email

The Most Common Error in Coverage of the Google Memo – The Atlantic
TL;DR: it wasn’t anti-diversity. Via @sonyaellenmann.
(tags: google sexism politics social-justice diversity)
The Google Memo: What Does the Research Say About Gender Differences? | HeterodoxAcademy.org
“1. Gender differences in math/science ability, achievement, and performance are small or nil…
2. Gender differences in interest and enjoyment of math, coding, and highly “systemizing” activities are large. …
3. Culture and context matter, in complicated ways. Some gender differences have decreased over time as women have achieved greater equality, showing that these differences are responsive to changes in culture and environment. But the cross-national findings sometimes show “paradoxical” effects: progress toward gender equality in rights and opportunities sometimes leads to larger gender differences in some traits and career choices. Nonetheless, it seems that actions taken today by parents, teachers, politicians, and designers of tech products may increase the likelihood that girls will grow up to pursue careers in tech, and this is true whether or not biology plays a role in producing any particular population difference.”
(tags: feminism google diversity psychology gender politics)
Suzanne Sadedin’s answer to What do scientists think about the biological claims made in the anti-diversity document written by a Google employee in August 2017? – Quora
Dr Sadedin’s is the best rebuttal to the Google memo that I’ve seen (as the rest just call it bad without rebutting it).
(tags: science google gender sexism psychology)
How To Add A Security Key To Your Gmail (Tech Solidarity)
2FA without the SMS/phone number backup (which can be hacked by social engineering your mobile phone network provider).
(tags: email google 2fa authentication security)

How work changed to make us all passionate quitters | Aeon Essays
Alleges that neoliberalism encourages employees to see themselves as the CEO of “Me, Inc”, always looking for tasks that’ll help them get their next job. Interesting final section about the modern obsession with “passion”.
(tags: capitalism business work economics career)
Troy Hunt: Introducing 306 Million Freely Downloadable Pwned Passwords
A service where you can check the clear text (if you trust the site owner) or hash of passwords to see whether they’ve leaked in any of the site hacks over the years.
(tags: security passwords api)
Operation Luigi: How I hacked my friend without her noticing
Funny stream of consciousness thing about hacking a friend (with permission). Time to enable 2FA on your stuff, people.
(tags: hacking phishing funny email authentication passwords)
Steve Dutch: Conservative Cranks and Liberal Meta-Cranks
What are the differences between cranks on both sides? Conservative ones are generally stupid, liberal ones are clever rationalisers.
(tags: politics cranks conservative liberal)

Mister Vimes’d Go Spare | Send in the Zeppelins!
One of the many online tribute threads for Terry Pratchett lead me to this fanfic about what happened after Sam Vimes died. Good stuff.
(tags: discworld fanfiction vimes gods terry-pratchett)
Temporary Mailing Lists | Hacking for Christ
Here’s a rough spec for something I’ve often wanted at work (less the “delete the archive after 2 weeks” part). Anyone seen an implementation of something like this?
(tags: email list ad-hoc)

Someone calling themselves “Neo” from the Skeptic Arena emailed me on the subject of my previous article, sending me a Word document with his replies in. I pointed out that emailing Word documents around is a bit odd, showed him where the comment box is, pointed out that he didn’t seem to have read the previous post properly, and went on my way.

Neo wasn’t content with that, and has now featured our conversation on his web site as a another Word document. Publically posting private emails is rude, but seeing as Neo has done it, he’s lost the right to complain about the following. I’ve replied to selected points below the cut, but you can see the whole thing in all its glory on Neo’s site, if you’re worried I’m being a bit too selective.

If you’re short of time, here’s what you can learn from this:

  • Atheists aren’t necessarily more rational than anyone else. Some of them write green ink emails to other atheists.
  • Arguments are not soldiers: it’s not rational to attack an argument merely because it’s for the opposing “side”.
  • Some people take this to the next level: they confuse mentioning an argument with using it, and attack the person mentioning anyway. Here’s a Christian example, and another atheist example, both directed at me. If both sides argue with me, I’ve achieved perfect balance in the Force! (edit: actually, one is directed at Yvain and I just pointed it out).

The mandatory tweets of the self-righteous vacillating centrist stats bore: a user’s guide – Telegraph Blogs
"Sit back with a look of superiority on your face." Tee hee. I think I’ve probably used some of these (though not on Twitter of course, that’s for twits).
(tags: argument twitter funny)
A plea for politeness; or, a call for kindness | Slave of the Passions
"politeness is something you owe to me not in virtue of my natural superiority over you, but in virtue of our equality. You should be polite to me, not in deference to my authority, but in recognition of our shared humanity, according to which I, like you, am a human being with feelings, weaknesses and frustrations; I am vulnerable and capable of being hurt, just as you are." But are people who are systematically better off than others as vulnerable?
(tags: argument politeness privilege philosophy)
Feds Threaten To Arrest Lavabit Founder For Shutting Down His Service | Techdirt
If you shut down your email service rather than giving the US government a back door, they’ll threaten to arrest you.
(tags: law politics nsa email encryption privacy lavabit)
Glenn Greenwald’s partner detained at Heathrow airport for nine hours
"David Miranda, partner of Guardian interviewer of whistleblower Edward Snowden, questioned under Terrorism Act." This is why we don’t permit laws which allow people to be held for long periods without charge, even if the laws are ostensibly about fighting "terrorism". There’s no way that the UK authorities can seriously think Miranda is a terrorist. Via Metafilter, where they’re speculating that the US and UK are spooked because they don’t know what Snowden has actually got.
(tags: law politics terrorism nsa spying heathrow privacy edward-snowden glenn-greenwald gchq)
Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation
"I am an independent Q.C. and not part of the government machine. I am tasked with reviewing the operation of the United Kingdom’s anti-terrorism laws. Where I am critical, I recommend change. My reports and recommendations are submitted to ministers and laid before Parliament." Interesting blog posts and reports on the police use of their anti-terrorism powers.
(tags: law politics terrorism police)

If you do this in an email, I hate you – The Oatmeal

Via matgb
(tags: email funny internet humour)

Killing Elvis – David Hines (hradzka) – Alien series (1979 1986 1992) [Archive of Our Own]

"Aliens" fanfic. Good fun.
(tags: aliens alien fanfic humour)

Football Mascots, English Democrats And Shadow Mayors | MetaFilter

"Some council leaders and their new powers under the Local Government Act 2000 ("LGA"): – Councillors of the Borough of Telford and Wrekin have the power of flight (section 2 of the LGA)."

Light Blue Touchpaper: The Gawker hack: how a million passwords were lost

The security group at Cambridge on how the Gawker hack occurred.
(tags: security hacking gawker passwords)

How to Think About Science

Metafilter links to a bunch of podcasts from modern historians and philosophers of science. I've linked to Mefi rather than the podcasts as there are some interesting comments from valkyryn in the thread, on what Shapin and Schaffer were saying about the role of trust in the scientific community.
(tags: audio science metafilter history philosophy)

The late, mannerist years of identity politics

"I am X, and I am different from Y. Other people are ignorant of the difference between X and Y. They must be educated. People, you must call me X and respect my difference from yourself, and from Y. You must refer to me by the term I have chosen to refer to myself by, and stay tuned for any changes I choose to make in this label, and new terms you must use to describe me — those new terms which the stigma treadmill or reclamation of previously-taboo terms may, from time to time, make it necessary for me to substitute."
(tags: identity politics gender feminism transexualism)

A gay witch hunt in Uganda

Andrew Brown: "A bill currently before the Ugandan parliament (pdf) proposes seven year prison sentences for discussing homosexuality; life imprisonment for homosexual acts; and death for a second offence. Sober observers believe it will be passed. The Anglican church in Uganda appears to support it, and the Church of England in this country is absolutely silent."
(tags: homosexuality morality anglicanism religion christianity sex uganda john-sentamu sentamu)

Pleased to meet you, hope you guessed my name

Christian commenter on Unreasonable Faith: "All ex-Christians are in league with Satan and are fully aware of it, don’t let yourselves be fooled into believing otherwise." Bugger, I've been rumbled. Time to buy a red cape…
(tags: atheism ex-christian de-conversion satan lolxians christianity religion)

Because As We All Know, The Green Party Runs the World.

Peter Watts on the email leaks from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia. "That’s how science works. It’s not a hippie love-in; it’s rugby."
(tags: global-warming climate science peter-watts politics environment email leak)

Richard Norman – Beyond belief

Richard Norman on the "New Believers": Terry Eagleton, Karen Armstrong and such like, the people who say religion is not remotely about believing stuff. "I cannot see how, in the end, a distinctive religious identity can be possible unless it is based on the acceptance of at least some non-metaphorical factual beliefs – beliefs about the existence of a personal deity and about how his intentions and purposes explain our world. Those beliefs do, inescapably, need to be rationally defended. And they can’t be. On that point, certainly, Dawkins is right."
(tags: richard-norman belief religion karen-armstrong terry-eagleton eagleton richard-dawkins)

‘The Evolution of Confusion’ by Dan Dennett, AAI 2009

Dennett on his project to interview clergy who no longer believe but are closeted (Dennett explicitly makes the analogy with gay people in the 1950s), on "deepities" in theology (interestingly, he rejects criticisms that other 3 horsemen don't know enough theology or philosophy), and on how we needn't suppose some people sat down and conspired to make up religions.
(tags: religion video dennett evolution daniel-dennett theology memes deepity)

The Daily Mash – CLIMATE CHANGE EMAILS STOP GLACIERS FROM MELTING

"This is the smoking iceberg that fires a polar bear of truth between the eyes of hysteria and communism."
(tags: funny climate environment satire global-warming science)

I have a message between two people who aren’t me (and aren’t known to me, don’t worry!) sat in both my Facebook Inbox and Sent Messages. The message was sent at 3:04 pm today, apparently.

This does not appear to be the problem mentioned in The Register recently, whose symptoms were that people would see whole pages belonging to other users. I can see my Inbox with messages people have sent to me, but I can see a message between these two people in it. I’ve sent them a message to ask whether they meant to message me, but right now, that looks unlikely.

A while back I wrote about some of the advantages of centralisation for keeping out spam and making new features available quickly. The downside, as livredor pointed out, is that Facebook is a single point of failure.

Could this happen with standard Internet email? Yes: I could mis-address the mail (less likely if I use an address book rather than typing an address by hand), or the recipient’s server could mis-deliver it (usually, if my outbound server hands my mail to the wrong remote server, the remote end will reject it). Are popular mail servers more reliable than Facebook? Almost certainly, I’d say. Lots of people are on Facebook, but I reckon the volume of Internet email is still orders of magnitude greater than that of Facebook messages. The email servers handling that volume are so reliable that I’ve never heard of a case of mis-delivered (as opposed to mis-addressed or lost) email. Google Groups doesn’t seem to have done so either, or at least, the evidence is uncertain. The Usenet postings I found talking about mis-delivered mail seemed to be explained by the little-known fact that Internet email is like a letter: there’s an envelope destination address used to deliver it, as well as the “Dear Fred” saluation you see in the To: header or Cc: header. I had a friend at university who used to send out party invites which looked as if they been addressed to president@whitehouse.gov and god@heaven.org. Anyway…

Don’t send anything sensitive in Facebook messages, will you?

Edited to add: The message has gone again now. I’ve used the help form to tell Facebook about it, so we’ll see what they say.