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After 10 years in tech isolation, I’m now outsider to things I once had mastered

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Re: After 10 years in tech isolation, I’m now outsider to things I once had mastered

#251

Post by weggooi »

desstap wrote: post #107
throwablePie wrote: post #87

> "Caging me for a decade is not rehabilitating. I may be making excuses for myself, though there is a lesson that could have been learned with the same amount of value for justice if the sentence was 2 years, 3 years, 5 years, even 6 years." From the article at: https://forklog.media/ex-convicted-hacker-ghostexodus-severi... I don't consider myself a bleeding heart lib but I think that a decade in prison is excessiv…

You are in Asia right? Let’s see China - disappeared for comparing xi jing ping the dictator to Winnie the Pooh, or mention Hong Kong or Taiwan in a postiive light on wechat Singapore - 2 years in jail for selling gum, death penalty for Having drugs Vietnam - 34 years for drug trafficking

If the Chinese government wants to punish a citizen, they don't need to send you to prison: They can track or tap your phone. They know when you check into a hotel and will send the police over to search your belongings.

Re: After 10 years in tech isolation, I’m now outsider to things I once had mastered

#252

Post by an_opabinia »

esperent wrote: post #188
devalgo wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Us has the highest verified incarceration per capita in the world and the largest number of total prisoners. So at least by verified numbers it's not really even close, the US is by far the worst. Are the numbers accurate for China or other oppressive regimes? Who knows and North Korea doesn't release numbers but they're thought to be close to or slightly higher than the US' per capita numbers. https://www.prisonstud…

So probably the only country that has very slight worse numbers in the entire world is North Korea, including all the other dictatorships and otherwise failed states. That's crazy.

Well, you could argue that all of North Korea is functionally an open air prison.

If you don’t get to live in a city because you lack the permit, is a rural Chinese citizen jailed in their home town?

If you don’t get to do stuff like drive without your male guardian present, is that Saudi woman watched over by a prison guard?

If you’re a German kid and you’re just tracked into trade school, did society put you to work for it below what you’re worth? Like prisoners being paid below minimum wage to make Victoria’s Secret underwear?

I’m not a hack, I know these things are different than jail. Coercion and incarceration takes many forms around the world though. Expand your mind beyond the formalism of the jail cell and you start to see it everywhere. That’s not necessarily a bad thing - that’s the self awareness this writer is asking for.

Besides, there’s also Belarus.

Re: After 10 years in tech isolation, I’m now outsider to things I once had mastered

#253

Post by system16 »

desstap wrote: post #107
throwablePie wrote: post #87

> "Caging me for a decade is not rehabilitating. I may be making excuses for myself, though there is a lesson that could have been learned with the same amount of value for justice if the sentence was 2 years, 3 years, 5 years, even 6 years." From the article at: https://forklog.media/ex-convicted-hacker-ghostexodus-severi... I don't consider myself a bleeding heart lib but I think that a decade in prison is excessiv…

You are in Asia right? Let’s see China - disappeared for comparing xi jing ping the dictator to Winnie the Pooh, or mention Hong Kong or Taiwan in a postiive light on wechat Singapore - 2 years in jail for selling gum, death penalty for Having drugs Vietnam - 34 years for drug trafficking

While one of the most famous things about Singapore, the law was introduced in the 90s to prevent vandalism of the then new metro system. Since 2004 pharmacists and dentists have been allowed to sell gum, including standard and sugar free gum. I can’t find verification: has anyone actually gone to prison for selling gum in Singapore?

Re: After 10 years in tech isolation, I’m now outsider to things I once had mastered

#254

Post by the_af »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #213
jmcqk6 wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I've looked into people who commits crimes and why, they rarely are considering the judicial system and the possible consequences of their actions. Harsh punishments do not seem to actually function as a determent in real life. From my perspective, harsh punishments is more about revenge than anything else. They're a simple way to feel like you're doing the right thing, as long as you don't examine it too closel…

That might be true for first time offenders but what about repeat offenders? They can't be said to not be familiar with the possible judicial consequences of their actions.

That's possibly a third category to add to "spur of the moment crime" and "I don't think I'll get caught": "I don't care what happens to me". A lot of crime done out of desperation, by people with nothing to lose, is precisely that: they are so desperate they don't value their life or the lives of others [1]. In that case, prison and even the death penalty is a poor deterrent; if you expect to live hard and die young, what can they threaten you with anyway?

[1] A journalism/essay book from my country (not the US), depicting the lives of youngsters in shanty towns, interviewed many of them. A surprising number of them claimed they didn't expect to live past 30, and didn't make any plans because plans were meaningless to them. If they died for whatever reason, "so be it". (By the way, in my mind this isn't an indictment of these people, but rather of the society which makes them believe they have no choice and no future).

Re: After 10 years in tech isolation, I’m now outsider to things I once had mastered

#255

Post by gilbetron »

KSteffensen wrote: post #155
save_ferris wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my observations of the American public, people generally seem to be fine with the extreme sentences and punishment that the system doles out. We’re completely apathetic towards most criminals (usually unless they happen to be rich & white), without understanding the circumstances that created their situation. Take the Crystal Mason case. She’s a Texas woman of color who voted illegally in the 2016 election and got…

What's the idea behind convicted felons not being allowed to vote?

Felons are less likely to vote for the system that put them in jail, the system that put them in jail has the power, so the system that put them there stops them from voting so it can stay in power.

Re: After 10 years in tech isolation, I’m now outsider to things I once had mastered

#256

Post by t-writescode »

hota_mazi wrote: post #204
masukomi wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't consider myself a bleeding heart lib but I think that a decade in prison is excessive for most non-violent crimes. you miss the point. prisons are a massive industry with serious lobbying clout. Putting lots of people in prison for a long time isn't a punishment to the prisoner, it's a gift to the prison system. The "punishment" is just a side effect, and the longer it lasts, the richer the people in power…

I understand there is some truth to that claim, but how real is it? Sentences are delivered by judges. There have been prominent examples of judges bribed by prison systems to deliver harsh sentences, but that doesn't seem to be the norm. Am I naive thinking that most judges deliver the sentence they believe is just, and that if something needs to be reformed, it's their perception of justice and not just the prison…

Mandatory minimums are what primarily dictate a lot of sentences anymore; and, those can be very arbitrary, especially with 3-strike laws.

Often, legislature decides the sentence length due to mandatory minimums.

Re: After 10 years in tech isolation, I’m now outsider to things I once had mastered

#258

Post by finder83 »

john-radio wrote: post #57
indigochill wrote: post #16

>The only solution to making me happy again would seem to download Ubuntu, mount it to a USB thumb drive, and get it installed. Had I known that Windows 10 doesn’t utilize BIOS, but has replaced it with UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface), which is a secure boot option that validates programs before giving them permission to run, I wouldn’t have wasted two more days of my life trying to install my favorite o…

> I don't understand what he's saying here. I dual boot Ubuntu on my Windows 10 PC all the time (as well as using Virtualbox). I think you have to disable UEFI before you can do this.

There are boot managers that allow you to continue to use UEFI. I believe you do have to disable secure boot in windows though.

Re: After 10 years in tech isolation, I’m now outsider to things I once had mastered

#259

Post by TheAdamAndChe »

mywittyname wrote: post #241
ghaff wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>has it really changed that much in 10 years Yes (although I'd probably put the real dividing line at more like 12 years). Facebook wasn't available outside of certain institutions until 2006, the same year Twitter dates to. The iPhone was first introduced in 2007 and arguably didn't really take off until the 3GS in 2009. So, yes, the internet was well-established by the 2000s. But today's always connected world of s…

I'd argue it hasn't changed much for technology people. I had an iPhone in 10 and used it constantly for the same thing I do today: news, web browsing when away, and chatting with friends. My google history confirms this. I still use the same gmail address, reddit, social media, Steam, bank, etc accounts. I think the biggest difference for me is that I use spotify now for music, rather than downloading it. And stream…

What's changed is social media. Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, YouTube, Instagram all use machine learning to provide just the right feedback for us to keep cominng back for more. This has hijacked our dopamine feedback loops and changed the way we interact with each other.

I know personally, my attention span is much worse than it was years ago. It's tough to find friends, and if I weren't married, I bet it would be tough and highly competitive to find a mate. I think this has something to do with it.

Re: After 10 years in tech isolation, I’m now outsider to things I once had mastered

#260

Post by jlawson »

karlkatzke wrote: post #137
annoyingnoob wrote: post #56

I recently had someone in a restroom ask me how to flush the toilet. The toilets had IR sensors and flushed automatically. This person had been in prison for many years and had never seen that before. I think part of the social reform that people are protesting for recently needs to extend to people in prison. Our system does nothing to rehabilitate people or to prepare them to re-enter society. We need to treat pris…

One of my coworkers met a guy on the bus the other morning who had been imprisoned in the mid 90s and was just released. (Assault charge plus drugs.) He hadn’t seen a smart phone in person yet and was astounded that you could look up bus schedules on it. Besides the tech astonishment and the sheer length of the 25 year prison sentence (that’s tangential), it was a bit inhumane how they treated released prisoners. Thi…

How sure are you that this wasn't a practiced sob story designed to extract money from passerby?

I've heard many such stories just like this. Criminal beggars will A/B test and refine their story over years to optimize results.

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