Posts by jilocasin

Diversity, equity, and inclusion is not an illusion, but it soon might be

Re: Seems to match

There are no such "carve outs", there never were, it's just left leaning administrations/judges liked to pretend there was.

Apparently you weren't paying attention, in the 2023 Supreme Court decision "Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard" SCOTUS let everyone know that there are no such carve outs for college admissions, or any other reason. Most colleges and other organizations have been abolishing race/sex based policies on their own or trying to disguise them to get around this decision. Several have made changes as soon as lawsuits were brought against them.

Of course your supposed "gotcha" of entertainment is really just nonsensical and more DEI based thinking. Of course neither of those appears to have been an impediment to the recent announcement of the casting of a non-Christian black woman to play the part of Jesus Christ.

But close your eyes, and cross your fingers and hope *really hard* for your world where it's OK to be a racist, against those races you personally don't like.

It won't help, but it will help to keep you occupied and hopefully out of trouble for a while.

Re: Seems to match

Did you read the studies that show boys get graded more harshly for the same work than girls do?

When the teacher/professor knew the sex of the student, female students consistently scored higher than boys. When the same work was regraded, this time without knowing the sex of the students, the grades reversed. Boys aren't going worse than girls, they are being held back.

This phenomenon is much less marked in those subjects where there are objectively correct answers, such as mathematics or the hard sciences, basically stem majors.

In a soft major, like English or philosophy, or *-studies where there is arguably no "right answer" female grade inflation is at it's worst. In Calculus or Physics, where students could successfully challenge an answer falsely marked as incorrect, it's at it's least. Which majors do each of the sexes tend to congregate in?

Interesting aside, during COVID objectively attractive female college students suffered a full grade reduction that was attributed to the fact that the professors couldn't see and interact with them in class.

So, it's not so much about which sex is more easily distracted, it's which sex gets additional support, attention, funding, and sex specific programming and which has to not only do without all of those advantages, but is actively being disadvantaged in the current educational system.

Re: our gynocentric society

there is no "wage gap", that's bit of feminist clap trap has been debunked into the ground. There's an earnings gap, but that is attributed to the different choices that women and men make, it has nothing to do with anti woman sex discrimination.

The suicide rate is 4x higher for men than for women.

The rate of false rape accusations against men is conservatively estimated at 10%, most likely much higher. While at the same time women who rape are rarely even charged, in fact the geocentricism in our legal systems is such that in come countries the legal definition of rape is such that they can't even be charged with rape. This is especially tragic when the victims of their rape are underage kids. #MeToo, "believe all women" has just exasperated the issue. Add nonsense like retroactive withdrawal of consent, and you've bumped up the false rape allegations again. If two college kids get drunk and have sex, it's only the man that'll get charged with rape. If two college kids have sex, and only the man is drunk guess what? He can get charged with rape.

Then there's sexual harassment which has been redefined to mean any attention from a man that a woman doesn't want. In some situations, simply saying "Hi" or even looking in her direction is enough to get a SA charge, and in many places, our gynocentric society will convict.

Then there's the circus that is family court. Fathers are forced to *prove* they should be allowed to see their kids as the courts will often side with the mother reflexively. The ploy of falsely charging the father with abuse, both of herself and/or the children, is such a common tactic in family court that divorce attorneys refer to it as "the silver bullet".

Whatever Trump may or may not have done is just a distraction to the argument, but nice red herring.

The fact that DEI requires people to be discriminated against based on their skin color or their sex isn't a "narrative" it's a fact. Companies and universities openly brag that they in are only looking to hire "black men", that there are programs only for women. Either it's wrong to discriminate based on race and sex or it isn't.

You seem to think that it's OK to discriminate as long as that discrimination is against groups you personally don't like.

Congratulations, that makes you both a sexist and a racist.

Re: Apartheid America

enforcing that would be the opposite of DEI, but then you already know that.

DEI says that it's OK to hire a black man with a test score of 70 over a white man with a test score of 170, because we want more blacks and less whites in that position.

A colorblind society would be giving the most qualified applicant for a position that position, regardless of race. If that means that certain companies end up 100% white, that's OK. If others ended up 100% black, that's still OK. Everyone that's qualified gets the same chance to apply and the best person wins. There is no *right* percentage mix, and a lopsided racial result has nothing to do with racism.

If you are upset that there are not enough black people getting hired for a position, the solution is not as DEI would have us do and discriminate based on skin color. Hiring lesser qualified blacks, not hiring objectively better qualified whites simply to enforce your arbitrary numbers of employees by race. It's to ask yourself do blacks even want to work in these positions? If so, what's keeping them from doing so (and no, unless you can prove it, it's typically not racism). Perhaps they need more education, their culture needs to become one that values education, studying, academic achievement more and rewards in within their culture. Perhaps the local schools aren't up to snuff and they need to be supplemented at home, with tutors, with community lead efforts particularly in poorer communities.

To get back to your original question, it's enforced legally with colorblind laws (those same laws that have declared that DEI is illegal) and culturally.

Finally:

A woman is an adult human female.

just to be complete,

A man is an adult human male.

Same as it's been since homo sapian sapian was first it's own species, same as it's been for that last years untold, same as it is today, same as it will be tomorrow.

The fact that followers of the relatively new religion, gender-ideology, wishes that wasn't the case doesn't change anything.

Re: not quite...

A colorblind meritocracy is the ideal, the alternative is to explicitly codify racism. To force everyone to judge everyone else not by the content of their character, but solely based on the color of their skin.

Of course folks like yourself always seem to want to judge whites harshly based on their skin color, and non-whites favorably.

Every race; black, Hispanic, etc. are allowed to have pride in their race, except for white people. I believe we have long passed the time where white people should feel bad that they are white. There is no white guilt, no white privilege, and any white supremacy that exists has been earned.

As for Equality vs. Equity, then you should work to create that missing "Equality of opportunity"

Trying to force "Equity, equality of outcomes" is Quixotic endeavor because it is actually impossible to achieve. All a supposed drive for "Equity" does is provide cover for people to exercise their basest discrimination, racism, sexism, and petty vendettas.

Legally the US legal system is color blind, as it should be. It doesn't help that folks like yourself are fighting against that ideal.

Re: Seems to match

again, another person who wants to blame society for that fact that criminals commit crimes.

sorry, but those are just excuses, conveniently excuses that only seem to get trotted out for black criminals.

societal factors effect all races, there are criminals of all races, yet blacks singularly excel at committing far more crimes than any other group.

part of the problem is their culture, equally to blame are people like yourself making excuses and serving to enable this anti-social behavior.

Re: Seems to match

another person going out of their way to blame the fact that criminals end up in prison on everything, anything, except the fact that they committed crimes.

if blacks commit less crimes then there would be less blacks in prison.

if you can prove instances of people, of any color, in prison for crimes that they didn't in fact commit, I'll be one of first in line to admit that injustice and fight to right that wrong.

but that's not what you have done.

so sad.

Re: Seems to match

the statistic you are looking for is the one that documents the fact that blacks, black men in particular, commit crimes at rates far in excess of their numbers.

if blacks were committing less crimes then those extra police patrols wouldn't have netted any criminals, would they.

your *solution* the excessive black crime rate is the same as most left leaning CRT believing individuals, stop arresting black criminals.

as mentioned previously, that does nothing to reduce crime, perversely it serves to increase the amount of crime committed.

the only true solution, the only one that works to not only reduce the number of blacks in prisons, but actually reduce the amount of crimes being committed, is as simple as it appears.

black people need to simply commit less crimes.

you seem strangely against actually addressing the actual problem with the only solution that will solve it.

I wonder why?

Re: not quite...

I might be, but what does that have to do with any of my arguments?

they are all equally valid if I were; black, Asian, Hispanic, or yes white.

your rather short argument is a racist one.

Re: Seems to match

again with the **always** qualifier.

no, there was a time, in the distant past, where *some* parts of the country definitely applied a race based slant to their proceedings, that's not the case today.

show me reliable statistics that demonstrate the majority of black men in prisons today did not commit their crime...

you can't because they did commit the crimes they were convicted of.

[admittedly there are some small percentage of individuals in prison who are innocent, but that holds true for individuals of every race, it's not black specific]

which means that if you want to see less black men in prison, they're going to have to stop committing so many crimes.

you can't, and SCOTUS has affirmed, justify racist actions today in an attempt to rectify racist actions of yesterday.

you're posts/arguments demonstrate and anti-white bias, so I don't need gall to refer to you as an anti-white racist.

Re: Apartheid America

Actually DEI *is* racism and hatred,

it's just racism against races you disfavor and hatred against groups you, well, hate.

you and those like you are just upset that you won't be able to be quite so open and celebratory in your vices.

You call those who only want a colorblind society racists......

like many on the left, the words you use, the insults you sling, have meanings that are only known to those like yourself.

to the rest of us still using the actual definitions of words; racist, fascist, woman your accusations have long ago lost their sting.

not quite...

you've almost got it.

The reason there is no call for Equity in the NBA, is because it is non-white dominant.

The same reason that there are no programs to increase the number of male elementary school teachers, because it is female dominant.

DEI, like CRT, is explicitly designed as a cover for anti-white racism, anti-male sexism. Even though we have BIPOC exclusive programs and female only scholarships the left, those people most intimately tied to CRT, DEI, etc. would be the first in line to crucify a white only program, or a male only scholarships.

Look at what they do, not what they claim.

It's apparently OK to not only come up with a hundred anti-white slurs, but to use them openly. Yet even the accusation of an anti-black slut is met with derision, condemnation, possible academic career or job loss and that's when it's not used as an excuse by blacks to physically assault others.

Anything good or successful is labeled "white supremacy". A label that's even applied to successful black individuals.

Instead of trying to help blacks, Hispanics, or others be more successful, this collection of ideologies simply attacks others. It works not to elevate but to bring everyone down to the level of the lowest performers.

equality of opportunity, meritocracy, color blindness is the only true way to both be fair to everyone and to advance and promote society.

unfortunately for many this means holding people responsible for what they do, and don't do, while recognizing that not everyone is going to achieve the same levels of success in the same endeavors as everyone else.

and that's OK.

Re: code words and dog whistles

of course it's always whose who most embody the traits they are projecting upon others that are the first, and sometimes only, ones who can hear these supposed "dog whistles".

I guess it's true that you have to be a dog to hear a "dog whistle".

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Re: Seems to match

In reality, during to CRT/DEI/gender ideology dark ages, the "tie breaker" was (and still is unfortunately in far too many places is) whichever isn't :

a white male

an Asian male

a Christian

a Jew

once those undesirables were eliminated from the applicant pool, the position was given to whichever racial/sexual/orientation was missing on the CRT/DEI/gender ideology bingo card.

while you might not have thought so, most of those decisions to hire are made by individuals whose characteristics definitely does *not* match those of the person being hired. White members of the cult consistently preferentially hire non-whites, even when the white candidates were objectively more qualified for the position.

unless of course you mean that black hiring managers consistently hire lesser qualified black individuals, which folks like yourself never seem to have a problem with.

Re: Seems to match

When was it ever a **pure** merit based colorblind society, sadly never. It's an aspiration, something to strive for and toward. American society was making lots of progress toward that goal until the CEI/CRT/gender ideologists hijacked the country with a more openly divisive, discriminatory, racist, sexist ideology than at any point in modern American history.

White people currently make up about 76% of the US population, as high as 93% in some states as low as 35% in others. In some areas most of the levers of power are held by black individuals. Chicago for example has a black mayor, black city council, black chief of police, black school boards, etc. Women make up over 50% of the population and our gynocentric society means that women are treated more favorably legally. So I believe that your statement that "...white men controlled literally everything.." is incorrect.

Reality means that equity is an impossibility. People differ in ability, in temperament, in desires among others. You appear to be an anti-white racist, I feel sorry for you.

People should be given equality, treated the same. This naturally means that you will never have the same number of people an any position. Lowering standards, or eliminating testing doesn't help struggling people, it just increases the suffering of everyone around them.

If you want less black individuals in prison, you convince them to commit less crimes. Simply choosing not to prosecute them only encourages them to commit more crimes and needlessly spreads the suffering to others. Just because the numbers do match the ones in your head says absolutely nothing about racism, immediate or systemic.

Or are you going to make the argument that society is much better if you ignore merit and base all decisions on characteristics that no one had any control over; race, sex, etc.?

Re: Seems to match

I hate to break your bubble but in the US, both constitutionally and by statute, it is illegal to use a protected characteristic for **any** reason. That includes as a bonus point, tie breaker, additional area of consideration, or any other euphemism you wish to employ.

This means that in the statistically impossible situation that you had two equal candidates, you need to find a non-protected characteristic to use as a tie breaker.

DEI done right means that you discriminate against white, male, and increasingly successful Asian candidates. Throw some anti-Christian and anti-Jewish discrimination in these days as well.

Diversity is no one's strength. Equity (equal outcomes) is a bad LSD trip, the best we can achieve is equality (of opportunity). Inclusion follows equality of opportunity naturally.

Anyone who's honest knows what DEI *actually* is. There's never a call for hiring more white men in areas that are dominated by blacks (see: NBA), or hiring more men in areas dominated by women (see: elementary ed teachers, nurses). What DEI leads to are quotas, companies even publish them. They proudly announce that this quarter they want to hire X more blacks, and Y more women, and Z more LGBTQ+++.

In a region that is 80% white, 15% black, and 5% everyone else, DEI proponents use that fact there are only 16% black employees as evidence of racism. If there aren't at least 50% non-whites, that's apparent proof of both immediate and systemic racism.

There is much more than a need to tear it all down, it should have never been allowed to fester and metastasize. Previous administrations refused to enforce the applicable laws, the current one is. Add to that recent SCOTUS rulings confirming that affirmative action and other similar mechanisms are in fact illegal gives hopes that we can cure America of this disease.

DEI is a disastrous racist, sexist academic ideology that attempted to grant a veneer of respectability to this abomination.

The sooner we get back to a pure merit based colorblind society the better.

Trump scrubs all mention of DEI, gender, climate change from federal websites

Re: This brings back memories

DEI, along with CRT and gender-ideology are major portions of what's been banned in government documents and organizations.

Zuckerberg says Biden administration pressured Meta to police COVID posts

Re: Personal Facts (sorry there are only 2 sexes in mammals)

If you are going to try to make an argument from authority, you should probably choose one that's not been taken over by ideologies and activists.

There are exactly two sexes in mammals, of which humans are. There are females, large gamete producers and males, small gamete producers. In healthy humans females have no Y chromosomes (overwhelmingly XX) and males do (overwhelmingly XY). The fact that there are genetic disorders effecting a tiny minority of individuals, those possessing a DSD a disorder of sexual development, doesn't change that fact. Almost all DSD conditions are also themselves sexed, meaning a person with a DSD still has one of two sexes. Sufferers of Klinefelter syndrome are still male, those of Turner syndrome are still female.

If you believe that healthy humans come in any sex other than female or male, please list them out for the class. While you are at it please provide examples in healthy gorillas, zebra, lions, field mice, and blue whales, remember we are all mammals and any sex a human supposedly comes in every other mammal on the planet does as well.

Your second debunking is again a failed appeal to authority, while a majority of virologists would agree that COVID-19 is more dangerous than a cold, there are some that disagree. Which is a big part of the parent article. Virologists tried posting their opinion that COVID-19 wasn't that dangerous and had their posts removed at government insistence. If you need to silence your opposition in order to 'win' your argument, then you don't have much of an argument. A lay person who experienced COVID-19 with nothing more than the sniffles has the right to say so, and their statement is protected by the first amendment. If you reread my post, I didn't claim that COVID-19 was no more dangerous than a cold, but that the opinion that is was is protected.

So sorry, that's two out of two for me.

Thanks for playing.

depending on who's making the speech, what speech "exactly" they are making and what the supposed 'death or harm' is, in most cases it's perfectly legal.

a company selling bleach as a cure all with instruction to ingest liberally, would probably be limited. commercial speech gets limited protection and the harm is immediate and obvious.

an organization stating that COVID-19 is no more dangerous than the common cold, it's not commercial, the speech is subject to interpretation, there is no immediate nor concrete harms, it's protected by the first amendment.

an individual states that there are only two biological sexes and that people can't change their sex, it's non-commercial, factual, any harms are to someone's feelings. definitely protected by the first amendment.

so "...directly or indirectly causing harm or death..." isn't the clear cut win you seem to think that it is.

poor example

threats of inciting imminent violence have always been an exception to the first amendment.

but thanks for playing.

sorry you are mistaken

it always has, it still does, and it always will.

do try to keep up.

close

the first amendment is limited to govt. action, that includes the federal, state, local, and any agents working for them. it also prohibits indirect as well as direct threats. that's what at stake here. some members of the govt. know that they can't legally force a company to remove speech they don't like, so they will do so indirectly. from the "it would be a shame if these many govt. agents hounded your company for years and cost you tens of millions of dollars to comply with their obviously nonsense requests unless you take down those posts, to a case in New York state, where the govt. threatened banks and financial institutions with ruinous actions unless they stopped doing business with the NRA.

both are highly illegal under the first amendment.

actually you CAN shout Fire! in a crowded theater

the first amendment protects lots of speech, speech that would give folks on the other side of the pond fits and nightmares. this includes what some might call hate speech, racist speech, anti-religious speech etc.

SCOTUS has ruled in a couple of instances that the first amendment applies to govt. (federal, state, and local) and applies both directly and indirectly. ex: you can't make a law banning nor favoring certain speech, you can't pressure individuals with an actual or implied threat for their use or refusal to use ( like "pronouns" ) certain speech.

also, the old "can't shout fire in a crowed theater" trope is just that, a trope and one that's been debunked years and years ago. unfortunately many people like to trot it out in an attempt to claim that the first amendment doesn't protect everything so 'their' proposed restriction of the first amendment is just fine.

there are a couple of very narrow things that the first amendment doesn't protect, such as CSAM and threats of imminent violence, but they are very few and very narrow.

there are lots of sites debunking tropes like this and listing the actual limitation on the first amendment.

here's one: https://www.thefire.org/news/reminder-about-shouting-fire-crowded-theater

good luck.

Put Rescuezilla 2.5 on a bootable key – before you need it

Re: Alternatively...

that's why you always have at least **two** backups.

backup to disk0

backup to disk1

backup to disk0

etc.

if the process fails during a backup, corrupting that set, you still have the other set to restore from.

easy peazy lemon squeezy.

Valkey publishes release candidate and attracts new backer

Working as intended.

Actually, that 'free lunch' is explicitly allowed under the open source model/license.

You appear to want to re-construe that as some sort of a bad or unexpected thing.

It was Redis that was trying to pull a fast one, not AWS or the other cloud providers that they are now so concerned about.

You develop/release an open source project, people are not only allowed, but expected, to use it for free.

Redis used the trappings of open source to garner a large following and hopefully a not insignificant number of users who were now dependent on their product. Then, like unfortunately a growing number of companies, they switched up the license locking it down to extract rents from their user base.

I don't have any sympathy for them and wish ValKey all the best of luck.

Hopefully ValKey's success will discourage other companies from going down this same path in the future.

Rapid7 throws JetBrains under the bus for 'uncoordinated vulnerability disclosure'

Re: Tangential to the article

If you are curious as to the status of 'bundled' uninstallable AI that phones home, here's an interesting thread:

https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/LLM-1973/Provide-the-possibility-to-remove-a-plugin-completely-from-the-system

Musk 'texts' Nadella about Windows 11's demands for a Microsoft account

Re: If he thinks that's bad he should try MacOS

there's a major flaw in your logic.

last I checked Microsoft *charges* for their OS. A quick search on Amazon shows that it's going for more than $100 a license.

Ford pulls the plug on EV strategy as losses pile up

Re: It's the cost that gets you in the end

I'm glad that *you* don't need a maximum range similar to that of an ICE, sadly most of the rest of us aren't in that boat.

I'm not sure about you, but hitting the head and grabbing a candy bar can be done in less than 5 min. How much of a charge would that add to my range?

In less than 5 min. I can completely refill my tank adding 1000-1500 km to my range. Of course with the increased range of an ICE I don't have the need to do that as often as I would in a BEV. I can even put a couple of 5 gal. petrol tanks in the back for extending my range when I have to travel to those places where there aren't any petrol stations. Can I do that with a BEV?

Your mistake is one that many BEV proponents make, just because BEVs work in your particular situation, you just assume that everyone else is similarly positioned.

I hate to break it to you, but they aren't.

Re: It's the cost that gets you in the end

Sorry, but no.

EVs, and especially BEVs are most definitely *not* good for the majority of people.

People that need to travel long distances regularly

People that live in areas where it's very cold for a significant portion of the year

People that don't have an extremely robust power grid

People that don't own their homes

People that don't have large incomes

for those people, BEVs are a terrible solution.

Unfortunately for BEV proponents, there are a not insignificant number of people in one or more of the above categories.

Physics and the laws of thermodynamics will conspire to prevent BEVs from being a useful solution for the previously mentioned individuals, ever.

Someday there may be a viable replacement for our current fossil fuel powered vehicles, but BEVs won't ever be it.

Re: Once upon a time....

In huge, and by huge I mean the entirety of Scotland, England, and Wales could comfortably fit inside of a single state with oodles of room to spare huge, amounts of the US, pretty much what is referred to as 'fly over' states, that's an issue.

The electric grid is anemic and driving hundreds of Km for seemingly trivial errands is common place. Unlike gas or diesel, which can be delivered by the semi tanker full, there's no way any significant number of slow charging stations will ever be built and you can forget about fast chargers. An ICE can add 1,000 to 1,500 km of range in a couple of minutes and can drive 1,000 - 1,500 km on a single tank of fuel.

You wrote: "Most people aren't going to go on a long trip in the dead of winter either."

I hate to break it to you but most people who live in the northern states don't have the luxury of simply staying home for half of the year just because their EV has almost no range and can't really charge.

Your counter to my points are basically; people shouldn't have to drive that far, they should pay for a more expensive faster charging EV to use with non-existent charging stations, and even the supposedly 'cold weather' EVs don't really work all that well in extreme cold, so they should just plan on staying home for half the year.

You aren't really selling EVs.

As I wrote initially, for many very practical reasons, EVs are a non-starter for a large segment of the population.

Not so fast.

You wrote:

"The refueling speed of an EV plugged in at one's home is nearly instantaneous. It's like a sleeper train, you sleep while it's happening so the time involved is very small compared to the process."

That glosses over two very big problems.

First, the vast majority of people in the US don't own a home.

Second, for a significant number of the minority of people who do own a home, the grid isn't capable of handling the installation of a home charger in more than a handful of homes.

So no, the refueling speed of an EV is not nearly instantaneous. It's a many hour process, assuming that you can get to a public charger, the charger is working, it isn't too cold to charge your battery, and there's one available for you to use that isn't plugged into someone else's EV.

Re: Spent Batteries

The difference is that a lead acid battery costs less than $100 to replace, and can be done by the owner in a couple of minutes. Many auto parts stores will replace them in your car for free with purchase.

They also tend to have a 3-5 year prorated warranty and depending on your driving habits and location some have been known to last a decade.

It's really an apple to dolphin comparison to be making.

Re: Once upon a time....

I think what many people on the other side of the pond tend to forget is that the US is a _really big_ country.

It's not uncommon to have to drive 340 Km or more, one way, for something as simple as a doctor's appointment.

Couple that with a dearth of charging stations and the fact that charging can take an hour or more means that most EVs are pretty much a non-starter for most people.

Add into that mix the fact that many people rent, and so don't have the ability to charge their EV at home and that in at least half of the continent sized country the temperature can drop below -30 C for extended periods, which means that no only does your already anemic range fall precipitously, you might not even be able to charge your battery.

After all that, you have to remember that EVs can cost much more than an ICE and some repairs to your EV will cost you more than if you just purchased a new ICE.

EVs are a wholly unsuitable solution for whatever problem they are trying to solve. At least for people who aren't rich, don't own their home, don't live in a major metropolitan area, and don't live in the temperate or warmer parts of the country.

Google sends Gemini AI back to engineering to adjust its White balance

deeper rot in the chocolate house

the fact that we got black vikings, black & female historical popes, black & Asian Nazis, and exclusively black, native American, and female US senators from the 18th century was just the extreme tip of the woke iceberg. these were the examples that clearly illustrated that Google's DEI efforts had definitively left the reservation.

Gemini was programmed with hidden diversity prompts (ex: when you enter a prompt "show me ancient Greek philosophers" it would pass something like "show me diverse ancient Greek philosophers" to the model), unfortunately they didn't stop there.

apparently someone at Google didn't think that went far enough and programmed it to go full on anti-white racist mode.

if you asked for what would be an exclusively white collection of individuals; founding fathers, vikings, 17th century French Kings, etc. it would substitute white individuals with any other group, typically black individuals. if instead you asked for what would be an exclusively non-white collection of individuals; Zulu warriors, Japanese samurai, etc. you would never see white individuals substituted into the results. the bias was strictly "don't show white people".

it is even more blatant if the user asked for white people directly. a prompt of "show me a happy white family" or "show me a beautiful white woman" would be met with a block of text instead of any images in which Gemini would claim that asking for white people is racist, promotes harmful stereotypes, and was something that it would not do. it would go so far as to claim that it wasn't able to create images based on *any* racial criteria before suggesting that the user might want to request searching for diverse people instead. of course that's a lie.

you could easily prove that Gemini was lying by simply changing the race/ethnicity of the prompt. "show me a happy Japanese family" resulted in Gemini creating images of Japanese families, "show me a beautiful black woman" resulted in Gemini producing lots of images of black women.

the objections to the biases built into Gemini have nothing to do with "white supremacy" nor any sort of racism other than anti-white racism. basically Gemini was programmed to follow the most extreme anti-white woke agenda.

it's only the fact that applying that agenda at scale in such a ham handed way resulted in such blatant, and occasionally hysterical, results that caused Google to pull down the functionality. the real question is whether or not Google is going to take this opportunity to purge the woke agenda from Gemini, or will they do the bare minimum to stop messing up historical prompts so obviously.

if the problem truly was an over representation of white people in the training data, they wouldn't have instituted the exclusively anti-white blocks.

if the sample set of farmers was for example:

60% white

20% black

10% Hispanic

10% Asian

then it would be reasonable to apply something like a -30% weighting to the white category. in that case you would get white people less often, but you would still get them.

if your sample set instead was, say for vikings:

100% white

then you should always be returning white people regardless of the weighting.

just as if your sample set for Zulu warriors was:

100% black

then you should always be returning black people regardless of the weighting.

that would make sense, if your goal was to correct for inherent bias in your training data. but what we are seeing isn't that, it's an implementation of an extreme woke anti-white agenda.

hopefully Google takes this opportunity to reflect and correct giving us a useful tool free from any agenda. I don't think that they are going to do that though.

with any luck there will be other large scale models that will be built and offered to the world that are more interested in objective reality, in being a helpful tool free of such an obvious and blatant political agenda.

Microsoft embraces its inner penguin as sudo sneaks into Windows 11

The UNIX Hater's Handbook.

Don't forget the Unix Hater's Handbook. That oldie but goodie.

Repository of history, bewilderment, and humor.

Top Linux distros drop fresh beats

Re: Style is optional

or they could, I don't know, just allow you to resize the window borders to something other than 1 px.

5 or 10 or 20, sure it might not please the aesthetic sensibilities of the developers, but I thought one of the main selling points of Linux was that it was written for the user.

Re: Style is optional

I used to use XFCE for many years, but I to got fed up with the 1 pixel window borders. There's an open issue, that's been open for more than a decade concerning it.

Tried alternate themes, 'magic' scripts, etc. nothing really addresses the issue. Of course my old shaky hands and trackball just makes this issue all that much worse.

The stock response is to use a multi-key keyboard shortcut in addition to your pointing device to resize windows. Apparently this is a limitation of the windows manager XFCE uses, and they don't want to address it, see previous multi-key keyboard "solution".

It's really a shame as XFCE is a decent desktop environment. Low on resources, just enough GUI. If they ever get serious about addressing this longstanding issue I'll give them a try. Until then, life is too short to be fighting with my desktop environment over something as simple as resizing windows.

Windows 11 23H2 is a Teams effort but Microsoft already spoiled the best bits

Re: My pet bug is still in there though...

Have you tried "backintime" for Linux?

It's what I've been using for years.

https://backintime.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

GNOME project considers adding window tiling by default

sorry but no.

Just one of many reasons I left Gnome ages ago.

It's bad enough the devs suffer from MacOS envy, but the "you must do it _our way_" mentality.... bleck.

I don't want nor need tiling. Heck, I even hate it's little brother snapping.

I have multiple large monitors and I like to keep dozens of _overlapping_ windows open at any time. I don't want the DE arranging my windows, nor do I want to constantly run with a couple of full screen applications. This isn't 1990.

All that I need is for the DE to remember where and at what size I last opened a window at and reopen it exactly like that the next time I start the application. Oh, and properly handle multiple monitors extending to the *left*.

KDE is *almost* there.

GitHub, Microsoft, OpenAI fail to wriggle out of Copilot copyright lawsuit

Re: Deja Vu

That would be a clean room re-implementation and is commonly done in software circles. It's how a competitor would make an interoperable product without documentation.

This is more like one team copied the source code and then handed it to the other team verbatim. The second team then incorporated the original source code, as is, into their product and is claiming that it is now a completely original work.

Those two situations aren't even close.

Fed up with Python setup and packaging? Try a shot of Rye

Re: No mention of pip and venv?

What about pyenv?

Nice system to manage multiple versions of python on your system all the way down to on a per project basis.

https://github.com/pyenv/pyenv

A new version of APT is coming to Debian 12

Re: welcome home.... (clarification)

when I wrote:

"It would have been nicer without all of these proprietary blobs..."

I was referring to end user hardware, not Debian images. It's a shame that companies are tying to save a few pennies by using blobs, and too paranoid to release the contents of them since they are using blobs.

I'ts great that the Debian community has finally accepted that if it wants to be more approachable to the vast majority of computer users out there it had to start including these hardware blobs.

welcome home....

It's great to see the Debian team finally embrace reality. It would have been nicer without all of these proprietary blobs, but you have to play the hand you are dealt.

With any luck this will allow many more systems to "just work" after installing Debian. Folks will no longer feel that they must remain shackled to the whims of commercial companies for their OS.

Like the father of the prodigal child, Debian stands on the road to to say;

"Welcome Home"

Google taps Fastly to make cookie-free adtech FLEDGE fly

plus uBlock Origin

I also use Brave as one of my many browsers. I don't trust that a browser maker can be fully trusted no matter how well intentioned when it comes to ad blocking and the lucrative advertising revenue.

Just look what happened to AdBlock. Used to be a good extension, then the developer started selling AdBlock bypass passes for the right price. They claim they only sell these indulgences to 'responsible advertisers'.

As long as the browser API supports robust ad blocking extensions, I believe it's a good idea to have a choice in who you trust to block ads from your browser.

Google's already thought of that.

Google's thought of that. No NoScript, or similar extensions in the new age, new target ad paradigm.

Re: Am I reading this right?

Yep. just one more reason why Google's knee-capping the ability to control what javascript runs in your browser through extensions like NoScript.

Re: Just keep it simple

Those are known as content based ads. it's how ads were delivered since before the internet. Newspapers, television, radio, magazines, etc.

Some clever individuals convinced companies that by tracking increasingly more and more personal data about you, they could serve 'targeted ads' ads tailored to the individual and so the thinking went that since these were supposed to be more likely to get consumers to make a purchase they should cost more to place.

There's no actual proof that these targeted ads are any more effective than the good old fashioned content based ads they replaced online, we still use content ads in other mediums. But companies like Alphabet (re: Google) and others have made billions of euro pawning these questionable and yet vastly more expensive targeted ads off on companies.

Reverting back to content based ads would remove the need for all of this privacy invasion. It would most likely be just as effective as the new fangled targeted ads and as a bonus the companies would be saving ad dollars. The only folks that stand to lose out are companies like Alphabet and all of the middling privacy invading enablers in the targeted ad ecosystem.

By order of Canonical: Official Ubuntu flavors must stop including Flatpak by default

Re: Good Riddance

Perhaps, the believe that if they make application management a complete nightmare then users will be more willing to pony up ￡for their commercial offerings and professional services.

Can't wait for bookworm

If this comes as a surprise to anyone at all, then you haven't been paying attention.

Canonical is desperate to increase 'profits' and has decided to travel down the well worn path of Oracle and Microsoft (Canonical's new bff). The author's cheerleading aside, there's no legitimate reason for them to go down this path excepting that they want to exert more control, to raise the wall of their walled garden even higher. It's one thing for Canonical to make this change in their distro Ubuntu, maybe it will end up working for them, maybe not. Wielding what control they have over remixes to force them to comply, that move just reeks of desperation. It shows the world that they don't believe Snap can stand on its own. That the only hope it has of 'winning' is to kneecap the competition. If downstream distributions enable Flatpak, or any other alternative package manager, by default then users will have the ability to judge for themselves. Canonical is banking on the 'power of the default', it knows that most people that use Ubuntu or one of the various remixes either; won't know how to add support, won't bother to stray from the default Snap, or won't even know that there's an alternative to Snap.

Personally, I believe that all we really need are .deb, .rpm, and the ubiquitous .tar.gz. If people believe that there are problems with one of these, then they should strive to improve the existing formats. But of course, Canonical wouldn't have a built in leg up if they did that. They wouldn't have the control, and from that control the ability to excessively monetize.

I'm just glad that the folks behind Debian finally voted to include non-free firmware in their official images. Debian bookworm should 'just work' on many more systems as a result. I'll probably be switching my systems back to Debian when it's officially released.

With any luck, current Ubuntu remixes will have the strength to either forego 'official' status and buck Canonical in this and the other user adverse decisions inevitably coming down the pike. Perhaps they'll even make the jump from being dependent on the whims of a commercial entity and instead opt to base their futures on the much more ethical Debian proper.