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Justice Stevens reads the fine print

matthewbutterick.com

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Re: Justice Stevens reads the fine print

#61

Post by pjc50 »

lostlogin wrote: post #58
noduerme wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Don't forget the medical degree so you can "do your own research", and the mechanic qualifications so you can avoid being scammed when it comes to fixing your car.

Re: Justice Stevens reads the fine print

#62

Post by willcipriano »

krageon wrote: post #49
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.

I have ten years in kitchens and while I do eat out I also know how disgusting kitchens are. I have a stomach for it but if you were a regular person and knew what I knew you'd refrain from eating out.

We pay back of house staff as little as we can get away with to work every weekend and holiday in hellish conditions. They just don't give a crap and who can blame them.

Re: Justice Stevens reads the fine print

#63

Post by JonChesterfield »

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.

How about helicopters? I definitely feel less willing to get on one after working near them.

Re: Justice Stevens reads the fine print

#64

Post by panta »

cbozeman wrote: post #55
noduerme wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 eith…

I don't think it's a stupid answer. Maybe too extreme, but I believe it contains some elements of truth. Trust has been largely eroded by greed, corruption and incompetence, and if one counts only on trust is probably going to get the short end of the stick. As a matter of fact, when you "outsource" some activity, you need some non-zero amount of competence in the outsourced field to be able to evaluate the level of service and avoid terrible outcomes. This is sadly true even when you go to a gastroenterologist.

Re: Justice Stevens reads the fine print

#65

Post by rovr138 »

noduerme wrote: post #45
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)…

My "hack" around this is, have a friend that's a lawyer.

I lucked out in that we had been friends before. I have answered many development and programming questions and issues for them, and they have for me too.

To others commenting, I guess it's about having trust in others and using that. We have friends and family that are in CS, accounting, law, medicine, etc. What we don't have, we pay for. Find a good resource and pay them.

I guess this goes back to the grandparent post were they talk about access and costs of different lawyers.

Re: Justice Stevens reads the fine print

#66

Post by Joeri »

krageon wrote: post #50
theK wrote: 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.

Unless you have a door specifically designed to withstand burglary a crowbar will always be an easier door hack than figuring out a backdoor to your automation.

There is no perfect security, only risk profiles. I would argue the risk profile of door lock automation is low enough not to be worthy of concern in most cases.

Re: Justice Stevens reads the fine print

#67

Post by vmception »

noduerme wrote: post #44

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.

Good to be skeptical of that idea, courts consider many forms of consent contractual as long as they can be accepted as proof of consent. Periodically, a jurisdiction may explicitly specify that a certain form of consent is necessary, presumably to unbog their court system.

Secondly, a lot of fine print benefits you. missed out on crazy compensation during a minor inconvenience just because you skipped locking in provable consent to the contract? oops

Re: Justice Stevens reads the fine print

#68

Post by atoav »

noduerme wrote: post #45
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)…

It saddens me that such a great part of US society (as I perceive it from the outside) has basically given up on fixing any systemic problem at all.

Be it small things like robocalls, or bigger things like a broken healthcare system, gun violence, lobbying in politics or things like the housing/opiod crisis — a big part of the US people I talk to have basically given up on any collective way of fixing these issues and just try to shield themselves individually from the consequences and risks. The summed up individual time, nerve and energy spent on this must easily outweigh the time, nerve and energy it would cost to fix these issues collectively.

Sometimes I even have the feeling that some people like hurdles like these because they believe it gives them some kind of "edge" in the competition with others — a bit like in the 30-year-war where at some point people had adapted to the war so much, they didn't want it to end, because they were a little less worse off than their peers — they had forgotten how much better off they could be if there was peace.

Re: Justice Stevens reads the fine print

#69

Post by axiosgunnar »

Do note though that „legal fine print“ is similar to „React-Node.js-Mongodb“ boilerplate.

Meaning that it sometimes makes sense to not have to start off at zero.

Also complaining about long contracts is like saying „I don't like this program because the source code is too long“. Depending on the program, this might be a little capricious.

Do you want lawyers to be „code golfing“?

Re: Justice Stevens reads the fine print

#70

Post by laichzeit0 »

lostlogin wrote: post #58
noduerme wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

At least have a degree in cryptography so you can verify your random number generator is cryptographically secure. A trivial task for the average HN reader, except the greatest impediment being that mathematics is impenetrable largely because of the obscure notation that mathematicians use when writing it.
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