So let me rephrase my question - what part of the blame should be assigned to the victim here, if their "fault" was buying a phone made and marketed by one of the largest and most well known software developers on the planet?
Also, this is an interesting discussion in general. If someone forgets to lock their door and a thief gets in and robs them, do you think it's fair to "blame" the person who forgot to lock their door? Or do you think that maybe we should recognize that 100% of the blame should be on you know, the person doing the robbing?
I agree that there's not any significantly better phone options, but no I would not place 100% of the blame on the robber. When we're talking about possessions, theft is a reasonably foreseeable consequence and not an outrageous action, so the owner can get a small slice of blame.
> If someone forgets to lock their door and a thief gets in and robs them, do you think it's fair to "blame" the person who forgot to lock their door?
No, but let's say they've bought from a manufacturer who is not most well known for their lock mechanisms, wouldn't it be the user's responsibility to find a better alternative? You're to be held accountable for your part.
You're making the assumption that the average person thinks Google employs the “most well known software developers on the planet” – that's your subjective take, not anything close to common knowledge
I suppose the question you're asking is why we've socially moved away from doing stuff just for fun in an effort to make a “passive” income and monetize as much of our time as possible.
Personally, I've seen my peers (by both profession and age) stop participate in activities that don't have an immediate reward, the only exception they make is if there's a long term financial reward. Odd.
"Passive Income" is the root of all of our economic troubles. People who are getting "Passive Income", are by definition not working and producing output for the economy.
In order to gain passive income, you must leech off someone else's work product. So in addition to not working yourself, you reduce the incentive for others to work by taking what could have been their wages.
The obsession with "Passive Income" is what is killing the United States and western economies. Capitalism only works when bad investing is punished and the investors contribute value to society by selecting productive and useful occupations for the labor force. In the current system, investors instead act primarily as leeches/parasites that are killing off the labor force.
There are too many governmental laws "protecting investors" that need to be eliminated, because they allow idiots to remain members of the investor class. If you are too dumb to recognize a ponzi scheme, then you don't need to be controlling society's capital and should be relegated to working class.
The idea of investing in the stock market as a whole and the creation of regulations that have made that viable are killing off the labor force in general.
I'm not convinced. Passive income is a form of arbitrage. It means there is an inefficiency in the market and that person is fulfilling it. It's pretty rare that continues indefinitely without any effort. There may be a lot of people trying for passive income but the ones who actually achieve it are very rare. Even being a landlord can be a lot of work.
Things like fractional reserve banking, the stock market, these are actually all a way to increase liquidity. A forcing function so that people do not sit on cash and instead let it flow back through the economy. Hardly parasitic/leeching, it's actually fueling the engine of our economy.
Broad (stock) index investing is pretty much passive income. So far, the indices (SP500 etc.) have been performing pretty well and the strategy panned out. It may change in the future though.
>>"Passive Income" is the root of all of our economic troubles. People who are getting "Passive Income", are by definition not working and producing output for the economy.
This is a win. Despite how we feel about Russia and its government, it's a good move to decrease Microsoft, Apple, and Google their global power. Now we hope that the open source community stays true to their open source intent and allows Russians to use open source software the same as any other person.
These are just dreams. Technically, you already could download red flag linux (Chinese), but it uses Chinese repositories, many packages rewritten by Chinese, and you cannot sure if they not inserted some spyware.
> It amazes me that people want to give the government this much power.
It amazes me that we let social media platforms run freely with whichever narrative, ideology they enforce. Government influence has in most cases a negative outcome, but letting these platforms, especially ones at the scale of Twitter and Facebook, act freely is unwise.
I was not disagreeing with you in the initial reply, two things can be true at the same time.
Like I said; government influence has a negative outcome in most cases, but allowing social media platforms to do as they wish is a recipe for disaster if we're not there already.
> Im sure the religious right would love to control the narrative
I'm sure the ideological left appreciates the social media platform's bias towards their progressive ideology. It's equally wrong if they had a different bias. You, we, need to stop being divisive, it's toxic.
Like I said, for the third time: government influence has a negative outcome in most cases. I'm not sure how you got to a different conclusion.
The government should keep social media platforms in check and protect their citizens against censorship (in any form, as long as it is lawful) on large, influential platforms.
So in fact, you do want the same government to “keep social media in check” that in another story that was on the front page was the government encouraging social media to censor speech? Would you want that same government to force HN to allow political topics? Would it apply to religious organizations that set up a social media platform?
You said yourself it would be a “negative outcome”.
The state pushing this is the same state that tried to force companies not to speak about diversity. They literally named a law “Stop Woke”.
I think that the last sentence already answered all the questions you just asked.
"The government should keep social media platforms in check and protect their citizens against censorship (in any form, as long as it is lawful) on large, influential platforms."
> Would you want that same government to force HN to allow political topics?
If we were talking politics and Dang would censor anyone because of their ideology, yes, the government should set laws in place against that.
> Would it apply to religious organizations that set up a social media platform?
No.
> You said yourself it would be a “negative outcome”.
Yes, stop misinterpreting it, I had expanded on it in the same sentence.
> The state pushing this is the same state that tried to force companies not to speak about diversity
You mean the same law that "prohibits teaching or business practices that contend members of one ethnic group are inherently racist and should feel guilt for past actions committed by others"? The same law that prevents schools and business from reducing a person to just their race to assign labels of privileges regardless of all the nuances that make up an individual?
So the government should pass laws that tell private companies what they can’t talk about. But the government should also pass laws that force companies to publish every other opinion? Isn’t that the government now controlling free speech?
Isn’t the government in fact pushing a narrative when they don’t allow companies to focus on sexual an racial harassment? Should companies not train interviewers that you shouldn’t discriminate based on someone’s accent or where they went to school?
If I set up a website where I want to talk about Christianity should I not be allowed to ban discussions about Islam or vice versa?
And there are very much “labels” when I as Black person was the dev lead for local company in the South where any time consultants and vendors came in they automatically assumed one of my reports - a white guy - was the manager.
It even happened at a business lunch with my team. The waitress asked the table in general was this one check or separate. I said one check, started pulling out my wallet and she still handed the check to the guy who I assume looked like a manager even though I was the only one reaching for a credit card.
My family is “labeled” all of the time when we “look like we don’t belong” somewhere in our city that was as recently as the mid 80s a “sundown town” and we are still very much the minority (less than 4%).
My 6 foot 5 step son who has lived in the burbs all of his life is very much “labeled” when he walks into a store.
I find it amusing you continue with the Cathy Newman reenactment.
>So the government should pass laws that tell private companies what they can’t talk about.
Yes, they should not allow private companies to spew and enforce systems of prejudices.
> But the government should also pass laws that force companies to publish every other opinion?
Yes, that's the free speech part, you know.
> Isn’t that the government now controlling free speech?
Not even close.
> Isn’t the government in fact pushing a narrative when they don’t allow companies to focus on sexual an racial harassment?
Except it only happens when it doesn't actually happen, and you look through a lens of prejudices, like the law attempted to prohibit. We have a justice system for when it actually does happen, though.
> Should companies not train interviewers that you shouldn’t discriminate based on someone’s accent or where they went to school?
And that is exactly what the law would prevent; "teaching or business practices that contend members of one ethnic group are inherently racist and should feel guilt for past actions committed by others".
So you’re in favor of the government controlling political speech that you don’t agree with? Nowhere in the DI&E training I’ve taken at the country’s second largest employer do they claim one group is inherently prejudice. We are all inherently prejudice based on our own lived experiences.
White people in metro areas are often prejudiced against “rural America”. Lighter skinned Black or often prejudiced against darker skin Black people. There have been reports that Indians are still practicing the caste system in hiring. Second and third generation Americans of the same race talk about people from their own country who are “fresh off the boat”.
But either way, seeing that you don’t see a problem with the government controlling speech that you disagree with is the very reason that the government shouldn’t have that power.
> So you’re in favor of the government controlling political speech that you don’t agree with?
Where did I say or imply any of that?
>Nowhere in the DI&E training I’ve taken at the country’s second largest employer do they claim one group is inherently prejudice.
Good, so that law you were so much against wouldn't affect you.
> We are all inherently prejudice based on our own lived experiences.
So that is your excuse to justify systematic prejudice? That is the same line of thinking racists use to justify their disgusting behavior.
> White people in metro areas are often prejudiced against “rural America”. Lighter skinned Black or often prejudiced against darker skin Black people. There have been reports that Indians are still practicing the caste system in hiring. Second and third generation Americans of the same race talk about people from their own country who are “fresh off the boat”.
What are you implying? That we shouldn't hire based on merit, but perceived race or prejudice? Your argument is all over the place, make a point.
> But either way, seeing that you don’t see a problem with the government controlling speech that you disagree with is the very reason that the government shouldn’t have that power.
No, that is not what you are seeing, but what you want to see. Feel free to re-read the entire thread because you seem to come to conclusions of your own.
I've repeated countless times that the problem is prejudice, not free speech. You're willingly ignoring what is said and make up conclusions for yourself.
DI&E training is not about “hiring based on race”. It’s about just the opposite. Treating people differently based on race because we all have implicit biases. Some of us are just intelligent enough to recognize it in ourselves and not allow it to affect our actions.
But the law is not about hiring. The law is about what companies are allowed to include in their training and the government was trying to decide what could and could not be said by private corporations.
The government wanted to in fact control speech - not hiring decisions.
Are you okay with the government controlling what private companies can say during their training?
> I hope that if someone writes a book saying people should physically harm you
One could argue that calls for gender-affirming surgeries or treatments are equally, if not, worse. These topics are especially prevalent in the LGBTQ community, as I have found from my experience. Nevertheless, we seem to encourage this kind of behavior whereas we. It is important to be aware of which ideas you are rejecting, especially when the community you seem to be defending is also committing acts of the same caliber.
This is wholly independent of policy initiatives. The idea that books that discuss transition are morally equivalent to something like The Turner Diaries is worthy of derision.
Banning books that talk against the Holocaust and promoting books that talk about gender-related surgeries are nowhere close in the damage they can potentially create even if you take the most pessimistic stance possible about the later, a sense of proportion is needed in any discussion.
I hope you can see the hypocrisy and bias in your desire to ban ideas you dislike – it's dangerous. A better outcome would be to fight bad ideas with good ideas.
And I hope you see the hipocrisy in saying that my idea about banning ideas that are bad for society is a bad idea. Because if that was your "good idea" vs my "bad idea" it didn't win that fight, just like it almost never does, and instead marketing, marketing budgets, preconceived notions, convenient beliefs, upbringing, the hard limit in the number of ideas one can learn about in one's lifetime and many other factors outweighs the fantasy that all ideas should be given equal exposure, as in a book titled "we should kill black people" should be countered with one titled "we shouldn't kill black people" and that every single person in every generation should extensively read both and come to their own conclusion and not use any conclusion society already learned as a whole.
> Yeah, but then they would imprison the CEO and not the developer.
While they do get blamed, the Netherlands doesn't seem to care all that much. They seem very selective with how they react to supposed money laundering
> ING’s Chief Executive Ralph Hamers said no individual at the bank was found to be responsible for the failures
Closed source means it is easy to hide whose fault it was, and then all you can do is fine the company since you can't arrest everyone. This is also why companies are so keen on deleting old message logs etc, to avoid leaders going to prison.
I heard on IRC that the person they arrested was the one who generally merged PRs. With closed source the closest equivalent is the leader of the development team. I would be surprised if a law enforcement agency is unable to locate that developer.
Jurisdiction is something of a problem, as we can see with the Panamanians being non-extraditable. That's why it was the Panama papers in the first place! But if you're going to facilitate money laundering, at least have the common sense to not do it under your own name in a jurisdiction where that is illegal or that will extradite you to the US.
So far about 1200, including 400 celebrities, three heads of state, nine former heads of state, and 150 sitting politicians worldwide.
It's the third largest successful corruption sting in history.
Also, edgelords online who don't know what's happening in the real world like to pretend there was no fallout, so that they can feel wise about corruption, and like to demand that other people look things up for them so they can feel like they made a point.
In reality, it was about half of the names in the document base so far, and that's despite it being international prosecution with an unwilling nation.
Things in the Panama Papers are going quite well for law and order, albeit slowly.
Would you be kind enough to tell us what result you were expecting, and what point you were trying to make?
In the future, would you please consider knowing the answers to your sarcastic questions before asking them, please?
Being a money mule makes you complicit in fraud or financial crimes. Running cryptocurrency code and using your own cryptocurrency wallet to help launder stolen money is a crime. People are expected to know better than to lend their wallet for "temporary storage" of money for a reward, especially if they don't know who the source or destination of the transaction may be.
No company will advertise themselves as a criminal operation, even the dumbest thieves aren't that stupid.
Google "bitcoin financial oppression", and you'll find that cryptocurrencies are being advertised left and right as a tool to escape "financial oppression", or as someone less cynical would say, to evade financial regulations.
Why is that a bad thing? You should absolutely blame and hold the victim responsible and accountable for their part.