rmxt

Fair points. Someone has to "pay", whether through effort or money, for the new systems to garner traction. I agree that it is hard to see where the momentum could or would come from, and no I cannot name an instance where something has garnered significant traction. Some of the alternative android location services are at least functioning for technical users. (https://github.com/microg/android_packages_apps_UnifiedNlp)

We return to my issue: does it being difficult and yet to be achieved mean that the people that are aware of potential drawbacks of the status quo should lay down and give up? That seems to be your implication.

I'm not sure that what people believe about Snowden is inextricably tied to people's perception of location tracking. In fact, I speculate that there are probably some people who both think Snowden is a traitor and think that corporations or the government shouldn't be location tracking them. (That's ignoring the futility that is speaking in broad strokes about "the general public".)

Furthermore, I am not sure that any of those are necessarily a given. I'm not advocating for breaking apps or an abrupt shift to no location services, I'm not dismissing your average end-user's needs/desires or insulting their intelligence. I'm hypothesizing that there might be ways to get non-GPS location services out of the hands of a few big players. It theoretically wouldn't make your phone cost more money, but it might take the time-money-effort of people who build the systems (maybe open-source?). I'm trying to appeal to the people who build the systems and brainstorm ways to do that, not really rally the end-users to this particular cause.

I see the "if you don't like it, don't use it" suggestion quite a bit. Can't we advocate for better public understanding of, and decentralization of, location services while also acknowledging that the best way right now is to leave it in a metal box turned off? The concepts of privacy and location services are at odds with one another, but reducing it to "love it or leave it" leaves the potential middle ground of preserving some privacy while reaping the benefits of location-aware information unexplored.

Unfortunately, this doesn't appear to capture the impacts of elevated train lines. Elevated train lines are overwhelmingly (nearly exclusively) concentrated in the outer boroughs, and imbue the streets beneath them with a very distinct (and almost universally dark) feel.

So... second guessing someone's retelling of a completely sober, undoubtedly career impacting scenario (one way or another) in the workplace is equivalent to second guessing someone's retelling of a drunken haze of a night?

It's folly to think that the same level and style of scrutiny need be applied to both. You aren't wrong to paint the alternate picture for your friend's case, but it's sidestepping the issue in question (e.g., potential harassment in the workplace) to attempt to make that equivalency here.

Glad to see that self-congratulatory snark and drive-by skepticism is alive and well! The amount of time it took to post this could have instead been devoted to finding research of the type you supposedly seek in good-faith.

Starting point that contains cites: http://www.apa.org/about/policy/resolution-psychotherapy.asp...

At least on Android and the Google Maps app, when one requests mass transit directions, UberX is often given as a potential route. Gives a fare quote and a trip time, IIRC.

Most of the submitted page is devoted to the answers to your question.

Surely college admissions procedures have changed significantly in the intervening 17 years, right? We're talking about the advent and removal of the 2400 point SAT, the rise of digital applications, and the rise of SAT subject tests, among other changes.

Furthermore, this specific point system in question was ruled unconstitutional and is no longer in use.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gratz_v._Bollinger

Putting your ideological motivations aside, how do programs promoting home computer ownership or basic literacy (with the ultimate aim of getting people up to par in literacy, before encouraging development in the sciences) in impoverished areas "nullify and demean the good work that hard-working individuals have done"? There's no logical connection there, nor any sort of free pass being offered.

Furthermore, the implication that people in poverty are any less "hard-working" than those that have achieved financial success/accessibility to the sciences seems like a claim that needs some citations. Quick Google searches suggest that escaping poverty with children would actually require working more than 40-hours a week. Seems like a catch-22 for trying to achieve financial, familial and educational success. [1]

[1] http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2015/05/06/u-s-minimum-wage-e...

Does poverty create "bad people" or do "bad people" end up in poverty?

That seems like a question that you would need answered before you can assert that "it's not economics keeping people from the sciences."

If we can't agree that the last three refer to "separation" (de facto discrimination) and not de jure discrimination, I think we will only continue to argue past one another.

Only one (the first) of the four quotes you've chosen restrict market forces in the way you are envisioning, i.e. white workers don't want black competition. I'd be interested in what the next sentence was, and wouldn't be surprised if it was "no white barber shall serve as a barber to colored women". (Aside: it seems like lots of these snippets are floating around the internet with little by way of attribution.)

The remaining three are "separate but equal". We return to the question: what about these laws required that the "separate" facilities be of lesser quality? Nothing about "separate but equal" immediately screams "discrimination", but as we know from history, it can end in discriminatory practice. The de facto ramifications of the laws were that black populations suffered (economically/educationally/etc.) at the hands of white populations: the market forces were not strong enough to encourage a lifting of the laws, or genuinely equal facilities, as Frondo suggests. Similarly, market forces may not be strong enough to encourage Airbnb hosts to serve all potential customers equally.

Your causation is backwards: people created the laws (under guise of equality) because they wanted to discriminate (and, if you want to boil everything down to some ahistorical economic gesture, it resulted in market forces tilting in their favor). To say that the laws stemmed from the economic implications is a stretch, especially post Plessy.

Linking to Wikipedia without expounding which details you are referring to is a bit of sleight of hand. Specifically, what part of "separate but equal" [1] "legally required" that "separate" facilities for blacks have poorer conditions than the facilities for whites? I speculate that it's embedded cultural beliefs of hatred and superiority/inferiority (or, at a minimum, apathy) that caused those poorer conditions and discrimination to happen much more so than anything that was "legally required" or based on economic concerns.

Also, the issue at hand for Airbnb is specifically about hosts discriminating against potential guests. How do hosts that discriminate against guests encourage a "race to the bottom"? There might be parallels between discrimination a la Jim Crow and discrimination a la Airbnb hosts, but they aren't in the form of economic concerns. Your snark about learning history seems misplaced.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plessy_v._Ferguson#Significanc...

Maybe five, ten, twenty years ago traffic signal buttons in NYC were an everyday sight, but they are increasingly further and fewer between. Taking the article's 100 functioning + 1000 non-functioning buttons at face value, combined with the fact that there are ~12,000 signalized intersections in NYC [1], means that it is likely that less than 2-5% of the crosswalks in NYC have buttons.

A fully equipped traditional "+" shaped intersection would have 4 crosswalks and 8 buttons, so 1100/(12000 * 2 to 8) = 1% to 5% of crosswalks could have buttons.

NYC gets a lot of grief for decrepit infrastructure, but this is an area where they have actually started to remove the unused stuff.

[1] http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/html/infrastructure/signals.shtm...

Undoubtedly some aspects of life will become safer, but the interesting question is "At what expense does that safety come?"

Just because something is the new normal, doesn't mean it is "right".

I agree, and I forgot about the "half billion over 12 years" line in the article. But why throw shade at the homeless due to a failing of the city?

What do you propose as an alternative? Charge them 25c for an hour of use?

I find it hard to blame the homeless (as you are) for taking advantage of a free perk, when it should be the cities and companies being held accountable for returning some portion of the profit back to those whom they are profiting from. Alphabet wants the information -- do you think they would have turned down a request to say that some nominal percentage of the revenue goes back to city social service programs?

Those with nothing have plenty to gain, but they should have more to gain. If private companies are profiting off of the backs of the public (both the "haves" and "have-nots"), why shouldn't/doesn't/didn't the city negotiate a profit sharing agreement so that money can go into programs that (among other things) can help the homeless more directly? Shelters to get people off the street, job training programs, libraries, resume workshops. As the article indicates, the city has a ton of leverage that it left on the table, in terms of lost opportunities for increased privacy and increased financial opportunity.

If we go "hierarchy of needs" on this situation, music for a homeless person seems like it should come a little bit behind shelter and food.

Is your implication that he was at Princeton only due to his race? Can you prove that?

Otherwise, this seems gratuitously negative and irrelevant.

You are correct to say that you can't commit a trespass by observing someone in public. However, trespassing is not an exclusive test as to whether a search is permissible (though it was the applicable rubric for Jones). The Katz test still must be applied, above and beyond the trespassory test. The concurrences in the Jones opinion state "at the very least, “longer term GPS monitoring in investigations of most offenses impinges on expectations of privacy.”

Swap "GPS monitoring" for infrared, EMF, video, audio tracking, whatever those planes are doing, and I think we are at the same level of "impinge(ment) on expectations of privacy."

Is it your opinion that Alito and Sotomayor are barking up the wrong tree? Is this sort of extensive (i.e. multi-modal (visual, EMF, etc.)), and evidently prolonged, monitoring not an impingement on typical expectation of privacy? Sure, this isn't a trespass, but if a private person was doing this to you, wouldn't you want to call the cops? (Oh, wait...)

There needs to be further refinement as to what actually constitutes "watching", e.g. with respect to duration, frequency, information monitored, etc. US v. Jones held that installing a GPS device on a car constituted a trespass against one's "personal effects".

I think the similar argument here would be that a near constant observation of someone, even while in public, would amount to the same sort of search, even though one has a very low expectation of privacy while in public.

It's not just men that can "have everything taken from them".

Portraying yourself as some sort of "victim of the system" because other people can get married doesn't exactly seem like the strongest way of arguing against asset division during divorce.

Rather than dismissing things as "strawmen," it would help if you clearly elucidate your claims before you make (what appear to be) broad brush statements, e.g. "Muslims took to the streets", "What are we supposed to think?".

Your original post comes across as prototypical "us vs. them", "we are the good guys" blather. Yes, murder and violence are indefensible, but otherization does nothing to work towards deeper understanding of the causes/issues at play.

Clearly the best response to violent and fatal intolerance....is more kneejerk intolerance.

Assuming all Muslims are ideologically the same, and that Muslims monolithically defend this sort of behavior is an asinine assumption.

Did you post the wrong link? There is no mention of a definition of colored, or any mention at all as to what sort of impact Jim Crow laws had on Asian immigrants. The website solely talks about Caucasian and Black. Your angle here is disingenuous: if you actually thought Jim Crow directly impacted Asian communities you wouldn't have left that out of your original argument about the terrible things that Korean immigrants have faced. ("Korea was dirt poor (think worst part of Africa levels) since forever, then a war, then refugees into the racist US.")

Yes, every individual person's experience is unique. However, that was not my point. My point was that the typical Korean immigrant's experience is a different situation than the typical experience of an ancestor of an African-American today. (Call it two brands: the general "Korean-American" paperclip, and a general "African-American" paperclip.)

Korean immigrants and their descendents, simply put, were and are in a different situation than African-Americans or their ancestors. Some parts of either of their situations are outside the control of individuals.

Can you say with a straight face that 200 years of legalized segregation, and concomitant economic starvation, should disappear ("unbend") within 60 years of it being de facto uplifted?

You didn't answer the question. I'll take that as a "no".

My point is that the properties of each paperclip are unique. Trying to make the sort of extrapolations between paperclips that you tend towards (misery poker) is not an exercise that leads to improvement for anyone.

Playing misery poker with racial hardships (like you are) is ridiculous and vain to begin with, but I'll ask you this: can you find one example of an American law targeting Koreans akin to this Louisiana law specifically targeting blacks?

"Any person...who shall rent any part of any such building to a negro person or a negro family when such building is already in whole or in part in occupancy by a white person or white family, or vice versa when the building is in occupancy by a negro person or negro family, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and on conviction thereof shall be punished by a fine of not less than twenty-five ($25.00) nor more than one hundred ($100.00) dollars or be imprisoned not less than 10, or more than 60 days, or both such fine and imprisonment in the discretion of the court."

https://goo.gl/sBpv2x

EDIT: My limited recollection of American history reminds me that there were protectionist laws against Chinese immigrants on the Western frontier. For the sake of this exercise, let's limit your law search to 20th century discrimination against non-Japanese, non-Chinese immigrants.

There is a line between "acknowledging reality and the lingering effects of institutionalized racism" and "the racism of lowered expectations," but it is not drawn at "blacks can't get away from the various hells of the world." The former is what I think the GP is getting at.

Your implication about economic protectionism being a net drain on society regardless of the classifiers could have been made without using a ridiculous example such as Jim Crow -- the non sequitur of Jim Crow lies not with my response, but with yours.

I can't and won't argue that "politically connected", "nepotism" or "random chance" are the best way of doing things, but "ambition", "ability", and "intelligence" play a non-negligible (at least non-zero) role in how much prosperity one can achieve in the taxi, real estate, etc. industries. Under Jim Crow style regulation, "ambition", "ability" and "intelligence" have zero impact on whether or not one can achieve one's fullest potential. "Right race" (a.k.a "random chance") is the only way to end up maximally successful under Jim Crow. Your argument that modern regulations are akin to Jim Crow falls flat with respect to how fungible the upward mobility is in the face of regulation.