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

91–100 of 230 posts

Re: Justice Stevens reads the fine print

#91

Post by sdoering »

atoav wrote: post #68
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)…

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 an…

As a total outsider my first instinct was to agree. Then I thought about aspects in my country (Germany) and thought that while not so obvious and blatant we have basically the same problems. And they grow year over year.

Let's take the example that the public prosecutor's office is bound by the instructions of the Ministry of Justice. Let us now assume that someone files charges against two politicians on the (justified) suspicion of supporting tax evasion by banks, and let us assume that these politicians now hold very prominent positions in the country. How would the public prosecutor's office react?

Exactly. The initial suspicion necessary for an investigation is denied. Despite demonstrable false statements made by the politicians in question before parliamentary investigative committees.

There are also regular rulings by the Hamburg court (think Delaware) regarding copyright, addblockers and the like.

Here, too, the individual can do nothing. Because the system is not made to allow such influence of individuals.

The elected representatives have gone through years of party school. Polished smoothly. Streamlined. Who questions things or acts in the sense of the people will find no place on the list to be elected. Who wants to found an own party must do a lot and will fail in the vast majority of cases because you need 5% of the votes to be represented at all in parliament.

Demonstrations, petitions and the like have not changed anything for a long time.

Imho we live in a corporate democracy. Not a democracy that represents any "people".

So the rational thing to do is to stop caring and to "only" protect one's own personal life and that of one's loved ones.

Re: Justice Stevens reads the fine print

#92

Post by denton-scratch »

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…

> or they're just as good as any other lawyer

My experience is that some advocates are much better than most advocates. The best lawyer I've had was a trainee barrister, standing in for a run-of-the-mill high-street solicitor, who couldn't show up. Presumably because she was a trainee, she did a really meticulous job for me, on what was a trivial offence: speeding. Few lawyers would put much effort into a speeding ticket.

She got me off; I was speeding, but I had been charged under the wrong section of the Road Traffic Act. "I humbly submit, your honour, that it would be quite wrong, your honour, for my client to be convicted of an offence he didn't commit, your honour".

Re: Justice Stevens reads the fine print

#93

Post by Retric »

dalbasal wrote: post #80
pjc50 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Political/funding decisions are part of the mix, but I don't think the daylight between highly funded and underfunded amounts to fundamental difference. Courts are extremely costly and/or low throughput. The vast majority of legal resolutions happen outside of courts, whether or not they even touch a court along the way. It just is not designed for efficiency. Court systems are designed to embody legal ideals (and im…

Courts don’t actually need to deal with vary many cases though. I suspect the average person needs to deal with the legal system for anything more complex than a speeding ticket less than once per decade.

And as it turns out five minutes in front of a judge can easily handle: “The speed camera is showing a picture of a pickup truck, I drive an SUV.”

It’s only a minute fraction of cases that take significant time to resolve. The UK has ~700 homicide victims per year and significantly fewer murder trials. Individual trials can be long and expensive without it actually adding up to a significant expense.

Re: Justice Stevens reads the fine print

#94

Post by noduerme »

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…

Just to respond to this and all the others at once:

The reason my family optimizes for law school as a default is that it's not a specialization, it's a baseline way of thinking about and dealing with any business or life situation you find yourself in. Just as "programming" in the general sense is not a speciality and is something I think everyone should be versed in as a logical form to call upon when needed, their view is that thinking as a lawyer is crucial. Whether you ever practice law or not. This is far different from delving into the specifics of some field of law or, in your example, medicine. It's as general a type of logic as you might get from a degree in philosophy; it just happens to be a lot more useful when you need to get things done in the here and now.

My father's command was: Be whatever you want but do it after you're a lawyer. I didn't do that, but then again, I'm the least successful of my brothers.

All I meant by my original comment was that there's a rationale to it: This is not one aspect of medicine. It's applicable to every endeavor in life. Taking the time to become intimately familiar with the ins and outs of the law is roughly the same as learning the CLI for the operating system that your society runs on. Most people are only familiar with the GUI.

And for the person who said no one can afford to go to law school: Many of the best I know went to night school or even studied completely on their own, and passed the bar while they were working other jobs full-time. Just like many of the best coders.

Re: Justice Stevens reads the fine print

#95

Post by sdoering »

michaelt wrote: post #87
sandos wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 reall…

> 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. The threat isn't a competent hacker targeting you directly. The threat is a competent hacker targeting the lock's vendor, getting their whole database, then selling address, entry code and occupancy times for $20 per home on th…

It boils down to assessing the threat level and the risk level.

Threat: Hacker owning vendor and selling info on darknet Threat likelyhood: 1%

Risk: All valuables being stolen. Risk value: High if you keep a few kilograms of gold in your home. But basically depends on your possessions.

When we were burglared while sleeping a few years back the perp entered through a window. It was the last window not switched to a new one more secure. It took him around 15 seconds to enter. He left with the DSLR, a TV, clothes, a few valuables lying around and my SO's purse. Additionally, because traditionally her car keys were by the door on ground level he could grab them and put everything into her car and leave.

Nowadays our purses and keys never stay downstairs when we go to sleep.

I think the risk profile for traditional break ins is way higher than the risk from a smart lock (not that we have any).

Re: Justice Stevens reads the fine print

#96

Post by noduerme »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #89
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)…

> 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 We can't have a functional society like this: by the time i am done getting a law degree, a software degree, a finance degree (massive dark pattern there), medical degree , etc - i will be 60 and millions in de…

I'd counter that if you expect people to handle all your legal issues, your software issues, your financial issues and your medical issues, without a solid understanding of any of those fields, you're also going to spend (and likely waste) a lot of money h and be less effective than if you knew what was going on.

Of those things you mentioned, only the law degree is useful when dealing with issues that arise in all of the others.

Re: Justice Stevens reads the fine print

#97

Post by noduerme »

chaosite wrote: post #53
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)…

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.

Yes. This is what I meant. Experience in code lets you see dark patterns quickly in software. Experience in law lets you see them in _everything_.

Re: Justice Stevens reads the fine print

#98

Post by mensetmanusman »

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)…

This is one of those answers that will get written up about in the New Yorker. Clearly the most logical answer for this audience…

Re: Justice Stevens reads the fine print

#99

Post by tinco »

mjevans wrote: post #90
makeitdouble wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a complete fiction that normal people read pages and pages of contracts, EULAs, and that type of stuff. I think incredibly long EULAs would be fine if violation on technicalities were lighter, and/or critical sections were put on top, in plain language. For instance, I wouldn't care much about Youtube's terms and services outside of what would warrant an account ban, and what's the privacy boundaries. If Googl…

Respectfully; No. A standard library of terms, preferably from the highest (and thus widest covering) level of government, should be the bulk and basis of all widely common contracts. I shouldn't have to re-read 40+ pages when I renew my dwelling's rental lease for another year; this should not be one more thing that has to be shopped around for. Don't provide an illusion of choice (as if we the people really have on…

I bought my house on a contract that was based off the national standard contract for residence transactions. Deviations from the standard were clearly marked. Regardless the contract was read to me by the realtor when I signed for the intent to buy, and the most important points were reiterated by the notary when confirming the actual transaction. It was great I found it useful and comforting to know I was signing for, doubly so knowing it was mostly the standard contract everyone else signs for.

That said. Your "10s of millions of wasted person hours" is a twisted way of presenting the data. Reading the contract was 30 minutes. That's 0.00019% of the time I will spend paying my largest monthly expense towards.

Re: Justice Stevens reads the fine print

#100

Post by chinathrow »

denton-scratch wrote: post #92
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…

> or they're just as good as any other lawyer My experience is that some advocates are much better than most advocates. The best lawyer I've had was a trainee barrister, standing in for a run-of-the-mill high-street solicitor, who couldn't show up. Presumably because she was a trainee, she did a really meticulous job for me, on what was a trivial offence: speeding. Few lawyers would put much effort into a speeding ti…

Where you charged for speeding afterwards?
Post reply on HN