Kyle Rittenhouse: Murder or self-defense?
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Grzmot's recent activity
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Comment on The melancholy decline of the semicolon in ~humanities
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Comment on Kyle Rittenhouse, Project Veritas, and the inability to think in terms of principles in ~news
Grzmot Link ParentI don't know. Truth be told I don't know much about the case that I can trust anyway. I saw a lot of different write-ups that basically reflect the content of this post; i.e. people villanizing...I don't know. Truth be told I don't know much about the case that I can trust anyway. I saw a lot of different write-ups that basically reflect the content of this post; i.e. people villanizing Rittenhouse without actually checking what happened.
I don't know either exactly. I actually thought about making a text Tildes post attempting to summarize what happened as drily as possible, it would have the added benefit that people would correct me if I got something wrong because that is much more effective than asking what actually happened.
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Comment on Riot Games' 'Arcane’ renewed for season 2 by Netflix in ~tv
Grzmot LinkConsidering how fantastic the first season was, it would've been absolutely idiotic not to.Considering how fantastic the first season was, it would've been absolutely idiotic not to.
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Comment on Kyle Rittenhouse, Project Veritas, and the inability to think in terms of principles in ~news
Grzmot Link ParentI thought he didn't carry the gun across state lines? Didn't he get it from a friend he was staying with?I thought he didn't carry the gun across state lines? Didn't he get it from a friend he was staying with?
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Comment on Kyle Rittenhouse, Project Veritas, and the inability to think in terms of principles in ~news
Grzmot Link ParentThat is what I meant. In dubio pro reo exists for a very good reason.That is what I meant. In dubio pro reo exists for a very good reason.
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Comment on Kyle Rittenhouse, Project Veritas, and the inability to think in terms of principles in ~news
Grzmot Link ParentCertain enough to lock the man up for life?Certain enough to lock the man up for life?
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Comment on Kyle Rittenhouse, Project Veritas, and the inability to think in terms of principles in ~news
Grzmot (edited )LinkExcellent write-up. To be fair, charging Rittenhouse with murder was the first big problem. Based on what we know, murder is a too steep charge to prove. Rittenhouse certainly didn't go to a...Excellent write-up.
To be fair, charging Rittenhouse with murder was the first big problem. Based on what we know, murder is a too steep charge to prove. Rittenhouse certainly didn't go to a protest to start killing people because he wanted to. Manslaughter might've been more appropriate, but if your legal system allows for a person to wield a rifle in public completely legally then the self-defense defense is completely justified and correct.
You can of course, disregard the legal lense and try and approach it with a different one. There's a good chance your conclusion will be different.
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Comment on Apple announces self service repair in ~tech
Grzmot Link ParentEvery publicly traded company does not function on a morality scale, but on a profit scale. They do this because they expect more profit out of it. Like they way they killed the headphone jack and...Have we become so cynical and paranoid that it's absolutely unthinkable that a company might do this because they genuinely think it's the right thing to do?
Every publicly traded company does not function on a morality scale, but on a profit scale. They do this because they expect more profit out of it. Like they way they killed the headphone jack and started selling AirPods. You think those are good for the environment, with their tiny batteries that will need replacing every 1-2 years?
I find it very strange that people still defend mega-corporations with nearly limitless funds and power. For the record, I don't have a problem with anyone buying their products. You do you mate. I just find it strange that they then argue for them too.
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Comment on Peter Jackson sells visual effects firm for $1.6bn to Unity in ~finance
Grzmot LinkImportant distinction. Weta Digital was making the tools that CGI artists used to make things like Gollum or Caesar from Planet of the Apes. Those are the guys being sold. WetaFX, aka the CGI...Under the deal the company will be split up, with its technology assets being sold to Unity as Weta Digital.
Its visual effects business will remain as a separate company called WetaFX, which is expected to become one of Unity's largest customers.
Important distinction. Weta Digital was making the tools that CGI artists used to make things like Gollum or Caesar from Planet of the Apes. Those are the guys being sold. WetaFX, aka the CGI artists actually making the special efffects, remain under ownership of Peter Jackson.
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Comment on Linus and Luke of LTT try to daily drive Linux in ~tech
Grzmot (edited )Link ParentWindows has also matured a lot as a platform and a lot of the issues it has today come from the fact that Microsoft has to string along the vast majority of all computer users including...Linus ran into one of those issues, and it genuinely did suck. I don't think Windows is immune from those issues though, nor has it ever been. I'm old enough to remember when simply going to the wrong website in Internet Explorer could fuck up your whole install with popups and adware.
Windows has also matured a lot as a platform and a lot of the issues it has today come from the fact that Microsoft has to string along the vast majority of all computer users including businesseses which are notoriously avert to change. A lot of the problems also come from the fact that Microsoft needs to make money. Luckily they realized a few years back that the advantage from just having this large install base is worth much more than trying to monetize Windows itself, so today they use it more like a platform to sell their other shit to you which leads to things like Microsoft Teams being built into Windows 11.
The big problem I have with the defense of Linux in this case is that Linus didn't try to do some cryptic magic of modifying the OS itself. I tried to install Steam. Yes he pushed past a very important warning, yes if he read a little more of said warning he would've seen that he was about to uninstall his desktop environment, but that warning was still really badly worded. I think the problem comes from the fact that a lot of people interested in Linux so much that they work on it are nerds, so the software that comes out is ultimately geared towards nerds. It's often ugly, mismatched and lacks UX design. The fact that often every application is developed by someone else doesn't help with the consistency of the experience, which makes it very hard for people who want their shit to just work to learn or want to learn. As long as that won't change, Linux will never have mass-market appeal. I think I would actually like to see a distro that has proper UX design.
Luckily though, a lot of work on computers is moving into the web and towards thin clients with your browser becoming a sort of swiss-army knife catch-all program that does everything. I think that this will be good for Linux because browsers work on there and if they work the vast majority of your computer interaction will too. The problem is that getting to the point where you can point and click at a browser icon and it opens a browser reliably is, and I cannot stress this enough, really fucking complicated.
Addendum: In one of there recent podcast episodes the two talk about more issues they encountered: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVmJooy5NiU
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Comment on When times are good, the gender gap grows in ~science
Grzmot LinkI stumbled across a thread on reddit showing the percentages of female researchers in Europe. It occasionally gets reposted, and there were a few good articles linked in the comments, even though...I stumbled across a thread on reddit showing the percentages of female researchers in Europe. It occasionally gets reposted, and there were a few good articles linked in the comments, even though the discussion there was not that interesting.
Further reading:
https://www.thejournal.ie/gender-equality-countries-stem-girls-3848156-Feb2018/
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When times are good, the gender gap grows
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Comment on October Tildes Writing Club in ~creative
Grzmot Link ParentThanks for the detailed feedback! I was trying to research what we know on rats specifically know. This is supposed to be a bit of a origin story, and was trying to find how experiments were...Thanks for the detailed feedback! I was trying to research what we know on rats specifically know. This is supposed to be a bit of a origin story, and was trying to find how experiments were conducted to establish the intelligence of rats. Said origin story does hinge a little bit on the group not being entirely happy together at the start, but instead it did turn into an exploration of conscience and how it relates to language.
A number of animals (e.g., ferrets, crows, some types of rodents) actually really like shiny objects. I'm not sure why that is. Some initial thoughts are that it's some sort of sexual competition via nest building (ala penguins), some side effect of tendencies to be curious/explore the novel, or blackmail material / using other minds as a way of assessing value?
Interesting! I suppose I could add a line about some other rats being interested in the silver, I just wanted to draw the distinction between the human minds caught up in our social systems and a fresh, new mind who doesn't understand it yet.
Evolution does some weird things. You can have a species do something as alien as eating their young out of stress/resource concerns/reproduction competition, while also acting like an extremely altruistic human elsewhere.
You could argue here that the rats were still under stress from being captured and transported to a new place, so this peace economy would not have been established yet. I'm further along in the story and things have calmed down, and also just before the first experiment gets conducted, so this information is very helpful! Thank you.
I missed whatever you first posted about Ostia and that doesn't seem to be hosted anymore. What's that all about?
Thanks for being interested! Here are the links. Please know, this is a prequel to the first story, Nightshade Violet. But I plan on breaking the continuity a tiny bit. The second one I'm quite proud of, because unlike the first, it doesn't start a million new plot threads.
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Comment on Signal deploys closed-source measure to mitigate spam in ~tech
Grzmot Link ParentHe isn't? He has behind him the education and a career in the field and gave it all up to whistleblow. In fact I'd say that he's one of the most credible netsec experts around. Maybe not...Edward Snowden is a not a credible security expert
He isn't? He has behind him the education and a career in the field and gave it all up to whistleblow. In fact I'd say that he's one of the most credible netsec experts around. Maybe not specifically cryptography but netsec in general.
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Comment on Signal deploys closed-source measure to mitigate spam in ~tech
Grzmot Link Parent(I think you replied to the wrong comment, you're quoting from the parent comment) True, Signal is consistently recommended by security experts as the messaging app. They have Edward Snowden...(I think you replied to the wrong comment, you're quoting from the parent comment)
True, Signal is consistently recommended by security experts as the messaging app. They have Edward Snowden literally on their homepage.
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Comment on Signal deploys closed-source measure to mitigate spam in ~tech
Grzmot Link ParentIs it? You sign up and start messaging. I don't see the inconvenience. The reason for this criticism still being repeated is because it still holds. Telegram rolled their own crypto and it was...Signal is incredibly inconvenient to use
Is it? You sign up and start messaging. I don't see the inconvenience.
"its crypto has been criticized"
The reason for this criticism still being repeated is because it still holds. Telegram rolled their own crypto and it was proven insecure.
Additionally to that, their operational centre is in Dubai, UAE. Not a country known for it's toleration of opposition. Their server software is completely closed source and proprietary. The Telegram server can read your chat messages unless you're in a secret chat, which means that governments like the one in the UAE can fairly easily get access to it.
In May 2016, the Committee to Protect Journalists and Nate Cardozo, senior staff attorney at Electronic Frontier Foundation, recommended against using Telegram because of "its lack of end-to-end encryption [by default] and its use of non-standard MTProto encryption protocol, which has been publicly criticized by cryptography researchers, including Matthew Green".
Also fun stuff like those rigged security contests they did that you literally could not win were real head scratchers and caused me to immediately distrust the developers.
But frankly, I would also trust it more today than Signal.
Why?
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Comment on After releasing full database of LGBTQ dating website, Black Shadow hackers leak medical records of 290,000 Israeli patients in ~news
Grzmot Link ParentIf paying the ransom is cheaper than securing your infrastructure, you pay the ransom. It's common in netsec circles and security is 1. expensive and 2. often goes against usability, which means...If paying the ransom is cheaper than securing your infrastructure, you pay the ransom. It's common in netsec circles and security is 1. expensive and 2. often goes against usability, which means that the user often lessens security in order to increase the usability of the system (aka writing your password on post-its next to your monitor).
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Comment on The new puritans in ~humanities
Grzmot Link ParentI think the point was that it wasn't out of spite, but out of the need for money, hence the reference to learning to code.be the kind of person who would ideologically align themselves with the far-right - with misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, racism, assorted kinds of xenophobia, climate change denial, and assorted other such unsavoury positions - out of spite.
I think the point was that it wasn't out of spite, but out of the need for money, hence the reference to learning to code.
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Comment on October Tildes Writing Club in ~creative
Grzmot LinkI've begun working on another story set in Ostia and I'm quite proud of the idea, but I will certainly not meet the deadline of today, midnight (barely two hours away). :( The general idea was to...I've begun working on another story set in Ostia and I'm quite proud of the idea, but I will certainly not meet the deadline of today, midnight (barely two hours away). :(
The general idea was to write a short story about a lab rat from the perspective of said lab rat, with the human scientist providing the god-like antagonist. And I have a great way to connect it to the first short story I submitted here about Ostia. Unfortunately I just don't see it turning into horror. It seems the only thing I can write is some sort of adventure. I'm still determined to finish it, because it opens up an avenue of a character that I wanted to explore before.
I'm also not feeling it yet. It's vague and maybe I'm just not describing people, places and emotions good enough in some futile chase of Chekhov's gun, maybe I'm overthinking it, maybe I'm just depressed.
Anyway, here's what I've written so far
At least like the last story, this time I have a full outline finished and I'm happy with it, so I think there's potential there, but at the same time, literally not one person has read the last story and told me about it, so maybe it's also a dead end.
I think the semicolon suffers because there are no clear rules on when to exactly use it. Even German, which has very clearly defined rules on grammar, here for example the page only dedicated to capitalization:
https://www.duden.de/sprachwissen/rechtschreibregeln/Groß- und Kleinschreibung
Before you ask, Duden is so precise that they put the spaces into the URL. They care, so paste the entire line. It's also in German, but I think you should get the gist from only the length.
Even in German, the semicolon usage is basically up to you. The rule is it's between the dot and the comma. If a dot is too strong, but a comma to weak, you use the semicolon. So it's fallen a bit out of fashion.