Gosh I wish IPv4 -> IPv6 was just
10.x.x.x -> 10.x.x.x.x.x
Instead we went to some hex-colon-double-colon BS. Like instead of "ssh 10.0.0.1" I have to now do "ssh -6 :://::2001:db8:ffff:abcd::34ff:2e6f::49af:fdef::"? Fuck that.
The simple fact that I can't memorize IPv6 addresses makes me lazy to use it. Whenever I want to SSH into a machine in 5 seconds flat I just rattle off its IPv4 address and I'm in.
There is a little known protocol invented in 1985 that even had a port number assigned to it by IANA. It's surprisingly well-supported by lots of systems even today!
It's called "The Domain Name System". I know it sounds alien and weird, but I assure you that you'll find that it greatly eases the burden of having to memorise network addresses!
Maybe your distribution has it included, just download it and give it a go.
I'm also an upper caste male in Silicon Valley. While I largely agree with you in that most people state-side haven't heard of it happening here, that doesn't mean it doesn't subconsciously exist.
The main thing I think the article got wrong is this:
> they're often clever attempts to find out something very specific
I don't think they are "clever" attempts. People aren't that clever, in general. It's very possible that people are just used to asking these very normal questions out of habit (e.g. "are you vegetarian" is a perfectly normal question to ask before going to lunch with someone, to factor that in your suggestions of places to eat). It's just that they may be subconsciously deriving further biases based on the answers instead of taking the answers at face value. If, for example, someone not being vegetarian was originally just a benign question to go out to lunch together, but later subconsciously causes the manager to not give them that promotion, that would be discrimination, and I can't say for sure that that doesn't happen.
One of the things about Tamil Nadu at least is that a lot of people don't have surnames in the traditional sense.
My "surname" is actually my dad's given name, and my dad's "surname" is his dad's given name. So it changes every generation, unlike most of the rest of the world, where a single surname lasts through generations.
The point about caste differentiability by surname is still valid, though in a different sense, because the given names also have caste bias.
IMO the easiest way to break this cycle would be a widespread campaign to de-stigmatize inter-marriage between castes; that would solve the problem of correlation between name and caste within a generation or two.
For anyone who is interested: this type of name is called a patronymic, and besides Tamil Nadu exists in at least Iceland and Russia.
In both of those countries, a particular grammatical ending is added to the name, whereas in Tamil culture the bare name is used.
In Russia, people also have family surnames, in addition to patronymics. For example: “Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev”, whose father was presumably named “Anatoliy [something] Medvedev”.
Or: “Katrín Jakobsdóttir”, whose father was presumably named “Jakob [something]”.
The option for immigrants to change their name at Ellis Island long ago existed in large part to combat bringing 'old world' prejudices into the then new USA, nothing has changed...
Nobody made a better life in America? I'm certainly aware of at least a handful of people who have gone from poverty to at least comfortable living after coming to America.
I was born in India, am of Indian Brahmin (i.e. the "top" caste) blood, and all I can say is this:
The caste system is a disgrace to India and I fully condemn it as an Indian. I hope this kind of shit can be abolished not only in Silicon Valley but in India as well.
Slavery was also a cultural say of life in America many places all over the world. There were probably secondary effects. But that doesn't matter because the practice is and always was, objectively evil.
How can you justify discrimination based on somebody's origin in any modern society? What kind of negative "secondary effects" that anti-discrimination would bring to a society? It's not like this is a small country or the first time we're talking about this issue.
Gosh I wish IPv4 -> IPv6 was just 10.x.x.x -> 10.x.x.x.x.x
Instead we went to some hex-colon-double-colon BS. Like instead of "ssh 10.0.0.1" I have to now do "ssh -6 :://::2001:db8:ffff:abcd::34ff:2e6f::49af:fdef::"? Fuck that.
The simple fact that I can't memorize IPv6 addresses makes me lazy to use it. Whenever I want to SSH into a machine in 5 seconds flat I just rattle off its IPv4 address and I'm in.