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Again, how would this prevent the company from just looking at the applicants with their eyes and discriminating against the ones they don't want?

But do you trust the same governments hassling journalists at the border and rooting through their electronic data to decide who is, and is not, a journalist?

Disclaimer: US border control, including in this case, is in my view terrible, unjust, and counterproductive. That being said:

There's a weird "OMG A JOURNALIST WAS HASSLED!" angle to the story that, frankly, smells of aristocratic entitlement. Journalists aren't some superior class entitled to swan about the world freely while us filthy plebeians wait in line for toilet paper; at least in America, they're citizens with no more -- and no fewer -- rights than anyone else, and that's the way it should be. The First Amendment is for every citizen, not just those who've managed to get credentials with someone.

Indeed, anyone advocating a reduction to border search insanity is likely harming their cause by linking it to journalists in particular, since journalists are such a widely despised group. There's going to be a nonzero number of people who are going to hear about a journalist being given trouble at the border, even unjustly, and think "good," not "wow, that could happen to me."

Why should journalists have more rights than ordinary civilians?

That's fantastic, thank you. Obviously the researchers are going to be optimistic about their own project but if it's even a tenth as good as they claim, this could genuinely solve the problem.

Hmm, I've never heard that proposal before. Is anyone seriously investigating the use of ground-based lasers to clear orbiting debris? It's plausible that a powerful and well-controlled laser could damage large satellites, but could that be done carefully enough to safely deorbit them instead of breaking them apart? And would the lasers be capable of clearing smaller pieces of debris?

> When China does it, it's bad, right? And the same done by the U.S. good? Or is it the other way around?

Neither.

Instead of flashing an applause light (on HN, that would be "The United States Government is evil!" but, to be fair, in lots of other places it would be yelling about the evil Chinese) we can look at the situation as it develops and why. It would depend on how the war came about, it would depend on the different actors' behaviors and motives. It would require thinking, and honesty.

That whole world-weary "well, who knows what the distinction is between patriotism and terrorism really?" is quite foolish in general, and an excuse to avoid making hard moral choices or, worse, to avoid siding with people who are unpopular in one's social milieu. Yes, there are gray areas. There are also areas which are quite black and white. Should satellite warfare ever happen, something we should all hope is not the case, there's every chance will be able to figure out who was right and who was wrong.

How is a computer looking at the applicant data, including their faces, more insidious than humans looking at it? In either case the company could claim they were totally not paying attention to skin color.

> One of the most important stories of the year, on HN for 6 hours, with 11 comments and 105 points. Is everyone already afraid?

Or maybe they don't share your opinion about how important or meaningful it is.

If some corporation did want to be racist (which has not been established), they'd hardly need fancy face-analysis technology to do it. They could, you know, just look at the applicants.

That... that's your evidence that Google are a bunch of racists? Because they want to know how well applicants did in college?

Okay, then. Good luck with the lawsuits.

> US corporations have a multi-hundred year history of using thinly veiled proxies for race as part of their hiring practices. This continues to this day, including in the tech industry.

That's a pretty serious accusation, one that could spark a lot of successful lawsuits against those companies -- especially in the current political climate in the states they tend to be located in. Do you have any specific evidence to back it up?

And if the President was selected by popular vote, that would mean something.

> This immediately brings to mind the history of scientific racism, specifically with craniometry being used to 'prove' that certain races are inferior.

I can't imagine why...? That would be like seeing a freeway and instantly thinking of the Nazis.

Gizmodo? Isn't that the revenge porn outfit that was sued into bankruptcy a while back?

Some microcontrollers use under 0.2 watts, which would be 153 grams of this material. So there are at least some potential applications. If you combined that with a bistable LCD display, could you make a clock/thermometer/whatever that would run almost indefinitely (until the Carbon-14 ran out, that is)?

Fair enough. Can I at least suggest, though, that if you don't want political fights going on at HN it would be a good idea to swiftly remove "stories" such as this one that are purely political and are guaranteed to bring out every ax-grinder on the Internet in the comments?

I can't help but notice that you skipped over the little details about a lack of democracy, a lack of free access to information, and how dissidents are punished.

> On the other side, western propaganda blanks out a lot of facts about Cuba. Among those is the fact that a significant percentage of Cubans approve their government.

I can't help but notice that you skipped over the little details about a lack of democracy, a lack of free access to information, and how dissidents are punished.

> On the other side, western propaganda blanks out a lot of facts about Cuba. Among those is the fact that a significant percentage of Cubans approve their government.

Weird. Then why the resistance to holding elections?

> But comparing the US and USSR isn’t nearly as easy. Both were (and are) horrible to non-citizen.

Go ahead and compare how the United States treated the citizens of, say, France, with how the USSR treated the citizens of, oh, say, Czechoslovakia. We'll wait.

> And while the US was mostly okay to the white citizen, minorities had to suffer for quite a while.

It's telling that you are attempting to draw an equality between segregation -- which was legally ended in 1957 as part of an open and democratic process -- with the USSR's extensive gulag system, intricate controls on freedom of expression and freedom of thought, and general lack of civil rights for everyone, which lasted right up until the day it disintegrated.

> In Germany we’re having a huge group of people who lived under communism – and want it back.

If Communism was so great, why did you have to build a wall to keep people from running away from it? That's the unanswerable point here.

Really? There have been free and fair elections in Cuba, where anyone can start up a political party, campaign for their positions without any fear whatsoever of government retaliation, and successfully get elected to office, even if they have anti-Communist views? Wow, I hadn't heard about this. You seem to be pretty confident about stating it, though, so perhaps you can go into some detail about these elections.

I'm also wondering why so many people were so desperate to leave Cuba in rickety rafts even though they could have just voted out the Castros instead in one of these elections you mention, but I'm sure you can explain that too.

"Done fucked up"? In what sense? You appear to have some action in mind.

The proposed changes to using the popular vote would not increase the campaigning in Wyoming or Montana either.

It already has. Which is doubly unfortunate since there is no evidence whatsoever of monkey business anyway.

Cuba also sent lots of soldiers to foment revolutions and enforce dictatorships in African countries. It's pretty rich to thank him for sending doctors when he's also sending the people creating more injuries.

> He had his fights and ills, but not with us.

Yeah, generally with his own citizens who he stomped on for decades. But hey, at least you got a couple free doctors out of it so screw those guys.

It's a pity that journalists (and a few self-interested politicians) distorted Halderman's points so dramatically. This stuff's never going to go away, now -- it'll be the foundation of wild conspiracy theories for decades.

Perhaps they could also call for the manufacturers to "develop technology" to give every driver a pony, while they're at it. It's kind of infuriating to hear from someone who thinks you can just say "develop technology" and then anything will happen.

No, they would try to run up the numbers in big cities and large media markets, and ignore the rest.

> Clinton got over 2m more votes than her opponent, but will not be President. That's not democracy.

I suppose it was kind of a rotten trick to not tell the Democrats about the Electoral College beforehand, yeah.

> It's that if someone wins a popular vote by 2 million fucking votes, then they should probably win the election.

Except that in a universe where the President was selected by popular vote, the candidates would have campaigned differently anyway, so your point is completely moot.

Wikipedia is one of those systems, like Twitter, that almost seems like it was intentionally designed to incentivize toxic behavior. It rewards clique building and gives victory in any fight to whoever is the most stubborn and has influential friends, regardless of the truth. We are going to regret subcontracting so much of the job of compiling and sharing human knowledge to it, guaranteed.