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Sometimes I find the pigeonholing thing is just siloing and laziness. The last guy did our infra, nobody else wants to learn it, so the trivial thing to do is just hire on a tick-box basis.

I'm at a company now where one guy was the React guy. He left and everyone else was the snooty anti-React type and refused to learn. They ended up re-writing the whole thing from scratch. Couldn't even be bothered to learn enough to hire for it. And the new framework is so niche it's now hard to hire for it.

Hate React if you want but come on guys, it's not a massively complex framework to learn the basics of.


> one guy was the React guy. He left and everyone else was the snooty anti-React type and refused to learn. They ended up re-writing the whole thing from scratch.

React is close to an industry standard, sounds like bad management. Again, you don't have to know React to hire for React, just bring "smart and gets thing done" people onboard and trust them on their word that they can quickly learn anything they need to get it done. Clear responsibilities and goals, trust, swift consequences if that trust is breached.


Yes, I don't disagree. Well, it's a place where engineering has seized power through obstinance and used it to do whatever they find interesting or resume-positive. Luckily I'm just consulting here as a favor for an old friend.

> And the new framework is so niche it's now hard to hire for it.

Why do you need to specifically "hire for a framework"? Wouldn't any front-end developer be able to pick up any front-end framework (unless it's outside the javascript space entirely, and requires knowledge of purescript, rescript, elm, rust, clojure, scala, etc.)


I don't want to dox myself by getting too specific, but yes it's essentially a frontend framework for backend engineers in a niche lang (at least, niche for frontend). So they'd just hire more backend engineers in their language of choice.

I think this might actually be fine for internal tooling, but this is a customer-facing web app. It's now incredibly clunky and every feature takes an age to get out. Full page reloads for everything, etc.


What type of companies though? Because startups definitely seem to discriminate. I think partly because it's easier to convince a 20-something that working 6 days a week for mythical equity is a good deal.

But they're Chinese companies specifically, in this case

I'm curious how you feel about images, because it seems we have the same problem: I draw a stick figure with genitals. All good. I put a little line and write '10 year old child', then... illegal? In some places, anyway.

The difference with text I suppose is that text is _never_ real. The provenance of an image can be hard to determine.


I think the ethics here get complicated. for me the line would be if the AI itself was trained on actual CSAM. as long as no one was sexually violated in the course of creating the final image, I see no problem with it from an ethical perspective; all the better if it keeps potential predators from acting on real children. Wether it does or not is a complex topic that I won't claim to have any kind of qualifications to address.

> all the better if it keeps potential predators from acting on real children.

The big question is if, those pictures could have the opposite effect.


If there is no proof there should be no ban. What if parent is right (more widespread porn caused people to have less sex after all) ?

This means that a ban caused more harm on real children.


That's a valid and interesting question to ask and study, but I don't think it's relevant to the decision of whether it should be illegal.

It is incredibly relevant. If murder is prevented by having people play violent games and live out their fantasy there, isn’t that a good thing?

I’m not convinced that it would be, but it’s an interesting hypothesis.


The comment I replied to was proposing the opposite equivalent, that fake CSAM (written fiction, AI generated images not trained on real CSAM) could increase risk of action.

I don't think violent video games should be banned, whether they increase or decrease IRL violence (I personally suspect they don't have a significant effect either way). And I don't think "simulated CSAM" (where no actual minors were involved in any part of the creation) should be banned on that basis either (though I don't know enough to guess whether it would tend to increase or decrease actual violations).


I think that's the most, if not only relevant part to base your decision on

And the followup big question is — how do you measure which effect, if any, occurs in practice?

So do you believe violent video games induce more violent crimes then?

The issue is a fair bit subtler than that. The analogous question here isn't "do violent video games induce violent behaviour in the general population?" but rather "do violent video games induce violent behaviour in people who already have a propensity for violence?"

Or, even more specifically, "does incredibly realistic-looking violence in video games induce violent behaviour in people who already have a propensity for violence?". I'm not talking about the graphics being photorealistic enough or anything, I mean that, in games, the actual actions, the violence itself is extremely over the top. At least to me, it rarely registers as real violence at all, because it's so stylised. Real-world aggression looks nothing like that, it's much more contained.


Yep. It can definately go both ways. A game like Doom can be a nice way to put off some steam.

IIRC, violent crime is increased in people pre-disposed to it when they use outlets and substitutes (consuming violent media, etc). That might not translate to pedophilia, but my prior would be that such content existing does cause more CSA to happen.

That's incorrect. There have been studies on this. In a few cases seeing depictions of violence causes an urge to act violently, but in the majority of people predisposed to violence it causes a reduction in that impulse, so on average there's a reduction.

The same has been shown to be the case with depictions of sexual abuse. For some it leads the person to go out and do it. For the majority of those predisposed to be sexual predators it "satisfies" them, and they end up causing less harm.

Presumably the same applies to pedophiles. I remember reading a study on this that suggested this to be the case, but the sample size was small so the statistical significance was weak.


This review [0] is a bit reductionist and overconfident with some of its adjacent claims, but it includes a decent overview of the studies we've done on the topic and references those for further reading. The effect is weak enough at a societal level that it mostly doesn't make sense to consider (and those effect directions are not supportive of your claim of overall reduction if you want to interpret them as strong enough to matter), but when restricted to groups pre-disposed to violence you do see a meaningful increase in violent behaviors.

[0] https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4698/3/4/491


Like this sketch where Chris Morris tries to get a (former) police officer to say what is and what isn't an indecent photograph?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eC7gH91Aaoo&t=1014s


I'm quite happy that it might give me, with pre-existing skills, more time on the clock to stay relevant.

Well you could have government-run cryptographically signed tokens. They're already in the business of holding ID data (i.e. they don't need to collect it and this wouldn't increase the attack surface).

But assuming it has to be a private solution, you could do the same thing but make it a non-profit. Then at least _new_ services you wish to use don't need to collect your ID.


I wish the UK looked this good.


Have you been to the Barbican?


Right, but what do you think the alternative is? There is limited space close to the entrance of the terminal, it has to be rationed somehow. Also what happens in practice is people take advantage. A trust-based 30s wouldn't work. Even with the current fees you can hang around Heathrow drop off and see the police having to move people along, check unatended cars, etc.


There's limited space everywhere. It is rationed by people not wanting to be there. There's limited space at the baggage claim but nobody is charging you to be at the baggage claim.


You think people don't want to drop off at the airport? There's literally a multi storey full of short term parking at every Heathrow terminal. They wouldn't fit in the drop off area at all.

You are charged to be at the baggage claim. The airline pays it on your behalf, from your fare.


you are not charged to be at the baggage claim


If you can find a way to utilize the baggage claim services without paying someone at some point I'd love to hear it.

Just because you're not handing someone your card as you walk up to it doesn't mean you're not paying for it.


nevertheless you are not charged to be at the baggage claim. You can stand there as long as you want to, and your bank balance doesn't decrease.


Baggage claim being run by a charity, obviously.


> nobody is charging you to be at the baggage claim

Not yet.


The alternative is not charging. JFK somehow manages. Yes there's traffic, but it keeps slowly moving.


JFK is pure hell compared to Heathrow, never mind to an actually well-run airport. I'll stick to paying for my externalities.


I have three major airports in reasonable driving distance. None of them charge money to pick up or drop off at the terminal. It works fine.


And what's your experience of other world airports? Have you been to Heathrow? What about somewhere like Changi? It's not just the dropoff that sucks at JFK.

Public realm is almost universally terrible in America because Americans rarely leave and don't experience anything better. It's bad, actually, to wait in traffic for a large portion of your life.

See also: the revolt over NYC congestion pricing. The congestion fee in Manhattan should be $50 or more.


I've only transited through Heathrow, I haven't tried the driving experience there. I have tried it in various other airports in Europe and China. None of them charged money to drive up to the terminal either and they were all fine too.

Sometimes the American experience isn't different from the rest of the world and it's your experience that's unusual, you know.


You understand that e.g. in Chinese cities they restrict car ownership and you have to enter a lottery/bidding system to get valid plates. Cars are a luxury. European cities have their own restrictions and discouragements. Rationing happens in many ways.

I have still never experienced an airport with pick-up/drop-off traffic as bad as JFK, and I've travelled to almost every country in Europe, plenty of countries in Asia, and Canada. Maybe South America can beat it though, TBD.


That's probably a "JFK is unusually bad" thing, not an "everything is terrible in America and those idiot Americans don't know any better because they never travel" thing. I haven't been driven to JFK since 2001 and I don't remember what it was like then, but driving anywhere around NYC requires great patience.


London is worse _overall_ for traffic than NYC, so I don't think it's that. I like America and Americans, but it's a fact that they don't travel much. JFK is not just bad for drop-off, it's chaos and run-down in general.


Many of us travel internationally quite a bit. And again, this thing you think is uniquely American very much is not.


> What does skin color have to do with this?

It affects their perception of how risky you are, obviously. Accurate or not.

In fact, security tech in China will openly classify you by race/ethnicity.


Of course according to the US government terrorists are now white US citizens, so you could say they have become more open-minded.


Yes, although the US is genuinely one of the least racist places in the world, that's more about how bad the rest of the world is.

In China the CCTV view just tags you up as Han/Uyghur/African/whatever. Nobody would even think twice about it.

There's not even a forum to discuss it, not because it upsets people to be confronted, it's just so casual and matter-of-fact it'd be strange to even talk about. Like of _course_ the Uyghurs are the dangerous ones.


Generally speaking, threats and calls to violence are legal. Only a subset are illegal.


[flagged]


Possibly the police will come bother you, but you're not being convicted.


You should use Google and try to understand what the person you’re replying to is saying. Because they’re correct and there’s a nuance to it under the law.


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