171–180 of 369 posts
> If you take one lesson from this, it’s that you can always say no. I fully understand why this is true, but it seems to ignore any retaliative measures that the management could take against the person who says no. With the benefit of hindsight, any such retaliation would be weaker than ending up in an orange suit. But the person has to find the guts to say "no" without that hindsight.
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Yes, the Hippocratic Oath works quite well even if it has no legal underpinnings, so why not use the same idea for developers? Indeed ACM and IEEE could draft one.
It only works because doctors have a self-governing body of other doctors as an oversight, usually called a chamber, board, Kammer, etc. This chamber is responsible for licensing doctors to perform medicine and has the power to withdraw that license upon violations of the Hippocratic Oath, other ethical violations and other professional misconduct or malpractice. Unless you want this kind of arrangement for developer…
At the end of the day you confront a jury and not a board of similarly positioned individuals.
> If you take one lesson from this, it’s that you can always say no. I fully understand why this is true, but it seems to ignore any retaliative measures that the management could take against the person who says no. With the benefit of hindsight, any such retaliation would be weaker than ending up in an orange suit. But the person has to find the guts to say "no" without that hindsight.
I would argue that you have a moral and ethical responsibility to say no when your manager asks you to do something illegal, even if it does cost you your job. The law is the law, and there is no excuse for breaking it. Your manager is certainly culpable, but if you act against the law, you are culpable as well. The exception is if you fear literal physical violence against you or others, or are being blackmailed or…
it depends how many friends and family you have in the area that can host your whole family that is now homeless. it depends how much disruption you are willing to inflict on your kids definitely right now as opposed to maybe in the future.
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> I think a lot of people in our world need to spend a little more time in introspection. Sadly, I suspect most or all of the investor class of people "in our world" have done this introspection. They've checked with their peers and lawyers, and decided it's a perfectly acceptable risk to have the founders and staff of a company they're already invested in do illegal things and potentially end up in jail, if it makes…
> They've checked with their peers and lawyers, and decided it's a perfectly acceptable risk to have the founders and staff of a company they're already invested in do illegal things and potentially end up in jail ... No legitimate business person I have ever met holds this position, if for no other reason than criminal acts pierce the corporate veil[0]. > ... so long as the investors and their staff are all insulate…
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So Google, Amazon, Oracle, Microsoft etc.
Kids these days always forget about IBM. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_World_War_II https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust
'In June 2025, IBM was named by a UN expert report as one of several companies "central to Israel's surveillance apparatus and the ongoing Gaza destruction."'
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_involved_in_...
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Ah, but the family of the canceled policyholders should suffer for losing their mother/sister/daughters? Make decisions to harm others, don't be surprised if it blows back in kind. Golden Rule is there for a reason. Treat others as you would have them do unto you.
Have the families of those "insurers" made a decision to harm others?
If you benefit from receiving stolen property, does the law force you to return it? One way of interpreting your scare quotes is that the executives turned a health insurer into a law violating company.
Obviously there are burdens of proof and this is most likely not possible to prosecute (it sounds like the health insurer has already shrunk and based on the date of the anecdote above, I’m guessing the relevant statutes of limitations have expired.
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If you can avoid those even when unemployed that would be all developed countries except the united states
380k homeless in UK. 262k in Germany. 122k Australia. 650k in USA. The per capita math is left for the reader but I don't believe there is much distinction here .
Based on the latest available data (mostly 2023) and current population estimates:
* *UK:* ~56.0 per 10,000 people (1 in 178) * *Australia:* ~45.4 per 10,000 people (1 in 220) [using 2021 census data] * *Germany:* ~31.0 per 10,000 people (1 in 323) * *USA:* ~19.4 per 10,000 people (1 in 515)
The per capita distinction is more significant than the raw numbers suggest.
(Note: Methodologies for counting vary by country, which can affect direct comparisons.)
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> They've checked with their peers and lawyers, and decided it's a perfectly acceptable risk to have the founders and staff of a company they're already invested in do illegal things and potentially end up in jail ... No legitimate business person I have ever met holds this position, if for no other reason than criminal acts pierce the corporate veil[0]. > ... so long as the investors and their staff are all insulate…
> > ... so long as the investors and their staff are all insulated from the illegal behavior and jail time risks. > There is no such thing. Sure there is. You can never request an illegal act, never commit an illegal act, but create a culture where others become incentivized to do illegal acts. This can be done in sufficiently subtle ways that it's impossible to prove it was intentional. "Will no one rid me of this t…
That is not subtle enough(anymore), if you want to disguise ordering murder.
Another recent classic case of this is the revelations that Uber were targeting law enforcement based on user behaviour, and refusing to offer them rides in areas where they were breaking regulations. I mentioned this at some point last year, and someone replied saying that they'd enthusiastically volunteer to take part in that project (assuming no personal risk). People's ethics are not always what you'd expect (or…
Apropos to the article, as a programmer for this feature, what you are actually asked to do is write a greybanning engine. It can take various features (geofence, denylist of phone numbers/emails/device identifiers/payment, etc.) and use it to calculate a score that applies a greybanning policy. The policy may be that the cars in the app are now fake, the ride will never come, your CC is "denied", etc.
Nothing illegal or unethical about this feature, as written, but it is a "dual-use" technology.
The feature has been used to literally save lives. There were taxi-affiliated people in South America that would call an Uber and then, at best, trash the car and beat the driver. At worst, they'd kill the driver. Those people need to be greybanned, along with scammers, criminals, and abusive people of all sorts.
The local market administrators, however, definitely might ban users that the know to be police ticketing the drivers, might ban any account signup from the police station, might ban city credit cards, etc.
You, as the programmer on this feature, can't defend against that unethical use of it.
If you work at the insurance company and get asked to write a rules engine but not the rules, this same thing applies to you.
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It's counter-productive to punish someone for something out of their control. One should not be punished for his parents', siblings' or childs' actions.
In the US it's unconstitutional for the government to do that, it's what the ban of laws of attainder is partially about.
Not really; attainder occurs when you're convicted by a legislator as opposed to a judge.