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Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

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Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#601

Post by xpe »

knuthsat wrote: post #376
dgellow wrote: post #363

No Assange, no Snowden. What a fool I am, I seriously envisaged that could happen... Instead it’s just more and more corruption.

The fact that all a POTUS does after presidency is enrich oneself, it's quite clear where the motives are. The moment when POTUS is unable to profit off of his presidency is the moment where these things wouldn't happen. POTUS becoming a multimillionaire after presidency is just a sad display of moral corruption. Edit: Not talking about Trump, just in general about POTUS. It's my impression that in the last 50 years…

The argument that "all Presidents have imperfect morals" is obvious and uninteresting. The quality of "moral character" varies tremendously among people.

Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#602

Post by rendall »

WickyNilliams wrote: post #512
rendall wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was very clear elsewhere what it would take to convince me that there is something to this nonsense. One guy using it in a courtroom ain't it. Did anyone interview him about it? Ask what it was, where he heard about it, what our who he was trying to signal, if he was? Or, did the journalist make up the association on their own?

I'm not here to read your entire comment history. I replied to a specific request of yours with a relevant example. You go off on a mostly irrelevant screed. Come on. Does it really need to be speculated on? That "one guy" is a white supremacist who killed 50+ people - I think it's pretty clear what his intentions were. On top of that, his written manifesto was a) steeped in 4chan memes and winks to those in the know…

> I'm not here to read your entire comment history

I wouldn't ordinarily expect that of anyone, except that you had already replied.

Perhaps we should define terms. When people use the term "white supremacist symbol" I hear something that is used by everyone including white supremacists to unambiguously signal white supremacy. A Nazi flag. A burning cross. Shaved head, bomber jacket, combat boots, and most importantly, white laces.

The content of these particular symbols stem self-consciously from their progenitors: putative Aryan heritage in the case of the swastika, the purity of Protestant Christian values for the burning cross, etc

A symbol that everyone uses - including white supremacists - to mean something else - "OK" - is not a white supremacist symbol by that definition.

Its history as a purported white supremacist symbol, a joke on a trolling board, doesn't follow that of actual such symbols

The movement to turn it into a white supremacist symbol is now driven largely by serious, earnest, white leftists, curiously enough. I point to the people who are constantly pointing it out as evidence as my evidence. Why is this, I wonder? It's curious.

> his written manifesto was a) steeped in 4chan memes and winks to those in the know

Assuming that's true, then it's even more evidence to me that OK is not a "white supremacist symbol" his own white supremacy notwithstanding. He, your best evidence that it is, this fellow who used it, is well versed in its origin as a joke.

Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#603

Post by x1ph0z »

fny wrote: post #539
throwaway876765 wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I voted for Trump because his policies more closely align with my beliefs than any other candidate on my ballot. I am very disappointed in his response to the election results after it was clear there wasn't proof of enough fraud to change the result, and I'm very disappointed in the pardons.

Please stop down voting posts like this. If we want HN to remain a welcome space for civil discourse for everyone, we need to respect other people's candid statements. Remember, Trump won 47% of the popular vote which likely includes a large number of HNers. We should not alienate those people.

Not now, not ever. I will always call out those that supported racism, bigotry, violence and Trump's admin did all that. The voice and platform he gave to the most deplorable people, has made me and others lose faith in all Americans.

Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#604

Post by qwerty456127 »

noisy_boy wrote: post #566

Whats up with sprinkling of "xyz is an upstanding citizen and father to n beautiful children." ? They are clearly not an upstanding citizen - otherwise they wouldn't require a presidential pardon. Being father to children is not an achievement and any two consenting healthy adult man and woman can produce them irrespective of their standing in society. And beauty of children is a criteria for pardon now? What if the…

This! Always baffled me. This probably is something from the colonial age when the population was tiny, conditions were harsh, labor hard, medicine nonexistent so producing a fellow colonist was considered an extremely valuable act, also requiring genuine dedication and courage.

Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#605

Post by perfmode »

lokar wrote: post #593
boringg wrote: post #547

Paid a lot of money for that pardon I reckon even though he was clearly a criminal. The trump admin is such a sham. So glad that they are out of power - hopefully forever for the sake of the Us.

I read some reporting that the going rate was only $20k, 10 up front and 10 after.

link?

Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#606

Post by __blockcipher__ »

fny wrote: post #546
SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think people on the right and the left are perhaps skipping over just how much McConnell was manipulating the admin not just over the last four years, but esp since Jan 6th. I am fairly confident that even if Trump had specifically wanted to pardon Assange or Snowden he could not have. Edit: lol, this will have been the most successful lie by the media and GOP... getting people to believe the GOP and Trump were fri…

What you're saying here is contradictory. Sure the GOP hates Trump, and Trump also hates the GOP. And that's exactly why Trump didn't give a damn to GOP criticism of his pardons. McConnell has no influence. That's why Stone, Kushner, and Bannon are on the list among others. Trump decided not to pardon Snowden and Assange. Full stop.

Not quite. Trump knows they're more or less okay with him pardoning Bannon - it pisses them off, but at the end of the day it's water under the bridge. Whereas Assange getting pardoned would absolutely infuriate the "deep state" to an extent that's hard to describe.

Trump should have pardoned Assange, it's the only thing that would actually have taken a (small) chunk out of the "deep state" for real. Instead, as many of us saw coming, Trump's rhetoric about "draining the swamp" and "fighting the deep state" was always empty bluster.

Now Assange will die in prison (there's not a snowball's chance in hell that Biden pardons him, to state the obvious).

Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#607

Post by rijoja »

tomp wrote: post #243
chandra381 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does Anthony Lewandowski being pardoned advance any public good? I would argue it does the exact opposite.

His conviction is based on being a fall guy for Uber’s corporate espionage. His pardon could be interpreted as a strike against “piracy is theft” mindset and the idea of “intellectual property” in general that HN often rallies against. I’m quite disappointed by Trump’s pardons but this one is actually a good one.

yeah it struck me as odd. Got downvoted like crazy for this, which is weird since I'd expect people to be leaning towards intellectual freedom here.

It's not as if I said he was not guilty, but rather saying that he would have a lot of information on self driving cars. Which is what he was charged with in the first place.

Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#608

Post by dgellow »

twox2 wrote: post #482
dgellow wrote: post #363

No Assange, no Snowden. What a fool I am, I seriously envisaged that could happen... Instead it’s just more and more corruption.

Why WOULD Trump pardon assange or snowden?

For one, to piss off Democrats and Biden’s administration. Snowden and Assange both revealed years of illegal activities and corruptions that occurred while a Democrat was president.

Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#609

Post by watwut »

dgellow wrote: post #363

No Assange, no Snowden. What a fool I am, I seriously envisaged that could happen... Instead it’s just more and more corruption.

Honest question: why did you expected that? They don't fit profile of people Trump help or cooperates with at all.

Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#610

Post by Cybiote »

twox2 wrote: post #500
leto_ii wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "But what already happened doesn’t really matter. You don’t need to know that history to build on what they made. In technology, all that matters is tomorrow." To me this is a mind-numbing display of ignorance. Once you understand that you're not the first human being to ever have existed and that the people that came before you (even way before) are not dumber than you, you will immediately realize that there's a…

I don't think it's ignorant, it's just another framework of looking at the world. Consider a chessboard that's in the middle of a game. The moves up to that point don't matter. Only the current state of the board matters and you make the best move given the current position. This is how this person sees technological progress, and I'm inclined to believe he's right... within the context of technology. Beyond that, I…

That is only because subgame perfect equilibrium is applicable to chess. An imperfect information game like Poker cannot have that. Technology is not a process with complete information therefore the chess analogy in the context of technology cannot work. And as bananabiscuit points out, Leela Zero can get away with considering orders of magnitude fewer positions than Stockfish because of the extensive experience from past games encoded into its weights.

Another argument against ignoring the past is it's important to identify what things remain invariant in society as technology evolves. Allowing for a fuller contextualization, understanding and perhaps somewhat anticipation of the on-going changes and their effects.

Technology itself is based on leveraging libraries, tacit knowledge, internet threads and mathematical concepts decades to hundreds of years old. That's a kind of history. It's not uncommon for advancements to occur after revisiting old lines of research that were ahead of their time.

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