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maire commented on The Internet Archive is back online   arstechnica.com/tech-poli... · Posted by u/Wingy
seestem · a year ago
It would be better if the Internet Archive was decentralized without a central point of failure, maybe run on something like bittorent.
maire · a year ago
I don't know if bittorrent has improved - but 20 years ago I had a personal issue with it.

At that time our son was using it for games. He goes away to college and came home for the first school break. I get a phone call from our internet provider asking if our son was home. I was so shocked and handed the phone to our son.

Apparently at that time bittorrent was optimizing for the most efficient path to a host. Since we had relatively good connection, the mighty weight of the internet was funnelling through our tiny internet provider to our son's computer. The provider (without our knowing it) had made a deal with our son that he would only turn on bittorrent between midnight and 6 AM. I doubt other providers would be so generous.

I have been sceptical of bittorrent since that day.

maire commented on The Rise and Fall of Silicon Graphics   abortretry.fail/p/the-ris... · Posted by u/BirAdam
ghaff · a year ago
Having worked longtime for a minicomputer company--which actually survived longer than most mostly because of some storage innovations along with some high-end Unix initiatives--it's really hard. You can't really kick a huge existing business to the curb. Or otherwise say we're going to largely start over.

Kodak was not actually in a position to be big in digital. And, of course, the digital camera manufacturers mostly got eclipsed by smartphones anyway a decade or so later.

maire · a year ago
Kodak was well aware of what was going to happen. Company culture killed digital photography.

I was at Apple when we worked with engineers from Kodak who were working to change various format standards to allow digital photos. This was in the late 1980s or early 1990s.

maire commented on The game theory of seduction and marriage with Jane Austen   optimallyirrational.com/p... · Posted by u/delichon
sublinear · 2 years ago
I don't have much to back what I'm about to say, but I feel like these articles are written for and describe younger people.

What's being described here are communication problems due to inexperience rather than the actual "game". This might as well be about chess.

People on their second marriage or single people older than about 35 may not have these complications. They can just tell a few stories about themselves and recognize if they're a match right away without much disagreement. Older people don't "reject" as much as they maintain a varying range of distance with that other person over time. Things run their course and people don't get as heartbroken if at all.

That this social maturity can occur regardless of romantic experience hints at something more complex going on than "love" or mere game theory.

maire · 2 years ago
> I feel like these articles are written for and describe younger people.

I think the opposite is true. I first read Jane Austin as a teenager. I had no concept of the economic environment of the book. I thought meh.

Now that I am retired and re-reading Austin, I view them more in terms of the economic environment. I didn't have this context when I was young, and the books are awesome. In several passages she give a critique of the economic system so sublimely that it passed over my head when I was young.

maire commented on I Was Illegally Fired by Amazon for Speaking Out About a Coworker's Death (2023)   jacobin.com/2023/11/i-was... · Posted by u/wglb
SoftTalker · 2 years ago
Sounds like an FMLA violation. Did you specifically say you would be taking leave? Not already on a "performance improvement" plan of any sort? Was anyone else let go on Friday?

I don't know how hard this sort of thing is to litigate, "at will" employment covers a lot of abuses, and honestly why would you want to stay at an employer who treats you like this? Probably best to spend your energy finding a new job.

Edit to add: You could report this to the Department of Labor. Not sure you'd personally get any restitution but if your employer was willing to do this kind of thing, you are probably not the only one they have screwed over. If an employer has a record of complaints they might get audited which could cost them a lot in penalties if they are violating the law.

maire · 2 years ago
FMLA only covers companies with 50 or more employees.

A friend was fired in the US when she told her boss she was pregnant and discovered this limitation. Her previous work experience was in France so she did not realize this could happen.

maire commented on Understanding the world science fiction convention   antipope.org/charlie/blog... · Posted by u/cstross
ianburrell · 2 years ago
People have been pointing out the numbers are bogus [1]. Notice that huge drop in votes between #7 and #8, that doesn't happen with normal voting. It can happen with slate voting but this would have to be pretty extreme. Also, the weird votes are only for some awards like novel.

I don't know what the score means, but notice that for Babel it starts lower and never changes, while the others increase presumably from lower ranks being added to score. I think the only way Babel happens if there were no ballots who put it lower only top position. It is also suspicious that it goes out at the seventh position, just losing out to the lowest slate.

Also, why would they the disqualify it if it had been eliminated. It makes sense to disqualify at the beginning or end of nomination. Also, there is no final vote count, there is nomination count and the final vote. It was removed before the final vote.

1: https://alpennia.com/blog/comparison-hugo-nomination-distrib...

maire · 2 years ago
That looks like a compelling argument.
maire commented on Understanding the world science fiction convention   antipope.org/charlie/blog... · Posted by u/cstross
ianburrell · 2 years ago
People are talking about them miscounting nomination votes to eliminate Babel. It is very strange that the #3 position would lose to #7. Like there would have to been no ballots that ranked Babel in lower position. The only thing makes sense is that they disqualified it early and stopped counting votes.
maire · 2 years ago
Although Babel was removed during the final vote count, here is what the interim vote count looked like. It looks like it would not even be on the short list.

https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25245686/h...

maire commented on Understanding the world science fiction convention   antipope.org/charlie/blog... · Posted by u/cstross
maire · 2 years ago
This article answers one of the questions I had about this year's Hugo awards.

R. F. Kuang's Babel was on many other lists of top book of the year. I was surprised that it did not even on the nomination list. Now I find out that it was pre-emptively removed from the nomination list before the vote!

I am not a big fan of Babel (and posted my issues on Goodreads) but I do want the vote to be fair.

maire · 2 years ago
I just looked at the votes - and Babel would not have won in any case. It was ranked #7 when it was disqualified.

Netflix's Sandman was also disqualified. On Bluesky Neil Gaiman said he was never told why it was disqualified. He also said he was one of four disqualified authors.

The lesson learned is do not have a world-wide vote in a country with censorship.

maire commented on Understanding the world science fiction convention   antipope.org/charlie/blog... · Posted by u/cstross
maire · 2 years ago
This article answers one of the questions I had about this year's Hugo awards.

R. F. Kuang's Babel was on many other lists of top book of the year. I was surprised that it did not even on the nomination list. Now I find out that it was pre-emptively removed from the nomination list before the vote!

I am not a big fan of Babel (and posted my issues on Goodreads) but I do want the vote to be fair.

maire commented on Home schooling's rise from fringe to fastest-growing form of education   washingtonpost.com/educat... · Posted by u/cs702
brightball · 2 years ago
When I moved into my current house about 10 years ago, the family next door home schooled. I'd never known any home schoolers before and definitely had some notions about how terrible it must be until I learned about it.

This family was part of a home school group with other families. The kids went to different houses every day and had an instructor focus on 1 subject for half of the day, mixed in with free time, depending on the age. 2 subjects per day, so as a parent your teaching commitment was a half day a week on 1 subject.

They would do field trips. They held a school play in a garage complete with costumes and video. And the kids were smart, well mannered, socially adjusted kids with very happy and normal lives. And there are plenty of sports opportunities as well. As far as I know, they all went to public high school too.

Completely shifted my view of what I thought home schooling was, which was the kids stuck in 1 house with 1 parent all day in social isolation.

The reality was closer to a model of a Montessori school which has a huge amount of success stories.

maire · 2 years ago
California provides awesome homeschool support. A lot depends on where you live.

In California the student enrolls in a home school program through a local public school. You are assigned a homeschool liaison and can enroll in public school classes. The kids and parents get a weekly checkin and support. You have to pass public school tests. You get a budget from the public school to use for materials.

My grandsons are getting homeschooled through 6th grade. My daughter decided it was just too hard to duplicate a high school education at home so she is phasing them into public school in middle school.

She gave each child the choice of home school or public school. The Covid lockdown made that choice easy for the kids. They know that if they don't keep up, she will send them back to public school. That is quite the motivator.

Just like your neighbors she works with other parents to keep the kids socialized, take them on field trips, and to form a support system. She also signs the kids up for sports.

The downside (from her observation) is since some of the early homeschoolers were bible based, she had to really review the school material. A surprising number of text books use the bible as history or have questionable science. She also noticed that many parents homeschool their kids because they can't participate in regular school (for various reasons). Her kids homeschool as a choice.

The biggest upside is that time is more flexible and the liaison is flexible. The family took a trip to NYC and the liaison was asking the boys quite a few questions about what they saw and learned.

maire commented on Why Tocqueville Matters   newstatesman.com/ideas/20... · Posted by u/samclemens
maire · 2 years ago
I love the change of subject. ;-)

u/maire

KarmaCake day967March 27, 2018View Original