161–170 of 370 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 2 years in jail for selling gum What do they have against gum?
Ever wondered what those black spots on city sidewalks are? That's gum. All of it is gum that's been spat out then walked on until it acquires a top embedded coating of city grime.
> "Caging me for a decade is not rehabilitating. I may be making excuses for myself, though there is a lesson that could have been learned with the same amount of value for justice if the sentence was 2 years, 3 years, 5 years, even 6 years." From the article at: https://forklog.media/ex-convicted-hacker-ghostexodus-severi... I don't consider myself a bleeding heart lib but I think that a decade in prison is excessiv…
He compares our current lease enforcement system to a chokehold: "Butler describes a chokehold as “a process of coercing submission that is self-reinforcing. A chokehold justifies additional pressure on the body because a body does not come into compliance, but a body cannot come into compliance because of the vice grip that is on it.” That, he says, is the black experience in the United States. "
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-ezra-klein-show/id...
I hadn't built a PC (nor used windows) between 2005 and 2016. After a few hours of catching up on the newest names (ie, what's the cheapo intel line called? What DDR version do I get? What is the SATA equivalent now?), everything became super familiar. Putting everything together was much easier (mouse cursors in BIOS?!) and looked a bit different, but amusingly familiar.
10 years ago I got a new Android from Google. Apple released a new iPhone with a larger screen. I had an app on whatever Google Play was called back then and this app still works on my phone. I read news online, I coded in Java, Javascript and Python on my MBP. I read Paul Graham essays about startups and posted comments on Hacker News.
The police had descended on my city (Toronto G20 in 2010), putting up massive barriers, kettling protesters, making massive arrests and brutalizing people. I was checking Twitter to see what was happening.
I booked flights on aggregators, booked hostel stays on websites and planned my trips through Google Maps.
Sure, many particulars have changed (AirBnB vs hostelworld, more things on phone vs laptop), but I honestly struggle to see much technological change in my life. Getting a Tesla, which was completely unattainable in 2010, seems like the technological highlight of the past decade.
Ironically, it seems our political situation has changed drastically over the last 10 years while technology has been slowly spreading but remaining fairly stable.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> and for what it's worth their punishment has provided nothing for me. That is why it is "The people vs. ..." and not "designdesign vs. ..." > Punishment compounds loss and has provided nothing to me or society. I think you need to convince society of that, rather than speaking for them. I look at a guy like Bernie Madoff, who poses no threat to the public now and is probably not likely to be rehabilitated in any tr…
You're right about convincing society, but American society has conflated vengeance with justice to the point that they may be inseparable concepts.
I don't think there's any other consistent way to look at the issue though. Treating murder as the ultimate crime, as almost all justice systems do, makes sense in terms of the cost to the victim and the desire of societies as a whole to see murderers punished. But most murders are unplanned, and most murderers are no more likely to murder again than any other member of the population. Given the above, long sentences for (unpremeditated) murder just do not make sense; they probably have little value either as deterrence or prevention, and they certainly don't rehabilitate. But would a victim's associates stand idly by if their murderer was free after five years?
> "Caging me for a decade is not rehabilitating. I may be making excuses for myself, though there is a lesson that could have been learned with the same amount of value for justice if the sentence was 2 years, 3 years, 5 years, even 6 years." From the article at: https://forklog.media/ex-convicted-hacker-ghostexodus-severi... I don't consider myself a bleeding heart lib but I think that a decade in prison is excessiv…
Isn't the punishment a way to stop people from trying to commit a crime? Because you seem to be focusing on the outcome/consequences of someone that committed a crime and got caught. It's not like the punishment is the result of "bad luck" or "unexpected circumstances", it was a deliberate conscious action, right? Also some of these actions aren't a burst of irrationality and poor thought process - they are planned a…
There are different opinions on what the main purpose of incarceration is (punishment, deterrence, rehabilitation, protecting society), but let's for a minute assume it's deterrence, aka "stop people from trying to commit a crime".
How well would you say incarceration as deterrence is working so far? Regarding shootings, muggings, robbery, murder, rape, even "white collar" crimes. Would you say prison (and even the death penalty) as deterrence has significantly helped reduce or stop crime in the US?
> "Caging me for a decade is not rehabilitating. I may be making excuses for myself, though there is a lesson that could have been learned with the same amount of value for justice if the sentence was 2 years, 3 years, 5 years, even 6 years." From the article at: https://forklog.media/ex-convicted-hacker-ghostexodus-severi... I don't consider myself a bleeding heart lib but I think that a decade in prison is excessiv…
> I was arrested in 2009 for installing botnets and commercial remote access programs on a handful of sensitive clinic systems, which included a critical SCADA system Hacking an online store and a sensitive clinical system should be punished with very different levels of punishment.
It doesn't seem like it was in the state's interest to lock this person up for 10 years. Two years would have been plenty to get the point across, for a fraction of the cost, plus the potential generational damage caused by a kid growing up fatherless in the formative 2-12 years.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't the punishment a way to stop people from trying to commit a crime? Because you seem to be focusing on the outcome/consequences of someone that committed a crime and got caught. It's not like the punishment is the result of "bad luck" or "unexpected circumstances", it was a deliberate conscious action, right? Also some of these actions aren't a burst of irrationality and poor thought process - they are planned a…
When I've looked into people who commits crimes and why, they rarely are considering the judicial system and the possible consequences of their actions. Harsh punishments do not seem to actually function as a determent in real life. From my perspective, harsh punishments is more about revenge than anything else. They're a simple way to feel like you're doing the right thing, as long as you don't examine it too closel…
Agreed. I'm not saying their approach was exactly unbiased or scientific, but Penn & Teller in their "Bullshit!" show put forward the following considerations:
- If a violent crime is "spur of the moment", by definition it never takes the judicial system into consideration. People who violently murder their loved ones in a fit of rage don't think of the consequences. People who shoot strangers over a car accident don't, either.
- If the crime is planned with anticipation, such as in many white collar crimes but also planned robberies, kidnappings, etc: the perpetrators always think they are smarter than the law and won't get caught. The possible consequences are irrelevant to them, because they simply don't think they'll get caught.
Just to be clear, is he saying that his prison was actually charging him $0.05/email to consult with his attorney over his appeal?