deong

20 ms·

121.
by deong 9y ago
I wasn't suggesting I had one. I'm just pointing out that SuperPACs get around pretty much any meaningful prior attempts at regulating campaign contributions. I don't think there is an alternative. What is needed in order t
122.
by deong 9y ago
They're implemented, but the rise of the SuperPAC after Citizens United more or less makes the regulations pointless. I can't contribute more than $2700 to a campaign, but I can contribute $27,000,000 to a PAC that requires only t
123.
by deong 9y ago
And if you don't have an agreement, you have no right to use the software. The execution of the EULA as a thing you don't get to see up front introduces problems, for sure. But I don't see anything blatantly illegal about an
124.
by deong 9y ago
It gives the consumer access to the software. I agree that the fact that you only see them after the sale is a problem, though one that would be "solved" to some degree if every vendor could be reliably relied on to honor the term
125.
by deong 9y ago
Well, if you sign the contract and the contract is legally "fair" (i.e., you weren't coerced, nothing fraudulent took place, etc.), then it doesn't matter what you say. The EULA isn't the only thing defining what ag
126.
by deong 9y ago
The optics are fine. It's a cutesy "about us" page.
127.
by deong 9y ago
Well sure. I'm not arguing otherwise. I'm just responding to a comment vaguely asserting that you can't make Google money in a boring corporate job. He wasn't arguing that the city was nicer. He just said, basically, &qu
128.
by deong 9y ago
I make roughly 85% of that 200k figure (give-or-take, depending on stock option values), and my house cost $90 per square foot. If you're a good senior level engineer, you can make good money in far more than five or six companies in t
129.
by deong 9y ago
It doesn't really matter. If you're an American citizen, you can just refuse and they have to let you enter. They might confiscate your device, but they can't turn you away from the border. And if you're not a US citizen
130.
by deong 9y ago
The sitting chief justice of the US Supreme Court at the time actually did call it a lynching.
131.
by deong 9y ago
No, they lost because their military power wasn't sufficient to impose their view of "rights" onto those they were fighting. Again, we all likely agree that there is a moral imperative in play here that slavery should not b
132.
by deong 9y ago
It's not an apologetic argument for slavery. In my mind, I'm making a distinction for a very real reason -- to say that, e.g., freedom of speech is a universal human right explicitly whitewashes over the fact that a tremendous num
133.
by deong 9y ago
Yes, but moral rights are my personal view, and don't help anyone. Legal rights actually matter.
134.
by deong 9y ago
Good point. I was thinking of criminal law.
135.
by deong 9y ago
Rights can be violated, of course, but the key is that there has to be some potential punishment for doing so. If you're in Saudi Arabia and they decide to execute atheists, and they do so with the full approval of the state, then thos
136.
by deong 9y ago
People fought and bled and died for the right to own slaves too. The point is that there's no such thing as a universal right. There are only rights some individual believes should be universal rights. If enough individuals band to
137.
by deong 9y ago
> You can't own human beings, because it violates their fundamental rights. This was true back when slavery was "legal". It really wasn't. We would like it to have been, but at the risk of stating the obvious, it&#x27
138.
by deong 9y ago
You can disable a Google Home device just as easily, and the rest of your comment is just you declaring by fiat that phones are OK because you personally find them useful, and the home devices are bad because you personally don't find
139.
by deong 9y ago
Sure, but the law doesn't care whether you sold me something as an investment or not. It cares that you sold me something under terms that were legal in the place where the transaction was made, that the contract was entered into volun
140.
by deong 9y ago
He means they don't "exist" in a legal sense. They aren't a special category of things in the law that are separately called out to be treated differently than any other aspect of transactions governed by contract law. L
141.
by deong 9y ago
Reddit is basically NNTP with a special client that offers a "here's top-rated stuff from everything" option. Which for anyone who used NNTP, should be self-evidentally a thing to be avoided. But like NNTP, some of the groups
142.
by deong 9y ago
That's nonsense. You said it yourself -- they share a treasury, if nothing else. Google has a CEO (Pichai). Alphabet has a CEO (Page). There are dozens of executives who control the myriad different little fiefdoms, but all of those pe
143.
by deong 9y ago
> Google is a bunch of independent teams competing and conflicting with each-other (to launch products, mostly.) Well, Google needs very badly to stop that then. If you think internal competition somehow breeds better products, then by a
144.
by deong 9y ago
A consumer-focused messaging app. There's also Duo for video calls and "Messenger" for SMS (on Android). There's also the older thing called "Messenger" that's still running on all those devices that no
145.
by deong 9y ago
Well, you could pull your phone out and use it to do literally any task that an Echo-like device could do. The entire selling point is the convenience of "talk to the air and things happen". I'm not sure why there should be s
146.
by deong 9y ago
I think there are certainly reasons to have your "hands-free conversational interaction" device also be able to show you things. It seems like the big pitch they're making right now is on communications, but there are loads o
147.
by deong 9y ago
To be fair, all code bases tend to be horrifying legacy systems if you wait long enough, and "long enough" is pretty much always shorter than the amount of time you'd want the system to still be in use.
148.
by deong 9y ago
They can do that today if they want to. I'm not seeing how the proposed solution adds anything.
149.
by deong 9y ago
I doubt it's quite that simple. It's private property that serves the public. We've had court rulings saying you can't, e.g., refuse to rent your wedding venue to gay couples. If you make accommodations available to the
150.
by deong 9y ago
So the computer picks 8 people, and you call out the first four on the list. One of them refuses, just like what happened here. Now what? Your solution just has the airline crew going, "Fair enough, sir, you can stay" and then cal

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