possibility

Ha! "Term of art" is another good one.

There are obviously evil characters, obviously good characters, and ambiguous characters. Mostly ambiguous.

But before you do that, try pulling out functions.

I think the claim is that demanding what is rightfully yours is greedy and selfish. I don't know whether I agree in this case (probably not), but there have been cases in my life where I do agree.

That is what I learned from the censorship of the officer's statement.

Why would I take the money? Because I've seen someone sue and win a lawsuit and I just wouldn't want to go through the stress of it. Even if I thought I was right and could win. Everyone has their price, maybe Jeremy would have settled for $20M.

And similarly I don't think YC would offer $4.5M if they knew they were (completely) in the right.

This is trivial, but my favorite part of your post is the use of "a writing" as an expression.

> After hearing the announcement, Guillory contacted Vogt to inquire about his share of the proceeds from the sale of Cruise to GM. Vogt responded that he was due nothing, but first offered $100,000, then $1 million, and then $1.5 million and acknowledgment that Guillory was a co-founder — but only if Guillory would immediately surrender his ownership rights.

> The second Director to contact Guillory, Altman, also said he was authorized to negotiate on Cruise’s behalf and offered Guillory triple the amount of Vogt’s previous offer, but only if Guillory would agree to sign a formal settlement agreement that same day.

3 x $1.5 million = $4.5 million. Personally, I would have taken the money, but I think it must be incredibly hard to make such a decision under time pressure and without counsel. Still, you can retire on that money and basically be happy, and I would have chosen that over this shitstorm if I'd had the presence of mind.

I think "people from place" constitutes an ethnicity, but I'll concede that this isn't a common mindset.

The irony is that the inhabitants of the "San Francisco Castro neighborhood" also form an ethnic group by virtue of living in the same place. Notably, it's a gay neighborhood. Takeaway? Gangs rob stores in gay villages. Oh, and cops are racists. Moral? Let people think for themselves, you can't get away from prejudice.

Hmmm. How about "any thoughtful reader"? Works for me.

I agree with you, but I'm going to quibble over:

> any reader who doesn't already have racial prejudices

because I don't believe these people exist.

The only machine around here that I could totally walk into is an S/390, but oddly enough I don't have the key to its bedroom.

Sam owns YC, YC owns HN, what does it matter? The whole purpose of HN is to make Sam (and the other partners, and investors, and YC startups) money. Mindshare is incredibly valuable. It's advertising that doesn't totally suck.

On reflection, perhaps this pointless diversion yields the following maxim:

  You can walk into a house through an open door,
  but you can't walk into a computer.

Oh, I was literally just arguing the other side about going through an open window because I didn't know for sure if it was burglary. (Common law says no, but that's probably updated, but maybe not in some places, but I didn't check them all.)

I don't see how you could access a computer without using "force", any input from a human constitutes force in my opinion. So no disagreement as far as the actual crime is concerned, I'm just nitpicking for fun...

Yes, but that's using force to open the door, which was in my original claim about no force on an open window.

Reading that WP article again, turns out I was just considering the common law part. It later says:

> The common law definition has been expanded in most jurisdictions, such that the building need not be a dwelling or even a building in the conventional sense, physical breaking is not necessary, the entry does not need to occur at night, and the intent may be to commit any felony or theft.

So I'll give it to you for "physical breaking is not necessary", even though I don't actually know about the jurisdiction in question. (I didn't rtfa.)

Well, I didn't know, so I looked it up before posting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burglary

> Although rarely listed as an element, the common law required that "entry occur as a consequence of the breaking".[7] For example, if a wrongdoer partially opens a window with a pry bar—but then notices an open door, which he uses to enter the dwelling, there is no burglary under common law.

There are more results if you search for "breaking and entering", it was all pretty consistent.

Picking the locks is breaking and entering, going through an open window is illegal trespass, assuming you don't have to move any parts of the window. At least where I live. It depends on whether or not you have to use even the slightest amount of force to gain access. It also depends on your intent to commit a crime inside. If I'm looking for you because I've found your toddler wandering around outside and I open an unlocked door to call out your name, it isn't a crime. I'm not sure what happens if I pick a locked door in that situation, getting pretty contrived now. But let's say I heard your kid crying inside that you'd abandoned, it wouldn't be a crime to pick the lock and rescue him/her.

Bipolar depression rapidly gives way to mania if you try to treat it like unipolar depression with standard antidepressants. The chances of this happening are greatly increased if you've never been diagnosed as bipolar. It happened to someone I know, and it was pretty ugly. The jackass behavior is an unfortunate part of the medical condition. It's common for the shame felt after coming down from a manic episode to throw you right back into depression. You can search for "ssri mania" if you want to learn more, it's a well-known phenomenon.

Tying your two examples together, the GPL version of free/libre is way more complex than the simple BSD version.

I think maybe you made a mistake, because the exchange reads like this:

A: Knives are for eating.

B: Eating is only a part of it. Knives are for handling food.

A: You can handle food with a fork. Your claim is false.

Specifically, "math is for solving problems" does not imply "problems are only solved by math".

I think that posting the pictures online like that is actually what's creepy. The matching almost has nothing to do with it. For instance, if he just had the subway photos, or he just had the profile pictures, it would give me a creepy feeling. It feels like an invasion of privacy. Here we even have laws that say you cannot publish someone's picture without their consent. Russia does too.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Country_specific_...

Additionally he quite likely doesn't have permission to post the profile pictures due to copyright.

You can hire lawyers on a contingency basis, which means they don't get paid unless they win. Typically they want half of the settlement money. $7 million dollars is still a lot, and it could be more if there are damages.

I know someone who went up against a Dow 30 tech company like this, won $8 million, and walked away with $2 million after tax. Let me know if you want more details, I'll email you.