4 ms·
Stallman: Thousands Dead, Millions Deprived of Liberties (2001)
- xlayn 17d agoEvery time "these type of people" are dismissed as lunatics, as extremist and alarmist, time comes back to prove they were right. I frankly dismissed the idea of "a group of extremely powerful and rich pedos" under a pizza store... and yes there were none under any pizza store.
- ekjhgkejhgk 17d agoStallman and "rich pedos" aren't even close in terms of lunacy. I never thought that Stallman's rants were far fetched at all.
- sroerick 17d agohttps://www.npr.org/2019/09/17/761718975/free-software-pioneer-quits-mit-over-his-comments-on-epstein-sex-trafficking-cas https://www.npr.org/2019/09/17/761718975/free-software-pione...
- F3nd0 17d agoHow is the link relevant to the topic at hand?
- ChickeNES 17d agoHow is RMS's connection/response to Epstein not relevant?
- F3nd0 17d agoThe topic seems to be warnings and predictions coming true even if they seem far-fetched at first. The linked article doesn’t talk about any warnings or predictions. It only recounts (in a way) how RMS, while discussing the topic of Epstein’s abuse, said some things which many people found offensive, leading to his resignation. I guess it is marginally relevant; it just seems odd to drop a marginally relevant link unaccompanied by further comment. Usually people seem to mention what brought it to mind, or which part they found particularly interesting.
- blagie 17d agoI think it's a good, analogous, contemporary example of how RMS tends to be misunderstood. In this context, his comments tend to be: a) Correct, if you read them precisely (which is how RMS writes -- precisely) b) Horrible, if you read them with the subtext implied in mainstream culture (which is how people read what RMS writes) That combination results in "with the terrorists" in 2001, "with Epstein" in 2026, and a lot of similar things in between. Coincidentally, it's highly unlikely Minsky did anything wrong. All the people thrown under the bus by MIT were either the people who acted ethically and came forward or, like Minsky, were dead. All the people who did unethical things didn't come forward, and are in the Epstein files. Not all the MIT folks in the Epstein files did unethical things, but many presumably did.... The MIT transparency report is worth reading in the light of the release. MIT had most of that information about its faculty at the time.
- beedeebeedee 17d ago> Coincidentally, it's highly unlikely Minsky did anything wrong. Virginia Giuffre said that she had sex with Minsky when she was 17 and he was 73. I think no matter how you look at it (even if she was technically above the age of consent in the jurisdiction of Epstein's island), it is still wrong and he absolutely should have known that. I am a big fan of Stallman's work and his views considering computer science and its role in society, but his views are not precise or correct in this matter.
- worik 16d ago> but his views are not precise or correct in this matter. The views he expressed re sexual assault were abhorrent I have huge respect for RMS. Being this wrong once shows the bad way (we) men of a certain age were raised. The idea that sexual assault must involve violence or the threat of violence is old, out of date, and at one point RMS held it along with society at large Times change, and as we get older we need to change with them.
- F3nd0 16d agoIn this instance, Stallman was arguing semantics. His long-term criticism [1] is that ‘sexual assault’ is being used to cover a wide range of wrongful actions, where a more nuanced terminology to distinguish between them would be more appropriate. That in itself doesn’t imply he finds any of those actions acceptable, only that he’d like them to have more specific names. He might not have picked a good time and place to share his terminological views, but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with them per se. [1] https://stallman.org/antiglossary.html#assault https://stallman.org/antiglossary.html#assault
- zrail 17d agoFrom the accounts I've read, RMS is a deeply unpleasant and problematic person. Doesn't mean he's wrong.
- F3nd0 17d agoBeing wrong, being malicious, being harmful, and being unpleasant are all mostly separate, but get mixed up occasionally.
- blagie 17d agoHe's deeply problematic in the same way as someone with autism, Tourette syndrome, echolalia, or OCD are problematic. He's not neurotypical. Once you deal with it, he stops being problematic. And the striking thing is Cassandra syndrome: Virtually everything he has said: a) Proves right, decades later b) Sounds crazy to most people, at the time
- EA-3167 17d agoDon’t throw other people under the bus to justify what a wretched person he is. Being autistic doesn’t make you defend pedophilia or any of the other unpleasantness he’s implicated in.
- teddyh 16d ago> defend pedophilia or any of the other unpleasantness he’s implicated in. Oh, well, time to link stuff again, I guess: • <https://stallmansupport.org/ https://stallmansupport.org/> • <https://sterling-archermedes.github.io/ https://sterling-archermedes.github.io/>
- hydrogen7800 17d agoEventually some of them will be right. Choosing which to heed without hindsight is the problem. Though in this case, Stallman was not a lone kook at the time.
- Avshalom 17d ago[flagged]
- ParentiSoundSys 17d ago> everything you know about Epstein and his circle was already public knowledge after his first conviction 20 years ago Complete nonsense, a lot of Epstein's deep ties to Silicon Valley and academia weren't even developed until after his conviction, and weren't reported to the public until much later. The more lurid takes on Epstein and his network/influence popularized by the QAnon psyop certainly did a lot to encourage everyone to look the other way, but the facts themselves were reported by a handful of responsible and even-keeled gumshoes in fringe/alt media until Julie Brown came along.
- thrance 17d agoYou were correct to dismiss pizza gate, as it was completely unfounded and pure right wing fantasy about satanist democrats eating babies in a basement. Now that we have an actual conspiracy involving the elites of the world in a child sex trafficking ring, the people previously pushing the pizza gate narrative are nowhere to be found. They can't accept that their guy was Epstein's best friend for decades and the second most cited name in the files (after Epstein himself). Haven't seen a single republican distance themselves from Trump because of his deep ties with Epstein.
- VCFundedGenYer 16d agoStallman is very problematic, a terrible person, and is the wrong one to deliver this message. It may be a correct message, but him delivering it makes it DOA.
- GMoromisato 17d agoJust to clarify because my own mental parser failed: He's not predicting that thousands will die because of mass surveillance--he's saying that the deaths of thousands in the 9/11 attacks are going to let the government deprive millions of their civil liberties.
- echelon_musk 17d ago[flagged]
- deleted 17d ago[deleted]
- globular-toast 16d agoI had to double check the date. I even saw 2001 in the title but I still think of every post-2000 date as "fairly recent" so didn't make the connection to 9/11.
- basisword 17d agoI've never been super alarmist about this stuff. But recently was looking back and it really is staggering the amount of simple freedoms we've lost in the last 25 years. Partly through government overreach for 'security' and partly through technology becoming so pervasive. It really feels like rules get added regularly, and none ever get removed. Things just get stricter. And with technology we add a layer of self/citizen policing of everything. The 'disallowed' but relatively innocent things we could get up to as kids/teenagers just 20 years ago kids today could only dream of.
- Fnoord 16d agoLost, and gained. Tor, Tails, Bitcoin, TLS each give freedom. These tools still exist, and still work, and there's a plethora of other tools, too. Something else: security.txt and ethical hacking took off, too. Patriot Act, Snowden revelations each made us lose freedoms. Yes, I'm aware of Trump's efforts in this regard, but GOP was rotten ever since Bush. Even before that, right-wing populism existed, too. But WWII was still too fresh for fascism to rise in the West. Also, law isn't very useful if it isn't applied. For example, copyright law regarding LLMs.
- 7e 16d agoAlso, several portions of the original Patriot Act have expired and were not renewed. Just like when Abraham Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus, wartime powers expand, and then contract in peacetime.
- quasse 16d agoAs someone who's lived fairly near the Canadian border for ~30 years, yup. It's hard to conceive that up until 2008 you could cross the border both ways without a passport. We treated them like the culturally and economically linked neighbors they are. Now it feels like a pointless, hostile interrogation in both directions.
- catlover76 16d ago[dead]
- iamnothere 17d agoRMS was correct, as usual. Of course he could not have predicted the additional 1 million deaths due to military action (and estimated 3.5 million more from subsequent effects) in the resulting Middle Eastern/Central Asian conflicts over the following years.
- boxed 17d ago[flagged]
- zardo 17d agoThe high infant death rates in Iraq prior to the global war on terror were also the result of US intervention (by liberals btw). https://www.newsweek.com/watch-madeleine-albright-saying-iraqi-kids-deaths-worth-it-resurfaces-1691193 https://www.newsweek.com/watch-madeleine-albright-saying-ira...
- deleted 17d ago[deleted]
- toyg 17d agoI'm sorry, since when George W. Bush and Donald Trump are "Western liberals"? Western, sure - liberals, the fuck.
- UncleSlacky 17d agoFrom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism : "Liberalism is a political and moral philosophy based on the rights of the individual, liberty, consent of the governed, political equality, right to private property, and equality before the law." Technically both major parties in the US are liberal parties, it's a "liberal democracy" where they both share a certain set of beliefs, though they may differ on the details. Only in the US is the word used as a slur by one party towards the other.
- _heimdall 17d ago
- maybewhenthesun 17d agost iGNUtius called it, amen. :-P
- aliasxneo 17d agoWrote some of my thoughts somewhat related to this recently [1]. I've simply concluded that its a matter of numbers: the more centralized data becomes the easier it is for the government to coerce access. If the government could obtain the data of a million citizens by coercing or engaging in law fare against one or two companies, it's much easier done. If they had to individually coerce, sue, or otherwise hack into those same million customers, it becomes a lot more expensive and difficult. It sucks that's the way it is, but that's why I think the new internet has to reverse the rules and make authorities more particular about who they track rather than just casting a dragnet across N major providers. [1]: https://dntls.substack.com/p/the-new-internet https://dntls.substack.com/p/the-new-internet
- ParentiSoundSys 17d agoAlong the same lines, "Welcome to the New and Improved Police State" by Dave McGowan, September 12 2001: https://centerforaninformedamerica.com/welcome-to-the-new-and-improved-police-state/ https://centerforaninformedamerica.com/welcome-to-the-new-an...
- jasonkhanlar 16d agoInformed? How about the 'Informed Trading' that was observed September 10, 2001? Yesterday I transcribed https://youtu.be/PrI8g3yHxAM https://youtu.be/PrI8g3yHxAM after having just found and learned about Marc Chesney.
- throwitaway222 17d ago[flagged]
- nemomarx 17d agoThe patriot act comes to mind. There are millions of people in the US, and we all gave up some level of privacy in our affairs, so it's straightforward.
- throwitaway222 16d agoThey say there is unlimited reconnaissance at the state level, but not once in my life did a wife or a friend or even an enemy of mine came up and said - I know you were at a bar last night. Shrug. What exactly was told to someone. What was found out? Pandemic now, We lost our ability to go into a fucking restaurant for a time.
- svidgen 17d agoWhoa ... ... Slashdot still exists?
- BeetleB 16d agoI'll make a confession: These days I find Slashdot to be much better curated than HN. Pretty much every day I find something worthwhile on Slashdot. I can't say the same for HN. Ironic given that I left Slashdot for HN so many years ago.
- em-bee 16d agoi was an active slashdot reader many years ago. i don't actually remember when/why/ or even where to i left. i guess it's worth taking a look back
- BeetleB 16d agoI probably left when CmdrTaco left.
- rpdillon 16d agoI've had the same uncomfortable revelation. I probably read Sloshdot for close to 20 years before dropping it exclusively for HN, but now I have it back in my RSS feed and it is consistently producing interesting articles that I would otherwise miss.
- marssaxman 16d agoNot only that, alterslash.org still exists.
- Thoreandan 17d agoHuh, small world, I'm the one who submitted that to Slashdot.
- nehal3m 16d agoCmdrTaco is a cool handle. :-)
- meerita 16d agoI never imagined how to pronounce it until now, "commander taco", isn't? I remember the old days of Slashdot all pools included CmdrTaco in one option.
- unicornops 16d agoCowboyNeal was the default poll response.
- meerita 16d agoOh yes!
- cisophrene 16d agoI think he meant he was Hobart the one that submitted the story. CmdrTaco is Rob Malda who use to run Slashdot and who created the post.
- nehal3m 16d agoAh, I see now. Thanks for educating me, it wasn't obvious at a passing glance.
- ryanisnan 16d ago> “Given that the human face recognition performed by the check-in agents did not keep the hijackers out, there is no reason to think that computer face recognition would help.” Even though I agree with the premise of the essay, this is absurdly false today. Computers are really good at this type of thing now, scarily so.
- thomassmith65 16d agoAgreed. In fact, the ubiquity and effectiveness of surveillance technology today makes Stallman's "massive surveillance" argument seem stale. These days, government surveillance is just a drop in the bucket. Surveillance by private companies and private citizens dwarfs it.
- edoceo 16d agoEverytime through TSA they cannot match me to my ID with computer photo thing. After three/four tries they call someone over, who looks at my ID, my face and then says "seems OK". I don't think computers are good at it.
- ChrisArchitect 16d agoalt link: https://www.stallman.org/millions.html https://www.stallman.org/millions.html Some previous discussion: 2013 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5839549 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5839549
- 7e 16d agoStallman also wrote that a Jeffrey Epstein victim may have been “entirely willing.” Not a really a great source for anything. If you must cult, cult someone else please.
- account42 16d agoThis is in fact not what he wrote. Perhaps you should read what the man wrote rather than what his detractors say he wrote before you condemn him.
- lixtra 16d agoFor the interested. According to this source[1], RMS wrote: > plausible scenario is that she presented herself to him as entirely willing [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20190913103059/https://medium.com/@selamie/remove-richard-stallman-fec6ec210794 https://web.archive.org/web/20190913103059/https://medium.co...
- firmretention 16d agoI can't take RMS seriously any more after he supported Covid vaccine mandates. A closed source printer driver is evil, but forcing people to get a proprietary novel medical treatment from a giant corporation that stands to profit immensely from it is A-OK? His conception of freedom only extends to what HE wishes to be able to do, and whenever there's a conflict with that, he wins. Typical behavior from an extremist. Source: https://www.stallman.org/notes/2021-jul-oct.html https://www.stallman.org/notes/2021-jul-oct.html "Meanwhile, I think that the proposed vaccine mandates for federal workers, military personnel, medical personnel and the work force of some businesses will help. They are a small fraction of the population, but in the delusional states they will help break through the anti-vax pressure." "Addressing those who call [vaccine mandates] attacks on personal freedom, one doctor said that "people also have a right to be able to go to work and not get infected and not get sick and not die." Hear, hear. We all have a duty to get vaccinated, except for the small fraction that medically can't do it."
- ikrenji 16d agothis post is giving "the 1800s called, they want their smallpox victims back" energy. the entire scientific community agreed covid vaccines are safe, but I suppose you did your own research
- orion7 15d agoYes. He also regularly shares news articles from five eyes propaganda outlets like the Guardian attacking Russia, Iran, and the Chinese on social media. It's weird to see him fall for and amplify that garbage