I really wanted to like Gleam because the Rust-like syntax and static types looked familiar and robust, but seeing how Lustre does HTML templating versus how Phoenix does Heex was my deciding factor to try the latter. My understanding is this is because of a current lack of any macro system.
I probably didn't give it a fair shake, but it all looks very early days, which isn't for me. Kind of a shame, because the dynamic types are still kind of driving me up the wall in Elixir. Elixir structs and dialyzer type specs feel so much worse than what statically typed languages provide.
> but seeing how Lustre does HTML templating versus how Phoenix does Heex was my deciding factor to try the latter. My understanding is this is because of a current lack of any macro system.
When I worked with Ruby on Rails I was "addicted" to macros for everything, but after working for a while with statically-typed languages like Elm and Gleam, I see that there are many other ways to solve those same problems. The code can be quite repetitive sometimes, but as long as the compiler ensures everything is in place, it works quite well.
It sounds like these people would otherwise be laid off if they were not parked in this department instead. I imagine they are quite unhappy, but getting paid 200k+ to do tasks that are usually gig work is hardly the most heart wrenching story in this tech market.
From the article, it seems to me they've been "relegated" to coming up with Leetcode problems for AI. Which, let's face it, a bunch of them probably already did before for their SWE interview circus. I can see why they may feel under-employed/under-utilized but aside from the dystopian data gathering, I really find it hard to see what they are complaining about.
The article even admits that their current tasks are easier than before. For the same paycheck! For 200K I will dredge through the most obscure IMO/Leetcode/ICPC problems and the palm of my hands will remain delicately smooth, in danger only of drying from the air conditioning. If there is no meaning and dignity in that I'm sure I'll have plenty leftover from that comp to find meaning and dignity elsewhere be it a side gig, charity work, or heck even just good times with my family and my social circle. A lot of people "just do a job" for much, much less and still live rich inner lives.
Really, an orchestra of small violins playing while I read this one.
> From the article, it seems to me they've been "relegated" to coming up with Leetcode problems for AI. Which, let's face it, a bunch of them probably already did before for their SWE interview circus.
It is a grim irony.
1. Human trains on leetcode to land AOGMX SWE job
2. Job forces them into new role writing leetcode to train AI
3. ...
4. AI eats human, inherits the earth
If your comment is intended to convey sympathy on these workers, I think you're going to have a difficult time finding folks that align with you.
If your comment is intended to remind folks that these workers can simply resign of their own free will to find meaningful and dignified work at a different employer, I think you're going to have an easy time finding folks that align with you.
Eh, maybe. It's not clear that some won't be returned to their old roles eventually. Personally, I think I'd prefer the layoff with severance over this kind of transfer.
There's not many cases of enforcement. Non-response is taken about as seriously as the Robinson–Patman act. I think the Census Bureau is very reliant on people thinking there will be enforcement, however, which is why the materials they send all have a threatening aura. I don't know about the ACS, but for the decennial census I often felt like my job as an enumerator was just to bother people until they'd answer. The case would keep being recycled until we got at least (IIRC) a head count.
If this is a Nazi reference, Census data was used to send people to concentration camps here during the same era. Less awful than death camps, at least.
That's a very strong statement. I'm absolutely no fan of ICE or indefinite detention of people based on where they were born, but I'm not sure we have camps where we're committing genocide in the states. Nor do I see that in our future.
So if the death camps hadn't been for the purpose of genocide but rather for disposing of the poor or convicted criminals or perhaps those suspected of being illegal immigrants would that have made them okay? It seems to me that "I'm not sure we have camps where we're committing genocide in the states" is largely irrelevant to the issue at hand.
I'm making the argument that the ideological or political underpinnings of the nazi's actions aren't what's relevant when drawing parallels regarding concrete abuses. It doesn't matter why the people are being interned, what matters is any violations of human rights and the associated responses.
I don't work in this industry so I don't know their secret sauce, but I would be surprised if census data is not used as a baseline for what they're selling. It doesn't make sense to not want to use it if your next best sources are relying on everyone in the household having an app that sells their location to your network constantly. I see outdated data about me on the public versions of these sites all the time, so I know they don't have omniscience.
> Title 13 provides the following protections to individuals and businesses:
> Private information is never published. It is against the law to disclose or publish any private information that identifies an individual or business such, including names, addresses (including GPS coordinates), Social Security Numbers, and telephone numbers.
> The Census Bureau collects information to produce statistics. Personal information cannot be used against respondents by any government agency or court.
> Census Bureau employees are sworn to protect confidentiality. People sworn to uphold Title 13 are legally required to maintain the confidentiality of your data. Every person with access to your data is sworn for life to protect your information and understands that the penalties for violating this law are applicable for a lifetime.
Violating the law is a serious federal crime. Anyone who violates this law will face severe penalties, including a federal prison sentence of up to five years, a fine of up to $250,000, or both.
I worked for Data company for a year. We absolutely used Census and ACS as baselines and checks. In fact, there was some talk about getting rid of ACS in Congress and we got emails about "EMAIL YOUR CONGRESSIONAL PERSON, DEMAND ACS STAY. Here are talking points."
I am indeed sworn to not reveal lots of data I knocked on doors for. My memory isn't that good, especially compared to the database it went into, anyway.
I hope it's not a baseline for individual records, but my assumption was that the census data would be pretty useful as a baseline for aggregate information, especially when it comes to comparing to private sets they're working with.
I "enumerated" for the last census. Trust in my community was already not high* and I had lots of interesting encounters. I really believed the rather invasive data I was collecting with a friendly face would be used and handled responsibly. I feel for the poor souls that'll sign up to go door to door for 2030 now that the firewalls against weaponizing and monetizing all of our sensitive government data has been torn down, and even more for those that will volunteer information that can hurt them.
The comments that this rather expensive endeavour should just be about getting a head count are also amusing to me. The data collected was such an important baseline of common understanding, and this will not be a good thing for its future quality. I've grown very jaded now seeing all the things taken for granted in this country and lost or degraded recently with a whimper.
*: To be fair, they sent me specifically to places that didn't respond, so I was naturally led to believe that everyone in my region hated the government, ignored bizzarrely threatening fliers, or had recently moved and had no knowledge of the inhabitants (if any) during the census period.
> The comments that this rather expensive endeavour should just be about getting a head count are also amusing to me. The data collected was such an important baseline of common understanding, and this will not be a good thing for its future quality.
Even without considering the Census data products alone, Census demographic data underlies virtually all extrapolation from other survey research. Everything from national opinion surveys based on tens of thousands of respondents, to small community surveys. A Census product with the most diverse participation pays off almost infinitely for America. It benefits everyone from national newspapers to rural counties.
If the smallest communities lose what little trust remains in the privacy of the Census, they have the most to lose in all of these ways.
That's my thought when I see the Census downplayed -- a massive amount of social sciences research revolves around the ACS. And it gets worse! Census data doesn't just control reapportionment (and/or gerrymandering), it directs how federal dollars trickle down to huge programs like Medicare and Medicaid that are then administered by states. Eroding more detailed household data like income throws programs designed to help people more out of whack, likely harming civic engagement even more.
And it's something of a coin flip whether people prefer that philosophy to the other mob. Trump has made it to a seconds term and is talking about a third because of the stunning policy failures of the US government over the last 50 years.
Trump came to power because too many people have forgotten what kind of man it takes to tear it all down. No more, no less. It's like a clock.
One generation bleeds and dies on a battlefield somewhere so that eventually a few generations later their ancestors can make the same conditions arise again.
Trump won by <1% against an incumbent in a time that incumbents lost by >10%.
It's absolutely not that people like Trump, it's just that democrats are inept. Literally all democrats had to do was run somebody that didn't have a record of losing primaries.
They're not legislatively inept, it's simply that viscerally, the electorate knows both mobs are guilty of the same representational transgressions. The GOP was always the party of big biz, while the dems were fronting as the hoi poloi's party, and everyone kinda figured that out as Trump played that irony and the anger behind it, masterfully.
How do you get out from behind that, is what renders them inept.
The mob has been convinced of these things. If nothing else, Trump is a master of convincing gullible, desperate people that when he lights the town on fire, only the people they don't like will get burned.
The Democrats did fail, but it's not a both sides situation. They failed to vigorously engage in a simple and honest way with the fact that their opponent is a conman and a crook.
I think the big difference between the Republicans and Democrats is that the R-electorate votes for R-candidates because they want what the R-candidates are promising, while the D-electorare votes for D-candidates because they don't want what the R-candidates candidates are promising.
It's one of the reasons why "both sides" arguments are so frustrating. You can find R-voters who will defend Trump all day, in equal numbers to D-voters who will criticize Biden/Harris. You can see it in the number of R-voters you encounter online who think it's a "pwn" to bring up Clinton going to Epstein's Island, while D-voters respond, "yeah, and? Lock him up, too." We don't want these people who lie to us and glad hand for corporations, but it's marginally better than the alternative.
He's arguably in worse shape than FDR in his last term. I've come around to seeing such talk as yet another clever and effective bum rush to stave off hisgetting written off as the lame duck he actually is.
Think what you want about him, he is if nothing else, a manipulative genius, so it tracks.
No, this isn't a natural law of the universe. Sometimes thing get worse and then stay bad for a long, long time. We happen to exist in a relatively stable, prosperous period. We have used that prosperity to build a system that is more complex and brittle than any time in the history of the species. It won't be pretty when we reach the inevitable crisis.
The people in charge have never seen suffering and don't understand the essential role they have in preventing it. Instead they're disassembling the plane for parts while we hurtle toward the ground.
The numbers since 2022 are to be taken with a bucket of salt.
And it's undeniable that the whole country is falling backwards - the economy is in tatters with high inflation, high interest rates , severe economic and kinetic damage to the main revenue generating activities (export of oil, gas, raw materials, military equipment), a poorly hidden ballooning debt crisis. And worst of all, a leader who cannot admit defeat so can't get the country out of the quagmire. So things will get a whole lot worse before there's any chance of them getting better.
Since your other comment got rightfully flagged, I'll respond to you here.
The numbers from 2024 are reflective of the complete disappearance of russia from global markets. For instance, there have been no military procurement deals after 2023, only deliveries of previously ordered stuff.
The poorly hidden debt crisis is within the regions paying the death and recruitment bonuses, and the military contractors forced to sell at a loss and being propped up by state backed loans (one went bankrupt recently). Neither of those show up on official state debt numbers, but are unquestionably a problem for the state budget to fix. The one where 50% is being wasted to achieve nothing in Ukraine. At the best of times there are a few kilometres here and there, but even that is over now.
Ukrainians still unequivocally support keeping the war until russia agrees to leave them the fuck alone, and they get security guarantees (if you think you have polls saying otherwise, look again in the questions and answers, a tiny majority are ready to surrender Eastern Ukraine to end the war now, but practically nobody is willing to do so without guarantees). Those are achievable objectives. On the other side the leadership cannot admit defeat or they'll get toppled, and has no hope of achieving anything they could spin as a victory. So they keep wasting human lives to prolong the inevitable defeat.
> For example, I'd love to see the source for this one.
How do I prove the lack of something? Prove there have been any Russian military exports.
What you're missing with the polls is "if there are Western military guarantees". That is not something russia is actually proposing, or would ever agree to. So it's a moot question, because it's not reflective of reality. When you look at what russia actually proposes, the majority of Ukrainians are against that.
No, the first one is true. It's the copycat comment that is vacuous and doesn't even make any sense -- "in the right" has a clear meaning, "in the left" is nonsense.
Your comment brought the song lyrics from Murder - Sepultura:
...
Same hand that builds, destroys
Same hand that relieves, betrays
Same hand that seeds, burns
Same peace that exists, here lies
...
Same religion that saves, damns you!
I got no comment on the essence of your comment, but (in your implied meaning), the very last of the song was matching what you wrote.
You're playing party politics. That's the risk you take: that the party has goals beyond your (dareisay naive) utopian ideals for civic engagement.
Parties are not universally evil, when I malign them in this way it is in full acknowlegment that organization is the nearly singular path to "effect on target" as regards society-scale politics. What I mean is the party per se becomes a superorganism that has always as its first priority self-preservation (a la homeostasis) and it is very worth remembering this when subsuming oneself into their structure.
> The comments that this rather expensive endeavour should just be about getting a head count are also amusing to me
Countries conduct censuses so they can understand, in great detail, what is going on with the people who make up the country.
With this accurate information, improvement plans can be made, and life can be improved for everyone.
The comments about just making it a head count give a very interesting window into the mentality of many these days.
They don’t want to - it can’t fathom how to - make life better.
Here is a case study from Greece in the ‘20’s, but all you need to do is google ‘ethnic cleansing’ and dig in, and you’ll see government data sources (including census data) all played a part.
“The census was conducted in a period of successive wars and rapid territorial expansion. We focus on the handling of the census data for Macedonia, a newly annexed territory that would soon become the site of the first instance of large-scale ethnic cleansing in modern Europe.”
Of course. But the specific claim you made was about many countries currently using census data to "round up and murder" some "specific groups of people by religion, ethnicity, etc."
I'm not arguing that you don't a valid point - broadly speaking. You do.
But you made a very specific claim, and that was what was being questioned. That's all.
Reading is fundamental. I made no such claim. I said many were using it to target people (which they are), and some are even using it to murder people using that data. Which they are.
Or do you think that is actually not happening right now?
>Many countries use census data to target (or even round up and murder) specific groups of people by religion, ethnicity, etc.
You were asked to back up this claim but haven't cited an example of any country currently "using census data" to "round up and murder" people.
Is China currently using census data to do horrible things? Are other countries? Maybe. I have no idea. I wouldn't be all that surprised TBH. You may be correct for all I know.
But that's not the point... The point is that you made a very specific claim and you still haven't provided any specific examples or evidence.
When Germany invaded the Netherlands they found it extremely convenient that the Netherlands had a nice centralised paper filing system telling them exactly where all the Jews lived. The Holocaust proceeded more efficiently in the Netherlands than it had in Germany.
That papertrail mattered less than how you make it sound.
France also sent people to the Germans during the occupation, and there was very little info needed. The gov wasn't caring much about due process or lengthy and accurate investigations anyway.
Is it easier and more convenient to round up people when you have a literal list of people, along with the attributes that someone might want to round them up based on? Of course.
Is it still possible to do it without said list? Yes, of course. It is just harder.
And more likely some or many will be missed, if those attributes aren’t super obvious and impossible to change.
It is indeed a bizarre discussion: nazis round up people with or without these lists, anyone could point the finger at a neighbor and they'd be gone tomorrow.
The question becomes if it mattered whether the people sent in were actually Jewish or depraved or whatever motive was invoked. To me it doesn't matter, it is was horrible either way.
I can't think of any such event where the issue came down to having a list or not.
We can see a similar thing happening with ICE raids: do they have clean and tidy lists? No, they're supposed to know what they're doing, but in practice they're just going after anything they want, anyone that crosses their path, and they don't stop at any specific criteria. We had testimony of arrest quotas, and random people shoved in to clear the numbers.
There will always be a convenient target when the point is cruelty.
To my eyes the chimpanze's "loaded gun" is the actual guns and the impunity to use them, and they're pulling the trigger because they can. Having accurate lists would be more of a painted targets instead of randomly shooting in the pack. Basically the kind of people shor would be different, but someone would still be shot.
I'd argue that raiding the data center is theatrical more than anything, and they're not flailing by lack of data, hundreds of arrest have been made at each major raids.
On the surface there is this talk about immigration status..We try to draw a somewhat reasonable narrative that makes sense, and I get the sentiment.
The witness comments consistently tell another story though:
> “The book and the movie do not line up,” Joyce told reporters on Thursday. “We’re being told one story, which is totally different than what’s occurring.”
> “It is clear the overall operation is anything but targeted,” said Sue Roche, ILAP’s executive director. “People are being racially profiled on the streets and in their cars. As is their playbook, ICE is doing everything they can to inflict maximum cruelty and chaos.”
My main point is that they are already fully effective.
What you call "running around in total chaos" is exactly what the organization was built for, its actions follow its structure and the only improvement they'd benefit for is more people more guns and less scrutiny.
really? bosnia 1990s, turkey early 1900s, pogroms all over europe in the 19th century, holodomor, china with tibet and uighurs, germany tabulating data on the jews with the help of ibm...
Can you give an example of an extermination program which was thwarted by a lack of accurate census data?
"The Nazis used a data source to implement an extermination program" is not a statement which proves that your problem was the existence of a data source.
‘Gov’t consistently threatens to do x which is bad, does x which is bad. collecting data which makes it easier to do x is… good?’
Do you even listen to yourself? How would collecting that data in this environment actually improve the country, instead of clearly being used to do bad things - which will make the situation worse?
Notably, this is the gun registry problem, and exactly why gun registries are also bad.
The real decline started after Edward Snowden and all the information that came out about the NSA. It really sparked distrust in the government. Trying to get people to respond to surveys was already hard, why would those general people believe the Census Bureau is actually keeping their data safe? Doesn’t matter when it comes to laws and the constitution, if you work for an Agency. You are the government. Response rates keep going down, now we have attacks from the President on statistics about the economy. I’m a little cynical and I just assume they will continue to shrink the statistical agencies and make the statistics more useless (which is what this recent policy change does), and they will shift to the private industry. Even though the private industry cannot do the work in the Field that the government does.
I’ll take the under on that bet any day. Maybe around 75% is where I would feel more confident. 25% of a country is more than enough to meaningfully shift perception.
I buy the argument that a functioning democracy requires the populace to believe that the government is honest, competent, and working in their interests. Watergate, Iran-Contra, and the Vietnam war (respectively) undermined those notions. As of ~2016, half of the US voting population had come of age after those events.
I respect that you recognize that the sample you were given for investigation may not be representative of your community in all respects. Does the Census Bureau publish statistics on the people they have to send interviewers for? Just asking, maybe I'll have to go check their site.
Other comments here about Germany and whatnot falls flat, and short. This is America, and part of it is being ok with your neighbors (unless they're truly insane and release plagues of rabbits or burn themselves out of their homes, but I digress), try to find some common ground even if it's awkward and you have to look the other way about some slights and trespasses.
I don't know how much trouble they went to to "fit" you to the cohort they tasked you with, or how much of a natural fit there was. Did you grow up / do you live in the area? There's an element of "liking" (Cialdini) each other which colors participants' perception of tasks. OTOH nothing like talking to perfect strangers to flex that muscle or find out you really don't have it.
The real sickness is the years spent chasing stock buybacks and low taxes while infrastructure and industrial capacity languished. What an absurd situation where arrays of "temporary" on-site gas turbines are the only viable way to build new infrastructure like this.
I'll even excuse the ones with food photos that look like they were taken with a feature phone. New places that can't even bother to take photos of their own menu are a massive red flag to me. Where else are they cutting corners?
I absolutely despise food delivery sites where there is either "example picture" or AI generated picture on food item. Why even bother? I understand that food-photography needs some level of skill, but still maybe bad photo of real thing is lot better than fake photo of fake thing...
I probably didn't give it a fair shake, but it all looks very early days, which isn't for me. Kind of a shame, because the dynamic types are still kind of driving me up the wall in Elixir. Elixir structs and dialyzer type specs feel so much worse than what statically typed languages provide.
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