1,238 karma · joined February 21, 2018
I'm not saying that US companies should not enforce US law. I think they should. That is: strictly within the US market.
When they operate outside the US market, they have to (also) adhere to whatever law exists for that market. If that creates a conflict, the company has a choice to either open up show elsewhere, outside of US jurisdiction (if that's the only way to comply with local market rules), or stay in the US and leave the foreign market alone.
Either way, being a US company should never be a valid excuse to violate laws (and/or legal protections) somewhere abroad.
It ultimately is up to a company to choose what they do and where they do it. To me, the current status quo appears to be that many US companies have been (illegally) enforcing US laws outside of US jurisdiction. Aside from that, and maybe even on a far worse level, they have been essentially been making up de facto "private laws", in their TOP/EULA "contracts".
Last time I checked, law should be left to governments. Preferable through democratic due process. Certainly not to commercial companies, who are either privately owned, or publicly by a select few rather undemocratic entities.
If they do that within the US market, that might be justifiable. But in this particular case, GitHub appears to enforce US foreign policy on what appears to be a company on the EU market. Also in what to me appears to be a rather ruthless, totalitarian, maybe even draconian way.
I'm pretty certain that absent this US law within the EU market, this action is arbitrarily discriminatory, and very likely constitutes inflicting serious damage on another company without a legal basis (within the US, yes .. outside the US, no).
GitHub may find itself stuck, between adhering to US laws and laws elsewhere (in this case EU, but China is probably a good example too). Still, is ultimately is a choice for GitHub to offer their products on multiple markets. If they have issues with that, they are free to exit a particular market. It certainly is never a valid excuse to start violating law in any market outside whatever country your headquarter might be located.
Tangentially, this rather typical popular belief that US companies can simply absolve themselves from legal liability, just by crafting clever TOS/EULA that supposedly does just that, has always confused to me. It was always my understanding that you can not create contracts that violate laws. In most countries with a somewhat sane state of law, governments really do not like or tolerate when companies start essentially making their own law in parallel. But apparently you can rewrite (even basic) law in the USA, as long as you can somehow get both parties to agree on it. Be that by free will or coercion.
Maybe it's time, for other parts of the world to no longer put up with this kind of bullshit, and demand that US companies actually adhere to the laws (and legal protections) that exist within their markets, or be free to buzz off and only operate on the US market alone.
With US foreign policy becoming increasingly self-serving, legally dubious, and in some case downright insane, having internationally operating companies enforcing those policies is becoming a seriously risky proposition for anyone outside the USA.
Even if people will know it is a bot, these people's rational capacities will in most cased be diminished under such circumstances, at best. Many will be easily (emotionally) manipulable, even more than with all the psychological trickery in product advertisement and big data exploitation these days.
Opinion: this clearly crosses the line of criminal behaviors, exploiting people who are clearly in a vulnerable positions (at least more than usual). I think the track record of tech companies rather clearly shows that their promised of taking good care of collected data (and privacy) mean little to nothing. At the end of the day, they do this for profit. That's enough for me to make this cross the line.
Also, what's really the "invention" here? Would something like this ever deserve a patent monopoly? If you take (dead) people's personal data and build a neural net (or any other "AI") to mimic/compliment that data (needed for answering questions), have you not just done what any/every neural net already does? If we're going to call that novel and innovative, then hold my beer ... or is this just again a big tech company abusing the patent system to hijack an obvious (use of) technology, excluding anyone who doesn't belong to their cozy little cross-licensing inbreed family from using what should be free to use in the first place?
#end-of-rant
However, you do correctly point out how this article appears to draw people in and then goes for maximum shock effect. I'm sure that whoever created this article did that on purpose. Even if the cited numbers happen to be accurate, this kind of tactic is rather typical for propaganda. The same can be said about producing "facts" that are either hard or impossible to verify.
To be clear: I am not saying that this is propaganda, but it does at least raise a few red flags about potentially being just that. Further research needed.
EDIT: to be even more clear: I have no doubt that the CCP have committed horrible crimes. But that will not make me just believe whatever somebody might write about it.
Please, don't get me wrong: I think US copyright law is criminal in and of its own (for plenty of reasons, even including international blackmail), but it is nonetheless actual (US) law, as it currently stands. Why would copyright law only apply to smaller players, yet not to Google? If that is not selective/arbitrary justice (therefore, no state of law), then what is?
I'm all for changing the status quo, but I doubt that this can ever be the right way. Especially considering Google's nature and track record.
Either way, what you said is something Bertrand Russel (certainly not best known for being a dumb man) once worded like this:
"The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt."
.. and just for good measure, here is another one of his quotes, which is hardly well know to those who would probably be better off if they did:
"Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man, and our politicians take advantage of this prejudice by pretending to be even more stupid than nature made them."
In summary: ignorant people do appear to often be more confident than they deserve to be. Whether that is actually because they are truly unaware of their ignorance, that could certainly be a good question to ask oneself. For there are plenty who deliberately abuse both faked ignorance and confidence just to bamboozle and deceive others.
Aside from that, I seriously doubt that just disruption of AT&T services was the objective here. Considering that this appears to have been a rather serious explosion, I guess the intent was more likely destruction rather than disruption.
With the amount of 5G nut jobs running around these days, I suspect that it is far more likely that somebody just seriously underestimated what it takes to bring down a building like this one.
But I guess that time will tell (more). I'm just speculating of course.
This certainly wasn't a small explosion, from the looks of it. But taking out a bunker .. unless you have access to weapons specially build for that purpose, good luck.
That AT&T still went down, may just demonstrated an apparent oversight in their emergency procedures for this site. I don't know the details, but having backup generators that rely any public infrastructure sounds like a pretty bad choice. That said, maybe those generators first burned through a decent supply of diesel fuel, only to later rely on (in this case absent) gas.
I have no idea how much diesel would be required to keep that site running for a prolonged period of time. Maybe such an amount could pose regulatory/safety issues on its own. Nonetheless, the sole purpose of emergency generators is to provide power that does not depend on any external factors (maybe aside from air/oxygen). So to me this story does sound at least a bit weird.
But somebody targeting that building and totally underestimating their chances, even if they may have still succeeded partially (if only by "luck") .. nah, that can not surprise me at all.
Isn't it essential for democracy that lawmakers decide on laws based on merits, instead of their adoption being dependent on all kind of unrelated laws and other external factors? How did this practice ever become a defensible one? I guess there will plenty of US citizens who have found a way to rationalize/defend this process, but I sincerely wonder if that might not be the most fundamental mistake of them all.
Seriously though .. why does anyone consider the USA a democratic state of law? I mean, both in absolute terms and in comparison with many other countries, it simply appears to be neither .. that despite unparalleled volumes of systemic propaganda to the contrary and many of its citizens stubbornly holding on to this belief that the USA is somehow a beacon and example to the rest of the world.
I grew up, as many others who grew up in NATO countries during the 80s, with horror stories about USSR and Chinese state propaganda. I have no doubt that a lot of that was actually true and certainly devastating. However, with the years, it increasingly appears as if the USA might actually be (and may always have been) the worst of them all. Just that most of its propaganda hides in plain sight, under banners of individual freedom and prosperity. Sure, you can say whatever you want, as long as you don't pose any real threat to anything of importance. But that is actually not all that different in most parts of the world (Russia and China included; despite the US trying to convince everyone to the contrary). Sure, the USA appears to act less oppressive towards its citizens (or at least compared to the stories they tell about events in other countries). But with a population so thoroughly brainwashed since birth, and being able to do what they do (most lucrative/criminal things almost exclusive in other countries) unopposed either way, maybe they just don't need it as much.
Feel free to down vote and flag, I honestly don't care (anymore). In fact, I would prefer to delete this account if HN allowed that. Because sincerely, I'm done with this site and this "community". Good luck to you all.
Just don't expect any sympathy, for anyone who will argue something along the lines of "we didn't know" or "we could not have seen that coming".
However, I got a similar reaction to this being called "flow cards". This to me looks just like yet another "standardized" set of (typical) web interface/page designs. Sounds like a big misnomer.
Regardless of that, I guess there will be plenty of (UX) front end engineers, who will see value in designing things in a uniform way and from what is essentially a limited set of "this is how it's done".
That said, with between 2 and 3 decades of at least observing (web) design, I am still convinced that any good design begins with an empty piece of paper and a pencil, and a good understanding of everything relevant to the design (e.g. problem domain, technical platform, target audience, etc, etc).
Whenever I see (yet) another company promoting their tools for "streamlining" web/interface design, the first thing that always strikes me is how much their tools appear to just push their particular ideas about what "good" (uniform) design is.
With the huge number of (varied) factor that may (or should) go into good interface design, I sincerely doubt that any of these tools can ever really help all that much in making better designs. They can help with collaboration and all being "on the same page", no doubt. But it still feels to me that they just train people in making designs in a particular (and often not the best) way, with maybe more negative side effects than the positive ones they provide. That is not to even mention how contemporary fashion also always is a factor, in any design.
Anyways, just my two cents. I'm open to criticism and disagreement on this.
I believe that a lot of that comes down to the current state of affairs simply being the cheapest or most cost effective solution.
I don't know what the military is currently investigating, but if memory serves me well then the commercial industry has been long working on more silent designs (in particular regarding propellers). Of course, even there it is a constant trade-off between effectiveness (regarding propulsion) and what is considered acceptable discomfort for passengers or the environment (regarding audio).
I believe that drones could already be made way more quiet with long existing technology. The key question here might be: how much shorter do you want your flight last, and how much more expensive do you want your drone to be?
That is, assuming this recourse was (legally) valid in the first place. I'm not sure of that.
I have no more than a laymen's understanding of these rules, but I at least expect that they apply to commercial entities (businesses) and not private individuals. This is an important distinction, which these days is often ignored/overlooked by many. Probably not in the least become so many people actually run (freelance) businesses as individuals, more often than not bordering on illegality, if not actually (unenforced) illegally. Much of that depends on national/local laws though.
Maybe the plaintiff does see it as YouTube being a business, or the person making these videos doing this professionally (if there's any money being made from the videos, it sort of is), but neither of those two business are (professionally) producing the protected product in question (let alone commercially sell it).
If the PDO regulations actually allow/warrant this action, then I'd argue that this goes way beyond the original intent and mandate of this PDO doctrine. Sadly, it would not be a first for an idea being (politically) adopted and then substantially changed/extended before being implemented into actual law/regulation. But with the (at best questionable) culture of lobbying going around in Brussels, that can hardly come as a surprise.
Maybe the lawmakers who voted in favor of this doctrine should be asked if this is what they actually voted for. It might just annoy them, being "harassed" (if not insulted) with such "unimportant incidents", but that might be just what is needed here. If this is unforeseen/unintended (ab)use of these regulations, it is most likely to stop when lawmakers get annoyed/pissed off and demand some kind of public statement, saying that this is not what is supposed to happen under this doctrine.
I never expected that to include/extend to the production process, let alone for personal use. I thought these regulations were all about commercial trade, to protect local producers against (supposedly unfair) outside competition. I don't really see how demonstrating a production process harms that.
In fact, considering the PDO protection local producers enjoy, it might just as well be argued that there is no need for any ban on the production of the same goods elsewhere, since those can already not be sold because of the PDO.
Did I just misunderstood the PDO doctrine, or is this just overreach (if not abuse) of it?
A case of wanted to have their cheese and it it too?
> .. the gov pays for these things not the citizens .. You do know that the only money governments have, is the money they got from its citizens, right? That is, aside from what they may have earned (though plundered or extorted might be more fitting) from other nations.
> .. the expensive vaccine is only $40, that's within the means of most poor people .. You may want to reevaluate your knowledge about the rest of the world. That is, outside the USA and some the more affluent parts of Europe. Also, that vaccine probably won't cost "just" $40 equally for everyone.
However, believe whatever you want. Time will no doubt teach us all a lessen. Personally, I hope it will teach me that I was wrong with my skepticism.
Regretfully, it would be not the first example of major economies using the current reality as an excuse/cover to conveniently push political policies/agendas that would otherwise have been impossible to implement (at least not without violating laws/treaties and maybe even basic human rights). I have no intention to fear monger, but I believe way too many are too naive about some of the things that are currently happening. That is, mostly people within those major economies, for people in less fortunate countries already learned the hard way how double-faced those major economies turned out.
How all this will eventually turn out ... anyone's guess is as good as mine. I guess we will all learn, when the immediate emergency of the current situation is over. I would prefer to be/remain optimistic, but thus far there appear to be more reasons for caution and skepticism (at best).
To a degree it's understandable that those who are constantly bombarded by their own relentless propaganda fail to see that they are indeed the bad guys. But this machinery that has so many so thorough brainwashed, has no intention of stopping. Also, it will have to get increasingly more criminal to sustain itself.
As so many of these systems before it, it will eventually turn on itself (it is already doing that, big time) and eventually destroy itself from the inside out. Only the strongest believers will be able to hold on to their faith in being the good guys. Others will wonder: "Why didn't we see it (coming)", ignorant of how many outsiders did already see it coming for a long time. Either way, a lot of people will have a similarly painful realization as the Germans had after WW2.
Don't take my word for it. You will see.
However, what I am doing is calling you out .. I honestly don't know if you are a deliberate propaganda mouth piece or just an unfortunate victim of it.
Either way, the moment you mentioned international law in relation to this issue, and even had to nerve to declare that the truth of your convictions are factually undeniable, you yourself were the one who pretty much shoved all-in and closed the door for any meaningful discussion. Maybe you should take a look in the mirror first, if you want to blame someone for being called out for that.
I have a pretty decent track record of being rather respectful (definitely beyond and above average) towards to opinions of other. Just maybe not for people who talk like you. You can take your (abuse of) political correctness and ..
EDIT: I see what you are trying, but you still don't get it (regarding international law). Good luck and goodbye.
It is always a bit amusing, though also somewhat infuriating, whenever somebody writes something like this. It often is a good indicator of what likely is to follow.
Truly ironic, that the people who (apparently) know the least about international law are usually the first to mention it. Even more that most of these people appear to come from countries that probably are the biggest violators of international laws, by historical track record.
I'm not even going to argue with you, for you rather obviously take personal convictions over actual knowledge. Good luck with that.
Here is a fact for you: the forces/interest behind most of this will come back to roost one day. Maybe rather sooner than you think. One thing I'm pretty sure of: you're not going to like. Don't say that nobody tried to warn you, when it turns out that the joke was always on you.
It started with very active meddling, spending copious amounts of money, into the internal politics of the country. It should also be noted that much of that money went to ultra-right-wing militant organizations, who have zero respect for democracy or freedom. Essentially, the USA bought itself a (fascist) private army to take control (or at least try to) over the natural resources in East Ukraine and Crimea. Russia responded rather predictably to that.
Some might even argue that they had every right to do so. I'd love to see Americans react, if Russia were to sponsor some kind of anti-US militia in Alaska, that would subsequently take control of state (military bases with missile launch facilities included). I'm pretty sure that US citizens would call that for what it is: an act of aggression.
No, the reason Russia doesn't invade Poland or the Baltic countries isn't because of NATO. Ironically, if those countries are at risk in any way, it's probably rather because of NATO. NATO (and its members) keeps insisting that the organization is defensive in nature only, yet its actions tell a rather different story (and it has done so for a long time, at least since the '90).
People may think whatever they want about what happened to Crimea and Eastern Ukraine, but to called that an annexation (or an invasion, as many have) is disingenuous as best.
It's no secret (in fact, it's on public record) that it was the USA who pumped copious amounts of money in getting a "favorable" group of very questionable "politicians" in power in Kiev. While presented as "spreading democracy and freedom", in the backdrop Western companies (with strong government ties) were making deals to take control of the natural resources in both Crimea and Eastern Ukraine.
Most importantly, those deals envisioned to take away the control (or even access) Russia (and the local population, for that matter) have/had over these resources. If anyone annexed anything, it was rather the USA than Russia. The key on all that is to observe which side was the one taking all the initiatives, and which side was basically just responding to what the other side did.
This fear mongering about Russian expansion simply doesn't match reality. If anyone has been expanding the last decade or so, it is NATO, not Russia. In reality, it probably should not surprise anyone. It's a well proven tactic to simply accuse your victims of being the one showing aggression, while in reality that is just resistance to your own (illegal) aggression. Just ask some of the older Poles. They still remember what Germany did.
AFAIK, with buildings these regulations (now) exists because they didn't in the past. People got really upset with other people just demolishing what they held dear, public outcry as a result and eventually regulations too. But in this situation the destruction is often driven by space being a scarce commodity (especially in cities).
I doubt that books often get destroyed to make way for new ones (barring a few criminal/extremist authoritarian regimes), so it might never have reached a point where enough people got upset about it and demand regulation.
But now I am curious though, if there are indeed regulations for these kind of works. If there are, that would essentially render my original opinion null and void.
Still, I would prefer it that way, rather than know that these works will end up in the hands of the financially powerful private hands. For I have little faith in that lot and their antics.
> These books are extremely valuable, but more importantly they are irreplaceable and are of great importance to international cultural heritage
> The works were being stored in a warehouse ahead of being transported to a specialist book auction in Las Vegas, in the US
So, they were of great cultural/historical importance, yet they were about to get shipped of to the USA to be auctioned. In Las Vegas, of all places.
If that was to be an open auction, where essentially anyone could bid, I fail so see how the end result is all that different from these thieves selling them on a black market.
Sure, with an open auction there is at least a track record, of where these works end ended up. But access to these works would just as well be on the whims of private owners. To me it sounds like works of such cultural/historical value ending up in private hands either way, is the real crime here.
Maybe fully legal(ized) in one case, but I think that says rather a lot about the system as a whole.
I think he would need either a tremendous marketing capital to reach enough people, or have some superb selling skills, to make a profit.
Maybe I'm just too pessimistic. I certainly do not belong to his target audience, which probably doesn't help.
For me this is one of those (typical) examples, of a rather (too) generic tool, solving a problem that is already being successfully solved by a number of other (free) tools.
AFAIK, tools like these can sometimes still succeed, if you pick a very specific/narrow niche market and focus all your marketing on that market, and offer special(ized) features for that particular market.
But as a generic tool, or one that tries to "do it all" for too wide a market, I don't think I've ever seen that succeed (commercially). At least not from this position, being a new kid on the block and competing with already established tools doing the same. Just not enough of an edge over the alternatives, I think.
I do feel sincerely sorry for the creator, if he believed this would work out for him. But I (also sincerely) believe it just never had much of a (realistic) chance from the start. I can't make it sound any nicer than that.
This is true, and pretty much always has been. It's also why, despite much propaganda (some know it better by the name of "The American Dream") and a few lucky exceptions, entrepreneurship has mostly been an endeavor of the more privileged, with access to enough funds to make several mistakes (or sometimes multiple in parallel) before hitting a jackpot.
For some reason, this often appears a rather touchy subject, if not a cultural taboo. In particularly in the USA, where many apparently believe that taking a risk as an entrepreneur should somehow result in success if you persevere. Some might even feel almost entitled to it, or so it appears. Which is rather odd, if you'd ever look at the statistics of failed business. Not to mention the many crazy and often totally unrealistic ideas some folks come up with.
Maybe it's all just a product of (cultural) brainwashing, ignorance, or just too much hope on a better live (or desperation about the current one).
EDIT: To be clear, I'm not saying that how the system works is fair. As a personal opinion, on the contrary. But complaining about how things didn't work out as you believed/hoped they should have, is like being angry at a bull for attacking you while being a vegetarian. Neither bull nor the system care.
That probably depends, on whether you factor in the profit Google makes from mining your data. That should be subtracted from their operating costs and only then compared to what they charge for the storage. My guess is that they'll make quite a killing on the thing, as a whole.
Even besides the morally questionable aspects (of the data mining), considering their position and leverage they might very well be slapped with some anti-trust rulings in the future.
Unlikely to happen in the US, since the meaning of anti-trust there has been systematically eroded and limited to where it has become all but a complete farce (compared to its original meaning/intentions). However, that's what you get when large corporations can pump vast amounts of money into politics, as if they were a voting citizen. But there is still some hope in other places. Either way, it shouldn't take rocket science to see how Google has a tremendous (unfair) advantage over any competition in this regard (which is what anti-trust really is about; not just avoiding/regulating absolute monopolies).