um_ya (u/um_ya) - Readit News

um_ya commented on Pegasus spyware seller: Blame our customers not us for hacking bbc.com/news/technology-5... · Posted by u/shivbhatt

TOMDM · 5 years ago

I really wish the public narrative concerning spyware would shift to something analogous to how we see the state monopoly on violence.

The police are a necessary institution that needs oversight and criticism to ensure that the dignity and rights of the population are preserved as much as possible. To that end, we don't hand over the role to private militia that has sparse regulation and no accountability.

NSO Group are the private police with sparse regulation and no accountability of the spyware world. They don't simply sell the means to an end, they operate and deploy those means on behalf of customers.

Just as we shouldn't accept police hiring private forces to kick down doors to check in on suspects, we shouldn't accept the contracting of services from NSO Group.

um_ya · 5 years ago

If I were Apple, I'd try to arbitrage these exploits by getting somebody on the inside to find out where the attack vectors are. I blame the companies for being exploitable.

um_ya commented on Fake Tesla, Apple stocks have started trading on blockchains bloomberg.com/news/articl... · Posted by u/mgh2

H8crilA · 5 years ago

Yeah, I would like to emphasize the fact that they're settled once individual contracts expire, be it cash or delivery.

I am yet to find a useful derivative that lacks a settling mechanism. How would you even price such a contract that lacks settling? Like why should it be worth anything at all?

um_ya · 5 years ago

You could technically buy real shares and sell synthetic shares on the blockchain, harvesting the price difference.

This would generally have the same effect as the blockchain user buying the stock directly, but through an intermediary collecting premium.

um_ya commented on Life as a public school teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2021 adamcadre.ac/calendar/202... · Posted by u/rossvor

dane-pgp · 5 years ago

> Private companies will compete for those vouchers

"Send your kid to our school, and we promise they'll always score 100% on their tests!"

um_ya · 5 years ago

The parents choose where to spend the voucher.

Unless you think parents value "100% on their tests" more than receiving a quality education.

I trust a parent's judgment more than administrators looking to prop up their numbers.

um_ya commented on Life as a public school teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2021 adamcadre.ac/calendar/202... · Posted by u/rossvor

crooked-v · 5 years ago

That sounds like a great way to indirectly punish parents who can't afford commutes for their children, since they get stuck with whichever schools the wealthier parents pull their children from.

um_ya · 5 years ago

The idea is that schools would compete for as many vouchers as they could, meaning they'd be willing to send buses out to your area, or find other ways to accommodate the parents with before school programs, ect.

um_ya commented on Life as a public school teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2021 adamcadre.ac/calendar/202... · Posted by u/rossvor

staticassertion · 5 years ago

School's so stupid. If you give people a grade and tell them to maximize it, with no meaningful rewards that they can understand, they're going to cheat. Duh. I regret not cheating in school, what a waste of time all of that shit was.

The teacher is basically like "haha dumb kids, we know you're cheating" and "if only we could punish students more!". There's a lot of "the smart kids are suffering because of the dumb kids" attitude here that I find disgusting.

> That too was in keeping with a theme. The teacher email I mentioned above was from one of the conference threads, but the emails sent to me personally from counselors and administrators have overwhelmingly broken down along these lines: such-and-such a student is feeling stressed, so please excuse her from this set of assignments. This other student gets nervous about taking tests or giving presentations or working in groups, so please excuse him from work of those types.

Oh god, how awful that these students won't get to suffer through some idiot's assignment that I'm sure would greatly better their life.

There's a lot wrong with school but I feel like this teacher doesn't realize that they're a part of that.

> Wow, a 100% pass rate! What a successful school!

Yes, it's cheating. They have an incentive, as your students do, to 'pass', and so they cheat.

Give students a place to be during the day while their parents work. Give them real, meaningful incentives that matter to young people - money, freedom, social structure, a feeling of productivity - and align those with learning real, practical skills, like how to read, write, analyze context, etc.

Hire non-idiots, pay them more, reduce class sizes. Yeah it'll cost more, but the obvious economic benefits will offset that. I can count on one hand how many teachers I had that I respected - the rest were obvious failures.

um_ya · 5 years ago

I like the school voucher idea a lot.

Give parents a voucher, as good as cash, for their child and let them choose the school.

Private companies will compete for those vouchers, aligning focus on satisfying the parents and the children, rather than the government.

um_ya commented on Medium sees employee exits after CEO publishes ‘culture memo’ techcrunch.com/2021/06/03... · Posted by u/elsewhen

LegitShady · 5 years ago

It doesn't address the issue. It's just ducking your head down to not participate one way or the other. It's fine for keeping your head down, it doesn't address workplace culture.

I have a coworker who does almost no work, but is on four different organizational diversity committees so is basically bulletproof. They've caused major rifts in the team. My only solution is to find a new job, which is what I'm working on now.

When your workplace empowers those sorts of behaviours in the name of progressive benevolence, just ducking your head down only works for so long.

um_ya · 5 years ago

If you think about it, this kind of culture actually hurts minorities because an employer will think twice about hiring them in the first place.

Why hire a black, hispanic, or LGBT person, if you have no ability to fire them without being labeled, canceled, or sued. Safer to just hire the white straight guy.

um_ya commented on Medium sees employee exits after CEO publishes ‘culture memo’ techcrunch.com/2021/06/03... · Posted by u/elsewhen

ecshafer · 5 years ago

The difference is tech has a lot more people who went to expensive fancy colleges and private high schools, and have comfortable middle class backgrounds, the military that is the extreme minority. People can talk about diversity, but its not truly diversity they are looking for, as they do not look for political or class diversity. The marines, has a lot of working class background people, and black, white, hispanic, working class people seem to get along just fine with different races without long diatribes about politics.

Tech has these "intelligentsia" activists that want to show they have the right ideas and opinions. Go to a welding shop or mechanic or marines or whatever, and everyone can have different opinions about something and nothing bad happens. People might laugh it off and call someone an idiot, that's about it.

um_ya · 5 years ago

I would rather have a work environment with crazy conspiracy nuts than orthodox SJW purists.

um_ya commented on Microsoft Irish subsidiary paid zero corporate tax on £220bn profit last year theguardian.com/world/202... · Posted by u/agd

medvezhenok · 5 years ago

We should also separate the concept of fairness from the reality of wealth in today's society. If a robot is doing the work which makes workers irrelevant, is that the fault of the workers? Should the productivity of the robot be taxed? (I believe it should - otherwise we are in a capitalist dystopia)

um_ya · 5 years ago

> I believe it should - otherwise we are in a capitalist dystopia

Should we tax the automobile for displacing the horse stableman.

um_ya commented on The lab-leak theory: inside the fight to uncover Covid-19’s origins vanityfair.com/news/2021/... · Posted by u/codechicago277

tootie · 5 years ago

Fauci is clearly dismissing the notion that it was engineered. He says pretty clearly that if a natural virus escaped the lab it would still be a natural virus and hence not a useful topic when it comes to treating it. I don't think he ever said it wasn't possible just that there's no reason to believe it. And it's understandably not his primary concern to figure out.

um_ya · 5 years ago

I think this whole thing is a great example of why you don't ban alternative viewpoints, even if considered "conspiracy theories".

Zerohedge was reporting this early on, and Twitter banned them for "misinformation".

um_ya commented on Microsoft Irish subsidiary paid zero corporate tax on £220bn profit last year theguardian.com/world/202... · Posted by u/agd

callamdelaney · 5 years ago

Oh, it's great that it's great society. Sucks pretty hard for him though.

um_ya · 5 years ago

"Pay your fair share".

I cringe every time I hear this from people.

Rich people pay WAY more than what they get back from the gov.