Ex-NSA Hacker Is Building an AI To Find Hate and Far-Right Symbols on Twitter and Facebook (vice.com) 509
Motherboard reporter Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai has interviewed Emily Crose, a former NSA hacker, who has built NEMESIS, an AI-powered program that can help spot symbols that have been co-opted by hate groups to signal to each other in plain sight. Crose, who has also moderated Reddit in the past, thought of building NEMESIS after the Charlottesville, Virginia incident last year. From the report: Crose's motivation is to expose white nationalists who use more or less obscure, mundane, or abstract symbols -- or so-called dog whistles -- in their posts, such as the Black Sun and certain Pepe the frog memes. Crose's goal is not only to expose people who use these symbols online but hopefully also push the social media companies to clamp down on hateful rhetoric online. "The real goal is to educate people," Crose told me in a phone call. "And a secondary goal: I'd really like to get the social media platforms to start thinking how they can enforce some decency on their own platforms, a certain level of decorum." [...]
At a glance, the way NEMESIS works is relatively simple. There's an "inference graph," which is a mathematical representation of trained images, classified as Nazi or white supremacist symbols. This inference graph trains the system with machine learning to identify the symbols in the wild, whether they are in pictures or videos. In a way, NEMESIS is dumb, according to Crose, because there are still humans involved, at least at the beginning. NEMESIS needs a human to curate the pictures of the symbols in the inference graph and make sure they are being used in a white supremacist context. For Crose, that's the key to the whole project -- she absolutely does not want NEMESIS to flag users who post Hindu swastikas, for example -- so NEMESIS needs to understand the context. "It takes thousands and thousands of images to get it to work just right," she said.
At a glance, the way NEMESIS works is relatively simple. There's an "inference graph," which is a mathematical representation of trained images, classified as Nazi or white supremacist symbols. This inference graph trains the system with machine learning to identify the symbols in the wild, whether they are in pictures or videos. In a way, NEMESIS is dumb, according to Crose, because there are still humans involved, at least at the beginning. NEMESIS needs a human to curate the pictures of the symbols in the inference graph and make sure they are being used in a white supremacist context. For Crose, that's the key to the whole project -- she absolutely does not want NEMESIS to flag users who post Hindu swastikas, for example -- so NEMESIS needs to understand the context. "It takes thousands and thousands of images to get it to work just right," she said.
Awesome (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Awesome (Score:4, Funny)
Unfortunately for them it is missing the most important factor: Blockchain.
Re:Awesome (Score:5, Insightful)
There's plenty of hate and violence on the left these days to match those on the far, far right.
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Nice.
"hate and violence" is on the Left but then only on the "far, far right", Way to advocate for political neutrality while being completely non-neutral.
Extremism is what defines political violence. Me telling you that probably won't change anything though.
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It's quite hard to not have an equivalence.
There are a pool of horrible people looking for an excuse for being horrible, and they will find it on both sides with a bit of distortion.
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Didn't you see the Slashdot posts from the past couple of days? Cold weather and all individual weather events are now officially evidence for global warming.
Re:Awesome (Score:4, Insightful)
i'm sure it would go something like this...
"cold weather is intersectionally related to white supremacy and thus the patriarchy because cold weather is typically found in northern climes, where the white people are originally from. Therefore, cold weather = white people = racism = patriarchy"
Re:Awesome (Score:5, Insightful)
Let me know when people begin growing and maturing again rather than lashing out at society for your problems (every rights movement save ending segregation).
Feminism was originally a just movement, true to its stated goals.
("Feminism" today is a sick, twisted perversion of the original. It's so bad they retroactively redefined feminism. Now if you want to talk about the feminism that cares about equality, respects men and women the same, etc. you have to talk about "first wave feminism".)
No, it's a blatant re-branding. (Score:5, Interesting)
No, conservatives have seen fit to re-brand feminism by pointing to its extreme elements. Is a small government type an anarchist? No but an anarchist would advocate for smaller government. Is someone concerned about illegal immigration a racist? No but a racist certainly would be. Likewise a feminist is not a man hater just because they advocate for treating women equally.
It makes me crazy to hear female conservative commentators make statements like "I'm not a feminist but..." and then state they're in favor of equality of the sexes or in other words, lay out a completely main stream feminist agenda. They're literally participating in the negative re-branding of feminism while saying they're all for it.
Re:No, it's a blatant re-branding. (Score:5, Informative)
I used to listen to Radio 4 in the UK (that's a pretty "middle of the road" station).. At the hours I was in the car listening to it, Women's hour was often on; it was interesting to hear what the subjects were that women were focusing on, and sometimes came up with things that were worth pondering a lot from the male perspective..
I gave it up when day in, day out, they were getting further and further into 3rd wave/intersectional feminism.. Now this is a "mainstream" station, not an extreme or "out there" kind of place. I gave it up and just listen to the music stations now.
I'm finding 3rd wave being more and more "normal feminism".. If you're first or second wave feminist, it's not called "feminist" by a huge section these days, just "normal".. After the war of sex in feminism that led to 3rd wave, there's no agreement on what it means to be feminist, so you say what it means, and anyone who disagrees is an oppressor. I've had loads of 'mainstream' women tell me it's perfectly valid to put me down and be as abusive as they like, as I have "male privilege", and it's their enshrined right to do this.
Re: No, it's a blatant re-branding. (Score:3)
No that's what it's supposed to do. What actually happens is it divides people along racial and gender lines. I've seen comments sneering at white homeless men because how could they fail with all that privilege or white men are doing all right because some are billionaires. In the meantime amazingly privileged white males make up the majority of suicides in the US and UK. What's wrong with treating people like individuals instead of as a collection of characteristics?
Re:No, it's a blatant re-branding. (Score:5, Insightful)
Many people claiming to want equality actually don't want equality at all, they want inequality which favors them.
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Let me know when people begin growing and maturing again rather than lashing out at society for your problems (every rights movement save ending segregation).
Feminism was originally a just movement, true to its stated goals.
("Feminism" today is a sick, twisted perversion of the original. It's so bad they retroactively redefined feminism. Now if you want to talk about the feminism that cares about equality, respects men and women the same, etc. you have to talk about "first wave feminism".)
When you get down to it, that's the normal trajectory of pretty much any mass movement which doesn't have extremely well-defined goals which are kept to. Some of this can be easily inherent in the movement from its start.
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Of all the recent politically-motivated protests, the left has been far more prone to violence. Then there's also the property destruction, looting, etc.
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Even attempting to equate hate on the left with the hate and violence on the right is detached from reality. Why trolls like you get any upvotes ... It's vile.
Sure. It's all those campus Republicans that shout down speakers they disagree with, and violently attacked the Secretary of Education.
Dude, what color is the sky on your planet?
Re:Awesome (Score:5, Informative)
He's a trans SJW who often writes about the trials of being a female in IT. To this person ANYONE who doesn't celebrate their flavor of crazy is "far-right" and full of "hate".
Re:Awesome (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Awesome (Score:5, Insightful)
It takes a special kind of guy to cut his penis off and then complain about being treated differently "as a female in IT".
And then to go on a crusade against "far-right" symbols? There is no greater "far-left" symbol than cutting off your own junk and then demanding everyone else pretend you're a woman.
This is what feminism is now? Men are even better at being female hackers? Well done feminism.
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Re: Awesome (Score:4, Insightful)
Because real women don't need feminism.
Re:Awesome (Score:4, Interesting)
When gay people said they didn't want to get attacked for being gay I supported them.
When gay people wanted to get married I supported that.
But now gay people want to force bakers to bake them cakes and trans people want to punish people for 'misgendering' or 'deadnaming' them you know what? They can fuck right off. It's not longer about gaining rights for themselves, it's about taking rights away from other people.
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Would you also think it's wrong for a baker to be forced to make a cake for an interracial wedding if he didn't wish to? Just for the record, lady. You don't mind me calling you a lady, do you? It's my right.
Re:Awesome (Score:5, Funny)
Reg: What!?
Stan: It's my right as a man.
Judith: Why do you want to be Loretta, Stan?
Stan: I want to have babies.
Reg: You want to have babies?!?!?!
Stan: It's every man's right to have babies if he wants them.
Reg: But you can't have babies.
Stan: Don't you oppress me.
Reg: I'm not oppressing you, Stan -- you haven't got a womb. Where's the fetus going to gestate? You going to keep it in a box?
(Stan starts crying.)
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The people who are in denial are the ones who think that arbitrary biological factors determine gender.
Re:Awesome (Score:5, Insightful)
Jim Crow and segregation is a special case. But not that much of one. E.g. look at the Woolworths case
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
On February 1, 1960, Joseph McNeil, Franklin McCain, Ezell Blair, Jr. (later known as Jibreel Khazan), and David Richmond, four young African-American students from the North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University (NC A&T), entered the downtown Greensboro Woolworth's and sat at the "whites only" lunch counter. Although a Woolworth's waitress told them "we don't serve Negroes here," the four students refused to leave their seats for the rest of the day. During the following days and months the four students were joined by other students in their sit-in demonstration, Sit-in protests spread to over one hundred cities across the United States during the next year, and are considered the onset of the Civil Rights Movement.
On Monday, July 25, 1960, after nearly $200,000 in losses due to the demonstrations, store manager Harris quietly integrated the lunch counter when he asked 3 black employees of the store to change out of work clothes into street clothes and order a meal at the counter. These were the first black customers to be served at the store's lunch counter. The event received little publicity
I.e. given a free market, companies that discriminate will go out of business and companies that don't discriminate will prosper. You don't need the government to intervene. In fact the government did intervene and on the wrong side - there were laws enforcing segregation. Get rid of those and let the market sort things out.
And gay people wanting wedding cakes is not the same thing as Jim Crow and segregation in the 60's. It's not like any of the wedding cake cases meant that the complainers couldn't get a wedding cake somewhere else. For example
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Craig and Mullins visited Masterpiece Cakeshop in Denver to order a custom wedding cake for their return celebration. Masterpiece's owner Jack Phillips, who is Christian, declined, informing the couple that he did not create wedding cakes for same-sex marriages due to his religious beliefs although the couple could purchase other baked goods in the store. Craig and Mullins left the store without discussing details of the cake design. The following day, Craig's mother called Phillips, who told her that he does not make wedding cakes for same-sex weddings. While another bakery provided a cake to the couple, Craig and Mullins filed a complaint to the Colorado Civil Rights Commission under the state's public accommodations law, the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act, which prohibits businesses open to the public from discriminating against their customers on the basis of race, religion, gender, or sexual orientation. Colorado is one of twenty-one U.S. states that have anti-discrimination laws against sexual orientation. Craig and Mullins' complaint resulted in a lawsuit, Craig v. Masterpiece Cakeshop. The case was decided in favor of the plaintiffs; the cake shop was ordered not only to provide cakes to same-sex marriages, but to "change its company policies, provide 'comprehensive staff training' regarding public accommodations discrimination, and provide quarterly reports for the next two years regarding steps it has taken to come into compliance and whether it has turned away any prospective customers."
Craig and Mullins actually got their cake from another bakery - and Masterpiece Cakeshop didn't refuse to sell them a cake, it refused to make them a custom one. I.e. this is not the same as Jim Crow. This is about Craig and Mullins wanting to bully someone they disagreed with politically and threaten them with bankruptcy unless they made a "I support gay wedding" cake and agreed to go on 'comprehensive staff training', aka have some SJW type tell them all they were scum.
Fuck 'em.
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Lucky for them that there was another bakery near by. Unfortunately the market doesn't always provide alternatives, so this kind of discrimination can do unavoidable harm to people.
Imagine if you arrived at the hospital with your wife about to give birth, and they said "sorry we don't deliver white babies".
Re:Awesome (Score:5, Insightful)
My parents were married as an interracial couple in the 1940s, they had to rent their apartment through a straw buyer. Now it's all well and good to say, "you have the civil right to marry anyone you want," but it's not very meaningful if that means giving up on a roof over your head.
Now wedding cakes are a cause celebre specifically because it's a trivial issue. But confronting this level of triviality is an intrinsic consequence of line-drawing. Either you draw no lines, in which case you as a person whose personal life choices may be unpopular are in possession of legal rights are effectively meaningless. Or you draw the line somewhere, in which case somebody is giving up something.
I'd argue that the fact that what is given up either way on this question is trivial, it's somewhere in the general vicinity of "right" when it comes to line drawing.
Re:Awesome (Score:4, Insightful)
Wedding cakes aren't a trivial issue. And of the opinions I've read on this, this seems to sum it up best
https://www.desmoinesregister.... [desmoinesregister.com]
It was nice to read the essay by the gay couple who got married in Iowa without any discrimination issues to deal with [Glad to live in Iowa, free from discrimination, Dec. 29]. It is fair and reasonable for the government to prohibit discrimination against gay couples and others in the selling of standard goods and services that are offered to the public like most products retail stores, rooms at hotels and meals at restaurants. But when the product or service needs to be customized or personalized by the seller, then discrimination by the seller should be allowed and the buyer should not be able to enlist the force of government to require the seller to provide the product or service.
So, for example, cake bakers should be required to sell what is what is on their shelves and available for sale without discrimination, but they should not be required to create custom cakes against their will. At the same time, buyers are free to choose other sellers and to organize peaceful protests and boycotts against such discriminating sellers. This way everyone's liberty is preserved and no force needs to be used by government or anyone else.
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When you buy a wedding cake you pick the design out of a book. The only reason they're made to order is that they're larger than the cakes people usually need, not because the baker has to come up with a unique design that reflects his opinions about your specific choice of spouse.
Custom and made to order are not the same thing. I am not a baker--my partner, though, has worked as one--but I've been inside quite a few bakeries that do custom cakes of various types.
However, I've also actually been in several different cake stores when people were placing an order for a custom wedding cake, and... A custom wedding cake is a custom wedding cake, not merely a made to order deal. This was not just 'pick a design out of a book' deal; you sit down with somebody and work out all the detail
Or another way of seeing it (Score:3, Informative)
"But now gay people want to force bakers to bake them cakes "
How about another way of seeing it? How about gay people don't want to be denied basic commercial services provided to everyone else? If a baker can tell a gay couple they won't make them a cake they can tell a black couple the same.
Re: Awesome (Score:5, Insightful)
Also if you call a biker a woman and get beaten up the biker is breaking the law. Misgendering laws like this mean you'd be breaking the law
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/... [csmonitor.com]
New York City issued guidelines in December 2015 for employers and landlords on the correct pronoun usage for transgender men and transgender women. Violating the guidelines intentionally or repeatedly could result in a fine as large as $250,000, especially if doing so appears to be malicious. The guidelines say that to avoid the fine, transgender people must be asked what their preferred pronoun is.
The guidelines require anyone who provides jobs or housing to use the transgender person's preferred pronoun, such as "ze," "hir," "they," them," "he," "she," "him," or "her." "Ze" is the third person singular, used in place of either "he" or "she," while "hir" is third person possessive, used to replace "his" or "her." Pronouns like "ze" or "hir" represent a break from traditional male- or female-only roles.
"Gender expression may not be distinctively male or female and may not conform to traditional gender-based stereotypes to specific gender identities," said a city official.
While some say that the conversation over transgender pronouns represents progress toward equality, others note how easy it might be - even for the parents of transgender people - to also sometimes forget or mix up the pronouns.
The guidelines are the country's first of their kind, coming from the New York City Commission on Human Rights. About 75,000 transgender people live in New York City.
"I think it comes down to respect. People identify how they want to identify and it's not up to anyone else to determine that," a pedestrian told Fox 5. "There are a lot of social norms that are changing and people need to understand that this is someone's life, it's not just a flippant choice."
Others however think the fine is too high. "I understand the intent," another pedestrian told Fox, "but $250,000 is excessive." Writer Paul Joseph Watson at InfoWar said the notion of businesses asking every customer what pronoun they want to use is "absurd," given that even Facebook delineates 71 gender options.
"So people can basically force us - on pain of massive legal liability - to say what they want us to say, whether or not we want to endorse the political message associated with that term, and whether or not we think it's a lie," writes Eugene Volokh, law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.
It's also pretty obvious that laws like this violate the First Amendment as Volokh points out. Be able to threaten people with $250,000 fines unless they call you "ze" is fucking mental.
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H(Sh)e
You can really save some time and hand wringing by just using the correct pronoun - it
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Him and Bradley "Chelsea" Manning are sure making the case that it's a good thing to hire transsexuals to work in intelligence.
Re: Awesome (Score:4, Insightful)
People who get triggered when their birth sex is mentioned, are on a personal crusade to silence 'the far right' and have access to all your data. What could possibly go wrong...
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People who get triggered when their birth sex is mentioned,
I've never met any, then again I'm not on a crusade to be as much as an arsehole as I can to my transgender friends.
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People who get triggered when their birth sex is mentioned,
I've never met any, then again I'm not on a crusade to be as much as an arsehole as I can to my transgender friends.
It helps when they're are not on a crusade to be as much of an arsehole as they can to everybody else. If you look and dress like a big burly 1%er biker dude or like a bubble-headed cheerleader? You might wanna wait until you've changed out your closet and been on hormones a while before expecting people will automatically know you're respectively really Jennifer or Bruce.
Labeling people discussing this sort of issue as transphobic only shuts down discussions--some of which are going to be important discu
Re:Awesome (Score:4, Funny)
He's a trans SJW who often writes about the trials of being a female in IT. To this person ANYONE who doesn't celebrate their flavor of crazy is "far-right" and full of "hate".
So it complains about working in IT - did I read that correctly?
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When did you stop beating your wife?
Oh, you're getting your beating tonight, honey.
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Nothing can possibly go wrong with this. It has everything: NSA, hacking, white supremacists, reddit, AI. Definitely worth funding.
I hope this was sarcasm!
signal to each other in plain sight (Score:2, Informative)
Dude, there isn't some sort of secret hate group code. Everyone knows those douches when they talk about "dem liberuls" or "dose imagrunts". They are not even trying to hide, they wear their status proudly.
Re:signal to each other in plain sight (Score:4, Insightful)
1. American immigration laws should be enforced.
2. There is no evidence that police in America apply different standards to white citizens and non-white citizens.
3. Islamic fundamentalism motivates the violent act committed by many extremists and must be combated and defended against using within the framework of foreign diplomacy, foreign aid, military policy, and immigration policy.
4. Government benefits should only be provided to the demonstrably infirm or aged citizens and not be made available to able-bodied persons of working age.
5. Restrictions on the sale, ownership, or possession of firearms punish the law-abiding and do not make any dent in violent crime.
All of those are either factually true or present an opinion within the mainstream of acceptible American thought. How long will it take for someone to label one or all of them extreme and me an extremist beyond the pale of acceptable civil discourse.
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While I do agree these claims by themselves are not racist, I did notice a strong correlation between these claims and people who are racist or support racists. Does it mean that everyone with these opinions is racist? No. Does it make sense to mistake them for one? I dont know, for me it is just the same as commenter "Train0987" who used "trans" as a pejorative.
Ironically enough, i just realized, I admitted the reason to associate these claims with racism is because the person doing the association is a bi
Re:signal to each other in plain sight (Score:4, Insightful)
First of all I didn't use "trans" as a pejorative. I did use "crazy" as one though.
Since you call me a bigot/racist, exactly which race do you imagine me to be? That I've put you on the spot with that question should indicate that you're already wrong and that you've been caught. The only dog-whistles here are those in your own head that you've been conditioned by others to hear. In other words, you are the bigot - not me.
Re:signal to each other in plain sight (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually there is abundant data confirming that minorities get different treatment by police than whites. For example epidemiological research says whites are slightly more likely to use weed than blacks, but law enforcement statistics show that blacks are roughly 3x more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession.
It is also true that police actually shoot roughly twice as many white people per year as blacks, but there are five times as many whites as blacks. This doesn't mean that every time a cop shoots a black man that race is a factor, but statistically it is bound to be a factor in a large number of shootings, although not in the simplistic way favored by many left-wing blogs on the topic -- although that probably happens at least some of the time. Assuming that the police are no better or no worse than society at large they must have enough racist sociopaths to produce at least a few shootings like that per year.
Re:signal to each other in plain sight (Score:4, Informative)
As a professional statistician, let me explain one big problem in your attempt to analyze racial shooting statistics:
Populations.
You are attempting to count the number of people shot of a given race against the ENTIRE US population for that race. However, that's not the group your sample is being chosen from. Your group is being chosen from amongst those that are interacting with police - if you never see a cop, you are not at risk of being shot.
The correct population to use is the number of white/black/etc people that interact with police (stopped, ticketed, arrested, anything) and compare that with the sample proportion that is shot/otherwise killed. Anything else is wrong, either due to ignorance or to perpetuate a deliberate falsehood.
Point by Point. (Score:3)
"1. American immigration laws should be enforced."
Sure but some common sense compassion is just what's right here.
"2. There is no evidence that police in America apply different standards to white citizens and non-white citizens."
How about the first link I found on the subject that even sites its research. https://www.google.com/url?sa=... [google.com]
So basically, white folks do far less time than black for selling drugs on average. Sure, it's not police exclusive but it is most certainly tied to the same core problem.
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Sure, Americans could just be culturally hyper violent compared to the rest of the the first world. From my own personal experiences traveling in the US and abroad i doubt that though. Furthermore if you look at overall crime statistics you'll see that US citizens isnt really more prone to criminal behavior.
If you read any European news it becomes quickly apparent that they have far more knife violence then us. But guns are so much easier to kill some one with so why arent these people using guns? It's beca
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It's even better than that. Not only are they not drying to hide, they pop up whereever some offended snowflake deems them appropriate. Can't win an argument on merits? Call the other guy a Nazi and you're golden! I'll demonstrate:
1. American immigration laws should be enforced.
2. There is no evidence that police in America apply different standards to white citizens and non-white citizens.
3. Islamic fundamentalism motivates the violent act committed by many extremists and must be combated and defended against using within the framework of foreign diplomacy, foreign aid, military policy, and immigration policy.
4. Government benefits should only be provided to the demonstrably infirm or aged citizens and not be made available to able-bodied persons of working age.
5. Restrictions on the sale, ownership, or possession of firearms punish the law-abiding and do not make any dent in violent crime.
All of those are either factually true or present an opinion within the mainstream of acceptible American thought. How long will it take for someone to label one or all of them extreme and me an extremist beyond the pale of acceptable civil discourse.
Ignoring the fact that 2 and 5 are demonstrably wrong. You are the one trying to change the definition of Nazi, not anyone else.
The problem you have is that Nazism is a far right wing ideology based on extremist nationalism and institutionalised racism (the difference between a fascist and a Nazi is the fact Nazism has racism baked into it's very foundation). You have trouble reconciling the fact that right wing philosophies can be bad, so you need to change its definition to suit you.
Further more, you're t
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Wrong facts alone cannot constitute an opinion.
Welcome to the modern world.
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You can usually tell when a talking point is propaganda by the fact that it is asserted to be incontrovertible fact and that it is already commonly known, thus there is no point talking about it. Both of those tactics are repeatedly employed by both the gun grabbers and and ghetto strongmen politicians to score points in the sound-bite competit
Re:signal to each other in plain sight (Score:4, Informative)
Re:signal to each other in plain sight (Score:4, Insightful)
1. Vox and Mother Jones (which one of your links cites) are partisan publications, not neutral reporters of fact.
That aside,
2. Disproportionate police use of force with and arrests of members of different population groups do not imply different enforcement standards unless there is parity in overall rates of crime among those groups. Black Americans commit more crimes per capita and live in higher-crime neighborhoods on average. Thus more encounters with police. And often for good reason. Your purported source of neutral facts tacitly assumes things like that don't matter and you tacitly assume that disparate outcomes implies disparate treatment. It doesn't. White people who charge at cops also tend to catch a bullet for their troubles.
3. Sloppy wording and lose definitions make for the best scatter plots, don't they? "Gun-related" deaths includes suicides. Whether you chose to count it in the same statistic as homicide by firearm is nothing other than that: a choice. Count it to pad the numbers one way. Exclude it to pad the numbers the other way. Half of "gun-related" deaths are suicides in the US and while I don't have numbers for the other countries on the plot, let's say the slope of that line drops by half.
The per-state chart is another cart-before-the-horse abuse of statistics. My statement was about gun restrictions. The chart is about gun ownership. The two are not the same, and while the correlation is weak to start with, the argument for causation is not there. Minnesota, Vermont, Maine, Iowa, Utah and Oregon have large populations and high gun ownership but lower gun deaths per capita than Colorado, Nevada, Maryland, and Florida which also have high populations but lower gun ownership. Then there's Chicago and Maryland and Camden NJ in particular which has strict local and state laws and insane homicide rates.
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2, Your defense only works if you find nothing wrong with racial profiling:
https://slashdot.org/comments.... [slashdot.org]
5. Stay on topic. We're talking about whether gun control reduces violent crime. Look at this chart [vox-cdn.com] and tell me how gun control doesn't work. If you'd like to imagine that the presence of more guns justifies more gun crime, remember that Switzerland has nearly as many guns as the US, and they're far more evenly distributed among the population there.
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LOL is that what you think? Here's a quick overview of Thailand's gun laws:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Also Switzerland isn't much wealthier than the US:
http://www.nationmaster.com/co... [nationmaster.com]
There's no relationship between monocultural and monoracial places and lower gun crime. Look at Somalia or any other war-torn African hellhole. Or on the other end of the spectrum, look at France, England, or eastern Canada. Those places are also not far from the US in wealth and have much lower gun crime. Or look at Au
Re:signal to each other in plain sight (Score:4, Informative)
A rather fuller examination of the data, and a proper conclusion can be found here [cesariolab.com].
A quick hint, Vox are basically using mis-framing of the population statistics to give a completely wrong picture.
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Should be fun (Score:5, Funny)
I give it a day before someone convinces the rainbow flag has been co-opted and is now a symbol of hate.
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You can get any result you want out of a machine learning approach to classification. Training the model to give the answers you want isn't cheating, it's how the algorithms are supposed to work.
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You can get any result you want out of a machine learning approach to classification. Training the model to give the answers you want isn't cheating, it's how the algorithms are supposed to work.
... and proof that such algorithms area terrible method for producing unbiased information.
Of course, that's hardly the intent.
And the far left (Score:4, Insightful)
And the far left gets a pass!
Re:And the far left (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Maybe he'll open source it, and it can be tuned to any hate speech. Left, right, misogynist, misandrist, racist, even people who hate goats.
Or maybe it won't work worth a shit, like all the rest of the algorithms that are supposed to flag stuff on social media.
Re: (Score:2)
The Left can't out-stupid the Right (Score:4, Interesting)
And yeah, the hypocrisy does really hurt. It bolsters the right wing media and disillusions the pro-rational, pro-truth left. (That's not even the same as "moderate". I don't believe in moderation for moderation's sake, just sanity for sanity's sake and truth for truth's sake.)
Show of hands: are there any leftists in the audience who don't know, or still refuse to admit, that Black Lives Matter was/is a centrally planned movement run by a organization that openly quotes and openly idolizes the fugitive "domestic terrorist" and cop killer, Assata Shakur? Because it was, and they do. For a very long time, they had an attributed quote from her at the top of their website and you could find dozens of videos of BLM protesters chanting that same quote in unison at their rallies and protests. And the other major populist leftist movement of the past few years, that Women's March thing? Also centrally organized, and they openly celebrated Assata Shakur's birthday.
The people on the left don't know this or want to hear any of this; they don't want think about it. But guess what? The right wing knows about it and they are using it (plus the War on Humor, plus a few of the actual lies printed by the "MSM", plus a thousand other groanworthy missteps by leftists who foolishly think they can beat the far right at its own game) to win over the hearts and minds of a new generation.
I have zero fear of the "far left" directly doing massive damage to America; our left-wing politicians are way too moderate-ized (and also too unpopular) for that to ever happen. But these jokers are ruining it for everyone else, all the millions of us who despite what the Republicans stand for right now. They're ruining it for everyone, because they actually think that they can out-stupid and out-demagogue the right wing in America. And you can't; you just CAN'T god damn it.
A left wing pro-PC / witch hunt mentality led directly to Trump and six months before that, it led directly to Brexit. How many clusterfucks is it going to take for people to wake up and realize that this has been a FAILED strategy and move on?
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How many clusterfucks is it going to take for people to wake up and realize that this has been a FAILED strategy and move on?
Based on my experiences? All of them.
It will take all the clusterfucks.
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Actually, some people can't. They're equally common on both ends of the political spectrum.
Where I come from, we call them "stupid."
What about the left? (Score:4, Insightful)
What about far-left wing symbols of hate, violence, and oppression?
Antifa flags, socialist fist, hammer & sickle
After all, the Communists have killed far more innocents than the Nazis did.
Re:What about the left? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
aren't real communists
Exactly this. The "no true Scotsman" argument. Except, we have a new modern version called Venezuela which raised the praises of Bernie Sanders when all was "good". "“These days, the American dream is more apt to be realized in South America, in places such as Venezuela ”"
Now, that doesn't represent socialism at all, because it has failed, and people are literally starving to death because of the policies of governance that caused people to stop producing because success is punished.
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Oh it was socialism alright. It was also complete oil export dependency and suicidal agricultural policy. Socialism isn't what ruined them.
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Never is. It is always something else.
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Antifa has literally never killed anyone and isn't communist.
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What about far-left wing symbols of hate, violence, and oppression?
What about it?
If you care go do something. Sto whining that someone else is trying to do something about a different bad thing.
Needs a good Xenophobe filter (Score:5, Insightful)
It definitely needs to find a way to filter out ANYTHING that might be Xenophobic because that's always racist.
Unless it's about Russia.
Or unless it's about Boycott, Divest & Sanction which is the politically correct way to literally act like 1933-era Hitler but OK on the UC Berkeley campus so not a hate group.
Or unless it's misgynistic AND xenophobic remarks about Melania Trump because reasons.
Or unless it's antisemitism directed at Ivanka Trump because similar reasons.
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Or unless it's about Boycott, Divest & Sanction which is the politically correct way to literally act like 1933-era Hitler but OK on the UC Berkeley campus so not a hate group.
Literally Hitler started building concentration camps in 1933. If you thing a bunch of noisy students is equivalent to mass genocide then something is very wrong with you.
Trans SJW wackjob (Score:5, Interesting)
https://www.self.com/story/tra... [self.com]
Can't find anything claiming he worked for the NSA, simply Army intelligence (which is anything but intelligent).
Re: (Score:2)
Should be looking for Che Guevara (Score:5, Insightful)
Communism is both much deadlier [reason.com] and more [townhall.com] socially-accepted [dailycaller.com] than any other kind of hateful school of thought today.
Anything "fighting evil" that ignores images of Che Guevara and like symbols is simply partisan b.s.
Outsource it to Microsoft (Score:3)
Just see who Tay [theverge.com] follows on Twitter.
I think (Score:2)
The media throws around the term " AI " a bit too much. They make it sound like we're bringing AI systems online on a daily basis to solve all of our problems.
I doubt we're anywhere close to a true, sentient AI and won't be in our lifetime.
Then again, this is the same media who calls everything an " assault rifle " regardless of what the weapon truly is.
I guess " building an AI " sounds sexier than " Bob is writing code " :D
Please Stop (Score:2)
>decorum
just fuck off already
"I disapprove of what you say, but..." (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Updated version:-
"I disapprove of what you say, but I defend your right to agree with me."
Re: (Score:3)
The famous statement "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" (incorrectly attributed to Voltaire) has always been the best summary of the principle and right of free speech.
Note how he said "I will dedend the to the death your right to say it".
Not "I will defend to the death your right to have a company provide a platform to you fror free".
Nor "I will decfend to the death your right to never have any criticism"
Sounds like an attempt to build a straw-man group. (Score:2)
"Crose's motivation is to expose white nationalists who use more or less obscure, mundane, or abstract symbols -- or so-called dog whistles -- in their posts, such as the Black Sun and certain Pepe the frog memes. "
The Black Sun - fine you can call that one - I had to look that one up. Just about anything Pepe the frog is a post meant to troll people like this ex-NSA hacker.
In order to be a proper victim there has to be a group that's in power and victimizing you, and if one doesn't truly exist, or isn't a
Bullshit (Score:2)
The real goal is to educate people
Whenever a liberal talks about "educating" someone, they're really talking about indoctrinating them.
Automated SJW brownshirt (Score:2)
So awesome. Grooming deplorables off the public network will make everything so nice. Should be a big help when hiring as well. Maybe voter registration some day. Yay.
What about extreme left-wing hate and threats? (Score:2)
Twitter is absolutely flooded with death threats from Muslims.
Load of "kill all cops" and "kill and white people" tweets.
Hateful messages against whites is commonplace.
That left-wing stuff all seems to be just fine with twitter.
Even the most moderate conservatives get censored, suspended, or have the accounts pulled all the time.
Great precedent (Score:2)
Re:Only white supremacists, right? (Score:5, Insightful)
I know..go figure, right?
I have actually been seeing of late, YouTube rants of people actually arguing that if you are of any non-white color they you by definition can NOT be a racist.
Seriously?
Geez....common sense has gone 101% out the door in the US.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
I have actually been seeing of late, YouTube rants of people actually arguing that if you are of any non-white color they you by definition can NOT be a racist.
Well, dredging strawmen from the bottom of the YouTube comment barrel is hardly epistemologically impressive.
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Ten years? I got that back in a feminist class in college in 1992 that I was forced to take since I needed the credits and it was the only thing that fit my schedule. Only men could be sexist. So myself and the one other guy in the class sat around getting glared at for a semester, until we received a shining C for our effort.
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So in your mind, the only area of inquiry epistemology applies to is epistemology.
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I'll tell you what I told my kids when it comes to information literacy: in a world with seven billion people, you can find examples of any kind of you can imagine. Christian terrorists? Oh, please, that's easy; there are even Jewish Neonazis out there. It doesn't make everyone who calls himself a Christian a terrorist.
What this means is that if you set out to confirm your preconceptions about some group people, you can find examples that do that. If you set out to disprove other peoples' preconceptions
Re:Odd (Score:5, Interesting)
Because it's Salami Tactics by the Far Left.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
The term Salami tactics (Hungarian: szalámitaktika) was coined in the late 1940s by the orthodox communist leader Mátyás Rákosi to describe the actions of the Hungarian Communist Party. Rákosi claimed he destroyed the non-Communist parties by "cutting them off like slices of salami." By portraying his opponents as fascists (or at the very least fascist sympathizers), he was able to get the opposition to slice off its right wing, then its centrists, then the more courageous left wingers, until only those fellow travelers willing to collaborate with the Communists remained in power.
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The problem is when the definition of "hate" keeps expanding to encompass anything a particular group does not agree with
Deplorable hatemonger nonsense. See definition here:
https://slashdot.org/comments.... [slashdot.org]