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pseudo0

3,357 karma · joined September 17, 2020

Infosec, cryptography, dabbles in machine learning.
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pseudo0··on Canada loses its measles-free status, with US on track to follow
Only for stays greater than six months. So an unvaccinated person can fly in from wherever and stay for 180 days legally, or just overstay their visa. That's plenty of time to spread measles.
pseudo0··on Canada loses its measles-free status, with US on track to follow
Mass immigration from countries where measles is endemic? India has over 10,000 cases per year and makes up the plurality of Canada's immigration intake. Canada has a very high two-shot vaccination rate, but there are pockets like the Mennonite communities that are vulnerable.
pseudo0··on US car repossessions surge as more Americans default on auto loans
Those rules are usually intended to prevent people from having a derelict car up on blocks "under repairs" for weeks or months at a time. No one will notice or care if you do a quick oil change.
pseudo0··on Nintendo Alerted After DHS Uses Pokémon to Promote ICE Raids
It's political satire, it's 110% fair use. Nintendo can't bully the US government with an army of lawyers, so they aren't even going to try.
pseudo0··on ICEBlock handled my vulnerability report in the worst possible way
Unfortunately something like 90% of "vulnerability reports" are some guy in India running an automated scanner reporting something that isn't actually a vulnerability and demanding $1,000+. This creates a ton of noise in the system both for legitimate security researchers and the people stuck managing vulnerability disclosure programs.
pseudo0··on U.S. Military Strikes Drug Vessel from Venezuela, Killing 11
The alternative was loading up a Coast Guard ship with guys and sending them out to do an interdiction, seizing 11 men, processing them through the American legal system, incarcerating them for decades, and then eventually deporting them. I bet that costs a couple orders of magnitude more than a drone strike. Arguing cost is not compelling in the slightest.
pseudo0··on Detecting and countering misuse of AI
I had a fingerprint scanner on an old phone and it would fail if there was a tiny amount of dirt or liquid on my finger or on the scanner. It's not big deal to have it fail on a phone, it's just a few seconds of inconvenience putting in a passcode instead. On a firearm, that's a critical safety defect. When it comes to safe storage, there are plenty of better options like a safe, a cable/trigger lock, or for carrying, a retention holster (standard for law enforcement).
pseudo0··on Anduril's product engineering machine
Ukraine keeping the nukes was never going to happen. The US, EU, and Russia were all in agreement on that. Ukraine was in shambles at the time, and no one wanted the risk of nukes getting transferred or sold outside of the existing nuclear club.

Ukraine had physical possession of the nukes, but their ability to actually use them was highly suspect. They might have been able to circumvent the security measures given enough time, but if anything such an attempt would have sparked an international "peacekeeping operation" to make sure the nukes didn't fall into the wrong hands.

https://cisac.fsi.stanford.edu/news/budapest-memorandum-myth...

pseudo0··on Investigation into 4chan and its compliance with duties to protect its users
It's bad optics to build their own Hadrian's Firewall, so they are trying to bully foreign companies into compliance instead. If they want to go after the ad revenue, they would have to try to identify and prosecute the UK-based companies doing business with 4chan, and they will struggle to do that when they have no ability to subpoena 4chan for their business records.
pseudo0··on Netanyahu's cybersecurity official arrested in Vegas in child sex sting
So they let a guy charged with a felony who was an obvious flight risk out on a $10k bond, didn't even take his passport, and he just hopped on his return flight home? What a joke. Israel does not extradite, so he's effectively home-free now.
pseudo0··on Tesla used car prices keep plumetting, dips below average used car
That works if you have the skills, tools, and willingness to do a lot of work yourself. For most people, a major repair on a 10+ year old car (engine, transmission, etc) means sinking more money into a car than its blue book value.
pseudo0··on Brennan Center for Justice Report: The Campaign to Undermine the Next Election
That's a specious argument because the voter ID problem requires basically zero resources. Just mandate voter ID, problem solved. Practically every other first-world country does, including progressive European countries.
pseudo0··on Monitor your security cameras with locally processed AI
Finally a practical use for the Metal Gear Solid cardboard box!
pseudo0··on Australia’s gains in wheat-farm productivity
You can turn it into animal feed.
pseudo0··on $83B Wasted: Showing up at the airport 3 hours before your flight
The TSA has a workforce of 65,000 people, it's an insane waste of collective time and energy. Meanwhile private planes don't even have to go through the TSA, presumably because big donors have actual political pull and the risk is laughably low. Too bad Elon didn't pick the TSA as a DOGE target, it would have been actually useful and wildly popular.
pseudo0··on The Dollar Is Dead
Isn't it a 50% inclusion rate for capital gains in Canada? That works out to a maximum tax rate of 27% in the top tax bracket. And they canceled the proposed increase to a 66% inclusion rate, which is probably smart considering how a ton of rich Canadians already move to Florida.
pseudo0··on Australia’s gains in wheat-farm productivity
A lot of it also gets turned into biofuels or sent to third-world countries as food aid. That could easily be rerouted in a crisis scenario, if domestic food security became an issue.
pseudo0··on Australia’s gains in wheat-farm productivity
A bit ironic to quote that considering how the speech was 55 years ago, and the green revolution is going stronger than ever. If anything the crisis of the next 50 years will be the economic and societal pressures crushing the childbirth rate in Western countries.
pseudo0··on EU kills Android bootloader unlock starting August 1
It's trendy to blame everything on AI, but this looks like good old-fashioned journo clickbait. The site has been around since 2017 and appears to be a Turkish content mill focusing on Chinese phones.
pseudo0··on A.I. researchers are negotiating $250M pay packages
Funding is so plentiful right now that they are really competing with acquihire rates. That amount might sound crazy as straight salary, it comes with multi-year golden handcuffs and avoids having to buy them out for billions if they go start their own endeavor.
pseudo0··on Visa and Mastercard are getting overwhelmed by gamer fury over censorship
Feminist groups also regularly try to get games banned from Steam, typically for sexism or violence against women. Eg.

> Women in Games CEO Dr Marie-Claire Isaaman has called on Valve to “act urgently” and remove the game from Steam, saying the game’s content “is not only vile and dangerous, but also actively promotes the dehumanisation of women and girls.”

https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/women-in-games-call...

pseudo0··on As Women Take over a Male-Dominated Field, the Pay Drops (2016)
> Consider the discrepancies in jobs requiring similar education and responsibility, or similar skills, but divided by gender. The median earnings of information technology managers (mostly men) are 27 percent higher than human resources managers (mostly women), according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

Way to blow up their credibility in one sentence... Those are completely different jobs. An IT manager needs both management skills and sufficient technical knowledge to make decisions about technical matters and effectively supervise technical employees. Those skills are in higher demand, resulting in higher pay for IC staff and managers.

Also, numerous studies have found that the pay differences within job categories are largely accounted for by factors like overtime, lack of flexibility, stressful work environments, long commutes, etc. Society encourages men to pursue higher compensation, so it's hardly surprising that they are willing to put up with more for an extra 5-10%, even if it's to the detriment of their health and work-life balance.

pseudo0··on 4k NASA employees opt to leave agency through deferred resignation program
The source I linked shows the Ireland housing index going from around 33 in 1995 to over 180 in 2025. That's an over 6x real return, which equates to a rate of return of over 6.5% after inflation.

Looking at the CEIC data you linked, which is not inflation-adjusted, it shows household income increasing from just under $20k in 2003 to around $40k in 2023. Plugging that into the CAGR formula you get a 3.5% nominal annual return.

So house prices have increased at over 6.5% annually after inflation, while household incomes have increased at 3.5% before inflation.

And your other link makes it clear that the change in wealth distribution is really just a side effect of the housing bubble:

> The Gini coefficient fell from 0.78 in Q2 2013 to 0.70 as of Q4 2020, before declining sharply since 2021 (Chart 3). This steeper decline in 2021 is driven by increasing net wealth for the Bottom 50%, accounted for by a combination of a decline in this groups mortgage liabilities and, to a lesser extent, an upward appreciation in the value of housing assets. As a consequence, by Q1 2022 the Gini coefficient for Ireland stood at 0.68.

pseudo0··on The UK’s new age-gating rules are easy to bypass
This isn't a uniquely American problem. Age verification is a huge pain to implement and completely tanks user sign up metrics. No tech company will do it unless absolutely forced by a major government, eg. see the recent US state-level laws that require age verification for porn sites. Websites are using IP-geo checks to apply the age verification process to as few users as possible.

Also I'd question putting Roblox in the child-friendly category. Hindenburg Research characterized the platform as a "Pedophile Hellscape". They obviously have a financial angle as a short-seller, but they point out some issues that seem pretty significant, in my opinion.

> We found Roblox to be an X-rated pedophile hellscape, replete with users attempting to groom our avatars, groups openly trading child pornography, widely accessible sex games, violent content and extremely abusive speech—all of which is open to young children and all while Roblox has cut content moderation spending to appease Wall Street and boost earnings.

> We put together a brief video compilation of Roblox moderation failures

https://hindenburgresearch.com/roblox/

pseudo0··on 4k NASA employees opt to leave agency through deferred resignation program
The problem with those stats for Ireland is that the Gini coefficient measured by the World Bank just looks at household income, not wealth. Much of the inequality in Ireland in the last few decades has been driven by the explosion in property prices and rents. This has created a great deal of inequality between people who benefited from the rapid increase in price of those assets, and the people stuck paying much higher rents. In roughly a generation (30 years) property prices have increased by roughly 600% after adjusting for inflation.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/QIEN628BIS

pseudo0··on Scientists may have found a way to eliminate chromosome linked to Down syndrome
Because people can reasonably predict whether they will be happy doing something before they do it. Like for example, if you polled people who had gone skydiving and asked whether they enjoyed the experience, I'd expect many would say yes. After all, they voluntarily signed up for it and paid money to do it. But if you randomly selected people and made them jump out of a plane, the results would be very different.

Also, people who have had negative experiences raising a child with Down Syndrome are presumably far less likely to be involved with non-profit organizations related to Down Syndrome.

pseudo0··on The UK’s new age-gating rules are easy to bypass
Are you talking about the Southport mass stabbing that killed three children and wounded 10? The perpetrator was a second-generation African migrant found with an Al-Qaeda training manual and ricin, who had been repeatedly referred to Prevent. The UK government initially refused to release information about the perpetrator, which caused speculation and confusion about the attack.

It's a bit odd to focus on the anti-government protests and call them terrorists, when they were out protesting because the government failed to adequately protect them from an actual terrorist.

pseudo0··on DJI couldn't confirm or deny it disguised this drone to evade a US ban
https://archive.ph/RC7wx
pseudo0··on Scientists may have found a way to eliminate chromosome linked to Down syndrome
It's a hypothetical question... But plenty of gay people have children through surrogacy, or they adopt prior to determining the child's sexuality.
pseudo0··on Scientists may have found a way to eliminate chromosome linked to Down syndrome
Would you want your children to be gay? As a straight person, given the choice I would want my children to be straight, so they could have biological children with their partner and a dating pool of ~48% of the population rather than ~2%. Those are pretty clear objective advantages, even putting aside the issue of societal acceptance.

It's completely understandable to have an attachment to one's own identity, but at a certain point trying to impose that identity on one's children becomes ethically questionable. A good example is the deaf community - would it be appropriate for a deaf couple to withhold medical treatment from their child that would allow them to hear? I would argue no, but some people disagree.

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