wslack

11 ms·

61.
by wslack 5y ago
I'd politely push back a bit. It makes sense that trans people don't want someone else assuming their pronouns - I wouldn't like it if someone called me something besides "he" - so the question in good faith is reas
62.
by wslack 5y ago
I suggest the book "Failure is not an option" by Gene Kranz, an Apollo flight director (played by Ed Harris in Apollo 13). He describes how the primary work of flight controllers in all missions is risk management. You are constan
63.
by wslack 5y ago
> Being paranoid about lawsuits against some personal blog shows a lack of legal sophistication and this type of sensationalism promotes an irrational fear of being somehow financially vulnerable to almost any legal predation. And yet, m
64.
by wslack 5y ago
It sounds like they are trying to imply it was his land without actually stating as such (because it was likely just over the property border).
65.
by wslack 5y ago
> They removed the Baron's homosexuality and sexual perversion Probably because at the time Dune was written, people conflated those things in a way that caused a lot of harm to people not interested in harming children. Seems highl
66.
by wslack 5y ago
> Controversial opinion, but I think adding Magsafe back (along with the other ports) was a step backward for the industry. It's too useful not to add back. Every laptop should have something like this; it prevents accidents and dam
67.
by wslack 5y ago
r/talesfromtechsupport is full of these sorts of stories. I make a visit on days when my job is frustrating and inevitably feel better.
68.
by wslack 5y ago
It's a good story and relevant. Not your fault the internet got spun up in a totally other direction with it.
69.
by wslack 5y ago
They seem to be treating it as a marketing opportunity, as well as explaining these topics for journalists. If their post didn't add to the public conversation, it wouldn't have been so viral.
70.
by wslack 5y ago
Super-niche subreddits still have something to give, but inevitably success > popularity > memes unless there is strong moderation.
71.
by wslack 5y ago
Unfortunately, the Supreme Court decided 5-4 that the courts should have no power here, so its up to state legislatures. ( https://www.npr.org/2019/06/27/731847977/supreme-court-rules... )
72.
by wslack 5y ago
I think its meaningful that the first one of these wasn't "a billionaire and his three friends." I also like the fundraising component, such as auctioning one of the seats via charitable lottery and deliberately choosing a pe
73.
by wslack 5y ago
> the world has become overly sensitive to certain subjects. I'm not sure that the world has become sensitive. Rather, opinions that people didn't feel safe to express about nonsense they experienced in their earlier life are n
74.
by wslack 5y ago
Every trans person I know knew this about themselves as a young child. They were not "influenced." Many of them had no idea that being trans was possible and thought they were gay, if they knew what that was.
75.
by wslack 5y ago
Correct! (I work at USDS, am commenting here just personally to shed light where I can).
76.
by wslack 5y ago
That would require (literally) an Act of Congress to pay civil servants more. That said, there are plenty of mid-senior programs for tech talent. There haven't been the same pipelines for more junior talent.
77.
by wslack 5y ago
Many people in that first wave of USDSers are back in government, some with USDS, some at other agencies. I think there's some of "this is shiny and new and putting the plane together as it flies" excitement that's diffe
78.
by wslack 5y ago
> Slow, bureaucratic, opaque, slow, low-compensation, slow. That's just not attractive to me. Some degree of slowness is (in some ways) a feature because of the harm, abuse, and eventual investigations that can happen at maximum spe
79.
by wslack 5y ago
> The government ought to put up or shut up. That requires congress to "vote to massively raise the salaries of bureaucrats." How do you suggest that happening? The media won't care about the distinction of it only being f
80.
by wslack 5y ago
Tolerance of wrong viewpoints is different than the active support algorithms give to discovering false content.
81.
by wslack 5y ago
Did they eliminate the primary process? The real value of IRV (IMO) is when you can have a Sanders and a Clinton (or a Trump and a Rubio) both on a general election ballot.
82.
by wslack 5y ago
> you can't distribute the counting well without transmitting the contents of all of the ballots There are only so many combinations of rankings that are possible. It shouldn't be hard to encode each of those possible orders an
83.
by wslack 5y ago
His point is that if few rank the fourth candidate first, they will be the first eliminated in the runoff process.
84.
by wslack 5y ago
That's true - but approaches that identify those best compromises get mathematically more and more complex as the system gains fidelity. We shouldn't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. If a place wants to implement another
85.
by wslack 5y ago
Scraping for non-profit purposes feels fine. Scraping for commercial purposes feels dirty. I don't know if there's a way for the law to square that circle.
86.
by wslack 5y ago
> If the CFAA doesn't apply to sys admins working at the highest levels of authorization, it seems to be a useless law. Foreign actors can simply hire sys admins to access whatever they want, no need for hacking. It's still ill
87.
by wslack 5y ago
However, in past decades, those other networks didn't cause the same level of propagation of misinformation.
88.
by wslack 5y ago
It's tricky because these accusations resonate because they remind us of things that really happen. (and in fact, lies can be formulated for maximum impact when truthtelling is usually more nuanced) Because powerful people have strong
89.
by wslack 5y ago
I think the point of the original comment is that everyone can't follow that path, at least right now. Someone has to pick the oranges and work in the warehouse. So pretending that everyone in those jobs is making bad choices is wrong,
90.
by wslack 5y ago
healthcare.gov's problem led to a rescue team, whose members helped to start USDS, whose members helped to start DDS! To your first point, it'd be more accurate to say that many government offices often don't hire any program

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