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Fuuuuuck I read some of the Marvel Heroic Roleplaying Civil War book, and now I wanna run a campaign of Mutants living on post-MDay Genosha right around Second Coming

The X Men and X Force have militant and non-militant sides, and you are caught in that middle.
 
 
 
 
 
 
Security is a political act

The 21st Century is *defined* by not understanding this
Hypolite Petovan
Hypolite Petovan 12 hours ago
The replies are full of political issues supposedly unrelated to cyber security, and yet...
@silverwizard
silverwizard
silverwizard 11 hours ago from ZoobopDeDoDop!
I mean, information security is key to how we engage in politics, and so, the issue might be unrelated, but we still need to think about haves and have nots in the issue

which I know you know, but am mad about
@Hypolite Petovan
Hypolite Petovan
Hypolite Petovan 11 hours ago
I mean, a conference itself is in meatspace, it isn't *just* about cyber security. Of course when you're white cis het, the subtlety is harder to grasp.
This entry was edited (11 hours ago)
Danyl Strype
Danyl Strype 3 hours ago
My personal biases say "fuck that guy". But if I was running a conference I would have a responsibility to transcend my personal biases. If someone has a history of harassing women (for example), that might be a reason to bar them from attending the event. But nothing that wouldn't stop them attending at all ought to stop them being a speaker. Evaluating the wisdom of this decision requires considering whether you'd still support the decision if it was the opposite; a tech conference committee with a majority of members who happen to be more conservative delisting a speaker for having a pro-choice voting record. Because this decisions sets a dangerous precedent that creates the potential for exactly that.

EDIT: for clarity of intent
This entry was edited (1 hour ago)
Hypolite Petovan
Hypolite Petovan 2 hours ago
I don't think that saying you're ready to betray your personal values for any reason sounds as good as you think it does. Actual conservative conferences have a long account on considering speakers only for their views, popularity and optics, not for any expertise whatsoever. There's no "potential for that", it's already happening, which throws the "dangerous precedent" argument out of the window.
@Danyl Strype @silverwizard
Danyl Strype
Danyl Strype 1 hour ago
You seem to be responding to a comment I didn't make. I've edited my comment to make my intent clearer. I apologize for the ambiguity.
This entry was edited (1 hour ago)
Danyl Strype
Danyl Strype 1 hour ago
My "personal values" are just that; my personal values. I'm vegan and I consider enslaving and killing animals for food to be morally wrong. If I was on the committee of a tech conference and tried to stop someone from being a speaker because they ate meat, I would be quite rightly told to fuck off. If it was an animal rights conference, that might be a different story. But even then, a meat-eating guest speaker who was coming to educate animal rights activists about improving our opsec would probably be tolerated because that's the pragmatic thing to do.

Whether or not someone is pro-choice (which I am) or pro-life has nothing whatsoever to do with whether they can present useful information at a security conference. Nothing. When you look into the gory details of cases like this, it generally turns out that the real reason they were barred from speaking has more to do with personal conflicts or faction fights, and the political reason given is just an excuse. One that will create enough arguments over the unrelated issue to distract people from investigating the real reason. The conflict between the founder of the Libreboot project and FSF/GNU Project a wee while back is a textbook case.
This entry was edited (1 hour ago)
Hypolite Petovan
Hypolite Petovan 59 minutes ago
Thank you for clarifying, my opinion doesn't change, saying that a tech conference has nothing to do with any politics is by itself a political stance. And picking speakers only on their perceived technical merits is a form of discrimination that assumes all attendees can and will overlook everything about speakers except the technical content of their presentation.

To expand on my earlier comment, a conference is mainly about humans. Technical content can be gathered online, only conferences bring human interactions, through live presentations and networking mixers. If your goal isn't to make all attendees comfortable interacting with each other, it is again a political choice that has nothing to do with tech but has real consequences, like perpetuating the existing domination structures and de facto excluding minorities from your event.
This entry was edited (58 minutes ago)
Danyl Strype
Danyl Strype 37 minutes ago
You're talking about this guy like he's a Grand Wizard of the KKK or something. Being pro-life, while on the wrong side of history (IMHO), is just an opinion. Just like being anti-gun-control, or supporting prohibition, or being pro-censorship. All things that go against my personal values, but I wouldn't support barring people from a tech conference, or from speaking, for those reasons either. The whole point of having tech conferences is to talk about tech with people from a wide variety of backgrounds, so that useful information isn't stuck in silos. Anyone who can't handle being around people with different opinions is shit out of luck, because there isn't a single person out there who has exactly the same opinions as anyone else about everything.
 
#representation
 
Large, covered in icing

Icing makes the gingerbread soft, best idea
 
What about hacking the people hacking you because they think you're hacking them?!

Hell, I know DFIR, I could probably build a case any major company is hacking you!

Put a note on your website that says "Stinky Google Stay Out" and the bot is probably violating the CFAA
 
 
 
I enjoy how the job of the conservative party is now to show off how ignorant you are
#trudeaulogic #fail #cdnpoli #tryharder
Hypolite Petovan
Hypolite Petovan 2 days ago
I don't, these guys are making a livelihood of it and it shouldn't be.
@silverwizard
silverwizard
silverwizard 2 days ago from ZoobopDeDoDop!
ok, yes, there's that. Our conservative politicians do need to be voted out and ridiculed, yes
@Hypolite Petovan
 
 
Hey @uOttawa have you fired the dude who randomly walks into offices and cards people?
#racism @uOttawa @Jamal_KB @bumblebrie
 
I love it how all our vulns are like "this remains terrible after fixes if you are in the cloud"
 
#CISO #cybersecurity #infosec #security @Michael Ball vCISO 🇨🇦☕️ @Jim Love
 
 
 
Fuck Zak, he makes me embarassed to be in my hobby

And ashamed I've not done enough to make people feel welcome
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