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My friend starts her job today, after learning to program in prison

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Re: My friend starts her job today, after learning to program in prison

#341

Post by samatman »

shadowfox wrote: post #317
NoImmatureAdHom wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's important to note that [1] seems to refer to federal sentencing, and almost all criminal law in the U.S. is state law. [1] is a small subset of what's going on, and it can't be used to generalize.

Not the OP, but it is interesting that the US criminal law is so state dependent. Out of curiosity: do you have reason to believe that the sentencing disparity is better when considering states?

I have reason to believe that the sentencing disparity is like the gender pay gap: easy to prove, if that helps your political goals, and also easy to disprove, if that suits you better.

Statistics is hard, and the entire reason there's leeway in sentencing is to account for situations which are resistant to statistical regularity.

There is, or was, a pretty obvious source of disparity in US law: freebase cocaine was a felony at much smaller quantities than cocaine salt, and the former was more likely to be used and dealt by black Americans.

Would that show up in such an analysis? They were different convictions, after all. So the only answer can be "yes or no", and so on ad infinitum.

Re: My friend starts her job today, after learning to program in prison

#342

Post by moooo99 »

nexuist wrote: post #153
dj_mc_merlin wrote: post #130

In Germany I was asked to provide my criminal record while working at a payment processing startup that had to obtain certain certificates. They were probably looking for crimes of a fiscal nature however, which is understandable. Second chances are second chances but security is mostly about trust. Another job at a startup in Germany that worked in less tightly controlled spaces has never asked me to produce my crim…

What crimes are applicable to software engineers, then? I don't think there are any laws punishing you from writing bad code, nor are there laws addressing data theft or security misconfigurations. GDPR applies against companies and not individual people, as far as I can tell. Would the only valid crimes be related to computer hacking?

> Would the only valid crimes be related to computer hacking?

Not necessarily. When working for a fintech or a bank, financial crimes can be very relevant. Writing bad code is, lucky me, not directly punishable as a crime.

Re: My friend starts her job today, after learning to program in prison

#343

Post by hirundo »

monksy wrote: post #249
jedimastert wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could assume hacking, fraud, corporate espionage, etc. along with info relevant to the software (i.e. if you make banking software I'd assume fiscal crime would be at least somewhat relevant)

Hacking would probably be a plus for a software enginer. They know how to debug systems. Espionage, theft, and violent crimes... That's a different situation (I don't want someone coming after me after I liter their PR with comments)

I know a guy who spent a year in federal prison on bogus wire fraud charges for an article published in a hacker magazine. He was afraid it would cripple his career, but the opposite was true. He's now the chief technologist at a major CDN and his prison time translated into a badass semi-legendary hacker image.

Re: My friend starts her job today, after learning to program in prison

#344

Post by adventured »

noobermin wrote: post #286
koiz wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the USA, background checks are often just part of the process. There's an entire industry built around providing the service.

Americans have been completely conditioned into accepting all sorts of trouble while maintaining the idea of freedom in contradiction to that.

Being free to background check someone you're going to work with, work for, or hire is in fact an entirely correct aspect of being free broadly. The US position on that is correct, not contradictory.

Restriction on action which does not involve using violence against others is restricting freedom in any proper liberal model of the word. That goes for everything from prostitution to drug use, and it absolutely includes being able to research information about other people you're going to work with.

It's hilarious that a place like Norway, which eg thinks publishing open salaries is to be touted, is then magically closed on checking other information about a person. So which is it, open information or not culturally? It's contradictory, arbitrary horseshit is what it is.

The position is philosophically identical to claiming that speech must be heavily restricted to be truly free (ie free of "hate" etc.). It's nothing more than intellectual infantilism, part of the mental immaturing and weakening of the West. It's Orwell-think, inverting everything; more restriction on personal action is freedom, more restriction on speech is free speech.

Re: My friend starts her job today, after learning to program in prison

#345

Post by virgilp »

monksy wrote: post #249
jedimastert wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could assume hacking, fraud, corporate espionage, etc. along with info relevant to the software (i.e. if you make banking software I'd assume fiscal crime would be at least somewhat relevant)

Hacking would probably be a plus for a software enginer. They know how to debug systems. Espionage, theft, and violent crimes... That's a different situation (I don't want someone coming after me after I liter their PR with comments)

Whereas if they're convicted for hacking, they'll only go after your digital assets/devices, so... no worries? After all, hacking convictions are a plus.

Re: My friend starts her job today, after learning to program in prison

#346

Post by mistermann »

GeoAtreides wrote: post #242
minitoar wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think a good definition of “racist tweet” would be?

"[Do bad things] to [racial minority|racial group]!" The definition of "bad things" is left as an exercise to the reader.

I wonder, if one could go even farther in your generalization such that it would apply to ~all human activity, might people be able to semi-realize that "The definition of is left as an exercise to the reader", where "an exercise to the reader" actually consists of the reader's conceptualization of reality (much of which is pure imagination, mistaken for fact), and from there perhaps realize that this is what lies at the heart of most human conflict and failures?

It seems like quite the tall order, but then humanity has a very long list of conquered tall orders, because some people were willing to pursue the "impossible", and we also happen to be blessed with some very powerful tools (some of which often work against us).

Re: My friend starts her job today, after learning to program in prison

#348

Post by kube-system »

monksy wrote: post #249
jedimastert wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could assume hacking, fraud, corporate espionage, etc. along with info relevant to the software (i.e. if you make banking software I'd assume fiscal crime would be at least somewhat relevant)

Hacking would probably be a plus for a software enginer. They know how to debug systems. Espionage, theft, and violent crimes... That's a different situation (I don't want someone coming after me after I liter their PR with comments)

A charge of 'hacking' is like a charge of 'breaking and entering'. They could have cracked a bank vault mission-impossible style, or maybe they threw a brick through the window.

For all you know, they could have 'hacked in' via the password on the post-it on their coworkers monitor.

Re: My friend starts her job today, after learning to program in prison

#349

Post by jlawson »

charlesu wrote: post #319
centimeter wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s funny watching people come up with all these complicated epicycle-ridden theories for why success is heritable, when the true answer is very obvious - most behaviors related to success are highly genetically heritable. This is the incontrovertible conclusion one draws when they critically observe the results of highly controlled and conditioned twin/sibling studies (on incarceration rate, among other things). Of…

> most behaviors related to success are highly genetically heritable And the implications of this are what? See, that's the problem with these claims. They serve no purpose other than to suggest that some people are inherently better or more deserving than others. But we live in a liberal democracy based on equality before the law. It wouldn't matter if some people are more predisposed to crime or smarter or whatever…

The implication is that if one genetic group is getting poorer outcomes than another group, you can't automatically assume it's due to discrimination.

This is an important implication because it completely undercuts many extremely important power structures, which use accusations of discrimination as their legitimizing argument. Which is why the science on this is resisted so hard.

The idea of anyone being inferior to anyone else is completely something you brought into the conversation. Normal people understand that being short does not make one inferior, nor does skin color, nor personality, nor intelligence. It just changes statistical outcomes. Not moral value.

If you think genetic differences between people make some people morally inferior, I would say that's a moral problem with you. Because even on the individual level, if not the group level, genetic differences are obvious and undeniable. Do you really think someone who scores low on an IQ test is morally inferior to you or deserves to suffer? I don't. If not, what's the problem with accepting the science on genetic group difference, especially given that it helps us reduce suffering in the world?

Re: My friend starts her job today, after learning to program in prison

#350

Post by richardwhiuk »

michaelt wrote: post #71
richardwhiuk wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely in the UK. You can ask for full criminal records.

You can ask. But UK convictions become 'spent' after a certain amount of time (Depending on the length of the prison sentence served, with 4+ year sentences never becoming spent) after which they leave the person's basic criminal record, and there's no obligation to tell a prospective employer about them. Only a few jobs (such as teaching) are allowed info on spent convictions.

The original article was a 13 year conviction, so would have shown up.
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