ryanobjc

There’s a reason why companies like google jumped on the covid thing earlier than most. Imagine an SRE group that got hit by a covid cluster. Now imagine that group handles... oh I dunno YouTube. Or search.

Even for mild cases of covid, the recovery can look like the flu. That means 1-2 weeks off work. And reduced ability for weeks after that. Now half of your team gets it at once.

Efficiency and resiliency are in opposite tension.

Why?

Why not do the pre-canvass prior to election day? What's wrong with verifying eligibility, via whatever legally mandated process, then holding the ballots. Or pre-tabulating them?

The latter is what San Francisco does. The mail in ballots are verified, and put into a tabulating machine specifically for the precinct. It holds the cards securely in a locked bin, and on election night, preliminary results can be pulled off the tabulation machine and combined with the in-person votes.

I am an elections clerk in San Francisco, and familiar with the processes. I say this is secure, and easy to verify and re-verify and saves a ton of effort on election day.

Where is your evidence that what you suggest is more secure, or important for... some reason?

I don't think you realize that during election day, the ballot cards are 'counted' (tabulated) during the day, all day. The scanning machine on site is tabulating the cards, then at the end of the day it's a simple matter of pulling the final tally after the last vote, both via paper print out and electronic media (CF cards). There is no "end of day counting" - just closing procedures, and clean up.

yes i see, its hard to read these things which are trying to be as positive as possible

To be clear the 'high quality' is still unlimited. Only the 'original quality' will be quotaed.

The headline here says it all really: https://www.wired.com/story/remote-work-perks-until-want-pro...

A colleague moved to an office in boulder. Everyone there is senior, and not leaving. No space to get promoted. All the big stuff that could get them promoted is already taken up.

A different friend moved from a satellite office, and has now been promoted twice.

Don’t forget the worst of the delays this year we’re deliberately left in place by GOP legislatures. There was a massive shift to mail in voting yet no changes to how they’re processed.

The pre-canvass part: opening mail in ballots, verifying them, preparing them for tabulation, can be securely done before the election. Most states with substantial mail in already do this. That means on Election Day, workers merely have to tabulate ballots which is a lot less work.

But in PA specifically the legislature declined to allow pre-canvass before the election.

When done right we have have reasonable speed and security.

Yes exactly this so much. I’ve done poll clerk and the security of the process depends on security seals and armed guards and all sorts of things that are easy to understand.

As a non citizen who worked the polls as a clerk, there’s plenty of ballot secrecy. Many people don’t care. But there are procedures in place. Sometimes people do care and they can obscure it.

Once the ballot is in the box, disassociated from the voter then there is no more secrecy concerns.

This is what happens in many elections.

The problem is mail in ballots, which were significantly more this year. When do you start processing them? In many states, the answer is: before election day.

In other states, notably PA, the law says "day of election". The legislature there deliberately did not take any action to change this. Why?

I've done election clerking, which I highly encourage everyone to do. Here in SF, it's an entirely paper election, and at every precinct there is a ballot scanner. As people fill out their ballots, it gets scanned, tabulated (aka "counted"), then deposited in a locked box that's part of the machine. Your ballot has no personally identifying markings, and is now lost in a pile of other ballots. That is how ballot secrecy works in practice.

At the end of the night, the electronic tabulation is removed from the machine (CF cards), then given in a security sealed bag to a deputy officer who takes it to city hall to be summed up for the results. The paper results are organized, and put in security sealed bags, and given to a sheriff (person with gun), and locked into a van to be transported back to city hall.

So now we have the best of both worlds: fast results, and paper audit trail. Any precinct can be retabulated - just run all the cards thru a machine again. The mail-in ballots are processed separately, and once the envelopes have been verified, the ballots are put thru a tabulation machine as well. My understanding is city hall has a ballot tabulator for every precinct mail-in, and as they process mail they drop them in the appropriate machine. If a mistake was made - it's easily correctable because each ballot has the precinct number printed on it.

It's a very easy to understand system, that requires only basic elements of computer security. Cross checking a ballot tabulator for accuracy is easy. Recounting is easy.

And finally, for accessible voting, people use a tablet to choose their selections, then their ballot is printed out, which contains the summary of the vote, and a QR code the ballot machine scans.

Oh yes, and the ballot machine scans and keeps image files of every ballot. I'm not sure what they do with that, but there we go.

It's fascinating, and my experiences in the SF elections department gives me high confidence that the SF election, and any run like it, are very secure, and accurate.

I thought something similar... they referenced emacs, and they took away... customized coloring? And appearance?

Really?

Nearly all my colleagues and friends here in the Bay Area are from somewhere else.

So this idea of a totally isolated bubble is a fiction made up on few facts to sell a story.

And most people are fairly tolerant - except of the intolerable few who wish to destroy tolerance. Again more made up stories.

I read this article and I was “ok memorization, but is that learning??” And even after perusing the supermemo website, and so on I’m still not convinced that this isn’t anything more than memorization for exams.

There’s a reason why this is popular in the “rationalist” community: they’re mostly college kids. I have never seen a coworker or other industry professional use any of these tools.

Why, because doing isn’t the same as remembering. Over time you remember by doing. That’s it.

Only a world where the feelings of the CEO are the most important thing in the entire company does this difference really matter.

As CEO your job is (a) leadership and (b) communications. He failed at both, badly. Perhaps he should have reached out to internal resources more (HR, PR, crisis PR, etc), but these are things I expect a CEO to figure out.

I'm not teaching a new hire coder what a computer is. Nor am I teaching a CEO about PR and communications!

Good comment. The opposite of pridewashing is either a form of neutrality or hostility. Neither which are good.

Yes it's "trendy", but there is REAL value in LGBTQ+ representation in media, goods, and more.

I was on the fence about the backlash, but ultimately what sealed the deal for me is his response to the situation.

As presumed-CEO and leader, he needs to have the confidence of his organization, and also the ability to address controversial difficult topics. He failed on that.

He finally did the right thing by stepping down. He would have always carried the weight of the mismanagement of the response to the employee-criticism, and that is what killed him ultimately.

A CEO position isn't a reward, it's a service position, and I believe that no one is entitled to it. (Ditto many forms of leadership) So to complain about how unfair it was to him, perhaps we should think about how unfair it was to the employees of the organization who had to deal with situation instead.

I do. I was having anxiety attacks on dextroamphetamine. 5 mg a day. I was resigned to dealing with them sometimes.

Then I by happenstance quit caffeine. And panic attacks went away. Sleep problems went away.

The meds were potentiating the caffeine!

Try quitting caffeine!

Adderall is so commonly prescribed but honestly for some people the better choice may be dextroamphetamine. I know it was for me.

The levo-amphetamine in adderall causes what is known as peripheral side effects. Higher heart rate. And so on. It doesn’t actually help the brain. Apparently it helps the dextro part last longer.

But its also potentially dangerous.

You gotta realize that millions, tens of millions, of Americans are white supremicists, look at black people getting shot by the police and think “they must be criminals they got what they deserved.”

We are having an (ongoing) argument in America as to who deserves what kinds of civil rights. Rights like marriage (which confers extensive legal rights), protection from being fired, fair treatment by the cops and legal system, and much more.

Ah yes good point - it’s of concern to every FAIR MINDED member of the group.

Lest we forget, there are many people who support the structural inequality.

It’s very brave if you, in the middle of a pandemic, to say that “sick days are private and have no impact on society at large.”

You must have missed March and April when sick days at “essential work” (such as grocery stores, restaurants, coffee shops, and more) was in fact a matter of national conversation: sick people going to work spread disease. The number of sick days was also of debate: most low wage jobs don’t offer more than 1 sick day a month or two. Not so good when someone needs two weeks off.

This kind of short sightedness and inherent support of the status quo as “it’s fine, I see no problem here” is exactly what the other commenter(s) are talking about.

Right wing 'material' is often refused for inciting violence, targeted harassment, and more now explicit lies on matters of significant civic importance - such as when/where to vote, lying health info in the middle of a pandemic, etc.

It's bad faith content, then when their crap is reasonably removed, there's endless crying. In fact a lot of the bad faith content is mixed up deliberately with political speech to incite action which allows them to claim marytrdom. If you do a long youtube video that is mostly political speech, and then you mix in a 5 minute targeted violent harassment in the middle, youtube is going to remove the whole thing. This is total bad faith.

The ironic thing is right-wing "alternative forums" to reddit/youtube/twitter, all have extensive moderation because, surprise surprise, trolling behavior degrades the value of online discussion boards. Don't be surprised if all you do is stand in a theater yelling you are shown the door. Or worse, you start yelling threats at another movie goer. That's the real analogy of 'right wing content' being banned.

I think he means postmodern in the common sense of the postmodern movement.

Modernism was a architectural and philosophical trend that peaked in the 50s. It really got started a few decades earlier than that. Think of uniform apartment blocks: modernist architecture in action. It was a sense that we were finding the universal laws of everything and we could make things equal and fair via uniform architecture for example.

Postmodernism was a critique of that and a deconstruction. Modernist ideas didn’t work all the time and for everyone.

If you’re referring to “now” the word you can use is contemporary. Meaning “along side”. This works for more things eg: “Albert Einstein corresponded extensively with his contemporaries.” Or “I dislike contemporary architecture”.

The Democratic Party legislates as if it represents all Americans. Which means compromise.

Rarely has the Democratic Party held all three branches recently. Holding the senate is a huge win for the republicans - they can be as obstinate and block things and only need a barest majority to do appointments and many other procedural shenanigans.

Like what the fuck is the house supposed to negotiate with? “We won’t pass bills”: the republican senate is entirely happy not to have bills passed. Now what?

The Republican Party is entirely devoted to debasing government and spoiling the notion of governance.

Come on, new words are created all the time. What do you call the grade before “1” in old English? Didn’t exist. The word is a loan word from German.

Language changes to suit the users of the language. Taking a hardline “you made words up so I’m going to retaliate to make words up” is no doubt fun rhetoric online but to do so in the real work... just makes you an asshole.

Why calling someone by their preferred names and pronouns is so difficult is beyond me. If your friend said “I’d prefer if you didn’t call me dick, please call me Richard” surely you’d grant such a trivial to you, yet important to them request.

Despite internet memes to the contrary, the use of very new pronouns (such as xie) is not super common. I’ve never seen someone get upset at being called “them”. Or structure your conversation and avoid pronouns: it’s super easy. I can’t remember names so I talk in such a way as to avoid names. Since pronouns and names fit in the same place syntactically, I can also magically talk to someone without using pronouns.

Plus when you land there, you won't be getting help or support. So toss all your support network for more space. For some that's reasonable, but for many it is not, and presuming that it's their own 'fault' for not moving is not charitable.

The headline is misleading. The original policy was the US Forest service - a federal agency.

As for calfire and the state being reluctant to authorize controlled burns, well given the risk of wildfire and having controlled burns escape, we probably need to not just be slack about who can burn what when, with which supervision.

The title does do the state of California a disservice. We already have a president* who is attempting to blame state leaders for fire, as a political fight. When the federal lands and federal agencies are also responsible for this as well.

The notion that not having smaller burns leads to larger fires is well established going back decades. We need to accelerate our adaptation to the new drier climate. This article could help. But give the blameology a rest.

Edit: also note the editorialization of the title. The original article title was a “native wisdom” approach, which got dropped for “some reason.”

Well the better prices is just a theory. I don’t even see it planning out. The cheaper fees don’t even have to be passed on consumers - if you had a beat selling property, why would you discount?

If epic wins, they’ll eventually raise prices and reap all the profits. Why wouldn’t they?

This is hopelessly naive and overly credible.

Companies with power and leverage won’t switch to an “open api” and generic ui. It’s better for them to offer their own proprietary experience and to be able to improve it.

Even if what you described was something companies would buy into... sounds like instead of N App Store programs to run, there’s be N App Store websites/urls to visit. what about payments? You’d need a trusted platform operator to avoid everyone having their own payment system and users having to enter details multiple times.

Also API to WHAT? Every App Store on windows has api access... to the os and install mechanisms. Any further value add services will require a trusted online partner (payments, security reviews, downloads?).

Deregulation of the power grid in California.

Competition focuses on price with a presumption that quality won’t suffer because users will switch. Well that isn’t necessarily so, it’s a hope rather than a hard fact. There are many examples, that I leave as an exercise to the reader, where a customer “chooses” a lower cost item with poor quality, including harmfully so.