Recent submissions

Comment · 8 days ago
> Keeping information secret is only justified if releasing it would put a person in serious danger or compromise a police/military operation.

I think that’s A reason to keep information secret. The other is if it would reveal sensitive sources and methods (e.g., capabilities that it known, would impact the ability to use those methods).

Not saying the legal interpretation falls under that, but just mentioning it.

Comment · 6 months ago
> Pretty cool of you to share your experiences bladegash. I always thought they wouldn't let people with mental health conditions into those environments. Shows what I know.

Some mental health conditions, like mine, don’t really show up until later in life and it is at least part of the reason I no longer work in that field :).

However, things are well managed now and I have a good career in the private sector!

Comment · 6 months ago
Yep, my thoughts as well. And I say this as someone who not only has a chronic mental health disorder that sometimes manifests as paranoia, but someone who used to work in the IC for 10 years (it has been a while since then).

Is it possible? Sure. But it is very unlikely that much resources and effort would be devoted to someone that made a few critical comments.

Comment · 2 years ago
Small correction, but there are actually four states (CA being one of them) where you can avoid law school by what is called “reading the law”. It entails more or less doing an apprenticeship with a practicing attorney or judge and meeting certain requirements.
Comment · 2 years ago
Comment · 2 years ago
Unrelated, but another interesting one is any non-admin contributors being able to add (and I believe update) secrets in a private repo for use in GH actions. It can’t be done via the UI, but can be done via the API or VSCode extension.

When I looked into it a while back, apparently it is intended behavior, which just seems odd.

Comment · 2 years ago
I don’t think correlation = causation in your anecdote. Care to provide some examples of people who were “cured” of Crohns through diet alone?

I have had Crohns for nearly four years with it in remission for the last two years. Diet and other lifestyle changes did slightly improve symptoms, but the only things that have yielded profound change were Inflectra and prednisone.

I think for those who have Crohns bad enough where they’re facing surgeries or being on a biologic for quite some time, diet alone isn’t going to fix the damage inflammation has already done.

Comment · 2 years ago
You hit the nail on the head, but think aside from information being more accessible to analyze/share when it isn’t classified/there isn’t a need to protect sensitive sources and methods, is the benefit vis-a-vis translations.

Finding native speakers of languages like Chinese, Russian, Farsi, etc. who are also eligible/want to have a clearance is a challenge (it’s expensive and self-limiting, since US citizenship is a requirement).

Training people already cleared in those languages takes a ton of time, expensive, and yields linguists with mixed-usefulness (think understanding formal Spanish taught in highschool versus Spanish actually spoken amongst peers/friends). There’s slang, intonations, etc. that non-native speakers have to spend time learning/may misunderstand.

In other words, OSINT has a much larger talent pool that yield arguably/presumably better translations.

Comment · 3 years ago
I guess I was more including Usenet as a part of the progression, not necessarily categorizing as a BBS.

Fair enough on the notice two, but I think people (or at least I) more generically use “BBS” to describe message boards/forums.

Anyways, appreciate the correction regardless, as after looking the actual definition, I was definitely wrong =)!

Comment · 3 years ago
Funny enough, BBSs were the way many of the players on WoW servers pre-cross realm would communicate/flame each other outside the actual game.

When I started online gaming with an old multiplayer tank game called Tanarus, we used Usenet. With EverQuest we used EZBoard, then with WoW it was many times the server’s board on the official WoW forums.

While I’m sure there’s a bit of nostalgia shading the memories, I made a lot of friends and great memories!

Comment · 3 years ago
Ah, gotcha, thank you for clarifying. That makes much more sense and I think it is a fair correlation to draw!
Comment · 3 years ago
I am not sure what your point is? They are two very distinct and independent animation studios, which OP seemed to be aware of.
Comment · 3 years ago
Huh?

Disney Animation Studios (not Pixar) has made three movies in the last ten years that are among the highest grossing movies of all time (Frozen, Zootopia, and Frozen II).

In terms of quality, anecdotally two of my personal favorite Disney movies ever were done by them within that timespan as well (Moana and Encanto).

My impression has been that the gap between Disney Animation Studios and Pixar has drastically narrowed.

Comment · 3 years ago
I am not sure that I agree life is quite as black and white to where that maxim can always hold true.

I think we can agree that intent/means used to achieve an outcome certainly do matter (more deonotological/Kantian philosophical worldview), but I do believe that consequences/outcomes of action and/or inaction certainly matter as well.

All sorts of mental gymnastics we could go through as to my reasoning, but I try to be cautious in accepting strict maxims as absolute truths.

Comment · 3 years ago
Certainly a fair point on mindset and I’m sure it will vary depending on where you work. I generally agree with you, but wonder if the viewpoints we each described are not mutually exclusive.

The viewpoint you are describing sounds along the lines of “good vs. bad”, “us vs. them”, “black vs. white”. I guess the viewpoint I mentioned is more describing how one consciously or unconsciously reconciles/reaches congruence between their actions and value system.

In other words, one part answers the “why” we do what we do and the other answers the “how do we feel ok with what we did”.

At least from my background, there were no illusions that many things we did would be considered of questionable morality or destructive in just about any other circumstances.

That then brings about the philosophical question I think your perspective ultimately answers, which is “this is wrong, but…sometimes doing wrong things can also be right or less wrong than the alternatives”.

Just to add, I especially agree regarding downsides. Aside from being abstract, the relationship between cause and effect may be murky or seemingly non-existent.

Thanks for adding your experiences/perspective!

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