Tech companies will never learn. How many times must we go through "real names" idiocies before these supposed geniuses stop being imbeciles
USA despite it's supposed freedom of speech has a long-standing tradition of censoring words
Lyft’s algorithm is trying to block people with names like ‘Dick’ and ‘Cummings’
161–170 of 307 posts
Re: Lyft’s algorithm is trying to block people with names like ‘Dick’ and ‘Cummings’
#162"Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names":
https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-...
Discussed most recently just 63 days ago:
Re: Lyft’s algorithm is trying to block people with names like ‘Dick’ and ‘Cummings’
#163It's not an algorithm, it's some overjealous dev/PM with not many important tasks on hand except for a little incident which he made big deal out of it by downloading all dirty words and do string contains.
Re: Lyft’s algorithm is trying to block people with names like ‘Dick’ and ‘Cummings’
#164Censorship never leads to good things
Re: Lyft’s algorithm is trying to block people with names like ‘Dick’ and ‘Cummings’
#165This reminds me of a story arc on "Hill St. Blues" where LaRue comes across a great stand-up comic and invests in his management... only to find that his full name is "Vic Hitler"... and further finds that Vic had made his father a deathbed promise that he wouldn't deny his surname or family "on account of that one unrelated lunatic".
Re: Lyft’s algorithm is trying to block people with names like ‘Dick’ and ‘Cummings’
#166It seems like tech companies have been doing DIY profanity filters. Apple has a profanity filter for engraving text onto a device in the online store ( https://twitter.com/minimaxir/status/1213188371452841984 ); intended to be your name, so terms like "Dick" have to not be filtered. I learnt that Apple has a validation endpoint. Since the engraving service was recently updated, I took a profanity wordlist and checked…
Funnily enough, 'The Outer Worlds', an offline single-player RPG game, censors player names.
https://wireframe.raspberrypi.org/articles/banned-character-...
Re: Lyft’s algorithm is trying to block people with names like ‘Dick’ and ‘Cummings’
#167Besides the humor of how Lyft's filter flagged traditionally Caucasian names like "Cummings" – in addition to the usual issues with non-Western names, e.g. Pimpong and Poon – I'm fascinated/confused how this made it into production? The user database already exists and was currently being used by the live application. Before deploying this new filter onto the production database, wouldn't you do a dry run to get not…
Or just let people use any name they want.
Re: Lyft’s algorithm is trying to block people with names like ‘Dick’ and ‘Cummings’
#168Besides the humor of how Lyft's filter flagged traditionally Caucasian names like "Cummings" – in addition to the usual issues with non-Western names, e.g. Pimpong and Poon – I'm fascinated/confused how this made it into production? The user database already exists and was currently being used by the live application. Before deploying this new filter onto the production database, wouldn't you do a dry run to get not…
Why even try to catch “naughty” names. Why do I even need to give Lyft a name in the first place? It just seems like such a made-up problem.
Re: Lyft’s algorithm is trying to block people with names like ‘Dick’ and ‘Cummings’
#169Besides the humor of how Lyft's filter flagged traditionally Caucasian names like "Cummings" – in addition to the usual issues with non-Western names, e.g. Pimpong and Poon – I'm fascinated/confused how this made it into production? The user database already exists and was currently being used by the live application. Before deploying this new filter onto the production database, wouldn't you do a dry run to get not…
Oh gosh, I grew up on The New Bob Cummings Show.
He had his own flying car, in 1961!
Re: Lyft’s algorithm is trying to block people with names like ‘Dick’ and ‘Cummings’
#170It seems like tech companies have been doing DIY profanity filters. Apple has a profanity filter for engraving text onto a device in the online store ( https://twitter.com/minimaxir/status/1213188371452841984 ); intended to be your name, so terms like "Dick" have to not be filtered. I learnt that Apple has a validation endpoint. Since the engraving service was recently updated, I took a profanity wordlist and checked…
A bit of a tangent but you reminded me-- and maybe, I'm totally full of shit or like my memory is wrong, but the iPhone predicting profanity was my favorite feature. For YEARS it would never write "duck" instead of "fuck," and generally was great, but then (and this is the like maybe I'm totally wrong part) after Jobs passed away that stopped completely... and now I get this bullshit I have to fucking correct all the…
Jobs had quite the puritanical streak when it came to his products.