Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Accountability Sinks

250bpm.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

381–390 of 407 posts

Re: Accountability Sinks

#381

Post by TeMPOraL »

xg15 wrote: post #310
TeMPOraL wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DS9 had an actual instance of torture too, but it was a hero being tortured by... half-hero, half anti-hero[0]? Not sure that one led anywhere, beyond being a very disturbing way to do character development. Section 31 angle is tricky, because the writers unintentionally[1] made them literally save the entire alpha and beta quadrants, and possibly the entire galaxy, from slow-burn genocide . The Dominion was known to…

> Section 31 angle is tricky, because the writers unintentionally[1] made them literally save the entire alpha and beta quadrants, and possibly the entire galaxy, from slow-burn genocide. I mean, Jack Bauer, too, saved America from all kinds of unspeakable evil by his clever use of torture. I'd say it's not tricky at all. The morally gray "it's bad but we'd be even worse off without it" justification is kind of the p…

Yes, but the difference is that Section 31 in DS9 is obviously "the baddies" to the heroes and the audience, and writers meant it to be "the baddies", and everyone in and out of universe was supposed to be appalled at the mutagenic virus subplot, and yet, taken in context of the larger events in the show, Section 31 came out as a light shade of gray instead of black.

It's one thing if them doing their thing was merely convenient, but the rest of the writing in the show converged into a situation where the Federation was under the wall, with no way to talk or shoot their way out of total defeat (and Earth being glassed to make a point). For Star Trek, that's pretty much a franchise-terminating event; they needed to write their way out of that corner - and Section 31 plot basically did that, before they realized it.

AFAIK the writers did not intend Section 31 plot to be posing the question whether any means are justified if the alternative is being exterminated - but it's what they inadvertently ended up doing.

(It's not the only time they hit a problem like this. AFAIR, the episode "Waltz" was made specifically because fans found more depth in the character of Dukat than the writers intended; as such, the whole point of that episode was to drive home that yes, Dukat is just that evil, period.)

Re: Accountability Sinks

#383

Post by gsf_emergency »

divan wrote: post #378
gsf_emergency wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My eyes opened a little bit! "Sidney Dekker" & "lese majeste" or even "Wilhoit" returned nothing interesting, so that's a new open secret (if I didn't totally misunderstand, that is) Aside: does that make "The United States " a careless sovereign (monarch) in your book? -- most criminal cases are "The U.S. vs ____": not only are community/rehabilitation afterthoughts, nobody looks forward to any pleasure of a Majesty…

The book I still have open is actually by Sidney Dekker - "Restorative Just Culture in Practice: Implementation and Evaluation". A quote: > In 1066, with the Norman invasion of England, William the Conqueror and his successors brought into existence a legal system that gradually replaced the church and local systems of conflict resolution. For the nascent state, the legal system turned out to be useful for exerting i…

TIL: SD inspired by air-crash investigations (which attract "informed" pundits like bugzappers), AND is a flight instructor himself!

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00224...

>Investigators are often forced to rely almost exclusively on domain knowledge and common sense, but this exposes them to the mechanisms of hindsight.

(I was on a hunt for his dissertation (Ohio State, Cognitive Engineering, 1996) -- wanted to approach the topic at a level as low+concrete as possible))

As to the King's Peace (Wilderness?) , nobody really knows or cares who chairs NTSB/OSHA lol

https://www.fisherphillips.com/en/news-insights/trump-nomina...

Re: Accountability Sinks

#384

Post by BlueTemplar »

biimugan wrote: post #210
1dom wrote: post #156

I read most of this agreeing with everything the author was saying, sometimes in a "I already thought that" but often in a "huh, that's a really cool insight." I quite like the style too. As a Brit though, I was completely blindsided by the inclusion of Dom Cummings. I'd forgotten he existed. Seeing his and Boris' attitude to PPE provision discussed in a positive light without any mention of the associated scandal[1]…

In an American context, this part also struck me: >> We did that. But only the Prime Minister could actually cut through all the bureaucracy and say, Ignore these EU rules on Blah. Ignore treasury guidance on Blah. Ignore this. Ignore that. “I am personally saying do this and I will accept full legal responsibility for everything.” > By taking over responsibility, Johnson loosened the accountability of the civil serv…

The problem in your case is the immunity bit, not the ability to cut through red tape if the situation is dire enough - which is like half of the job of the president (or similar post) !

Re: Accountability Sinks

#385

Post by mmarian »

Khaine wrote: post #347
pixl97 wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea, the problem most often in computer security checklists is misapplication of the checklist. I do cyber security related stuff for the finance and they have some of the dumbest checklists ever. A more recent one I got was "We only allow the HTTP verbs 'GET' and 'POST', your application can only use that and the verbs PUT, PATCH, and DELETE cannot be used. After not replying 'are you fucking stupid' I said "You do…

Most of this comes about because the talent pool for cyber is so small. Cyber Auditors, should understand what the risk is, and what controls should be in place, and how they operate. Most don't because they lack the appropriate technical skills. Therefore we fall back on checklists, as less skilled people can do a compliance check to it. In large organisations this can also happen between cyber and engineering teams…

Don't think the talent pool is small. It's the budget. InfoSec is seen as a huge money sink in the eyes of many unfortunately.

Re: Accountability Sinks

#386

Post by steveBK123 »

toast0 wrote: post #348
acheron wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Real ID requirements started 20 years ago, which I suppose is “recent” in government terms, but not really. In some states everyone has already had a Real ID compliant license for years. In others, notably California, they’ve been kicking the can down the road the entire time.

I mean, they say they're going to start enforcing RealID 'requirements' this month, but given how often it's been delayed, and the current executive, I think it's fair to wait and see.

It was on SNL so it must be finally true?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsRaQ6a2s9U

Re: Accountability Sinks

#387

Post by pyrale »

blueflow wrote: post #76
pyrale wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That way of saying that the holocaust is a thing of its own, that can be compared to nothing else is simply a way of separating genocide victims into first-class and second-class victims. The only outcome would be to weaken the collective "Never again" outcry against barbary.

From the perspective of the victims, it was not special, indeed. My "research" focused on the other perspective to learn social patterns.

Here are a few other genocides of the 20th century: the Armenian genocide [1], Porajmos [2], the Rwandan genocide [3].

Please enlighten us on how pointing similarities in the administrative involvement, the systemic nature of the targetting, the harnessing of technology, or the way individuals perpetrating it are made to feel less accountable is, in your words, "highly inappropriate".

I honestly don't see how you could make such a claim for all these examples without negationism.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_genocide [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romani_Holocaust [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwandan_genocide

Re: Accountability Sinks

#388

Post by TeMPOraL »

latexr wrote: post #314
TeMPOraL wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DS9 had an actual instance of torture too, but it was a hero being tortured by... half-hero, half anti-hero[0]? Not sure that one led anywhere, beyond being a very disturbing way to do character development. Section 31 angle is tricky, because the writers unintentionally[1] made them literally save the entire alpha and beta quadrants, and possibly the entire galaxy, from slow-burn genocide . The Dominion was known to…

> DS9 had an actual instance of torture too, but it was a hero being tortured by... half-hero, half anti-hero If you’re talking about Garak torturing Odo, that seems different than the 24 case because in that instance Garak was explicitly working for “the bad guys”. And even so he was doing the torturing reluctantly and only doing so because the alternative was the torturing being done by another operative which woul…

> Technically it wasn’t the disease which defeated the Founders, though I supposed one can argue it debilitated them enough.

It put a countdown clock on their remaining lifespan. Infecting all the Founders simultaneously with a lethal disease made the entire war (that they were very much winning) moot. For the Founders, the entire reason behind the conflict was to ensure their own safety from hypothetical future threats (they were a paranoid bunch); that obviously is not achieved when all Founders are dead, so the entire calculus changes.

That's what I mean by saying that the virus short-circuited the war. It may have been the compassionate and extremely risky act of Odo that, in true Star Trek fashion, changed hearts and minds and got everyone back to the negotiating table, but even without it, the virus would've ended the war within a week or such - leaving alpha and beta quadrants in a bad state (fighting against now feral but still superior Dominion invasion force), but still much better and more survivable than the war itself was.

> Even so, despite the results I didn’t feel like the show was necessarily approving of Section 31 (the main characters actively tried to defeat them).

The show was very much not approving of Section 31; that one was communicated quite clearly. What I'm saying is that, if you ignore what you're being told and look at what you're being shown - the events that happened, not the main characters' opinions on them - it's becomes much harder to paint Section 31 as villains of the story.

I believe this outcome was not intended by the writers; it's just what the whole storyline ended up adding up to.

Re: Accountability Sinks

#389

Post by Pamar »

einpoklum wrote: post #17

> Bad people react to this by getting angry at the gate attendant; good people walk away stewing with thwarted rage. Notwithstanding the rest of the column, this particular example brings the following thought to mind: It could actually be argued that getting angry at the gate attendant is not a "bad people" response. Suppose that under those circumstances, the typical individual passenger would demand the gate atten…

Maybe your point is valid for other situations, but believe me, letting someone getting on a plane after their names has been removed from the Flight Manifest (passengers list) will have very bad consequences for everyone involved.

Starting from the Captain deciding the plane will not depart until the police has taken care of the situation (assuming they find out before taking off, which is quite probable if the seat had been reassigned to someone else).

Re: Accountability Sinks

#390

Post by scotty79 »

asdf6969 wrote: post #366
scotty79 wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buy your steak, toss in a pot of unsalted water. Cook for a while to make it edible. Eat it when hungry. Tell me again how tasty the meat is. Do the same with rice, potatoes or lentils and you'll have completely different experience. Pick any fruit. There's even no need to boil. Tasty from the get go.

Are you seriously trying to argue that food doesn’t actually taste good if it has to be cooked first? Throw steak in a hot pan. It tastes great with no other seasonings. Tasty from the get go. Throw rice in a hot pan. It tastes awful. Therefore, rice is not tasty.

Have you tried? Eat unsalted steak fried/grilled/seared on the pan? It doesn't taste good.
Post reply on HN