The threat to the perpetrator -- of 90 days prison time and a permanent criminal record of being a mischief-maker -- prevents people from pulling the alarm.
Sure, and to circle all the way back to the original point several posts up - why is this a deterrent to someone pulling a fire alarm but not for someone sending a fake UDP broadcast? The penalty will be exactly the same.
Harder to track down the person. Unless the hotel is logging every packet on its network and paying to archive the TBs of encrypted video streaming data that goes through every day. And it's a purely local network, so not like the NSA can help out.
Edit:
"Unauthorized" computer access is a serious federal crime under the CFAA, and that you did it as a joke is not a legal defense. Famous examples:
> At least one point of those ethicists is to stop people who are naive from doing things with permanent consequences without first checking to see what those consequences would be.
Are the consequences really that permanent? It's pretty easy (in China) to monitor a handful of test subjects with heritable mutations and make sure they don't reproduce.
> At this stage of the science you're more likely to cause harm than cure disease
The potential upside of developing the science is huge, which is essentially what He is doing.
Sorry Person275, you were approved as a test subject so you are bared from partaking in life.
But don't worry, they haven't had success passing laws legalizing your organ harvesting so you'll probably get to live a full life even after we're done testing you.
Yes, these consequences are permanent. What He did was permanently modify the cells that make up a tiny embryo. The germline cells- those that go on to make sperm and eggs in the developing person- are thus permanently modified, causing those changes to be passed on to the children.
Note that the specific change he made was intended to make these subjects more robust to resisting HIV infection. HIV infection in China is extremely rare, so it's an odd choice to pick- most doctors would instead focus on a well-understood, testable condition that is caused by a mendelian gene change. And, He's change likely didn't really have the outcome he predicted (common problem with genetics- the mutation you make almost never has the phenotype you desire). So there was a lack of need for this risky work and it also wasn't the right work. And, those changes will be passed on to the children of the affected children.
Now, I need to point out if your attitude is that these are "test subjects", and that you are going to keep them from reproducing, I can assure you that politicians, lawyers, doctors, scientists, and parents are going to stop talking to you and you're not going to be able to make a career out of this. This is an area that is closely tied to people's strongest beliefs and a single misstep (He made multiple missteps) can ensure you never work in this field again. m Learnign to speak the jargon so that people think you're a well intentioned doctor, not Doctor Frankenstein, is absolutely critical to being able to work in this field.
Forced sterilization only ceased in the United States in 1981, I'm sure the CCP has enough authoritarian power to forcibly sterilize genetically altered humans if they chose to do so.
I disagree with forced sterilization, just to be clear.
The article is FUD of course, but one thing worth noting is how it assumes a dropping pregnancies are because of forced sterilization and not just improving life quality - which is how it works everywhere else.
yeah, forced sterilization was common in China with their one-child policy that was only recently rescinded. There are plenty of stories and even documentaries on it.
Social workers are proposing forced sterilization for disabled people in parts of Western Europe. They have, of course, chosen to change the term to "forced anticonception".
Their case is that the attitude of one woman and one couple are causing too much stress, but really costs, on the social sector.
The woman is a prostitute that would allegedly offers sex with a visibly pregnant woman to increase her revenue. She has declared in court she doesn't mind if the child is taken away, in fact she wants that.
The other are a couple, both have Down syndrome. A very important detail is that Down syndrome, despite being a genetic problem, IS NOT hereditary, so their kids are healthy. Well, not 100%, but they certainly don't have Down syndrome. Now for this couple this is actually a problem, since these kids rapidly grow smarter than their parents ... at age 6-7-8, at which point they completely control their parents and the situation has "exploded" more than once, in fact more than a hundred times.
The couple have declared, in court, that "they will keep trying until they get to keep one".
This brings a number of weird consequences. For example, if you're worried about the future offspring then you should probably allow Down syndrome children to procreate, and in fact allow this at lower ages than 18 (because they have reduced lifespan, if you want them to have good odds of seeing their kids graduate, they must have kids before the age of 26 or so, and at 26 only half will be seeing their kids' high school graduation from their deathbed in a hospital, the other half will not see it).
On the other hand, if effects on offspring are your worry, you should probably forcibly abort babies in healthy women merely because they drink alcohol (or take drugs) during pregnancy. Fetal alcohol syndrome is real and does not just affect 1 generation. And it's the timing that matters, not so much the amount of alcohol. One sip in month 1-4 will be worse than a bigger amount after the 8th month. And whatever else you think about Cannabis, it is most certainly not safe during pregnancy, although the usual argument does apply: not nearly as bad as alcohol or drugs. But still very, very bad. Are you prepared to forcibly abort a baby because a mother had one sip of alcohol? Plus how would you ever know?
Fantastic article (fully accessible if you disable javascript) summarizing the political situation across .nl .be and even .fr a little bit:
Right now there are calls to forcibly abort and then forcibly sterilize women who get drunk during pregnancy.
The consequences of that are much worse, I might add, than the ones observed in this experiment. They are also permanent and will be passed on for generations. "Fetal alcohol syndrome".
In practice I think the chance of this actually happening to those women is, for the moment, zero. The above changes are effectively proposed as a way to save money for social services, and I do hope we, as a species, are above using forced sterilization to save a buck. Additionally I hope that any doctor that is asked to do this will refuse to do it.
> It's pretty easy to monitor a handful of test subjects with heritable mutations and make sure they don't reproduce
So just to be clear, what we're talking about here is a protocol for performing eugenics on humans that were bred as part of an experiment, right? And ethically, that isn't a hang-up for you?
> what we're talking about here is a protocol for performing eugenics...
No. What we're talking about is if it's ethical to essentially create a race of monster-people by altering their DNA.
GP is saying, no way it's ethical, because if they have offspring it would be unethical. I'm saying maybe it's as ethical as current medical science, as long as you sterilize them.
You're the only one talking about eugenics.
> ethically that isn't a hang-up for you
Look, ethics is in its core, a public affair. Ethicists are primarily concerned whether general people will find XYZ acceptable, and why or why not.
For me personally, I'm not concerned with academics. I'm concerned with whether I feel it's right or wrong in my personal view. Is genetically altering humans ethical in my personal view? No.
> I'm saying maybe it's as ethical as current medical science, as long as you sterilize them
This is eugenics. You are the one that brought it up saying maybe it's relatively ethical. I'm rejecting that point and saying that it categorically is not ethical.
Anonymity is the forgiveness of the internet machine.
> The broader question is how any of us – but especially children and young people – can become comfortable with our own freedom, our own spontaneity, against the backdrop of surveillance capitalism, which is the real condition of the reaction economy
Separate digital identities from real ones.
Edit 2: I originally had a much longer discussion about WWII and forgiveness but edited it out and did not indicate that I edited. Basically, I made a mistake, I take full responsibility, although you will bear the consequences.
Anonymity isn't forgiveness, it's simply avoiding consequence. Forgiveness is a real world social transaction that can only be granted to real world identities, which presupposes an awareness on the part of the offending person and a willingness to change their behavior.
>Sure von Braun worked for the enemy, but the U.S. needed his expertise and therefore gave him amnesty. Same for Unit 741, Hirohito, etc. in Japan.
The US didn't forgive Von Braun and Japanese scientists, they simply chose to look the other way out of expediency, because the evils of the Axis had become a commodity for the Allies. That's a subtle but important distinction.
Sorry I edited out all the discussions about WW2. Assumed this was a dead thread and it was safe if I did it quickly. I'll edit this and address them here... please forgive me.
Edit:
> The US didn't forgive Von Braun and Japanese scientists, they simply chose to look the other way out of expediency, because the evils of the Axis had become a commodity for the Allies. That's a subtle but important distinction.
Right -- you're making the distinction, between forgiveness in the sense of amnesty, and forgiveness as a ritualized, cultural, and Christian purification concept. Von Braun and Unit 731 received amnesty-forgiveness. Hirohito received ritual-forgiveness.
> Anonymity isn't forgiveness
Anonymity is forgiveness in the first sense.
GP was concerned with "the Cancelled" receiving both types of forgiveness. Anonymity only provides amnesty-forgiveness. It's up to you to reconcile that with the fact you don't receive ritual-forgiveness (and have to be ok with mere amnesty). Probably explains why most anonymous folks on the internet are so anti-establishment, because in this sense it (i.e., placing little value on ritual forgiveness) is a requirement to accept being a real person inhabiting an anonymous identity.
> Anonymity isn't forgiveness, it's simply avoiding consequence. Forgiveness is a real world social transaction that can only be granted to real world identities, which presupposes an awareness on the part of the offending person and a willingness to change their behavior.
why the necessity of changing the behavior of them who receive the forgiveness?
the requirement of having a "willingness to change their behavior" tickles my funny sense (it raises a warning flag from me) because it prepares a bridge (a connection, a pathway) to control by means of forgiving which does not feel correct to me.
but I'm still trying to understand the general concept of forgiveness.
I agree that anonymity is not exactly forgiveness in principle. but functionally, and on the internet, something similar is accomplished by anonymity and by social forgiveness in real-world interaction.
Maybe the main difference between anonymity online and face-to-face forgiveness is the awareness of the actors involved? with anonymity you're not really forgiving anybody personally because you don't know who they are; this is reminiscent of how we don't have to 'forgive' the ground if we ever trip and get hit in the knees by the ground or something.
but the functional contribution of both forgiveness and online anonymity is a capacity to absorb mistakes. to withhold (or delay) the application of "justice" (but in practice it's usually some sort of revenge or token scapegoating) because it does make sense to do it like this.
but this is not trivial to explain; hence the complexity around explaining (and understanding) the principles of forgiveness....
"Forgiveness" seems to be at least two separate but related things.
1. A willingness not to dwell on the past.
2. A relief from a sense that the past is causing present harms.
(1) applies largely to the person doing the forgiving, and (2) to the person being forgiven, but they are intertwined.
The "necessity of changing the behavior" affects both. If the behavior is still going on, then it doesn't matter if they've been forgiven for past transgressions. And if the person desires to believe that the past isn't still causing harm, then continuing to cause that harm undermines that.
You can frame it as a devious matter of "control" if you want, but we're talking about a conflict here. The person granting forgiveness wants a thing to change. They don't suddenly have omnipotent power to enforce that change. They merely have a way of framing the question.
If you don't care to be forgiven, there's nothing that can be done. If you have caused harm and don't mind continuing to be harm, then the second part of my formulation simply doesn't apply to you.
It leaves the first half, and they can do their best. It will almost certainly involve removing themselves from the situation, as best they can. That can have consequences for the person doing the harm, and if that matters to them they may reconsider. But that's not a magical control over them.
If you go through for the "great books" approach, just be aware that it's not the same curriculum as a major in mathematics:
> Mathematics is one of the many subjects studied in the college’s interdisciplinary great books curriculum. There are no majors at St. John’s.
It may be fulfilling from a humanistic/personal development perspective, but you won't really have the tools to do anything useful like cryptography, algorithms, physics, statistical inference, data analysis, etc., which, in my mind are the really cool things you can understand by learning math.
> Interviewer: Tell me a bit about your life situation at the time. Were you working on the project full-time? What did you do for funds?
> Diego: The year COVID hit was the most transformative year of my life. I was 15 at the time. A combination of both personal circumstances along with isolation gave me so much clarity—I transformed 180 degrees. During this time, I really got into self-improvement and started working out, meditating, reading, taking cold showers etc.
Personally, I did some of what he did when I was his age, but not to the same extent and I mostly decided to chill out and enjoy college.
At that age it's really risky to do. Really hard to go to college and sit in classes for 4 years if you already know everything. I guess you could go straight to grad school or industry, but you miss out on a lot of the social maturity and friendships you develop in college. Learning all this is almost a curse; he will always, in some sense, be alone in his newfound abilities.
(Sorry for the edits. Done editing before any child comments.)
I did something like this and ended up just substituting graduate classes for my math and physics requirements while taking regular undergraduate classes for everything else. I made a lot of great friends and was not the only undergrad in those graduate classes. I don't see it as a curse at all. I think the author will be fine if he stays motivated and finds the right peers and the right path.
Agree with everything you said. I also did the same thing basically, undergrad CS and grad math classes.
The author basically did all of undergrad math and physics, and now apparently they're planning to self-study all the grad math. The thing with self-studying is you're taking yourself out of the system, and at some point you have to inject yourself back in. I hope the author is able to do that and doesn't miss out on undergrad college too much, because it's really enjoyable if you find the right friends and you'll look back on it fondly.
I disagree, I think it will provide him with a great foundation for college. As great as online learning is, I don’t think it’s the same as taking a class that you go to multiple times a week and get in person feedback on. It also takes multiple passes at a given subject to properly understand it. I’m sure he’d learn many new things he didn’t quite get from his self study if he enrolled in an actual analysis course or w/e.
this makes sense to me. I skimmed what he took and it says he learned real analysis, a pretty challenging course. It's one thing to listen to the lectures and solve some problems and it's another to be given a difficult homework on a very tight deadline and perform well, same for exams.
I think it's extremely cool though and really a great idea but I am cautious about saying he has the equivalent of those undergraduate degrees.
Yeah, I have unpleasant real analysis memories of frantically taking notes while the lecturer stood facing the blackboard writing down proofs. But, I made it in the end and I have it on good authority now that 1 is indeed bigger than 0!
> it's another to be given a difficult homework on a very tight deadline and perform well, same for exams.
This is the stupid, broken part of school, that only exists as a cost-cutting measure. Real learning and creativity doesn't have this nonsense. It's like saying that living in a nice house is bad because you don't get to smell your poop while you eat. No one needs that. Diego is getting a better education because it isn't being arbitrarily cut short and of track before the going gets good.
I agree with you about it being broken. We’re so focused on grades because they are a believed to be an important part of the credentialing process for getting jobs. An ideal learning environment would likely be something closer to Plato’s academy, imo. Probably not possible under capitalism except for the very rich with a lot of leisure time.
At least in the fields mathematics, physics, and to a lesser extent CS (which has a huge number of students and is becoming like a new business degree), professors view undergraduate degrees as a way to find good students who can go on to graduate school. So there is a tendency to be adversarial in classes. The GPA is one way to measure student aptitude but it's not perfect. Typically more than one metric is taken. If you just love these topics that's a great thing to learn. But if you want to contribute to the fields, it will be hard unless you go through the credentialing process.
> We’re so focused on grades because they are a believed to be an important part of the credentialing process for getting jobs.
Various colleges (ex: Reed, Brown) in the U.S. don't have grades. Their graduates do just fine, afaik.
In defense of grades, they are a good extrinsic motivator for learning boring subjects. Grades are a good consequence for phoning in it. I would probably have skipped reading most of the books I was assigned to read in school if there were no consequences, and would have ended up an (even) less educated person if not for grades.
> At that age it's really risky to do. Really hard to go to college and sit in classes for 4 years if you already know everything.
Or you can do what many of us did, and take more advanced classes.
> I guess you could go straight to grad school or industry, but you miss out on a lot of the social maturity and friendships you develop in college.
There is a standard pathway. Diverging from it doesn't cripple people, at least anyone I know. The pathway was different 100 years ago, or 400 years ago. It's all good.
Personally, though, if I were him, I'd do something different, like a field of engineering. The math and physics will give a huge edge, while he's learning new stuff.
nah, i have plenty of similarly smart friends who are doing just fine. he'll fit right in in some college environments, and he can take the time he's not wasting doing class and pursue real things that matter, like research.
I can see both sides of the riskiness of studying the material before taking the course. On the one hand, a person who I see as highly accomplished person in mathematics told me that he did very well in his courses by pre-studying much of their material in the summer before they started, because he was both interested in the subjects and wanted to do well. But on the other hand, I also know of some people who took an introductory language course after previously studying the language, and received worse grades than people new to the language because they didn't put as much effort into the assignments as they didn't see the value (though they did well with minimal preparation for writing assignments).
I think it's better to pre-study, as if you go to the right university, you can take honours-level courses or enter more rigorous, challenging programs, which should still be challenging enough to engage you. Alternatively, if you don't like the challenge (though if you're the type of person to achieve that amount of self-study, you probably would enjoy it), you can take a more normal program and focus on more deeply learning the material over a longer period of time. With the higher grades from deeper learning, you can stand out and earn scholarships and grants to get practical experience by working in a professor's lab.
So, overall, I think it's better to pre-study if you can, as you can keep the benefits while minimizing the risk of boredom by finding ways to challenge yourself. Though in reality, the main issue for someone around 18 is that they might not even know about the risks of boredom, or how to challenge yourself in this way. Hopefully such people who are succeed in self-studying in advance, are around good people who can guide them to find ways to challenge themselves in a healthy way.
Haha. The importance of grades depends on your goals: on the one hand, I know two engineering grads who scored multiple great internships with a sub-3.0 GPA, with one landing a very high-paying job thanks to these internships. But on the other hand, a mathematics professor persuasively said to my class that your life can be a lot easier if you do get higher grades. They can help with graduate school admissions, scholarships, and getting certain internships.
So, while grades don't really matter for the vast majority of great employers after graduation, good grades do make it easier to find opportunities earlier on. If it's not overly stressful for a student to achieve higher grades, it's worthwhile to score them for better early career opportunities (e.g. access to top labs and competitive internships).
But if it's too much of a burden for the student, you can be extremely successful career-wise regardless of grades, especially if you work hard and creatively to find ways to gain experience and demonstrate your abilities. For example, one successful former classmate found great internships via networking through their engineering design team, where the companies overlooked their GPA in favour of their demonstrated experience with engineering with the team.
If he can write a good application and gets great scores at his tests (which he should considered how above the required level he is now), he should get a good scholarship and knowing the material should get him noticed pretty quickly which will open opportunities to publish quickly at least in mathematics.
Plus, he clearly is self-motivated and able to study by himself. University will give access to a ton of material and researchers. He should thrive.
Given the opportunity, learning is rarely a wrong choice.
Or he could lead group study sessions. I graduated last year and for many of my classes there were a couple of people like this, and everyone loved them.
What I find strange in OP's story is that HC and recruiter actually gave a reason for the rejection. Most companies after they reject you are tight-lipped.
> denied by multiple Databricks employees in the [Blind] thread, who clearly said...
That proves nothing. HR departments shill on Blind.
I agree “HR departments shill on Blind” but the claim made by several people in that thread (at least one who said they are a hiring manager) that Databricks has recently hired multiple people who were laid off is verifiable as true or false. It’s not just a generic weasel statement like “it’s not our policy to…” or “we treat all applicants fairly” or something like that.
> but the claim made by several people in that thread (at least one who said they are a hiring manager) that Databricks has recently hired multiple people who were laid off is verifiable as true or false
How exactly, again, did you verify their identity as a hiring manager?
> The 39-year-old immigrant from India, who works in Seattle on a H-1B visa, said as soon as he heard the question “Do you eat meat?” from his Indian manager he knew he was in trouble.
> By admitting to eating meat, the tech worker had exposed himself as a member of an oppressed caste, or a Dalit, formerly known as an “untouchable,” in the social hierarchy that is pervasive in South Asian countries.
(EDIT: if the article and allegations are true)
I say the following as an outsider, an
American, and with the utmost respect for other cultures and their right to dignity and the integrity of their traditions within our society:
Jesus Christ. What the fuck is wrong with this person.
This is an unacceptable behavior, and it should be banned as a condition of entry to the country. This supposedly enlightened and woke country. Although this is a cultural tradition -- and it's not our place to judge what may or may not go on in India -- all humans are equal here, and this tradition should not be allowed in the United States.
(EDIT: Maybe this story is a false flag, maybe this is all fake, to justify layoffs, purges, etc... but if not, the above is my opinion as an anon.)
> By admitting to eating meat, the tech worker had exposed himself as a member of an oppressed caste, or a Dalit
This is nonsense. The majority of Indians, upper caste or otherwise eat meat. Vegetarians make up less than 2% of the population of my home state.
I have no trouble believing that Indians abroad act out their casteist bigotry in vile ways. But when I read something that gets the details so wrong, I start to wonder how much of it is just made up.
I am from Punjab, & certainly there are more than 2% of vegetarians in Punjab (maybe more people drink alcohol & but not eat meat). A google search says 33% of Punjabis are vegetarian. Stereotype is typical Punjabi eats chicken, saag, butter, liquor.
Another complexity is, different levels of vegetarians. One who eat egg only. One who eat fish only. Or chicken only, no mutton. Or no pork. Or never beef. Or any combination. Or depends on season, day, weather, people. People might be secretly eating meat without telling parents or family.
Although your statement may be completely true, less than 2% vegi, (stereotypes) for South Indian states, Bengal, Orissa etc.
Yes, Punjabis are very caste aware in USA, Jatt & such, and that absolutely come into play here in California while making social connections, gathering, groups. At works, retail locations, hiring, Punjabi owners care less about caste & more about cost.
But diet isn't the only data point here, pretty sure diet plus home state/region (maybe discernable from accent and/or surname) is likely enough to determine it
> pretty sure diet plus home state/region (maybe discernable from accent
You would be wrong. There is absolutely no way to tell a person's caste based on where they come from.
> surname
Surname could be an indicator but that doesn't need questions about diet.
I know people who were raised in vegetarian Hindu households in India who became beef lovers after they moved to the US. I'm skeptical that questions about diet are particularly useful for a would-be caste discriminator.
A lot of non-Dalit people eat meat in India. The only thing eating meat proves is you are not a Brahmin, the priest class, who were long considered the most pure and closer to God. In addition Jains and Gujaratis also do not typically eat meat.
If some Indian were to ask me if I eat meat, I wouldn't immediately associate malice with that enquiry. Talking about food back home, is a common source of connection for a lot of the Indian diaspora.
OP is correct by and large. But Hinduism is full of contradictions, for every rule there are are half a dozen exceptions so your observation isn't an anomaly.
The thing is, there's no master text (unlike Indian constitution) that one can consult and conclude "Brahmin == no meat". Someone would cite a scripture from an ancient Hindu text (for example, Rigveda, or Manu Smriti etc.,) and draw a conclusion, however the same text might as well contain a scripture few pages down that says exactly the opposite.
I was indeed responding to this meaning. I was commenting that it's perfectly possible for a community to be Brahmin and yet be meat eating. Just that it's not mainstream. In India, the very first assumption one makes the moment they hear Brahmin/Jain is that they must be pure vegetarians.
> Not eating meat however is a strong signal though
I also personally know several counter-examples to this rule.
If meat/no-meat is the only signal people are using, there must be a lot of false positives and negatives. Or my sample of the population is somehow atypical.
Yes it is not, plenty of soft cues are signals - today's generation isn't good at identifying them ( a good thing!).
Meat/no-meat is the most common signal, certainly not the only one, surname would be another, language (ethnolect or dialect) is sometimes another.
There are no perfect methods short of asking, some older people and more overtly racists (even they aren't aware) straight up do ask.
Also most racists only really care whether you are their caste or not, it doesn't matter what you actually are, so classification into their group or not is easier than do it precisely.
There are a lot of false positives and negatives, which is why this is a broken system in cities and places where you couldn't possibly know their caste from their diet or their surname.
Nothing short of explicitly asking for their caste would let you know 100%, people are just really good at generalizing.
The real question Ive heard being asked is "Veg or Non veg?" This in many places is used to ask the caste question without explicitly asking for caste.
The other question I've heard being asked of Indians is "what is your full name?" as most upper caste Indians indicate their caste in their surname/family name. If your surname isn't upper caste, you are likely to be silently dropped in many social situations.
So someone who eats meat and doesn't have an uppercaste name is a lower caste. However since some upper castes do eat meat the surname question gets them through.
The color of your skin is the third SELECT. At some point all of it seems like a DB query.
In many localities and apartment complexes across India you will find it difficult to get houses because of these simple questions. A brief stint in Bangalore was eye opening with real estate agents being super frank about caste specificity.
Veg or non veg will get different answers from my family. Dad eats meat because liquor. Mum doesn't because she never did. We siblings are split half & half.
This question may get different answers based on season, day, time, or even people around, or even meat options. Navratre no mean, no meat on sundays, Tuesday, Saturday, or such. No meat in front of parents or relatives. No meat if preparing for some big exam. No meat if it is pork or beef. Chicken, egg, fish ok.
I'm guessing the journalist made the wrong simplifying assumption. A lot of people from the brahmin caste don't eat meat, so maybe the anecdote is about a brahmin and not-a-brahmin interaction. There's plenty of people who're not dalits and eat meat.
The journalist may have attempted to "simplify" the anecdote instead of explaining all these details, but ended up screwing it up. To anyone who's Indian this comes across like it's "fake news", whatever their intention maybe.
Americans already have enough damaging stereotypes of Indians, it would be nice if reporters were careful reporting subtle problems instead of editorializing everything to fit their audience.
Facts. Quite a few ignorant comments on this post follow the classic "discrimination has nO pLaCe iN tHiS cOuNtrY!!!" by amnesiacs who need to be reminded that just 6 decades ago it was a COMMON & POPULAR American cultural practice to hog-tie pregnant black women upside down on tree branches and burn them alive for fun. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynching_in_the_United_States.
Should we talk about how equally they treated Native Americans? (they've slaughtered 99% of them and stolen their land which they continue to live on and enjoy as their own).
And remember, they're going to teach the world about human rights and equality!
This is laughable and absurd. Eating meat has nothing to do with caste. Please don't make assumptions based on some shitty article. It clearly has an agenda.
Now, let me tell you what Indians do make fun of. If you are a hardcore vegetarian, meat eating Indians will make fun of you calling you "Grass Eater" as a joke among friends. But that is not too different than American culture as well. Even the legendary Arnold Schewarnegger in the movie "Escape Plan" said "You hit like a vegetarian".
That's simply incorrect. Meat consumption correlates strongly with caste and the traditional reason is that it's a signifier of high social and religious purity. The American equivalent to this is teetotalling which is more prevalent among high social status Protestants. (essentially the US Brahmin class).
And even today of course vegetarianism has the same function. Vegetarians in the WWest as well as India are still more affluent and educated and it's a sign of civilized behavior, self-discipline, moral status etc. Arnold, as a bodybuilder (derogatory term "meathead" is no accident) may be rich but as an actor isn't a traditional upper class member.
I've always associated religious teetotalism more with low church/Evangelical protestantism (e.g. Baptists and Methodists) rather than 'high church' denominations in, say, Anglican/Episcopalian, Presbyterian, or some Lutheran sects. The former doesn't exactly seem like high social status to me.
Uh, there are a lot of supposedly upper caste people who eat meat. Maybe in the old days but I thought the caste stuff was no longer a thing. It’s really the wokeism / sjw finding their next supposed cause.
But I agree with you. By putting that statement in quotes, I implied that the OP had said that. And they didn't. Wasn't fair of me to do that. Apologies.
> This is an unacceptable behavior, and it should be banned as a condition of entry to the country.
Or, we could embrace everyone, establish equal rules for participation in our society and show them a better way. I think this “Jesus Christ” you invoke would agree.
> In my generation it seems like everyone has something they are really into that isn't work or their immediate family.
Not all zoomers. I pretty much confine myself to work, lurking online, occasional periods of HN commenting, drinking, and the occasional walk or hike. Just biding my time and collecting my tech TC. When I get into late 20s and am rich, then I'll think about doing those things.
> Main street suburbia is no longer dead antique shops. There's now an arthouse cinema, axe throwing, duck pin bowling, and a brewery.
I always hear junior tech workers and interns saying how much they do these rock climbing/top golf/etc. type of activities. I always assumed they were signaling. Maybe it's great and more people should try axe throwing.
>When I get into late 20s and am rich, then I'll think about doing those things.
This is pretty unhealthy honestly. As I got out of my early 20s my worldview on a lot of this sort of "hole up and just grind, rest later" has changed a lot. Who knows what your late 20s will be like? I've seen them end up going all sorts of ways for different people. Maybe you will end up with some expensive medical condition, maybe you will just be older and not have the body you had in the early 20s. Some of your friends and loved ones will have died by then, you might even die, who knows? Live today for today, because there's no guarantee for a tomorrow. If this lifestyle makes you happy then by all means do what makes you happy, since avoiding stress is very important to a healthy long life, but don't ever defer enjoyment or happiness to some later time you assume will happen.
I still vaguely remember this discussion from Walden from when I read it 10 years ago:
> "I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers.
> The farmer can work alone in the field or the woods all day, hoeing or chopping, and not feel lonesome, because he is employed; but when he comes home at night he cannot sit down in a room alone, at the mercy of his thoughts, but must be where he can “see the folks,” and recreate, and as he thinks remunerate himself for his day’s solitude...
> ... He wonders how the student can sit alone in the house all night and most of the day without ennui and “the blues;” but he does not realize that the student, though in the house, is still at work in his field, and chopping in his woods, as the farmer in his, and in turn seeks the same recreation and society that the latter does, though it may be a more condensed form of it.
> Consider the girls in a factory,—never alone, hardly in their dreams. It would be better if there were but one inhabitant to a square mile, as where I live. The value of a man is not in his skin, that we should touch him.
There is more than one way to live, and it's not a sickness not to eagerly participate in social axe throwing et. al. I think it's great that some people like it. But I don't think not doing it is missing too much. Life is long.
I'm not telling you to go throw axes if that's what you aren't into. I was just honing in on your point that you'd make time for your life after you are older and rich, and how that isn't a great mindset because things can sometimes change dramatically from your expectations. That's all. Again, if you are happy with how you live your life, by all means, its just that your initial comment indicated to me that you were perhaps putting off some happiness and living for a later date that comes with expectations that might not get met. Life is long, if you luck out and live long, but you will learn eventually how temporary life and good health really are.
As someone who did what you talk about for quite some time, life is not long. There is a reason that carpe diem is a durable enough phrase to have survived millennia.
Depends on how you live life. I have seen people even in their 60s and 70s have a very rich life, especially as money can buy things that are usually not accessible for those in their 20s who are still building their wealth.
In fact an incorrect implementation of CBC mode famously caused a vulnerability in Microsoft's ASP.NET in 2010 (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/security-updates/securityb...). The margin for error is small and even subtle mistakes or incorrect design can cripple security. Even Microsoft got it wrong once (although they handled remediation very well).
Or... you can have a more nuanced viewpoint and note that CBC is really, really, really easy to implement, and _really_ doesn't fall into that category of discussion.
The reason you don't implement your own block ciphers is because side-channel attacks are damn near impossible for normal programmers to understand. Especially timing attacks.
But block-modes of operation? Some of them are really easy. I've ever heard of a bad implementation of CBC causing a security bug.
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I'd say you shouldn't implement your own GCM mode. GCM is quite complex, and the Galois Field's authentication bits could be side-channeled if you don't know what you're doing.
CBC? Where's the flaw? Its so stupid simple I don't think that even a novice would make a critical error.
You keep saying "the Galois Field" as if that was a thing. It's GCM. The components of GCM are CTR mode and the GMAC authentication code, which is based on GHASH. If you're afraid of Galois fields, you don't get to use AES at all! Nobody should be implementing any of these primitives themselves, very much including CBC, which, as you saw downthread, left both you and the author of this project with an insecure cryptosystem.
Vulnerabilities in CBC systems were for a long time during the 2000s the most common crypto vulnerabilities on the Internet. There are more things that go wrong with CBC mode than just forgetting to authenticate it!
> You keep saying "the Galois Field" as if that was a thing
You're kidding, right? You've never looked at how GCM-mode works? The entire set of math is inside of the GF(2^128) field. That's why its called a Galois Counter Mode.
I don't think anyone should be implementing their own GCM mode. Its very subtle and potentially full of traps. CBC on the other hand is pretty dumb and simple, and surprisingly secure and robust
> Vulnerabilities in CBC systems were for a long time during the 2000s the most common crypto vulnerabilities on the Internet. There are more things that go wrong with CBC mode than just forgetting to authenticate it!
If they're so common, you shouldn't have much of an issue naming one such vulnerability.
The math used in AES (Rijndael) utilize operations in GF(2^8) tho, so you're doing operations using Galois fields whether your utilizing GCM or CBC. I don't really see how adding the GCM mode utilizing GF(2^128) on top is significantly more difficult or error prone than implementing the AES block cipher itself. You should still be familiar with operations over Galois fields regardless if you've for some reason (foolishly imo) decided you want to implement AES cryptographic primitives on your own.
Regardless there's no good reason not to use a vetted open source implementation instead, preferably with an even higher level of abstraction so your not having to worry about ciphers or modes of operation at all[1].
The library used in this Javascript widget has AES already implemented, but not GCM mode.
> Regardless there's no good reason not to use a vetted open source implementation instead, preferably with an even higher level of abstraction so your not having to worry about ciphers or modes of operation at all[1].
I think that's generally the preferred solution, yes.
It's a CBC padding oracle, intrinsic to the operation of CBC --- if you PKCS7-pad some other mode, you do not get the same attack --- the single best-known cryptographic vulnerability on the Internet, and the parent commenter took the time to give you the most famous instance of it. For the record: that's also not the only CBC vulnerability.
The padding is a key part of using a block cipher in CBC mode.
I’m not sure why you’re ferociously defending the practice of implementing your own cryptography. It’s well known that this is a horrible idea for good reason.
> Furthermore, padding oracles are completely irrelevant to data at rest, like as described in this topics use case. So it really is a bit of a non sequitur too.
That's not true and extremely dangerous to say. In an offline, black-box scenario no server is needed for a padding-oracle. You are thinking of a side-channel oracle. A padding-oracle attack can absolutely be feasible in many cases.
I appreciate your efforts at actually elevating this discussion. Yes, I said something too general when I really was just trying to describe _this_ particular HTML-page encryption implementation.
You're right that its possible that an offline decryption algorithm could in fact be a padding oracle under the right scenario. But I still posit it probably doesn't apply to this static-HTML page generator.
> It is economically rational for ambitious women to try as hard as possible to be thin
It is economically rational for all ambitious people to try as hard as possible to fit into the accepted standard of attractiveness, including weight. This is just a special case.
Another point, I don't think most people find hyper-thinness attractive. In fact being underweight is far worse for your health (HR=~1.6) than overweight is (HR=~1.05). I hope notions of attractiveness in Western societies can normalize on just being healthy.
> I hope notions of attractiveness in Western societies can normalize on just being healthy.
I believe this is happening, particularly noticeable for American women. "Fit/Athletic" is in, "skinny" is out. My wife has noticed that high-status/high-income American women tend to be much more athletic than high-status women in Europe and elsewhere, where they tend to be thin. In both cases, genetically inherited attractiveness also dominates (e.g. height for men, facial structure, etc).
> Another point, I don't think most people find hyper-thinness attractive.
Depends on the society. In Asia it's still by far the most popular aesthetic, especially for women.
> Depends on the society. In Asia it's still by far the most popular aesthetic, especially for women.
I guess I outed myself as an American. I'm not sure I want to compare attractiveness standards with other cultures. I'm ok to take a hedonistic view here: if adhering to super-thin attractiveness standards causes women suffering or shortens their lives (which it does) then the standards are bad and I hope people in those countries reevaluate their standards.
I think a lot of that has to do with perception in media as well. I remember as a kid, it seemed that almost every male protagonist in coming of age stories had a tomboy girlfriend who was very athletic. Recently I had a discussion with some friends on childhood TV crushes, and most of them mentioned characters that fit the "fit" tomboy archetype.
Sure, it's anecdotal. Still, I wonder how much media people see in childhood influences what people view as attractive later in life?
> Depends on the society. In Asia it's still by far the most popular aesthetic, especially for women.
This would surprise me. Being fit and muscular is a sign that you are wealthy enough to spend time exercising and researching how to exercise, and/or have a trainer.
Being able to control your diet is cool, but what is even cooler is being able to go for an 8K run and then eating whatever you want.
The crucial statistics/claims in the article are the following
> Myriad studies find that overweight or obese women are paid less than their thinner peers while there is little difference in wages between obese men and men in the medically defined “normal” range.
> The upper estimates of the wage premium for a women being thin are so significant that she might find it almost as valuable to lose weight as she would to gain additional education. The wage premium for getting a master’s degree is around 18%, only 1.8 times the premium a fat women could, in theory, earn by losing around 65lbs—roughly the amount that a moderately obese women of average height would have to lose to be in the medically defined “normal” range.
Which is used to support the conclusion that it is "economically rational for women to lose weight".
Yep, and I believe the life expectancy change for just being overweight is very small, weight doesn't start really affecting expectancy until you hit the Obese mark.
The article seems pretty clearly to indicate that this is far from "just a special case". It cites data that show that the rewards to thin women relative to fat ones far outpace the differences in reward for men on their own axes of attractiveness.
Cameras near fire alarms and it's a crime in the U.S. to give a false alarm.