Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Justice Stevens reads the fine print

matthewbutterick.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 230 posts

Re: Justice Stevens reads the fine print

#41

Post by Cthulhu_ »

WalterBright wrote: post #37
paxys wrote: post #5

Related to the opening of this article – it is interesting to see how one can get completely soured on certain products or experiences because, by virtue of their profession, they see the dirty underbelly of how things in that industry actually work. Someone who has read cruise contracts in detail will never want to go on one. Cooks with experience in commercial kitchens never want to eat at a restaurant again. Someo…

Once I learned how airplanes were actually designed and built, I felt much safer on them. Especially the 757, which I worked on.

A layman is shocked to find out it's a tube of pressurized aluminium, but knowing how the sausage is made makes it better.

Re: Justice Stevens reads the fine print

#42

Post by Cthulhu_ »

KarlKemp wrote: post #10
paxys wrote: post #5

Related to the opening of this article – it is interesting to see how one can get completely soured on certain products or experiences because, by virtue of their profession, they see the dirty underbelly of how things in that industry actually work. Someone who has read cruise contracts in detail will never want to go on one. Cooks with experience in commercial kitchens never want to eat at a restaurant again. Someo…

One of those hypotheses is easily testable: bridges can collapse and you will hear about it. And yet.. it rarely happens? There was one in Italy and one in the US recently but, to a decent approximation, it’s a non-issue. Maybe we should have more trust in people and their work. Maybe our bridges are fine, our food is kosher, but what’s rotting on the inside is society, eaten alive by cynicism and distrust.

They're only fine until they're not; there's plenty of instances of rotting infrastructure that one day will fail, and it's not like these issues are unknown, there's just not enough money or people to fix it.

Meanwhile the US government is going to spend another trillion on its military.

Re: Justice Stevens reads the fine print

#43

Post by lordnacho »

Someone needs to do something about the legal-industrial complex. It's a complete fiction that normal people read pages and pages of contracts, EULAs, and that type of stuff. It's basically impossible to read the docs for all the services you buy, and even if you did you wouldn't know what it meant in terms of law.

Yet we have lawyers talking through the technical minutiae as if they are source code. There's a huge disconnect between what people understand their rights and legal positions to be, and what the lawyers can turn it into.

There's other problems as well. At least here in the UK, the court system does not have enough capacity. This leads to all sorts of problems with who gets justice.

Then there's the money. If we're all equal before the law, how can there be lawyers who cost thousands an hour? Either they're more effective than other lawyers, in which case we're not all equal under the law, or they're just as good as any other lawyer, in which case they are just good marketers. I'm sure it's a mix of both, but if we cared that everyone had equal access, why wouldn't there simply be a big bench of lawyers from which you get assigned one? The legal system has somehow managed to both be a social good and a tremendous source of profit for its members. (Well, some of its members, they don't all make piles of cash.)

Re: Justice Stevens reads the fine print

#44

Post by noduerme »

Being from a family of lawyers, I was always told that fine print on documents you didn't sign or initial essentially has no weight in court. I'm not a lawyer and I've never tested this hypothesis personally, but I tend to disregard it as something that wouldn't hold up if I had a valid claim.

Re: Justice Stevens reads the fine print

#45

Post by noduerme »

lordnacho wrote: post #43

Someone needs to do something about the legal-industrial complex. It's a complete fiction that normal people read pages and pages of contracts, EULAs, and that type of stuff. It's basically impossible to read the docs for all the services you buy, and even if you did you wouldn't know what it meant in terms of law. Yet we have lawyers talking through the technical minutiae as if they are source code. There's a huge d…

The answer according to my family: Get a law degree. I'm the only one who doesn't have one / hasn't passed a bar exam. If you don't want to be victim of that system, treat being a lawyer as a form of hacking. It's no different than being a victim of dark pattern software practices, which you would be if you didn't know how to code. (Ironically, part of my slot involves helping lawyers get around pitfalls in software).

Re: Justice Stevens reads the fine print

#46

Post by exikyut »

grujicd wrote: post #17
paxys wrote: post #5

Related to the opening of this article – it is interesting to see how one can get completely soured on certain products or experiences because, by virtue of their profession, they see the dirty underbelly of how things in that industry actually work. Someone who has read cruise contracts in detail will never want to go on one. Cooks with experience in commercial kitchens never want to eat at a restaurant again. Someo…

As a developer, I was shocked when at a friend's house saw that Alexa not only operated lights, but door locks and blinds. Or when another friend takes hands off the steering wheel to test lane keep assist. I don't think I can trust any software at that level.

It's not just trusting the software, but the implicit policy around its implementation and use and even more implicit social norms around what it is expected to do that develop and evolve in interesting ways as products and services entrench further and further into the woodwork.

Say an attacker captures enough of a homeowner's voiceprint to build a language model good enough to get past Google's or Amazon's voiceprint matching, then pipes ", open the front door" through a wall or window (possibly ultrasonically).

What happens now?

Who is to blame?

Is it the homeowner's fault for using a product according to the use cases included in the instructions?

"Oh, no, that was just a serving suggestion! You shouldn't use to lock your doors unless the doors were an effectively unnecessary decoration to begin with."

So then you have Buy N' Large and Big Brother getting into the home and contents insurance industry.

No. No you don't. The only reason this use-case got cleared by Legal is because someone figured out the circle of plausible deniability (weaponized portmanteau of "circle of competence") is currently wide enough to fit a lawsuit defence through. :(

It's like with Tesla and the whole self-driving thing. The implementation *happens* to be able to drive asleep "drivers" down highways at 100 miles an hour, and the company has somehow been able to corral itself into the evil-genius legal position of being 50% "always keep hands on the wheel" and 50% "look self-driving AI go brrrt" and somehow combine the liability protections of the former with the societal expectations of the latter. Solely in terms of overpromising and underdelivering and then wrangling the legal status quo to declare that okay, I do think it's a bit... not great.

Crucially, this problem is most definitely not limited to Tesla, Google or Amazon; it's an endemic permeability in the legal systems of ostensibly-developed countries that makes a joke of the proof-of-work foundation of good-faith technical investment, and institutes a fraudulent social contract that the infrastructure we increasingly depend on is fundamentally reliable and trustworthy ("set in stone") when it is not. To adopt these technologies is to adopt the ever-changing tech stacks that underpin them, and the risks associated with upgrading the proverbial engines on ever-larger digital airplanes while they're in flight. I think it's dangerous and irresponsible to dispel the tenuous fabric of social perception around these risks and give unsuspecting passersby the impression things are safer than they are.

Hmm.

I'm reminded of http://bash.org/?4753:

   The problem with America is stupidity. I'm not saying there should be a capital punishment for stupidity, but why don't we just take the safety labels off of everything and let the problem solve itself?
Maybe that's what's happening here?

Re: Justice Stevens reads the fine print

#47

Post by vkou »

grujicd wrote: post #17
paxys wrote: post #5

Related to the opening of this article – it is interesting to see how one can get completely soured on certain products or experiences because, by virtue of their profession, they see the dirty underbelly of how things in that industry actually work. Someone who has read cruise contracts in detail will never want to go on one. Cooks with experience in commercial kitchens never want to eat at a restaurant again. Someo…

As a developer, I was shocked when at a friend's house saw that Alexa not only operated lights, but door locks and blinds. Or when another friend takes hands off the steering wheel to test lane keep assist. I don't think I can trust any software at that level.

Why would you be even a little bit concerned over software door locks?

Most traditional locks can be picked open in seconds. There's no meaningful way to do any worse than that. The only fit-for-purpose way to use locks is in keeping honest people honest. They are utter rubbish at keeping bad guys out of your house.

Re: Justice Stevens reads the fine print

#48

Post by theK »

grujicd wrote: post #17
paxys wrote: post #5

Related to the opening of this article – it is interesting to see how one can get completely soured on certain products or experiences because, by virtue of their profession, they see the dirty underbelly of how things in that industry actually work. Someone who has read cruise contracts in detail will never want to go on one. Cooks with experience in commercial kitchens never want to eat at a restaurant again. Someo…

As a developer, I was shocked when at a friend's house saw that Alexa not only operated lights, but door locks and blinds. Or when another friend takes hands off the steering wheel to test lane keep assist. I don't think I can trust any software at that level.

I presume the Alexa Argument ist against the service and not against automation. Running your whole life on self hosted home automation is Stil awesome and the way to go. Just ensure that data never leaves your home premises and you have enough resiliency.

Re: Justice Stevens reads the fine print

#49

Post by krageon »

paxys wrote: post #5

Related to the opening of this article – it is interesting to see how one can get completely soured on certain products or experiences because, by virtue of their profession, they see the dirty underbelly of how things in that industry actually work. Someone who has read cruise contracts in detail will never want to go on one. Cooks with experience in commercial kitchens never want to eat at a restaurant again. Someo…

> Cooks with experience in commercial kitchens never want to eat at a restaurant again.

Having done such work, this is absolutely untrue. I got a renewed appreciation for the hard work kitchen staff put in and the stringent requirements on cleanliness that kitchen staff has. I suppose this will change based on the country you are in, if you are in a country with bad sanitary checking you will have a bad time.

Re: Justice Stevens reads the fine print

#50

Post by krageon »

theK wrote: post #48
grujicd wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a developer, I was shocked when at a friend's house saw that Alexa not only operated lights, but door locks and blinds. Or when another friend takes hands off the steering wheel to test lane keep assist. I don't think I can trust any software at that level.

I presume the Alexa Argument ist against the service and not against automation. Running your whole life on self hosted home automation is Stil awesome and the way to go. Just ensure that data never leaves your home premises and you have enough resiliency.

I would say trusting any kind of software with door locks(!) is a terrible idea. Yes, if you use home automation you should self host. No, if you secure your home you should not needlessly expand the attack surface.
Post reply on HN