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p0pculton For Lower-Income Students, Big Tech Internships Can Be Hard to Get

https://phys.org/news/2020-09-bus-drivers-white-customers-fr...

You can pretend all you want that white people dont receive preferential treatment, but neither research nor the historical record show evidence for that belief.

p0pculton AGI Doom and the Drake Equation

I am not super worried that a superhuman AGI will yeet humanity with that intent. I am more worried that a much more naive AI will do something "accidental" like hallucinate incoming nukes from, say, a flock of birds, and send a retaliatory strike

p0pculton For Lower-Income Students, Big Tech Internships Can Be Hard to Get

One of my (dual ivy) co-workers (dual state school) always liked to point out that we both ended up at the same place, doing the same job, to playfully troll me. Your point is spot on.

p0pculton For Lower-Income Students, Big Tech Internships Can Be Hard to Get

Yale, Columbia, Community College and a State school here. I've also taught college courses at an extension school of a public university.

The population differences are real. They're like normal distributions where the mean of one is perhaps a whole SD higher than the mean of another. That said, if you pick the top 5 students at the State School and the top 5 at the Ivy, the students themselves are roughly equivalent, but the ones from the Ivy had a lot more access to higher quality facilities, funding, opportunity, faculty, and peers.

p0pculton For Lower-Income Students, Big Tech Internships Can Be Hard to Get

> I am still considered privileged and white. When you have no circle, no network, no money, when no one in your family went to college, everything is more difficult.

Now imagine being a Black person with no circle, no network, no money, no one in your family having gone to college. Everything identical for your skin color. Statistically, the hypothetical black person is likely to have worse outcomes than the hypothetical equivalent white person. This is what white privilege is.

It is possible that you benefitted from white privilege, despite all of the hardships you faced.

You can pretend all day that white privilege doesn't exist, but that's just not what is observed.

p0pculton Read “Gravity’s Rainbow” fifty years later

Correct

p0pculton Show HN: Banterai – Talk to any AI celebrity, human-like voice conversations

You can't be a huge hater if you are profiting off of him, or building a business on him.

p0pculton Show HN: Banterai – Talk to any AI celebrity, human-like voice conversations

Donald Trump, though I don't like him, gets a pass as he was in fact the president. It would be weird to have Obama there but not Trump.

p0pculton Read “Gravity’s Rainbow” fifty years later

It's verbal jazz, or literary expressionism. Riffs and tone poems. Look for recurring themes and symbols.

We aren't taught (in American schools, anyway) a lot of how to ingest these genres of media. Hence the refrains (about abstract art, e.g.) "my 5 year old could paint that!"

p0pculton Where have all the laid-off tech workers gone?

Go to the local gym and work on actual social networking. Peloton is just goofy.

p0pculton San Jose police union executive director charged with smuggling fentanyl into US

Yes, I outlined several specific proposals for ways to curb police overreach and power. Perhaps you missed them among all of your caterwauling?

p0pculton San Jose police union executive director charged with smuggling fentanyl into US

Do you have a substantial counterpoint, or did my tone offend you?

p0pculton San Jose police union executive director charged with smuggling fentanyl into US

Sir/Madam, the discussion has started. You are still discussing procedural details.

Do you have anything of substance to add?

p0pculton San Jose police union executive director charged with smuggling fentanyl into US

"To what degree should we defund the police? And how else might we limit their power?" are perfectly germane ways forward with a discussion.

I'll start: qualified immunity. Make police carry malpractice insurance. No more civil forfeiture. No military surplus.

It's a negotiation. I start at one extreme (defund), you start at another (status quo). We meet in the middle.

p0pculton A misleading open letter about sci-fi AI dangers ignores the real risks

they're junkies. they come around because they're junkies. doesn't matter if you have good stuff or bad stuff. they're addicted. dying just ends revenue streams.

p0pculton The age of average

They've converged because manufacturers kowtow to the maximum likelihood sale, not because we think they're nice.

Of course, some people think they are nice. And yeah, maybe in a choice discrimination/maxDiff study, I would choose some of these converged styles over other styles, but not necessarily among all potential options.

Then, because manufacturing capacity is limited (whether we are manufacturing cars/spaces/aesthetics/ideas), the choice set that is actually available narrows.

Call it the tyranny of data science.

p0pculton UK sets up fake booter sites to muddy DDoS market

ChatGPT to the rescue

p0pculton Patriot Act on steroids: anti-TikTok Trojan horse for censorship, surveillance

Yeah so i suppose it is the [checks notes] Democrats who are throwing molotovs at church signs over Drag Story Hour.

TIL

https://fox8.com/news/church-to-host-drag-story-hour-vandali...

p0pculton CFTC sues Binance and CEO Changpeng Zhao [pdf]

Ah yes, the evils of [checks notes] empiricism.

p0pculton Launch HN: Play.ht (YC W23) – Generate and clone voices from 20 seconds of audio

actually, this is the way. force their hand.

p0pculton UK: Food inflation rises to 18.2% as it hits highest rate in over 45 years

Not everyone is trying to be an unethical jerkwad.

p0pculton Police sue rapper Afroman for using footage of home raid in his music videos

The police are an arm of the state, and have virtually unlimited power to dispense violence, even in seemingly illegal circumstances. There is no power theoretically greater than state power in the USA; the enforcement arm of the state does not need or deserve a union.

p0pculton California bill would ban sales of Skittles, other ‘toxic’ snacks

The requirements to use them, where they exist, are not.

p0pculton California bill would ban sales of Skittles, other ‘toxic’ snacks

With enough accurate data (and time, as these toxins aren't really fast acting) you could get to causality with the right kind of statistical analysis. Typically, counterfactual analysis and some DAGs.

p0pculton California bill would ban sales of Skittles, other ‘toxic’ snacks

Telling us what not to eat? Orrrrr, more accurately, is the government forbidding the use of toxins in food?

Go ahead, munch on some uranium if you like. That's on you. What's not OK is some company putting it in my food.

p0pculton California bill would ban sales of Skittles, other ‘toxic’ snacks

That's certainly one take. They probably shouldn't be able to regulate seatbelt use, or forbid pollutants.

The free market will take care of it, right?

p0pculton We asked the SEC for reasonable crypto rules for Americans

What do you expect to happen, the local Sheriff gets to enforce whatever "laws" s/he can make up, so long as they aren't explicitly approved activities?

p0pculton We asked the SEC for reasonable crypto rules for Americans

My HOA would argue otherwise. It exists specifically to prevent housing prices from falling due to certain local factors.

p0pculton We asked the SEC for reasonable crypto rules for Americans

No, neither of those groups do things to impact the value of the crypto in a way akin to managing or directing a company.

p0pculton SEC charges crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun and his companies for fraud

I am skeptical that you have any credentials with which to dispute the scientific value of the term "parasocial interaction" legitimately.