maxlybbert

I was actually thinking at a different level.

When I drive on the freeway, any time a police car gets behind me and turns on its lights, I have to stop. If I don't stop, I can ultimately be charged with evading arrest, or fleeing police, or some similar offense. I can be fined and even put in jail, even if a judge decides that the officer didn't actually have a valid reason to stop me.

If a police officer approaches me (when I'm not in a car) and tells me that I'm under arrest, I don't have the legal permission to leave. Even if I know I didn't break any laws. Even if I happen to know why the officer wants to arrest me and I know that it's not a valid reason for an arrest.

Why? Why does the law require me to obey without question, especially when honest mistakes that I might make are treated very differently from honest mistakes the trained officer might make? Fundamentally, because we have decided that the alternative is worse.

Do officers abuse their authority? Of course they do. But we've decided that toothless police departments aren't worth anything (and, in fact, lead to more vigilantism and crime). And we've decided that "self help" solutions (e.g., giving people the right to violently resist arrest if the officer is in the wrong, while punishing people who resist valid arrests) are worse.

That’s a valid concern.

Of course, the example chosen for the article didn’t involve anybody abusing their authority. It involved police doing what I’d expect them to do. But I’ll acknowledge that if all of the relevant details were different, then I’d also be concerned.

Yes, it is true that police have powers that can be abused, and police have abused them.

It’s also true that they have those powers because we’ve decided the alternative is worse. The example used in the article was a case where police did not obviously abuse their authority. If you want to get me worked up about police overreach, you’ll need a different example.

I do not want to live in a world where random drones/cameras control my every move

How did the drone control anybody’s move in the example? It seems that the drone wasn’t even noticed.

Police drive around in patrol cars. They don’t call judges every time they look at other cars. There may be problems with this system, but adding drones hasn’t created a new loophole.

I don’t understand the problem. Police saw something they thought was suspicious, took a closer look, and then decided there was nothing illegal happening.

I don’t think there’s a constitutional right to know when you’re being tailed. Or to be notified every time a police officer does a double-take.

This is a very common position. But I’ve never understood the argument that police should have to do some amount of busywork for things to be fair.

Warrants aren’t required so the police are sportsmanlike. Warrants are required because interacting with the police can be inconvenient or hellish, depending on the interaction.

For the record, most states have publicity rights (with exceptions) so that publishing a photo may still require somebody’s permission.

But the police don’t need a warrant to follow me in public, and even take pictures that they have no intention of publishing.

The Supreme Court mentioned your question in 2012 in US v. Jones ( https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/565/400/ ), without giving an actual answer:

“This Court has to date not deviated from the understanding that mere visual observation does not constitute a search. See Kyllo [v US]. ... We accordingly held in [US v] Knotts that ‘[a] person traveling in an automobile on public thoroughfares has no reasonable expectation of privacy in his movements from one place to another.’ ... Thus, even assuming that the concurrence is correct to say that ‘[t]raditional surveillance’ of Jones for a 4-week period ‘would have required a large team of agents, multiple vehicles, and perhaps aerial assistance,’ ... our cases suggest that such visual observation is constitutionally permissible. It may be that achieving the same result through electronic means, without an accompanying trespass, is an unconstitutional invasion of privacy, but the present case does not require us to answer that question.”

The fourth amendment is supposed to address invasive and inconvenient general warrants and search warrants. And that’s “inconvenient” from the point of view of the person being investigated. I don’t understand the view that all’s fair as long as the police do a certain amount of busywork, but that does seem to be popular even among some judges.

I really hope this doesn’t turn into yet another case of judges looking at irrelevant facts when making decisions.

The fourth amendment does not say “private conversations,” so when police started tapping phones, the courts focused on whether the phone tap physically intruded on somebody’s house, papers, or effects. Police apparently could tap phone conversations by watching reflections on a nearby window, and the fourth amendment didn’t apply because there was no physical intrusion. The “reasonable expectation of privacy” test come from Katz v. US ( https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/389/347/ ) where the Supreme Court realized that whether there was a physical intrusion was irrelevant.

In 2012, Windows 8 stopped booting on computers without UEFI secure boot. Hardware companies weren’t enthusiastic, but they couldn’t ignore Microsoft’s demand. Microsoft published the spec for how Windows 8 would handle secure boot, and that included the crypto key that will be expiring in September. Microsoft’s spec did actually have provisions for non-Microsoft operating systems.

Linux developers didn’t all agree about whether Linux needed to do anything about Microsoft’s plan, but ultimately a Red Hat programmer convinced enough people that it would be easier to follow Microsoft’s spec than to tell new users to “turn off secure boot” if they wanted to run Linux ( https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/12368.html ). This wasn’t a popular decision, and it hasn’t become any more popular over time, but it has worked.

It's definitely possible. And common, at least in some projects. The only real drawback is that sloppiness will lead to multiple slightly different nonstandard string types in the same project.

You would think so. Strangely, even though warrants have to be specific, police are allowed to seize things they come across during the search, even if those things aren’t on the warrant ( https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/496/128/ ).

It’s not a free-for-all, though. If the warrant is for a stolen car, the police can’t open up pill bottles during the search; they have to look in places where a stolen car could be hidden ( https://www.fletc.gov/audio/execution-search-warrant-i-mp3 , do a text search for “elephant”). And the things being seized have to be obvious contraband ( https://www.rothdavies.com/criminal-defense/frequently-asked... ).

The US can be very creative about when its jurisdiction applies ( https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/94-166 ).

Manuel Noriega and “el Chapo” Guzman were both convicted of crimes they committed outside the US but that caused other people to commit crimes inside the US.

Traveling to countries for child sex abuse is illegal and severely punished, although it appears that the law is about the traveling with intent, and not (officially) about the actions that take place overseas: https://www.justice.gov/criminal/criminal-ceos/extraterritor... .

Well, they made a big deal about saying that while they sold their software to the Defense Department, it wasn't actually being used to kill people. Except for well-known military contractors (e.g., Raytheon), who have sold plenty of software specifically to kill people.

I guess there's a reason we saw plenty of articles about software used somewhat defensively -- such as distinguishing whether a particular "bang" was a gunshot, and where it likely came from -- instead of offensively -- such as improvements to targeting software.

I'm sure it was meant as "kills the wrong people."

People are always worried about getting rid of humans in decision-making. Not that humans are perfect, but because we worry that buggy software will be worse.

It's easy to say "I will never let the Department of Defense use my search engine for evil!" Or "the more money they spend on me, the less they have for weapons!" ( https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Theo_de_Raadt ) when you aren't really expecting money. But when somebody shows up with a check, it becomes much harder to stick to your principles. Especially after watching Palantir (and "don't be evil" Google) rake in plenty of dough.

Also: https://gist.github.com/kemitchell/fdc179d60dc88f0c9b76e5d38... .

You asked:

"Yes, but it only has two senators. The 39.5 million people in California have the same Senatorial representation as the less than 600 thousand people in Wyoming.

"In what world is that fair or remotely democratic?"

I answered "Not everything in the constitution is meant to be democratic."

I'm sorry if you are not capable of understanding how that answers your question.

Tampa Bay Buccaneers? Las Vegas Raiders?

Do you think the LA Rams have that name to claim ancestry?

If somebody has a really stupid proposal -- such as "make all 3D printers refuse to print guns" -- I don't see why I have any obligation to "compromise" with them. Or to talk with them at all. Other than, perhaps, explain that they ought to learn about the things they want to regulate before they start making proposals. The fact that they have an incredibly long track record of bad proposals, and many strongly-held opinions based mostly in ignorance, is just entertaining.

It is, in fact, legal (but very expensive) to own a tank ( https://www.drivetanks.com/ , yes, that's a company, but a rich enough motivated person could fill out the same paperwork). Apparently each exploding shell is a NFA taxed destructive device ( https://youtu.be/GW2U0qORdLE ).

The gun manufacturer's trade association has consistently said that 3D-printed "ghost guns" are more fantasy than reality, and that legal designs don't cause any more trouble than other legal guns: https://www.nssf.org/articles/3d-printers-cannot-produce-und... .

The people who wrote the constitution had plenty of experience with the First and Second Continental Congresses, and the Congress set up by the Articles of Confederation. And Parliament, and state legislatures. They both loved and feared democracy. Not everything in the constitution is meant to be democratic.

Senators were originally appointed by state governments to prevent the federal government from slowly weakening the states ( https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S1-2-3/A... “To further allay Anti-Federalist concerns regarding concentrated federal power in Congress, the Federalists emphasized that bicameralism, which lodged legislative power directly in the state governments through equal representation in the Senate, would serve to restrain, separate, and check federal power”). That’s not really “democratic.”

In grade school, we focused on the fact that states with small populations weren’t enthusiastic about letting larger states set national policy. Sure, New York would have been happy to have more influence in both the House and the Senate than any other state, but Rhode Island, Delaware, and Connecticut weren’t going to sign under those terms. Horse trading to get them to join wasn’t “democratic” either, but they wouldn’t have joined any other way.

I know what Colbert said, and what Colbert claims CBS said. But I feel like something is being left out.

The equal time requirement wouldn’t prevent Colbert from interviewing a political candidate. And it wouldn’t require Colbert to send invitations to anybody. It would require Colbert to allow a competing political candidate to appear if the candidate demanded it.

CBS could decide they don’t want that hassle. Colbert could decide he doesn’t want that hassle. But the law as it stands doesn’t prevent the interview.

I actually remember when Reagan’s FCC decided to stop enforcing equal time. Plenty of people complained about how the change would ruin America. Now they seem to believe Reagan was right after all.

Yes, this comes up, but the Court tends to say things that didn’t exist are covered by constitutional rights. I can’t imagine think of any time they asked “could the founders have imagined this?” Television, radio, and the internet are all protected by freedom of the press without anybody ever showing that the founders could have imagined them.

From Heller v. DC:

“Some have made the argument, bordering on the frivolous, that only those arms in existence in the 18th century are protected by the Second Amendment. We do not interpret constitutional rights that way. Just as the First Amendment protects modern forms of communications, e.g., Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union, and the Fourth Amendment applies to modern forms of search, e.g., Kyllo v. United States, the Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding.”

A few years after that ruling, the Massachusetts state supreme court upheld a conviction for a woman who had carried a taser for self defense. The Supreme Court accepted her challenge, allowed it to go forward without paying court costs, and unanimously overturned that ruling without asking for oral arguments ( https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/577/411/ ):

“The court offered three explanations to support its holding that the Second Amendment does not extend to stun guns. First, the court explained that stun guns are not protected because they ‘were not in common use at the time of the Second Amendment’s enactment.’ This is inconsistent with Heller’s clear statement that the Second Amendment ‘extends . . . to . . . arms . . . that were not in existence at the time of the founding.’

“The court next asked whether stun guns are ‘dangerous per se at common law and unusual,’ in an attempt to apply one ‘important limitation on the right to keep and carry arms.’ ... In so doing, the court concluded that stun guns are ‘unusual’ because they are ‘a thoroughly modern invention.’ By equating ‘unusual’ with ‘in common use at the time of the Second Amendment’s enactment,’ the court’s second explanation is the same as the first; it is inconsistent with Heller for the same reason.

“Finally, the court used ‘a contemporary lens’ and found ‘nothing in the record to suggest that [stun guns] are readily adaptable to use in the military.’ But Heller rejected the proposition ‘that only those weapons useful in warfare are protected.’

“For these three reasons, the explanation the Massachusetts court offered for upholding the law contradicts this Court’s precedent.”

The fact that Caetano was a unanimous and thorough ruling says a lot to me. Perhaps you’re holding out hope that Heller will be overturned soon, but the chances for that are very slim ( https://youtu.be/nFTRwD85AQ4 ).

I have a copy of https://archive.org/details/gerard-metral-gun/ on my bookshelf (by a European, too!).

For what it's worth, the only company where I posted Dilbert art (two animation cels that my wife bought for me from eBay) was nothing like the Dilbert world. It's just that I loved Dilbert and I thought it was a funny decoration.

I'm positive he was trolling.

Personally, I think most Americans don't give Venezuela much thought.

I think Trump is hoping to get a short popularity boost the way George Bush did with the capture of Manuel Noriega, but people cared more about who controlled the Panama Canal in the 1990s than they care about who controls Venezuela today. And I don't know anybody who expects this to impact drugs coming from Venezuela or Latin America in general.

Even though the military was involved, I think this was officially a law enforcement action, much like capturing Manuel Noriega and sentencing him to prison.

Nicolás Maduro was indicted for various crimes in 2020. I have a feeling the "possession of a machinegun" charge will be dropped, but the US does have a long track record of saying drug activity affects the US enough that it can arrest and prosecute almost anybody.

The invasion of Ukraine, on the other hand, is -- I believe -- a regular military exercise. Putin has claimed that he wants to achieve some unusual goals ("denazify the Ukraine special forces"), but even those goals aren't really law enforcement.

Economists often talk about substituting capital for labor. It's certainly common in countries, such as the US, where labor is relatively expensive.

I think it's perfectly reasonable to change the tax system to make sure there's no tax advantage to substituting capital for labor, or for that matter, labor for capital. I have no idea what changes would be needed, but there's no reason that using AI should have significant tax implications.