Hacker News: semiotagonal

New comment by semiotagonal in "HSBC to shift $20B worth of assets to blockchain-based Digital Vault"

semiotagonal — Fri, 29 Nov 2019 17:33:34 +0000

Git uses hashes to identify commits, but does it actually chain them, i.e. include the previous hash as an input to the current hash?

New comment by semiotagonal in "Singapore tells Facebook to correct post under new fake news law"

semiotagonal — Fri, 29 Nov 2019 06:49:38 +0000

Sure. It's the world Americans already live in, except for certain specifically defined types of lies (e.g. fraud, perjury, libel of non-public figures, etc).

Of interest: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/08/does-th...

New comment by semiotagonal in "Singapore tells Facebook to correct post under new fake news law"

semiotagonal — Fri, 29 Nov 2019 06:27:34 +0000

In the US it is almost impossible for a public figure, especially a political figure, to win a libel lawsuit.

In theory, a deliberate, malicious false statement against a public figure would count as libel; but in practice basically everything is allowed. This prevents politicians from intimidating their critics with lawsuits.

EDITED TO ADD: In fact in the US there is pretty much a constant stream of false statements about every politician, and I can't recall any politician ever winning a libel case. Devin Nunes is trying currently, and basically making a fool of himself.

New comment by semiotagonal in "Twitter account deletions on 'pause' after outcry"

semiotagonal — Thu, 28 Nov 2019 18:39:59 +0000

If you want a short-and-simple username, you need to do what it takes to defend it, even if that means logging into twitter once in a while. Even registered trademarks require active defense, or they lapse[0]. Why should it be as easy as just grabbing it first, especially if that pollutes the platform in a way that hurts the platform company?

If you want an easily defended but unique identity, pick something that isn't short-and-simple, and you'll have less competition.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laches_(equity)

New comment by semiotagonal in "After WeWork, SoftBank’s Startup Bookkeeping Draws Scrutiny"

semiotagonal — Thu, 28 Nov 2019 17:07:36 +0000

I don't think a smaller number of dumb startups will have much negative impact, considering the huge numbers of highly paid employees the giant "fang companies" have.

New comment by semiotagonal in "The Color of Surveillance: Monitoring of Poor and Working People – Reading List"

semiotagonal — Wed, 27 Nov 2019 22:11:19 +0000

There's nothing about GPS that says it should provide continuous information to others about one's location.

New comment by semiotagonal in "The Color of Surveillance: Monitoring of Poor and Working People – Reading List"

semiotagonal — Wed, 27 Nov 2019 21:12:06 +0000

Also if you sit near the Android people, let them know I'm going to be irritated if I find that my parents have been tricked into activating location tracking on their phones again! It seems like I have to shut off all the various Google privacy settings every time I visit them. They don't want to be tracked.

New comment by semiotagonal in "The Color of Surveillance: Monitoring of Poor and Working People – Reading List"

semiotagonal — Wed, 27 Nov 2019 20:27:31 +0000

Thanks for the response. I'm mostly familiar with Google Docs in the workplace, where it was apparent who was reading what document at a particular moment from a list of users at the upper-right.

Separately, on my personal account, at some point I viewed a publicly shared document from a well-known person, and that ended up in my "shared documents" (or "documents shared with you"?) for ages. I wasn't sure if that sharing was evident in both directions. I've avoided clicking on shared Google Drive documents since then.

If it's not the case that the owner of the doc can audit activity, I stand corrected.

EDITED TO ADD: I suppose the root of my confusion is that it's pretty hard to distinguish the behavior of Google Drive from Google Docs; and once the lack of privacy has been observed anywhere (e.g. using Docs the workplace), it's hard not to assume it's also happening with PDF's shared via Google Drive, simply because you can't know what the other person is seeing.

It's especially hard when there is an asymmetry (e.g. in a non-GSuite environment, I can see some publicly shared document in my "shared with me" list, but I guess the sharer can't see me).

New comment by semiotagonal in "Lessons learned building an ML trading system"

semiotagonal — Wed, 27 Nov 2019 17:49:03 +0000

I wish he'd keep it running, then write on lessons learned turning $200K into something much less, should such a loss be manifest.

New comment by semiotagonal in "The Color of Surveillance: Monitoring of Poor and Working People – Reading List"

semiotagonal — Wed, 27 Nov 2019 16:56:55 +0000

I think you're missing my point that even if you willingly impose Google surveillance on yourself, Google Drive is still worse than Google Analytics because your personally identifiable activity is visible to the author and/or other readers, not just Google.

New comment by semiotagonal in "The Color of Surveillance: Monitoring of Poor and Working People – Reading List"

semiotagonal — Wed, 27 Nov 2019 16:49:57 +0000

I should have made it clear I was assuming that people were authenticated to their Google account. I think most people who use GMail never log out, and might not check the URL and realize they were navigating to a Google doc.

New comment by semiotagonal in "The Color of Surveillance: Monitoring of Poor and Working People – Reading List"

semiotagonal — Wed, 27 Nov 2019 16:44:24 +0000

Doesn't Google Drive show the identity of someone reading the document to other people reading it, or at least the owner? That's worse than just collecting analytics internally at Google.

New comment by semiotagonal in "I'm not burned out, I'm pissed off"

semiotagonal — Wed, 27 Nov 2019 16:29:39 +0000

> The good news is that there is one way to avoid this (the only way AFIK)

I managed to recover from a similar level of burnout/pissed-offedness by changing my domain of software development completely. I got out of high-stakes server-side software and into client-side mobile software. It took some effort to pivot, but in the end it was a great relief. In my experience, Apple's slow approval process is a much better problem to have than getting pinged at 3am for any reason.

New comment by semiotagonal in "Older IT Workers Left Out Despite Tech Talent Shortage"

semiotagonal — Mon, 25 Nov 2019 23:49:19 +0000

If I were the sixth person at a five-person startup I'd be forever worried that I was just on the wrong side of the get-rich-if-it-succeeds line.

New comment by semiotagonal in "Relentlessly Simplify"

semiotagonal — Mon, 25 Nov 2019 17:57:14 +0000

That's actually pretty minimal. It only looks cluttered because the desk is small. The shelves are only half-used, and mostly in proper stacks.

New comment by semiotagonal in "Hard Problems in Cryptocurrency: Five Years Later"

semiotagonal — Sun, 24 Nov 2019 17:05:10 +0000

Learning on the job in an unforgiving domain can be costly.

New comment by semiotagonal in "Hard Problems in Cryptocurrency: Five Years Later"

semiotagonal — Sun, 24 Nov 2019 15:59:52 +0000

I did about 0.1% of the amount of research you did a few years ago and was really struck by the irreversibility of mistakes. Other engineering domains can have irreversible (e.g. fatal) mistakes as well, but they don't have as many enthusiasts jumping in to the field.

New comment by semiotagonal in "X17 Particle"

semiotagonal — Sun, 24 Nov 2019 00:48:30 +0000

Discovering new physics doesn't move us away from a unified theory, it just means we were wrong about how much farther we have to go.

New comment by semiotagonal in "The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius"

semiotagonal — Sat, 23 Nov 2019 17:34:50 +0000

This is why having a social safety net is so important. If society can put a floor under how badly people can lose, they'll feel more free to try low-probability high-payoff endeavors.

New comment by semiotagonal in "The revolution of machine learning has been exaggerated"

semiotagonal — Fri, 22 Nov 2019 18:41:30 +0000

From a professional perspective, does it make sense to get on a train that is so crowded already? Step 0 is probably to take Andrew Ng's on Coursera, but as of right now, you'd be among "2,647,287 already enrolled!" [0]

[0] https://www.coursera.org/learn/machine-learning