escapetech's comments

escapetech | 8 years ago | on: Regarding Marcus Hutchins aka MalwareTech

A guilt and redemption system focuses almost exclusively on the transgressions of the accused for the well being of society. An ethical system takes into account the well-being of everybody including the accused.

escapetech | 8 years ago | on: Launch HN: 70MillionJobs (YC S17) – Job board for people with criminal records

Also, please reconsider your decision to feature Google and Facebook as prominently as "featured employers". If it's for security, maintenance, and janitorial work, it's more practical to list the agencies that they hire temps from. Otherwise, look no further than nearby East Palo Alto and one will find that neither company particularly cares about rehabilitating ex-offenders or people from at-risk communities for any type of technical employment.

The general rule with Silicon Valley and San Francisco companies is to take everything they say in public or through their carefully worded P.R. with a grain of salt, and actually find out first hand if they practice what they preach hiring outliers with respect to diversity, records/credit/etc, non-Ivy League degrees, etc.

escapetech | 8 years ago | on: The Decline of the American Laundromat

Certainly while there are cultural aspects at play, it's impossible to ignore the reality of certain areas in America being cleaner and less littered, and better serviced than other areas, and a large part of that has to do with the money available for people who inhabit and regularly use those spaces/facilities, and the ability to keep away certain demographics in order for the money to continue to be available.

escapetech | 8 years ago | on: The Decline of the American Laundromat

It's not only in cities. In the USA, public facilities outside of exclusive areas are usually associated with those considered poor and personal failures.

Combined with the resentment that most people have towards subsidizing public facilities and services used by/built for those who need them (even though in the USA, it's a fraction of what's used towards foreign interventions), there's little if any incentive in maintaining, let alone building more public/publicly used places, especially ones that will end up being used exclusively by the people they want nothing do with (who often internalize this open resentment and further contribute to the problem of poor quality public facilities).

escapetech | 8 years ago | on: I Have No Enemies: My Final Statement (2009)

> Now, the government is too afraid to publicly speak about Liu

As it should be. Speaking up would only draw more attention to Norway's unscrupulous actions in conflicted and autocratic regions, especially considering its public image of neutrality, diplomacy, non-interference, and promoting progressive values. Denmark and Sweden are also in this as well - they say they promote human rights while exporting billions of euros in military technology and services to regions with known human rights abuses.

escapetech | 8 years ago | on: Owl – An OCaml Numerical Library

Also problematic for numeric code in Ocaml is the lack of native interoperability with C data types and native arrays and instead having to use time-consuming abstractions such as BigArray or marshalling via FFI. Unfortunately, solutions like as CTypes only seem to compound the problem by not addressing a particular issue with a runtime, but finding clever ways around the limitation.

escapetech | 8 years ago | on: Federal Court Establishes Constitutional Right to Film Police Officers in Public

I would also add

* Open sourcing data to promote transparency and integrity.

* Whistle-blower protection of both civilians and law enforcement who witness and report misconduct.

* A national registry for those ever suspended/terminated for serious/repeated misconduct.

* Continual training and development beyond academy training.

* Transfer to different departments after a period of time in one department (as part of continual training).

* Yearly internal reviews by external (national) agencies

escapetech | 8 years ago | on: I'm not a Woman in Tech

>> I'm glad her experiences are such that she hasn't encountered these barriers,

According to whom? Just because one doesn't address or mention the obstacles faced in their personal life doesn't necessarily mean that none were faced.

>> I've never seen men, as a group, encounter the obstacles I've seen many female peers discuss.

The solution is not to ignore the individual instances of these problems occurring within a group or across other groups that aren't necessarily by gender.

escapetech | 8 years ago | on: I'm a creep. I'm sorry

The lengths that companies will go to protect themselves from lawsuits is silly, but at the same time necessary given the potentially problematic behaviors and motivations of certain employees.

escapetech | 8 years ago | on: Michael K. Williams Is More Than Omar from ‘The Wire’

In light of the "All Eyez on Me" movie recently released, there is an interesting, indirect relationship between Michael K Williams and Tupac Shakur.

Shakur was filming with Mickey Rourke for 1996 release Bullet (actually filmed in 1994), and Williams was specifically chosen for a role by Shakur because of his facial scar. William's manager at the time was James Rosemond who is currently incarcerated with several life terms. Rosemond was a childhood friend of Michael Williams, and grew up in the same area of East Flatbush, Brooklyn, near the Vandeveer housing projects (now called Flatbush Gardens), and became heavily involved in street crimes as a teenager, allegedly robbing drug dealers like in the Wire.

Fast forwarding to the early 90's, a number executives in the urban music industry had indirect/direct ties with street crime and gang culture, and Rosemond, who became Michael K William's manager, was believed to be one of them (he also managed several popular urban music groups at the time). It's widely believed by industry insiders that Rosemond wanted to become Shakur's manager as well, but Shakur wasn't interested. Also, much of Shakur's problems (the 1994 shooting and imprisonment) are believed by many to be of the doing of either Rosemond or his acquaintances.

It would be interesting to know how much Omar's character was influenced by his friendship with Rosemond and people from the neighborhood they both knew.

escapetech | 8 years ago | on: I'm a creep. I'm sorry

Actually a breakup can turn into any one of those situations. One person can begin spreading rumors and propagating lies about the other person, or begin leaving harassing messages. Workplace morale can be severely affected. Co-workers lives can literally be in danger because of how one person in a workplace romance interprets behaviors.

You really have to understand the perspective of a company to know why any form of singling out an employee for any type of reason, including dating or romance, is a potential legal landmine.

escapetech | 8 years ago | on: I'm a creep. I'm sorry

You personally may think dating coworkers is fine under some circumstances, and so may the other person potentially involved, but others not involved and observing may find it unacceptable under any circumstance. One goal of the workplace is to ensure equal treatment and equal protection to all of its workers under any and all circumstances.

escapetech | 8 years ago | on: As the U.S. fantasizes, the world builds high speed rail

I've seen projects for extending train lines and bus routes literally coming to complete halt because residents were defensive and paranoid about the demographics of people that would be potentially visiting their area. There's a general consensus in much of America, even among the working class, that walking and using public transportation is a sign of personal failure.

escapetech | 8 years ago | on: I'm a creep. I'm sorry

It's not necessarily about power imbalances - subordinates might express interest in a superior, or a colleague might interest in another colleague, and both situations can be just as problematic as a superior expressing interest in a subordinate.

The problem is simply one person deciding to single out another person for any deviation of expected treatment especially when it has no relation to the social context or work performance/duties.

Hitting on a coworker is potentially as problematic as inviting a coworker to church. Being extra friendly to a coworker or customer of a different gender is just as problematic as being nasty and disrespectful to a coworker or client of a different ethnicity. Every scenario mentioned is grounds for making the person or possibly even those next to the person uncomfortable, leading to harassment claims. Furthermore, the idea of only behaving a certain way if the other party consents is a lack of principle. It potentially jeopardizes the protections a workplace is supposed to provide to all workers and customers. Just because a door is left open does not mean one should enter.

escapetech | 8 years ago | on: Canada's top court backs order for Google to remove firm's website from searches

Considering that the DA threw everything but the kitchen sink at the Cosby case, a retrial would be either unlikely or unfruitful, given the judge's intentional leaking of juror's names to the press and hinging his judicial career on a guilty verdict prior to the trial, a second trial could result in legitimate claims of malicious prosecution, making any conviction easy to appeal and ultimately overturn by a higher court.

escapetech | 8 years ago | on: Canada's top court backs order for Google to remove firm's website from searches

> Let's not lose sight of other potential dangers just because we're focused on one that's getting a lot of attention in the moment.

Sure, the Cosby trial might be an example of another danger. He was found not guilty despite claims that were ultimately found by a jury of his peers to be baseless or questionable.

But this really isn't about the spectrum of abuse of allegations, but rather the danger in how someone may legally try to suppress publicly available information because of a particular court deeming it in the public interest to.

escapetech | 8 years ago | on: Canada's top court backs order for Google to remove firm's website from searches

> but what about the other end of the spectrum, where baseless claims are leveled on a person.

You are confusing imaginary baseless claims with matters of public record. The potential danger of abuse is in allowing individuals/entities using the law to keep potentially unfavorable public records off from the Internet as a matter of public good, as with the right to be forgotten cases in the EU.

escapetech | 8 years ago | on: Canada's top court backs order for Google to remove firm's website from searches

This wouldn't be the first time a government is requiring Google to modify their search results. This case parallels the "right to be forgotten" cases brought against them by the EU several years ago. There is a reason that civil liberties and human rights organizations like the ACLU are concerned about this precedent.

In the US, with the murders of unarmed civilians by law enforcement and subsequent acquittals occurring at an alarming rate with increasing public outrage, it might be only a matter of time before a court somewhere rules in the favor of a person found innocent who is suing to keep as many details of a particular murder off the Internet on the grounds that his or her constitutional rights being violated (i.e inability to find employment, friendship, etc), and companies such as Google being forced to comply with the court's rulings.

escapetech | 8 years ago | on: Ask HN: What are the best books on modern computer graphics?

What many people fail to realize is that the older and fixed pipeline legacy API's in modern graphics cards are emulated with thin layers directly on top of the modern stacks. On today's iOS devices, OpenGL ES 1.0 is emulated with the OpenGL ES 3.0 API, which very likely in turn is emulated with the Metal API.

If there was a genuine interest in helping the transition to the newer API's, the different parties writing and implementing today's API's would publicly make available the code for emulation layers to the older API's.

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