Hacker News: olefoo

New comment by olefoo in "Animation of a blue whale trying to avoid ships"

olefoo — Sun, 14 Feb 2021 01:25:01 +0000

It could be a collective defense mechanism. The idea of animal intelligence being a threat to what many people perceive as the necessary status quo of being able to endlessly consume the resources of nature without consequence.

New comment by olefoo in "Kubernetes Failure Stories"

olefoo — Thu, 11 Feb 2021 23:50:28 +0000

This is engineering. Not art. We learn from our failures and build better than before.

New comment by olefoo in "McKinsey to pay $573M to settle claims over opioid crisis role: source"

olefoo — Thu, 04 Feb 2021 23:34:28 +0000

And not a single director goes to jail. Not even for a weekend.

New comment by olefoo in "Element (Matrix chat app) suspended from the Google Play Store"

olefoo — Sun, 31 Jan 2021 04:52:45 +0000

In the wake of an unprecedented attack on the core institutions of a democracy; forums and websites that were being used to plot violence against lawmakers are discovering that all available sources of pressure on them to change their behavior are being exercised?

The Parler dudes are just lucky that they haven't been arrested for material support of terrorism yet.

New comment by olefoo in "Cryptocurreny crime is way ahead of regulators and law enforcement"

olefoo — Sun, 24 Jan 2021 03:23:46 +0000

There is also the viewpoint that bitcoin was a crime from beginning to end. That the goals of it's creation were to provide an unpreventable vector for money laundering. That it's current function of undermining the dollar order is also an intended result.

And let us not; in this age of ecological collapse, forget the emissions impact of cryptocurrencies.

New comment by olefoo in "Management by metrics leads us astray"

olefoo — Thu, 21 Jan 2021 17:39:48 +0000

You seem to think that teams of economists don't cherry pick metrics that suit their perspective.

New comment by olefoo in "How to overcome Phone Addiction"

olefoo — Sat, 02 Jan 2021 21:41:25 +0000

Is it the phone people are addicted to, or the media available through it?

Especially Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp and Twitter. All of which seem designed to cultivate obsessive compulsive behavior in their users with social proof, intermittent rewards and a builtin hedonic treadmill.

New comment by olefoo in "He spent 10 days in jail after facial recognition led to arrest of the wrong man"

olefoo — Mon, 28 Dec 2020 20:42:47 +0000

So if you are wondering why Clearview is so bad specifically for black people; it might help to know that the company has extensive ties to Right-wing white supremacists. And that many of those relatioinships were formed in Peter Thiel's orbit.

https://artificialintelligence-news.com/2020/04/08/clearview...

New comment by olefoo in "ATT services down due to bombing in Nashville"

olefoo — Sat, 26 Dec 2020 03:11:46 +0000

What we're seeing is a "stochastic insurgency" where loosely affiliated groups and individuals conceive, plan and execute infrastructure attacks and targeted assassinations. Relatively little operational coordination; but lots of online showing support and post-crime support.

I hope all congressional representatives and local government officials are reviewing their safety plans.

New comment by olefoo in "Security expert warned SolarWinds in 2019 that anyone could access server"

olefoo — Mon, 21 Dec 2020 04:51:03 +0000

Construction companies seem to do fine even though building codes exist.

It's not uncommon for a mature industry to face a reckoning around damaging practices that were common when they were nascent industries.

Would you like to live below a dam that was built under a loose and permissive regulatory regime? How about storing sensitive personal data in a datacenter whose owner specifically disclaims liability for it's exposure?

New comment by olefoo in "Security expert warned SolarWinds in 2019 that anyone could access server"

olefoo — Sun, 20 Dec 2020 23:16:24 +0000

This is an idea that should be explored more fully. The downside is that it will make information technology a much less freewheeling and innovative field.

New comment by olefoo in "You have the right to record police in public, federal court rules"

olefoo — Thu, 17 Dec 2020 04:20:12 +0000

Police work a _lot_ of overtime in most jurisdictions.

So the base salary may be misleadingly low. Especially since many police contracts have a 2x or even 3x payout for overtime under some conditions.

As with many statistics around policing there is a deliberate and calculated intent to muddy the waters and prevent effective policy discussion.

New comment by olefoo in "Hackers used SolarWinds' dominance against it in sprawling spy campaign"

olefoo — Wed, 16 Dec 2020 03:57:01 +0000

For such a high value target why aren't they using MFA built in to the hardware?

They're a networking company but they apparently build stuff like it's still 1996.

New comment by olefoo in "Hackers used SolarWinds' dominance against it in sprawling spy campaign"

olefoo — Wed, 16 Dec 2020 03:42:28 +0000

Remember that these individuals are usually hired and given responsibility based on their ability to game class signalling games; they exist to justify the status quo.

If the status quo were more justifiable their actual job responsibilities to other people within the organization ( conflict resolution, scheduling, resource allocation, and personnel management) are things that could be automated in a hot minute.

New comment by olefoo in "How to Talk When a Machine Is Listening: Corporate Disclosure in the Age of AI"

olefoo — Mon, 14 Dec 2020 18:43:46 +0000

I wonder how long until we see the first lawsuits for stock price manipulation using this feedback loop?

If an unscrupulous executive were to make factually true statements that were engineered to mislead automated assessment algorithms so that they or their associates could buy the dip.

Would it even technically be against the law?

New comment by olefoo in "U.S. Treasury breached by hackers backed by foreign government – sources"

olefoo — Sun, 13 Dec 2020 22:16:23 +0000

Imagine if an automobile manufacturer allowed you to configure the safety features of your car and had the defaults set to unsafe but convenient values to help sell vehicles... do you think the manufacturers should evade liability?

New comment by olefoo in "The YouTube ban is un-American, wrong, and will backfire"

olefoo — Sat, 12 Dec 2020 00:22:16 +0000

This is all the result of confusing 1st amendment rights with the right to access the audience that gathers at a particular URL.

What Taibbi is asking for is that the guy who tells you that drinking rat poison is good for you should be allowed an audience and that even putting a warning alongside the video would be an infringement on his rights.

Looking at the comments here I have to conclude that HN is no longer on board critical thinking much less common sense.

New comment by olefoo in "Noted A.I. Ethicist Timnit Gebru Let Go from Google Following Email Exchange"

olefoo — Sat, 05 Dec 2020 03:31:29 +0000

Let's just say that it is a strong tell that one's ethics may not be defensible if your ethics watchdog is threatening to resign.

Consider for instance the exit of Walter Shaub from the Trump Administration.

https://www.npr.org/2017/07/06/535781749/ethics-office-direc...

New comment by olefoo in "Billionaires Build"

olefoo — Fri, 04 Dec 2020 21:39:03 +0000

Well, of course billionaires don't directly exploit people. They just build systems and take advantage of large scale features of the social environment that exploit people.

It's a completely different morally.

I mean, you can't hold airbnb responsible for either the housing crunch or any part of the homelessness crisis. They just created a system that allows landlords to cash in on high-return short term rentals. The negative externalities created by the mass adoption of their platform cannot be landed on their moral accounting. It's totally obvious.

New comment by olefoo in "Noted A.I. Ethicist Timnit Gebru Let Go from Google Following Email Exchange"

olefoo — Thu, 03 Dec 2020 16:24:40 +0000

When you can't help yourself from firing ethicists; you might have an ethics problem.