HN user

dmatech

456 karma
Posts0
Comments181
View on HN
No posts found.

Primarily because it encourages people to keep doing this performative stuff, think they're actually helping people, and take resources away from more meaningful work. By resisting these efforts, I'm preventing what would likely be runaway acceleration.

In theory, the actual individuals are still bound by state law, but the supremacy clause allows federal laws made in pursuance of the US Constitution to preempt those state laws. Of course, these laws still need to be "necessary and proper" for carrying out an express power like regulating immigration. A law that is unnecessary or improper would theoretically not hold up in court. The same goes for executive action.

Perhaps the most infamous case of this was the Idaho manslaughter case against FBI sniper Lon Horiuchi for killing Vicki Weaver in the Ruby Ridge incident. His case was simply "removed" to federal court and dismissed under the supremacy clause (although this dismissal was later overturned narrowly when appealed).

This is why it's absolutely essential to always be aware of which types are value types in the .NET type system. Attempts by either users or the designers to conflate or unify them are ill-conceived. The nullability semantics could have been kept consistent if they went all the way back to the beginning of the CLR and did it that way, but this would have not been consistent with Java's JVM and type system (which they were trying to mimic).

That said, we already have value types like System.Int32 which inherit from System.ValueType (an abstract type) which inherits from System.Object (a non-abstract reference type), so things are already a bit weird.

Providing a platform for defamation and other tortious speech is generally legally protected under §230. They still have to respond to court orders and DMCA requests, though. This is how sites like Kiwi Farms remain online. That said, commercial apps can sometimes be sued under defective product laws.

Are there any POSIX or ISO guarantees on "FILE"? I think it's safe to assume that it isn't an incomplete type, but all functions that use it operate on pointers anyway. Storing a copy of a "FILE" object might result in each copy pointing to the same underlying file handle but having different internal state.

The consequences for following an illegal order include being sued, being held in contempt of court, or being criminally prosecuted by a subsequent administration. They don't have the same immunity that presidents do because they don't have a direct vesting of authority under Article II.

In the USA, both are true. Civil servants can (and should) refuse to follow an order they think is unconstitutional, illegal, or simply unwise. But this won't stop them from being fired for insubordination. I don't think the courts will attempt to force the president to retain subordinates that are actively opposing him on the job.

Yep. It's probably rooted in our psychology as primates. I'm not saying this is good, but psychology is often ugly.

Men want to compete for status against other men. If women are present, it's not quite seen as a venue for male intrasexual competition in the same way. It's also possible that the greatest status in society can be found where males compete (unless you're dealing with a matriarchal society).

Ordinarily I'd agree, but I don't think these degrees are being marketed as vocational credentials like you'd see at a vocational school. If you get one of the more questionable humanities degrees and expect it to get you a job, that's not exactly a reasonable expectation. Some degrees basically double as a vocational credential (CS, medicine, and even journalism), but not all.

A big problem is that a lot of people think that doing what they're told by the "smart people in charge" (which might include their parents), they can expect to succeed in life. And a lot of people told the kids to follow their passions but also get into the most elite school possible in order to impress some HR person. This was bad advice.

T&S departments generally exist for one reason: to manage reputational risk. This sometimes involves legal risk, but it usually just means preventing relentless hit pieces about your company enabling something portrayed as horrible. This can result in customers and even employees leaving if the media is relentless enough.

Companies take risks if the reward is considered good enough. In this case, that reward is income from the customer (who can still be dropped if the hit pieces start getting published).

Security features should be free or a lot cheaper. But compliance? Heck no. Customers with compliance requirements are the ones with some group demanding they prove that they're adhering to numerous (sometimes contradictory) policies. If they can afford to create all that red tape, they can afford to pay to comply with it.

The major questions doctrine itself is a relaxation of strict separation of powers. Normally there is strict separation between lawmaking, judicial functions, and enforcement. MQD at least allows the "minor questions" to be exceptions. I know that a lot of people think separation of powers is inefficient and outdated, but it's still the law of the land.

No, but it's perfectly fine for lawmakers to make laws setting these standards (ideally with the input of experts). That's how we get local building codes.

The ultimate power to make policy choices should be made by lawmakers who can be voted out. Bureaucrats are too insulated. An individual bureaucrat can't feasibly be fired by either a President or the Congress.

Open plans have visual and auditory distractions. Cubicles with decent walls at least eliminate the visual distractions. On the other hand, glass-walled offices might have decent soundproofing but have the distraction of people constantly walking by.

There's also the question of form vs. function. A lot of people in leadership care a great deal about the workspace looking "modern" and care less about it being effective for the people working in it.

They don't necessarily need to be big offices. It's just that corporations generally do seating based on seniority and status, not need. They have tiny cubes for worker bees and giant private offices for the queens.

Even small offices require more costly building materials than large cubicles. So even a high density might still be somewhat expensive. Fortunately, there are opportunities for cheaper commercial real estate these days, so someone has the opportunity to try something new.

Nobody is going to opt in to having their data used for advertising in exchange for nothing at all. It will eventually be held that it's abusive to even give people that option. So the obvious solution would be to take away the option entirely and give Europeans the option to have a paid account with no ads/tracking or to be locked out of the site. Of course, the EU could just whine about how Americans get Facebook for "free" but Europeans don't.

If the EU really wants to ban ad-supported sites, they should just come out and do it.

I'd argue that Facebook itself is protected 1A speech (as are the recommendations of the YouTube algorithm). It's not a consumer product, and it's not a defective one. Parents have parental controls, and they should educate themselves on how to effectively use them.

I suppose that the broader concern is over precisely what duties a company has to its customers. They obviously have the duty to be truthful when making offers, but every customer relationship will have an adversarial component where each party benefits at the other's expense (or at the expense of third parties). In cases like a bar serving alcohol to customers, there's usually some responsibility to prevent patrons from getting extremely intoxicated and getting in a car. But that case involves a clear signal that someone is dangerous. Facebook doesn't know if someone's grades are suffering or if they're having mental health issues. It doesn't know if it should tell the user to "touch grass".

You could, but now you have three addresses per node instead of one. Plus, the mechanisms for assigning those addresses are weird compared to DHCP and static assignment. I get that it facilitates packets being routed reliably, but some of us want maintainable firewall rules that don't have to deal with IP addresses changing out of the blue.

I've personally never had trouble going to a restaurant or other place with restrooms for customers, but I'm sure things are very different in places known for people who are homeless, drug-addicted, mentally ill, or criminals.

If people use few consumables and keep the restroom clean, it's probably more likely to remain open to the public. But I'd imagine the staff doesn't want to clean up a biohazard or deal with dirty needles.

Americans are a peculiar people. You might save a few lives in the short term by censoring ideas that cause harm (which are usually legally protected even if they're false). The problem arises once people get wind of the fact that there is centralized government influence on what they're allowed to say or hear. Americans generally don't believe their governments to do this fairly or competently.

So a lot of people fall into conspiratorial thinking about what they're not being allowed to hear. They also lose trust in a government that doesn't trust them in return (or allow them to make their own decisions). So there are very negative second-order effects to going down the route of paternalistic censorship here.

It's an interesting edge case. It's pretty clearly completely legal in the USA, though the content is grossly offensive. Some of the individual posts are almost certainly defamatory, but §230 shields the site itself from that liability (though not the posters).

This brings us back to the real question: should extreme unpopularity alone be enough for deplatforming in a free society? Or should actual laws need to be broken?