unishark (u/unishark)

unishark commented on Captcha Patent Is an All-American Nightmare eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08... · Posted by u/CTOSian

alisonkisk · 5 years ago

Switch to what? Patent trolls can sue other Captcha users just as well.

The patent is on Captcha, not on using Google. It even appears to be a patent on image Captcha, and Google is the main provider of non image Captchas.

unishark · 5 years ago

Switch to not using Captchas I'd say. Technology can already beat them a solid percentage of the time, so they're becoming just an obsolete tool for blocking obsolete attacks. With ten years left on the patents, amusingly.

unishark commented on Swiss Ph.D student’s dismissal spotlights China’s influence nzz.ch/english/swiss-phd-... · Posted by u/ipnon

jacksonkmarley · 5 years ago

Well, buried in the middle of this article is an important point:

> In fact, as of the fall 2019 semester, Gerber had been officially enrolled only at the university in China, not at St. Gallen.

So he was a Swiss person doing a PhD at a Chinese university. His relationship with the professor at the Swiss university was an unofficial one, so the word 'dismissal' here is pretty misleading. No information about what happened to his actual PhD program at the Chinese university that I noticed.

The actual evidence of chinese influence?

> She said she had received a message from a Chinese doctoral student doing research at a Canadian university.

So, it sure sounds like some people had their feelings hurt.

My totally made-up hypothesis on this article: honest reporter researched a story, realised it was pretty weak, then when they wrote it up shuffled things around a bit to give an exaggerated impact, but couldn't bring themselves to lie or leave out any facts.

unishark · 5 years ago

There's information on his Swiss PhD program in the article. The Swiss University advised him to de-register so he could maintain years of eligibility or whatever, and the Swiss advisor continued to supervise him obviously. The University had told him that re-registering upon his return would be "no problem" with the support of the advisor. So he kind of got caught in a transitional stage where he has no options if a dispute with the advisor arises. Maybe it's not fair to criticize the University administration for this, but it's not accurate to simply describe him as unaffiliated and making up fake news or something.

As for the Canadian student, the quotes from the professor herself are what say the complaints came "from China". Perhaps she meant from the Chinese student in Canada, but if so that's her error, not the author's.

unishark commented on Surveys show Americans want more walkable cities governing.com/community/v... · Posted by u/jseliger

iammisc · 5 years ago

I just disagree. I live in the very environment you claim doesn't exist

unishark · 5 years ago

Well if businesses are clustered together for the convenience of drivers, it will also be especially easy to access for the people living close enough to walk. But the math may hold be that this cannot be so possible for everyone.

unishark commented on Wealthy people are renouncing American citizenship axios.com/wealthy-people-... · Posted by u/SirLJ

emodendroket · 5 years ago

What's the fire department doing for me, a citizen of my town who has not experienced any fires? Why am I paying for it?

unishark · 5 years ago

What if you live in another town and are paying for that fire department? Just kidding. But really if you live in a country which has a tax treaties with the US, you also can offset your taxes with taxes paid to a foreign country anyway, so even for high-earners nothing goes to the embassy. If you do use the embassy, you generally do pay them fees of course.

The embassy is for maintaining relations with foreign countries, not just passports and birth certificates (and pricey notary services). That seems like a sideshow. When it comes to services for the public, they appear to spend most of their time dealing with visa applicants, based on the crowds and lines I've seen. They also do offer assistance for missing persons abroad; if you have a relative that goes missing abroad the embassy will investigate. That seems nice of them. I assume other developed countries' embassies are basically the same though.

unishark commented on Wealthy people are renouncing American citizenship axios.com/wealthy-people-... · Posted by u/SirLJ

Justsignedup · 5 years ago

This was to close certain problematic tax avoidance issues. People were fleeting from the US to avoid paying taxes, but kept all the benefits, or hid the money off-shore.

The problem here is that they never raised the amount you must report, because in the past, 150k used to be a lot. Now that should be closer to 500k. But like the minimum wage and tax brackets, they haven't kept it up with inflation. Not in the way they needed to at least.

Unfortunately the main loss from US citizenship loss is voting and potentially travel to the US. But the wealthy influence politics by lobbying not voting.

Now if Citizenship was required to fund lobbying... wooh that would be a big hit for those abandoning the US.

unishark · 5 years ago

Kept all what benefits? People who fled the US are now living under some other country's benefits, and pay taxes there instead.

Don't citizens of (almost) every other country in the world have the ability to go live abroad and keep all their benefits, whatever they are? I'm not following where Americans can actually get away with anything special.

unishark commented on The STEM Crisis Is a Myth (2013) spectrum.ieee.org/the-ste... · Posted by u/hncurious

nradov · 5 years ago

A CS degree was never intended to produce skilled coders. It's not a vocational training course.

unishark · 5 years ago

ABET accreditation (not as important in CS as engineering, but still very common) requires a CS program to teach software development and strong programming skills.

Training for professional roles (like engineering) is essentially vocational training. There is an industry need that drives the curriculum requirements.

unishark commented on Sentenced by Algorithm nybooks.com/articles/2021... · Posted by u/lxm

nickthemagicman · 5 years ago

Interesting example of how context can affect the sentencing and seriousness of the crime!

unishark · 5 years ago

Well if you enter as a legal visitor through a border checkpoint you give the govt the opportunity to do security checks, restrict import of various things, charge customs taxes. Plus they have an idea you are there. It makes sense that sidestepping some or all of that screening and record-keeping will be treated more harshly.

unishark commented on Employers bow to tech workers in hottest job market since the dot-com era latimes.com/business/stor... · Posted by u/belter

the_only_law · 5 years ago

I learned to ask for things just a bit too late. For my current role, the job description explicitly noted there would be no relocation assistance. I ended up paying for my move out of pocket.

They were actually looking for two people for the role I was applying to. After starting, I met the other guy that was hired a few months before me. He had moved from even further than I had. After talking, he mentioned he was given relocation assistance. When I asked him about the explicit mention that that would not be offered. He simply told me he noticed it, but asked anyway and got it.

unishark · 5 years ago

No relocation assistance means no guilt when you switch to another job in under a year. Or at least less, if you got a signing bonus too.

unishark commented on Sentenced by Algorithm nybooks.com/articles/2021... · Posted by u/lxm

noduerme · 5 years ago

My first reading as a native speaker was that "the algorithm" meant "the Man". But after several readings, I think he meant that this algorithm would categorize someone who was legally considered less than a citizen as a more likely recidivist. Which is an interesting point. Particularly in the US where there's a notion of illegal immigrants having already broken the law. Would this algorithm consider them to be more likely to be repeat offenders if it were weighted to treat noncitizenship as a factor, or overstaying a visa as a crime? And if so, then why wouldn't it weight slaves as more likely to reoffend. And if it did that, what would stop it from weighting the descendants of slaves the aame way?

unishark · 5 years ago

I thought the US was somewhat unusual in its lax treatment of illegal immigration. However lying to or sneaking past border officials to enter a country is literally a crime yes (certainly for foreign nationals, and probably not kosher for citizens to do either). Though entering on a visitor visa and overstaying is just a civil violation with a civil penalty (deportation). If a citizen had a record of using false identity documents or trying to evade legally-enforced border crossings, a fair algorithm would presumably have to take that into account just as well.