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>Not defending the 2nd amendment is different than opposing it.

That's not how it works, at least not in my mind. When dealing with something that is assailed as frequently as gun rights, lack of support is the same as opposition.

I want an organization that supports the Constitution, completely and fully.

cloakandswaggeron India's tech industry panics over U.S. plans to change high-skilled visas

It's about time.

Say what you will about Trump's other policies, but it's high time someone took an ax to the H-1B program. The level of abuse I've witnessed from it over the years is heinous; foreign workers essentially working as indentured servants, with the only beneficiaries being corporations using their cheap labor and the foreign consultancy firms that farm them out.

I'll be interested to see what changes get made to the program to move it back towards its intended purpose.

cloakandswaggeron Welcome, ACLU

And the Supreme Court has ruled, again and again, that it is an individual right. How is it that the ACLU is an originalist when it comes to every amendment except the Second?

cloakandswaggeron Welcome, ACLU

They defend every part of the Constitution except the Second Amendment. That hypocrisy is why the ACLU will never see a penny from me.

cloakandswaggeron Read the Trump administration's draft of the executive order on cybersecurity

I don't see much point to hypothesizing about jackbooted Trump soldiers showing up at Google and demanding their data until it happens.

Furthermore, it misses the larger point that all of their data is readily and easily collected by the NSA already.

cloakandswaggeron Urge President Trump to give scientists a seat at the table

Hollerith, he didn't just ask for a source, he implied it was an "alternative fact" which is a political attack

cloakandswaggeron Urge President Trump to give scientists a seat at the table

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einsatzgruppen

>Many Einsatzgruppe leaders were highly educated; for example, nine of seventeen leaders of Einsatzgruppe A held doctorate degrees.[42] Three Einsatzgruppen were commanded by holders of doctorates, one of whom (SS-Gruppenführer Otto Rasch) held a double doctorate.[43]

So perhaps I was wrong to say majority, but a good portion.

As an aside, what a bizarre thing to nitpick. Why does this fact bother you?

cloakandswaggeron Urge President Trump to give scientists a seat at the table

The majority of Einsatzgruppen (SS) officers had PhDs.

Anecdotes aside, I used to think this way until I realized that being a leader is about a lot more than raw intelligence.

The best leaders (business, political or otherwise) have a unique mental resolve that is a lot stronger than the rest of us. They need to be able to thrive in chaos and stay motivated when everything is falling apart.

I arrived at this conclusion after years of looking at various CEOs and scoffing at how easily I could do the job--just make arbitrary decisions, take credit when they work and deflect when they don't, right?

It wasn't until I worked for a company that was teetering on failure that I realized there was more to it. While I would have felt completely overwhelmed, frustrated and defeated, this CEO somehow managed to stay positive and kept fighting for years until the business was in the clear.

cloakandswaggeron John Carmack on the Government

His point that government is not subject to the same competitive forces which force private industry to adapt or die isn't wrong.

You can see this at work in industries with monopolies or duopolies: how many people are over the moon about the service and support they receive from, say, Comcast?

Carmack's point seems to be that an entity with no competition and the ability to requisition cash at a whim is inherently wasteful and broken.

cloakandswaggeron John Carmack on the Government

I found the post very rambley but I don't think Carmack was far off the mark. Most of his arguments seem to orbit around the concept that the federal government is hugely wasteful, which isn't a particularly uncommon or controversial opinion.

Your comment about the US tax rate is misguided though. While we might technically pay less than some European countries (not much less, in some cases), we also receive a lot less in return.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/04/the-myth...

A vast amount of US tax dollars go towards social security--a creaky, shuddering retirement plan that many expect will collapse before they ever benefit from it--and defense. When ~32% of your paycheck evaporates with no clear benefit like those enjoyed in European countries, it makes sense to complain.

cloakandswaggeron USDA disavows gag-order emailed to scientific research unit

Ask yourself this: Do I, a US taxpayer, own everything the government buys with my money? Think I can take a trip to my local military base and use one of "my" tanks?

And before you counter that there is a difference between data/research papers and "real" things like tanks, the government (and the media industry, and the scientific industry, and...) don't see it that way. It is intellectual property, owned by the US government.

cloakandswaggeron Trident whistleblower: nuclear 'disaster waiting to happen' (2015)

That's what I gathered from this. Now, I wouldn't put it past the UK to have some over-the-top rules and regulations (I work regularly with one of their largest agencies and it is a nightmare of a bureaucracy), but these seem like the complaints of a relatively low-ranking, non-technical person.

cloakandswaggeron New Wyoming bill forbids utilities from using renewables

Let me see if I understand: Industries are destroying the environment, which supports human life, and you want to stop this presumably because human life has some intrinsic value.

Your answer to this is to use the force of the state to destroy those industries, and if they resist you will literally kill the people opposing you. Do those lives have less value than others? Or is this a twisted greater good type of thing, where you think climate change is happening so quickly that we should jump to dropping bombs to stop it? (hint: it's not)

cloakandswaggeron New Wyoming bill forbids utilities from using renewables

>And if that fails resorts to an invasion

It always astonishes me when statists are so clear about their violent propensities.

cloakandswaggeron New Wyoming bill forbids utilities from using renewables

There's a reason anti-dumping laws exist.

cloakandswaggeron New Wyoming bill forbids utilities from using renewables

I think you're wrong there. The "old guard" conservatives actually walked the walk when it came to their free market ideals, and a big part of globalization was enabled by them.

There seems to be a new strain of conservatism being lead by Trump which seems to be a marriage of formerly liberal populism (protect workers, rebuild middle class, bring back factory jobs, socialized healthcare) and conservative economics.

cloakandswaggeron New Wyoming bill forbids utilities from using renewables

Do you think those blue collar coal workers are going to be amenable to switching careers so they can service wealthy ski resort visitors? All while making much less money?

On a personal note, I've always been troubled by the over-representation of unnecessary services and useless gadgets in the US economy. Luxury ski resorts and $400 cookie baking devices (with connected smartphone app) are not noble products, and they demoralize the workers who provide/build them.

I know this might not be a popular sentiment to those on HN who Uber home from their San Francisco office to pick up their Blue Apron delivery and pre-order their new iDevice, but there it is.

cloakandswaggeron What I Wish I'd Known About Equity Before Joining a Unicorn

I worked for a "startup" that was going on 10 years old, $190 million in funding and was still not profitable.

I was stunned by just how many of the long-time employees had no understanding of stock options. One was actually flabbergasted to learn that each funding round was creating new shares and diluting the value of existing ones; he thought the founders were selling their own shares to raise the money!

The ignorance was due in part to the company being in a region where startups and stock options are not common. Another big factor was willful deception by the founders, who had been promising to start the IPO process for three years, and frequently estimated that their IPO valuation would be equivalent to Facebook's.

cloakandswaggeron Introducing ProtonMail's Tor hidden service

There's pretty good evidence that you should not trust your ISP:

http://www.theverge.com/2013/7/21/4541342/isp-owner-describe...

While your message contents would still be encrypted when using the regular old ProtonMail site, it would expose your identity and who you are sending messages to.

cloakandswaggeron Introducing ProtonMail's Tor hidden service

How so? It seems like it would be just as safe as any type of messaging that uses asymmetric cryptography.

cloakandswaggeron The jobs that really smart people avoid

>His strategy of turning the WashPo into the HuffPo Insider but with a better rolodex and even less ethics seems to be going solid from a biz standpoint.

Sadly this is spot on. If it weren't for the Gawker suit, I think we would have seen many more former news agencies devolve into BuzzFeed-caliber sources of misinformation.

cloakandswaggeron Coinbase and the IRS

I'll never understand the people who are rabidly anti-Bitcoin. Can anyone enlighten me? Are they threatened by an alternative to traditional fiat currency, or have they just read so much propaganda (like that WaPo article) that they're completely committed to it now?

cloakandswaggeron I Turned a Routine Traffic Ticket into a Constitutional Trial

In other words, you're willing to disregard an injustice as long as the person it's victimizing is someone you disagree with.

That alone is wrong, but that you state it with such conviction and self-awareness is disturbing.

cloakandswaggeron I Turned a Routine Traffic Ticket into a Constitutional Trial

>In summary, I think absolute enforcement is effectively Orwellian.

It is, but that seems to be the point. The only way to highlight the absurdity of having so many laws is to enforce them so strictly that it creates a public backlash.

Put another way, the only reason our legislators were able to amass such a large amount of laws is because they are selectively enforced, or not enforced at all (for now).

cloakandswaggeron I Turned a Routine Traffic Ticket into a Constitutional Trial

Could you make a different topic for this? It's extremely long and seems only tangentially related to fighting red light tickets.

cloakandswaggeron I Turned a Routine Traffic Ticket into a Constitutional Trial

You do realize that harm caused and potential for harm are both considered heavily in criminal law, right? Bringing up a bunch of absurd examples doesn't change the fact that criminal law isn't 100% binary.

cloakandswaggeron I Turned a Routine Traffic Ticket into a Constitutional Trial

What's your point? I'm trying to understand what you're hoping to accomplish. That the original article is invalid because the guy pushing the issue is a conservative?

cloakandswaggeron Backpage Shuts Down Adult Ads in the U.S., Citing Government Pressure

I have a hunch that police didn't uncover lots of child sex trafficking rings on Backpage, nor were they interested in doing so.

It was far more useful as a honeypot & revenue generator for them through John stings. Setting up a fake Backpage ad for a weekend and raking in $20k through the relatively safe act of fooling non-violent offenders is the best deal out there for police.

At the end of it all you get a nice feel-good headline about how the local PD arrested 40 sex offenders.

cloakandswaggeron Backpage Shuts Down Adult Ads in the U.S., Citing Government Pressure

No, there really isn't. The only distinct difference is that the "sugar baby" lifestyle is just a way of dipping your toe into being a full blown prostitute.

I met a girl who had dated several guys from SA. She said in each case, it was one or two "normal" dates before the guy offered her $500-$1K for sex.

It's funny to me that "sugar babies" are treated as innocuous. In reality it is probably a lot more insidious than "real" prostitution because it serves as a gateway for girls to get into the game while lying to themselves.

cloakandswaggeron Backpage Shuts Down Adult Ads in the U.S., Citing Government Pressure

Well, of course professional escorts are happy. Backpage was, at best, competition for them, allowing "independent contractors" to offer competing services for cheaper. At worst, it was a very popular sting site for cops, effectively scaring off customers in the area.

When you're a "pro" with your own website and $600/hr price, Backpage is competition. I don't think they're happy about it because of concerns about human trafficking.