@jik@federate.social avatar

jik

@jik@federate.social

he/his
Digital Services Expert at #USDS (https://usds.gov/), detailed to #VA.
I work primarily in #infosec, #IT, and #SaaS infrastructure. Prior to USDS, I was a #tech #startup #CISO.
Dad, old-school hacker, Righteous Indignation Man. Opinions are my own. You can follow my blog from the Fediverse via https://blog.kamens.us/author/jik/.
#MaskUp #COVID #CovidIsNotOver #USPol #MAPol #BosPoli #Boston #MA #politics #resist #linux #FOSS #OpenSource #ConsumerActivism #privacy #programmer #hacker #fedi22

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jik, to random
@jik@federate.social avatar

I am so sad and angry about being increasingly shut out of most communal Jewish life, starting in 2016 thanks to Trump, seguing into the pandemic, and more recently escalating thanks to the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
🧵 1/10

jik,
@jik@federate.social avatar

Just to be clear where I'm coming from... My father is a rabbi. I attended Jewish day school for seven years. All of my kids attended day school for at least 9 and in some cases 13 years. I was observant until the age of 31, when I realized most ritual had long lost all meaning for me and gave up on much of it. I still believe strongly in Jewish ethics and value Jewish culture and community. Unfortunately I don't feel like I can be part of it anymore, at least not in our current moment.
2/10

jik,
@jik@federate.social avatar

In 2016, I watched in horror as it became clear to anyone truly paying attention that Trump and his MAGA movement were a danger to American democracy and to the safety of marginalized people (including Jews!). I hoped Jewish institutions would take a principled stand against Trumpism (and begged several that I had ties with to do so), but they abdicated their responsibility to do that for fear of alienating Republican donors most of these institutions now depend upon. I was crushed.
3/10

jik, to Palestine
@jik@federate.social avatar

#3 Daughter had an anxiety attack at the encampment last night and got pulled out of the circle by the medics, so she wasn't arrested when the cops moved in a few minutes later.
She then led the charge to block the police wagon from driving away. They manhandled her but didn't arrest her. 🤷
She lost a bunch of stuff in the clear-out, though.

jik,
@jik@federate.social avatar

@mozz thoughts and prayers

jik, to Cybersecurity
@jik@federate.social avatar

I just got an email from with the subject "Introducing Voice ID from USAA". They're rolling out a new feature allowing people to be authenticated via voiceprint analysis when they call.
What could possibly go wrong?
Oh, yeah, this:
https://www.pcmag.com/news/deepfake-software-fools-voice-authentication-with-99-success-rate
Fortunately it's opt-in, and I certainly will not be.

mattblaze, to random
@mattblaze@federate.social avatar

Spent a nice morning not sitting at the defense table listening to opening statements in a criminal trial against me for financial shenanigans involving hush money payments I made to cover up an affair with an adult film star. I have to say that was a good way to not spend the day.

jik,
@jik@federate.social avatar

@mattblaze it's good to have a plan

jik, to ai
@jik@federate.social avatar

How some of my colleagues are reacting to parallels how so many people have reacted to the ongoing pandemic.
"You're right, AI has huge problems and will never do what its boosters claim, but it's inevitable, so if we don't get on board we'll get run over."
No. Just no. If AI is bullshit, then people in tech need to say so and refuse to "get on board."
Just as people need to stop pretending COVID is over.
People are doing vast harm through complacency.
The emperor has no clothes.

jik, to random
@jik@federate.social avatar

There is something a little too on the nose about an Orthodox rabbi using the language of the Romans ("caveat emptor") to explain why he's deferring entirely to the government, not making any effort to approach prevention from the perspective of Jewish law and act as a thought leader for his congregation.
I guess rabbinic authorities have never issued rulings related to healthcare, medicine, community safety, or communal obligations in the past, amirite?

jik, to random
@jik@federate.social avatar

A member of a local congregation's father passed away. He is sitting shiva (accepting visitors) at home. His rabbi sends out this email: "Out of abundance of caution [name] will be holding... Shiva visits at his home outdoors as he has been testing positive for Covid for over a week. While symptom-free, [name] doesn’t want to take even the slightest chance of anyone getting sick."
HOW do people still not know that symptoms and contagion are unrelated?

jik,
@jik@federate.social avatar

And yes, in fact, I did send a polite email to the rabbi setting him straight. Will it do any good? Who knows, but it was necessary anyway. Too long for alt text, will post the text in replies.

jik, to random
@jik@federate.social avatar

19yo daughter went to club with 18yo friend tonight. We're friends with friend's parents. Friend got her hands on booze, drank too much, threw up, passed out. Daughter texted us from ambulance on the way to hospital. I drove over to friend's house to let her parents know what's going on. I'm back home now, they're on the way to the hospital. Hopefully everyone will be ok. Well, except the club that let an 18yo get pass-out drunk; I suspect they're going to be going through some stuff.

jik,
@jik@federate.social avatar

Additional details that have emerged about the Thursday night incident...
Daughter and friend were accompanied by daughter's drinking-age coworkers. They provided drink to daughter; friend took it from daughter.
I have not gotten into this with daughter because she feels bad enough already about putting booze into friend's hands and she's a grownup who needs to figure this stuff out for herself (or with her therapist, not me).
(cont.)

jik,
@jik@federate.social avatar

Far from being the first time friend has gotten drunk, she has apparently been drinking nearly every night with another friend. And experimenting with various drugs as well.
Friend's parents had no idea any of this was going on. Daughter told them when they got to the hospital, which IMO was exactly the right thing to do; friend had borderline alcohol poisoning and almost died, for Pete's sake!
(cont.)

jik,
@jik@federate.social avatar

However, when friend woke up in the hospital and discovered that daughter had called her parents AND told them that she'd been drinking regularly and taking drugs, she totally exploded and told daughter she would never speak to her again.
(cont.)

jik,
@jik@federate.social avatar

I told daughter friend is exhibiting classic addict behaviors, including denial and transforming anger at herself and self-loathing into anger at the people trying to help her. I also told her if friend manages to get through this she she'll eventually understand, but it's going to take a long time and it's not a sure thing. Daughter is gutted; friend had been one of her closest friends. And she's incredibly worried about her. But there's really nothing she can do for now but wait and hope.
/fin

jik, to FreeSpeech
@jik@federate.social avatar

I can't even begin to quantify the amount of stupid it takes to make the claim that it has nothing to do with freedom of speech when a university allows itself to be intimidated into cancelling a valedictorian's speech because of threats of violence.
"'To be clear: this decision has nothing to do with freedom of speech,' said the provost, Guzman."
#smdh #FreeSpeech #bigotry
Ref: https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/04/16/the-university-of-southern-california-cancels-its-muslim-valedictorians-commencement-speech-citing-safety-concerns/

jik, to Israel
@jik@federate.social avatar

I think and aid should be voted on separately because I don't think we should be giving military aid to Israel and I do think we should be giving it to Ukraine.
Unfortunately, thinks they should be voted on separately for exactly the opposite reason.

RebelGeek99, to random
@RebelGeek99@mastodon.social avatar

How the fuck are parents reconciling the frequent childhood illnesses that seem to be ripping through all my friends' households? This is not normal. We were never this sickly when I was growing up-- and I was one of the "sickly" ones (I had a bad dust allergy). I don't even have kids and I see it 😒

Denial can be a powerful agent, so I'm assuming that's how it's being dealt with until it can no longer be dismissed at scale. This is all so messed up.

jik,
@jik@federate.social avatar

@RebelGeek99 It's shifting baseline syndrome, propelled by people's need to be in denial since admitting the truth—that they failed to protect their kids from a grave illness they could have protected them from—is too psychologically painful.
That is, people very much want what's happening now to be "normal" because otherwise they have to confront their own and society's failures, so they allow their brains to be tricked into shifting what is considered normal and forgetting the old baseline.

jik,
@jik@federate.social avatar

@justyourluck @RebelGeek99 Eventually if everybody keeps getting COVID then nearly every person in the country will have a close relative who is permanently disabled by it. There will be a tipping point, I think, where people simply won't be able to sustain the denial.
It might be triggered by a celebrity who is widely liked and respected going public about their Long COVID, like how the US basically shut down in March 2020 after Tom Hanks went on TV and told people he had COVID.

jik,
@jik@federate.social avatar

@justyourluck @RebelGeek99
>The permanently disabled stop talking about it or they will get ignored by their family and friends so they talk as if everything is fine and avoid the topic.
Yup, that muffles the signal, but it doesn't totally kill it. That's why it's going to take years more—until many more people are permanently disabled, with each one of them slightly increasing the signal—before it gets loud enough for people to start taking COVID seriously.

jik, to legal
@jik@federate.social avatar

Valid organizations:

  • pay experienced staff to review a large subset of support encounters regularly, with a focus on the work of agents with known performance issues, correcting mistakes and updating standard training as needed;
  • directly link agents' performance ratings to their error rates as per the above reviews; and
  • have a predefined error rate above which non-improving agents are dismissed.
    If you prioritize speed rather than correctness, that's what you get.
jik,
@jik@federate.social avatar

I did user support for more than four years as an undergraduate. I learned important lessons from that experience, including:

  • Users often don't understand what they're really asking. The most important skill for support people is figuring out the real problem, not just answering the specific questions users ask.
  • The people reviewing support interactions really need that skill, so they can recognize when agents aren't doing it.
  • Most people working in support aren't great at it. sigh
jik,
@jik@federate.social avatar

Most people working in aren't great because it requires many of the same skills as other roles, and support roles pay much less, so people with the skills gravitate toward the other roles.
One fix: have your engineers and product managers spend a significant percentage of their time—literally in their job descriptions—doing support while you keep paying them as engineers/PMs.
This has the huge added advantage of giving them direct exposure to the problems end users deal with.

msquebanh, to random
@msquebanh@mastodon.sdf.org avatar

@jik Sorry, if I was abrasive towards you. I didn't mean to be. I'm just very upset about how many folks still don't understand why many of us POCs feel like we do. Thanks for taking extra time, to try to understand us. I really appreciate that, a lot.

jik,
@jik@federate.social avatar

@msquebanh You weren't abrasive, it's cool. Hang in there.

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