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Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

nytimes.com

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Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#931

Post by freejazz »

wakawaka28 wrote: post #899
freejazz wrote: post #703

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I say cash loosely speaking Is this a legal term or something? Not to be rude, but who cares what you mean by it? It's totally besides the point

If you're talking to me or reading my comment then you should care what I mean. Otherwise you're wasting your time. Obviously "loosely speaking" is not a legal term but I'm sure there is one that means the same. I mean you need real money to buy things, not bad paper. Bankruptcy does not exist to deliver good feels to people, it exists to settle financial matters as objectively as possible.

Right. The debt owed to the creditors...

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#932

Post by freejazz »

wbl wrote: post #848
freejazz wrote: post #831

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they'd be paying a dollar more than the second highest bid, not the amount of the highest bid. Frankly, I'm not sure how that could not be more clear.

They wouldn't have made that bid if the rules were different! A vickrey auction has a lot of support as getting revenue.

So?

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#933

Post by Natsu »

davidw wrote: post #805
Natsu wrote: post #587

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you point us to videos of other people doing lots of federal drug & gun crimes who get away with it?

They rejected a plea deal. That almost never happens. He was 100% guilty of some things, but they wanted to drag out the whole process for publicity rather than to actually do some semblance of 'justice'. And some of these incoming people threatened to keep going after him just to inflict pain on his father. These are no longer the party of Romney and McCain. "The cruelty is the point".

> They rejected a plea deal. That almost never happens

They rejected it because it was worded to absolve him of all crimes, not just those charged, and the judge found the parties did not agree on which interpretation was correct so there was no agreement. It is completely appropriate for the court to want to know exactly what the plea agreement covers and to make sure both sides actually agree on the meaning of it. They could have ended it by coming up with a simple, normal plea agreement that doesn't have that strange ambiguity.

If anything, that looks more like an attempt to do a backdoor non-pardon pardon than some kind of persecution. It was only "dragged out" because Biden's DoJ did not agree in court with Hunter Biden's lawyers on what they had actually agreed to.

And despite the "they" in your sentence seeming to refer to Republicans in some capacity, from start to finish, the Hunter Biden prosecution was done by Joe Biden's Department of Justice. You may complain that the judge was appointed by Trump, but the charges couldn't have been brought to begin with without Biden's DoJ authorizing it.

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#934

Post by cthalupa »

cess11 wrote: post #926
cthalupa wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Sandy Hook families have literally been awarded punitive damages. Their point is literally punishment. That is why punitive damages exist in civil law. It's what the word punitive means.

Something can be punishing without being a punishment.

The intent is explicitly and specifically to punish someone and be a punishment.

Compensatory damages are awarded in an attempt to compensate the plaintiff for the damage they received due to the actions of the defendant. Punitive damages are awarded to the plaintiff on top of the compensatory damages and their exact purpose is to punish the defendant for their actions.

They are two different types of damages and the exact purpose of punitive damages is to be a punishment. It's their raison d'etre. They were created to provide further levers to punish people.

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#935

Post by tptacek »

throwaway10210 wrote: post #898
dang wrote: post #887

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a common claim, but it only ever seems to be made by people with a strong ideological commitment who are mad that the opposing commitment isn't banned on the site. In other words, the complaint is that we don't moderate HN based on ideology. Since to do that would contradict HN's reason for existing ( https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor... ), I'm not inclined to start. The irony is th…

[flagged]

The two sibling commenters spend hours per week on HN and haven't seen this. I spend an hour or so a week looking for this --- you can see it in my comment history --- over and above the probable hours per day I spend on HN (I am on HN professionally).

It's an open-access site, so if you go looking for this stuff, you will absolutely find it. But it tends, strongly, to come from throwaway accounts, and is virtually always flagged off the site. I used to point this stuff out to Dan, but have mostly stopped, because by the time he sees the email it's already dead.

So, no, sorry, I don't think the "festering" charge will stick.

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#936

Post by HWR_14 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #389
HWR_14 wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought the other reason was that some creditors were trying to use their debt forgiveness as a credit to purchase inforwars. Which obviously doesn't make sense in a bankruptcy, since the whole point is the creditors are not going to get paid back 100%.

> Which obviously doesn't make sense in a bankruptcy, since the whole point is the creditors are not going to get paid back 100% The creditors already own the asset. The estate is selling, not Alex Jones. If you asked every creditor which bid they preferred, which do you think they'd choose? The creditors forgoing their claims obviously prefer one. As for the rest, they'll choose the one that pays them more: The Onio…

The Onion's bid is the one where the creditors are applying their debt. The competing offer is more cash.

The whole point of bankruptcy is that the creditors do not get to vote and the solution that makes the majority happy isn't the best one. In an ideal bankruptcy everyone recovers the same percentage of their debt.

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#937

Post by TheFreim »

lbwtaylor wrote: post #930
TheFreim wrote: post #915

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He built a business out of attacking and re-victimizing *parents whose children were murdered.* He's scum of the earth. > attacking *people* with bald face lies and using the generated outrage to sell snake oil. You made a specific claim, were refuted because that specific claim is clearly false, and now you've made a general claim while presenting it as if it's the same as the specific claim. This is not intellect…

The poster suggested that Jones actions on Sandy Hook were an outlier. One 'bad' action. They were not. He built his business on Sandy Hook and similar actions, and that's clearly what my original post intended and I stand by it. I think it's intellectually dishonest to suggest Jones faced consequences because of one bad action. I have stronger words for it honestly but I'm trying to stick to the rules of this forum.…

You claimed: "He built a business out of attacking and re-victimizing parents whose children were murdered."

This is false, as he obviously didn't build his operation solely on his claims about Sandy Hook as you claimed. The other comment pointed this out, so you changed what you were saying without admitting what you said was inaccurate. Now you are bizarrely claiming that you didn't say what you said, even though everyone can read what you wrote. Alex Jones was sued because of what he said about Sandy Hook, he was not sued for these other actions which were not relevant to the case. Whatever you think about Jones, it doesn't do anyone any good to portray the Sandy Hook case as being about other things.

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#938

Post by andrewmcwatters »

dang wrote: post #889
andrewmcwatters wrote: post #815

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Moderation here is entirely based on tone, not content My least favorite thing about reading HN, by far. Glad someone else said it.

I don't want to pick on you personally (so I apologize if it feels that way), but I also don't want to leave this unresponded to when we've had to ask you so many times to stop breaking the site guidelines ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40910766 ). I think most HN readers are glad that we ask users not to personally attack others (questioning whether they can read, calling them morons and rubes, telling them…

Of course it's based on tone. You repeatedly let users antagonize one other, until someone breaks guidelines, you advocated for a startup that was named "fucking awesome," after the concept that they were taking advantage of labor arbitrage, you seem to ignore the realities of mainstream sentiments when they are controversial in order to make your job as a message board janitor easier, and you pick and choose when to ignore hyperbole.

All a reader has to do is observe your behavior, and it's clear what kind of person you are. You make it obvious by your retelling of your personal judgement of my commentaries here. I didn't realize you were St. Peter, Dan.

So Dan, if you don't want people to think you're an asshole, don't be an asshole. But don't tell me Hacker News janitorial moderation isn't based on tone when the guidelines themselves dictate it.

You're bullshitting every reader here and you're showing every user that you're comfortable opening up your admin tools and regurgitating pinned comments without context to stick it to me, and any other reader who dares question your methodology.

Oh and by the way, thank you for privately downweighting my account and numerous other people's here when I had previously consistently been a top comment in a number of threads. When it was inconvenient for you and a comment had well over a hundred upvotes, it's so nice that you can hide behind moderation tools and just send that comment straight to the bottom of a thread.

Don't lie. I have what, hundreds? Thousands? Of comments here? You thought a single percent? A tenth of a percent? Were distasteful? I've been here for probably 15 years and yeah, you pick on people personally.

It's supportable, but unlike what moderation tools you have, Hacker News' codebase doesn't allow me to pin your comments unless I want them to end up in my general pool. And unlike you, I'm not paid a salary to pour over people's comments online.

Don't do this. You do this bad faith stuff all the time and have for years. Don't lie to me and everyone else by saying sorry and then acting like an asshole the next few sentences. Oh whoops. Sorry, didn't mean to pick on you. Then reading off everything you can.

Really? You think people are that stupid?

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#939

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

im3w1l wrote: post #874
Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #561

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see anything in those articles about gay frogs. Trans frogs, sure, but sex and sexual orientation are different.

The correct term is intersex, but whatever. But in addition > EE2 exposure at all concentrations lowered male sexual arousal, indicated by decreased proportions of advertisement calls and increased proportions of the call type rasping, which characterizes a sexually unaroused state of a male. So the males also became uninterested in sex with females. Given that I think you must be really nitpicking to find fault with…

> you must be really nitpicking

I mean...this IS Hacker News. Extreme levels of pedantry is just par for the course, isn't it?

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#940

Post by pclmulqdq »

Retric wrote: post #863
pclmulqdq wrote: post #783

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was the preferred outcome by the majority of his creditors, not by all his creditors (note that preferred != economically best). If the creditors were unanimous in their preferences, there would be no issue before the court.

No the judge stated he believes it could be sold at a higher price not that the deal wasn’t structured properly. There’s been confusion on the math. Because one party was forgoing a portion of their share everyone else not just the other victims would be better off financially. ps: Economic maximization alone isn’t relevant here. The underlying economic value matters when individuals aren’t voluntarily participating…

I think the word "preferred" has been a bit overloaded in this discussion. There is a sense of economic advantage that you may be using, and this deal in that sense is "preferred" for everyone. There is the other sense of stated preferences, and this deal is clearly not in the stated preferences of one of the parties (hence the appeal to a court).

I think if the creditors unanimously wanted this to happen, it probably would not have been reversed over the idea that there could have been a higher value. The fact that this issue was raised to a court indicates that at least one creditor did not prefer it.

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