keiru (u/keiru) - Readit News

keiru commented on Zero Trust Information stratechery.com/2020/zero... · Posted by u/notlukesky

keiru · 6 years ago

Firstly, getting this out of my chest: It felt like a really good note, except for the graphs. The author acknowledges that he is pulling the Bell curve out of his ass, but somehow serves to illustrate his point. But for some reason the extra amount of information that would implicitly come from the internet seems uniformly distributed across qualities. I would have expected a taller (or wider) Bell curve if anything. Why even bother with graphs if there is no semblance of meaning to it? Was he aiming for the target audience's math fetish? I do appreciate silly illustrations, but I felt it distractingly pointless.

Having said that, it's nice to see that people acknowledge the ways that information was available, seeding the need to re-evaluate information dynamics.

keiru commented on Canadian scientists make Covid-19 research breakthrough, isolating virus ctvnews.ca/health/coronav... · Posted by u/jonbaer

djsumdog · 6 years ago

hmm .. wish they released pictures. Isolating the virus is interesting because it's possible to get good, high resolution images when you have a billion of them in one place, versus the current computer generated image everyone is using.

keiru · 6 years ago

It's amazing how the whole world can be in turmoil about a presence we barely bothered to actually look at because there's simply no point in doing so.

keiru commented on Tell HN: Your old Yahoo Mail emails are probably gone · Posted by u/mayank

diablo1 · 6 years ago

You can also re-register an account that was deleted by someone else. Major hole in Yahoo's systems. Enables identity theft and other shenanigans

keiru · 6 years ago

This is the only reason I chose not to delete some old accounts from different sites, and check on them yearly-ish. I used to think the internet as ephemeral, but I don't have that luxury as long as anyone else doesn't. From relatives to banks the authentication crisis is real. My soul is forever bound to some shitty teenage usernames and some poorly secured hashes distributed around the world.

keiru commented on Ask HN: Was the Y2K crisis real? · Posted by u/kkdaemas

protomyth · 6 years ago

Yes, it was a real crisis. This revisionist history that some are now saying it was no big deal. It was a big deal and many people spent many hours in the 90's assuring that the financial side of every business continued. I am starting to get a bit offended at the discounting of the effort put in by developers around the world. Just because the news didn't understand the actual nature of the crisis (Y2K = primarily financial problems) is no excuse to crap on the hard work of others. It is sad that people that got the job done by working years on it get no credit because they actually got the job done.

I see this as a big problem because Y2038 is on the horizon and this "not a big deal" attitude is going to bite us hard. Y2K was pretty much a financial server issue[1], but Y2038 is in your walls. Its control systems for machinery that are going to be the pain point and that is going to be much, much worse. The analysis is going to be a painful and require digging through documentation that might not be familiar (building plans).

1) yes there were other important things, but the majority of work was because of financials.

keiru · 6 years ago

>Y2038 is in your walls

Fuck me, as this is true

keiru commented on The future of work requires a return to apprenticeships weforum.org/agenda/2019/1... · Posted by u/max_

keiru · 6 years ago

Related: Samo Burja is a sociologist with a pretty tidy and poignant YouTube channel. He has a lot of stuff on human institutions (from corporations to civilizations), their underlying social mechanics and what makes or breaks them. He emphasizes the importance of patronage and apprenticeship viewed as a "social technology" that allow for the correct passing of knowledge that is essential to maintaining institutional life-cycles.

Short introductory videos:

Why We Still Need Masters & Apprentices: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ribdRDO75Rk

Dynasties: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNIYEhjI2xE

Functional Institutions are the Exception: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fanjkT3pi0

Intellectual Dark Matter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KPAD1UjpsE

Longer and very worthwhile talks:

Civilization: Institutions, Knowledge, and the Future: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACdYmuFyjWM

Institutions And Intellectual Dark Matter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aA-YeBb5V4

keiru commented on Ask HN: Why is everyone I talk to in the real world so unperturbed by Covid-19? · Posted by u/handsomechad

keiru · 6 years ago

I found this so baffling that the best I can say is I don't know, and I've found no explanation satisfactory. "Denial" doesn't cut it, it's mass delusion. The first Chinese quarantine was a giant red flag that nearly everyone ignored.

keiru commented on Ask HN: How are you preparing for COVID-19 disruptions? · Posted by u/Spellman

Recursing · 6 years ago

Hi! Are you following me from the other thread? o.o

It's not "It can't possibly happen here!", more like "it hasn't happened in any place in western Europe in recent memory". We've had major earthquakes and stuff, but nothing that "stocking food" would have been useful for, (afaik)

keiru · 6 years ago

Which brings us back to the matter at hand; devastating plagues have happened many times in Europe. This one is probably not going to be devastating, but we really don't know the effect of this disruption in today's society.

keiru commented on WHO: COVID-19 in 29 countries last Monday, now 56 npr.org/sections/goatsand... · Posted by u/bookofjoe

rasz · 6 years ago

We now know with certainty Chinese numbers are more trustworthy than US (and half of EU) ones on the sole basis Chinese are actually TESTING people, while CDC refuses any due diligence.

keiru · 6 years ago

But back to the discussion about the WHO, their bland attitude is greatly to blame for the inaction of the CDC, and the rest of the world.

As a case study, for some days half of all confirmed cases outside of China were in the Diamond Princess, and the proportion held until very recently with 1000+ cases worldwide (sans China). Why? Sampling bias. Even arguing that a cruise is more virus-friendly cannot possibly account for a single ship holding half of the world's cases. And then came about Iran and Italy, with no clear path of spread. It's hurtfully evident that there are so many more cases and there's a huge visibility issue, and the WHO delaying measures aggravates the matter dramatically.

keiru commented on WHO: COVID-19 in 29 countries last Monday, now 56 npr.org/sections/goatsand... · Posted by u/bookofjoe

enchiridion · 6 years ago

Why? Genuine question

keiru · 6 years ago

They showed a strong unwillingness to declare the high state of emergency from the start, which dragged the numbers 30 fold through delayed action. They were the one institution with the moral authority to drive prevention (incentivising testing, the closure of air travel, etc). People act as if the only possible responses are complete inaction or panic. This is terribly misguided. Had the WHO declared high alert a month ago, it would have meant a whole month to take it all in, plan, condition your touch-your-face reflexes, rethink your lifestyle, etc. Maybe they didn't want to be the boy who cried wolf after SARS, MERS and H1N1 were declared global outbreaks and ended up not being full-blown pandemics. But now what? Is the watchdog scared to watch? They act as if Chinese numbers are trustworthy, and I can only guess that it's half political reasons, half delusion. The CCP has a history of under/misreporting catastrophe that should be factored in, at the very least as a warning label. With a mostly mild disease that spreads like wildfire there's bound to be huge visibility biases which were not taken into account, and then you end up with things like Italy where they don't even know how it spread.

Instead there's a discourse vacuum where people seem to decide what's going to happen more on the basis of pre-existing narratives than reality. Examples; People mistrust the US believed it's all exaggerated to hurt China, for a while some "journalists" wrote more about racism and stigma than the actual ongoing development, politicians kept ringing the everything's OK alarm, and finally, mindless optimists are the worst.

The Chinese government decided to establish an economy-crippling quarantine on January 23rd with only 1000 confirmed cases. Something was awry. And in the following week all the warning sings have been available (the quick spread, reports of CCP measures and life in Wuhan, research papers about the spread, incubation, etc). But for a month now the WHO refused to read the writing on the wall, only god knows why.

keiru commented on Yes, it is worse than the flu: busting the coronavirus myths theguardian.com/world/202... · Posted by u/zachguo

blueadept111 · 6 years ago

Why do I keep reading the advice that it's important not to touch your face? How is the skin of the hands different from the skin of the face?

keiru · 6 years ago

It's way thinner and full of holes. It's not so much about the skin on your cheeks, but your mouth, eyes, nose membranes. And even if you just dirty your cheek, the contamination might spread elsewhere with further touching. Think about this: How do you take drugs? Eye dropplets, oral blotters, snorting.