The UK is different, the donor has no legal obligations or right to access to the child.
A much more sensible situation. In the particular case I cited, the recipients, a same sex female couple, divorced, and there was a money problem, so they took the donor to court. Here the childs welfare is paramount, so men who are not even the father, and the child is a result of adultery, can be forced to pay child support, while the actual father does not. Kooky stuff.
And Kansas being Kansas, it is possible that it was an activist judge who just wanted to throw a spanner in th works for a double whammy of same sex couples, and dperm donors. So we get weird case law.
Some of the folks in Kansas are pretty biblical in outlook - although we'll ignore the part about taking one's widowed sister-in-law as an automatic wife, with all the in-person "donations" as a part of the deal.
Next, try to explain the concept that work (for most people anyway) doesn't involve derping on your phone all day to a millennial. It is so strange seeing them in meetings, useless, eyes glazed, texting and snapchatting the day away.
The ones who worked with me considered Facebook to be a critical job skill. The smartphone addiction is so bad that they go through withdrwal worthy of a heroin addict if they can't have their phone for a minute.
They could make money providing vetting services. Provide medical checks for donors, and maybe STD checks for recipients if they plan to use the direct deposit method.
I think the legal grounds are a little murky. At least here in America, a sperm donor can be required to pay child support http://wthitv.com/2015/09/05/k...
And of course, since we sue the deepest pockets, the UberSplooge company would likely get somehow drawn into the donnybrook.
Child support can last past the age of majority as well, if the offspring goes to University. So while not all that likely, that donation could cost you plenty.
As well, n such a crowded world, its hard for at least me to justify such things, so if a person wants a child that badly, adopt.
Public service announcement: Its important to remember to use a condom folks - that's how we lost Freddy Mercury, and that's how we got Justin Bieber!
So our final result is 2.62e16 / 8.77e23, or 1/3.35e7
one in 33 million isn't one in a billion, so I would also be interested in seeing their math, but the conclusion that the selection was biased seems to be fairly well supported.
The question is though, arr all of the applicants assumed to be equal in all qualifications? Have some come from a placement service like ITT? which has been discredited.
And like it or not, since we are dealing with Asians, have some been state sponsored? There are issues with organizations dealing with issues of a secure or sensitive issues and state sponsored foreign actors..
Mere numbers of applicants are not telling the entire story.
Okay, I'll answer your question. The premise is ridiculous
Yes, or at least very unlikely. Narrow it to two people and it becomes more likely. But it was foremost a test case to get some active thought going. Separating a social goal from fairness on a personal level.
But for the sake of argument, let's say that is somehow the case. I'd probably pull a name out of a hat or something.
annnnnd..... You pass! Very good. In a problem with no good answer, no satisfactory solution that doesn't offend someone, no fairness to the individuals, you cast race and gender aside, and use plain random chance. Which of course is the only logical answer.
In a world of agendas, and people who are promoting their own agenda over other's agendas, and where rational thought is precious scarce, some times ya gotta just employ chance.
And I apologize for badgering ya (sincerely) but I do this kinda shit some times.
I guess all those studies saying these devices are actually counter productive don't matter when APPLE!
makes sense tho capitalism was always more important than science in the ol' US of A!
There is a much bigger picture here.
The damn things don't have to work at all. What they do is give teh company the ability to blame the victim when something bad happens to their health. It's a clever ploy actually
Th e part where you define fair - Now define it.
And I suppose that you aren't going to answer my question about who you are going to hire, the white woman, the African ethnicity of any gender, or the asian.
Tell me, since you are the one who clearly says I do not undertand "fair". TEach me, this might be th emoment where I gain some insight, and I would be forever grateful to be schooled in something I have no idea of.
You say you do.
So which one is it Animojo? Two of the three are not going to have a job, all are considered underrepresented, and you decide based on you knowing what is fair.
Who gets the job, and who does not?
A company should spend time looking at their affirmative action programs, not just metrics.
The deathstar problem is however, you get sued by the metrics. It's like the silly no child left behind schooling. Thy teach to the test, and only the test. If the kid actually lerns anything they don't give a damn. And if the test scores aren't good enough, the school is punished.
Basically it comes down to having a responsibility to check for reasonable fairness and do something when it becomes apparent that there is an issue.
Fire the non-asian people? Make a ruling that no one but asians are hired until this fairness is achieved? What is fair? And then, what do we do about other groups that are underrepresented? Will there come a time when a white woman is not hired and is passed over by a asian male? Is that in keeping with the demands for inclusiveness?
That means collecting the stats and when you see something like this identifying the problem and taking steps to rectify it.
As I noted, since there is a multiplicity of demands for inclusiveness, that in order to comply with them, someone is going to lose based not on their ability to do the job, but where their anscesters came from.
It looks like the issue is understood, the lawsuit cites the reason why it is happening, so really there isn't much excuse for not fixing it.
Yes, eliminating networking, and hiring exclusively a particular enthinicity, as the overarching criteria of the job, perhaps fireing some, until the company reflect the proper diversity.
I don't know your ethnicity, but would you give up your job for hiring someone of a different ethnicity? I didn't give up my job, but I gave up three promotions so a woman could get promoted. There was a quota system on promotions, and I voluntarily gave up deserved promotions for a female. It didn't work out for the place, since they left. But I do understand that in real life, it isn't always fair.
As to how to fix it, use less recommendations and more objective hiring.
It's got nothing to do with quotas, they are a bad way to address the issue. That's why the only people who suggest them are people who oppose diversity. They are not needed here.
The problem is of course, that in a numbers or percentages based system, you have to deal with numbers as a measurement of success. Otherise you throw out all of the numbers altogether.
What you are suggesting if you use as little as possible a quota as possible, is that since a 75 percent figure was claimed as the asian applicants, with 21 positions filled, anything other than 15.75 asian hires is racist.I guess one of them has to be a pregnant female.
That would be accepting that entering an application makes all potential employees as qualified as each other. So 75 percent is an inviolable number, and must be adhered to, otherwise you will be sued.
And that, sir, would be the very definition of a quota.
Now we are going to get uncomfortable. Who gets a job between 3 equal candidates, a white woman, a non gender specific person of African descent, or an asian male? The implied inequality is simple when it's a male of European descent, let's just in this case discard those in order to avoid a lawsuit, because hiring one might put you over your limit. Not hiring the white male is an easy decision, but not so much when the underrepresented groups become pitted against each other. Challenge, make your choice of the first three. No need for your rationalization, just your choice. Who gets the job?
And no, Animojo, I don't oppose diversity, nor do I care for your implicit accusation that I do. I do however, not ascribe to simplistic ideas as to what constitutes diversity. My questions are uncomfortable, piss people off, and perhaps constitute a learning experience.
They are not alleging active discrimination, they are saying that the company tended to go with personal recommendations which created unintentional bias. The company has a responsibility to ensure fairness.
How does one ensure "fairness"? Do the individual employees have to broaden their social circles to include more asians? Or is the referral system something to be eliminated?
These really aren't trivial questions, as if the paramount goal is inclusiveness of all ethnicities, races, genders, sexual orientation, religion, and whatever else makes things "fair" is going to be almost impossible to coexist with a referral process that is based upon an employee's familiarity with a potential hire's suitability for a job.
As well, is the determinant factor local ratios of asians to others, or global ratios. State or National.
And what happens when there are conflicts, such as which quota is being adhered to? Is a woman who is asian working toward fulfilling two quota requirements? or just one? This is also not a trivial question, as it is possible to have mixtures that end up making the overall quota requirement fulfillment look good, but in terms of actual numbers, every person who is eligible for multiple quota fulfillment is actually depriving another person of underrepresented groups employment because of the multiple quota criteria.
I mainly bring this up because of that odd 20 percent hire rate. And if it's not active discrimination, what the hell are they suing for? It either is, or it isn't. If you get a workplace in Silicon Valley that has no asians or women or people of African descent, or the Huffington Post's all white woman and one asian woman boardroom meeting, that is pretty obvious that there's something going on, and it's active intentional discrimination. 20 percent asian hires though? Might be just people's networking going on. As a lawsuit action, what is the remedy? You can't have a lawsuit without a remedy. That's what I am interested in
It's wrong to discriminate against an entire group of people based on that statistic.
Then again, there was that 20 percent asian hire rate.
It would seem that in a company that was actively discriminating against asians, the numbers of hires would be a lot closer to 0%
I wonder what the ethnicity is of an American of African descent marries a Scotch Irish person, and they have an offspring who then marries a person from China, who then have some children.
In either case you could simply make some minimal effort to vet the person in question, rather than just applying dubious statistical biases.
And of course, that's not what's happening here anyway.
I use "asians" in quotes, because that's a really nebulous term.
Speaking of statistics, there were 21 people hired, and 17 were "non-asian" and 4 were "asian"
Now here's the problem when we go down the rabbit hole of stats, percentages, and hiring by race.
What were the numbers of hires that were of African descent?
What were the numbers of hires that identified as female?
In a business that is presumably racist, what was the situation that led the company to hire "asians" as 20 percent of the hires during this period.
From the article: "The likelihood that this result occurred according to chance is approximately one in a billion," said the lawsuit,
Yeah - I'm going to have to call bullshit on that - I'd love to see that math.
But then, according to the article The majority of Palantir's hires as engineering interns, as well as two other engineering positions, "came from an employee referral system that disproportionately excluded Asians,"
And both the comments are from the lawsuit, so I give them veracity as an integral part of the lawsuit
Well, right there is your answer. These interns and two engineering positions came from employee referrals.
In my professional life, I'm exposed to a lot of different ethnicities, but if I referred every "asian" for placement in an open position, and no non "asians" at all, and they all were hired, it might hit 20 percent, of which this lawsuit is considered racially discriminating.
So what this is actually an attack against is the process of referral. Should a referral of a known non-"asian" who might have a great track record, be disregarded for an unknown "asian" person, or even more importantly, if referrals are to become verboten, should a non-"asian" be not hired and an "asian" of known flaws be hired?
So perhaps the process of employees giving assessments of people they know is what is considered racist. That's actually a little scary, because it means an employee who knows a person as a bad actor will then not be allowed to make commentary on that.
Yeah, that's what they are - load levelers at best. They're not replacements and NEVER will be.
You are missing that they don't actually have ot be attached to a grid. I can easily generate all the power that I need from solar. Wind isn't practical in my house location.
All I'm waiting for is the right moment.
I've found All of the naysaying by your ilk to be way off. My local energy use through using devices that use a lot less energy, and by properly insulating have exceeded the naysaer's predictions by an incredible amount. Installed a top efficiency gas furnace that extracts so much heat that the "chimney" is 2 inch PVC pipe, as well as the intake. No inside air is heated and vented. Along with an extra layer of insulation in the attic, and I am spending per year what most locals are spending a month for heating. Damn thing has paid for itself in 3 years, not the 20 or "never" the naysayers claim. Same with turning all of the lighting into LED's.
I'm paying 50 dollars a month for electrical service, and I have a freaking outside hot tub. Yeah, I bought a highly insulated one.
And I'll be off the grid as soon as solar power and energy storage hits the right price point, combined with the right point of conservation. And I haven't given up a darned thing - I live at a high comfort level.
Meanwhile those local smarter folk, some how are paying over a grand a month for heat, which is a lot more than what I'm paying per year and a few hundred dollars a month for electricity, 4 times my level, are on the smart track. Or not.
Your nasty-ass response is indicative of a typical feeling of loss of control and/or grandiosity.
Your incredible sensitivity is indicative of incredible sensitivity. Give me facts, or I'll give you a tissue to cry in.
Not sayin', just sayin'
People who deny progress have been denying progress forever.
It's how we get people who are still refusing to vaccinate their children, even though the researcher and lawyer who started the Anti-Vaxxer movement have long been discredited.
It's how a lot of people believe that the Earth was created in 4004 b.c.e., and that their deity created all life in it's present form, even though if their belief is true, all of physics and biology must be discarded becase it is completely wrong.
It's how a lot of people deny the existence of the greenhouse effect, or just say that the only Carbon Dioxide that has an effect is non anthropogenic sources, completely ignoring that without a greenhouse effect, life on earth would not exista at all, and that the human released CO2 os not human made, merely sequestered CO2 that has been re-released.
You might think I'm a prick, or an asshole, I wouldn't even deny that. So what?
But if that is the core of your argument, thanks for playing, and let the grown ups discuss things now.
Obama's original birth certificate sadly was lost in the fire, but don't worry we have county records computer in Hawaii full of replacement ones
God keeps ressurecting the birth certificate, but Hellary has had every messenger trying to deliver the truth killed. I think she's up to a village worth now, so there's no one to raise the children any more.
Fear not though, God's armor Joe Arpaio is on the case, and the will of god shall prevail over muslim terror babies from Kenya.
Power is fungible. Whether the electrons generated go into your factory or someone else's at the end of the day has the exact same environmental effect. Worrying about which electrons are being used is idiotic and misses the point.
Oh boy - now you have them wondering what electricity has to do with mushrooms.......
Furthermore the best locations for renewable power are not necessarily the best locations for the end users of that power.
Exactly, and its really the same for all sources of power, except perhaps nuc.
North and west of me is a lot of coal generated power. Its there because the mines are there. Population density is maybe 25 per square mile - that's a number off the top of me noggin - but it's mostly forest and cow pastures. Hydro is pretty obviously needing to be where there aren't a lot of people. And the nice thing about solar and wind is that they act as a load leveler, especially solar, which is most active at peak demand times. And as for wind, the Allegheny front, where a lot of Wind Power is generated, is pretty much constantly windy.
From earlier post
Further, trying to run full-time off wind+solar would require a substantial investment in energy storage to balance night/still air and storage is where we need the investment.
Power storage will matter for the system once you get beyond a certain generating capacity for solar/wind but for now fossil fuels and nuclear are more than capable of taking up the slack so it's an important but secondary consideration for now. For those who want to use the electricity they generate storage matters but that isn't the goal for companies like Google or Apple.
By the way, The person who says that running full time off of solar/wind needing a substantial investment in energy storage is not understanding that with traditional grid powering methods, there is already a huge investment in storage.
We don't build these turbine based power generation systems to handle peak power. Economics and turbine characteristics make that a bad idea for a system with wildly varying power demands. A turbine isn't good at reacting immediately, or running at power levels it wasn't designed for.Wanna see a power generation engineer blanch? Start talking about runaway turbines. So we load level. An example is using off peak hours to pump water into a reservoir that releases water to create enough electricity at peak hours.
The system is in place already, solar and wind act as very good load levelers, and they are becoming cheaper all the time. All that's left is the actuarial tables.
Nights and windless days are very much reality. It is a fact that wind and solar are not economical, else subsidies wouldn't be necessary to get them built. You speak of a threshold; well, Germany stepped over it years ago. It didn't work out, and they are stepping back. Might be we want to rethink, and make decisions based on facts and reality.
Spouting the same old same old. Was your great-grandpappy all pissed off when we switched over from whale oil to kerosene? Or changed over from those bright carbon arc lamps to delicate little filament lamps?
Load leveling is the issue, and it's an issue for every form of power generation. And without a milliwatt of solar or wind, it's heavily involved in power generation right now https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Power is stored when it is available, and drained when it is not. While there are differences, in power availability, the principle is the same.
Right now, battery storage makes local storage quite feasible, and there are new introductions on the way.
But there are so many other factors. Ever build a house in an area where there isn't power yet? Just wait until you get the bill for running a couple miles of powerline. Solar or wind is not only cheaper at that point, it is much cheaper.
As well, a lot of us are looking for ways to remove ourselves form the power grid. At which point a whole different powering paradigm comes into play. It is really easy for me to figure out my hotel loading, and come up with the powering and storage needs to provide myself with electricity. Its a work in progress, but I've reduced my electrical bill to around 55 dollars a month, and that's with all my computers, and a spa tub. I have a small solar install as a testbed, powering my radio equipment. At the moment solar hits a good price point, I'm off grid.
By the way, Using subsidies as a reason that solar or wind isn't viable is not a good tack to take. Oil gets huge subsidies. And just try building a nuc plant without immense subsidies, and even tail end subsidies - where the plant is given liability immunity.
Anyhow, I've got some plans for a carbon arc lamp if you want to go back to the old ways.
What's happened is that Amazon has come to realize that there is little point in continually pay someone for power when you can just get your own. This is simply a cost cutting measure to grow their AWS profit margin and ensure they can compete with competitive pricing. It's also good PR which they can use as ammunition for marketing. Amazon execs don't give a fuck about the environment, it's all about the money.
Actually, I suspect they do. I know a lot of higly placed people that actually do care about it. If thy didn't, for the immense drain on profitability as claimed by some - they'd never be allowed to go this route.
What is changing, is that despite what a lot of CogDis people think, a threshhold is being crossed. CogDis people can bring out the same old memes of it won't work, it won't work economically, it won't work because the sun isn't shining or the wind doesn't blow 24/7 - but this stuff's gettin' real.
Yes, a computer should be getting updates if it ever connects to a network independent of whether or not it had internet connectivity. In this case, it is the other hosts on the network that create the risk.
Sorry, I have a Windows 10 off th einternet system. Now that it works, there's no way I'm going to screw it up with Microsoft W10 updates. On the computer I used to familiarize myself with W10, it's been bitched up three times now. P
A vius is a lot less damaging than missing a deadline because teh computer stops working. At this point, Microsoft is included in the malware suppliers.
There should be a single blog, yes. But there should also be the ability to choose which patches you want, if necessary. Say a particular graphics driver is known to kill a certain game, or a certain network update conflicts with a utility, there should be a way for advanced users do opt-out of them.
Or even better, not make updates that have to be rolled back because they fuck up machines. It must be Stockholm syndrome or something akin, that so many people are so accepting of an Operating System that regularly screws the pooch in the computers. They even seem to think that getting their computers fucked up is a mark of superiority.
Ain't no need for that friends!
Somehow or another, OSX and Linux manage to not screw up people's computers often or at all. Using all three, my Windows machines Well, I'm down to one now are the only ones that work just fine one day, then after an update do not.
full discosure, Mac Mail got a little goofy for a little while, and one update made my Mac at the time a little jittery, but it was fixed pronto, and it noever stopped working
Getting rid of the W10 Dell I was using was a huge improvement, freed up time to actually do work, not get the computer to work.
But then, Microsoft is trying to create an environment as closed as Mac,
What is this "closed environment" people speak of? I can install any program I wish on my Mac. I run Windows 7 on it. I can run Linux on it. I don't often run Linux on it because it's already running Unix. But if that's a closed system, gimme that over Windows 10 any day.
It's not about what users want anymore, just about extracting maximal dollars.
Can't argue with ya there, although some times it seems like an abusive relationship between Microsoft and their users as well.
Slashdot Mirror
The UK is different, the donor has no legal obligations or right to access to the child.
A much more sensible situation. In the particular case I cited, the recipients, a same sex female couple, divorced, and there was a money problem, so they took the donor to court. Here the childs welfare is paramount, so men who are not even the father, and the child is a result of adultery, can be forced to pay child support, while the actual father does not. Kooky stuff.
And Kansas being Kansas, it is possible that it was an activist judge who just wanted to throw a spanner in th works for a double whammy of same sex couples, and dperm donors. So we get weird case law.
Some of the folks in Kansas are pretty biblical in outlook - although we'll ignore the part about taking one's widowed sister-in-law as an automatic wife, with all the in-person "donations" as a part of the deal.
Next, try to explain the concept that work (for most people anyway) doesn't involve derping on your phone all day to a millennial. It is so strange seeing them in meetings, useless, eyes glazed, texting and snapchatting the day away.
The ones who worked with me considered Facebook to be a critical job skill. The smartphone addiction is so bad that they go through withdrwal worthy of a heroin addict if they can't have their phone for a minute.
I read that Apple has already bettered that.
IOW Apple bettered the baby batter?
They could make money providing vetting services. Provide medical checks for donors, and maybe STD checks for recipients if they plan to use the direct deposit method.
I think the legal grounds are a little murky. At least here in America, a sperm donor can be required to pay child support http://wthitv.com/2015/09/05/k...
And of course, since we sue the deepest pockets, the UberSplooge company would likely get somehow drawn into the donnybrook.
Child support can last past the age of majority as well, if the offspring goes to University. So while not all that likely, that donation could cost you plenty.
As well, n such a crowded world, its hard for at least me to justify such things, so if a person wants a child that badly, adopt.
Public service announcement: Its important to remember to use a condom folks - that's how we lost Freddy Mercury, and that's how we got Justin Bieber!
We snuck out the video of the failure mode of the new Samsung Washing machines. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
So our final result is 2.62e16 / 8.77e23, or 1/3.35e7
one in 33 million isn't one in a billion, so I would also be interested in seeing their math, but the conclusion that the selection was biased seems to be fairly well supported.
The question is though, arr all of the applicants assumed to be equal in all qualifications? Have some come from a placement service like ITT? which has been discredited.
And like it or not, since we are dealing with Asians, have some been state sponsored? There are issues with organizations dealing with issues of a secure or sensitive issues and state sponsored foreign actors..
Mere numbers of applicants are not telling the entire story.
But in future, please at least try to assume I'm some kind of weird reverse-racist or insane lunatic.
Did you mean "please don't assume? i hope?
Okay, I'll answer your question. The premise is ridiculous
Yes, or at least very unlikely. Narrow it to two people and it becomes more likely. But it was foremost a test case to get some active thought going. Separating a social goal from fairness on a personal level.
But for the sake of argument, let's say that is somehow the case. I'd probably pull a name out of a hat or something.
annnnnd..... You pass! Very good. In a problem with no good answer, no satisfactory solution that doesn't offend someone, no fairness to the individuals, you cast race and gender aside, and use plain random chance. Which of course is the only logical answer.
In a world of agendas, and people who are promoting their own agenda over other's agendas, and where rational thought is precious scarce, some times ya gotta just employ chance.
And I apologize for badgering ya (sincerely) but I do this kinda shit some times.
APPLE!
I guess all those studies saying these devices are actually counter productive don't matter when APPLE!
makes sense tho capitalism was always more important than science in the ol' US of A!
There is a much bigger picture here.
The damn things don't have to work at all. What they do is give teh company the ability to blame the victim when something bad happens to their health. It's a clever ploy actually
What part of "fair" don't you understand?
Th e part where you define fair - Now define it. And I suppose that you aren't going to answer my question about who you are going to hire, the white woman, the African ethnicity of any gender, or the asian.
Tell me, since you are the one who clearly says I do not undertand "fair". TEach me, this might be th emoment where I gain some insight, and I would be forever grateful to be schooled in something I have no idea of.
You say you do.
So which one is it Animojo? Two of the three are not going to have a job, all are considered underrepresented, and you decide based on you knowing what is fair. Who gets the job, and who does not?
A company should spend time looking at their affirmative action programs, not just metrics.
The deathstar problem is however, you get sued by the metrics. It's like the silly no child left behind schooling. Thy teach to the test, and only the test. If the kid actually lerns anything they don't give a damn. And if the test scores aren't good enough, the school is punished.
The metrics, as it were.
Basically it comes down to having a responsibility to check for reasonable fairness and do something when it becomes apparent that there is an issue.
Fire the non-asian people? Make a ruling that no one but asians are hired until this fairness is achieved? What is fair? And then, what do we do about other groups that are underrepresented? Will there come a time when a white woman is not hired and is passed over by a asian male? Is that in keeping with the demands for inclusiveness?
That means collecting the stats and when you see something like this identifying the problem and taking steps to rectify it.
As I noted, since there is a multiplicity of demands for inclusiveness, that in order to comply with them, someone is going to lose based not on their ability to do the job, but where their anscesters came from.
It looks like the issue is understood, the lawsuit cites the reason why it is happening, so really there isn't much excuse for not fixing it.
Yes, eliminating networking, and hiring exclusively a particular enthinicity, as the overarching criteria of the job, perhaps fireing some, until the company reflect the proper diversity.
I don't know your ethnicity, but would you give up your job for hiring someone of a different ethnicity? I didn't give up my job, but I gave up three promotions so a woman could get promoted. There was a quota system on promotions, and I voluntarily gave up deserved promotions for a female. It didn't work out for the place, since they left. But I do understand that in real life, it isn't always fair.
As to how to fix it, use less recommendations and more objective hiring.
It's got nothing to do with quotas, they are a bad way to address the issue. That's why the only people who suggest them are people who oppose diversity. They are not needed here.
The problem is of course, that in a numbers or percentages based system, you have to deal with numbers as a measurement of success. Otherise you throw out all of the numbers altogether.
What you are suggesting if you use as little as possible a quota as possible, is that since a 75 percent figure was claimed as the asian applicants, with 21 positions filled, anything other than 15.75 asian hires is racist.I guess one of them has to be a pregnant female.
That would be accepting that entering an application makes all potential employees as qualified as each other. So 75 percent is an inviolable number, and must be adhered to, otherwise you will be sued.
And that, sir, would be the very definition of a quota.
Now we are going to get uncomfortable. Who gets a job between 3 equal candidates, a white woman, a non gender specific person of African descent, or an asian male? The implied inequality is simple when it's a male of European descent, let's just in this case discard those in order to avoid a lawsuit, because hiring one might put you over your limit. Not hiring the white male is an easy decision, but not so much when the underrepresented groups become pitted against each other. Challenge, make your choice of the first three. No need for your rationalization, just your choice. Who gets the job?
And no, Animojo, I don't oppose diversity, nor do I care for your implicit accusation that I do. I do however, not ascribe to simplistic ideas as to what constitutes diversity. My questions are uncomfortable, piss people off, and perhaps constitute a learning experience.
They are not alleging active discrimination, they are saying that the company tended to go with personal recommendations which created unintentional bias. The company has a responsibility to ensure fairness.
How does one ensure "fairness"? Do the individual employees have to broaden their social circles to include more asians? Or is the referral system something to be eliminated? These really aren't trivial questions, as if the paramount goal is inclusiveness of all ethnicities, races, genders, sexual orientation, religion, and whatever else makes things "fair" is going to be almost impossible to coexist with a referral process that is based upon an employee's familiarity with a potential hire's suitability for a job.
As well, is the determinant factor local ratios of asians to others, or global ratios. State or National.
And what happens when there are conflicts, such as which quota is being adhered to? Is a woman who is asian working toward fulfilling two quota requirements? or just one? This is also not a trivial question, as it is possible to have mixtures that end up making the overall quota requirement fulfillment look good, but in terms of actual numbers, every person who is eligible for multiple quota fulfillment is actually depriving another person of underrepresented groups employment because of the multiple quota criteria.
I mainly bring this up because of that odd 20 percent hire rate. And if it's not active discrimination, what the hell are they suing for? It either is, or it isn't. If you get a workplace in Silicon Valley that has no asians or women or people of African descent, or the Huffington Post's all white woman and one asian woman boardroom meeting, that is pretty obvious that there's something going on, and it's active intentional discrimination. 20 percent asian hires though? Might be just people's networking going on. As a lawsuit action, what is the remedy? You can't have a lawsuit without a remedy. That's what I am interested in
It's wrong to discriminate against an entire group of people based on that statistic.
Then again, there was that 20 percent asian hire rate.
It would seem that in a company that was actively discriminating against asians, the numbers of hires would be a lot closer to 0%
I wonder what the ethnicity is of an American of African descent marries a Scotch Irish person, and they have an offspring who then marries a person from China, who then have some children.
Scotch Irish "white", black, or asian?
In either case you could simply make some minimal effort to vet the person in question, rather than just applying dubious statistical biases.
And of course, that's not what's happening here anyway.
I use "asians" in quotes, because that's a really nebulous term.
Speaking of statistics, there were 21 people hired, and 17 were "non-asian" and 4 were "asian"
Now here's the problem when we go down the rabbit hole of stats, percentages, and hiring by race.
What were the numbers of hires that were of African descent?
What were the numbers of hires that identified as female?
In a business that is presumably racist, what was the situation that led the company to hire "asians" as 20 percent of the hires during this period.
From the article: "The likelihood that this result occurred according to chance is approximately one in a billion," said the lawsuit,
Yeah - I'm going to have to call bullshit on that - I'd love to see that math.
But then, according to the article The majority of Palantir's hires as engineering interns, as well as two other engineering positions, "came from an employee referral system that disproportionately excluded Asians,"
And both the comments are from the lawsuit, so I give them veracity as an integral part of the lawsuit
Well, right there is your answer. These interns and two engineering positions came from employee referrals.
In my professional life, I'm exposed to a lot of different ethnicities, but if I referred every "asian" for placement in an open position, and no non "asians" at all, and they all were hired, it might hit 20 percent, of which this lawsuit is considered racially discriminating.
So what this is actually an attack against is the process of referral. Should a referral of a known non-"asian" who might have a great track record, be disregarded for an unknown "asian" person, or even more importantly, if referrals are to become verboten, should a non-"asian" be not hired and an "asian" of known flaws be hired?
So perhaps the process of employees giving assessments of people they know is what is considered racist. That's actually a little scary, because it means an employee who knows a person as a bad actor will then not be allowed to make commentary on that.
Consumer drones have become interwoven with paranoia about weaponized military drones.
The questions are uncomfortable, are they not?
Yeah, that's what they are - load levelers at best. They're not replacements and NEVER will be.
You are missing that they don't actually have ot be attached to a grid. I can easily generate all the power that I need from solar. Wind isn't practical in my house location.
All I'm waiting for is the right moment.
I've found All of the naysaying by your ilk to be way off. My local energy use through using devices that use a lot less energy, and by properly insulating have exceeded the naysaer's predictions by an incredible amount. Installed a top efficiency gas furnace that extracts so much heat that the "chimney" is 2 inch PVC pipe, as well as the intake. No inside air is heated and vented. Along with an extra layer of insulation in the attic, and I am spending per year what most locals are spending a month for heating. Damn thing has paid for itself in 3 years, not the 20 or "never" the naysayers claim. Same with turning all of the lighting into LED's. I'm paying 50 dollars a month for electrical service, and I have a freaking outside hot tub. Yeah, I bought a highly insulated one.
And I'll be off the grid as soon as solar power and energy storage hits the right price point, combined with the right point of conservation. And I haven't given up a darned thing - I live at a high comfort level.
Meanwhile those local smarter folk, some how are paying over a grand a month for heat, which is a lot more than what I'm paying per year and a few hundred dollars a month for electricity, 4 times my level, are on the smart track. Or not.
Your nasty-ass response is indicative of a typical feeling of loss of control and/or grandiosity.
Your incredible sensitivity is indicative of incredible sensitivity. Give me facts, or I'll give you a tissue to cry in.
Not sayin', just sayin'
People who deny progress have been denying progress forever.
It's how we get people who are still refusing to vaccinate their children, even though the researcher and lawyer who started the Anti-Vaxxer movement have long been discredited.
It's how a lot of people believe that the Earth was created in 4004 b.c.e., and that their deity created all life in it's present form, even though if their belief is true, all of physics and biology must be discarded becase it is completely wrong.
It's how a lot of people deny the existence of the greenhouse effect, or just say that the only Carbon Dioxide that has an effect is non anthropogenic sources, completely ignoring that without a greenhouse effect, life on earth would not exista at all, and that the human released CO2 os not human made, merely sequestered CO2 that has been re-released.
You might think I'm a prick, or an asshole, I wouldn't even deny that. So what?
But if that is the core of your argument, thanks for playing, and let the grown ups discuss things now.
Obama's original birth certificate sadly was lost in the fire, but don't worry we have county records computer in Hawaii full of replacement ones
God keeps ressurecting the birth certificate, but Hellary has had every messenger trying to deliver the truth killed. I think she's up to a village worth now, so there's no one to raise the children any more.
Fear not though, God's armor Joe Arpaio is on the case, and the will of god shall prevail over muslim terror babies from Kenya.
Damn - I've probably started a new conspiracy.
Power is fungible. Whether the electrons generated go into your factory or someone else's at the end of the day has the exact same environmental effect. Worrying about which electrons are being used is idiotic and misses the point.
Oh boy - now you have them wondering what electricity has to do with mushrooms....... Furthermore the best locations for renewable power are not necessarily the best locations for the end users of that power.
Exactly, and its really the same for all sources of power, except perhaps nuc.
North and west of me is a lot of coal generated power. Its there because the mines are there. Population density is maybe 25 per square mile - that's a number off the top of me noggin - but it's mostly forest and cow pastures. Hydro is pretty obviously needing to be where there aren't a lot of people. And the nice thing about solar and wind is that they act as a load leveler, especially solar, which is most active at peak demand times. And as for wind, the Allegheny front, where a lot of Wind Power is generated, is pretty much constantly windy.
From earlier post
Further, trying to run full-time off wind+solar would require a substantial investment in energy storage to balance night/still air and storage is where we need the investment.
Power storage will matter for the system once you get beyond a certain generating capacity for solar/wind but for now fossil fuels and nuclear are more than capable of taking up the slack so it's an important but secondary consideration for now. For those who want to use the electricity they generate storage matters but that isn't the goal for companies like Google or Apple.
By the way, The person who says that running full time off of solar/wind needing a substantial investment in energy storage is not understanding that with traditional grid powering methods, there is already a huge investment in storage.
We don't build these turbine based power generation systems to handle peak power. Economics and turbine characteristics make that a bad idea for a system with wildly varying power demands. A turbine isn't good at reacting immediately, or running at power levels it wasn't designed for.Wanna see a power generation engineer blanch? Start talking about runaway turbines. So we load level. An example is using off peak hours to pump water into a reservoir that releases water to create enough electricity at peak hours.
The system is in place already, solar and wind act as very good load levelers, and they are becoming cheaper all the time. All that's left is the actuarial tables.
Nights and windless days are very much reality. It is a fact that wind and solar are not economical, else subsidies wouldn't be necessary to get them built. You speak of a threshold; well, Germany stepped over it years ago. It didn't work out, and they are stepping back. Might be we want to rethink, and make decisions based on facts and reality.
Spouting the same old same old. Was your great-grandpappy all pissed off when we switched over from whale oil to kerosene? Or changed over from those bright carbon arc lamps to delicate little filament lamps?
Do you fly into a rage when you see an LED lightbulb? https://banledlighting.wordpre...
Load leveling is the issue, and it's an issue for every form of power generation. And without a milliwatt of solar or wind, it's heavily involved in power generation right now https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Power is stored when it is available, and drained when it is not. While there are differences, in power availability, the principle is the same.
Right now, battery storage makes local storage quite feasible, and there are new introductions on the way. But there are so many other factors. Ever build a house in an area where there isn't power yet? Just wait until you get the bill for running a couple miles of powerline. Solar or wind is not only cheaper at that point, it is much cheaper.
As well, a lot of us are looking for ways to remove ourselves form the power grid. At which point a whole different powering paradigm comes into play. It is really easy for me to figure out my hotel loading, and come up with the powering and storage needs to provide myself with electricity. Its a work in progress, but I've reduced my electrical bill to around 55 dollars a month, and that's with all my computers, and a spa tub. I have a small solar install as a testbed, powering my radio equipment. At the moment solar hits a good price point, I'm off grid.
By the way, Using subsidies as a reason that solar or wind isn't viable is not a good tack to take. Oil gets huge subsidies. And just try building a nuc plant without immense subsidies, and even tail end subsidies - where the plant is given liability immunity. Anyhow, I've got some plans for a carbon arc lamp if you want to go back to the old ways.
What's happened is that Amazon has come to realize that there is little point in continually pay someone for power when you can just get your own. This is simply a cost cutting measure to grow their AWS profit margin and ensure they can compete with competitive pricing. It's also good PR which they can use as ammunition for marketing. Amazon execs don't give a fuck about the environment, it's all about the money.
Actually, I suspect they do. I know a lot of higly placed people that actually do care about it. If thy didn't, for the immense drain on profitability as claimed by some - they'd never be allowed to go this route.
What is changing, is that despite what a lot of CogDis people think, a threshhold is being crossed. CogDis people can bring out the same old memes of it won't work, it won't work economically, it won't work because the sun isn't shining or the wind doesn't blow 24/7 - but this stuff's gettin' real.
Yes, a computer should be getting updates if it ever connects to a network independent of whether or not it had internet connectivity. In this case, it is the other hosts on the network that create the risk.
Sorry, I have a Windows 10 off th einternet system. Now that it works, there's no way I'm going to screw it up with Microsoft W10 updates. On the computer I used to familiarize myself with W10, it's been bitched up three times now. P A vius is a lot less damaging than missing a deadline because teh computer stops working. At this point, Microsoft is included in the malware suppliers.
There should be a single blog, yes. But there should also be the ability to choose which patches you want, if necessary. Say a particular graphics driver is known to kill a certain game, or a certain network update conflicts with a utility, there should be a way for advanced users do opt-out of them.
Or even better, not make updates that have to be rolled back because they fuck up machines. It must be Stockholm syndrome or something akin, that so many people are so accepting of an Operating System that regularly screws the pooch in the computers. They even seem to think that getting their computers fucked up is a mark of superiority.
Ain't no need for that friends!
Somehow or another, OSX and Linux manage to not screw up people's computers often or at all. Using all three, my Windows machines Well, I'm down to one now are the only ones that work just fine one day, then after an update do not.
full discosure, Mac Mail got a little goofy for a little while, and one update made my Mac at the time a little jittery, but it was fixed pronto, and it noever stopped working
Getting rid of the W10 Dell I was using was a huge improvement, freed up time to actually do work, not get the computer to work.
But then, Microsoft is trying to create an environment as closed as Mac,
What is this "closed environment" people speak of? I can install any program I wish on my Mac. I run Windows 7 on it. I can run Linux on it. I don't often run Linux on it because it's already running Unix. But if that's a closed system, gimme that over Windows 10 any day.
It's not about what users want anymore, just about extracting maximal dollars.
Can't argue with ya there, although some times it seems like an abusive relationship between Microsoft and their users as well.
You could use a trampoline to jump high enough to see over a privacy fence. Omg burn all trampolines!
Or at least, allow people in Kentucky to shoot at them when their heads appear above the fence!