chocolate's recent activity

  1. Comment on Pakistan's sham election - How the army chose Imran Khan in ~society

  2. Comment on Is doxing ever acceptable? Do the ends ever justify the means? in ~talk

    chocolate
    Link Parent
    On an individual level it makes sense. As soon as you apply it to groups, it's an invitation for everyone to be as bad as the worst actor.

    On an individual level it makes sense. As soon as you apply it to groups, it's an invitation for everyone to be as bad as the worst actor.

  3. Comment on Is doxing ever acceptable? Do the ends ever justify the means? in ~talk

    chocolate
    Link Parent
    When I protested the invasion of Iraq, I would have been happy to be identified. The point was that I wanted my voice heard. When I protested Scientology I wore a mask. Not because I feared being...

    When I protested the invasion of Iraq, I would have been happy to be identified. The point was that I wanted my voice heard.

    When I protested Scientology I wore a mask. Not because I feared being identified but as a way to draw attention to their practice of SLAPP tactics.

    I think there is a huge difference between identifying people who make their voice public, and using identification as a threat to silence dissident voices.

    3 votes

  4. Comment on Polish government might prosecute people who fly LGBT white eagle flag for desecrating a national symbol in ~lgbt

    chocolate
    Link Parent
    There's been no enforcement either way. Check the article. Also, I can't believe I've never heard the term 'selective enforcement'. It's very useful.

    There's been no enforcement either way. Check the article.

    Also, I can't believe I've never heard the term 'selective enforcement'. It's very useful.

    3 votes

  5. Comment on Dying alone in Japan: The industry devoted to what's left behind in ~life

    chocolate
    Link
    I couldn't imagine dealing with multiple people in grief every week. Especially as going through their stuff would make the deceased real to you - how many items would provide a story?...

    I couldn't imagine dealing with multiple people in grief every week. Especially as going through their stuff would make the deceased real to you - how many items would provide a story?

    More seriously, she worries that low-cost Chinese-manufactured goods are starting to offer real competition to secondhand goods in developing markets

    Manufacturing costs so low that they beat free.

    1 vote

  6. Comment on Favorite one-hit wonder artists? in ~music

    chocolate
    Link Parent
    My wife is Indian. I completely relate.

    My wife is Indian. I completely relate.

    1 vote

  8. Comment on Behemoth, bully, thief: How the English language is taking over the planet in ~humanities

    chocolate
    Link
    (You beat me to posting this by 18 minutes! This is good for tildes.) This is not surprising, as English is such a common subject for European students. I also wonder about neologisms; do we use...

    (You beat me to posting this by 18 minutes! This is good for tildes.)

    Researchers at the IULM University in Milan have noticed that, in the past 50 years, Italian syntax has shifted towards patterns that mimic English models, for instance in the use of possessives instead of reflexives to indicate body parts and the frequency with which adjectives are placed before nouns. German is also English grammatical forms, while in Swedish its influence governing word formation and phonology.

    This is not surprising, as English is such a common subject for European students. I also wonder about neologisms; do we use any non-English words for technology? Even 'Bluetooth' is the Anglicised form.

    The quest to master English in Korea is often called the yeongeo yeolpung or “English frenzy”. Although mostly confined to a mania for instruction and immersion, occasionally this “frenzy” spills over into medical intervention. As Sung-Yul Park relates: “An increasing number of parents in South Korea have their children undergo a form of surgery that snips off a thin band of tissue under the tongue … Most parents pay for this surgery because they believe it will make their children speak English better; the surgery supposedly enables the child to pronounce the English retroflex consonant with ease, a sound that is considered to be particularly difficult for Koreans.”

    How many Anglosphere Koreans would it take to dispel that myth?

    1 vote

  10. Comment on Amazon's face recognition falsely matched twenty-eight members of Congress with mugshots in ~tech

    chocolate
    Link
    Four things. I'd like to see the photos they were falsely matched with. If they are genuinely people who look like them, that's just the way faces and facial recognition work. 'People of colour'...

    Four things.

    1. I'd like to see the photos they were falsely matched with. If they are genuinely people who look like them, that's just the way faces and facial recognition work.

    Nearly 40 percent of Rekognition’s false matches in our test were of people of color, even though they make up only 20 percent of Congress.

    1. 'People of colour' being falsely matched at a higher rate could indicate one of three things. The software may be performing poorly (possible). Certain ethnicities look more similar than others (true in some cases, but certainly not for African Americans who tend to be racially mixed). There may simply be a disproportionately large pool to get a false match against (most probable, and easiest to verify as police records generally include a race).

    2. There also seems to be a massive gender disparity - only one of the 28 positives appears to be a woman. The article doesn't tell us the makeup of the sample group, but if it were 50/50 then men are 27x more likely to be flagged. If they were a proper randomised sample (as the above quote suggests) then there should still be 5-6 women flagged.

    3. Are we really sure they were false matches? Joking.

    This is a serious issue. The racial and gender disparities may be poor software, which can be fixed. If they are a case of the different relative sizes of pools, we're in trouble - no matter how accurate you get, people have doppelgangers.

    Police aren't even my biggest concern. Imagine not being able to get a job because employers start using this en masse and you just happened to look identical to the police sketch of a serial arsonist. You would probably never know, and even if you did are you going to include a disclaimer on your resume?

    4 votes

  11. Comment on American Hippopotamus in ~misc

    chocolate
    Link
    Hippopotami are thriving in one part of the Americas - Colombia. Pablo Escobar had a private zoo. After his death, it was effectively abandoned. The local rivers turned out to be an ideal habitat...

    Hippopotami are thriving in one part of the Americas - Colombia.

    Pablo Escobar had a private zoo. After his death, it was effectively abandoned. The local rivers turned out to be an ideal habitat for a hippopotamus.

    https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/05/160510-pablo-escobar-hippos-colombia/

    http://www.euronews.com/2018/02/20/colombia-declares-war-on-pablo-escobar-s-hippos

    2 votes

  12. Comment on The number of people in extreme poverty fell by 137,000 yesterday in ~news

    chocolate
    Link Parent
    None - babies take their place.

    None - babies take their place.

    1 vote

  14. Comment on Favorite one-hit wonder artists? in ~music

    chocolate
    Link Parent
    And she picked Savage Garden to demonstrate Australian music?

    And she picked Savage Garden to demonstrate Australian music?

  15. Comment on Favorite one-hit wonder artists? in ~music

    chocolate
    Link Parent
    I don't think they count as one hit wonders.

    I don't think they count as one hit wonders.

    8 votes

  17. Comment on Rewriting History: what one decision would you go back and have someone change? in ~humanities.history

    chocolate
    Link Parent
    Russia remains Tsarist, the British and French Empires continue to expand, maybe the Ottomans and Austro-Hungarians even survive. It would certainly be a different world.

    Russia remains Tsarist, the British and French Empires continue to expand, maybe the Ottomans and Austro-Hungarians even survive. It would certainly be a different world.

  18. Comment on Is there a space for the extremes of "alt right" on Tildes? in ~tildes

    chocolate
    Link Parent
    Also, trolls are really annoying.

    Also, trolls are really annoying.

  19. Comment on The OA - has anybody else seen this on Netflix? in ~tv

    chocolate
    Link
    My wife absolutely loved it. I thought it was ok.

    My wife absolutely loved it. I thought it was ok.

    1 vote

  20. Comment on Casual gaming group? in ~games

    chocolate
    Link
    Warframe guilds are sort of expensive, in terms of catching up with research.

    Warframe guilds are sort of expensive, in terms of catching up with research.