SocialCops’ 10 (base 10) Engineering Commandments — the values that drive everything for the #Engineering Team #InsideSocialCops 🙌

(Thread👇) Tell us if you can relate to any of these? Do you have your own values that guide your decisions? Share them with us! ⛳

0. Coder != engineer

Coders focus just on writing code to make something work. Engineers take a much wider view, focusing on both the problem and every aspect of the solution. 🤓
1. “Import lib”

It's not wise to waste time building tools or libraries if there’s already something that does the same job! Wherever possible, extend existing libraries and contribute back to the community. 💁‍♀️
2. With great power comes greater responsibility

Every choice we make on our platform and every feature we build stands up to a responsibility — helping people make more data-driven decisions and bring about real change for millions of people. 💪
3. Fail fast and keep learning

Failing fast is about doing lots of fast iterations and learning from each, rather than getting stuck on one solution or decision. 👊
4. Know thy build

Knowing your build inside and out is a crucial part of engineering. It’s not enough to know what will work and when it’ll work. It’s just as important to know what won’t work and when it won’t work. 🚧
5. #ItIsNotMagic

There is never a magical problem or a random occurrence. We expect our engineers to figure out what caused a break, not throw their hands in the air and proclaim that it’s just broken — find what is happening under the hood. 🕵️‍♀️
6. Measure whatever is measurable

While our products help organizations make better data-driven decisions, it is important for us to measure everything that we can to figure out the next course of actions. 📊
7. Automate whatever is repetitive

Our base tendency should be to automate wherever possible, rather than doing tasks manually — automation gives us more time to work on building the actual product. ✔️
8. Premature optimization is the root of all evil

Pick the right battles to fight at the right time. If you optimize too early, you’ll spend and re-spend lots of time and still come out with not the most optimized solution. 🙅
9. When in doubt, ask!

Stuck or confused? 🤔 Just ask your fellow engineers! Someone will have a solution, or at least an idea to help you get started on the right path. ➡️
We hope these were helpful — whether you’re an engineer interested in working with us or you’re forming your own team’s engineering commandments! :) Interested to learn more about #engineering culture #InsideSocialCops? Check here: https://t.co/QTVs9tf1tj

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global health policy in 2020 has centered around NPI's (non-pharmaceutical interventions) like distancing, masks, school closures

these have been sold as a way to stop infection as though this were science.

this was never true and that fact was known and knowable.

let's look.


above is the plot of social restriction and NPI vs total death per million. there is 0 R2. this means that the variables play no role in explaining one another.

we can see this same relationship between NPI and all cause deaths.

this is devastating to the case for NPI.


clearly, correlation is not proof of causality, but a total lack of correlation IS proof that there was no material causality.

barring massive and implausible coincidence, it's essentially impossible to cause something and not correlate to it, especially 51 times.

this would seem to pose some very serious questions for those claiming that lockdowns work, those basing policy upon them, and those claiming this is the side of science.

there is no science here nor any data. this is the febrile imaginings of discredited modelers.

this has been clear and obvious from all over the world since the beginning and had been proven so clearly by may that it's hard to imagine anyone who is actually conversant with the data still believing in these responses.

everyone got the same R
We finally have the U.S. Citizenship Act Bill Text! I'm going to go through some portions of the bill right now and highlight some of the major changes and improvements that it would make to our immigration system.

Thread:


First the Bill makes a series of promises changes to the way we talk about immigrants and immigration law.

Gone would be the term "alien" and in its place is "noncitizen."

Also gone would be the term "alienage," replaced with "noncitizenship."


Now we get to the "earned path to citizenship" for all undocumented immigrants present in the United States on January 1, 2021.

Under this bill, anyone who satisfies the eligibility criteria for a new "lawful prospective immigrant status" can come out of the shadows.


So, what are the eligibility criteria for becoming a "lawful prospective immigrant status"? Those are in a new INA 245G and include:

- Payment of the appropriate fees
- Continuous presence after January 1, 2021
- Not having certain criminal record (but there's a waiver)


After a person has been in "lawful prospective immigrant status" for at least 5 years, they can apply for a green card, so long as they still pass background checks and have paid back any taxes they are required to do so by law.

However! Some groups don't have to wait 5 years.

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This is a pretty valiant attempt to defend the "Feminist Glaciology" article, which says conventional wisdom is wrong, and this is a solid piece of scholarship. I'll beg to differ, because I think Jeffery, here, is confusing scholarship with "saying things that seem right".


The article is, at heart, deeply weird, even essentialist. Here, for example, is the claim that proposing climate engineering is a "man" thing. Also a "man" thing: attempting to get distance from a topic, approaching it in a disinterested fashion.


Also a "man" thing—physical courage. (I guess, not quite: physical courage "co-constitutes" masculinist glaciology along with nationalism and colonialism.)


There's criticism of a New York Times article that talks about glaciology adventures, which makes a similar point.


At the heart of this chunk is the claim that glaciology excludes women because of a narrative of scientific objectivity and physical adventure. This is a strong claim! It's not enough to say, hey, sure, sounds good. Is it true?
Recently, the @CNIL issued a decision regarding the GDPR compliance of an unknown French adtech company named "Vectaury". It may seem like small fry, but the decision has potential wide-ranging impacts for Google, the IAB framework, and today's adtech. It's thread time! 👇

It's all in French, but if you're up for it you can read:
• Their blog post (lacks the most interesting details):
https://t.co/PHkDcOT1hy
• Their high-level legal decision: https://t.co/hwpiEvjodt
• The full notification: https://t.co/QQB7rfynha

I've read it so you needn't!

Vectaury was collecting geolocation data in order to create profiles (eg. people who often go to this or that type of shop) so as to power ad targeting. They operate through embedded SDKs and ad bidding, making them invisible to users.

The @CNIL notes that profiling based off of geolocation presents particular risks since it reveals people's movements and habits. As risky, the processing requires consent — this will be the heart of their assessment.

Interesting point: they justify the decision in part because of how many people COULD be targeted in this way (rather than how many have — though they note that too). Because it's on a phone, and many have phones, it is considered large-scale processing no matter what.