like_any_other

It's illegal for one branch of the government to cooperate with another to enforce the border. Meanwhile, abandoning the border (despite a legal obligation to enforce it), and even sabotaging states from stepping in to fix federal neglect and establish the border they are owed, is perfectly legal [1].

"The rule of law"

[1] https://www.npr.org/2024/01/22/1226142790/supreme-court-texa...

> making it so privacy policies legally survive bankruptcy

They currently don't? Why? Isn't that completely insane? How is that different from buying a music CD with the restriction that it may not be used commercially, declaring bankruptcy, and selling it without that restriction, so the buyer can make and sell copies of it? I.e. it's using bankruptcy to create from thin air and sell permissions that one was never given.

Can I, in the process of personal bankruptcy, sell information I've signed an NDA on? Can I sell genetically modified seeds that I signed a contract forbidding me from re-planting them, now without the re-planting restriction?

> appropriation

Want to take a guess on what their author's opinions would be on social issues du jour? You don't even have to go that far back before the average person is beyond far-right by today's standards:

‘Greatest Generation’ runs counter to its wholesome image in survey on race, sex and combat during World War II - https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2021/12/20/greatest-g...

> This is a sensible approach for policymakers. For the average person [..] it does not make a whole lot of sense.

Unfortunately, scaring the average person is the best way to make policymakers act. Or at least, it's one of the few ways available to random individuals. Policymakers are rarely ahead of public concerns - they usually have to be dragged behind them.

The article neglects to consider the precautionary principle. It asks us to act as if AI is safe until it's proven to be dangerous, when the cautious approach is to act as if it's dangerous until it's proven to be safe.

Yes, saying it was part of US historical culture to accept people like this guy, when the culture explicitly rejected them, is a lie. Nothing you said so far disproved this.

But I was more polite, and merely said he "forgot to mention" that aspect. That's all it took to draw your objections. I'll leave you to your word games now.

Edit: Fine, you get one more reply.

> The question was “foreign nationals,” not “people like this guy.”

But the topic was this guy.

> And it’s a specific choice to consider race as part of “like this guy,” not a law of nature.

Yes, a specific choice that the US made, from its founding up until 1965. But you are more comfortable talking in vague abstractions divorced from real world implementations, talking about words without thinking what those words refer to, so I get why you're confused. It's just a way of thinking I find repellent, and refuse to humor. As I said, enjoy your word games.

Yes, my broad statement about US immigration policy is incorrect because of a few exceptions. It's impossible to talk about trends and averages because there's always a counter-example somewhere that, by your logic, disproves the whole thing. This gas is not hot - look at these ten molecules, they're moving slow! I guess China is open and welcoming too, because they have thousands (1.4 million!) of foreigners living there?

(0.1% of China's total population, but why let statistics get in the way of anecdotal reasoning?)

Are you really incapable of thinking statistically, even this little bit, or are you just playing dumb because it lets you avoid engaging honestly with the question a little bit longer?

> I corrected the actual misconception in another comment: CBP is not hiring noncitizens.

If you want to imply that what I corrected wasn't a misconception, why don't you say so directly? Is it because doing so would make it too obvious you're trying to deflect from the truth?

I'll summarize the conversation up to this point to you: The story is about a Chinese national working as a supervisor in CBP.

geetee asked why is CBP hiring foreign nationals.

jeffbee answered that it's because the US is a "nation of immigrants that for centuries recognized the value of recruiting foreign people".

I corrected him that those "centuries long" attitudes only applied to whites, and excluded the Chinese national subject of the article. This directly debunks his assertion that American values until recently meant his acceptance.

My beliefs are only relevant in so far as it is against my beliefs to lie. Why is that so strange to you? You seem to believe debunking lies requires one to have some fringe beliefs. What does that say about what you think are mainstream beliefs? What does it say about yours? I've only referred to widely-known facts of US history, that I don't believe you're ignorant of. Why did you not only not correct the lie, but attacked the person that did? The only conclusion I can make is that you are so at odds with truth, that you see correcting obvious lies as an assault on your worldview.

> Their comment didn’t mention whiteness at all.

Yes, that was the misrepresentation.

> But, yes, most immigration was Europeans and African slaves but probably that was because it was expensive unless you effectively sold yourself.

You don't think it had anything to do with the Naturalization Act of 1790 that limited citizenship to whites, or the fact that even in 1965, congressmen felt the need to lie to the public and promise that law would not change US demographics? It was just because it was "expensive", that people from Europe immigrated, but not from South America?

Correcting jeffbee's misrepresentation of history is important for the same reason they felt the need to misrepresent it in the first place.

> for centuries until very recently most Americans readily recognized the value and necessity of recruiting foreign people into various posts.

You forgot to mention that, for those centuries, US immigration was effectively whites-only, until the 1965 Hart-Celler act (that politicians promised wouldn't change this!): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hart-Celler_Act

> an advertising profile

It's going to be so easy to determine who you voted for, given a record of every TV show and news programme you've watched, to 90% accuracy. Or to determine if you'd be a "corporate culture fit" when you're next looking for a job. Or an apartment. Or to find whether anything matching the hash of some trade secret documents was displayed on your TV (or ever connected to it [1]) - the "advertising" firm will be forced to hand over documents on you through lawsuit discovery and the wonderful 3rd party doctrine.

Have you been watching media associated with "woke subversion"? "Islamic extremism"? "Far-right hate"? "Incitement to subversion of state power" [2]?

They're not building an advertising profile. They're building a profile. Ads are just the most common known use-case at the moment. But the profile will remain long after ads become the least of your concerns. Consider how such a profile would have been used during the cultural revolution.

If the government required you to submit a record of every book you read or own, people would rightly freak out. How is this any different?

[1] LG Smart TVs log USB filenames and viewing info to LG servers - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6759426

[2] Hong Kong's Tiananmen activists sentenced to up to seven years in prison - https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgyvk2djk4o

It's not about the money. It's the thin edge of the wedge, separating you from control over your own property - and handing that control to someone else. Arguing about what a reasonable price is, or how they can use vs. abuse that control, is like arguing how the prison guards should treat you, instead of trying to escape.

> It baffles me that anyone still uses Mercator projection for any serious purpose.

The article is just strawmaning our past, as is fashionable. Ironically the same author published an article warning against misinformation just a week prior: https://www.not-ship.com/normalize-debunking-each-other/

From the article:

Minister for Communications Michelle Rowland explained why the government was planning to introduce a digital duty of care: "What’s required is a shift away from reacting to harms by relying on content regulation alone, and moving towards systems-based prevention, accompanied by a broadening of our perspective of what online harms are."

This is a positive step forward and one aligned with other jurisdictions around the world. [..]

The digital duty of care will require tech companies to regularly conduct risk assessments to proactively identify harmful content. This assessment must consider what Rowland called “enduring categories of harm”, which will also be legislated. Rowland said these categories could include: -harms to young people, -harms to mental wellbeing, -the instruction and promotion of harmful practices, -other illegal content, conduct and activity.

So extremely broad and open-ended requirements that will allow the government to punish any speech platform they don't like, force them to install government-approved apparatchiks to key positions, and this of course gets nothing but glowing praise by the article.

Speaking of apparatchiks, the article is written by Lisa M. Given, Professor of Information Sciences & Director, Social Change Enabling Impact Platform, RMIT University. Such a highly-credentialed expert could not bring herself to mention a single drawback of the proposed vague and far-reaching censorship framework. In fact the article doesn't include a single instance of the word "free speech" or "censor". Because censorship is bad, but "preventing harm" is good.

Don't hold your breath on "culture/media/literary theorists" mentioning that. Nor the fact that "the odds of success were identical for every group at every job" is a completely unrealistic assumption.

> In a consultation this year, the UK government said it would consider legislating should the platforms not act to prioritise trustworthy content.

To get an idea of what the UK government considers "trustworthy", consider this incident, as reported by a "tabloid":

Nottinghamshire Police officer sacked on equality grounds for telling racist man to 'go home' The officer was 'provoked' by a man in custody who described England as a 'dirty nation' and its citizens as 'animals' - https://www.nottinghampost.com/news/local-news/nottinghamshi...

And by the BBC: Sergeant who made racist comment sacked - https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn8mr78xzzzo

The BBC omitted half the story, describing only the officer's response, and using only the vaguest "rude and abusive behaviour" description for the instigator. (As an aside, it's interesting to note that more police officers got sacked in that one single incident, than for the entire Rotherham grooming gangs scandal and coverup. The government has its priorities.)

They have a habit of doing this. When a Nigerian killed his Spanish wife, his identity was entirely omitted from the BBC's reporting, except for "ex-partner":

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/clyw7g4zxwzo

https://www.surinenglish.com/malaga/benalmadena-torremolinos...

> Even though no reasonable person would believe such a thing would be in the TOS

Even if they did, it's a bad to let clickthrough TOS subvert laws and privacy. This idea that contracts can dismiss all other considerations needs to die.

> How do you know that TV you bought is untampered?

Many rooted devices display during boot a warning that they have been rooted. This is a problem that has been solved for more than a decade, but manufacturers pretend not to know the solution, because they are actively hostile to user freedom.

> How do you trust that your hotel/AirBnB is not using root on _their_ TV to use its microphone to spy on you? Or actually records your video output (instead of "just" ACRing it)?

Let's pretend there aren't plenty other ways they could spy on you. If it's bad if a hotel does it, why is it okay if LG does it? Do you honestly trust LG, and the thousands of "partners" that they sell your data to, and every government whose warrants they have to honor?

Your argument reduces to "if the warden lets us out of our jail cells, who will make sure we behave?"

Yes there is. It's much easier to enforce laws if everyone's electronics tattle on them, or if they are otherwise sabotaged, as with DRM, than if citizens have tools that answer to and obey only them.

If there were no other power than political, we wouldn't need weapons to fight wars or rebellions.

'Power' in this case is hardware and software under your control.

The lesson is you can't pay the danegeld to make a problem go away - the only lasting solution is to get the power and sovereignty to do it yourself. Or as Kipling put it - "But Iron – Cold Iron – is master of them all."

I will remind everyone again that weev was raided by the FBI, arrested, and had all electronics seized, before getting a chance to defend himself in court, all for the crime of publishing emails he found on unsecured URLs he was able to guess.

But we're allowing 1000x worse things, because what, there's a vague line about it buried deep in some EULA, which means laws no longer apply?

Lets treat them the same. Raid LG, seize all of their electronics, at least in the US (other countries are encouraged to do their own raids), arrest the executives, and after they're all in jail, and digital forensics are poring over their products and servers to find what else they did, they can argue in court how actually all these crimes are legal.

It's only fair.

> politically impossible

Is it? Are tech companies so popular that voters would revolt if politicians proposed break-ups? They would not be the first - Standard Oil and Bell were also powerful corporations that got split.

'Despite'? I thought the theory of evolution was widely accepted.

> the “smart” aren’t necessarily having fewer kids than the “idiots.”

They are: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fertility_and_intelligence

There are some confounding factors, like education and income also affecting fertility, and correlated with most measures of intelligence, but that doesn't actually affect the diagnosis - regardless of if intelligence directly lowers fertility, or if the effect is mediated by e.g. education, the net effect is that smarter people have fewer children (in our current environment).

"Ex" FBI and CIA officials in key social media posts, and running "harmful content" teams, is covert, and targets US's own citizens, so yes, it is exactly the same thing. That's not even all of it, e.g.:

The Pentagon and CIA Have Shaped Thousands of Hollywood Movies into Super Effective Propaganda - https://worldbeyondwar.org/the-pentagon-and-cia-have-shaped-...

Or recruiting "former" intelligence officials to debunk and censor a true story: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter_Biden_laptop_controvers...

And people outside the USA, such as myself, don't find it so easy to dismiss foreign influence campaigns, e.g.:

US-Funded NGOs and Former Officials Shaped The UK’s Online Safety Act - https://foundationforfreedomonline.com/us-governnent-cutouts...

Nothing new:

Spooks infiltrate Silicon Valley: Facebook is riddled with ex-CIA agents – including President’s briefer who now runs 'harmful content' team – so many ex-FBI work at Twitter they have Slack channel and Google is rife with ex-CIA - https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-11562433/Facebook-rid...

Facebook, Twitter stocked with ex-FBI, CIA officials in key posts - https://nypost.com/2022/12/22/facebook-twitter-stocked-with-...

Twitter Is Said to Have Struggled Over Revealing US Influence Campaign - https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/22/technology/twitter-milita...

Twitter Aided the Pentagon in Its Covert Online Propaganda Campaign; Internal documents show Twitter whitelisted CENTCOM accounts that were then used to run its online influence campaign abroad. - https://theintercept.com/2022/12/20/twitter-dod-us-military-...

"We bring out the moderate voices. We amplify those. And in more detail, we detect and we flag if there is adversary, hostile, corrosive content in some open-source Web forum, [and] we engage with the Web administrators to show that this violates Web site provider policies." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Earnest_Voice