10 ms·

Please stop. Your comments here are glib, contemptuous and entirely unhelpful.

hyperventilator 13y ago
Stallman has said as much. But if he said the US are Nazis that would be helpful, right?
jrockway 13y ago
Just because I'm not hysterical about the TSA doesn't mean I can't comment here. When you travel by air, you are cramming yourself into a small metal tube with 300 other people. The other 299 people want everyone there to be checked for weapons, so the government does this. If you want to be able to travel without being screened, there are tons of options available to you. But the reality is, you have no right in the US to travel, and the government can set whatever standards they want for public spaces. There are plenty of options available for traveling without being screened. They cost more than the mainstream ones. (Buy your own plane and see how many TSA checkpoints you go through.) But just because something is expensive doesn't mean that you are being deprived by the government of some right. If you want to fight the TSA, shouting "police state" just makes you look stupid. You should figure out how to examine the effectiveness of the TSA numerically, and explain that to your elected representatives. Has the TSA slowed the growth of the air travel industry? Are there racist patterns in the TSA's profiling? If you can prove something with data, people will listen. But whining about the end of the world on a website nobody reads isn't going to solve any problems. It just makes you look like an out-of-touch anti-authoritarian teenager. Look: I really believe that you can get around the TSA and that it isn't a police state. This is not the Holocaust. This is not the end of the world. It's just an inconvenience you have to pay to get a $200 round-the-world flight.
- anu_gupta 13y ago
  Genuinely hope you get hellbanned for this. If the HN moderators apply the same standards to you as they do to everyone else you should be.
  - jessaustin 13y ago
    What, because of the cursing? [EDIT: which has now been edited out; too bad, I always appreciate a sincere "Fuck you!"] Let's not be censorious. I can think of some hellbanned who didn't obviously deserve it, but most of the ones I've seen did obviously deserve it. Are you seriously going to argue that jrockway is as bad as the guy who posts all his personal revelations from the Lord? [EDIT: I'm talking about the richly-deserving-of-his-hellban "losethos": that guy's ramblings are always worth a drag of the trackball.] And like jrockway said, he is somehow on the leader board. That probably ought to mean something.
    - mindcrime 13y ago
      I'm not going to jump on the "hellban jrockway" bandwagon, but I will say that I don't see any reason that being on the leaderboard should net anyone special treatment. The "board" shows history... what you did in the past doesn't change the effect or merit of your current behavior. By analogy - should someone automatically be pardoned for a crime they commit today (let's go extreme and say murder), because they had displayed good behavior in the past? All of this said, I am a bit surprised by some of jrockway's comments in this thread, given his posting history. Almost enough to wonder if someone else has taken control of his account.
    - anu_gupta 13y ago
      The fact that he's on the leaderboard means precisely nothing except to indicate he's on the leaderboard. Plenty of other people have been banned for saying "Fuck you" on here, and it's interesting that jrockway silently edited his comment to remove his swearing at someone else on here, as well as removing his invitation to check that he's a huge karma accumulator - which he seems to think actually means something. Anyway, I"m not a mod, just someone who's a bit tired of one set of people being treated differently.
    - nitrogen 13y ago
      [EDIT: I'm talking about the richly-deserving-of-his-hellban "losethos": that guy's ramblings are always worth a drag of the trackball.] losethos is a talented programmer with schizophrenia. The reason his posts deserve to be killed is because they are 98% content free and occasionally disturbed, paranoid, and racist, hallmarks of schizophrenia. But losethos the person, as a human being in distress, doesn't deserve any of that.
- jessaustin 13y ago
  news.ycombinator.com/leaders may prove enlightening. [EDIT: he really did make this argument, but it seems to have disappeared.] What happened? Did you have a stroke? Are you actually jrockway's brother-in-law, "borrowing" his handle?
  - jrockway 13y ago
    I don't understand why everyone is so outraged that I don't think the US is a police state. "Airport security is horrible", so I say to take the train. Have you ever taken the train? The security is not that bad. But instead, I get downvoted to -4 and people accuse me of having a stroke. All I can say is that the hysteria is at an amazingly-high level. I am not sure why I even read TSA-related articles anymore.
    - eropple 13y ago
      In many, many cases, trains are simply infeasible. Family across the country? Budget a week just to get there to visit them, with all that awesome plentiful vacation time American companies are known for? Come on. Modern life makes flying necessary for a ton of people. They have to fly or they don't go. That is de facto control of your travel: risk assault and detention if you're brown. Control of your travel is a major aspect of every modern authoritarian state, and that's why people are alarmed. I think the reason people are incredulous because your claims are blinkered. You're a sharp dude. I like most of your posts. But you are just not aggressively shortsighted enough to be excusing this with a straight face. And your argumentum ad leaderboardum sucked transcendentally. You are totally, totally better than that.
    - eliasmacpherson 13y ago
      Take the bus? Drive? as a suggestion to avoid the TSA is not valid, I am not sure whether you are aware of this, by the way train travel is covered too: http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2012/02/29/the-tsa-is-coming-to-a-highway-near-you/print/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2012/02/29/the-tsa-is-c... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visible_Intermodal_Prevention_and_Response_team https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visible_Intermodal_Prevention_... (EDIT: I misquoted you from memory)
- Someone 13y ago
  "But the reality is, you have no right in the US to travel" http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/ http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/, article 13.1: "Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state." "and the government can set whatever standards they want for public spaces" So, in your opinion, a government can decree that whites can't travel first class in planes, or that women must wear a burkha on the street? For me, all that hyperbole makes it hard to see what value your arguments have.
  - jrockway 13y ago
    No offense, but you're the one misinterpreting what I wrote with hyperbole. Show me the line of the Constitution that lets you travel by air.
    - moocowduckquack 13y ago
      Funnily enough, they didn't bother dealing with legal references to air travel before planes were invented. You will also notice that they made no references to space travel either, or computers.
      - bobbydavid 13y ago
        but they don't mention horses either. the method of travel is irrelevant.
        moocowduckquack 13y ago
        Really? Well, I suppose it worked for Hannibal across the Alps...
    - smtddr 13y ago
      I can't believe what I'm reading from jrockway, a Google employee whose past comments seem very level-headed, in these threads. I _REALLY HOPE_ your account has been hijacked because if a person like you really holds these opinions then I must be a very, very horrible judge of character. Makes me wonder about all the people around me that I think are on the same wave-length when it comes to the whole terrorism & FUD thing. I feel betrayed somehow. If this is really you then it shows just how far & deep the terrorism-FUD has reached. Or maybe it's just me who had no idea until now, just how fearful the american public has become. Reading these comments from you is almost like imagining Stephen Colbert saying this stuff. I'd just assume his twitter account was hacked or it was April fool's.
- yarou 13y ago
  "This is not the Holocaust." yet. "This is not the end of the world." yet. I'm sure many Germans and Italians (or any society on the brink of autocratic rule) felt as you do now. But the end result is strikingly similar. Small erosion of liberties leads to escalation until it becomes the status quo of not having those liberties in the first place. Funny how this world works, labor is restricted yet capital can flow freely. Smith and Ricardo must be turning in their graves.
  - thomasz 13y ago
    > "This is not the Holocaust." yet. Get some perspective.
  - xtracto 13y ago
    Indeed. A lot of the dismissers should have a walk through the Holocaust Memorial ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memorial_to_the_Murdered_Jews_of_Europe http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memorial_to_the_Murdered_Jews_o... ) to "understand" how does it feel to enter an autocratic regime: When you just start walking, everything seems OK, columns all look the same height and you can easily see the other side. But suddenly you are in the middle of a huge maze with very tall walls, which does not seem to have an end in sight. People won't realize the problem until it is too late.

Stallman has said as much. But if he said the US are Nazis that would be helpful, right?

Just because I'm not hysterical about the TSA doesn't mean I can't comment here. When you travel by air, you are cramming yourself into a small metal tube with 300 other people. The other 299 people want everyone there to be checked for weapons, so the government does this. If you want to be able to travel without being screened, there are tons of options available to you. But the reality is, you have no right in the US to travel, and the government can set whatever standards they want for public spaces. There are plenty of options available for traveling without being screened. They cost more than the mainstream ones. (Buy your own plane and see how many TSA checkpoints you go through.) But just because something is expensive doesn't mean that you are being deprived by the government of some right. If you want to fight the TSA, shouting "police state" just makes you look stupid. You should figure out how to examine the effectiveness of the TSA numerically, and explain that to your elected representatives. Has the TSA slowed the growth of the air travel industry? Are there racist patterns in the TSA's profiling? If you can prove something with data, people will listen. But whining about the end of the world on a website nobody reads isn't going to solve any problems. It just makes you look like an out-of-touch anti-authoritarian teenager. Look: I really believe that you can get around the TSA and that it isn't a police state. This is not the Holocaust. This is not the end of the world. It's just an inconvenience you have to pay to get a $200 round-the-world flight.

anu_gupta 13y ago
Genuinely hope you get hellbanned for this. If the HN moderators apply the same standards to you as they do to everyone else you should be.
- jessaustin 13y ago
  What, because of the cursing? [EDIT: which has now been edited out; too bad, I always appreciate a sincere "Fuck you!"] Let's not be censorious. I can think of some hellbanned who didn't obviously deserve it, but most of the ones I've seen did obviously deserve it. Are you seriously going to argue that jrockway is as bad as the guy who posts all his personal revelations from the Lord? [EDIT: I'm talking about the richly-deserving-of-his-hellban "losethos": that guy's ramblings are always worth a drag of the trackball.] And like jrockway said, he is somehow on the leader board. That probably ought to mean something.
  - mindcrime 13y ago
    I'm not going to jump on the "hellban jrockway" bandwagon, but I will say that I don't see any reason that being on the leaderboard should net anyone special treatment. The "board" shows history... what you did in the past doesn't change the effect or merit of your current behavior. By analogy - should someone automatically be pardoned for a crime they commit today (let's go extreme and say murder), because they had displayed good behavior in the past? All of this said, I am a bit surprised by some of jrockway's comments in this thread, given his posting history. Almost enough to wonder if someone else has taken control of his account.
  - anu_gupta 13y ago
    The fact that he's on the leaderboard means precisely nothing except to indicate he's on the leaderboard. Plenty of other people have been banned for saying "Fuck you" on here, and it's interesting that jrockway silently edited his comment to remove his swearing at someone else on here, as well as removing his invitation to check that he's a huge karma accumulator - which he seems to think actually means something. Anyway, I"m not a mod, just someone who's a bit tired of one set of people being treated differently.
  - nitrogen 13y ago
    [EDIT: I'm talking about the richly-deserving-of-his-hellban "losethos": that guy's ramblings are always worth a drag of the trackball.] losethos is a talented programmer with schizophrenia. The reason his posts deserve to be killed is because they are 98% content free and occasionally disturbed, paranoid, and racist, hallmarks of schizophrenia. But losethos the person, as a human being in distress, doesn't deserve any of that.
jessaustin 13y ago
news.ycombinator.com/leaders may prove enlightening. [EDIT: he really did make this argument, but it seems to have disappeared.] What happened? Did you have a stroke? Are you actually jrockway's brother-in-law, "borrowing" his handle?
- jrockway 13y ago
  I don't understand why everyone is so outraged that I don't think the US is a police state. "Airport security is horrible", so I say to take the train. Have you ever taken the train? The security is not that bad. But instead, I get downvoted to -4 and people accuse me of having a stroke. All I can say is that the hysteria is at an amazingly-high level. I am not sure why I even read TSA-related articles anymore.
  - eropple 13y ago
    In many, many cases, trains are simply infeasible. Family across the country? Budget a week just to get there to visit them, with all that awesome plentiful vacation time American companies are known for? Come on. Modern life makes flying necessary for a ton of people. They have to fly or they don't go. That is de facto control of your travel: risk assault and detention if you're brown. Control of your travel is a major aspect of every modern authoritarian state, and that's why people are alarmed. I think the reason people are incredulous because your claims are blinkered. You're a sharp dude. I like most of your posts. But you are just not aggressively shortsighted enough to be excusing this with a straight face. And your argumentum ad leaderboardum sucked transcendentally. You are totally, totally better than that.
  - eliasmacpherson 13y ago
    Take the bus? Drive? as a suggestion to avoid the TSA is not valid, I am not sure whether you are aware of this, by the way train travel is covered too: http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2012/02/29/the-tsa-is-coming-to-a-highway-near-you/print/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2012/02/29/the-tsa-is-c... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visible_Intermodal_Prevention_and_Response_team https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visible_Intermodal_Prevention_... (EDIT: I misquoted you from memory)
Someone 13y ago
"But the reality is, you have no right in the US to travel" http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/ http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/, article 13.1: "Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state." "and the government can set whatever standards they want for public spaces" So, in your opinion, a government can decree that whites can't travel first class in planes, or that women must wear a burkha on the street? For me, all that hyperbole makes it hard to see what value your arguments have.
- jrockway 13y ago
  No offense, but you're the one misinterpreting what I wrote with hyperbole. Show me the line of the Constitution that lets you travel by air.
  - moocowduckquack 13y ago
    Funnily enough, they didn't bother dealing with legal references to air travel before planes were invented. You will also notice that they made no references to space travel either, or computers.
    - bobbydavid 13y ago
      but they don't mention horses either. the method of travel is irrelevant.
      - moocowduckquack 13y ago
        Really? Well, I suppose it worked for Hannibal across the Alps...
  - smtddr 13y ago
    I can't believe what I'm reading from jrockway, a Google employee whose past comments seem very level-headed, in these threads. I _REALLY HOPE_ your account has been hijacked because if a person like you really holds these opinions then I must be a very, very horrible judge of character. Makes me wonder about all the people around me that I think are on the same wave-length when it comes to the whole terrorism & FUD thing. I feel betrayed somehow. If this is really you then it shows just how far & deep the terrorism-FUD has reached. Or maybe it's just me who had no idea until now, just how fearful the american public has become. Reading these comments from you is almost like imagining Stephen Colbert saying this stuff. I'd just assume his twitter account was hacked or it was April fool's.
yarou 13y ago
"This is not the Holocaust." yet. "This is not the end of the world." yet. I'm sure many Germans and Italians (or any society on the brink of autocratic rule) felt as you do now. But the end result is strikingly similar. Small erosion of liberties leads to escalation until it becomes the status quo of not having those liberties in the first place. Funny how this world works, labor is restricted yet capital can flow freely. Smith and Ricardo must be turning in their graves.
- thomasz 13y ago
  > "This is not the Holocaust." yet. Get some perspective.
- xtracto 13y ago
  Indeed. A lot of the dismissers should have a walk through the Holocaust Memorial ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memorial_to_the_Murdered_Jews_of_Europe http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memorial_to_the_Murdered_Jews_o... ) to "understand" how does it feel to enter an autocratic regime: When you just start walking, everything seems OK, columns all look the same height and you can easily see the other side. But suddenly you are in the middle of a huge maze with very tall walls, which does not seem to have an end in sight. People won't realize the problem until it is too late.