rkcr's recent activity

  1. Women Who Code shutting down

    There isn't any public announcement yet, but they sent out this email to leadership: Dear Women Who Code Community, It is with a heavy heart that we write to inform you of the difficult decision...

    There isn't any public announcement yet, but they sent out this email to leadership:

    Dear Women Who Code Community,

    It is with a heavy heart that we write to inform you of the difficult decision to close Women Who Code, following a vote by the Board of Directors to dissolve the organization. This decision has not been made lightly. It only comes after careful consideration of all options and is due to a variety of factors that have materially impacted our funding sources. We understand that this news may come as a disappointment, and we want to express our deepest gratitude to each and every one of you who have been a part of our journey.

    As a community, we are powerful. For more than a decade, Women Who Code has created a sense of belonging in tech and support for our community, thanks to the dedication and commitment of our members, volunteers, and staff. We have brought together a vibrant community of over 360,000 technologists who deeply care about building an industry that is more diverse, inclusive, and equitable. We’ve delivered more than 20K community-led events, awarded more than $3.5 million in scholarships, held developer conferences and technical summits in tech hubs around the world, logged more than one million high-skilled, leadership-building volunteer hours, given away more than $2.5 million in conference tickets for broader industry engagement, and shared more than 14K job opportunities. Even more than these trackable outputs, we’ve come together to support each other, navigate the industry as a powerful force, share both technical protips and strategies for rising in our careers, and break barriers.

    While so much has been accomplished, our mission is not complete and our vision of a tech industry where diverse women and historically excluded people thrive at every level is not fulfilled. Despite our collective efforts, the challenges we face have become insurmountable and we must confront that what worked for us is no longer working. We are deeply saddened by the difficult decision to dissolve the organanization.

    As we embark on the process of winding down operations, we are committed to ensuring a smooth transition and fulfilling any remaining obligations to the best of our ability. Unfortunately, we will not be able to continue offering any program services, and will be cancelling all upcoming events. We will be refunding any ticket purchases made by members for our upcoming developer conference, WWCode CONNECT 2024.

    Although this chapter is coming to a close, we believe that the spirit of our community will endure and hope that the relationships and experiences you've gained through your involvement with Women Who Code will continue to inspire you in your future endeavors.

    On behalf of the Board of Directors and staff of Women Who Code, we extend our heartfelt thanks for being part of the movement, and encourage you to continue to seek support from other like-minded organizations who authentically support the careers of women in the tech industry and keep inspiring each other as you navigate the industry. It has been an honor and a privilege to serve the mission, and work alongside such passionate individuals.

    Thank you for your understanding and support during this challenging time.

    39 votes
  2. Comment on A quick post on Chen’s algorithm in ~comp

    rkcr
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    If you’re a normal person — that is, a person who doesn’t obsessively follow the latest cryptography news — you probably missed last week’s cryptography bombshell. That news comes in the form of a new e-print authored by Yilei Chen, “Quantum Algorithms for Lattice Problems“, which has roiled the cryptography research community. The result is now being evaluated by experts in lattices and quantum algorithm design (and to be clear, I am not one!) but if it holds up, it’s going to be quite a bad day/week/month/year for the applied cryptography community.

    2 votes
  3. Comment on Embezzlers are nice people in ~finance

  4. Comment on Chechnya 'bans music that is too fast or too slow' in ~music

    rkcr
    Link Parent
    Thank you, this is a much better explanation than I could come up with! The conductor for my community orchestra often switches between conducting in 2 or 4, even within the same section, just to...

    Thank you, this is a much better explanation than I could come up with!

    The conductor for my community orchestra often switches between conducting in 2 or 4, even within the same section, just to create a slightly different feel (but not a different speed). It's really quite arbitrary.

  5. Comment on Chechnya 'bans music that is too fast or too slow' in ~music

    rkcr
    Link Parent
    Sure - mathematically they are exactly the same, but the feel of the song can change based on the "pulse", or more often it's simply easier to think of a fast song as "cut time" instead of having...

    Sure - mathematically they are exactly the same, but the feel of the song can change based on the "pulse", or more often it's simply easier to think of a fast song as "cut time" instead of having to count every single beat.

    Take the can can from Orpheus in the Underworld. Here's one version that's conducted in 4/4 (and the audience claps every beat). It's fast, exciting, ~160BPM. Compare that to this recording, wherein the conductor is waving his hands essentially half as often - 2/2 time - cut time, ~80BPM.

    Same song, but one version is much easier on the conductor, and arguably the basic pulse of the song is in a different place. (You can even see in the 160BPM choir clapping that some of them are thinking of it as cut time - only clapping half as often as the others.)

    1 vote
  6. Comment on The Assist - Thoughts on AI coding assistants in ~comp

    rkcr
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    The main thing I dislike about AI coding assistance is that I have to very carefully review the AI's code to make sure that it does the right thing and none of the wrong things. And I, personally, find that reviewing code is more difficult than writing equivalent code myself.

    17 votes
  7. Comment on Chechnya 'bans music that is too fast or too slow' in ~music

    rkcr
    Link
    As a musician... this is so vague you could ban anything. What's to say a song is 100BPM in cut time vs 200BPM common time? I suppose that's the point - to have free license to suppress any song.

    As a musician... this is so vague you could ban anything. What's to say a song is 100BPM in cut time vs 200BPM common time? I suppose that's the point - to have free license to suppress any song.

    24 votes
  8. Comment on The FBI’s new tactic: Catching American suspects with push alerts in ~tech

    rkcr
    Link Parent
    Android developer here (so I can't speak to iOS at all). Also, it's been many years since I've implemented push notifications so I could be a little fuzzy (aka wrong) here. tl;dr - everyone is...

    Android developer here (so I can't speak to iOS at all). Also, it's been many years since I've implemented push notifications so I could be a little fuzzy (aka wrong) here.

    tl;dr - everyone is susceptible, disabling push notifications will likely not help.


    There's a point of confusion here: the word "notification" is overloaded.

    The "notification" users think of is the little message that pops up while using the phone. Apps determine when those show up, and they can be disabled at will. However, in this context, a "push notification" is a low-energy way of communicating between the server and the device.

    While UI notifications and push notifications are often linked, there's no reason they have to be! The app can show a UI notification without having received a push notification, and a push notification can be received without the app showing a UI notification.


    With that clarified, let's dig into push notifications.

    Android uses Firebase Cloud Messaging as the basis of all push notifications. The lifecycle flow shows push notifications are a two-step process: first you register your device, then you can send/receive messages.

    As noted above, this whole process works separately from UI notifications. So even if your notifications are disabled, the app may still register your device, and might even run the logic to try to send a notification - you just won't see it. Why? Because apps might be using push notifications for more than just UI notifications - for example, a push notification could tell an app that there's new data to sync in the background, so that the next time you open your app it has fresh data.

    If the app only uses push notifications to show UI notifications, then a privacy-focused app developer could prevent FCM from initializing (and thus registering) your device. However, that's extra work and I doubt most developers would go that extra mile; the main reason developers would do this work is in cases where the same app is delivered in contexts where FCM is not available (e.g. Amazon Kindle).


    One last point: I don't think the individual apps can use the push notification token they receive to figure out your identity. However, since Google knows all the push notification tokens, they could figure out that the same device that uses push notifications for app XYZ is also the same device that has push notifications for Gmail (and thus can find the user's identity that way).

    10 votes
  9. Comment on Bitcoin tops $57,000 price level for first time since late 2021 in ~finance

    rkcr
    Link Parent
    It's not an "all or nothing" situation - it's a matter of degrees. You can contribute a lot or a little to our extinction, depending on your choices.

    It's not an "all or nothing" situation - it's a matter of degrees. You can contribute a lot or a little to our extinction, depending on your choices.

    17 votes
  10. Comment on I’m worried that the Israel-Palestine conflict is tearing Tildes apart in ~tildes

    rkcr
    Link Parent
    I'm guessing there's a lot of us who feel the same way, and thus have never participated in these discussions. Even if the people commenting on these threads are getting into flamewars, many of us...

    I'm guessing there's a lot of us who feel the same way, and thus have never participated in these discussions. Even if the people commenting on these threads are getting into flamewars, many of us are actually just avoiding them. So what you're seeing is still just a subset of Tildes.

    13 votes
  11. Comment on George Carlin estate sues creators of AI-generated comedy special in key lawsuit over stars’ likenesses in ~tech

    rkcr
    Link Parent
    Unfortunately (or fortunately?), it's not actually interesting/novel anymore. The creators of the show have now stated that AI was not involved at all: IANAL so I don't know how the rest of this...

    the copyright infringement side of this is really interesting and novel legally.

    Unfortunately (or fortunately?), it's not actually interesting/novel anymore. The creators of the show have now stated that AI was not involved at all:

    “It’s a fictional podcast character created by two human beings, Will Sasso and Chad Kultgen,” Del wrote in an email. “The YouTube video ‘I’m Glad I’m Dead’ was completely written by Chad Kultgen.”

    IANAL so I don't know how the rest of this will play out, they may still have a case on voice/likeness.

    18 votes
  12. Comment on Electric cars are not the future – In cities at least, e-bikes make more cultural and consumer sense in ~transport

    rkcr
    Link Parent
    Fair enough. I was reacting more to the mid-level comment about more extreme weather. I still think it's rather disrespectful to claim that someone's lived experience is actually just media hype;...

    Fair enough. I was reacting more to the mid-level comment about more extreme weather.

    I still think it's rather disrespectful to claim that someone's lived experience is actually just media hype; that's mainly what I'm reacting to, I suppose.

    6 votes
  13. Comment on Electric cars are not the future – In cities at least, e-bikes make more cultural and consumer sense in ~transport

    rkcr
    Link Parent
    You need to take into account the context of this thread. The top-level comment is about how cars solve the problem of transporting 1. children 2. in extreme weather. I'm not trying to shut down...

    You need to take into account the context of this thread. The top-level comment is about how cars solve the problem of transporting 1. children 2. in extreme weather.

    I'm not trying to shut down someone who wants to talk about bikes vs. cars in other circumstances. But you can't just disregard the premise of the discussion. You have to engage with the topic, not just hand-wave the very case being discussed as "an edge case."

    20 votes
  14. Comment on Electric cars are not the future – In cities at least, e-bikes make more cultural and consumer sense in ~transport

    rkcr
    Link Parent
    It's pretty wild to call places where tens of millions of people live (e.g. Canada) "an edge case". I feel like you've been discounting other peoples' lived experiences all over this thread. You...

    This kind of edge case gets exaggerated all over media and creates a misleading perception of impracticality.

    It's pretty wild to call places where tens of millions of people live (e.g. Canada) "an edge case".

    I feel like you've been discounting other peoples' lived experiences all over this thread. You don't live in a frigid environment and you don't have kids - maybe listen & learn from people who are in that situation, instead of trying to convince them they're going about life wrong.

    30 votes
  15. Comment on Stuff we figured out about AI in 2023 in ~tech

    rkcr
    Link
    Simon Willison maintains one of the most informative blogs about LLMs, and his overview of the past year is a great summary of recent advances, discoveries, and setbacks.

    Simon Willison maintains one of the most informative blogs about LLMs, and his overview of the past year is a great summary of recent advances, discoveries, and setbacks.

    11 votes