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Justice Stevens reads the fine print

matthewbutterick.com

51–60 of 230 posts

Re: Justice Stevens reads the fine print

#51
Fine print or not, most people (myself included) rarely if ever read the "fine print".

If you did read the fine print, and you were of a problem-solving (pessimist) mentality, then you would never buy anything or do anything. You certainly would never take any medicine, because nothing is scarier than the fine print there.

I wonder what the fine print on a Tesla self-driving purchase looks like...

Re: Justice Stevens reads the fine print

#52

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…

>At least here in the UK, the court system does not have enough capacity.

This isnt a problem startups can, nor should they solve. It requires political will.

Re: Justice Stevens reads the fine print

#53

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)…

Dark patterns in software usually involve UI/UX, so knowing to code doesn't really help with those. On the other hand, being able to code an app might be enough to make someone go "why is it like that? I know it doesn't have to be!" in response to a dark pattern.

Re: Justice Stevens reads the fine print

#54
post #13

> ... is fully and fairly notified about the existence ... I'm not a lawyer, but recently I did watch the movie Legally Blond (recently for free at YouTube) where the character Elle Woods on her first day of Harvard Law School was sent out of a class for being "unprepared", that is, not having read 41 pages on "jurisdiction" or some such. Well, Ms. Woods might have responded to the professor that she did nothing wron…

> recently I did watch the movie Legally Blond (recently for free at YouTube) OT, but what do you mean? Is youtube showing full movies now, or was this a pirate upload?

Both: Youtube has an official set of movies, possibly a duplicate of Google Play or a different set; and people routinely upload pirate movies, although anything more recent than about 1990 is likely to get a copyright strike.

Re: Justice Stevens reads the fine print

#55

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)…

This is a stupid answer. And I don't mean it's ignorant, I mean it's stupid.

The answer to a problem cannot be, "Become a subject matter expert in that field."

You don't understand the problem with your small intestine? Become a gastroenterologist. No thanks. Society has to be built on trust to function. Yes, we've allowed for an enormous amount of trust to be eroded in the Western world, but that's over now. We either make the hard choices to rebuild these institutions or we see the long slow miserable collapse of our society.

Re: Justice Stevens reads the fine print

#56
post #49
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.

Totally agree, though it seems differ quite a bit between different kinds of kitchens here in Sweden. Producing stuff sold in stores means super-stringent checks where for example you have to swap your clothes before entering and exiting the area where you prepare the foodstuff. Now school kitchens on the other hand... sure they are checked but not at all with the same strictness it seems.

Re: Justice Stevens reads the fine print

#57
post #13

> ... is fully and fairly notified about the existence ... I'm not a lawyer, but recently I did watch the movie Legally Blond (recently for free at YouTube) where the character Elle Woods on her first day of Harvard Law School was sent out of a class for being "unprepared", that is, not having read 41 pages on "jurisdiction" or some such. Well, Ms. Woods might have responded to the professor that she did nothing wron…

> recently I did watch the movie Legally Blond (recently for free at YouTube) OT, but what do you mean? Is youtube showing full movies now, or was this a pirate upload?

Buster Keaton's "The General" is on YouTube. (It's out of copyright, but still worth watching, in my opinion.)

Re: Justice Stevens reads the fine print

#58

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)…

Does that mean that everyone on HN should have a computer science degree, a marketing degree and an MBA?

Re: Justice Stevens reads the fine print

#59

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…

> At least here in the UK, the court system does not have enough capacity

Yeah, that's a political decision; the government is so anti-public service that it's cut it to disastrous levels.

In many cases the cuts to legal aid are politically targeted at situations where the government was losing too many cases.

Re: Justice Stevens reads the fine print

#60
post #50
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I use a "smart" lock, even with BT/wifi/GPS based automatic unlocking which seems to freak my fiancee out. I see it as stealing my phone is not different from stealing my key. The more sinister ability is to unlock remotely via the "cloud" which I am still a bit shocked that it just seems to work, and no complaints AFAIK from insurance companies. I just happen to know that locks aren't really a deterrent if you really want to get inside a house....

On the other hand, in reality I am not going to be targeted by competent hackers (who would own me at once), but rather a crude gang of misfits roaming around for an easily burglarised home.

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