7 ms·

Charles Krauthammer note to readers: “My fight is over”

85 points by abhisuri97 8y ago

kbwt 8y ago
OT: Is asking for money to opt out of tracking and personalized ads actually GDPR-compliant?
- Matticus_Rex 8y ago
  That's being debated in the privacy community as "consent-or-pay." The short answer is that we don't actually know. There are arguments on each side, and I tend to think (a) the plain reading of the law suggests no and (b) for a number of reasons, regulators will probably decide to rule that it's okay, but the reasoning that gets me there is pretty complicated.
  - tjoff 8y ago
    Do you have any links to such discussions? I would have thought it would be a clear cut no. Also 50% price increase for no ads and tracking is mind boggling, scum of the earth.
    - Matticus_Rex 8y ago
      All the stuff I've seen has been on listservs, sorry. Bundling consent inside a contract is prohibited, but the theory is that by providing a paid option (which wouldn't operate under the consent basis) OR essentially a free version if you allow them to process your data, they come out from under the bundling problem. It's questionable, certainly, but the supervisory authorities could go either way with it. They'll be under pressure to allow it, as without that, WaPo and other companies with similar models will likely find it cost-prohibitive to allow EU citizens to have a free option and will paywall it entirely for them.
      - tjoff 8y ago
        Thanks, that seems to be quite on collision course with the intent of the law (in my opinion). >... WaPo and other companies with similar models will likely find it cost-prohibitive to allow EU citizens to have a free option and will paywall it entirely for them. I think that would be preferable. We need more incentive to be able to create decent alternatives, as it is now it seems no one can be bothered.
        Matticus_Rex 8y ago
        Given that news outlets are struggling to stay alive, I think we are likely to see few alternatives spring up. If a paper needs a marginal $8/subscriber to stay afloat, and they make $2.50/user from tracking/etc, we likely see a model where subscriptions cost $6 with tracking and $9 without. Obviously we don't know the exact numbers, but this is hardly inconceivable -- we know for a fact these companies are mostly losing money as it is.
        tjoff 8y ago
        With decent alternatives I meant alternatives to ads+tracking, which obviously isn't working out despite ruining the internet. Few people would accept ads if they could pay the pennies that could ever be hoped to be extracted from ad exposure. The cost to the user are substantially worse than the gains at the other end.
  - jpfed 8y ago
    "Consent or pay" sounds so hilariously wrongheaded on its face. I'm imagining someone using that approach in literally any other aspect of their lives and seeing how well it flies.
    - Matticus_Rex 8y ago
      Well, in most other aspects of our lives, incentivized consent is allowed (and in fact it one of the foundations of contract theory). The GDPR has effectively disallowed it, which is one of the provisions here that actually reduces consumer autonomy rather than increasing it. The GDPR is going to make the internet a more expensive place, whether you think it's a good thing overall or not.
beeftime 8y ago
He spent his life shilling for hate, war, and the most vile excesses of capitalism good riddance, imo.
danschumann 8y ago
After hearing the news, I found out he's actually been in a wheelchair since college, when he broke his neck in a swimming pool, and he doesn't have much use of his arms. His story is pretty courageous from that stand point.
- ygarsoxa 8y ago
  Yes, to finish medical school after something like that is pretty amazing!
- stvswn 8y ago
  He did a lot in his life, wheelchair and all. He off to a great career in medicine (chief psychiatry resident at Massachussetts General) before he became a policy adviser to the Carter administration and then later a speechwriter for Mondale, which pushed him towards political commentary. A life well-lived.
- slavik81 8y ago
  > he broke his neck in a swimming pool This seems to be an understated danger. Whenever I hear about a young person confined to a wheelchair, it seems as likely as not that their mistake was diving headfirst into unexpectedly shallow water.
  - danschumann 8y ago
    My old college neighbor did the same thing, drunk at a 3rd friends wedding. He's in a wheelchair now. One more thing a parent has to stress.
cjensen 8y ago
I'm far less progressive than most HN commenters. For me, his columns were well-written and well-reasoned. I disagreed with half of them. What I liked most is that he made me think.
- robg 8y ago
  Sadly many folks have forgotten that the point of opinion writing is exactly to make us think, whether we disagree with their conclusions or not.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - smt88 8y ago
    I honestly think that's giving most publications too much credit. Many opinion pieces seem intended to provoke outrage, much like Facebook's much-maligned newsfeed algorithms.
    - DanielBMarkham 8y ago
      That's quite recent. Instant feedback, starting with the 24-hour news cycle and ending with social media clicks, brought on the bomb-throwers. In the 80s and 90s it was not unusual to pick up the paper and read an informed, cogent, well-reasoned essay about some topic that few readers might be interested in (and most might disagree with). All that's gone now, however. It's all just clan-based emotion-driven click-bait and grenade-throwing now. I said I scan a ton of commentary. It used to be (ten years or more ago) that the majority would be, well, opinion pieces. Now only 5-10% or so are actually opinion pieces. Most of the time it's just cheerleading to people with more and more invective about things the audience already agrees with. There's really little value to be had.
  - iron0013 8y ago
    Ha, wait, what? Opinion pieces don't exist simply as a public service to help readers get the ol' brain juices flowing! They are outlets for rhetoric, striving to convince the reader--and often to call them to action. For this reason, opinion pieces have a moral valence! An opinion piece which competently and cleverly convinces its audience that good is bad and wrong is right is a deeply unethical thing. And Krauthammer's entire career was spent doing exactly this.
bhouston 8y ago
Hmm... it is unfortunate. I always remember him for pushing super hard for the invasion of Iraq and thus partially responsible for the deaths of 100,000s at least and also more than $T of funds used for that war: "Time is running short. Saddam has weapons of mass destruction. He is working on nuclear weapons. And he has every incentive to pass them on to terrorists who will use them against us." From: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/2002/04/19/we-cant-blow-it-again/79cca890-0bea-4e2d-ba8b-3787989d87cf/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.79f457320126 https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/2002/04/19/w...
- Nimitz14 8y ago
  It's really astonishing how many liberals in the west will defend the middle-east's version of Hitler. Go and tell an Iraqi Kurd it would have been better to leave Iraq under Saddam's rule. Also so convenient to absolve any of the half dozen other actors involved in the conflict of any blame. The deaths are all Bush, Wolfowitz's and so on fault (now also Krauthammer's according to you). Things are definitely not as simple as that.
  - IOT_Apprentice 8y ago
    How many liberals? Convenient that the US propped Saddam up and provided him with chemical weapons for use against Iran and his own people. When it was no longer in Bush's interest he was toppled and then the provisional regime bungled the rebuilding of the infrastructure that the coalition destroyed, by putting in incompetent political cronies and party loyalists in charge of reconstruction. Conservatives invaded and destroyed the country and were so outrageously ignorant of the society, and breathtakingly stupid about fixing what they broke. Go and tell ANY Kurd how Turkey, Syria and Iran want no Kurdish state and will grind the Kurds down to prevent it. Then answer for how well the US will support the Kurds given Trump's love affair with Erdogan.
  - bhouston 8y ago
    If the war was promoted based on facts and logic, it would have been different. I was not against the first Iraq war nor against the Afghanistan war -- those were straight forward and not based on lies. The Afghanistan war didn't go much better than the Iraq war either, thus it isn't about the after effects. The Iraq war was sold to the public based on lies and Charles Krauthammer was one of those key promoters pushing those lies. For a good segment of the population at the time it was very obvious this was being done.
DanielBMarkham 8y ago
His work will be missed. I regularly scan opinion columns from people all over the political spectrum. I enjoy reading well-reasoned essays whether I agree with them or not. Krauthammer always provided well-reasoned essays. Whatever the issue, if the public got too far out ahead of it, either for or against, Charles was quick with a "Harumpphh" and a clever one-liner to point out that we should be more circumspect. I stopped watching cable TV news years ago. Charles Krauthammer is one of a few commentators that I missed watching on a regular basis. He was a grumpy old uncle who had been around the block a time or two and was going to set me clear on how to think about some issue. Most of the time I just ignored him, but it was fun having him around anyway. The world will be a poorer place without his work.
- iron0013 8y ago
  I agree, "harumphs" and clever one-liners from grumpy old uncles are really what our national discourse needs a lot more of. The world will truly be a poorer place without this torture advocate and war monger.
  - DanielBMarkham 8y ago
    The world is always a poorer place without people with minority opinions, no matter how immoral or heinous. Separate your politics from your rational mind. Freedom of speech means people making well-reasoned essays for things you might find horrible. That's the entire point, peaceful persuasion through reason and civil discourse. And if it were only things we found comfortable, we would stagnate as a species. Running around with your head on fire in a moral panic constantly doesn't accomplish much for your side -- and it makes for horrible public policy. We should mourn the loss of any civil person who makes a reasoned and rational case for anything. Even if they are wrong, they raise a new generation on understanding why they are wrong and being able to think their way through the issues. In fact, the people who are the most wrong -- as long as they are civil, rational, and make well-reasoned arguments -- are the most valuable protector of a free and moral society that we have. I swear I'm getting an inflatable copy of "On Liberty" and start beating people over the head with it. Western society went over this ground 200 years ago. Nothing has changed since then.
francisofascii 8y ago
My most remembered opinion piece by him was 'Raise the gas tax. A lot' Quite the opposite to most conservative energy policies. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/charles-krauthammer-raise-the-gas-tax-a-lot/2015/01/08/5b4b407c-976f-11e4-aabd-d0b93ff613d5_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/charles-krauthammer-...
zb 8y ago
I'll always remember Krauthammer as an enthusiastic advocate for torture - not just after the fact (to defend his neocon allies who had actually carried it out), but before it too. He put torture on the agenda when nobody else was talking about it. It's a shame that he's dying, because he still seems quite pleased with himself about all the damage he's done to human civilisation.
- pen2l 8y ago
  I think particularly at _this_ time, when he is writing his good bye, this is the time to apply the principle of charity, this is the time to remember the good things he's done, and not the bad. Remember that he's one of the guys consistently disagreeing with Trump (which is still rare amongst republicans).
  - ravenscrow 8y ago
    > this is the time to apply the principle of charity, this is the time to remember the good things he's done, and not the bad. It's silly to ignore the war crimes and the deaths of hundreds of thousands just because a war criminal is dying. > Remember that he's one of the guys consistently disagreeing with Trump (which is still rare amongst republicans). Rare? The entire republican establishment has come out against Trump - mccain, graham, romney, etc. And krauthammer doesn't consistently disagree with trump. He supported trump's illegal attacks on syria.
    - CWuestefeld 8y ago
      Elsewhere you said The point of an opinion piece is to lie, cajole, trick, etc people into accepting your opinion or viewpoint. It seems you may be doing that right now. You're calling Krauthammer a war criminal, which is patently false. He may be wrong-headed, but since he never actually acted in the war, never served as an agent of the government, it's flat-out false to refer to him as a "war criminal".
      - ravenscrow 8y ago
harikb 8y ago
Recent turmoils in the US and the World in general, has me wonder about a different aspect of this. For those who don't like the current state of affairs in the world (Trump, Brexit, "populist" movements everywhere), it is awful to leave from this world not knowing what will happen to your family and friends. The scene from "The Matrix, not like this..." is what comes to my mind.
sctb 8y ago
Commenters: if you won't resist the temptation to rehash stale political controversy out of respect for a human person, then please resist because it's dreadfully tedious and obviously against the guidelines. > Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

85 points by abhisuri97 8y ago

kbwt 8y ago

OT: Is asking for money to opt out of tracking and personalized ads actually GDPR-compliant?

Matticus_Rex 8y ago
That's being debated in the privacy community as "consent-or-pay." The short answer is that we don't actually know. There are arguments on each side, and I tend to think (a) the plain reading of the law suggests no and (b) for a number of reasons, regulators will probably decide to rule that it's okay, but the reasoning that gets me there is pretty complicated.
- tjoff 8y ago
  Do you have any links to such discussions? I would have thought it would be a clear cut no. Also 50% price increase for no ads and tracking is mind boggling, scum of the earth.
  - Matticus_Rex 8y ago
    All the stuff I've seen has been on listservs, sorry. Bundling consent inside a contract is prohibited, but the theory is that by providing a paid option (which wouldn't operate under the consent basis) OR essentially a free version if you allow them to process your data, they come out from under the bundling problem. It's questionable, certainly, but the supervisory authorities could go either way with it. They'll be under pressure to allow it, as without that, WaPo and other companies with similar models will likely find it cost-prohibitive to allow EU citizens to have a free option and will paywall it entirely for them.
    - tjoff 8y ago
      Thanks, that seems to be quite on collision course with the intent of the law (in my opinion). >... WaPo and other companies with similar models will likely find it cost-prohibitive to allow EU citizens to have a free option and will paywall it entirely for them. I think that would be preferable. We need more incentive to be able to create decent alternatives, as it is now it seems no one can be bothered.
      - Matticus_Rex 8y ago
        Given that news outlets are struggling to stay alive, I think we are likely to see few alternatives spring up. If a paper needs a marginal $8/subscriber to stay afloat, and they make $2.50/user from tracking/etc, we likely see a model where subscriptions cost $6 with tracking and $9 without. Obviously we don't know the exact numbers, but this is hardly inconceivable -- we know for a fact these companies are mostly losing money as it is.
        tjoff 8y ago
        With decent alternatives I meant alternatives to ads+tracking, which obviously isn't working out despite ruining the internet. Few people would accept ads if they could pay the pennies that could ever be hoped to be extracted from ad exposure. The cost to the user are substantially worse than the gains at the other end.
- jpfed 8y ago
  "Consent or pay" sounds so hilariously wrongheaded on its face. I'm imagining someone using that approach in literally any other aspect of their lives and seeing how well it flies.
  - Matticus_Rex 8y ago
    Well, in most other aspects of our lives, incentivized consent is allowed (and in fact it one of the foundations of contract theory). The GDPR has effectively disallowed it, which is one of the provisions here that actually reduces consumer autonomy rather than increasing it. The GDPR is going to make the internet a more expensive place, whether you think it's a good thing overall or not.

beeftime 8y ago

He spent his life shilling for hate, war, and the most vile excesses of capitalism good riddance, imo.

danschumann 8y ago

After hearing the news, I found out he's actually been in a wheelchair since college, when he broke his neck in a swimming pool, and he doesn't have much use of his arms. His story is pretty courageous from that stand point.

ygarsoxa 8y ago
Yes, to finish medical school after something like that is pretty amazing!
stvswn 8y ago
He did a lot in his life, wheelchair and all. He off to a great career in medicine (chief psychiatry resident at Massachussetts General) before he became a policy adviser to the Carter administration and then later a speechwriter for Mondale, which pushed him towards political commentary. A life well-lived.
slavik81 8y ago
> he broke his neck in a swimming pool This seems to be an understated danger. Whenever I hear about a young person confined to a wheelchair, it seems as likely as not that their mistake was diving headfirst into unexpectedly shallow water.
- danschumann 8y ago
  My old college neighbor did the same thing, drunk at a 3rd friends wedding. He's in a wheelchair now. One more thing a parent has to stress.

cjensen 8y ago

I'm far less progressive than most HN commenters. For me, his columns were well-written and well-reasoned. I disagreed with half of them. What I liked most is that he made me think.

robg 8y ago
Sadly many folks have forgotten that the point of opinion writing is exactly to make us think, whether we disagree with their conclusions or not.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- smt88 8y ago
  I honestly think that's giving most publications too much credit. Many opinion pieces seem intended to provoke outrage, much like Facebook's much-maligned newsfeed algorithms.
  - DanielBMarkham 8y ago
    That's quite recent. Instant feedback, starting with the 24-hour news cycle and ending with social media clicks, brought on the bomb-throwers. In the 80s and 90s it was not unusual to pick up the paper and read an informed, cogent, well-reasoned essay about some topic that few readers might be interested in (and most might disagree with). All that's gone now, however. It's all just clan-based emotion-driven click-bait and grenade-throwing now. I said I scan a ton of commentary. It used to be (ten years or more ago) that the majority would be, well, opinion pieces. Now only 5-10% or so are actually opinion pieces. Most of the time it's just cheerleading to people with more and more invective about things the audience already agrees with. There's really little value to be had.
- iron0013 8y ago
  Ha, wait, what? Opinion pieces don't exist simply as a public service to help readers get the ol' brain juices flowing! They are outlets for rhetoric, striving to convince the reader--and often to call them to action. For this reason, opinion pieces have a moral valence! An opinion piece which competently and cleverly convinces its audience that good is bad and wrong is right is a deeply unethical thing. And Krauthammer's entire career was spent doing exactly this.

bhouston 8y ago

Hmm... it is unfortunate. I always remember him for pushing super hard for the invasion of Iraq and thus partially responsible for the deaths of 100,000s at least and also more than $T of funds used for that war: "Time is running short. Saddam has weapons of mass destruction. He is working on nuclear weapons. And he has every incentive to pass them on to terrorists who will use them against us." From: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/2002/04/19/we-cant-blow-it-again/79cca890-0bea-4e2d-ba8b-3787989d87cf/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.79f457320126 https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/2002/04/19/w...

Nimitz14 8y ago
It's really astonishing how many liberals in the west will defend the middle-east's version of Hitler. Go and tell an Iraqi Kurd it would have been better to leave Iraq under Saddam's rule. Also so convenient to absolve any of the half dozen other actors involved in the conflict of any blame. The deaths are all Bush, Wolfowitz's and so on fault (now also Krauthammer's according to you). Things are definitely not as simple as that.
- IOT_Apprentice 8y ago
  How many liberals? Convenient that the US propped Saddam up and provided him with chemical weapons for use against Iran and his own people. When it was no longer in Bush's interest he was toppled and then the provisional regime bungled the rebuilding of the infrastructure that the coalition destroyed, by putting in incompetent political cronies and party loyalists in charge of reconstruction. Conservatives invaded and destroyed the country and were so outrageously ignorant of the society, and breathtakingly stupid about fixing what they broke. Go and tell ANY Kurd how Turkey, Syria and Iran want no Kurdish state and will grind the Kurds down to prevent it. Then answer for how well the US will support the Kurds given Trump's love affair with Erdogan.
- bhouston 8y ago
  If the war was promoted based on facts and logic, it would have been different. I was not against the first Iraq war nor against the Afghanistan war -- those were straight forward and not based on lies. The Afghanistan war didn't go much better than the Iraq war either, thus it isn't about the after effects. The Iraq war was sold to the public based on lies and Charles Krauthammer was one of those key promoters pushing those lies. For a good segment of the population at the time it was very obvious this was being done.

DanielBMarkham 8y ago

His work will be missed. I regularly scan opinion columns from people all over the political spectrum. I enjoy reading well-reasoned essays whether I agree with them or not. Krauthammer always provided well-reasoned essays. Whatever the issue, if the public got too far out ahead of it, either for or against, Charles was quick with a "Harumpphh" and a clever one-liner to point out that we should be more circumspect. I stopped watching cable TV news years ago. Charles Krauthammer is one of a few commentators that I missed watching on a regular basis. He was a grumpy old uncle who had been around the block a time or two and was going to set me clear on how to think about some issue. Most of the time I just ignored him, but it was fun having him around anyway. The world will be a poorer place without his work.

iron0013 8y ago
I agree, "harumphs" and clever one-liners from grumpy old uncles are really what our national discourse needs a lot more of. The world will truly be a poorer place without this torture advocate and war monger.
- DanielBMarkham 8y ago
  The world is always a poorer place without people with minority opinions, no matter how immoral or heinous. Separate your politics from your rational mind. Freedom of speech means people making well-reasoned essays for things you might find horrible. That's the entire point, peaceful persuasion through reason and civil discourse. And if it were only things we found comfortable, we would stagnate as a species. Running around with your head on fire in a moral panic constantly doesn't accomplish much for your side -- and it makes for horrible public policy. We should mourn the loss of any civil person who makes a reasoned and rational case for anything. Even if they are wrong, they raise a new generation on understanding why they are wrong and being able to think their way through the issues. In fact, the people who are the most wrong -- as long as they are civil, rational, and make well-reasoned arguments -- are the most valuable protector of a free and moral society that we have. I swear I'm getting an inflatable copy of "On Liberty" and start beating people over the head with it. Western society went over this ground 200 years ago. Nothing has changed since then.

francisofascii 8y ago

My most remembered opinion piece by him was 'Raise the gas tax. A lot' Quite the opposite to most conservative energy policies. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/charles-krauthammer-raise-the-gas-tax-a-lot/2015/01/08/5b4b407c-976f-11e4-aabd-d0b93ff613d5_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/charles-krauthammer-...

zb 8y ago

I'll always remember Krauthammer as an enthusiastic advocate for torture - not just after the fact (to defend his neocon allies who had actually carried it out), but before it too. He put torture on the agenda when nobody else was talking about it. It's a shame that he's dying, because he still seems quite pleased with himself about all the damage he's done to human civilisation.

pen2l 8y ago
I think particularly at _this_ time, when he is writing his good bye, this is the time to apply the principle of charity, this is the time to remember the good things he's done, and not the bad. Remember that he's one of the guys consistently disagreeing with Trump (which is still rare amongst republicans).
- ravenscrow 8y ago
  > this is the time to apply the principle of charity, this is the time to remember the good things he's done, and not the bad. It's silly to ignore the war crimes and the deaths of hundreds of thousands just because a war criminal is dying. > Remember that he's one of the guys consistently disagreeing with Trump (which is still rare amongst republicans). Rare? The entire republican establishment has come out against Trump - mccain, graham, romney, etc. And krauthammer doesn't consistently disagree with trump. He supported trump's illegal attacks on syria.
  - CWuestefeld 8y ago
    Elsewhere you said The point of an opinion piece is to lie, cajole, trick, etc people into accepting your opinion or viewpoint. It seems you may be doing that right now. You're calling Krauthammer a war criminal, which is patently false. He may be wrong-headed, but since he never actually acted in the war, never served as an agent of the government, it's flat-out false to refer to him as a "war criminal".
    - ravenscrow 8y ago

harikb 8y ago

Recent turmoils in the US and the World in general, has me wonder about a different aspect of this. For those who don't like the current state of affairs in the world (Trump, Brexit, "populist" movements everywhere), it is awful to leave from this world not knowing what will happen to your family and friends. The scene from "The Matrix, not like this..." is what comes to my mind.

sctb 8y ago

Commenters: if you won't resist the temptation to rehash stale political controversy out of respect for a human person, then please resist because it's dreadfully tedious and obviously against the guidelines. > Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html