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tga_d

1,831 karmajoined 13 年前
CS PhD candidate at the University of Waterloo, studying various things involving network performance, language safety, and metadata protection.

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tga_d
·6 天前·discuss
Strava doesn't have complete coverage, especially on newer trails, but more importantly: doing the trace via Street Complete attaches it to an OSM note with an optional (but encouraged) photo. This additional context makes it a lot more useful for editors than an ordinary trace, which can just as easily be an actual trail, a desire path, or someone deciding to improvise a shortcut through some brush. Even if the note just contains the word "trail", that helps us (though more detail is greatly appreciated, of course).
tga_d
·17 天前·discuss
I don't see how that was implied? Just because someone is part of the "club" doesn't mean many other "members" can't be skeptical of their role.

In fact, it doesn't even seem difficult to simultaneously acknowledge and commend the valuable role they play, while also expressing concern over the influence they wield and how it might contrast with desires and goals of the wider community.
tga_d
·上個月·discuss
These are two separate incidents, please read the article. While the latest one is certainly arguable and I suspect most people would understand why someone would want to take it seriously (even if they themself would not), the earlier "Free Palestine" one seems absurd to label a threat, and I would be very curious how someone would justify it as such.
tga_d
·3 個月前·discuss
Setting aside the fact that there are multiple very old, very large religions that are nearly or actually vegan (e.g., Jainism), or that people raised vegan can't easily digest meat or animal products, why on earth do you feel that you or a hospital worker are qualified to determine the beliefs making up someone's identity, when you know absolutely nothing about them?
tga_d
·5 個月前·discuss
Most of the input devices that Apple sells on their website don't have multitouch, including 0 keyboards and only one of the mice. Many of the photos on the site for each of their non-iMac desktops include full setups that don't have a magic mouse or separate touch pad. The Mac mini and Mac Studio don't come with any input devices, and don't say anywhere that multitouch is recommended (closest is some language clearly marketing it as an up-sell on the Studio, "Take your creativity to the next level [with extra purchase]").
tga_d
·6 個月前·discuss
I suspect the more likely scenario is they don't actually care how accurate these nominal categorizations are. The information they're ultimately trying to extract is, given your history, how likely you are to click through a particular ad and engage in the way the advertiser wants (typically buying a product), and I would be surprised if the way they calculate that was human interpretable. In the Facebook incident where they were called out for intentionally targeting ads at young girls who were emotionally vulnerable, Facebook clarified that they were merely pointing out to customers that this data was available to Facebook, and that advertisers couldn't intentionally use it.[0] Of course, the result is the same, the culpability is just laundered through software, and nobody can prove it's happening. The winks and nudges from Facebook to its clients are all just marketing copy, they don't know whether these features are invisibly determined any more than we do. Similarly, your Google labels may be, to our eyes, entirely inaccurate, but the underlying data that populates them is going to be effective all the same.

[0] https://about.fb.com/news/h/comments-on-research-and-ad-targ...
tga_d
·6 個月前·discuss
I'm going to have to bite at the bait here: your post is guilty of what it's critiquing, and to a larger degree than the post being replied to.
tga_d
·10 個月前·discuss
I agree, I just don't think it makes someone a "failed excuse for a human being".
tga_d
·10 個月前·discuss
There's a sort of mirror world of academic research happening, where on one side of the mirror, you have people building the tools to censor the internet (typically but not always in Asian venues), and on the other, the tools to circumvent that censorship (typically but not always in Western venues). I know far more people on the latter half of the equation, but have enough exposure to the other side of the mirror to know that most of them earnestly believe they're doing something good. They see massive megacorportaions pushing American interests as an unfair lever in a fight for national sovereignty, and what they do as simply leveling the playing field, and combating misinformation. While I would wholeheartedly agree that they are mistaken in their analysis (reifying systems for people, "The institution I'm supporting may sometimes do bad things, but what I do is supporting the good parts!") and should immediately stop, I wouldn't want to dehumanize them any more than I would someone who works for Palantir, or even Google, Amazon, etc.
tga_d
·10 個月前·discuss
"It is well that war is so terrible, otherwise we should grow too fond of it." - Robert E. Lee
tga_d
·4 年前·discuss
For one, while the Irish faced discrimination, it was significantly less than that of non-Europeans. More importantly though, how does this have any bearing on why the question is relevant today? Are you somehow under the impression that the Irish are currently subject to extensive prejudice, or that no racialized group is?