fatbird

41 ms·

541.
by fatbird 6y ago
The story is missing a lot, with no details on the travel expenses that made several of the trades possible: X -> Vancouver -> Amherst, Mass. -> California -> Queens, NY. From that point, the article just says "he traded..
542.
by fatbird 6y ago
Yes: there were marches of millions of people in all the major cities of the Western hemisphere against what were readily understood to be the lies of the Bush Administration rushing to war. Didn't matter. The invasion of Iraq happen
543.
by fatbird 6y ago
What I'm getting at is that the horse-trading in American government, that is essential in producing a passing vote amongst a large number, produces low-quality legislation after a lot of time-consuming process more fit for media postu
544.
by fatbird 6y ago
Party positions are decided by party leadership--an even smaller and clearer group to hold accountable for particular laws. You already have an opaque process of deciding party positions amongst insiders. What party-line votes do is cause
545.
by fatbird 6y ago
Look at Canada to see how this works and decide whether you get an even more extreme tyranny of the minority. You don't. Legislative priorities are decide by party leadership, which is much more accountable for the laws passed by the
546.
by fatbird 6y ago
This is a problem of legislative mechanism. The way U.S. and state gov'ts create and pass legislation is a playground of perverse incentives, opaque procedure, and the worst aspects of gamesmanship. One immediate fix would be for stri
547.
by fatbird 6y ago
Indeed. Imagine how people of color feel at the possibility of an AI running ever-larger parts of society that has racism built right into it at the start because the people building it are blind to anything but the most obvious instances
548.
by fatbird 6y ago
That was a public argument on her core area of research. Google literally hired her to do that work. Being professionally assertive isn't toxic.
549.
by fatbird 6y ago
That happened after she was fired. You can't cite that behaviour as a reason for firing her. Violates causality.
550.
by fatbird 6y ago
The only evidence of toxicity was an email she sent after being forced to retract a paper that she wouldn't have to retract under proper academic circumstances, based on feedback they weren't even going to provide to her. That&#x2
551.
by fatbird 6y ago
I think you're missing the point: companies like Google set up research units like this to act like tenured positions, like mini-universities, and then employ academics like Gebru just so they get the credibility that comes with employ
552.
by fatbird 6y ago
As we debate this, Google has been credibibly accused of the most basic and wide-ranging antitrust violations, and whether they actually pay a price for it, assuming the accusations are true, isn't a slam dunk. Knowingly committing eth
553.
by fatbird 6y ago
the primary motivation for funding ethical AI work is _public relations_ Exactly. The secondary motivation is the possibility of benefiting from some basic research. It's ultimately a credibility play, which makes their handling of
554.
by fatbird 6y ago
Because the academic standard for research, and the original motivation for tenure, allows for researchers to criticize anyone, including their own institution, as long as it's done and presented as the proper product of research. In
555.
by fatbird 6y ago
I'm with you. I've done big REST APIs and now have a big GraphQL API on my ongoing project, and I wouldn't do GraphQL again for anything I'm working on. The beneficial use cases for GraphQL are far narrower than presen
556.
by fatbird 6y ago
Do you mean "common" in the sense of "normal operations", or in the sense of "we're in financial distress and need to skimp on payroll for a bit"? That's what I don't understand here: is Wistron
557.
by fatbird 6y ago
It's true, it does!
558.
by fatbird 6y ago
Gebru's account is that she was first refused the feedback, and then offered only a recitation of the feedback, not the written account. She offered to rewrite to account for the feedback, and was denied. Dean doesn't dispute th
559.
by fatbird 6y ago
You're right, we are living in different realities.
560.
by fatbird 6y ago
I think it's a very reasonable conclusion, as do the white men who offered their stories of their own ultimatums in solidarity with her. Why would you think that it would depend entirely on the ultimatums and the circumstances of eac
561.
by fatbird 6y ago
She wasn't asked to change it, and she didn't refuse. She was summoned to a meeting where she was informed that the paper must be retracted by her, due to substantive feedback that was provided anonymously, that would not be prov
562.
by fatbird 6y ago
Several white, male researchers at Google told stories of their own ultimatums that lead to a series of discussions with management and ultimately accommodation for them. But the black woman does the same and is fired. What's differen
563.
by fatbird 6y ago
Who says that loyalty is blind? Typically the preorder purchasers have a bunch of other Apple products and are happy with them and trust that the headphones will live up to that. It might be optimistic (it definitely is sometimes), but it
564.
by fatbird 6y ago
Fair.
565.
by fatbird 6y ago
It's not "the brand", it's his experience with the brand: he has a demonstrated trust in it based on his history with it. If the alternative is a day spent comparison shopping and researching, then an overage of $200 is
566.
by fatbird 6y ago
GP is self-indulgent, not mentally ill. My brother spent $2,000 upgrading his golf clubs, and didn't improve his score at all. GP said he's willing to spend an extra $200 to avoid two hours of research. Most of us here make at l
567.
by fatbird 6y ago
What you're calling "attachment", others would call "trust". Like the sibling comment, my wife and I got a Bosch dishwasher when we needed one because we didn't want to spend a couple days becoming dishwasher
568.
by fatbird 6y ago
Volunteering to be exploited doesn't absolve the exploiter of their wrongdoing.
569.
by fatbird 6y ago
The TV and film industries are heavily unionised across multiple sectors--tech, writers, actors, directors, etc.--and it's the norm to complete projects on time and on budget, or with immediate compensation for planning failures leadin
570.
by fatbird 6y ago
There really aren't any must-read books, except for certain areas there are a bunch of must-read books, and none of them make a good entry point to the study and practice of philosophy. Like most mature fields, philosophy has a well de

More ›