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testbot123

80 karma · joined April 15, 2020

Likes: JavaScript, React

Dislikes: Police brutality

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testbot123··on Google bans ZeroHedge and The Federalist from its ad platform
The site isn't "cancelled" though. Google has chosen not to do business with another business because advertisers that pay Google don't want their ads to appear on ZeroHedge, whose comments section features language that said advertisers don't want associated with their brand. ZeroHedge still exists, is still listed in Google's search results, and can still make money -- just not on Google's ad network. This is the free market at work.
testbot123··on ‘Hey Siri, I’m getting pulled over’: Records police interaction, sends location
The Wikipedia link you're citing does not have data that refutes OPs claim. It mentions several studies that seem to refute it, but in the next sentence(s), shows further studies which refute those.
testbot123··on Opinion: Open-source should stay away from all kinds of politics
Links are below, with excerpts in case you don't have time to read the massive volumes of text produced by the government, NGOs, and journalists.

Sorry it's out of order.

testbot123··on Opinion: Open-source should stay away from all kinds of politics
"Demographic Differences in Sentencing" [9] -- " Black male offenders continued to receive longer sentences than similarly situated White male offenders. Black male offenders received sentences on average 19.1 percent longer than similarly situated White male offenders during the Post-Report period (fiscal years 2012-2016), as they had for the prior four periods studied. The differences in sentence length remained relatively unchanged compared to the Post-Gall period.", " Violence in an offender’s criminal history does not appear to account for any of the demographic differences in sentencing. Black male offenders received sentences on average 20.4 percent longer than similarly situated White male offenders, accounting for violence in an offender’s past in fiscal year 2016, the only year for which such data is available. This figure is almost the same as the 20.7 percent difference without accounting for past violence. Thus, violence in an offender’s criminal history does not appear to contribute to the sentence imposed to any extent beyond its contribution to the offender’s criminal history score determined under the sentencing guidelines."

" New HUD Report Shows Continued Discrimination Against People of Color" [10] -- "People of color looking for homes are told about and shown fewer homes and apartments than their white counterparts."

"Police harassment affects half of black youth, one-third of whites, study says" [11] -- "Ever since a Florida jury acquitted George Zimmerman for the fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin, a 17 year-old walking home from a convenience store, criticism of unfair treatment of people of color by police has been a near-constant headline.

But the issue is hardly new to young black Americans, over 50 percent of whom reported knowing a victim of police harassment or violence in 2009, well before Michael Brown or Freddy Gray were household names throughout the country."

"You really can get pulled over for driving while black, federal statistics show" [12] -- "The Justice Department statistics, based on the Police-Public Contact Survey, show that "relatively more black drivers (12.8%) than white (9.8%) and Hispanic (10.4%) drivers were pulled over in a traffic stop during their most recent contact with police." Or, to frame it another way: A black driver is about 31 percent more likely to be pulled over than a white driver, or about 23 percent more likely than a Hispanic driver. "Driving while black" is, indeed, a measurable phenomenon."

"‘Walking while black’ can be dangerous too, study finds" [13] -- "Sadly, it seems, “walking while black” can have dangerous consequences.

That’s because a recent study suggests motorists are less likely to stop for an African American pedestrian in a crosswalk. A black pedestrian’s wait time at the curb was about 32 percent longer than a white person’s. Black pedestrians were about twice as likely as white pedestrians to be passed by multiple vehicles.

The small but provocative study — conducted by researchers at Portland State University in Oregon and the University of Arizona — suggests that biases just outside people’s conscious awareness can make them less likely to yield to minority pedestrians. And that could put those pedestrians at risk, said Kimberly B. Kahn, an assistant professor of social psychology at Portland State University."

If you'd like, we can discuss gerrymandering, voter ID laws, and other forms of disenfranchisement of minorities, which prevents any meaningful change to systemic racism.

[9] https://www.ussc.gov/research/research-reports/demographic-d...

[10] https://www.demos.org/blog/new-hud-report-shows-continued-di...

[11] https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/USA-Update/2015/1104/Police-ha...

[12] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/09/09/you-r...

[13] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/dr-gridlock/wp/2015/10/2...

testbot123··on Opinion: Open-source should stay away from all kinds of politics
"Study: ‘African-American Names’ 16% Less Likely to Be Approved for Airbnb Rentals" [3]

"Black Preschoolers Far More Likely To Be Suspended" [4] -- "Here's what the education data show: kids who are suspended or expelled from school are more likely to drop out, and those dropouts are more likely to end up with criminal records. In many places, school discipline pushes kids directly into the juvenile justice system. Take just one example: a school fight can end in an arrest for assault.

Education and civil rights groups have dubbed this phenomenon the "school-to-prison pipeline." There are big racial differences in how school discipline is meted out: students of color are much more likely to be suspended or expelled that white students, even when the infractions are the same.

A new government study on discipline in the nation's public schools shows just how very early that gap is present. According to the report, black children make up 18 percent of preschoolers, but make up nearly half of all out-of-school suspensions. (We're talking mostly four-year-olds, people.)"

"CIVIL RIGHTS DATA COLLECTIONData Snapshot: School Discipline" [5] -- "Disproportionately high suspension/expulsion rates for students of color", "Disproportionate suspensions of girls of color",

"The Essence of Innocence: Consequences of Dehumanizing Black Children" [6] -- "The social category “children” defines a group of individuals who are perceived to be distinct, with essential characteristics including innocence and the need for protection (Haslam, Rothschild, & Ernst, 2000). The present research examined whether Black boys are given the protections of childhood equally to their peers.We tested 3 hypotheses: (a) that Black boys are seen as less “childlike” than their White peers, (b) that the characteristics associated with childhood will be applied less when thinking specifically about Black boys relative to White boys, and (c) that these trends would be exacerbated in contexts where Black males are dehumanized by associating them (implicitly) with apes (Goff, Eberhardt, Williams, & Jackson, 2008). Weexpected, derivative of these 3 principal hypotheses, that individuals would perceive Black boys as being moreresponsible for their actions and as being more appropriate targets for police violence. We find support forthese hypotheses across 4 studies using laboratory, field, and translational (mixed laboratory/field) methods.We find converging evidence that Black boys are seen as older and less innocent and that they prompt a lessessential conception of childhood than do their White same-age peers. Further, our findings demonstrate that the Black/ape association predicted actual racial disparities in police violence toward children. These datarepresent the first attitude/behavior matching of its kind in a policing context. Taken together, this researchsuggests that dehumanization is a uniquely dangerous intergroup attitude, that intergroup perception of children is underexplored, and that both topics should be research priorities."

"Black Crime Rates: What Happens When Numbers Aren’t Neutral" [7] -- "(1) If a black person and a white person each commit a crime, the black person is more likely to be arrested. This is due in part to the fact that black people are more heavily policed.", "(2) When black people are arrested for a crime, they are convicted more often than white people arrested for the same crime.", "(3) When black people are convicted of a crime, they are more likely to be sentenced to incarceration compared to whites convicted of the same crime."

"Data Show Racial Disparity in Crack Sentencing" [8] -- "Speaking on the House floor last week, California Republican Rep. Dan Lungren acknowledged the potential racial effects of the old sentencing structure. "Certainly, one of the sad ironies in this entire episode is that a bill [the old sentencing structure] which was characterized by some as a response to the crack epidemic in African American communities has led to racial sentencing disparities which simply cannot be ignored in any reasoned discussion of this issue," said Lungren."

[3] https://washington.cbslocal.com/2015/12/14/study-african-ame...

[4] https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2014/03/21/292456211...

[5] https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/crdc-discipl...

[6] https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/psp-a0035663.pdf

[7] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/black-crime-rates-your-st_b_8...

[8] https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2010/08/03/data-show-ra...

testbot123··on Opinion: Open-source should stay away from all kinds of politics
"Black unemployment rate is consistently twice that of whites" [0] -- "One common explanation, as William A. Darity Jr. of Duke University told Salon in 2011, is that blacks are “the last to be hired in a good economy, and when there’s a downturn, they’re the first to be released.” A 2010 article testing that “last hired, first fired” hypothesis against panel data from the Current Population Survey (from which the unemployment rate is derived) found considerable support for the “first fired” part but not for the “last hired” part: Blacks are in fact disproportionately likely to lose their jobs as the business cycle weakens"

"African-Americans With College Degrees Are Twice As Likely to Be Unemployed as Other Graduates" [1] -- "Schmitt pointed to a series of studies that have in recent years found that when trained sets of black and white testers with identical resumes are sent on interviews, white men with recent criminal histories are far more likely to receive calls back than black men with no criminal record at all."

"DiTomaso says the study, like other research, challenges the assumption that opportunity is available to all Americans who equip themselves with the right skills. Private-sector labor data reported to the federal government shows little change in the share of management and executive-level jobs held by racial and ethnic minorities since the 1980s, she said. In fact, in industries that offer workers the best wages, the share of white men in these jobs has actually grown.

The researchers behind the center's study of black college graduate employment patterns emphasized the role that the recession has played in dampening every worker's employment prospects. But they concluded that the long-term unemployment crisis among black college graduates ultimately could not be explained without accounting for continuing discrimination against black applicants."

"Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination" [2] -- " We perform a field experiment to measure racial discrimination in the labor market. We respond with fictitious resumes to help-wanted ads in Boston and Chicago newspapers. To manipulate perception of race, each resume is assigned either a very African American sounding name or a very White sounding name. The results show significant discrimination against African-American names: White names receive 50 percent more callbacks for interviews. We also find that race affects the benefits of a better resume. For White names, a higher quality resume elicits 30 percent more callbacks whereas for African Americans, it elicits a far smaller increase. Applicants living in better neighborhoods receive more callbacks but, interestingly, this effect does not differ by race. The amount of discrimination is uniform across occupations and industries. Federal contractors and employers who list Equal Opportunity Employer' in their ad discriminate as much as other employers. We find little evidence that our results are driven by employers inferring something other than race, such as social class, from the names. These results suggest that racial discrimination is still a prominent feature of the labor market."

[0] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/08/21/through-goo...

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/05/african...

[2] https://www.nber.org/papers/w9873

testbot123··on Opinion: Open-source should stay away from all kinds of politics
> This is not the case now in the largest part of the country, nor is it true in most parts of Europe. In other words, had BLM been around in the 1950's they would have been 'in control of the discussion' as they would have had the truth on their side. Nowadays this is not the case, those claims of 'systemic racism' are unfounded and easily refuted. [...] There are racist individuals, some of those may be in positions of power where they can effect racist policies over a limited amount of people but this is the exception, not the rule.

I strongly disagree with this premise. It's the claims that "systemic racism is dead" that are unfounded and easily refuted.

testbot123··on I'm resigning from my job at Facebook
Luckily, he made a very public post about it which is currently being discussed in one of the most influential tech news aggregators on the internet. If others are inspired and also leave the company, it will make an impact.
testbot123··on I'm resigning from my job at Facebook
Facebook loses much more money with this employee's departure (if their salary is indeed 250k like you're claiming) -- the cost of recruiting, training, and keeping employees is incredibly high, especially in tech.

Now imagine that OP inspires 100 employees quit -- now Facebook has a problem that it must address, because it's threatening their bottom line.

testbot123··on I'm resigning from my job at Facebook
I don't need to engage in politics in my workplace. I can work with people with differing political opinions in terms of activism and advocacy, though.

"Liberal" and "conservative" aren't the only political flavors, either. Lots of leftist activists don't work with liberals and lots of right-wing activists don't work with conservatives, for example. It's also difficult to work with someone whose beliefs conflict too much with your own or whose views are dehumanizing (like, I wouldn't want to work with someone who regards themselves as superior because of their race).

testbot123··on I'm resigning from my job at Facebook
Don't have any commentary on the substance of this quote, but man that is some terrible writing.
testbot123··on Opinion: Open-source should stay away from all kinds of politics
"All lives matter" is divisive because "black lives matter" is a statement that black lives are largely devalued and forgotten in a system of institutionalized racism. "Black lives matter" leaves off the implied "too": "black lives matter, too."

> "WTF is the impulse behind changing #BlackLivesMatter to #AllLivesMatter. Do you crash strangers' funerals shouting I TOO HAVE FELT LOSS" - @arthur_affect on Twitter

testbot123··on How much do we need the police?
I should also clarify that this history is focused on the Los Angeles area around 1960s-1990s, viewed from the lens of the drug war. Gangs had existed in the country for a long time before the 60s (and in LA, too -- Bloods and Crips), but the proliferation of crack into the US via Los Angeles caused an explosion in the crime rate.

For brevity's sake, I'm also ignoring a lot of other serious issues related to police relations with the citizens of LA (e.g., Watts riots in '65, Rodney King in '92), which should be considered to paint a full picture of the antagonisms that have led us to where we are today. The drug war didn't create gangs (they existed before), but it poured fuel on the fire which led to a lot of the violence in that area in the 80s/90s.

testbot123··on How much do we need the police?
> Right, that's another word for police.

I guess we agree then: more police so we can stop targeting minorities in street-level busts and instead target the big offenders: white collar crime that destroys minority communities and keeps them in perpetual bondage. If you want to haul the rich and powerful out of their homes with tear gas and tanks, who am I to disagree?

> No, but that didn't cause gangs, and you know it.

Now we're getting somewhere. By itself, no, it didn't. Institutionalized racism in the forms of employment, education, and housing discrimination carried from the 1960s caused largely-minority communities to remain segregated and poor while at the same time, white flight took money from the inner cities and moved it to the suburbs, leaving behind an underfunded and broken education system [0]. The Civil Rights Act and the Fair Housing Act are relatively recent developments: 1964 and 1968, respectively -- just a little over 10 years before your father got to LA. By the 80s, increased class stratification and tough-on-crime initiatives from the federal government meant minorities and the poor faced even more disproportionately aggressive policing and incarceration. With little hope of achieving the same success as their more affluent counterparts in the suburbs, many individuals turned to crime as a mode of survival. Then came Iran-Contra, crack cocaine, and gangs.

Of course, if you're talking about true gangs in the US during this time, we can also discuss the American mafia, white supremacists like the Aryan Brotherhood, the KKK, or even the gangs depicted in the film, "Gangs of New York" in the "Five Points" area of NY (but this is an example of some of the first gangs in the US, around the late 1700s -- thought some historical context would be interesting). These gangs, however, have faced less scrutiny because of their close connections with law enforcement and government.

[0] For a heartbreaking account of the devastating long term effects of this, I highly recommend Jonathan Kozol's 1991 book, "Savage Inequalities: Children in America's Schools"

testbot123··on How much do we need the police?
It's a demand for accountants, lawyers, and law enforcement that focuses on egregious offenders and systemic injustice, eliminating the root causes of crime. Not tear gas and tanks.

You were speaking about crime in the 70s and 80s. That probably has a lot to do with the War on Drugs [0] (have we won yet?), brought to you by the same administration who gave us Iran-Contra [1], which largely introduced the US (LA specifically) to crack cocaine [2]. I believe every single person involved with that scandal was pardoned. Oliver North even had his own show on Fox News and became president of the NRA!

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_drugs

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reagan_administration_scandals

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_drugs#CIA_and_Contra_co...

testbot123··on How much do we need the police?
You mean, like... Jefferey Epstein?

We spend so much time defending the rights of police to use military-grade weaponry on individual citizens that we forget that the people who are actually looting this country and committing its most grievous crimes are largely ignored.

testbot123··on ACLU sues Minnesota for police violence against the press
I don't think they're advocating for disbanding the department completely (from the article):

> I don’t know yet, though several of us on the council are working on finding out, what it would take to disband the MPD and start fresh with a community-oriented, non-violent public safety and outreach capacity.

It takes a lot of investment in the community, but it works: https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/01/what-happened-to-crim...

testbot123··on Ask HN: How are your companies addressing systemic racism?
> To give you an example: if you have little personal contact to a specific minority, and over 50% of the people of that minority you see on TV are either criminals on local news, or musicians and actors playing gangsters, everyone who doesn't have a lot of contact with them in real life is getting scared every time they see someone who fits the profile.

Yes, I agree that the portrayal of minorities in the mass media in the Western world is incredibly racist. Part of the reason for this is the racism inherent in the US justice system -- you're currently witnessing worldwide protests over it.

However, I also see many representations of non-minorities portrayed in negative light -- why is it that only minorities are forced to atone for fictionalized representations of themselves and are not regarded as individuals with their own agency, lives, dreams, hopes, pains, and instead must be lumped into the same group and called to account for the actions of someone that happens to have the same skin color?

> By the way, this is not limited to race, but also for example applies to people with tattoos. If all tattooed people you see are criminals, you are scared by tattooed people as well. It works with every property of people that's easily visible.

People choose to be tattooed.

"Be more visibly obedient to the cultural norms of racists" is not a valid suggestion for addressing systemic racism.

testbot123··on Ask HN: How are your companies addressing systemic racism?
Minorities have been trying to prove their worth to the US since the inception of the country (which was built on their backs). It hasn't changed anything.

And why isn't it that the non-minorities shouldn't be the ones who are groveling and seeking to be model citizens? Remember that if a white police officer hadn't killed a black man in the street, we wouldn't be having this conversation right now. By your logic, shouldn't all white people now be tainted by his actions and forced to acquiesce to cultural standards set by non-whites?

If I disparaged your race, would you say the onus is on you to prove me wrong?

testbot123··on Ask HN: How are your companies addressing systemic racism?
Minorities are not responsible for the racism perpetuated against them. It's not a "marketing problem" that minorities need to solve, it's a racism problem that the perpetrators need to solve.
testbot123··on Police attacks against journalists across the U.S. since May 28
You're correct, I apologize.
testbot123··on Police attacks against journalists across the U.S. since May 28
Not sure why you're being downvoted. There is documented evidence of this:

> "To see this - traffic blocking the main intersection of a level 1 trauma centre, blocking the entrance and exit to our hospital. Blocking patients from receiving care that they need, makes me angry. It hurts. It hurts a lot," said one healthcare worker on Facebook.

> WLNS reports another posting: "You are currently blocking ambulances, physicians and caregivers from making it to work to care for the sick and relieve the exhausted workers.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...

Quotes a local news story: https://www.wlns.com/news/health/coronavirus/capitol-protest...

testbot123··on DEA authorized to conduct surveillance on protestors
28 CFR § 0.100: https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/28/0.100
testbot123··on DEA authorized to conduct surveillance on protestors
Because the DEA has a special unit for it: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-dea-sod/exclusive-u-s-dir...
testbot123··on Zuckerberg Leaves Racial Justice Leader Frustrated After Call
> let people decide for themselves whether they want to be gay

> By allowing gay marriage, you are forcing your views on everyone

This is a straw man. People don't choose to be gay, and conservatives are depriving people of their rights for something they can't choose. Allowing individuals the right of self determination is nowhere near allowing a sitting president to incite violence against American citizens.

testbot123··on How to Make this Moment the Turning Point for Real Change
> Boloney. It is individuals, even if in positions of authority (and even if far too many of them), carrying out their own warped agenda, not that of the state.

We'll have to agree to disagree. I believe that the justice system in the US is inextricably tied to systematic, institutionalized racism, and that the justice system and its roots cannot be divorced from those who are enforcing its laws. Minorities in this country are arrested, prosecuted, and sentenced differently from their white counterparts because of that institutionalized racism.

> Why should I choose? I oppose violence (or even excessive force) by police officers, and I oppose arson by rioters. And I oppose both for the same reason.

Fair enough.

testbot123··on How to Make this Moment the Turning Point for Real Change
Racist violence is political violence. It is agents of the state enforcing a racial order which is inextricable from (and perpetuated by) the politics of the state.

> And, "it hasn't kill anyone yet" is a pretty weak counter to the claim that arson can be violence. In fact, people do die from arson. The fact that nobody has - yet - in these protests does not change that whatsoever.

Okay, but then people are more likely to be killed by a police officer than by arson. So why don't we focus on the actual violent catalyst for all the protesting (and the ones playing out all over the country), which actually happened? Why are we so focused on the potential of the protestors to accidentally kill someone, rather than the very real threat of police actually killing unarmed US citizens?

One of these types of supposed violence is actually much more deadly than the other, with ample evidence.

testbot123··on How to Make this Moment the Turning Point for Real Change
Is it not political violence when a black man is killed in the street without due process, treated differently than a white person would be?

I still haven't seen any evidence whatsoever that any homes have been looted or burned by protestors, or that anyone has been killed by protestors. Only "what if"s, like "what if the fire killed someone?" It didn't, but we have a very real case of a police officer killing someone -- shouldn't that be the most important thing we're focusing on here?

testbot123··on How to Make this Moment the Turning Point for Real Change
> Burning and looting homes

I need evidence here.

> and businesses

Businesses like Target, who come into small communities, push out the mom-and-pops, then raise prices?

> there are plenty of assaults and murders if you're not convinced

I'm not convinced, and I need evidence that a) the shootings that you're about to link to are in fact linked to the protests (because in one case it seems like a drive-by) and b) the assaults were not self-defense from e.g., someone pointing a weapon at a crowd of people or e.g., a truck driver attempting to plow through a crowd of peaceful protestors.

testbot123··on Caught on camera, police explode in rage and violence across the US
Thanks, but I’ve been here a lot longer than my account age and I know how things work. Unfortunately, your behavior shows you to be a bad faith actor, and unfortunately for you a lot of the users on HN can recognize the gaslighting you’re attempting right now. Your patronizing post here really clinches it, as you yet again attempt to put me on the defensive and claim that your arguments are just honest debate on “taboo” subjects.

You are not engaging in earnest debate. You are attempting to deflect and discredit, as in this post. I’m not new to this place or these tactics.

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