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Talia Ringer

Hey. I was banned from types.pl for having interviewed at the NSA 13 years ago, when I was 20 years old. I'm grateful for a new home on mathstodon.

I am very unhappy with anyone who is going after the types.pl moderators personally for this and not just respectfully discussing the situation, and I'm personally extremely sorry if my Tweet inspired any of those actions. If I see this at all I will be escalating to SIGPLAN CARES.

In a recent post I mentioned working with the department of defense as faculty. I mean that in two capacities: (1) receiving DARPA grants for verification work, and (2) organizing a workshop through the department of defense on the security risks of generative AI for code. I am always public about this with students, and I always ask students before funding them on DARPA grants, making it clear I will source funding elsewhere if the student strongly opposes defense funding.

This is the kind of thing I wanted to discuss after seeing Oppenheimer; I'm a bit bummed that instead I got banned for a post about something that happened 13 years ago, when I was not in the PL community at all, and basically lived under a rock with respect to everything except math, Dance Dance Revolution, and competitive running.

I also recognize that server admins can make and enforce their own rules. I still wish I could have just received notice to port my account so that I could have kept my followers.

Anyways, hi, please help me rebuild my friend network here.

7 Aug 2023 at 22:39 | Open on mathstodon.xyz
63 comments
Walker Boh🛡

@TaliaRinger yeah read that elsewhere. Nuts. Welcome back.

7 Aug 2023 at 22:53 | Open on infosec.exchange
Alan Jeffrey
Brendan
Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦

@TaliaRinger welcome back, happy you found a new home on fedi. :blobcatcoffee:

7 Aug 2023 at 22:59 | Open on mstdn.social
monkee 🐒

@TaliaRinger Insta-Block with no chance to move is definitely a dick move.

7 Aug 2023 at 23:02 | Open on chaos.social
Steve Canon
Hazel Weakly

@TaliaRinger hiii :blobfoxwave: I'm sorry you got banned without the chance to migrate your account. That's not super cool.

I'm glad to still see you around, though!

7 Aug 2023 at 23:04 | Open on hachyderm.io
Eugene Wallingford

@TaliaRinger I'm glad I saw this post through a boost from @typeswitch, so that I could follow you in your new place.

7 Aug 2023 at 23:12 | Open on mastodon.social
Greg Wilson
Talia Ringer

I mentioned in that post that the war in Ukraine had changed my views about my ties with the department of defense in my capacity as faculty. This is true. I used to feel very torn about accepting any money from the department of defense for my verification work, or giving the department of defense advice about anything related to my research area of expertise, but recently I have been a lot less torn because of this war. My point with the previous post was that maybe feeling a lot less torn is shortsighted on my part. Maybe this was obvious to a lot of people, but it wasn't obvious to me.

I mentioned in that post that the war in Ukraine had changed my views about my ties with the department of defense in my capacity as faculty. This is true. I used to feel very torn about accepting any money from the department of defense for my verification work, or giving the department of defense advice about anything related to my research area of expertise, but recently I have been a lot less torn because of this war. My point with the previous post was that maybe feeling a lot less torn is shortsighted...

7 Aug 2023 at 23:13 | Open on mathstodon.xyz
Jon Sterling

@TaliaRinger I think it is indeed a little shortsighted but it is important we have a venue where it’s possible to talk about it ;-)

(Meaning, i don’t think Ukraine is a good reason to change one’s mind about defense funding; but generally, i do not have a problem a priori with defense funding and it matters a lot what you are actually doing.)

7 Aug 2023 at 23:16 | Open on mathstodon.xyz
Thomas Dickerson

@jonmsterling @TaliaRinger I I’m a staunchly anti-war libertarian and am WELL aware of the shit show that is the last 70+ years of American foreign policy but like…I also have friends who serve in the National Guard and doing work that could result in them being less likely to die because of bad equipment or planning is something that I would be proud to contribute to

8 Aug 2023 at 0:47 | Open on mumak.app
Thomas Dickerson

@jonmsterling @TaliaRinger there aren’t clear cut answers here, and as Jon says it matters what specifically your work is being used for.

8 Aug 2023 at 0:48 | Open on mumak.app
Talia Ringer

In particular, I went into this movie expecting to hate Oppenheimer. I instead found that I related to him a lot. That scared me, and made me think more about what this means for me right now as a researcher. It is something I need to sit with for a while, and I wanted to express that.

7 Aug 2023 at 23:19 | Open on mathstodon.xyz
Talia Ringer

I probably could have been more eloquent at expressing this. I was also having a lot of feelings and just wanted to quickly get those feelings into words before going to sleep.

I assume for some reason this led to folks digging into my past and finding the post about the NSA interview which mentioned a fun math puzzle. I maintain that this was the coolest interview question I ever had to answer, even though I'm also glad I didn't go work for the NSA. My research in undergraduate was in elliptic curve cryptology, and pretty much everyone around me interviewed with or went to work for the NSA; among math majors at Maryland in the pre-Snowden days, this was considered a prestigious and honorable thing to do. That sounds incredibly weird to me in retrospect, but it's also true.

I probably could have been more eloquent at expressing this. I was also having a lot of feelings and just wanted to quickly get those feelings into words before going to sleep.

I assume for some reason this led to folks digging into my past and finding the post about the NSA interview which mentioned a fun math puzzle. I maintain that this was the coolest interview question I ever had to answer, even though I'm also glad I didn't go work for the NSA. My research in undergraduate was in elliptic curve...

7 Aug 2023 at 23:24 | Open on mathstodon.xyz
Talia Ringer

Anyways, if you're going to dig through my past, here's my undergraduate honors thesis (under Larry Washington) if you'd like a bit of entertainment: honors.cs.umd.edu/reports/ring

7 Aug 2023 at 23:26 | Open on mathstodon.xyz
Frank T

@TaliaRinger Thank you for sharing. This is the kind of thoughtfulness I appreciate. Politics of purity that was demanded of you is not a path that is good or productive and instead the messiness of everyday life and choices we make is what we all live with.

7 Aug 2023 at 23:30 | Open on mas.to
Irenes (many)

@TaliaRinger <3 welcome back! damn, we saw the discourse around it but we didn't realize it was you. glad to have found you again quickly.

7 Aug 2023 at 23:47 | Open on mastodon.social
Eric Blair

@TaliaRinger

And just as a bit of context:

For all the things we know about NSA post-Snowden, we also know that Google and Facebook are doing worse things on privacy. In many cases, Facebook has far more data on private citizens than NSA does.

For that reason, it’s hypocritical to give others a hard time about connections to NSA, unless they are even more strongly criticizing those who work for Facebook.

7 Aug 2023 at 23:43 | Open on mastodon.online
Matthew Rigdon

@protecttruth @TaliaRinger Personally, I think the novel 1984 has focused people on government surveillance to such an extent that we are completely blind to the fact that corporations are collecting more data than Big Brother even considered acquiring.

8 Aug 2023 at 4:44 | Open on mas.to
Raven Onthill

@protecttruth @TaliaRinger the US three letter agencies have at least some ideals and some decent people in them and are ultimately answerable to elected officials. Facebook has Zuckerberg, who seemingly glories in genocide, and Google apparently wants to own everybody's mind. And then there's Thiel and Musk.

The naive anarchism and socialism I have encountered here on Mastodon disturbs and infuriates me. I am old enough to remember when some US socialists trusted the Soviet Union.

8 Aug 2023 at 9:25 | Open on mastodon.social
Tim

@ravenonthill @protecttruth @TaliaRinger seems like a real "let he who hath not supported a dystopian tech entity cast the first stone" situation.

8 Aug 2023 at 11:27 | Open on mastodon.social
Caoilte O'Connor

@protecttruth I'm all In favour of criticizing government over business. But we absolutely don't know that Google and Facebook are doing worse things. We've got no idea what the NSA is doing now. All we know is they've got better at prosecuting whistleblowers.

8 Aug 2023 at 10:01 | Open on mastodon.social
fbz

@TaliaRinger seven out of eight of us who graduated with undergrad math degrees in 2001 at my university got NSA recruitment letters. i did not. (i am a dual citizen of the USA and France and it was right before the freedom fries era). in the end i'm glad i found my hacker family and didn't work for the NSA. but it's so strange to me that you got banned with no ability to migrate mastodon instances over interviewing there years ago? also, hi.

8 Aug 2023 at 1:06 | Open on hackers.town
Oliver Jensen

@TaliaRinger glad to have found your new address! Would you be willing to share the puzzle here?

8 Aug 2023 at 5:08 | Open on hachyderm.io
Kensan

@TaliaRinger Thank you for sharing. It’s a good reminder that feelings are complicated and that it’s actually good to reevaluate our view of things by thinking about what is happening around us.
Sorry that you did not get chance to migrate your existing account :(

8 Aug 2023 at 7:59 | Open on mastodon.social
Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦

@TaliaRinger isn't it about short-term vs. long-term, and about immediate needs vs. broader issues?

Short-term, Ukraine needs help. Immediate need is to stop Putin.

Long-term, I would love to live in a world where way less money is spent on military. Broader issue being the military-industrial-complex.

7 Aug 2023 at 23:25 | Open on mstdn.social
Ashton

@rysiek @TaliaRinger Which of course is pretty orthogonal to whether or not someone should get the boot for having interviewed at a three letter as a young adult.

“We ban anyone with any connection with the defense industry no matter how tenuous” is one of those things that makes ideologues feel good, but doesn’t do squat to achieve the states purpose.

(Also, cynically, I don’t think a world free of defense industries is possible).

8 Aug 2023 at 2:16 | Open on hachyderm.io
victor yodaiken

@TaliaRinger Teller is easier to hate although Oppenheimer was irresponsibly delusional about the bargain he was making.

8 Aug 2023 at 4:58 | Open on discuss.systems
Talia Ringer

@vyodaiken To be fair they somehow managed to make Teller look like the lead singer of My Chemical Romance which definitely didn't help his case

8 Aug 2023 at 4:59 | Open on mathstodon.xyz
victor yodaiken

@TaliaRinger I haven't seen the movie, just read a biography by Kai Bird. Still astonished at how much oppenheimer drank though. Never heard of my chemical romance, but looked them up, and yes.

8 Aug 2023 at 5:01 | Open on discuss.systems
victor yodaiken

@TaliaRinger Norbert Weiner was the most serious of that generation in thinking about consequences. Also he really looked the part
8 Aug 2023 at 5:04 | Open on discuss.systems
Ulrich Junker

@TaliaRinger I haven’t seen the Oppenheimer movie yet. We have read Heinar Kipphardt’s play on Oppenheimer in school and it gave a clear idea that he had become a victim of cold war politics.

8 Aug 2023 at 6:03 | Open on fediscience.org
rastilin

@TaliaRinger

I think people can only hate on Oppenheimer with the luxury of both hindsight and victory. At the time both the Germans and Japanese were carrying out horrific atrocities while taking more and more territory and the Germans had their own nuclear program.

In the end the Allies won and the bomb only got used very late in the war; but none of the scientists working on it knew that this would be the case.

I also think the media is tilted to give this kind of reaction. If the movie started with 30 minutes of Japanese and German atrocities and them talking about how they're going to take over America the movie would hit very differently.

@TaliaRinger

I think people can only hate on Oppenheimer with the luxury of both hindsight and victory. At the time both the Germans and Japanese were carrying out horrific atrocities while taking more and more territory and the Germans had their own nuclear program.

In the end the Allies won and the bomb only got used very late in the war; but none of the scientists working on it knew that this would be the case.

8 Aug 2023 at 7:26 | Open on aus.social
DiscreetSecurity

@TaliaRinger It's difficult. I used to work for an actual defence company - as we slightly euphemistically call them - and left in large part because of arms sales to dictators who were bombing civilians with "trainer" aircraft. But I recognise that Ukraine needs arms and modern weapons to avoid being genocided.
You can only go with what you feel - I'm a locksmith now, and have been for nearly 20 years. It would be weird to try to hold that part of my past against me. Same for you.

8 Aug 2023 at 0:10 | Open on infosec.exchange
Cybarbie

@TaliaRinger "A Mastodon instance for programming language theorists and mathematicians. Or just anyone who wants to hang out."

WTF... do they have any idea how many... nevermind domain block

7 Aug 2023 at 23:14 | Open on mastodon.social
Matthias Liffers

@TaliaRinger I hope that nobody ever judges me based on what I did when I was 20.

7 Aug 2023 at 23:24 | Open on social.tthi.as
Jared Davis

@TaliaRinger huh. Was curious so I looked at types.pl server rules. Seems pretty clear that rule (7) gives cover for admins violating rule (1) in specific cases. What was that story about Gödel’s citizenship interview again?

7 Aug 2023 at 23:32 | Open on mathstodon.xyz
kierkegaank

@TaliaRinger instances with unreflected purity hysterics waving their arms around and screaming as discourse? NO?!?

7 Aug 2023 at 23:41 | Open on mastodon.sdf.org
Pyrex, nightsworn alchemist

@TaliaRinger Hello again! We don't know each other, but you seem cool. Welcome to Mathstodon -- I hope you are OK!

7 Aug 2023 at 23:44 | Open on dragon.style
FortunateFool

@TaliaRinger@mathstodon.xyz that's super lame they banned you for something in your past. Especially something where you were low on the totem pole.

8 Aug 2023 at 0:00 | Open on infosec.town
Artem Pelenitsyn
laurent oget
Torbjörn Björkman

@TaliaRinger Hello! 👋

Full disclosure of my feelings in attached gif, but that all looks peachy to me.

8 Aug 2023 at 0:18 | Open on mastodon.social
Michael Ekstrand
peterb

@TaliaRinger Hi, Talia! Nice to see you made it on. Will follow you here, of course.

8 Aug 2023 at 0:37 | Open on mathstodon.xyz
Ciggy Bringer of Smoke

@TaliaRinger out of curiosity, what is the types.pl instance even about? I saw the edges of what happened by the by but it struck me as a bit hamfisted unless its like Snowden Fan Instance or somesuch.

8 Aug 2023 at 0:45 | Open on kolektiva.social
Artemis

@TaliaRinger that's ridiculous. Some people just love going on a power trip. I'm sorry that happened, and I hope you have a happier better time on the new instance!

8 Aug 2023 at 1:40 | Open on wandering.shop
Artemis

@TaliaRinger okay I just looked up what the heck happened and what a bizarre and immature tantrum by the types.pl mod.

8 Aug 2023 at 1:53 | Open on wandering.shop
HoldMyType

@TaliaRinger hello , i learnt about it the last night on Twitter, the absurdity of the incident triggered a whole thread then and there out of me, about, what I do , just 2c. Idk I could have written it better, but here my way , I hope it helps , although, it's just a matter of people knowing about the incident.
twitter.com/brokenbijection/st

8 Aug 2023 at 1:52 | Open on mathstodon.xyz
Jason Bowen

@TaliaRinger The math rock is a perfectly nice one to be under.

8 Aug 2023 at 2:10 | Open on mast.hpc.social
ocdtrekkie

@TaliaRinger Don't know if I can help you find your old followers, but I can give you one more. Unfortunately some fediverse admins are fickle and prone to sudden abrupt actions.

8 Aug 2023 at 2:13 | Open on mastodon.social
prozacchiwawa

@TaliaRinger wow sorry to hear that. hope the new instance serves.

8 Aug 2023 at 3:21 | Open on functional.cafe
Patrick

@TaliaRinger It's messed up that individual server admins control your ability to migrate. Sorry that happened :(

8 Aug 2023 at 3:35 | Open on patrick.social
Humble Fan of Atty. Woo

@TaliaRinger

Welcome aboard. I was at Texas A&M in 1972 flunking out in the fall semester. I'd had a fight with my parents over what I cannot remember, so I stopped going to class. I flagged 5 courses & received a postcard that simply said you are not welcome back. Bad timing, as the Military Draft was about to roll out the numbers for the 365 days of birthdays. I remember heading out the door when mom said, "Don't you want to see what your number is going to be?" They were showing the drawing on live tv at the time, and I replied, "What for, it'll be 13." Right then, it popped up as 13. Anyway, I ended up enlisting, passing the background test, was given a Top Secret Clearance for Special Intelligence & headed to Basic Training. I became an 05D20, a Spook (what the others called us in the Army Security Agency), and we reported to NSA. I was in 5 yrs active, was not in much danger, and returned home unscathed. Have had a decent life, too.

I think once you settle in, you'll like it.

@TaliaRinger

Welcome aboard. I was at Texas A&M in 1972 flunking out in the fall semester. I'd had a fight with my parents over what I cannot remember, so I stopped going to class. I flagged 5 courses & received a postcard that simply said you are not welcome back. Bad timing, as the Military Draft was about to roll out the numbers for the 365 days of birthdays. I remember heading out the door when mom said, "Don't you want to see what your number is going to be?" They were showing the drawing on...

8 Aug 2023 at 4:49 | Open on universeodon.com
Bjornsdottirs

@TaliaRinger "SIGPLAN CARES" is ambiguous to most if not all readers

8 Aug 2023 at 5:56 | Open on mastodon.top
Loukas Christodoulou

@TaliaRinger thank you for posting, this is an interesting story.

8 Aug 2023 at 6:07 | Open on mastodon.nu
Alon

@TaliaRinger Hey, welcome to Mathstodon, and I'm glad you're staying on the Fediverse instead of going back to Birdsite or moving to Bluesky :).

8 Aug 2023 at 6:49 | Open on mastodon.social
JP Sugarbroad

@TaliaRinger Hi! What happened to you is sucky, but I'm glad you found a new home and I hope they treat you well.

Ooo, proof automation! ❤️ That's a follow.

8 Aug 2023 at 7:24 | Open on mastodon.social
glyn

@TaliaRinger Ha! I had a job offer from GCHQ when I was 20, but that was 42 years ago. I don't see why that should be a problem for anyone really.

Since GCHQ wouldn't tell me which area the job was in (!), I went to work for IBM instead and never looked back. (A friend accept GCHQ's offer, but hit a pretty low glass ceiling after a few years and resigned.)

8 Aug 2023 at 9:10 | Open on fosstodon.org
emilygorcenski

@TaliaRinger Oh I've seen this story before. Sorry you're dealing with this nonsense!

8 Aug 2023 at 10:31 | Open on indieweb.social
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