goodrubyist

This assumes that people only (or at least) mostly depend on Amazon's search results' ordering to decide which products to buy. This is not true, at least not for everyone. I, e.g., visit review websites like Wirecutter to decide. Something tells me I'm not the only one.

Wikipedia and a few other sites I saw say otherwise for the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terms_of_service Wouldn't make much sense otherwise.

All of it, if it was presented for me to accept when signing up for this account. Don't remember explicitly. As I said to others, most of it is boilerplate, so you just learn to skim and see the stuff that's really different.

They're usually not that complicated. And most of them say usually almost the same things with some edits thrown here and there. E.g. compare the disclaimer of warranty/liability sections of two different EULAs. E.g. this kind of text in Apple macOS Tahoe EULA is found almost everywhere:

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, THE APPLE SOFTWARE AND SERVICES ARE PROVIDED “AS IS” AND “AS AVAILABLE”

https://www.apple.com/legal/sla/docs/macOSTahoe.pdf

The same point applies to most of the text. But yes, some text is specific to the service. E.g. the same doc above says in bold:

"By using the Content Caching Features of the Apple Software, you agree that Apple may download and cache such Apple Eligible Content on your Caching Enabled Mac."

I'd say that's something worth knowing if you use that OS.

I skim or read all the time, and so should people -- but ultimately they're adults and if they want to agree to them without reading, it's their choice (they shouldn't expect to later say they didn't read - this doesn't work, and that's how the current American legal cases were decided as well, thankfully, see e.g. regarding arbitration). Btw, regarding class action and arbitration, many of us already know that these are present in bold in the terms of many services we use or are going to use without even actually reading them.

I'm an average person and I read them all the time. It's not usually 400 pages long. More like 3-4 pages. If a person genuinely can't understand, they should not use the service. That's not sarcasm, I, myself, do not like to sign contracts I cannot understand -- but that's rare when you can look up stuff.

Agreeing to terms and contracts without reading or at least skimming them is not responsible adult behavior and should not be used as a model for legislation, no matter how many people do it. I agree that we do have a culture where private law is not taken very seriously, and that's very unfortunate.

People do not have a right (morally speaking, not legally) to access or use a service (or a website) etc without having to read/agree to the terms (applies to analog and digital).

it's basically the American mindset vs the European one (or anyone not in the US?).

He's very likely being defensive.

I approve every command myself, and no, it's still much faster than doing it myself.

But I like the general fallacy behind this that people fall for all the time: taking the past value of a variable as a complete predictor of its future value (applies to other stuff like investment returns e.g.)

yes, it's the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy

If you're using a heuristic, it can be fine, but only if you also know that it's only a heuristic, instead of thinking that it's truth and lambasting anyone who suggests otherwise.

They really don't have any money.

Yes, and he is not a president.

*typo, I meant SSRN.

That's not the argument for textualism. You can read law review articles and papers on SSRI to find more.

You should really look into how judges interpret laws (rules, basically). There are two schools I know of: purposivism and textualism (I agree with the latter and it doesn't take into account intentions. That's the basis of how the recent case Van Buren v US was decided, I would recommend reading it: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/20pdf/19-783_k53l.pdf). But in both, you have things like canons of interpretation and background principles and so on. It's always awesome to see how people who have to deal with the problem have thought about it, because they have usually invested a lot of time into it and come up with insights. See also, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statutory_interpretation

so many butts!

Were those startups that went out of business did so because of their stacks/architecture, or are you confusing correlation with causation? And, there is a good reason people shy away from PHP, and it has nothing to do with trying to be "flashy." There should be a name for this kind of fallacy.

Do you have any evidence that "Most people who word things that way don't use the term "males" in a similar way". I think it's highly likely that you do not have enough (anecdotal) data to legitimately make a claim like that. At most you could make such a claim about "most people in my experience" but then, you wouldn't have monitored them for quite long either, just for an internet convo or so.

Trying to influence the racial make-up of a class is, let's admit it, loathsome racial engineering.

That's not how it works at least in the US, but I don't know about Germany. SCOTUS claims that the judicial system is not for reviewing all the acts passed for constitutionality, but (as per Article III) only addressing specific harms brought up by individuals (the requirement for standing). This is from a 1992 precedent:

1. The plaintiff must have suffered an "injury in fact," meaning that the injury is of a legally protected interest which is (a) concrete and particularized and (b) actual or imminent 2. There must be a causal connection between the injury and the conduct brought before the court 3. It must be likely, rather than speculative, that a favorable decision by the court will redress the injury

Talking in advance about what law is constitutional would be perverse under such system (I love the standing doctrine, btw and so does the Chief Justice).

It’s AngularJS being killed, not Angular, which is the framework that’s current.

I, for one, love the people who would be proudly installing this because they have "nothing to hide" while chiding those who are (appropriately) concerned.

Yes it has been around, but it's quite jarring to see anyone actually use it.

I also think it's broken in the way you describe, but also find it amazing that it can remain broken for so long given the costs associated with it.

But, how are you qualified to make that determination (as in whether a person is decent enough to work with)? Isn't it likely that you either get a skewed impression of this from an interview or that you are biased yourself? The person you reject for lacking decency could be your interviewer in another situation, and reject you for the same reason.

* not trying to imply that there is no objective way to define/measure decency

Exactly, this heuristic doesn't work all (or even most?) of the times. A more accurate approach is to rely on the terms you agree to when you buy/use software (if you don't want to read them, then you can depend on faulty shortcuts instead).

It's a news piece, not an editorial.