in white). So there is no coloring around the edges in spring/fall for many graphs because the average temperature is likely between 50-70.
kamkazemoose··on USMS Asset Forfeiture Bitcoin Sale
> These bitcoins were forfeited in various federal criminal, civil and administrative cases, including:

>United States v. Carl Mark Force IV, Northern District of California (Case No. 15-0319)

>United States v. Sean Roberson, District of New Jersey (Case No. 14-565);

>United States v. Ross William Ulbricht, Southern District of New York (Case No. 13-06919)

>Department of Justice, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Case No. 776075-14-0028

>United States v. 178.95842915 Bitcoins stored in MultiBit wallet XXXX4XDAd, Eastern District of Washington (Case No. 16-07009)

>Department of Treasury, Internal Revenue Service, Case No. 2015 9400 500008 01 001

>United States v. Approximately $200,979.15 Seized from Tradehill, Inc., held in the name of Megan Thompson, et. al. Eastern District of California, Case No. 14-02950

>United States v. $309,305.24 in U.S. Currency, etc., District of Maryland, Case No. 15-03474

>Department of Homeland Security, United States Customs and Border Protection, Case Nos. 2015330700002501, 2015330700002701, 2014330700023701, and 2014330700027201

So some are from him along with a mix of several other cases.

kamkazemoose··on Plastc Card
On the bottom of their wallet tab [1], they list several participating banks, so it sounds like they might have those partnerships you mention.

[1] https://www.plastc.com/wallet

kamkazemoose··on It’s Easy to Hack Hospital Equipment
It could be done as a murder for hire, or as a terrorist event. It's possible some hackers would do it 'for the lulz' or maybe they just want to test out a hack and accidentally go to far, though these are more unlikely. And there is also extortion, maybe you find everyone that has a vulnerable pacemaker, and demand they pay you or else you stop their heart. Criminals are clever, if they find a way to attack people they can often exploit it.
kamkazemoose··on A Motion-Sensing Keyboard
you could do some other gesture, like raising two fingers? We are trained to tap now, but people can figure out different gestures like pinch to zoom so I don't think the clicking has to necessarily be a tapping gesture
kamkazemoose··on Virtual Reality is going to change the world
I'd be surprised if the Sony news had anything to do with this. These sorts of acquisitions don't happen overnight, they've likely been talking for months, doing due diligence and other research into the deal.
kamkazemoose··on Facebook acquires Oculus VR
> But this is just the start. After games, we're going to make Oculus a platform for many other experiences. Imagine enjoying a court side seat at a game, studying in a classroom of students and teachers all over the world or consulting with a doctor face-to-face -- just by putting on goggles in your home.

> This is really a new communication platform. By feeling truly present, you can share unbounded spaces and experiences with the people in your life. Imagine sharing not just moments with your friends online, but entire experiences and adventures.

This seems like the money quote. Basically they want to have everyone share virtual experiences together within your network.

kamkazemoose··on Facebook acquires Oculus VR
It seems like it would be an odd play against glass, because of the differences of VR vs AR. With VR you're in another world, and that doesn't seem like facebook's goal, which would be to add facebook information with the rest of the world. So it seems unlikely unless they're planning to completely overhaul the project and make it AR instead of VR.
kamkazemoose··on Emails From Schmidt And Sergey Brin Show Agreements Not To Hire Apple Workers
He makes both of those points, but I think the point of hours argument is that the behavior we're seeing is tech companies agreeing not to cold call, and no other form of not hiring or price fixing, and that as long as this is limited to stopping cold calls it isn't illegal.
kamkazemoose··on Technical Details Behind a 400Gbps NTP Amplification DDoS Attack
I'm not sure at what layer it would be visible that the packets are ntp monlists? The basic answer is probably that the providers just aren't filtering at that level, like if you need layer7 visibility, they don't want to do dpi on any packet that crosses their boundary. Even if you don't need L7 visibility, it would still require another element of processing and filtering that they might not be interested in doing since it will almost always result in some extra cost to run.
kamkazemoose··on More Bitcoin Regulation Is Inevitable
I imagine most regulation to bitcoin would be more vague and instead be written to apply to all cryptocurrencies.

People aren't calling for the regulation of other cryptocurrencies mostly because they don't have the same kind of usage and economy surrounding them that bitcoin has. If people start trading coinye in the same way and it reaches similar volumes as bitcoin, you'll see the same sort of talk. It just makes more sense to treat cryptocurrencies the same under the law, unless there is something about a particular one that made it most different than all the other current variations.

kamkazemoose··on Your Phone Number Is Going To Get A Reputation Score
If you receive a customer service call from a number with a higher klout score, you could send them to a 'VIP' agent that's been authorized to give them better deals or whatever. If you give better support to a few users who have a lot of twitter followers then that person is a lot more likely to tweet about a good experience and help the companies reputation. Otherwise if they have a bad experience they have enough followers that if they tweet about a bad experience, there's obvious harm there.

It's the same reason someone will have a bad experience and e-mail a company but get ignored. Once The Consumerist runs an article about it though, it gets fixed.

kamkazemoose··on Uber CEO responds to concern that Uber's SF service is decreasing in quality
You could have the app send you a picture of the person who should be picking you up. The user could then report if someone else comes to pick them up. The only problem I'd see is that it might make riders uncomfortable if it is someone different, they might not want to cause a scene or any sort of confrontation, and they want to get to their destination, but they also wouldn't want to ride with someone unlicensed.

So I'm not sure exactly how you'd get around that problem. Maybe you give people who report that they have a different driver say $20 credit, and the ride is free or something. Of course then you'll have people trying to cheat the system.

kamkazemoose··on BlackBerry Met With Facebook Last Week to Discuss Potential Bid
Maybe they have some other debts to balance out their assets?
kamkazemoose··on Four UK men arrested over Silk Road links
In that case an LEO would probably go undercover, spend time building credibility in the scene and eventually get someone to sign their key to be a part of the network as well. LEOs have infiltrated many groups and I don't see anything special that would prevent them from doing it again this time.
kamkazemoose··on Ubuntu Edge funding level over time
They stated originally that the $600 was only going to be available for the first 24hours of the campaign.
kamkazemoose··on Beyond Helium
They mention that at the end of the article

>One other limitation will be creating aerographites that can support themselves with the air inside the material “pumped" out of it (to truly achieve being lighter than air). In practice, getting a real blimp to work will probably be made out of a future version of aerographite or another aerogel that is super strong and light, one that could self support itself without collapsing in on itself if the air between the meshes of nanotubes is pumped out. A partial vacuum will have to be created inside the aerographite structure without crushing the aerogel. This may be the fatal flaw to the idea or at least the next problem to solve (i.e. given that the material is superhydrophobic, maybe a thin shell of water could be put around the aerogel or some similar exotic solution).

kamkazemoose··on A London pub now accepts payment in Bitcoin
I also wonder how much of it is novelty/PR. This move gets a lot more people talking about them, and you'll get some people who just want to spend bitcoins in meatspace.
kamkazemoose··on Google set to acquire Waze for $1.3B
Maybe Waze has certain patents that Google thinks are worth a lot?
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