The New York Times just wrote a fair piece on Matt Taylor, the British Scientist from the Rosetta Mission team who showed up on the big day with the wrong shirt.
It's a heart warming story, truly. A dear friend hand-makes a fun, bold bowling shirt, for their scientist friend. The scientist decides to honor the gift by wearing it on the glorious day when their mission makes humanity's first ever landing on a comet. Wow! Hurrah for science! Hurrah for breaking down stupid stereotypes of lab coat scientists and injecting some personality in the day!
Except there is just one thing: the shirt shows, among other things, sexist images of women.
The debate is on. What exactly is wrong with the shirt? And what should be done about it?
Let's break down its many layers.
Layer #1-- Taken literally and absent of any social dynamic, the illustration on the shirt is sharply unpleasant to look at for many women. That's on a purely aesthetic basis.
Layer #2-- The shirt exists in a cultural context in which many women nurse old wounds of objectification and sexual aggression. To them, the illustration is a reminder (or an outright trigger, the case may be), which piles on the unpleasantness of Layer #1.
Layer #3-- Absent of any intent, the shirt is a reliable signal that the wearer is at least unaware of its impact on many women. Knowing that at least one man in the organization lacks that awareness suggests the place does not value developing in its members the kind of understanding of other people's perspective that's needed to work well as a diverse team. That always makes things hard when you are the underdog.
Layer #4-- The shirt opens the possibly that the wearer does in actuality love the shirt, at least in part, because it displays a woman entirely "as a heterosexual man sees her", removed from any depiction of her own agency. Granted, it's not a given that the person is an avowed misogynist. Granted, it's not at all a given that the shirt is used as a kind of twisted awareness campaign supporting objectification, let alone supporting rape culture --this shirt is not as grossly unambiguous as the ones that read "no means yes, yes means anal". But the possibility is open all the same, and that's uncomfortable.
Layer #5-- Once the possibility is open, stereotype threat kicks in. Stereotype threat can easily kill 60% of someone's performance in a controlled environment. In an organization, this means many great women will leave for an environment where the whole 100% of their creativity can express itself.
These five layers are active regardless of the wearer's intent. Here, morals of intent and morals of impact split. What exactly should we do with a very negative impact done by someone with no ill intent?
One of the best attitudes I know is Hacker School's: "[once your impact is pointed out to you], apologize, reflect for a second, and move on."
Unfortunately, Matt Taylor's case doesn't make that possible. He participated in a major cultural event, at the very same time two other large misogyny conversations are burning all over the internet: (1) gamergate and the associated terrorizing of outspoken women in the game industry. (2) the exiling of women out of computer science, out of the Valley, and in particular Uber being outed in a big way this week. It's unavoidable then that Matt would become a symbol of a greater problem. Strictly speaking, that's unfair to the individual involved. Still, when history knocks at your door, isn't it one's duty to answer it with greatness?
Wednesday, November 19, 2014
Friday, April 4, 2014
On Mozilla's new CEO Brendan Eich stepping down
Recall, Mozilla is not a technology company. It is a civil right organization that works in the technology space. It believes that freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and notably freedom from being spied by upon for political gain by powerful people, can only be guaranteed so long as the technologies that make up the internet remains free, open and controlled by the people -- not by corporations and not by governments.
That is its reason for existence. Everybody within Mozilla powerfully resonates with that mission, else they wouldn't be there.
When we discover that the NSA makes secret deals with private companies to insert spying code into commercial software, which is then used to spy on international leaders during world trade negotiations, the Mozilla foundation redouble its effort to construct a spying-proof browser. Call it applied technological civil right activism.
Civil rights, in essence, means defending the powerless against bullying by the powerful. Defending the poor against class war from the rich. Defending the minority against imposition by the majority.
Thus for the Mozilla Foundation and its supporting community, is it unavoidable that its leadership must be judged by the excellence of their judgement in matters of civil right. Eich failed in two ways. First by taking the heteronormative position, he participated in harming a minority (He has since apologized for that harm.) Second, by using his wealth to bend the democratic process, he participated in corrupting the one-person-per-vote principle that is so important in protecting the voice of the people against moneyed interests.
That is its reason for existence. Everybody within Mozilla powerfully resonates with that mission, else they wouldn't be there.
When we discover that the NSA makes secret deals with private companies to insert spying code into commercial software, which is then used to spy on international leaders during world trade negotiations, the Mozilla foundation redouble its effort to construct a spying-proof browser. Call it applied technological civil right activism.
Civil rights, in essence, means defending the powerless against bullying by the powerful. Defending the poor against class war from the rich. Defending the minority against imposition by the majority.
Thus for the Mozilla Foundation and its supporting community, is it unavoidable that its leadership must be judged by the excellence of their judgement in matters of civil right. Eich failed in two ways. First by taking the heteronormative position, he participated in harming a minority (He has since apologized for that harm.) Second, by using his wealth to bend the democratic process, he participated in corrupting the one-person-per-vote principle that is so important in protecting the voice of the people against moneyed interests.
Sunday, March 23, 2014
Quick personality quiz for libertarians: are you a Free Marketeer?, or a Pro-Capitalist?
A free marketeer is someone who believes that through the free flow of information, free choice and free exchanges, we will see arise a healthy, prosperous and fair society.
A pro-capitalist is someone who believes that society will, on the whole, be better-off if important decisions about society's efforts and production potential are made by the people who control a lot of monetary capital.
Both attitudes are currently flying under the banner of "Libertarianism". Yet they are very different and distinct. What's more, both claim Adam Smith for their camp, when he clearly repudiated one of them.
We can tell the two apart with the following litmus test.
Over the last eight years, 37 technology companies have come together and agreed to never hire each other's employees, since the waves of hire-rehire were raising salaries and eating into their profits. The agreement was made in secret through verbal communication between CEOs and kept off the record as much as they could manage.
Should this be illegal? And if so, how severe should the punishment be?
Under free marketeering, this is called collusion by market-controlling players to fix the free prices of the market. It amounts to wage theft and the punishment should be at least as severe as if the company had stolen the money directly from their employees' bank accounts and called it "profit."
Under pro-capitalism, the CEOs' judgement is de facto authoritative, following a conviction that if these CEOs have made this much money, certainly this is a proof of good judgement, and their calls have no need to be second-guessed. This is the view the Adam Smith abhorred.
Investigative reporter Mark Ames at Pando has been writing track of the legal action taken against the companies:
In the comments, many individuals are defending the CEOs along pro-capitalist lines. I suspect -- I worry -- that these folks think of themselves as Adam Smith-style libertarians, when they are no such thing. Perhaps they have not actually read him.
Reading "The Wealth of Nations" I found myself learning a whole lot more about the price variations of wheat and of tariffs in the 18th century than I thought I ever would. I also learned about the rampant misery and poverty then. Adam Smith largely blamed this sad affair on market collusion by heavy actors, often through cartelling to fix the free market, alternatively through lobbying and corrupting the government.
Needless to say, it was eye-opening to see the distance between the fantasy made of Adam Smith's position by the pro-capitalists with the writing of the man himself.
I would urge the honest free-marketing libertarians to speak up loudly in these cases when their ideals are being co-opted by the pro-capitalists.
A pro-capitalist is someone who believes that society will, on the whole, be better-off if important decisions about society's efforts and production potential are made by the people who control a lot of monetary capital.
Both attitudes are currently flying under the banner of "Libertarianism". Yet they are very different and distinct. What's more, both claim Adam Smith for their camp, when he clearly repudiated one of them.
We can tell the two apart with the following litmus test.
Over the last eight years, 37 technology companies have come together and agreed to never hire each other's employees, since the waves of hire-rehire were raising salaries and eating into their profits. The agreement was made in secret through verbal communication between CEOs and kept off the record as much as they could manage.
Should this be illegal? And if so, how severe should the punishment be?
Under free marketeering, this is called collusion by market-controlling players to fix the free prices of the market. It amounts to wage theft and the punishment should be at least as severe as if the company had stolen the money directly from their employees' bank accounts and called it "profit."
Under pro-capitalism, the CEOs' judgement is de facto authoritative, following a conviction that if these CEOs have made this much money, certainly this is a proof of good judgement, and their calls have no need to be second-guessed. This is the view the Adam Smith abhorred.
Investigative reporter Mark Ames at Pando has been writing track of the legal action taken against the companies:
In the comments, many individuals are defending the CEOs along pro-capitalist lines. I suspect -- I worry -- that these folks think of themselves as Adam Smith-style libertarians, when they are no such thing. Perhaps they have not actually read him.
Reading "The Wealth of Nations" I found myself learning a whole lot more about the price variations of wheat and of tariffs in the 18th century than I thought I ever would. I also learned about the rampant misery and poverty then. Adam Smith largely blamed this sad affair on market collusion by heavy actors, often through cartelling to fix the free market, alternatively through lobbying and corrupting the government.
Needless to say, it was eye-opening to see the distance between the fantasy made of Adam Smith's position by the pro-capitalists with the writing of the man himself.
I would urge the honest free-marketing libertarians to speak up loudly in these cases when their ideals are being co-opted by the pro-capitalists.
Monday, December 30, 2013
How to Pen a Political Takedown Note, in the style of Krugman
One short sentence announcing what is happening, in general, absent of this particular feud. Two sentences stating your opponent's opinion, in a manner that is fair and they they would recognize. A few words stating that they are wrong (or very wrong, or catastrophically wrong, the case being.)
A promise of a detailed explanation later, but first, come context.
One or two or five paragraphs of necessary historical and philosophical context, as most questions deserving of a detailed response are really deserving of essay-length reflections. But this is the internet, five paragraph will have to do.
Two or three paragraphs articulating your rebuke to your opponent, in light of the historical context. The key here is to help the reader put two and two together -- resist the temptation to lean on any sense of authority. Now is not the time to be the delivery person of the Judgement Inc. Corporation. Present the argument fairly and sternly.
One line calling your opponent a ditwit or some such. By the time you get here, you've earned it
Saturday, September 21, 2013
Health care in America is funded by the government to a greater extent than in Canada (reprise)
Little known fact: Health care in America is funded by the government to a greater extend than in Canada. Between Medicaid, Medicare, Military Health Care, and emergency room services for the non-insured or the under-insured, the American government pays US $2,728 per person per year for health care.
In Canada, the government pays only US $1,893 per person per year. That's 30% less.
With that money, the Canadian government manages to cover everyone with world-class quality care. Even though the American government is paying more per head, its money only manages to cover a small fraction of its population, with the rest being left to fend for themselves with private insurance companies. These companies charge higher prices for coverage than even the USA government spends, let alone the Canadian government (about US $8000 per year) and outright refuses to offer their services to 20% of the population.
This leaves the United States with the largest population in the world without access to health care, and the highest rates of bankruptcy. In the US having a medical emergency often means going bankrupt. Bankruptcies arises whether or not you have private health insurance coverage since private insurances cover so little (when they do offer coverage) that their disbursement are rarely sufficient to avoid bankruptcy. 62% of all bankruptcies are caused by medical events.
The strangest aspect of American health care is the presence of folks who are rabid defenders of the American system, who speak without any awareness of the current system's failings, and without any knowledge of the alternatives.
The case of death panels angst is particularly poignant, since one keystone pillar of the new health law is to force private insurances to abolish their "Do Not Treat" list -- from 20% (mentioned above) down to near zero. The law:
Then there are the claims about the amount of money different governments have to spent, claims that certain numbers ought to be ruinous, yet the arguers never put in the effort needed to look up the numbers. In many anti-Obamacare posts, the key thing to notice are the appearances of the word "handout", which reveal the nature of their conception of the role of government.
While governments are generally constructed to take care of domains where the private sector does poorly (such as health care -- the specific economic reasons are too long for this post, but are covered in most introduction to economics textbooks, if you are curious). Anti-handout people understand governments principally as a transfer of wealth to receivers of handouts. This attitude is also known as class-war-ism, and is one of the most corrosive forces in modern American politics.
Government Number Source, Wikipedia
For more details on the content of the new Obamacare law, read this fantastic post in the fantastic subreddit titled Explain It Like I'm Five.
In Canada, the government pays only US $1,893 per person per year. That's 30% less.
With that money, the Canadian government manages to cover everyone with world-class quality care. Even though the American government is paying more per head, its money only manages to cover a small fraction of its population, with the rest being left to fend for themselves with private insurance companies. These companies charge higher prices for coverage than even the USA government spends, let alone the Canadian government (about US $8000 per year) and outright refuses to offer their services to 20% of the population.
This leaves the United States with the largest population in the world without access to health care, and the highest rates of bankruptcy. In the US having a medical emergency often means going bankrupt. Bankruptcies arises whether or not you have private health insurance coverage since private insurances cover so little (when they do offer coverage) that their disbursement are rarely sufficient to avoid bankruptcy. 62% of all bankruptcies are caused by medical events.
The strangest aspect of American health care is the presence of folks who are rabid defenders of the American system, who speak without any awareness of the current system's failings, and without any knowledge of the alternatives.
The case of death panels angst is particularly poignant, since one keystone pillar of the new health law is to force private insurances to abolish their "Do Not Treat" list -- from 20% (mentioned above) down to near zero. The law:
- Forbids insurance companies from discriminating based on a disability, or because they were the victim of domestic abuse in the past (yes, insurers really did deny coverage for that)
- Says health insurance companies can no longer tell customers that they won't get any more coverage because they have hit a "lifetime limit".
- Says insurers can't just drop customers once they get sick.
- Forbids "pre-existing conditions" for kids under the age of 19.
- no more refusal of care because of pre-existing condition at all.
Then there are the claims about the amount of money different governments have to spent, claims that certain numbers ought to be ruinous, yet the arguers never put in the effort needed to look up the numbers. In many anti-Obamacare posts, the key thing to notice are the appearances of the word "handout", which reveal the nature of their conception of the role of government.
While governments are generally constructed to take care of domains where the private sector does poorly (such as health care -- the specific economic reasons are too long for this post, but are covered in most introduction to economics textbooks, if you are curious). Anti-handout people understand governments principally as a transfer of wealth to receivers of handouts. This attitude is also known as class-war-ism, and is one of the most corrosive forces in modern American politics.
Government Number Source, Wikipedia
For more details on the content of the new Obamacare law, read this fantastic post in the fantastic subreddit titled Explain It Like I'm Five.
Thursday, June 6, 2013
Scary hypothetical: Your email account just got hacked
Ouch, your email account just got hacked. Sorry this is happening to you. We live in an age of computer security where the spammers and scammers have the upper hand. Hopefully the wind will turn soon.
Very possibly, the spam the hacker sent went to all sort of people, not just to your contact. Very possibly they also emailed to a list of targets the spammers have grabbed from around the web, and from other hacks. They merely used your account as a conduit to make their email fly with artificial legitimacy, so they wouldn't trip the recipient's spam filter. That sucks, I know.
Here's what you need to do, from most urgent first:
It might seems counterintuitive, but these days, physical security is vastly stronger than online security, so while this practice isn't exactly as strong as using Keepass, and not as convenient, it is sufficiently strong for most purposes. Petty thieves are just not known for rooting around people's house for printed password lists, and if they found the list they wouldn't know what to do with it.
When choosing passwords, adding a punctuation mark doesn't nearly work as well as it used to. The reasons are two-folds:
And in case you are asking, yes, Macs are just as vulnerable. Now that everything has moved online, it doesn't matter much which kind of machine you are running. The more prominent attack vectors I was describing, breaking into the website and phishing, don't involve your machine at all. An attack into your laptop most likely would involve your browser, and those are largely the same across platforms. I know plenty of Macs who have been hacked, and in some ways, getting your Mac hacked is worse, since Apple controls the machine so deeply. A salient story here is that of the famous technology reporter at Wired, Mat Honan, who had his Mac hacked and destroyed remotely.
Very possibly, the spam the hacker sent went to all sort of people, not just to your contact. Very possibly they also emailed to a list of targets the spammers have grabbed from around the web, and from other hacks. They merely used your account as a conduit to make their email fly with artificial legitimacy, so they wouldn't trip the recipient's spam filter. That sucks, I know.
Here's what you need to do, from most urgent first:
- Change your password at Gmail or Yahoo, or whichever service you used. Hopefully you already did this. Preferably, change your password from a different computer than your usual one: In the worse case, there is an attack virus on your computer watching you enter the password updates. That would be bad.
- Change your password on all sites where you have used the same password, or a derivative of the password, or a similar password-generation scheme.
- Turn on two-factor authentication on your account. This will be a huge win in securing your account going forward. Lifehacker describes the feature in details.
- Start using Keepass to generate and store securely a different password for every website you have a password with. Every password will be super random and super long, and thus super secure. See my blog post on this topic here.
- Do a thorough scan of your computer for viruses and trojans. Follow the instructions here. If that seems intimidating, bring your computer to a friendly local computer repair shop.
It might seems counterintuitive, but these days, physical security is vastly stronger than online security, so while this practice isn't exactly as strong as using Keepass, and not as convenient, it is sufficiently strong for most purposes. Petty thieves are just not known for rooting around people's house for printed password lists, and if they found the list they wouldn't know what to do with it.
When choosing passwords, adding a punctuation mark doesn't nearly work as well as it used to. The reasons are two-folds:
- Most hacks don't actually involve breaking the password. They get in by defeating the security of either the website itself, or that of your computer, or through a phishing email. That's where two-factors authentication really shines. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phishing
- Hacks made by breaking passwords involve a website being hacked and its users password list getting stolen. The thief then cracks as many passwords as they can, offline, using massing supercomputers rented by the hour. They then proceed to attempt to login into other websites using those credentials. You can read the story the devilish effectiveness of this technique in this fantastic long-form article at the always top-notch publication Ars Technica.
And in case you are asking, yes, Macs are just as vulnerable. Now that everything has moved online, it doesn't matter much which kind of machine you are running. The more prominent attack vectors I was describing, breaking into the website and phishing, don't involve your machine at all. An attack into your laptop most likely would involve your browser, and those are largely the same across platforms. I know plenty of Macs who have been hacked, and in some ways, getting your Mac hacked is worse, since Apple controls the machine so deeply. A salient story here is that of the famous technology reporter at Wired, Mat Honan, who had his Mac hacked and destroyed remotely.
To end on an up-note, I do feel the wind is turning. This new two-factor authentication feature many websites have began implementing is a huge breakthrough for everyone's security online. As two-factor become popular and widely used, I have great hope that we will see a stunning decrease in the number of people affected by hacks and hackers. Plus, at this point we can more or less trust that hardly no one clicks on the links sent by these attacks, which demonstrate how far we've come along educating each other about this new topic of online computer security that was imposed onto everyone a few years ago. This too, deserves to be celebrated and it bodes well for the future.
Good luck.
Good luck.
Monday, April 1, 2013
Happy World Backup Day!
Today I am grateful that my electronic devices remembers all those pesky little wonderful things for me – such as my wedding pictures and what not.
Would like to invite everyone to check and make sure that all the files are secured and properly backed up at least once a year. And what better day for this than March 31, the day before the Internet goes silly.
In that spirit, I would like to share my very own backuping recipe.
Our two Windows laptops both run Dropbox in order to protect the most important files. One laptop runs on the free plan, the other we pay $8 per month for some extra space. Some of the larger files are are impractical to backup at Dropbox, specifically our videos and raw-format pictures. For these, we have a USB hard drive plugged into a Asus RT-n16 router which acts as a small file server. This drive is the destination for two processes. First, the laptops run the free software Duplicati.org which copies recently changed files to that hard drive over our home Wi-Fi every night. And second, we use the free version of the program Macrium Reflect to make for images of our hard drives every so often. This way if a laptop gets stolen or damaged, we don't have to reinstall everything from scratch.
That little hard drive could the stolen at once, so I wouldn't rely on it without some form of off-site backup. For this, I installed a copy of the open source software Tomato on the Asus router which lets me run small Linux programs on it. I have a script that copies the file from the hard drive to Amazon S3 file storage service which offers some of the most inexpensive hard drive space rentals available.
The logic here is, our laptops are not ON at home for as long as you might imagine. In true New York style, we move about town a lot and spend copious amount of time slipping overpriced coffee, using various coffee shop's free Wi-Fi. It would seems impolite to backup large files over their connection. Better to backup to the small drive at home, over the super-fast 802.11n connection, and let the daemon process running on the Asus router upload at leisure throughout the day.
All our hard drives are encrypted using the open source program TrueCrypt, to protect our privacy and identity in case of theft of the devices. All our passwords are unique, randomly generated, and stored encrypted in the open source program Keepass Professional. Keepass's encrypted file itself is in our Dropbox folder, this way it gets backuped in turn.
Finally we upload our music to Google's music locker, at music.google.com/, which is free up to 20,000 songs
I must say, this setup is the best I've felt about our backup setup in years (knock on wood). All our data eventually makes it to off-site storage, and all the most important steps are automatic.
What is your backuping recipe?
Would like to invite everyone to check and make sure that all the files are secured and properly backed up at least once a year. And what better day for this than March 31, the day before the Internet goes silly.
In that spirit, I would like to share my very own backuping recipe.
Our two Windows laptops both run Dropbox in order to protect the most important files. One laptop runs on the free plan, the other we pay $8 per month for some extra space. Some of the larger files are are impractical to backup at Dropbox, specifically our videos and raw-format pictures. For these, we have a USB hard drive plugged into a Asus RT-n16 router which acts as a small file server. This drive is the destination for two processes. First, the laptops run the free software Duplicati.org which copies recently changed files to that hard drive over our home Wi-Fi every night. And second, we use the free version of the program Macrium Reflect to make for images of our hard drives every so often. This way if a laptop gets stolen or damaged, we don't have to reinstall everything from scratch.
The story of how Pixar almost lost Toy Story 2
That little hard drive could the stolen at once, so I wouldn't rely on it without some form of off-site backup. For this, I installed a copy of the open source software Tomato on the Asus router which lets me run small Linux programs on it. I have a script that copies the file from the hard drive to Amazon S3 file storage service which offers some of the most inexpensive hard drive space rentals available.
The logic here is, our laptops are not ON at home for as long as you might imagine. In true New York style, we move about town a lot and spend copious amount of time slipping overpriced coffee, using various coffee shop's free Wi-Fi. It would seems impolite to backup large files over their connection. Better to backup to the small drive at home, over the super-fast 802.11n connection, and let the daemon process running on the Asus router upload at leisure throughout the day.
All our hard drives are encrypted using the open source program TrueCrypt, to protect our privacy and identity in case of theft of the devices. All our passwords are unique, randomly generated, and stored encrypted in the open source program Keepass Professional. Keepass's encrypted file itself is in our Dropbox folder, this way it gets backuped in turn.
Finally we upload our music to Google's music locker, at music.google.com/, which is free up to 20,000 songs
I must say, this setup is the best I've felt about our backup setup in years (knock on wood). All our data eventually makes it to off-site storage, and all the most important steps are automatic.
What is your backuping recipe?
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