It seems like a perfect plan. I will start tomorrow morning, right after paying for my brand new bridge. LOL. Seriously though, I am a horrible salesman and don't like anything related to persuasion, promotion or similar.
This is a different link, but providing pretty much the same: nothing. I am not saying that these aren't real figures, but irrelevant ones. Without a proper stratification/analysis, almost any conclusion can be extracted. Most of black women earn less than most of white men? OK. This seems consistent with the black/white, women/men wealth distribution in the States. Does this fact mean that black women are systematically, unfairly and unmotivatedly being paid less than white men while doing exactly the same job? No. That conclusion cannot be reasonably extracted from such a simplistic data set and you can (or should) not use saying-nothing data to support whatever idea you prefer.
I think that my point is already crystal clear and don't see why I should continue this chat, so hopefully you don't mind if I stop it here.
I provided data. Do you have anything other than speculation?
This isn't proper data, this is a extremely simplistic summary with no real meaning for a so complex reality. These results can be explained in many different ways (= all of them are meaningless = data source is irrelevant). The whole point of my original post was precisely highlighting that fact. You thinking that any worthy conclusion can be extracted from that graph is speculation; I simply provided other reasons which might explain the observed differences, never by expecting them to be taken as absolutely valid.
By default, everyone is assumed to be treated equally in the USA (otherwise, they could sue their employers); if you think that this isn't the case, you would have to prove it. My opinion? There are quite a few differences because people are different and do/expect different things. Perhaps I am wrong and there is a systematic non-justifiable difference in salaries uniquely motivated by gender/race, but you would have to prove it. You would have to get proper(ly stratified) data, perform a comprehensive analysis by bringing many different factors into account and confirm that your expectations hold for a relevant part of the population. Your graph doesn't do anything of that. If adequately analysing this whole situation needed 1 million steps, your graph wouldn't be even step 1.
?! Do you want me to support my critic to your generic assumptions based on no relevant data with data? Don't you see the irony there? You expect others to deliver what you don't! Also you are doing a curious onus probandi inversion, something like "Elephants can fly. Don't you believe it? Show me that they can't!"
No, I don't have any worthy data and don't think that anyone does; at least, not for honestly coming up with the impossible simple and undoubted answer which you are looking for. On the other hand, with bad data and a gullible audience, some people can prove anything and right the contrary. I am not too much into this sub-world myself (because of my solid principle, dignity and all that), but you shouldn't have many problems to find a scammer or someone with flexible enough values willing to "prove" whatever needs to be proven.
Zero tolerance policies are how Damore got fired in the first place.
This is not what I meant. I meant only caring about what is strictly related to the given work. I don't really care about this whole Damore story, but in principle I don't like the behaviour of any of the involved parties: if you are working as a programmer, you and your company should only care about programming and related aspects like being nice to co-workers.
Sounds like you're a hell of a lot more right-wing than you say you are.
I am 100% sure that there isn't any conservative bit in me. I am also completely honest. On the other hand, you seem to have some (mis)interpretation issues.
When you say you don't see race, youâ(TM)re ignoring racism, not helping to solve it
I don't agree with that. I cannot say that I see a racial difference, because I truly don't see it. I do see lots of people, mainly in certain countries, with evident (at least to me) latent racism (never saying even a bad-sounding word, but behaving racistly in a systematic way). I do see people of certain races having a somehow common behaviour, but voluntarily because of feeling part of their community. I see societies which have been and still continue being very tough on certain races. I can recognise all that, but I cannot recognise that I feel in that way or that it makes any sense or that similar counter-measurements (positive discrimination) would be a good idea. I don't think that hypocrisy or in-denial approaches are even a temporary solution, but a way to perpetuate the problem.
Have you suddenly opened your eyes, seen something you don't like and want to immediately solve it? Do you expect to look around you, locate some people to blame, come up with some magical solution and make everything fine for everyone? Sorry, but this isn't how the world works. The only way to solve an extremely complex problem involving a huge number of different people (when some of them might not even want to solve it) is: firstly, properly understanding it (everything, the bits being positive/negative to you), what also implies self-awareness/acceptance and stop looking for magical solutions or someone to blame; and then, doing things step by step, being very patient and accepting that everything will be changing very slowly.
This is still a too generic statement which should only be applicable under well-defined conditions. In general terms and in the US, it seems evident that there is a tendency towards white males earning more, but this can also be explained by other generic trends like a big number of women leaving their jobs relatively soon (mainly because of getting married/children); this has been the standard scenario until recent times and even nowadays seems quite common. The direct consequence of that fact is that men are more likely to keep working on the same job for much longer than women, what is associated with higher salaries and promotions. There are also generic gender-related personality traits like men being more aggressive, ambitious, competitive; and women tending to prefer safe and comfortable conditions. Regarding black people, it seems also clear that, in the USA, a big proportion of people in this minority tends to belong to lower classes (because of history, racism and similar). Logically, there are tons of exceptions to all these ideas, but this is precisely my point: trying to generically define a so big and diverse number of people makes little sense.
It isn't a matter of actually having or not a gap in general terms, it is a matter of adequately understanding the situation to determine whether that makes sense or not under the given conditions. Otherwise, any attempt at solving the situation would be useless or even unfair under quite a few scenarios (I am a man who has never supported any kind of discrimination, why should I be arbitrarily discriminated against?). This might even be analysed in different ways like why choosing these specific features and not others like education, social status, family wealth, etc.? Why can you find people dying in the streets living in the same city than others having more than enough resources for 1000 lives? Or you could even see it in a different way: how can you criticise discrimination when you are actively defending similar means to accomplish your goals? Even a different approach: how can you (black woman) consider yourself identical to others (white men) when you are expecting an extra advantage, a paternalistic sample of arbitrariness to unconditionally favour you?
So, you are saying that the whole USA workforce is divided into 10 categories which are also accounting for other issues like seniority, skills or overtime.
After reading articles like this or the previous one (for me, both of them are basically about people wanting irrelevant aspects to be relevant), my expectations on this front get further reinforced: zero-tolerance with generic victimism-, prejudice-, hypocrisy-based whomever/whatever at work (and pretty much everywhere else).
DISCLAIMER: I am a white, cisgender, heterosexual, leftist, etc. man proudly ignoring all these and other features/ideas of myself or anyone else at work (programming/engineering). I am also a big fan of fairness and objectivity.
Curious. Thanks for sharing! In any case, note that this is a C library able to deal with JavaScript code rather than a pure JavaScript autonomous alternative. Although they use C in all the code samples, I guess that there shouldn't be problems with any other C-library-compatible language; but you would have to support the corresponding language environment + the library. By bearing in mind that resource minimisation is a quite important aspect in embedded systems, doing all that doesn't seem like the most optimal alternative.
Here you have a quote of the page 5 in the linked paper:
Consider the case where the code in Listing 1 is part of a function (such as a kernel syscall or cryptographic library) that receives an unsigned integer x from an untrusted source.
Please, tell me a real-life situation where receiving an "unsigned integer from an untrusted source" is common and/or doesn't provoke many other problems (e.g., given program most likely crashing with wrong values), but this is just the start. Let's continue reading...
The process running the code has access to an array of unsigned bytes array1 of size array1 size, and a second byte array array2 of size 64KB. if (x y = array2[array1[x] * 256];
The code fragment begins with a bounds check on x which is essential for security. [...] When the compiled code above runs, the processor
begins by comparing the malicious value of x against array1 size. Reading array1 size results in a cache miss, and the processor faces a substantial delay until its value is available from DRAM. During this wait, the branch predictor assumes the if will be true, and the speculative execution logic adds x to the base address of array1 and requests the data at the resulting address from the memory subsystem. This read is a cache hit, and quickly returns the value of the secret byte k. The specu-lative execution logic then uses k to compute the address of array2[k * 256], then sends a request to read this address from memory (resulting in another cache miss). While the read from array2 is pending, the value of array1 size finally arrives from DRAM. The proces-sor realizes that its speculative execution was erroneous, and rewinds its register state. However, on actual proces-sors, the speculative read from array2 affects the cache state in an address-specific manner, where the address depends on k. etc.
Have you got the idea? Basically, they expect that, under extremely specific conditions, failing to check the boundaries of an array provokes a malicious execution (rather than the way much more likely crash of the program). This is what I meant with theoretical: extremely difficult to happen unless under theoretical/prepared conditions and even much more difficult to provoke a truly malign output. I am not saying that they shouldn't fix it, just that exploiting problems of this kind is extremely difficult.
Am I mistaken that a Javascript exploit is possible?
The fact that a given programming language gives you more or less freedom regarding how to deal with the memory management aspects doesn't change the fact that the generated applications rely on memory. In any case all these bugs seem fairly theoretically and very difficult to be actually exploited. It seems more a matter of making sure that computers are 100% safe at their most basic level than actually avoiding imminent threats.
One of the most curious things about censorship-, prohibition-, arbitrariness-, etc. prone attitudes is that they usually try to prove that they are objectively better. They don't seem to accept their real imposition-based authority (you can use Facebook only if you accept its rules or Facebook's rules have to agree with the corresponding legislation or Facebook should listen what many of its users say) and hypocritically claim their moral superiority.
DISCLAIMER: I am not defending any position here. In general, I prefer permissive and properly-understanding approaches which only rely on prohibitions when strictly required.
These impersonators are simply creating a Twitter account with appealing pictures/simplistic bios and people care about whatever they say?! If that bot was doing something useful, I guess that it should continue doing so (BTW, is it so difficult for the bot creators to just open another Twitter account and simply perform the corresponding updates, probably just modifying the API connection info?). On the other hand, people who can be tricked so easily are very likely to be tricked anyway: there is no easy fix for so much gullibility.
+1 Insightful?! I guess that the whole extremely evident text which even a really dumb kid should be able to immediately understand as a joke + "LOL" (I do expressly tag all my jokes here since some months ago as a public service to those with limited understanding skills) wasn't clear enough regarding my intention. LOL (-> this means that I am being sarcastic and that that previous post was evidently a joke and that the moderator +1ing it as insightful has some serious understanding problems).
The true intention was well disguised! Who wouldn't have opened a file called "video_xxx" sent by a random person? A different story would have been a name like "warning_this_is_a_virus_never_ever_click_here"; even in that case, around 25% of people might click on it anyway. There are lots of unlucky individuals out there who cannot do anything to avoid this almost-perfect technique to succeed. LOL.
Still, you could use a VM with Windows on it, couldn't you?
It isn't the same. For minor issues VMs are fine. To work comfortably on something more or less serious for long periods of time, I prefer the proper thing either via multi-booting or different computers.
I have recently moved my main desktop operating system from Windows to Linux and I am quite happy with the change. On the other hand, I have to continue relying on Windows for quite a few things like developing Windows-based software. Similar multi-OS setups are likely to be increasingly common among developers and more technical people. OS manufacturers, software tools and infrastructure seem to also be going in this more practical lets-take-the-best-bit-from-everyone direction. Even the incompatibilities desktop/web/mobile/etc. are likely to keep decreasing.
IMO, a big proportion of (desktop) users voluntarily moving to Linux seems a quite unlikely scenario. A different story is Linux-based systems becoming more relevant everywhere and to everyone, regardless of final users being fully aware about that fact.
From the point of view of being inside a rocket, most of tests done to that car are pretty much irrelevant. It has a very complex geometry and distribution of masses/densities/materials; there are lots of moving/easily removable parts; it is difficult to be kept perfectly balanced; etc. Nothing of this applies to a regular simple shape (e.g., a cube) made of cement or any other material.
I don't think that this or any other car has ever passed through tests analysing its behaviour under as demanding conditions as the ones associated with being launched inside a rocket; and certainly not from the rocket perspective, what really matters here. Or you can see it in other way if you wish: 1000 kg of steel are identical to 1000 kg of cement from the static/weight point of view; but it is impossible to tell how similar/different both objects are from the dynamic perspective unless geometries, mass/density distributions, etc. are brought into account.
-1 Overrated! Same thing yesterday when I wrote another not-blindly-appraising post to an Elon-related article! You can say whatever you want about the Elon's army, but at least they act consistently! LOL.
There are evident differences in mass, weight distribution (inertial mass, reactions to turbulent conditions, stability, etc.) and even price between a car and a block of concrete. On the other hand, I am honestly not sure about how using any of these objects is really affecting the rocket setup. In principle, it seems quite sensible to assume that the car option would required an important adaptation (+ provoke not properly tested conditions). In case that both alternatives behaved similarly, my previous comment would logically not be applicable.
Justifying an accident when such an irrelevant frivolity is involved would be quite difficult. Personally, I am pretty much the opposite of a show-off, although don't mind taking risks/bringing things further as a way to accomplish something really worthy. I don't even care about (or/or feel a bit sorry for and/or make fun of) people behaving ostentatiously.
Combining both unnecessary ostentation and unnecessary risk seems particularly difficult to defend. I seriously hope that nothing goes wrong, but I would expect a fair reaction (from clients, public opinion, authorities) otherwise. Kind of my motto: feel free to do whatever you want, but better be ready for the consequences.
Slashdot Mirror
Sell something nobody really wants
It seems like a perfect plan. I will start tomorrow morning, right after paying for my brand new bridge. LOL. Seriously though, I am a horrible salesman and don't like anything related to persuasion, promotion or similar.
This is a different link, but providing pretty much the same: nothing. I am not saying that these aren't real figures, but irrelevant ones. Without a proper stratification/analysis, almost any conclusion can be extracted. Most of black women earn less than most of white men? OK. This seems consistent with the black/white, women/men wealth distribution in the States. Does this fact mean that black women are systematically, unfairly and unmotivatedly being paid less than white men while doing exactly the same job? No. That conclusion cannot be reasonably extracted from such a simplistic data set and you can (or should) not use saying-nothing data to support whatever idea you prefer.
I think that my point is already crystal clear and don't see why I should continue this chat, so hopefully you don't mind if I stop it here.
I provided data.
Do you have anything other than speculation?
This isn't proper data, this is a extremely simplistic summary with no real meaning for a so complex reality. These results can be explained in many different ways (= all of them are meaningless = data source is irrelevant). The whole point of my original post was precisely highlighting that fact. You thinking that any worthy conclusion can be extracted from that graph is speculation; I simply provided other reasons which might explain the observed differences, never by expecting them to be taken as absolutely valid.
By default, everyone is assumed to be treated equally in the USA (otherwise, they could sue their employers); if you think that this isn't the case, you would have to prove it. My opinion? There are quite a few differences because people are different and do/expect different things. Perhaps I am wrong and there is a systematic non-justifiable difference in salaries uniquely motivated by gender/race, but you would have to prove it. You would have to get proper(ly stratified) data, perform a comprehensive analysis by bringing many different factors into account and confirm that your expectations hold for a relevant part of the population. Your graph doesn't do anything of that. If adequately analysing this whole situation needed 1 million steps, your graph wouldn't be even step 1.
?! Do you want me to support my critic to your generic assumptions based on no relevant data with data? Don't you see the irony there? You expect others to deliver what you don't! Also you are doing a curious onus probandi inversion, something like "Elephants can fly. Don't you believe it? Show me that they can't!"
No, I don't have any worthy data and don't think that anyone does; at least, not for honestly coming up with the impossible simple and undoubted answer which you are looking for. On the other hand, with bad data and a gullible audience, some people can prove anything and right the contrary. I am not too much into this sub-world myself (because of my solid principle, dignity and all that), but you shouldn't have many problems to find a scammer or someone with flexible enough values willing to "prove" whatever needs to be proven.
You mean you don't believe that people selling Lularoe stockings and John Deere tractors are making the same commisions?
Clearly not. Who on the hell would want to buy a tractor? LOL.
Zero tolerance policies are how Damore got fired in the first place.
This is not what I meant. I meant only caring about what is strictly related to the given work. I don't really care about this whole Damore story, but in principle I don't like the behaviour of any of the involved parties: if you are working as a programmer, you and your company should only care about programming and related aspects like being nice to co-workers.
Sounds like you're a hell of a lot more right-wing than you say you are.
I am 100% sure that there isn't any conservative bit in me. I am also completely honest. On the other hand, you seem to have some (mis)interpretation issues.
When you say you don't see race, youâ(TM)re ignoring racism, not helping to solve it
I don't agree with that. I cannot say that I see a racial difference, because I truly don't see it. I do see lots of people, mainly in certain countries, with evident (at least to me) latent racism (never saying even a bad-sounding word, but behaving racistly in a systematic way). I do see people of certain races having a somehow common behaviour, but voluntarily because of feeling part of their community. I see societies which have been and still continue being very tough on certain races. I can recognise all that, but I cannot recognise that I feel in that way or that it makes any sense or that similar counter-measurements (positive discrimination) would be a good idea. I don't think that hypocrisy or in-denial approaches are even a temporary solution, but a way to perpetuate the problem.
Have you suddenly opened your eyes, seen something you don't like and want to immediately solve it? Do you expect to look around you, locate some people to blame, come up with some magical solution and make everything fine for everyone? Sorry, but this isn't how the world works. The only way to solve an extremely complex problem involving a huge number of different people (when some of them might not even want to solve it) is: firstly, properly understanding it (everything, the bits being positive/negative to you), what also implies self-awareness/acceptance and stop looking for magical solutions or someone to blame; and then, doing things step by step, being very patient and accepting that everything will be changing very slowly.
race and gender inequality
This is still a too generic statement which should only be applicable under well-defined conditions. In general terms and in the US, it seems evident that there is a tendency towards white males earning more, but this can also be explained by other generic trends like a big number of women leaving their jobs relatively soon (mainly because of getting married/children); this has been the standard scenario until recent times and even nowadays seems quite common. The direct consequence of that fact is that men are more likely to keep working on the same job for much longer than women, what is associated with higher salaries and promotions. There are also generic gender-related personality traits like men being more aggressive, ambitious, competitive; and women tending to prefer safe and comfortable conditions. Regarding black people, it seems also clear that, in the USA, a big proportion of people in this minority tends to belong to lower classes (because of history, racism and similar). Logically, there are tons of exceptions to all these ideas, but this is precisely my point: trying to generically define a so big and diverse number of people makes little sense.
It isn't a matter of actually having or not a gap in general terms, it is a matter of adequately understanding the situation to determine whether that makes sense or not under the given conditions. Otherwise, any attempt at solving the situation would be useless or even unfair under quite a few scenarios (I am a man who has never supported any kind of discrimination, why should I be arbitrarily discriminated against?). This might even be analysed in different ways like why choosing these specific features and not others like education, social status, family wealth, etc.? Why can you find people dying in the streets living in the same city than others having more than enough resources for 1000 lives? Or you could even see it in a different way: how can you criticise discrimination when you are actively defending similar means to accomplish your goals? Even a different approach: how can you (black woman) consider yourself identical to others (white men) when you are expecting an extra advantage, a paternalistic sample of arbitrariness to unconditionally favour you?
across all occupations
So, you are saying that the whole USA workforce is divided into 10 categories which are also accounting for other issues like seniority, skills or overtime.
After reading articles like this or the previous one (for me, both of them are basically about people wanting irrelevant aspects to be relevant), my expectations on this front get further reinforced: zero-tolerance with generic victimism-, prejudice-, hypocrisy-based whomever/whatever at work (and pretty much everywhere else).
DISCLAIMER: I am a white, cisgender, heterosexual, leftist, etc. man proudly ignoring all these and other features/ideas of myself or anyone else at work (programming/engineering). I am also a big fan of fairness and objectivity.
I draw your attention to JerryScript
Curious. Thanks for sharing! In any case, note that this is a C library able to deal with JavaScript code rather than a pure JavaScript autonomous alternative. Although they use C in all the code samples, I guess that there shouldn't be problems with any other C-library-compatible language; but you would have to support the corresponding language environment + the library. By bearing in mind that resource minimisation is a quite important aspect in embedded systems, doing all that doesn't seem like the most optimal alternative.
Meltdown is trivial
Seriously? Care to share a link or something? Spectre seems quite tricky, take a look at my comment down this thread.
I meant "if (x < array1_size) y = array2[array1[x] * 256];" rather than "if (x y = array2[array1[x] * 256];".
Consider the case where the code in Listing 1 is part of a function (such as a kernel syscall or cryptographic library) that receives an unsigned integer x from an untrusted source.
Please, tell me a real-life situation where receiving an "unsigned integer from an untrusted source" is common and/or doesn't provoke many other problems (e.g., given program most likely crashing with wrong values), but this is just the start. Let's continue reading...
The process running the code has access to an array of unsigned bytes array1 of size array1 size, and a second byte array array2 of size 64KB.
if (x y = array2[array1[x] * 256];
The code fragment begins with a bounds check on x which is essential for security.
[...]
When the compiled code above runs, the processor begins by comparing the malicious value of x against array1 size. Reading array1 size results in a cache miss, and the processor faces a substantial delay until its value is available from DRAM. During this wait, the branch predictor assumes the if will be true, and the speculative execution logic adds x to the base address of array1 and requests the data at the resulting address from the memory subsystem. This read is a cache hit, and quickly returns the value of the secret byte k. The specu-lative execution logic then uses k to compute the address of array2[k * 256], then sends a request to read this address from memory (resulting in another cache miss). While the read from array2 is pending, the value of array1 size finally arrives from DRAM. The proces-sor realizes that its speculative execution was erroneous, and rewinds its register state. However, on actual proces-sors, the speculative read from array2 affects the cache state in an address-specific manner, where the address depends on k. etc.
Have you got the idea? Basically, they expect that, under extremely specific conditions, failing to check the boundaries of an array provokes a malicious execution (rather than the way much more likely crash of the program). This is what I meant with theoretical: extremely difficult to happen unless under theoretical/prepared conditions and even much more difficult to provoke a truly malign output. I am not saying that they shouldn't fix it, just that exploiting problems of this kind is extremely difficult.
Am I mistaken that a Javascript exploit is possible?
The fact that a given programming language gives you more or less freedom regarding how to deal with the memory management aspects doesn't change the fact that the generated applications rely on memory. In any case all these bugs seem fairly theoretically and very difficult to be actually exploited. It seems more a matter of making sure that computers are 100% safe at their most basic level than actually avoiding imminent threats.
Detailed description here. LOL.
One of the most curious things about censorship-, prohibition-, arbitrariness-, etc. prone attitudes is that they usually try to prove that they are objectively better. They don't seem to accept their real imposition-based authority (you can use Facebook only if you accept its rules or Facebook's rules have to agree with the corresponding legislation or Facebook should listen what many of its users say) and hypocritically claim their moral superiority.
DISCLAIMER: I am not defending any position here. In general, I prefer permissive and properly-understanding approaches which only rely on prohibitions when strictly required.
These impersonators are simply creating a Twitter account with appealing pictures/simplistic bios and people care about whatever they say?! If that bot was doing something useful, I guess that it should continue doing so (BTW, is it so difficult for the bot creators to just open another Twitter account and simply perform the corresponding updates, probably just modifying the API connection info?). On the other hand, people who can be tricked so easily are very likely to be tricked anyway: there is no easy fix for so much gullibility.
+1 Insightful?! I guess that the whole extremely evident text which even a really dumb kid should be able to immediately understand as a joke + "LOL" (I do expressly tag all my jokes here since some months ago as a public service to those with limited understanding skills) wasn't clear enough regarding my intention. LOL (-> this means that I am being sarcastic and that that previous post was evidently a joke and that the moderator +1ing it as insightful has some serious understanding problems).
The true intention was well disguised! Who wouldn't have opened a file called "video_xxx" sent by a random person? A different story would have been a name like "warning_this_is_a_virus_never_ever_click_here"; even in that case, around 25% of people might click on it anyway. There are lots of unlucky individuals out there who cannot do anything to avoid this almost-perfect technique to succeed. LOL.
Still, you could use a VM with Windows on it, couldn't you?
It isn't the same. For minor issues VMs are fine. To work comfortably on something more or less serious for long periods of time, I prefer the proper thing either via multi-booting or different computers.
I have recently moved my main desktop operating system from Windows to Linux and I am quite happy with the change. On the other hand, I have to continue relying on Windows for quite a few things like developing Windows-based software. Similar multi-OS setups are likely to be increasingly common among developers and more technical people. OS manufacturers, software tools and infrastructure seem to also be going in this more practical lets-take-the-best-bit-from-everyone direction. Even the incompatibilities desktop/web/mobile/etc. are likely to keep decreasing.
IMO, a big proportion of (desktop) users voluntarily moving to Linux seems a quite unlikely scenario. A different story is Linux-based systems becoming more relevant everywhere and to everyone, regardless of final users being fully aware about that fact.
From the point of view of being inside a rocket, most of tests done to that car are pretty much irrelevant. It has a very complex geometry and distribution of masses/densities/materials; there are lots of moving/easily removable parts; it is difficult to be kept perfectly balanced; etc. Nothing of this applies to a regular simple shape (e.g., a cube) made of cement or any other material.
I don't think that this or any other car has ever passed through tests analysing its behaviour under as demanding conditions as the ones associated with being launched inside a rocket; and certainly not from the rocket perspective, what really matters here. Or you can see it in other way if you wish: 1000 kg of steel are identical to 1000 kg of cement from the static/weight point of view; but it is impossible to tell how similar/different both objects are from the dynamic perspective unless geometries, mass/density distributions, etc. are brought into account.
-1 Overrated! Same thing yesterday when I wrote another not-blindly-appraising post to an Elon-related article! You can say whatever you want about the Elon's army, but at least they act consistently! LOL.
There are evident differences in mass, weight distribution (inertial mass, reactions to turbulent conditions, stability, etc.) and even price between a car and a block of concrete. On the other hand, I am honestly not sure about how using any of these objects is really affecting the rocket setup. In principle, it seems quite sensible to assume that the car option would required an important adaptation (+ provoke not properly tested conditions). In case that both alternatives behaved similarly, my previous comment would logically not be applicable.
Justifying an accident when such an irrelevant frivolity is involved would be quite difficult. Personally, I am pretty much the opposite of a show-off, although don't mind taking risks/bringing things further as a way to accomplish something really worthy. I don't even care about (or/or feel a bit sorry for and/or make fun of) people behaving ostentatiously.
Combining both unnecessary ostentation and unnecessary risk seems particularly difficult to defend. I seriously hope that nothing goes wrong, but I would expect a fair reaction (from clients, public opinion, authorities) otherwise. Kind of my motto: feel free to do whatever you want, but better be ready for the consequences.