Tag: Quote of the Week

In Support of Strong Encryption

Yes!

IEEE supports the use of unfettered strong encryption to protect confidentiality and integrity of data and communications. We oppose efforts by governments to restrict the use of strong encryption and/or to mandate exceptional access mechanisms such as “backdoors” or “key escrow schemes” in order to facilitate government access to encrypted data. Governments have legitimate law enforcement and national security interests. IEEE believes that mandating the intentional creation of backdoors or escrow schemes – no matter how well intentioned – does not serve those interests well and will lead to the creation of vulnerabilities that would result in unforeseen effects as well as some predictable negative consequences.
— IEEE Position Statement

AR create_with

I knew there was AR’s 

find_or_create_by

  method but I didn’t know it had a very useful companion 

create_with

 .

@something ||= SomeModel.create_with(some: "stuff").find_or_create_by(foo: "bar")

This will either find a record  

SomeModel.where(foo: "bar")

  or create it with 

SomeModel.create(foo: "bar", some: "stuff")

 . Very useful.

Allwissender Beobachter

Ein allwissender Beobachter, der in unser Gehirn blicken und alle relevanten Faktoren erfassen könnte, wäre in der Lage, unsere Entscheidung vorherzusehen.

Diese Aussage ist so dumm und offensichtlich bekannt, dass es jeder Beschreibung spottet. Er steht auch noch unter dem Titel „Neurowissenschaften: Gedankenlesen noch in weiter Ferne.“ … m(

Ethnic Affinity

Facebook started targeting ads based on its perception of a person’s race or ethnicity, but just to be safe without actually taking into account their race or ethnicity. The magic PR BS word they invented for it is “ethnic affinity.”

They want to monetize every aspect of your identity, whether that’s an ethnic affiliation or a preference for bean thread noodles.

The problem is that profiling somebody’s ethnic affinities has a lot more cultural baggage attached to it—to say the least—than profiling somebody’s taste in restaurants. And that’s why Facebook’s multicultural targeting scheme is getting a lot more pushback than the company bargained for.