Username Requirements
Some things make sense: don’t use your SSN as your username. But I don’t think I’ve ever seen a user name require both a letter and a number in it.
Seen, Heard, Said
Things I’ve seen, heard, or was told by someone. Item in this category usually originate from the Internet.
The election was so close that I’ve come to see th…
The election was so close that I’ve come to see the result as a bad roll of the dice. A few minor tweaks here and there — a more enthusiastic Sanders endorsement, one fewer of Comey’s announcements, slightly less Russian involvement — and the country would be preparing for a Clinton presidency and discussing a very different social narrative. That alternative narrative would stress business as usual, and continue to obscure the deep social problems in our society. Those problems won’t go away on their own, and in this alternative future they would continue to fester under the surface, getting steadily worse. This election exposed those problems for everyone to see.
0Voting Paradoxes
via Hacker News1
In social choice theory, Arrow’s impossibility theorem, the general possibility theorem or Arrow’s paradox is an impossibility theorem stating that when voters have three or more distinct alternatives (options), no ranked ordervoting system can convert the ranked preferences of individuals into a community-wide (complete and transitive) ranking while also meeting a pre-specified set of criteria, unrestricted domain, non-dictatorship, Pareto efficiency, and independence of irrelevant alternatives.
Remember to vote though.
0like reddit, but better comments ↩
Authenticity. Stories. Integrity. My Word.
0A lot of the lessons that were learned by others, I felt that I had already learned in the past couple years. But I did take some notes of little reminders of these lessons. I’ll share them here – mostly because I want to write them down.
My main takeaways were these: authenticity. stories. integrity. my word.
Authenticity. We were invited to look at how we are being inauthentic in our life. Why are you holding back? What are your justifications/reasons? And what would life be like if you operated outside of these justifications/reasons? Can you be unreasonable? Can you be authentic? I think I am.
Your story. Those justifications/reasons were referred to as “your story.” We make up stories all the time about ourselves: “I can’t quit my job because…” And about other people: “he’s not calling me back because…” It’s interesting to just observe the stories you tell yourself on a given day. Mike and I call each other out now with “that’s a story.” It’s kinda fun.
Integrity. Is the foundation. As your life expands, so should your integrity. Often, it’s the other way around; we excuse ourselves for a small lapse in integrity, and as life goes on, we excuse a little more, and a little more. I’ve found that integrity is a fantastic guide for my own decisions and actions, and it’s a great lens through which to view others and determine with whom I want to spend my time.
Your word. When you give someone your word, when you say you’re going to do something, they organize their life around it. And when you don’t followthrough, you are training others as to how to regard you. Have a new relationship with your word. Be impeccable with your word.
You Can’t Always Get What You Want
Jeffrey Goldberg at Agilebits, who make 1Password, has a great primer on why law enforcement back doors are bad for security architecture. The entire article is worth a read, presents a solid yet easily understood technical discussion — but I think it really can be distilled down to this:
0Just because something would be useful for law enforcement doesn’t mean that they should have it. There is no doubt that law enforcement would be able to catch more criminals if they weren’t bound by various rules. If they could search any place or anybody any time they wished (instead of being bound by various rules about when they can), they would clearly be able to solve and prevent more crimes. That is just one of many examples of where we deny to law enforcement tools that would obviously be useful to them.
Quite simply, non-tyrannical societies don’t give every power to law enforcement that law enforcement would find useful. Instead we make choices based on a whole complex array of factors. Obviously the value of some power is one factor that plays a role in such a decision, and so it is important to hear from law enforcement about what they would find useful. But that isn’t where the conversation ends, it is where it begins.
Whenever that conversation does takes place, it is essential that all the participants understand the nature of the technology: There are some things that we simply can’t do without deeply undermining the security of the systems that we all rely on to keep us safe.
The Price Is Right – Behind the Scenes!
I love learning about how TV shows are put together. This is a great, real-time look at how The Price Is Right is filmed.
0Version Number Philosophy
From the documentation for Python’s distutils.version:
StrictVersion
Version numbering for anal retentives and software idealists.LooseVersion
Version numbering for anarchists and software realists.
Who ways programmers don’t have a sense of humor.
0N.F.L.’s League Office to Drop Its Tax-Exempt Status
Pretty much what the headline is…I’d be curious to know how much they’ll pay in taxes.
0A Calvinist arrives at the gates of heaven…
He sees that there are two lines going in. One has a sign that reads “predestined,” and the other, “free will”. He naturally heads to the predestined line.
While waiting, an angel comes and asks him “Why are you in this line?”
He replies, “Because I chose it.”
The angel looks surprised, “Well, if you ‘chose’ it, then you should be in the free will line.”
So our Calvinist, now slightly miffed, obediently wanders over to the free will line.
Again, after a few minutes, another angel asks him, “Why are you in this line?”
He sullenly replies, “Someone made me come here.”