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Justice Stevens reads the fine print

matthewbutterick.com

181–190 of 230 posts

Re: Justice Stevens reads the fine print

#181

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 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 o…

The statistics don’t support your assertion. Most people aren’t lawyers, and the median amount of money a person spends on legal counsel is pretty low.

Re: Justice Stevens reads the fine print

#182
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.

It varies a lot. Quite a long time ago, I worked at a pizza place in a regional chain. That location was kept quite clean, as were most of them. However, sometimes they'd give us the chance to pick up a shift at another location if they couldn't arrange one of their own employees on that day (usually because they called in sick). One such location was absolutely filthy. That location was since closed (grapevine says the chain fired the GM and couldn't find anyone to replace them).

What helps is that there are signs of this sort of thing, if you know what to look for. E.g you should prefer places where you can see into the kitchen (which is most of them these days), places where the customer service workers tuck in their shirts, and places that keep their bathrooms and parking lots clean. Places where police and EMS folks eat really tend to be good bets (they usually also get a discount, but lots of places offer such discounts).

Re: Justice Stevens reads the fine print

#183
post #90

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 agree 100%. The "free-for-all contract law" based society in which, to get the most basic goods or services, everyone is forced to sign hundreds of contracts that they didn't have input in writing, can't possibly understand or even read, is completely unattainable.

All basic things of day-to-day life (jobs, rent, utilities, tickets, subscriptions) should be governed by mandated standard contracts (with some flexibility based on a series of optional clauses), so people just have to learn/understand a contract once and take that knowledge for the rest of their life. This way the actual paper contract a person signs should be just a single page, listing the parties, citing the standard contract, and a few bullet points citing the optionals. E.G. "I just rented a house, I signed Standard Rental Contract #3 with a no-pets and no-smoking clauses." - "Good for you, mine is the stricter Standard Rental Contract #2, and they also wanted to add the no-pets clause but I payed extra to remove that."

Anything outside this should only be considered a legal contract if each party involved had their own layer present when the contract was written and when it was signed (layer co-signing it with a legal duty to the client), having full input in writing the actual contract. If a company handles you one of their own contracts and asks you to sign without allowing you to change it, then it should not be valid/legal binding.

Re: Justice Stevens reads the fine print

#184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you spend a little time thinking about the amount of restaurants versus the amount of actual people there are in a country, you will realise one is relatively easy to enforce compared to the other. Furthermore, the conversation was about the average. It is not the case that the average human being goes around snorting coke in the toilet every day, just as it is not the case that the average restaurant is some bast…

Having worked in them for a decade I know how it works in practice. Perhaps whatever country you are from has sparking clean restaurants full of well paid, sober people but in the US, they are disgusting as a rule. My peers in the UK reported the same. We had to call a ambulance for our health inspector once beacuse they overdosed in the bathroom. Check out Kitchen Confidential if you want to see this backed up, and…

With respect, I had this to say about your situation:

> [...] if you are in a country with bad sanitary checking you will have a bad time.

Lo and behold, you have a bad time.

Re: Justice Stevens reads the fine print

#185
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.

737 MAX would like a word.

Re: Justice Stevens reads the fine print

#186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Schlage doesn't know where I live, though, nor do they get any status updates from my home assistant. It isn't software that is the problem you're referring to, it's involving a third party unnecessarily.

Maybe for your smart lock - but sandos has "GPS based automatic unlocking" so his lock vendor probably knows exactly where he lives.

Re: Justice Stevens reads the fine print

#187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's "technical minutiae"; I was charged with an offence that I didn't commit. My advocate just took the trouble to read the Act that I was charged under. Given that the court knew I hadn't committed the offence I was charged with, it would certainly have been a miscarriage of justice to go on and convict me anyway, and I could have got it overturned on appeal.

You said you were speeding, right? But somehow the judge can't just say "ah right, looks like it's the wrong traffic statute that's been filed. Here's a fine for whatever it was that you actually did, you can just settle it here or we do a proper trial if you disagree". I mean of course we don't want people to be convicted of things they didn't do, but how is it ok for someone to get away with something they did do,…

[deleted]

Re: Justice Stevens reads the fine print

#188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't mind blinds so much, but it'd have to be via a button; I dislike talking on a good day, let alone to a machine. That said, my lights are operated via RF remote(s) (two systems, one working on plugs, the other from ikea), pretty convenient without needing an internet connection. Just an awkwardly sized battery.

At least with Alexa, you don’t need to talk to a device to manipulate smart-home devices. The mobile app has controls in it for you to use.

Pretty sure that's the case with all voice-assisted smart home tech

Re: Justice Stevens reads the fine print

#189
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't mind blinds so much, but it'd have to be via a button; I dislike talking on a good day, let alone to a machine. That said, my lights are operated via RF remote(s) (two systems, one working on plugs, the other from ikea), pretty convenient without needing an internet connection. Just an awkwardly sized battery.

Why not just automatic? Maybe plus a button for privacy/needing darkness for a film or whatever depending on the room, but mostly I just want curtains & blinds to open in the morning and close in the evening.

Because they provide privacy in addition to light blocking. I don't have a 100% reliable schedule on when I'm going to need my windows to be blocked.

Re: Justice Stevens reads the fine print

#190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having worked in them for a decade I know how it works in practice. Perhaps whatever country you are from has sparking clean restaurants full of well paid, sober people but in the US, they are disgusting as a rule. My peers in the UK reported the same. We had to call a ambulance for our health inspector once beacuse they overdosed in the bathroom. Check out Kitchen Confidential if you want to see this backed up, and…

> in the US, they are disgusting as a rule Sanitation is enforced at the local level. Making blanket statements about the U.S. carries little information. Restaurants in New York (county) are spotless. Restaurants in San Francisco, less reliably so. The broader point holds, however--people in the restaurant industry tend to go out to restaurants.

> Restaurants in New York (county) are spotless.

They most assuredly are not. At least the ones I've worked in. I did a few months at a sandwich place where the owner would smoke while assembling sandwiches with his bare hands. I've never worked in SF so I can't comment on what it's like there.

Don't even get me started on those takeout only ghost kitchens. A lot of times they are running out of people's houses, rinsing lettuce in bathtubs.

If you think that's gross you should see how it's handled on the distribution end. Pallets of chicken breast sitting for hours in the summer sun and then served that evening.

We go out to eat beacuse you get desensitized to it after a while not beacuse it's clean.

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