Erik Haugen @ech@qoto.org
Computer programmer
"From what we can tell, Haugen works at Google. So much for "Do no evil."" – Kent Anderson
Joined Mar 2023
Pinned post
#introduction
Greetings, I'm a Christian, husband, dad, and computer programmer in Texas, USA.
My hobbies include powerlifting, and, uh, ...
Wish I had more time for gardening, reading, photography.
spoilers
The annoying thing is that the plot doesn't seem to need this: the Sophons can just act as the Trisolarian's agent here, and send reports back to the invasion fleet. (Granted, I have only read the first book and watched the first season.) When reading the book I think I even missed the part about FTL communication; I thought they were just doing what I described here.
Science journalism never fails to disappoint.
https://www.vox.com/culture/24108638/3-body-problem-science-physics-theory-explained-how-real-is-it This is one of those "the real science behind the show" things, and it says faster-than-light communication is possible through quantum entanglement. 
The author completely misses the point of the expert quote cited. #Ansible
https://www.ft.com/content/6fb1602d-a08b-4a8c-bac0-047b7d64aba5
What a confused article.
He has this great insight about amazon/facebook-style product lifecycles, but then lumps layoffs in with that incoherently as if it was one in the same.
He identifies the problem with regulation and regulatory capture, but then with no hint of self-awareness talks as if more regulation is of course the solution. weird.
Erik Haugen
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I posted to my desultory blog the transcript of a talk I gave in 2009 inside Google, mostly because someone recently asked me to, feeling the message needs reinforcing.
Erik Haugen
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For the last few months I've been trying to get an itemized bill from the giant "non-profit" hospital system that patched me up in February. Despite it being required by law, they've done everything to make it impossible to get. Me in the Daily Beast: https://www.thedailybeast.com/getting-an-itemized-hospital-bill-is-basically-impossible
Erik Haugen
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It's #GlobalEncryptionDay!
Time to remind everyone that a backdoor "for the good guys only" is simply not possible.
By demanding encryption backdoors, politicians are not asking us to choose between security and privacy. They are asking us to choose no security. 👇
https://tutanota.com/blog/posts/why-a-backdoor-is-a-security-risk
tl;dr – What is a good name for the thing people are criticizing with labels like "CRT" or "SJW" or "woke" (or in olden times "PC")?
There's a certain flavor of activism/politics that has picked up steam in the Left in the last 10 years, and especially the last 3 or so. The ideas aren't new, of course, but I think it's fair to say their market share has grown quite notably in recent years.
The core is:
* Concern with identity-based oppression: a lot of problems in the world are because some group with power is oppressing some other group (white->POC, cis->trans, rich->notrich, het->gay, etc, etc, etc) Ideas like intersectionality and so on.
* To address the above, question core liberal ideals that have failed us: if equal treatment under the law ends up not being so equal, then maybe stop trying and instead do something to enforce outcomes. Think: Kendi's anti-racism, as he so eloquently describes it. Or think: the "critical" in "critical theory".
Some additional comments: there's an emphasis on whose narratives we listen to – after all who best to talk about the problems faced by the oppressed group other than someone from that group? The oppression is systemic – not necessarily someone deliberately oppressing. It infects us all. Anticapitalist, usually.
So: leftist idpol, but with a skepticism of liberal values (here by "liberal" I don't mean Left as the word sometimes does in US politics)
It seems uniquely difficult to name and categorize political philosophies like this; it's never going to be a clean taxonomy, in a sense, where each person rigidly adheres to a menu of positions. Add to that a lot of the names given to these kinds of things are pejorative.
Given that, is there a good name for this? "Critical theory" & "western Marxism" describe adjacent scholarly traditions, but maybe not the pop-politics part of it, so maybe not ideal? "cultural marxism" is used for ~this, but is probably not accurate (it's not all that Marxist, etc) and might make people think you're an anti-semitic conspiracy-monger. "critical social justice" maybe?
Erik Haugen
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“The open access movement is fighting to get rid of paywalls altogether, and we are making progress. But in the meantime, thanks to Alexandra’s courage and creativity, researchers around the world have SciHub. It is my honor and privilege to recognize her with a 2023 EFF Award.”
Erik Haugen
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Academics: stop being coy about #SciHub and start treating it like basic research infrastructure. If you dont include it in your syllabus already as a normal way to access research, you should start. No more winks and nods, just link directly to it and accept no criticism for doing so from the researchers that necessitate its continued existence by their publishing practices
This is hilarious.
@EU_Commission Dear EU, The following page appear blank which using the privacy-focused #TorBrowser: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/de...
Erik Haugen
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if you don‘t have @mmasnick’s Techdirt.com in your RSS reader, you miss a lot in term of critical and to-the-point analysis of internet-related politics. Like the canadian link tax mess.
Erik Haugen
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The UK government are planning to follow China and require security vulnerabilities be reported centrally and then remain unpatched to allow Five Eyes access. https://www.justsecurity.org/87615/changes-to-uk-surveillance-regime-may-violate-international-law/
This is great. I don't really have a problem with Musk and Twitter/X/whatever-it's-called per se, but if they're driving people to consider open standards for basic things like this then A+.
Erik Haugen
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"deep learning model that can steal data from Keyboard Keystrokes recorded using a Microphone with an accuracy of 95%"
Erik Haugen
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fedi meta
sad truth: as long as instances like .art keep moderating as they do ("proactively", guilt-by-association, etc.), Mastodon and the fediverse as a whole will stagnate.
I get that people want to keep it "manageable", but you also want more people to adopt the concept and ideology so we are not dependent on centralized services.
but new users will leave right away if they have to deal with federation issues if they can't interact with friends.
Erik Haugen
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Details on possible SVPCA talks, #4
HOW DID THE AIR GET INTO PNEUMATIC VERTEBRAE?
In animals with air-filled vertebrae (birds, pterosaurs, dinosaurs), air reaches the bones through diverticula — tubes connected to the lungs and air-sacs. But how do the diverticula find their way?
In extant amniotes, seven groups of blood vessels penetrate vertebrae in distinctive locations. Pneumatic features are found in all seven locations in sauropod vertebrae.
So the diverticula followed blood-vessels
What's the thinking behind replying to someone to let them know you blocked them? I've noticed this quite a bit.
Today someone replied to let me know I had made an "obnoxiously cishet" comment about how any service that isn't e2e has to divulge secrets when subpoenaed and that I would now be blocked.
I mean, I guess I can try to be less cishet going forward; was that the goal?
Erik Haugen
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24 hours of Earth's rotation, with the camera locked to the sky instead of the ground. We're all hanging out on this spinning rock.
Brilliant video by Bartosz Wojczyński. https://artuniverse.eu/gallery/190705-rotation24h #nature #wonder #earth
Erik Haugen
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E2EE is really driving governments crazy. Political representatives are becoming morbidly obsessed with spying into their citizens' conversations and they've stopped using excuses.
Spain has apparently stopped pretending that they're doing it for the kids (that's always been a dumb excuse to start with). They're clearly stating that the government needs the ability to decrypt everybody's conversations, period.
I'd propose a simple idea for political representatives who talk against encryption. If any of them ever says again "it should possible for governments, and nobody else, to safely break E2EE, without any risks for privacy and security", they should be fired on the spot.
I'm sick of hearing boomer politicians with no clue of how computers work repeating this stale piece of bullshit again and again. I'm sick of their surveillance morbidness paired with their deep arrogance and ignorance. An incompetent employee who doesn't know what he/she is talking about and is in a position where their ignorance can do great harm should be fired without appeal, period.
Computer programmer
"From what we can tell, Haugen works at Google. So much for "Do no evil."" – Kent Anderson
Joined Mar 2023
