throwawayjava

It's extremely invasive for some random civil servant to execute an unexpected search on a device that most reasonable people assume is private.

This might be a reasonable solution if it's a one-off unique solution and is therefore unlikely to be detected. But if you can't count on security through obscurity, this is a good way to end up serving real jail time.

Unlike janitors or checkout operators, software work can be outsourced. Outsourcing doesn't make sense for high-skill software engineering for two reasons. First, actually writing the code is only a small part of the job. And second, even when it comes to writing the code, there's still a real quality difference between top US candidates and top international candidates [1].

But software work that requires "little to no skill" is exactly the sort of thing you can successfully outsource.

[1] https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/03/us-computer-science-...

1. The skyrocketing cost of college really does create enormous problems. I'm assuming the family profiled are either doctors or lawyers, because otherwise those $32K/yr payments would only last for a few years at most. (I paid $40K/yr in loans for both my wife and I when I got my first real job, but that happened exactly once... and we weren't buying BMWs or Land Rovers while we were doing it.)

2. Pensions, which have largely eroded away in the private sector, were enormously valuable. The switch from pensions to 401(K)s without a significant corresponding increase in pay is one of the most significant ways in which the real value of take-home pay has declined in the past 30 years.

But everything else could be cut in half, probably without even noticing:

1. $42K/yr on childcare is au pair/"elite" preschool money.

2. $5,000/mo mortgage is pretty high, even for a family of four in a high CoL area.

3. Three vacations a year @ $6,000 a pop. I take more than three vacations a year, but most of them are closer to $500 for a family of 4 (camping/backpacking). The expensive ones never get higher than $3,000. There's "getting away from work for a while" and then there's "flying a family of 4 to Paris a few times a year". The former is not a "luxury" especially for a high stress job, but the latter definitely is.

4. Luxury cars. For $10K they could buy a perfectly functional new car (which would last 10 years) every year. The only way that these are not "luxuries" is if they're required for work.

5. $3K on clothing per year, every year. That's high even for someone who has to dress nicely for work. Yes, nice suits are expensive, but they also last a long time. And your kids definitely don't need "meetings with high value clients" clothing.

6. $1K/mo on "children's lessons". I know how this happens, because I charged up to $100/hr for private tutoring while in grad school. But it's entirely unnecessary. It really is OK for your kid to get a B in an AP course. And if they need $100/hr quality tutoring for every course they're taking, the real world is going to be a rude experience. Also, $1K/mo on "children's lessons" while the kids are also young enough to need childcare is absolutely insane.

And even in some of the "very expensive" housing markets, you can still find homes that are affordable relative to income within 40 minutes of downtown areas. Chicago and Boston both come to mind.

The primary differences, as far as I can tell, are that:

1) Niche senior positions are harder to find in cheaper cities (think "deep hard tech expertise"). For example, nearly all of the major corporate research labs in CS (MSR, Google Brain, Google Research, IBM Research, Oracle Labs, ...) are in or around expensive CoL areas. On the startup side, "hard tech" startups are very often more capital-intensive so are even more attracted to geographic VC bubbles.

2) Moving up within BigCos is sometimes more difficult if you're in a satellite office.

In fact, the whole thrust of my comment was that it's sometimes desirable to have "a genuinely diverse collaboration based on profound and meaningful differences of perspective", and the last paragraph of my post calls out the "nice looking poster" approach.

What point are you trying to make? It sounds to me like we're largely agreeing.

There is real value in reading about the same topic from differing perspectives. Not all writing is or aspires to be purely fact-based journalism, and that's okay.

It's reasonable that The Markup wants to hire group of people with diverse viewpoints on how "powerful institutions are using technology in ways that impact people and society". I would be surprised and underwhelmed if they had e.g. only software engineers or only consumer rights activists writing.

The issue is their assumption that only non-white, non-males have interesting things to say about how "powerful institutions are using technology in ways that impact people and society".

They are dangerous to ad revenue.

Maybe they are also dangerous in other ways, but those discussions are a red herring.

Danger to ad revenue is the only danger large publicly traded internet companies actually care about.

Do you have any data on this question? Or is this just a blind assumption that "people who disagree with me on X probably also disagree with me about Y"?

FB/YT/Twitter are not fundamental to modern life.

They aren't even fundamental to gaining an audience. Lots of businesses[1] manage to turn handsome profits without advertising on those platforms.

[1] And that's what infowars/milo are -- businesses looking for make a profit by producing social commentary and then selling ad space / books / videos / merch for more than it costs to produce the commentary.

Your case more about he-said-she-said than 'our own eyes lying to us'. Completely different issues.

Not sure if this is a reason for or against.

Ecuador has quite strict computer crime laws. E.g. distribution of hacking tools is illegal.

The law he is being charged with violating reads: "Diseñe, desarrolle, programe, adquiera, envíe, introduzca, ejecute, venda o distribuya de cualquier manera, dispositivos o programas informáticos maliciosos o programas destinados a causar los efectos señalados en el primer inciso de este artículo."

which google translates as: Design, develop, program, acquire, send, introduce, execute, sell or distribute any malicious means, devices or programs or programs intended to cause effects indicated in the first paragraph of this article.

Laws that criminalize creation/distribution of "hacking tools" are dangerous and scary because there's really no bright line as to what constitutes a hacking tool; e.g., it's even possible that Ola's work on JOpenSSL or OTRv4 could be construed as a "hacking tool" under this law :(

A good if unfortunate reminder to anyone who works in computer security to check local laws before traveling and especially before emigrating.

It's crazy how easy it is to learn how to pattern match well enough that you can build really useful stuff while still not really understanding what you're doing. Human brains are amazing.

The argument is being able to look at some court house built in 1925 is not more important than people in 2018 (and forever into the future) having more affordable places to live.

I tend to agree that the "no historical preservation" viewpoint is way overblown. E.g., there are lots of monuments and buildings in Boston and Philly that should always be preserved because they are integral to telling the nation's founding story. But there are lot of "historical landmarks/buildings" in the USA that are really only significant to the handful of people who pushed to make them "historical" (and are probably now dead anyways).

Plus, there are real downsides to your approach. It puts the onus on the employee to collect from the employer, which is best-case arduous and worst-case more expensive than it's worth with most of the money going to a billboard lawfirm anyways.

Your approach might make sense in the mid six figures and up, but for low-wage or even low to mid middle class workers, outright nullification would be way more effective.

I.e., if you want to avoid confusion, don't ever say "supposedly X" if you actually do believe "X" is a fact.

Oxford has this to say on supposedly: "used to show that you do not believe that something you have been told is true". Hope that helps

You called it a "supposed criminal act". Usually "supposed" used in that way means something similar to ostensible. That's why I started my post with "It's not supposed". In fact, that's the first definition Oxford gives for supposedly...

This isn't really relevant to the point you're making in this thread, but figured I'd point it out anyways

The court's job is not to enforce ryanlol's idea about what the law should be. The court's job is to enforce the actual existing text of the actual existing laws.

The actual existing laws say that attempting to break into a computer to which you do not have access is a crime, even if your effort alone is not the lynchpin. And that conspiring to help someone else attempt is also a crime.

I'm not sure what the gray area is supposed to be here.

If I teach you lock picking skills as a fun hobby, that's clearly okay.

If I teach you lock picking skills knowing you aspire to be a house robber, that is grayish legally and wrong ethically.

But if I break into a specific bank vault for you to help you steal stuff, and we talked about stealing the stuff before I helped you, then I'm clearly involved in a criminal conspiracy.

Assange committed a crime, and if he played the same role in helping to empty your bank account you'd want these laws to exist.

The ethical question here is about whether that crime was ethically jusified. I.e., it's about civil disobedience, not about whether blatant conspiracy should be legal.

This is what I mean by overblown. People's perception on this issue is just ridiculously out of whack. Young men aren't as dangerous to civil society as a lot of people like to imagine. The violent ones get jail and the rest grow up.

This is really only true at the margins.

> Why would a woman settle for a friendly 165 cm guy with a good job, if a 185 cm "lumberjack" is only few swipes away (in theory, because there are many more women competing for him)?

For the same reason most people choose friends based on who they get along with instead of who has the most money/status. After all, why spend time on a friendship that only gets you a beer now and then when you could spend your time befriending people with yachts and ski lodges?

People crave closeness and belonging. Being close with someone who you actually enjoy spending time with feels better than having sex with someone you don't care about.

Note: few people enjoy the company of another person merely because that other person "has a good job" or is merely "friendly". How many of your male friends do you enjoy spending time with because they make good money and aren't assholes? Probably very few. For the rest, you have something in common that drives the friendship. The same thing is true in romantic relationships.