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Demonstration at Home of Google Developer. Google Bus Blocked in Berkeley

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Re: Demonstration at Home of Google Developer. Google Bus Blocked in Berkeley

#211

Post by nilkn »

JeremyMorgan wrote: post #208
nilkn wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about the people who worked just as hard and still can't afford decent housing in the area? Just one aspect of the privilege you enjoy is the fact that one of your passions in life happened to lead to a high-paying job. I and almost everybody on this forum enjoy this same privilege. This is a particularly insidious one because it's so hard to detect in yourself and admit to. When you're the sort of person who st…

>It's a lot harder to "see a target and hit it" when you have absolutely no interest or passion in the target. Then those people are not entitled to anything. I have no interest or passion in becoming a surgeon, and since they make so much more than me I should go start a ruckus down at the hospital, using this logic.

Actually this logic doesn't imply that at all. I really don't see how you concluded from my post that I support the actions of the protestors in the original article. If you refuse to admit you might be privileged in any way, that's your prerogative. I won't show up at your doorstep, but I won't agree with you.

Re: Demonstration at Home of Google Developer. Google Bus Blocked in Berkeley

#212

Post by aaronem »

walshemj wrote: post #71
walshemj wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes and there was a huge fuss when they put the BT logo on the car park passes.

Two who ever voted me down around 20% of my ex coworkers I know in BT from NI had close family members killed by terrorists in the troubles.

"In theory, there's no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is."

The trouble with the eternal firearms argument is that anti-firearms types tend to be theorists (many of whom, in my experience, have never even laid hands on a firearm, to say nothing of firing one), and pro-firearms types to be practitioners.

It's sort of like expecting a random Haskell programmer and a random PHP programmer to see eye-to-eye on anything, or indeed to be able to have a productive conversation with one another. In theory, this can occur. In practice...

Re: Demonstration at Home of Google Developer. Google Bus Blocked in Berkeley

#213

Post by kenrikm »

ForHackernews wrote: post #153
walls wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd have to be completely insane to believe #3 is in any way related to #1 and #2. I personally feel the world is a much better place (certainly Oakland is) with highly skilled employees flushing out the trash.

> I personally feel the world is a much better place (certainly Oakland is) with highly skilled employees flushing out the trash. To what or whom does "the trash" refer in your comment?

I think he's referring to the people who make Oakland one of the most dangerous cities in country to live in.

Re: Demonstration at Home of Google Developer. Google Bus Blocked in Berkeley

#214

Post by aaronem »

scarmig wrote: post #155
mdip wrote: post #118

When you attack an individual because of the place s/he chooses to work you take the "Let's all protest the activities of Big X" down to a personal level. I'd be horrified if I woke up and found a large group of people protesting in front of my house because of who I work for. Reading this message, I instantly put myself in that employee's shoes and instantly became hostile toward the organization arranging this. I m…

Question: people will often protest at the houses of CEOs, who consider themselves just employees doing their jobs. E.g. after the Bhopal disaster, people protested at the home of the Union Carbide CEO as he was trying to evade responsibility and minimize payouts to the victims. Is this inappropriate? I agree with you that the protestors didn't gain anything from this particular protest and did harm to their cause, i…

It's still inappropriate, but considerably less so, both because a C-level officer of such a large company is likely to have security arrangements of some sort, and because a C-level officer has at least some influence over the policies of the company in question -- the CEO, of course, most of all.

That said, there is a qualitative difference between showing up at the guarded front gate of a CEO's mansion, and showing up on the ordinary front doorstep of a rank-and-file employee's two-story house. The former can at least be said to "go with the territory". The latter verges very closely on an imminent threat of bodily harm; the whole point of such action is to demonstrate to its victim that he and his family are not safe anywhere, not even in their home.

Re: Demonstration at Home of Google Developer. Google Bus Blocked in Berkeley

#215

Post by DanBC »

aaronem wrote: post #209
ThomPete wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet you do exactly that.

As far as I can tell, it's a necessary consequence of any mention of firearms on HN, in any context. There seems little point in blaming any one participant, in any one instance, for the perennial argument over what is perhaps the most immediately, or at least the most reliably, polarizing issue ever raised on HN.

Fireamrs is only one hot-button topic for HN.

Others include Isreal / Palestine; sexism; RMS; etc. it is trivially easy to troll HN. HN does not do well at ignoring trolls or not responding to overly-enthusiastic posters. (There are some exceptions to this where a person will carefully talk through differences in opinion to try to understand or communicate a point of view but these are exceptions).

Re: Demonstration at Home of Google Developer. Google Bus Blocked in Berkeley

#216

Post by kenrikm »

vidarh wrote: post #191
mgunes wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, there aren't "people"; there is "a person", me. Just one person. Everyone else is speculating on how the poor little "Googler"'s life is destroyed by a naive peaceful protest, derailing the issue with anti-left wing jokes, suggesting that "Googlers" carry weapons, and so on. HN at its best: when its ideological toe is stepped on. popcorn

I'm a marxist - certainly not aligned with any right wing libertarians. But right from the headline that article disgusts me. Unless they have concrete proof that this specific guy have done something particularly bad (and they've not presented any), calling him out by name and with photos of his home is way over the line to begin with. Not only is it creepy, it is deeply counterproductive and will only serve to alie…

My wife is from Cuba, I've witnessed first hand what "applied" marxism creates, misery and strife. Let alone places like North Korea etc.. Honest question, how do you cope with the reality vs the ideal?

Re: Demonstration at Home of Google Developer. Google Bus Blocked in Berkeley

#217

Post by pavel_lishin »

BryanB55 wrote: post #177
pavel_lishin wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Good luck. I'd encourage this even if you are not a Google employee. How come?

Well you asked so I'll answer but I understand that a lot of people on HackerNews may not share my same views on self defense. Also to be clear, I don't think a non-violent blockade necessitates the use of a firearm. However, I think the topic came up because protests can and do lead to a handful of rogue protestors going too far, getting too angry and attacking people. So to answer your question in a general stateme…

Fair enough; I respect your desire and right to do so. I don't think it's for everyone, though, so I asked why you wanted to encourage everyone to do it. Thanks for answering my question.

I, personally, believe that I'm statistically likely to make a situation worse or possibly hurt myself if I own a handgun. So I choose not to have one. I might choose differently at a later date, depending on where I live.

Re: Demonstration at Home of Google Developer. Google Bus Blocked in Berkeley

#218

Post by kenrikm »

nilkn wrote: post #176
ForHackernews wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are housing prices in San Francisco really so insane that a two-story house is "pompous" and a "palace"? > developing "war robots" Technically, since their acquisition Boston Dynamics, Google is indeed in the business of war robots: http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/google-buys-major-military... Though they've said they're only going to fulfill their existing military contracts, not seek out others. I guess we'll see…

> Are housing prices in San Francisco really so insane that a two-story house is "pompous" and a "palace"? For the middle class and below? In many neighborhoods of the Bay Area the prices really are that high now. I agree of course that the description is over the top, but I think it does accurately reflect how economically tough the area is for most residents, particularly those who are not developers, lawyers, or d…

Yeah a simple house like that is easily 800k here, compare that to other places were you can purchase a similar house for 100k yeah housing prices are crazy here. 2k/mo for a 1BR 3k/mo for a 2BR.

Re: Demonstration at Home of Google Developer. Google Bus Blocked in Berkeley

#219

Post by aaronem »

diydsp wrote: post #210
tomp wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that kind of the point of a protest? The threat of revolution?

If one takes "kind of" to mean "not," then yes. Otherwise, no, the point of protest is not to threaten anything or anyone, including revolution. Seriously, just look up protest in a dictionary. It's an expression, a communication. It's a chance for people to respond. It's a visible, recordable effort, as opposed to an anecdote.

Your argument suggests a certain naïveté, or else a desire to claim there is no subtext whatsoever in organizing a mob to serve as the medium of the "communication" to which you refer.

Whatever the overt message, and especially when the purported message is as confused and vaguely threatening as in this case, in the act of arranging that someone should awaken, to find a crowd surrounding his house and shouting imprecations, there cannot but be a subtextual implication which amounts to "And you'd better listen to us, or else!"

Of course, I'm sure that, finding yourself in the position poor Levandowski did, your first instinct would be to argue semantics with the mob! What more reasonable response, after all, could there possibly be? And what more reasonable creature, than a shouting mob, with which to carry on such a discussion?

Re: Demonstration at Home of Google Developer. Google Bus Blocked in Berkeley

#220

Post by stygiansonic »

By their messed-up logic (I can't tell whether this is parody or not), their use of jQuery on their website would put them among the military-industrial-surveillance supporters since they are lending their implicit backing to a project/library that the NSA uses on their website.
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