Heat death of the internet
84
votes
kenc's recent activity
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Comment on Best foreign films and TV shows? in ~tv
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Comment on Time to delete your Glassdoor account and data in ~tech
kenc LinkAfter I posted this, I went ahead to delete my account since I wasn't really using it anyway. Just cleaning up my digital footprint and all. This morning, I was greeted with the email "Your...After I posted this, I went ahead to delete my account since I wasn't really using it anyway. Just cleaning up my digital footprint and all.
This morning, I was greeted with the email "Your Glassdoor Personal Data Has Been Deleted", which is all good, except this second paragraph:
Please note, however, that despite your request to delete data, we reserve the right to keep any information in our archives that we deem necessary to comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes, enforce our agreements, and exercise the right of freedom of expression and information. We will also keep a record of your request for legal and compliance purposes.
which doesn't really instill any confidence that my data is really deleted. I don't delete many accounts so I don't know if this is common practice for other sites and I don't know if they are just obligated to include this for legal purposes.
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Comment on Time to delete your Glassdoor account and data in ~tech
kenc Link ParentAs far as I'm aware, there is no identity verification process on Glassdoor so anyone could create a spoof account or give a fake identity. As with all anonymous review sites, this depends on the...As far as I'm aware, there is no identity verification process on Glassdoor so anyone could create a spoof account or give a fake identity.
As with all anonymous review sites, this depends on the good will of their users. Its possible that people are leaving fake reviews or leaving reviews with fake identities. I could even see some organizations creating fake accounts to boost themselves or forcing their employees to leave positive reviews. This is all just speculation but I could see it being a problem, which might be one of the reasons Glassdoor is trying to mandate a real name now.
Don't get me wrong - its a terrible solution since its the antithesis to the entire premise of their site, even if they claim that giving your real name has no effect on the identity of your reviews.
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Comment on Time to delete your Glassdoor account and data in ~tech
kenc LinkI personally don't have an issue with including my real name, but the fact that an employee updated the profile with their real name and location (which they didn't consent to sharing on their...The TL;DR is: Glassdoor now requires your real name and will add it to older accounts without your consent if they learn it, and your only option is to delete your account. They do not care that this puts people at risk with their employers. They do not care that this seems to run counter to their own data-privacy policies.
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After I responded to that support email last week, I found that they had updated my profile to add my real name and location, the name pulled from the email From line I didn't think to cloak because who does that?I personally don't have an issue with including my real name, but the fact that an employee updated the profile with their real name and location (which they didn't consent to sharing on their profile) after replying to a support email is just really scummy.
I went to check my Glassdoor account and sure enough, you can't edit or remove your name anymore without sending in a request.
If you're looking to delete your Glassdoor account, check out justdeleteme.xyz for instructions.
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Time to delete your Glassdoor account and data
102 votes -
Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp
kenc Link ParentUnfortunately, my ISP has CGNAT which I believe does not work with DDNS :(Unfortunately, my ISP has CGNAT which I believe does not work with DDNS :(
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Comment on How user groups made software reuse a reality in ~comp
kenc LinkA history of how reusable software was distributed in physical catalogues before modern repositories like PyPI and NPM existed.A history of how reusable software was distributed in physical catalogues before modern repositories like PyPI and NPM existed.
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How user groups made software reuse a reality
4 votes -
Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp
kenc LinkSetting up a WireGuard VPN network to access my home LAN with my phone/laptop when I'm out of the house. Because I don't have a static IP, I set up a hub and spoke configuration with a VPS to...Setting up a WireGuard VPN network to access my home LAN with my phone/laptop when I'm out of the house. Because I don't have a static IP, I set up a hub and spoke configuration with a VPS to forward all traffic to my Raspberry Pi at home.
So far, what I have is this and it's all working well. Each client has two tunnels - the aforementioned tunnel to the VPS and another tunnel to Mullvad. However, what I really want is to effectively "combine" the two tunnels into one, so I don't have to switch between networks when I want to access my home LAN.
I believe the latter setup is possible, but it's so much more complex for me that I'll have to do a lot of reading up on iptables and routing in the weekend...
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How I keep myself alive using Golang
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Comment on #! Useful use of cat(1) in ~comp
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Comment on How I taught the Iliad to Chinese teenagers in ~books
kenc LinkThis is a long (and interesting) read, but some context from the introduction: and some highlights: I'm sorry but I'm not sure whether this should go in ~books or ~humanities or some other group.This is a long (and interesting) read, but some context from the introduction:
Several years ago I had the chance to lead two seminars with a group of high-performing Chinese high school seniors. Each seminar had between 20-35 kids; each of these students was a graduating senior enrolled in the international department of a prestigious high school in Beijing.
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Half of the seminar’s time, however, was spent on one work: The Iliad. When the seminar was over, many students reported to me that reading and discussing this one book was the highlight of the three years they spent in high school. This reading was popular enough that a small group of students who had taken the other seminar asked me to teach the Iliad section of the class to them privately over the summer.
and some highlights:
Why, my Chinese students asked, will we read this? Because you need to prepare for American university classes, I replied. But more importantly: because this book might just change your life! I said this without apology or awkwardness. I believed it! Ultimately, if a great work of history and literature does not have the potential to change a student’s life, to shape their character or transform their worldview, there is no point in teaching it! Most students believe this themselves. They can tell whether you believe the books you are assigning are that important. If you do not believe the works you are assigning matter, students will not think they matter either. I presented the Iliad as a meditation on universal problems of the human condition. My students read it as such.
Most students hunger for work that has real meaning. If they must study, they would prefer to study something that matters. They want to matter themselves. That is the second key to reaching cynical teenagers: they must be treated like men and women whose decisions and opinions matter. I was eager to learn from their observations and opinions. I genuinely believe I have as much to learn from my classes as they do from me. I was insistent that the books we read had great moral significance, but it was not my part to force ‘morals of the story’ down my student’s throats. Teenagers rarely respond well to blunt didactics. My role was to provide sufficient historical or literary background so that students could understand works like the Iliad, and then push them to wrestle with the questions these texts posed. The conclusions they developed were their own. Students were eager to tell me of these conclusions because they believed (rightly) that I valued their insights and experiences.
I'm sorry but I'm not sure whether this should go in ~books or ~humanities or some other group.
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How I taught the Iliad to Chinese teenagers
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Comment on How to do things if you're not that smart and don't have any talent in ~life
kenc LinkI find a lot of these points to be helpful especially when joining a new field. From my experiences (which are mostly in tech), the most helpful thing I did was simply to write things down. There...I find a lot of these points to be helpful especially when joining a new field.
From my experiences (which are mostly in tech), the most helpful thing I did was simply to write things down. There have been so many times where colleagues that are much more talented than me have fixed issues and gone on to forget about them entirely. A few months later, a similar issue would pop up again and we would struggle to remember what exactly it was that we did to solve it. In most cases, I like to do the grunt work of writing minutes for that call we had and recording it in a ticket somewhere.
Another thing I found to be impactful was writing onboarding checklists. Joining a new team or job that's missing this is extremely frustrating and its not too hard to create too. I basically go around discovering what I need to get started and add them to a checklist. Its surprisingly how many times I had to do this. When anyone new joins, I just point them to that checklist.
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How to do things if you're not that smart and don't have any talent
22 votes -
Comment on Why you should consider a smaller keyboard in ~comp
kenc LinkI have been using a Planck for about 2.5 years and I really enjoy the small form factor and programmability of the keyboard. I find 3 layers is all I need and never really have only problems...I have been using a Planck for about 2.5 years and I really enjoy the small form factor and programmability of the keyboard. I find 3 layers is all I need and never really have only problems except when playing a game that requires weird hotkeys like you mentioned, but I mostly use the controller anyway.
However, since the Planck is ortholinear, I did struggle with when I first switched over from normal staggered keyboards, and it took me about 3 weeks to get used to it.
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Comment on What are the best websites/programs for creating mood boards / image collages / 'visual lists'? in ~tech
kenc LinkObsidian.md has a new Canvas mode that might be good. Notion can also work although its online only. -
Comment on The 2023 Hugo Awards: A report on censorship and exclusion in ~books
kenc Link ParentThis excerpt from the Esquire article I mentioned above will provide some context on why the convention was hosted in China: I don't think anybody was surprised that hosting the event in China...This excerpt from the Esquire article I mentioned above will provide some context on why the convention was hosted in China:
In 2021, the voting process to select the host city for the 2023 convention became a lightning rod for conspiracy theories. Each year, anyone who purchases a membership in the World Science Fiction Society can vote on where WorldCon will be held two years later. In 2021, voters could choose between Chengdu and Winnipeg, Canada for the 2023 convention. “There were concerns that a couple thousand people from China purchased memberships [in the World Science Fiction Society] that year to vote for Chengdu,” says Jason Sanford, a three-time Hugo finalist. “It was unusual, but it was done under the rules.”
While Sanford welcomed the participation of new Chinese fans, other people were alarmed that many of the Chinese votes for Chengdu were written in the same handwriting and posted from the same mailing address. The chair of the convention that year, Mary Robinette Kowal, says some members of the awards committee wanted to mark those votes as invalid. “But if you’re filling out a ballot in English and you don’t speak English, you hand it to a friend who does,” she says. “And the translation we’d put in could be read as ‘where are you from,’ not ‘what is your address.’”
Eventually, a few votes were invalidated by the committee, but most were allowed to stand. “China has the largest science fiction reading audience on the planet by several magnitudes, and they are extremely passionate,” Kowal says.
Later, when Chengdu was announced as the winning site for the 2023 convention, more than 100 authors—including N. K. Jemisin, G. Willow Wilson, S. A. Chakraborty, and Tochi Onyebuchi—signed an open letter “in protest of serious and ongoing human rights violations taking place in the Uyghur region of China.” Other authors were concerned about the Chinese Communist Party’s history of censoring LGBTQ content, as well as material that criticizes the party’s government.
I don't think anybody was surprised that hosting the event in China resulted in censorship. It is, however surprising that the censorship was performed preemptively by the Western committee of the event.
Also, its obvious that we are all against the CCP, but there are close to a billion people living in China and some of those people would like to participate in and be part of the international SFF community, so its not very fair to exclude them due to the actions of their government.
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Comment on The 2023 Hugo Awards: A report on censorship and exclusion in ~books
kenc LinkThis extract from the report provides a quick TLDR: Some other highlights: ... ... It should also be noted that the Chinese community is just as affected and angry as the Western community. From...This extract from the report provides a quick TLDR:
Emails and files released by one of the administrators of the 2023 Hugo Awards indicate that authors and works deemed “not eligible” for the awards were removed due to political considerations. In particular, administrators of the awards from the United States and Canada researched political concerns related to Hugo-eligible authors and works and discussed removing certain ones from the ballot for those reasons, revealing they were active participants in the censorship that took place.
Some other highlights:
On June 5, Kat Jones asked McCarty for a “list or a resource you can point us to that elaborates on ‘other topics that may be an issue in China’?”
McCarty responded on June 5 at 7:18 pm saying “At the moment, the best guidance I have is ‘mentions of Hong Kong, Taiwan, Tibet, negatives of China’. I will try to get better guidance when I have a chance to dig into this deeper with the Chinese folks on the committee.”
On June 6, Kat Jones wrote an email to the administration group titled “Best Novel potential issues.” In the email, Jones raised concerns about the novels Babel, or the Necessity of Violence by R. F. Kuang and The Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. Jones wrote that Babel “has a lot about China. I haven't read it, and am not up on Chinese politics, so cannot say whether it would be viewed as ‘negatives of China’” while adding that The Daughter of Doctor Moreau talked “about importing hacienda workers from China. I have not read the book, and do not know whether this would be considered ‘negative.’”
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In an interview conducted on February 4 in Chicago, Dave McCarty said that the Chinese government was not indirectly involved in the Hugo Awards “except insofar as the government says what the laws are in the country. […] So the government of China says what's cool in China and the people just operate inside of the bounds of what's cool, which is exactly the same way that you and I work here.”
What McCarty appears to be referring to is self-censorship [...]
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As Lacey explained in more detail in her apology letter, “We were told to vet nominees for work focusing on China, Taiwan, Tibet, or other topics that may be an issue in China and, to my shame, I did so. Understand that I signed up fully aware that there were going to be issues. I am not that naïve regarding the Chinese political system, but I wanted the Hugos to happen, and not have them completely crash and burn.”
It should also be noted that the Chinese community is just as affected and angry as the Western community. From the report:
When Vazquez was asked if he could help connect the authors with any fans in China who might comment for this report, he said “I’m sorry. They do not want to speak to the media even anonymously.”
As Vasquez stated in a follow-up comment, “I have a lot of love for Chinese fandom and my friendships and connections there run deep. That's a real and vibrant fandom there that is, like us, wanting very little to do with their government being involved in their fandom. They definitely don't think it's their government and instead think it's corporate interests or, even worse, a fan/pro organization. Honestly, they seem more scared by that than anything else which saddens me to see and despite multiple attempts to get them to share their story they seem really hesitant.”
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It’s my sincere hope that in the years to come we all remember that the regular SF/F fans in China didn’t want this to happen. They are as horrified as Western fans are by all of this. Instead of blaming China’s genre fans, we should work to ensure this issue with the Hugo Awards never happens again.
A statement from the Glasgow 2024 Hugo Awards Chair has since been released, with Kat Jones resigning from the committee. This Esquire article from early Feb also provides information on other related controversies surrounding the 2023 Hugo Awards and Chengdu WorldCon.
Edit: After posting this, I saw this topic has been previously discussed here. Welp, just gonna leave this up anyway.
Drive My Car - Japanese emotional drama film based on the Murakami short story of the same name.
The Night Eats the World - French zombie film with a focus on a lone survivor. It has mixed reviews, but I found it to be an interesting take on the zombie genre.
Kingdom - South Korean zombie series set in 16th century Korea. Another interesting take on the zombie genre in a historical setting, highly recommended.
What Did You Eat Yesterday? - Japanese LGBTQ+ slice of life series that focuses on the relationship of a middle-aged gay couple in Tokyo. It's adapted from a manga series of the same name. It's very cute and centred around the couple making home-cooked meals for each other to show their love.