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What an Uncensored Letter to M.L.K. Reveals

nytimes.com

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Re: What an Uncensored Letter to M.L.K. Reveals

#141

Post by nemo »

internet_arguer wrote: post #136
comrade1 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm talking about IT workers. Average wages are 2x-3x of the u.s. Taxes are 11% to 21% depending in the canton vs the u.s which can be up to 40% in CA. Expenses are 2x in Switzerland but if you live in s.f. probably comparable. I don't want this to get sidetracked to be a conversation about Switzerland though. In general life is better in Europe than the u.s. - less desperate. At least you have obamacare now.

Obamacare isn't really good for anyone except the self-employed and underemployed. The bottom-of-the-barrel unsubsidized O-care option in CA for a family is about $650/mo.

Obamacare has also been a huge benefit to people with pre-existing health conditions. It's also been a huge benefit to the many uninsured who were picked up in the Medicaid expansion.

The private plans for the self-employed/underemployed do suck though. Eventually the country needs to dump the foolishness of employer-based private insurance into some more mature, rational, and responsible approach to universal healthcare, but for now it's sadly the best we could manage.

Re: What an Uncensored Letter to M.L.K. Reveals

#142

Post by comrade1 »

internet_arguer wrote: post #135
comrade1 wrote: post #52

This was in the 1960s. Imagine the projects being conceived now for targeting individuals and population subsets to change opinion, mood, etc. using things like social media, targeted communications, etc. The US then and now was totalitarian and authoritarian. Some of you, especially here on hn, may not fall into those mind-sets but it doesn't matter - you've lost - you're barely scraping by, working 60 to 80 hours a…

I'll bite. From one troll account to another. It's interesting when someone from Switzerland claims the moral high ground about a country's past wrongs. Switzerland has a colorful history of Nazi collaboration and laundering of stolen treasure by the 3rd Reich. Is that an unfair characterization of you as a modern Swiss person? Yes. Just like comparing 1960s America to the present day. The U.S. may not live up to the…

I'm not Swiss, I'm American.

The Swiss provided a service to the Jews in Germany and helped hide their money from the nazis. Unfortunately most of their customers were killed... If I lived in a country with a corrupt or evil government I would try to move my money to Switzerland too, but the u.s. Is making it increasingly difficult to conduct finance anonymously.

Based on your other comments... I'm not sure if you're aware of the rest of the world. ETH is on par with MIT and EPFL is high up there as well. There is a good start up community here in Zurich, but it's true that VC isn't as advanced here - it's still mostly angel investors. Google has a big office here and it seems to be adding to the enovironment.

But I'm not sure if Silicon Valley is a good goal. I've live and worked there for startups and two big mainstream companies and have no desire to go back that desperate life.

Re: What an Uncensored Letter to M.L.K. Reveals

#143

Post by rglover »

GhotiFish wrote: post #81
rglover wrote: post #56

Something that's always confused me about the world and people as a whole. Why are so many people hell bent on implementing some "moral standard" that everyone needs to follow? Honestly? There's this bizarre projection of the individual and his/her motivations onto every living being that fails to make any logical sense. Is there any psychological premise for why we feel the need to dictate the behavior of others suc…

Is this an inditement of Dr. King, the FBI, Or the EFF? Are you inditing all three of them? I'm pretty sure all three parties have put their words to action, and are fully willing to follow their moral beliefs in addition to foisting those beliefs on others.

No one in particular, this article just brought the thought to mind.

Re: What an Uncensored Letter to M.L.K. Reveals

#144

Post by rglover »

sopooneo wrote: post #112
rglover wrote: post #56

Something that's always confused me about the world and people as a whole. Why are so many people hell bent on implementing some "moral standard" that everyone needs to follow? Honestly? There's this bizarre projection of the individual and his/her motivations onto every living being that fails to make any logical sense. Is there any psychological premise for why we feel the need to dictate the behavior of others suc…

It's probably not the case here, but the reason I always supposed is that people secretly resent the moral rules they strive to follow, and think, "hey, if I've got to do this, so do you!"

Ha! I like that. Never thought of it that way.

Re: What an Uncensored Letter to M.L.K. Reveals

#145

Post by opendais »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #46
opendais wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd prefer a better educated populace that realizes the "technical evidence" being submitted in many cases is essentially witness testimony and not physical evidence [e.g. fingerprints on the murder weapon] which I think many people believe. Witness testimony is perfectly fine as long as it isn't implied to be anything greater than that.

Say the issue is call metadata. They showed that I called the murderer, who then murdered someone I had a grudge against. So this evidence doesn't prove that I did order a hit, but at least proves that I had the opportunity to have done so. The metadata is technical evidence, not witness testimony. But... Who wrote the software that collected the metadata? Any bugs in it? Any possibility that I did not, in fact, make…

Does that happen in every case for every piece of technical evidence?

Re: What an Uncensored Letter to M.L.K. Reveals

#146

Post by AnimalMuppet »

dragonwriter wrote: post #128
none_for_me_thx wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anarchy => no rulers not Anarchy => no rules

Rules come from somewhere. That somewhere is rulers. Therefore, no rulers => no rules. Therefore, (Anarchy => no rulers) => (Anarchy => no rules).

Well, rules in anarchy have to come from consensus of the people. So the only rules, in practice, are those that the people are willing and able to enforce against those who wish to break them.

History shows that, in anarchy situations, those who wish to break the rules are sometimes highly motivated and well armed. Thus anarchy at least means "no rules that apply to a warlord when he really wants them not to".

Now, one could argue that that is essentially the situation with the US government now. But the well-armed warlords tend to show considerably less restraint than the US government does.

Re: What an Uncensored Letter to M.L.K. Reveals

#147

Post by comrade1 »

adventured wrote: post #137
comrade1 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm talking about IT workers. Average wages are 2x-3x of the u.s. Taxes are 11% to 21% depending in the canton vs the u.s which can be up to 40% in CA. Expenses are 2x in Switzerland but if you live in s.f. probably comparable. I don't want this to get sidetracked to be a conversation about Switzerland though. In general life is better in Europe than the u.s. - less desperate. At least you have obamacare now.

Europe is less desperate? I don't think so, unless you're only counting about five countries as being Europe. Spain has 30% real unemployment. France's economy hasn't grown in ten years in inflation adjusted terms, and is suffering hyper stagnation; it has averaged sub 1% nominal GDP growth for that time. Italy is on its third recession in seven years. Portugal is so relatively poor their middle class would barely qu…

Just like I wouldn't recommend a European take a job in Mississippi I wouldn't advise an American take work in Poland.

Re: What an Uncensored Letter to M.L.K. Reveals

#148

Post by AnimalMuppet »

comrh wrote: post #124
gohrt wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A Political Party is full of likeminded people. (Or it loses elections; see: Democrats) HN is not a HiveMind. https://mayday.us/

I think almost every group is a hivemind. And HN certainly shares characteristics of groupthink.

I don't think that almost every group is a hivemind. I don't think HN shares many characteristics of groupthink.

Even if I'm wrong, that still means I'm not part of the same hivemind/groupthink as you are. And yet here we both are, on HN.

Re: What an Uncensored Letter to M.L.K. Reveals

#149

Post by dang »

rooster8 wrote: post #134
dang wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. We changed the url to that from https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/11/fbis-suicide-letter-dr... as the "original" source.

I understand that it's policy to change the URLs to the original source, but in this case I feel the EFF article was a better discussion piece.

Yes, it's not always the case that a single URL is better in every respect. We're working on a design for associating multiple URLs with a story. Even with that, though, there still needs to be a primary URL, because the title on the front page has to link somewhere.

One thing we were stuck on for a while is how to let users vote on what the primary URL should be, but (fingers crossed) I now think we may have hit on a way to do it.

Re: What an Uncensored Letter to M.L.K. Reveals

#150

Post by AnimalMuppet »

opendais wrote: post #145
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Say the issue is call metadata. They showed that I called the murderer, who then murdered someone I had a grudge against. So this evidence doesn't prove that I did order a hit, but at least proves that I had the opportunity to have done so. The metadata is technical evidence, not witness testimony. But... Who wrote the software that collected the metadata? Any bugs in it? Any possibility that I did not, in fact, make…

Does that happen in every case for every piece of technical evidence?

I think it has to. The only way it could not is if you had a piece of physical evidence, and you were going to extract the technical evidence from it there in the courtroom in front of the jury. But even then, you have to worry about the chain of custody of the physical evidence, and about the tool you're going to use to extract the technical evidence in the courtroom...
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