Jonas Wechsler on Contemporary Issues in Computer Science

I don't particularly believe that developers have the ability to inform the general public. If you have uninformed friends and family you can explain things to them, but in general people get their information from the news and other media. There are some exceptions to this, of course: Professor Scott Aaronson has written many posts on Quantum Computing on his very successful blog Shtetl-Optimized . He's also guest written for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal , a geeky webcomic. However, these are mostly frequented by people who are already familiar with computer science. If you really want to protect the interests of consumers, I think we need to expand our right to privacy and freedom of speech to include technological privacy, security, and access to information. In the United States, we have a well established right to privacy. This protects against violation of solitude and private affairs, as well as public exposure to embarrassing private facts (Prosser). This sh...

The most fundamental way to contribute to ethical internal business practices is by writing and enforcing a well-formulated code of ethics for the company. When unethical business practices are exposed, rarely is it unbeknownst to the CEO (Henning). Things like a supportive work environment, fair pay, and positive impact can all be established from a high-level managerial position. Having a supportive work environment is one of the most important contributors to employee satisfaction (Todd). Of course, racism, sexism, sexual assault, and unequal treatment are unacceptable in any work environment. However, even well intentioned individuals can make statements that make others uncomfortable (Elington). It's important that employees feel free to come forward and that HR is required to receive all reports of misconduct. A supportive work environment also means hiring people to work on things they're passionate about, and then letting them work on those things. Passionate employe...

Some major tech companies operate on a three-phase testing cycle where new code first goes through unit testing, then integration testing, and then QA and A/B testing. Although it comes under criticism from some developers, I think it's a very effective methodology that can be time-efficient once you're experienced with the tools involved. Unit testing, for example, often is criticized because the tests themselves follow the structure of the code very closely. If you have a function that issues a service request and formats the response, the unit test might just mock the service and assert that the returned value matches the mocked input. The point of the unit test, then, is not to verify that the code functions as intended (that's the job of integration testing), but to make sure that the dependencies don't make breaking changes down the line. I've heard some people talk about "blind black-box tests", in which one developer writes unit tests for another...

In the case of  Lewis Galoob Toys, Inc. v. Nintendo of America, Inc. , Nintendo claimed that the Game Genie peripheral for the Nintendo Entertainment System constituted a derivative work. The Game Genie was a add-on for the NES which allowed players to enter in codes which altered the byte code of the games they played. For example, the code "SLXPLOVS" would give infinite lives for Super Mario Bros. 3. Nintendo referred to a product by Artic International which would alter Pac-Man and Galaxian cabinets, which was deemed in violation of copyright (Lewis). However, the Artic chip would copy memory from the video game onto itself, which differentiates itself from the Game Genie, which only modifies a data transfer. The case was ruled in favor of Galoob, and Nintendo was prevented from changing future consoles to invalidate peripherals like the Game Genie. Galoob was also awarded $15 million to compensate for a period of time where they were not allowed to sell their product. ...

There's two major ideas I can draw from How Much Land Does a Man Need? The first is that the desire for money and power can distract you from the important things in life, and can literally destroy you if you're not careful. The other is that Russian life has very little upward mobility, and the government is intensely oppressive. Tolstoy was an Anarchist, and believed that all government hurts its citizens. The story is a representation of his personal beliefs: the government is corrupt, and instead people should support Anarchy, love others, exercise patience, and live with the bare minimum. Tolstoy was born into nobility. After dropping out of university he gambled away most of his wealth. He then enlisted in the army during the War of Crimea. During his service, he was promoted to lieutenant for "outstanding bravery and courage"(War). After his service, he was disgusted by the death and destruction of war and became a non-violent anarchist. He is quoted as say...

Virtue Ethics is an ethical framework that judges a person's ethical value based on their character, rather than a set of principles. Aristotle is often credited for developing this framework. He claimed that an object or being can be "proper functioning", e.g. a knife is good if it can cut well, a flower is good if it can reproduce well, wild dogs are good if they can hunt well together, etc. He laid out a few generally beneficial qualities in people: we grow, are healthy and fertile, use reason, and we get along well together. This is partially derived from Natural Law Theory, which is a concept discussed by Christian philosophers like Thomas Aquinas. Natural Law Theory states that there are certain rights, beliefs, laws, etc. that are given by God to all people. Aristotle stated that, in order to make ethical decisions, people should try to become more virtuous, and then the correct decisions will be self-evident. He proposed a list of 18 moral virtues of each perso...