The last time I heard of Joyent was in the mid-2000s on John Gruber’s blog when it was something like a husband-and-wife operation and something to do with WordPress or MovableType - 20 years later now it’s a division of Samsung?
In the meantime, they sponsored development of node in its early days, created a could infrastructure based on OpenSolaris and eventually got acquired by Samsung.
https://pricepergig.com/us?minCapacity=24000 shows the cheapest 24TB drive is $269.99 right now, so yeah, with a sale you'll get to $240. But if you're ok with smaller drives, you can get a much better price per gig ratio
Seagate Expansion drives are in this price range and can be shucked. They're not enterprise drives meant for constant operation, the big ones are Barracudas or maybe Exos, but for homelab NAS they're very popular.
I have such a NAS for 8 years, (and a smaller netgear one from maybe 16 years ago), and have yet such a disk fail. But you can get unlucky, buying a supposedly new but "refurbished" item via amazon or the seagate store (so I hear), or have the equivalent of the "death star" HDDs, which had a ridicilously high burnout rate (we measured something like > 10% of the drives failed every week across a fairly large deployhment in the field - major bummer.
If you use such consumer drives, I strongly suggest to make occasional offsite backups of large mostly static files (movies for most people I guess), and frequent backups of more volatile directories to an offsite place, maybe encrypted in the cloud.
Of course you would stagger the offline backups. But if we are talking storing e.g. movies, the worst case scenario is really not so bad (unless you have the last extant copies of some early Dr Who episodes, then BBC would want to have a word with you)
> There is no designer in the world making bad designs as part of some conspiracy to enable their employer to launch improved designs several years later. There’s no company that operates that way.
You honestly think the people working on those did a bad job intentionally, and the companies took big PR and revenue hits intentionally, just so they could save the day years later?
> you need to instruct the AI agents to include this.
The agent can't do that if you told Claudepilotemini directly to make some change without telling it why you were prompting it to make such a change. LLMs might appear magic, but they aren't (yet) psychic.
He's saying that he likely has an MCP connected to jira on the LLM he's developing with.
Hence the prompt will have already referenced the jira ticket, which will include the why - and if not, you've got a different issue.
Now the LLM will only need something like "before committing, check the jira ticket we're working on and create a commit message ...
But whether you actually want that is a different story. You're off the opinion it's useful, I'd say it's rarely doing to be valuable, because requirements change, making this point in time rational mostly interesting in an academic sense, but not actually valuable for the development you're doing
It depends on a ton of factors, and at least I'd put very little stock in the validity of the commit message that it might as well not exist. (And this is from the perspective of human written ones, not AI)
Future HN headline: Pam Bondi orders Google to revoke verification status and code signing certificates of authors of {partisan/politically-unfavourable Android app}
Methinks this won’t be the last politically-motivated removal from Apple’s App Store; the more apps they remove then the more they weaken their own arguments about how a locked-in walled garden is in consumer interests.
What if the government asks for sentiment analysis? Thoughtcrime detection? Always-on audio collection? Always-on location logging?
All the things we were afraid of are simple technically and the only thing stopping it is a few executives of a trillion dollar company who must report earnings to shareholders.
Well, we're talking not just about "corporations", we are talking about entities with more gross earnings than most countries' GDP, e.g. Apple is sitting on billions of dollars in cash. These guys have the tech, the data, and oceans of money. Heck, some of them even have space forces :)
Maybe in our (very near?) cyber punk future, it's not only goverments that we should be concerned about. After all, we have some measure of input regarding the goverment.
>Maybe in our (very near?) cyber punk future, it's not only goverments that we should be concerned about. After all, we have some measure of input regarding the goverment.
Why shouldn't we already be concerned about the corporations? They've been slurping our data and selling it for a profit for my whole life[0].
Sure, that sort of behavior started with banks and other financial institutions, but has extended, over the decades, to consumer products companies (P&G, General Mills, etc.) and to retailers (Walmart, Target, etc.), then into internet search (Google, Bing), "social" media (the Meta conglomerate, etc.), hardware and software companies (Apple, Google, Microsoft, etc.), communication devices (Apple, Google, Samsung, etc.), consumer electronics (LG, Samsung, GE, Maytag), Automobiles (GM, Chrysler, Nissan, Toyota, etc., etc., etc.) and "IoT" devices (Amazon, Google and a host of others) are all hoovering up as much information as they can to both sell (and governments as well as other corporations are buying and paying through the nose) and use for "targeted" ads.
Isn't your refrigerator showing you ads, your TV recording what you're doing while you use it, your phone reporting pretty much everywhere you go, everything you do and everyone with whom you communicate, social media apps recording every key stroke, even if it doesn't end up in a post, your car tracking both your movements and your driving behavior, your internet searches used to create detailed shadow profiles of your interests and purchasing habits. I could go on and on and on. Corporations are collecting levels of private data on people that would have been beyond the Stasi's[1] wildest dreams.
And so I'll ask again, when, exactly, should we "start" to be concerned about corporate surveillance?
Oh, we most certainly should be, but I am just musing about the (not entirely improbable future and possibly inevitable) when corporations are more powerful and lethal than any government.
Yep, anything DNC-labeled or affiliated will be next on the ban list. Truly scary stuff, that tens of millions of fellow Americans are actively cheering on.
The big tech companies bent the knee (or, complied with local policies and laws) to Russia, China, Europe, etc already to do business over there, it's nothing particularly new but we are fully aware that Russia and China are not free countries, and Europe has stricter consumer / data protection laws (so it's less free for companies than the US).
The left did this in the previous admin with Parler. This has been going on for a long time and Apple will not face any repercussions because it is abused by both sides of the political aisle.
It is not illegal to notice actions of government agents in public or to report them to others; it was a legal app designed to facility activity protected by the First Amendemnt.
A) it's not illegal, as evidenced by the fact that not a single person has been prosecuted. There is no law being broken, just the feel-feels of the surveillance state getting hurt.
B) Even if there was a law, its the duty of every American to disobey unjust laws. The government serves at the pleasure of the people, not the other way around. There are a lot of people getting awfully comfortable with weak men ordering other jack booted weak men to systematically tear down what actually makes America great. I thought we settled this last time, but maybe we need to revisit the issue.
>"it's the duty of every American to disobey unjust laws..."
Is this what universities are teaching? Where did you get this from, honestly?
This is a terrible assertion. The subjectivity of what is just or unjust would lead to overwhelming violent lawlessness if this were true. Thankfully, we have no such duty.
Please, stand up for what you believe is right within the legal framework. This is a largely just society, by comparison.
Maybe travel a bit to see what an unjust society looks like. Weigh your options, at least, before resorting to criminality as a lifestyle choice.
>> "it's the duty of every American to disobey unjust laws..."
> This is a terrible assertion. The subjectivity of what is just or unjust would lead to overwhelming violent lawlessness if this were true. Thankfully, we have no such duty.
The United States was founded by people defying unjust tax laws. It wouldn't exist as a country if its people had quietly accepted British law. The idea that it's the duty of Americans to disobey unjust laws is very much in line with its founding.
And when we look to history, the people who advanced freedoms and civil rights, the people we really remember - a great many of them were lawbreakers. Mahatma Gandhi was arrested for defying the British salt tax and colonial rule. Nelson Mandela was arrested for opposing apartheid. Martin Luther King Jr was arrested for breaking segregation laws and marching without a permit. Every person who signed the US Declaration of Independence was committing treason against the British crown.
>"The United States was founded by people defying unjust tax laws."
It is not the duty of every American to establish their own tax laws and form their own confederacy of themselves and do whatever they feel like. You're comparing the establishment of a government to the duty of a citizen. I think you can see how that makes no sense, right?
MLK was a non-violent pacifist, and his march was legal. Overly restrictive permitting laws violate the first amendment and he made that clear by exercising his civil liberties, lawfully, in the face of disagreement and unlawful arrest.
Gandhi was arrested by an opposition government. He broke none of his nation's laws.
Mandela fought a war. He participated in revolution. Are we all supposed to lead revolutions? Every week a new AR-15 carrying psychopath should shoot people up that he disagrees with? - Obviously not.
Disagreeing peacefully with unjust laws is a protected right. But violence and lawlessness is absolutely not a duty. It's not even advisable.
And promoting it as such is completely senseless in a country where peaceful discourse is a protected right. You already won! You have a peaceful way to make a difference! Why would you break laws to make a statement when you can already make a statement without risking a prison sentence?
None of the people you've listed had that option.
I'm very much horrified that a clearly educated person could arrive at such a misguided and dangerous conclusion.
> It is not the duty of every American to establish their own tax laws and form their own confederacy of themselves and do whatever they feel like. You're comparing the establishment of a government to the duty of a citizen.
Does that mean that disobeying an unjust law is acceptable if a lot of people disobey? How many makes it acceptable?
> MLK was a non-violent pacifist, and his march was legal.
Not according to Circuit Judge W. A. Jenkins Jr., who issued an injunction that led to MLK's arrest in Birmingham. Nor were the sit-ins he participated in legal according to the segregation laws at the time.
> Gandhi was arrested by an opposition government. He broke none of his nation's laws.
India at the time was ruled by the British. If we're going to say that colonized or conquered nations don't count, where do we draw the line? How recent does the conquest have to be?
> Mandela fought a war. He participated in revolution. Are we all supposed to lead revolutions?
So again this seems like it comes down to amount of support, at least in your view. People can disobey unjust laws as long as they have enough people agreeing with them. Is that correct?
> And promoting it as such is completely senseless in a country where peaceful discourse is a protected right. You already won! You have a peaceful way to make a difference! Why would you break laws to make a statement when you can already make a statement without risking a prison sentence?
Because non-violent civil disobedience is often more effective than discourse.
Rosa Parks broke the law and was arrested, and that ultimately lead to the law being declared unconstitutional. But if no-one broke the law, would it have been overturned as quickly?
MLK went on marches that there were injunctions against, and participated in sit-ins that were against the segregation laws at the time. Would the campaign for civil rights been as successful if there was no civil disobedience at all?
Suffragettes like Emmeline Pankhurst broke the law to draw attention to their cause. Would women have gotten the vote as soon if they obeyed the law?
> Does that mean that disobeying an unjust law is acceptable if a lot of people disobey? How many makes it acceptable?
No it doesn't. The establishment of government can be done without warfare in most cases, despite the nation's history. There was no framework for diplomacy or democracy within the kingdom. Your argument looks more like you've jumped to violence and lawlessness, even given alternatives. That's just bloodlust. That's not MLK. That's not Ghandi. You know that.
> India at the time was ruled by the British. If we're going to say that colonized or conquered nations don't count, where do we draw the line? How recent does the conquest have to be?
I won't entertain this example because it's irrelevant to the discussion. Is the US occupied by a foreign military, or are you just ignoring the political options at your disposal because you'd prefer to focus on how fast we can jump to arms and shoot each other? Let's skip this tangent.
>So again this seems like it comes down to amount of support
My argument against this example is that it's a last resort, while you're presenting it as the option of choice. A duty, no less.
>Because non-violent civil disobedience is often more effective than discourse.
It's sometimes more effective in the absence of alternatives. And non-violent civil obedience is most often effective and in most cases far more persuasive with the majority. Prioritize your efforts. No need to get violent when we can be disobedient. No need to get lawless when we can participate in democracy. Even fools won't follow a fool.
>Rosa Parks broke the law and was arrested, and that ultimately lead to the law being declared unconstitutional.
It was already unconstitutional. She didn't break the law. The judicial branch doesn't make new laws, it interprets existing ones. Her disobedience was lawful, and only required because she lacked a platform to reach the courts.
>(MLK...) Would the campaign for civil rights been as successful if there was no civil disobedience at all?
Same thing here, it was already unconstitutional to prevent peaceful demonstrations. Opposing local government with the law on your side to get the attention of a superior governing body is disobedience but as we can see by the court rulings, it's in fact not unlawful.
Even if it were unlawful behavior, it is not a duty. I have no imperative to go looking for laws to break, and anyone who tells me I have to is sick. I'm not MLK. There's 10 examples in history that this panned out for. I'm not such a megalomaniac as to think I'm going to be one of them. And I certainly don't think we all are.
> There was no framework for diplomacy or democracy within the kingdom. Your argument looks more like you've jumped to violence and lawlessness, even given alternatives.
Why do you assume that disobeying unjust laws automatically implies violence?
The only example I've given that involves violence is the American War of Independence, and only then because it's particularly pertinent to the idea that Americans have a duty to disobey unjust laws. All my other examples have been non-violent civil disobedience.
When someone tells me that they believe they have a duty to disobey unjust laws, my first thought isn't that they intend to be violent; it's that they intend to engage in non-violent civil disobedience. You can believe that you have a duty to disobey unjust laws and also believe that violence is a last resort.
> Is the US occupied by a foreign military, or are you just ignoring the political options at your disposal because you'd prefer to focus on how fast we can jump to arms and shoot each other?
The US was founded by foreign invaders. This is why I ask how recent a conquest needs to be.
By the time Gandhi was protesting in the 1930s, India had been under British rule for over 170 years. If Gandhi is morally justified to defy laws set by the invading British, then Native Americans are surely morally justified to defy laws set by the invading US government.
And again, you jump to the idea that defying unjust laws automatically means shooting people.
> It's sometimes more effective in the absence of alternatives. And non-violent civil obedience is most often effective and in most cases far more persuasive with the majority. Prioritize your efforts. No need to get violent when we can be disobedient.
Then we effectively agree. How long do you think we should give a government to fix an unjust law before engaging in civil disobedience and disobeying that law? Presumably it depends on the severity of the injustice, but I'm interested to get a feel for your intuition on this.
> It was already unconstitutional. She didn't break the law. The judicial branch doesn't make new laws, it interprets existing ones. Her disobedience was lawful, and only required because she lacked a platform to reach the courts.
So is someone justified in breaking the law if they believe that law will be overturned by a higher one? What if they're wrong?
Also, how would we test laws for constitutionality if no-one ever breaks those laws? Surely there needs to be something that brings the case in the first place.
> Even if it were unlawful behavior, it is not a duty. I have no imperative to go looking for laws to break, and anyone who tells me I have to is sick.
So if someone tells you that you have a duty to behave morally, that person is sick? Doesn't that include the vast majority of Americans, who at least in theory follow religions that advocate people act morally above all else?
You seem to acknowledge that civil disobedience, even violence, can be justified as a last resort. Yet you also seem to hold legal obligations higher than moral ones, and are dismissive of people who'd choose morality over legality.
Breaking laws is not behaving morally. In fact those are nearly always mutually exclusive. Morality is for you to have an opinion on, but it is not an objective truth.
You find yourself in a reality of consequences wherein choosing to break laws is a really bad option in nearly all cases.
Because of that, one cannot call it a duty. A duty obliges ALL citizens to break laws. ALL and seldom/last resort are mutually exclusive, logically.
You have found yourself in contradiction. You can't both believe that breaking laws is a last resort and also believe that it is a duty based on subjective criteria like morality.
It is a logical impossibility.
Can you break unjust laws? Yes. Is that ever the best option? Yes.
Is that a duty? No.
It's almost NEVER a good choice. It is a last resort. It was a good choice in extremely rare cases and a terrible choice for the majority of humanity in the majority of cases so often that it's justified to generalize that it's never going to be good for you as an individual.
You need to be a megalomaniac to believe it's going to be good for you. That you are somehow special like MLK. And let's not forget it wasn't good for him either. Sadly.
Don't let your star struck glamorization of moral icons and historical outliers lead you to make statistically bad decisions. These examples are famous moral icons BECAUSE they are outliers. They aren't MORAL outliers, they are rare examples of cases in society where morality was not overwhelmingly agreed upon. That's the expected course of growth for nearly all legal frameworks of justice.
You are most probably not an outlier and when you are you won't know that you are because legal framework is derived from the same majority opinion from which your understanding of morality originates anyway.
It's safe to assume, if you are breaking laws in a democracy, that you are on the wrong side of morality because the laws themselves, in a democracy, originate in the majority's moral agreement.
There is no way in hell, given that the above is true, that it should be a duty.
That rhetoric of duty throughout history has been used to charge the public for revolutions, and most especially violent ones. It is by no means a rational, or scientific conclusion. That is the objective reality, sir.
Don't be a jackass. Obey the law. You're not smarter than everyone that made the law. When you are, we'll tell you. That's democracy.
> You have found yourself in contradiction. You can't both believe that breaking laws is a last resort and also believe that it is a duty based on subjective criteria like morality.
I don't take the phrase "a duty to disobey unjust laws" as literally as you do. If it's more effective to overturn the law through legal means, then of course do that first.
Calling something a "duty" doesn't mean you get to turn your brain off and follow it blindly. Ships have a duty to help people in distress at sea, but they obviously need to first ensure that they don't put themselves in danger.
> That you are somehow special like MLK.
Believing that you need to be 'special' to act morally is one of the main causes of widespread societal injustice. As MLK said:
"I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to 'order' than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice"
> Don't be a jackass. Obey the law. You're not smarter than everyone that made the law. When you are, we'll tell you. That's democracy.
I was in favor of gay marriage long before it became law, or even was supported by the majority of people. Yet now it is. So the law at the time was ultimately wrong and I was ultimately right. By your definition, doesn't that mean I am smarter than everyone who made the law?
I don't think you need to be smarter than lawmakers to identify unjust laws. You need only look at the progressive causes of today to find the moral norms of tomorrow.
By not taking the word literally you're asking me to take your own opinion of what that word means, so that you can be right. No. My answer to that request is no. You don't get to choose what words mean. Society does. Again, democracy.
You didn't have to break any laws for me to help you vote for gay marriage. We all knew it was wrong that's why it's legal. Not because you punched someone or burned a car, or whatever illegal things you did, or in your revised view, advised people to do using the wrong definition of the word "duty."
Next time just be patient. Wrong laws take time to fix. And they take longer when you derail society into thinking that people who support gay marriage are violent law breakers.
Democracy requires that citizens have a duty to obey the law. Not a duty to break it.
Gay marriage is now the law in your example. I don't want everyone opposed to that law to go ahead and break it! Right? Wouldn't it be better if they just went ahead and tried to overturn it legally so that we normal people can do normal things like not letting them?
So, no, you don't appear to me to be the most intelligent person on the block. Certainly not enough to carry the cause for us tactfully. I wouldn't follow you. Neither would the vast majority of Americans, thankfully.
And don't tell people it's their duty to do illegal things, that is also illegal, especially when it leads to violence.
Just accept that you're not smarter. Have humility. Chill out. Get a law degree if you want to help. Don't be annoying. Don't be an idiot. Don't break the law. Have some respect for society. You didn't single handedly create it. Stop acting like you did.
We all created it; and the laws that run it. And we all need to come together and discuss what laws fit for us today. And we can't do that if you go around breaking them and acting like the conversations we agree on don't matter.
> By not taking the word literally you're asking me to take your own opinion of what that word means, so that you can be right.
No, I'm pointing out that we need to use our brains when considering glib generalizations.
If you want a more accurate phrase, you could say that:
"People have a moral duty to oppose unjust laws, beginning with legal avenues of opposition, followed by non-violence civil disobedience, followed by violent uprising as a last resort, all while giving a reasonable period of time between steps that is governed by the severity of the injustice being perpetrated, weighed against the actions being taken to prevent it."
However, that doesn't exactly roll off the tongue. The point of a phrase like "Americans have a duty to disobey unjust laws" is to trade precision for concision. It's up to you to extrapolate what people mean, or just ask them to clarify. I'm guessing this is something you find difficult?
> You didn't have to break any laws for me to help you vote for gay marriage. We all knew it was wrong that's why it's legal.
What do you mean by this? It was only in 2010 that the majority of Americans finally believed that same-sex marriage should be allowed.
If we accept that same-sex marriage is moral, then we must also accept that the majority of Americans prior to 2010 were wrong. Similarly, people were wrong in the past about racial segregation, women's rights and so forth.
Doesn't this indicate to you that morality is not just what the majority think?
> And they take longer when you derail society into thinking that people who support gay marriage are violent law breakers.
Why are you so obsessed with bringing violence into this? At every point I've emphasized that violence is a last resort, and that breaking the law does not automatically imply being violent.
> Just accept that you're not smarter.
You've missed my point.
I didn't say I was smarter than lawmakers; I pointed out that by your criteria I was, thereby implying that your criteria was flawed.
It was a self-deprecating rhetorical device, but I see it flew over your head, so let me try to speak more plainly:
I don't believe that morality is defined by the majority, because to do so would imply that it was moral in 1950 to persecute people by the color of their skin, and that it was moral in 1980 to persecute people by their sexual orientation. I reject that.
I do believe that people have a duty to act morally, even if this means breaking the law. That's not to say that people shouldn't exhaust legal means of protest first; legal protests are less personally risky and in free societies can be very effective. But I can certainly think of scenarios where doing the right thing would necessitate breaking the law, and in these situations, people have a duty to do what's right.
>I'm guessing this is something you find difficult?
It's not difficult, it's incorrect. It means something completely different.
>Doesn't this indicate to you that morality is not just what the majority think?
No. It indicates that there is no such thing! And you're not qualified to be the arbiter of the subjective devices we call societal justice and morality all by yourself. You must be convincing to the many. And only then can you have a decent hope of being considered moral.
>I don't believe that morality is defined by the majority.
Then you agree with all the most reviled villains in history who also knew better what is moral for everyone else.
>...would imply that it was moral in 1950 to persecute people by the color of their skin...
Again you're assuming that the law dictated what was moral, but it's the opposite causal relationship. Law follows morality over many years. Morality doesn't follow the law. But we must work within the law to adjust it over time to fit what the all consider moral. Until that happens it won't change, and especially not typically by violence. Just the opposite, violence can be used by the law to empower itself, but it cannot be used by the law breaker in the same way because it brands you a villain damaging your ability to convince the majority. That's because the majority gave that power to the law, not to you. Only in a democracy is that true.
>I do believe people have a duty to act morally...
Me too! But clearly that's subjective. Here we are disagreeing on what that is. The law was invented to settle exactly these such cases.
>Why are you so obsessed with bringing violence into this?
To me it looks like you're obsessed with bringing violence into this, and you haven't thought it out far enough to see that.
Let's play this out. You break the law. People, known as law enforcement, who chose of their own free will a violent career path will arrive with loaded firearms. These individuals are intentionally chosen for their lack of mental ability and for their willingness to follow orders and endure violent and dangerous situations, aggressively.
I can guess what the next step looks like. Don't play stupid. So can you.
> And you're not qualified to be the arbiter of the subjective devices we call societal justice and morality all by yourself.
Does this mean that you have no internal conscience? You just go along with what the majority of society considers to be moral?
You've indicated you believe that same-sex marriage is moral, but before that became a majority opinion, did you believe the opposite?
>> I don't believe that morality is defined by the majority.
> Then you agree with all the most reviled villains in history who also knew better what is moral for everyone else.
You mean like Jesus of Nazareth or Buddha?
The belief that morality isn't defined by the majority is an extremely common viewpoint. Probably the most common viewpoint, since its one shared by every major religion.
> Let's play this out. You break the law. People, known as law enforcement, who chose of their own free will a violent career path will arrive with loaded firearms. These individuals are intentionally chosen for their lack of mental ability and for their willingness to follow orders and endure violent and dangerous situations, aggressively.
So America's police force is so corrupt and violent that they'd think nothing of gunning down unarmed protestors in cold blood.
Why do you think that following the law would stop this?
I'm honestly trying to understand your thought process here. On the one hand you imply that most police officers are a hair trigger away from firing on a crowd; on the other, you seem to be insinuating that a individual's adherence to the law is an absolute defense.
>You just go along with what the majority of society considers to be moral?
As pertains to the law. Yes!
>did you believe the opposite?
Did I behave the opposite would be the question. You're talking about duty which implies action. No. I did not break any laws.
>You mean like Jesus of Nazareth or Buddha?
There is no evidence of any Jesus, but that's another discussion. The Buddha is a fantastic example of a man who advised the acceptance of all beliefs in society, showing humility and exemplifying how his beliefs were not the end all doctrine for morality. An opposition to invasion isn't relevant here because invasion isn't an attempt at a societal agreement on morality.
>The belief that morality isn't defined by the majority is an extremely common viewpoint.
No it isn't. All religions attempt to align society on a singular "higher" shared morality provided by the church, which throughout history represented their state and their justice system too.
>police force is so corrupt and violent that they'd think nothing of gunning down unarmed protestors in cold blood.
I didn't say corrupt. But violent, yes. Unarmed protesters aren't breaking any laws.
But if they fail to move when instructed, breaking the law, then that definition no longer applies and they are indeed physically relocated by increasingly violent means.
>Why do you think that following the law would stop this?
The law is the closest thing to a moral agreement of the majority. You're acting against that agreement when you break the law. Any amount of force used by police to protect that moral agreement becomes easy to justify in court. How many cops are sitting in jail? It's not a big number. That should tell you all you need to know. You're giving the opponent a justification for violence if they want it. And as I said before, they are selected from a pool of people who want it. That's a job requirement.
No individual agrees with all laws. But society must agree with that near moral agreement known as the law. It's the best we have.
When people don't have that near moral agreement, the fabric of society is degraded into anarchy, which empowers the most violent. And that's so much worse, isn't it?
>> You just go along with what the majority of society considers to be moral?
> As pertains to the law. Yes!
I'm interested in where you draw the line.
For instance, suppose a doctor is treating an underage rape victim whose pregnancy would put their life in danger, but the doctor practices in a state that outlaws abortion. The doctor decides to prescribe abortion pills anyway, breaking the law but following their oath to do no harm. Do you believe the doctor acted morally or immorally in this case?
To be clear, this isn't me attempting to catch you out - I'm just trying to understand what you personally believe. Are there any instances where you would agree that breaking the law is the right thing to do?
I'm also curious how you view changes to beliefs over time. Was it moral in 1950 to discriminate based on race and sex, because that was the majority opinion at the time? Or is it only today's majority opinion that matters? And if so, what happens in the future when the opinions of the majority shift further?
> No it isn't. All religions attempt to align society on a singular "higher" shared morality provided by the church, which throughout history represented their state and their justice system too.
Christians, Jews and Muslims would say that God is the highest moral authority. That's core to their faith.
How much society influences their interpretation of God's word is up for debate, but their belief is that morality does not stem from majority opinion; it stems from the word of God.
> I didn't say corrupt. But violent, yes. Unarmed protesters aren't breaking any laws.
Unarmed protesters certainly can break laws! You don't need a weapon to block off a highway, break into a building, or deface a wall with graffiti.
But if the police aren't corrupt, then why do you suggest that they're likely to shoot? Because they're stupid or under-trained?
> The law is the closest thing to a moral agreement of the majority. You're acting against that agreement when you break the law. Any amount of force used by police to protect that moral agreement becomes easy to justify in court. How many cops are sitting in jail? It's not a big number. That should tell you all you need to know.
Sure; it tells me that the law is unjust when it comes to punishing police officers who commit crimes.
> No individual agrees with all laws. But society must agree with that near moral agreement known as the law. It's the best we have.
I don't disagree that society needs laws to function, but there are also many laws that are unjust, and they won't change without societal pressure.
Obviously the safest way to change laws is through legal protest and democratic reform, but that isn't always the most effective way. Breaking the law is a good way to make headlines and spread awareness.
Another issue with democratic reform is that democracies are not all equally representative. A system like the USA is less representative than, say, Switzerland. In other words, its more difficult in the US to change laws than in some other democracies, even if the majority agree the law should be changed.
>...whose pregnancy would put their life in danger, but the doctor practices in a state that outlaws abortion...
He doesn't need to break the law. This is legal in all 50 states. Point in fact, law is loosely fit to the morals of the society in which you find yourself. I'll go a step further and point out that you have no way of ever proving that the morals you carry as an individual weren't gifted to you by that same society. Research suggests that they very much were. This is important in some of my other answers.
> Are there any instances where you would agree that breaking the law is the right thing to do?
In court, I trust that in the majority of cases, if someone acts in a way that the majority find to be in alignment with the values of the society that tries them, if that society matches the one in which they align as well, that they will be found innocent, implying that they didn't break the law. This satisfies your MLK examples, and all the others too.
By the way, if you read the above paragraph carefully, you'll find that it is not my opinion, but a logical construct of fact. If we assume that democracy works, its purpose is to create laws that match the majority direction of the moral compass of the people. Therefore, your actions in court are compared against the very morals which you are assumed to expect of yourself. That's also why someone found to have broken the law is referred to as "guilty." In a more archaic definition, guilt is an emotion. The court is finding the accused to have known that they were doing wrong and to feel bad about it.
In other, more pointed words, to have been possessed of the duty to break the agreed upon code of conduct of the morals shared by the accused and their peers. I used the word "duty" here intentionally to point out how logically impossible it would be to consider it moral.
>Was it moral in 1950 to discriminate based on race and sex...
It wasn't, that's why this ended not long after. But I see what you're asking so let me revise your question. 1920: the majority would tell you that it's the nature of humanity and that it's not immoral.
You and I don't agree with that, but we aren't a product of the 20s. If you think you would be an exception, then I'd call you egotistical. That would be statistically very improbable. Your morals are every bit a product of your peers' morals as ChatGPT is a product of the internet.
>Unarmed protesters certainly can break laws! You don't need a weapon to block off a highway, break into a building, or deface a wall with graffiti.
In doing any of those things, they've ceased to be protesters. They are now rioters. Rioting is illegal. And it does warrant a violent response.
>..then why do you suggest that they're likely to shoot?
What kind of person chooses a violent job? A violent person. Violence is not corruption. In fact it's perfectly justified in some cases.
This goes both ways. If you know you're going to interact with violent police when you go sit on the highway, you're also looking for violence. There's nothing peaceful about it.
Let's look even closer; blocking a highway prevents emergency transportation causing loss of life. It's not just beyond protesting, it's beyond rioting. You're out there killing people. I wouldn't think it's a stretch to pin manslaughter and in some cases even murder or serial murder on them.
Preventative, even violent action, is justified here. Notice the law says so too.
And especially if the protesters didn't know that, it makes the point that they can't be trusted to protect the wellbeing of society more than the law and should therefore never be advised to believe it's their "duty" to trust their own judgement of morality over the law. In this example, they've committed a moral atrocity as a protest! They need to be told that they can't trust themselves, and that they are a danger to society.
Was Ghandi a danger to his fellow man? Was MLK? Look how easy it is for them to imagine that they are each as enlightened as MLK when in fact, they've become murderous criminals.
Please, just don't break the law. Don't get shot. Use your brain!
>their belief is that morality does not stem from majority opinion; it stems from the word of God.
Sure but the church will tell them what that is and will ensure that every member knows it. That's a shared morality. It's also malleable over time, just like the legal system.
>it tells me that the law is unjust when it comes to punishing police officers who commit crimes.
It seems society cuts them some slack since they are, after all, removing protesters from the highway so that their grandma can get to the hospital, or their kid doesn't bleed to death in the ambulance.
Herein, the morality of the individual, the protester, led them to kill my grandma, or my neighbor's son. Now they for sure don't appear to be responsible enough to trust their morals. Intentionally or accidentally, it doesn't matter. The outcome is that they've killed people because they thought they know better than the laws that took millions of people thousands of years to create, and they'll do it all while believing themselves to be a peaceful protester that has a duty to break unjust laws.
Just like every villain in history.
>..there are also many laws that are unjust, and they won't change without societal pressure.
Then you should be patient or resign to humbly accept that you may be wrong and that they won't and maybe shouldn't change, otherwise you might do something stupid like sit on the highway, inciting cops to become violent, end up in prison, my grandma will die on the way to the hospital, and you'll plead in court that you didn't mean to kill her, you were making a statement.
Seriously, don't do something selfish like that. Maybe you're really ahead of the moral curve, but in the experience of many millions of people who share the world with you or those who lived before you, we find that to be a very unlikely assessment.
>Breaking the law is a good way to make headlines and spread awareness.
No it's a good way to kill people. See the examples above. You've just lowered your moral standing to less than the law. I don't see how you can come back from that.
You seemed like a nice person, and at the very least asked good questions, but you lost my respect when you said this.
> its more difficult in the US to change laws than in some other democracies, even if the majority agree the law should be changed.
You give credit to the law every time you break it and someone dies. That's exactly why it's so hard to change. You're causing the problem and then complaining about it?
The columns are getting too narrow to continue. I wish you well, and I hope you'll change your mind about breaking the law, and if you won't, that you'll be jailed safely.
> I'll go a step further and point out that you have no way of ever proving that the morals you carry as an individual weren't gifted to you by that same society.
Oh sure, I won't deny I'm influenced by the society around me, but my morality can't be entirely a product of that society, otherwise I wouldn't find any laws to be unjust.
> You and I don't agree with that, but we aren't a product of the 20s. If you think you would be an exception, then I'd call you egotistical.
But I was in minority when it came to gay rights in the 1990s, and I'm in the current minority when it comes to trans rights in the 2020s.
Why do you assume that I wouldn't also be in the minority regarding civil rights, were I born earlier? I'm not saying I'd be in the 1%, but I'd like to think I'd at least be in the 40%.
I guess I should at least applaud the honesty of someone who implies they would be supporting the Klan or worse if they were born a century earlier, but I think your mistake is assuming everyone is like you.
> In doing any of those things, they've ceased to be protesters. They are now rioters. Rioting is illegal. And it does warrant a violent response.
I would consider that to be extremely immoral. All this time we've been talking about how violence should be a last resort, and now suddenly it isn't?
> Let's look even closer; blocking a highway prevents emergency transportation causing loss of life.
The emergency vehicles would use the shoulder to pass the traffic, and the protestors could just move out the way when an emergency vehicle came. I'm not saying you don't have a point that lives could be endangered, but it's a leap to say that people would certainly die, even in this hypothetical example of yours.
And what about graffiti? How would that endanger life?
> No it's a good way to kill people. See the examples above. You've just lowered your moral standing to less than the law. I don't see how you can come back from that.
So all non-violent civil disobedience is immoral, because you were able to think of an example of how a specific act of civil disobedience could be the cause of a death.
Fine. Let's use the same logic on laws.
The second amendment guarantees every American a right to bear arms, but this includes Americans who are irresponsible. An irresponsible gun owner might leave their firearm where a child could find it, leading to the death of that child.
Voilà: a example of how a specific law could cause a death, which by your logic means all laws must be immoral.
> The columns are getting too narrow to continue. I wish you well, and I hope you'll change your mind about breaking the law, or that you'll at least wind up in jail before you get someone killed.
Thanks for the discussion. I can assure you that I have no current plans to break the law, but if a dream team of professional criminals recruits me for an ambitious and improbable casino heist, you understand that I can't make any guarantees.
The fact of their being lawless would preclude the argument. If the government is lawless then by definition they are not law enforcing. Not a government.
I don't see that remotely fitting the United States as a generalization.
I would argue that if you do, you are either poorly traveled, or fanatical.
I would hope it's the prior, for everyone's sake. Try hailing a cab at midnight in the middle of Mexico before declaring the US to be ultimately lawless.
Maybe don't actually try that.
Regardless if you find the government to be so unjust as to convince you to break laws and become violent, you belong in prison and the majority of people will help to put you there, make no mistake. Regardless of leadership, I highly value that about the US.
I hope you'll change your mind before that happens.
> Try hailing a cab at midnight in the middle of Mexico before declaring the US to be ultimately lawless.
I've been to Portland, does that count?
> I hope you'll change your mind before that happens.
I don't think you do. I think that you fantasize about throwing your political opponents in prison, and uttering a veiled threat cloaked in empathetic language makes you feel powerful and clever.
In any case, I'm not sure what you took away from my response, but survival isn't a bad thing - at least not for the individual. It's clarifying, putting one in the proper mindset from collaborative to transactional and opportunistic.
Of course, systemic myopia and brain drain can hurt an organization worse than any direct action could ever aspire to, but organizations run by violent thugs aren't known for known for advancement based on competence as opposed to loyalty.
> I hope your assumption isn't projection, but I think it is based on the rest of your comment. You appear to be making an effort to organize violence, so I'm going to step out of the discussion here.
The domestic use of ICE and the military is plainly the actions of an organization of violent thugs by anyone with eyes to see. I do not advocate for violence - to the extent I am advocating for anything, I am explaining to you the foreseeable results of ideology-based institutional rot.
You are aware of this, don't appreciate the implications of what I am saying, and have seemingly resorted to yelling "violence" at the top of your lungs in the hopes that I am intimidated by such an accusation and become defensive.
>resorted to yelling "violence" at the top of your lungs
Shouting at the top of my lungs? If you can hear me shouting through the glass then you can probably hear my eyes rolling right now too. Of course I did neither. You should consider how often you might be doing this in your daily life, because assuming the worst in the people you interact with is a sure way to be treated like garbage (and justly so).
Back to the point, I understood from your commentary that you mean violence when you refer to unlawful behavior. If you don't then you have every opportunity to say so.
I don't think I was presumptuous in my understanding, because I can't think of a way for you to interact with violent, armed forces, unlawfully, without inciting violence. And that's my point.
That and more so that it's not a duty of every citizen to behave unlawfully. In fact, it's been the successful approach of maybe 10 such citizens in history. You can see the other commentor's examples. It's unlikely you're going to be one of them. It would show humility to, in the least, admit as much.
Also because you've made no substantial justification for it to be a duty. Afterall, that's the comment you responded to.
I think not. You already gave away which direction you were intending to steer the conversation and the conclusion you were intending to eventually draw.
Next time, perhaps practice more patience before you jump the gun like that.
And it won't affect their branding in any relevant way.
As "Amusing Ourselves to Death"[1] would explain, what almost all Apple consumers want is just FaceBook, WhatsApp, memes and games. Anything else is "boooring!".
I've started buying refurb, and will be heavily considering my upcoming electronics purchases. I encourage others to reduce consumption from companies which kowtow to this dangerous administration's demands and rhetoric.
I've been boycotting Amazon as best I can for nearly a decade though since they had ambulances outside their warehouses and delivery workers pissing in gatorade bottles but reducing consumption of toxic brands can be done and is effective at sending messages when done en masse.
I also boycott all the social media companies, Disney, Google as much as possible.
Sadly, there's not a ton of options in this space (computer electronics).
I've also e-mailed [email protected] and expressed my opinions in a polite manner. Maybe someone read it. Who knows.
I like the thought, but AFAIK it doesn't really change the bottom line much, as long as you buy a used older product from a brand. Probably because the person selling it is buying a newer model, so you're still helping the company out.
I might be wrong, though. But this was the initial conclusion I arrived at when I was researching whether to buy an iPhone 17, iPhone 15 Pro (used) or Android phone. Only the last option would probably hurt Apple directly. And only a liiiiiittle.
Ah! But, of course, I will also be slowing my purchasing cycles which means I'm buying less products over my lifetime.
I plan to ride my laptop out til it dies, not buy another Apple Watch, ride my phone out until I can no longer use it. Etc.
I'll do the same with work equipment instead of getting available upgrades.
And I still have my Apple One subscription because I got the whole family on it, but maybe one day I'll make the sad choice and cut that off too.
Yea, it's absolutely tough, and it's probably meaningless in the singular sense of it all, but if more and more folk think like I do, that will absolutely hit them in their bottom line. And, selfishly, I get to feel decent about where my money is going.
That's nonsense. The choice is between you purchasing a new phone or you not purchasing a new phone. It's post hoc justification to assume that your dollars from buying a used unit will be used for something in particular. You made the decision you wanted and then built the logic to support it.
> If you're autistic, don't mask. Live authentically as yourself and find people who love you for who you are.
No thank you. I very much prefer to remain employed.
I get enough accommodations as it is; society is built on give-and-take and I’ve found a stable medium. My masking is part of that compromise. Without it I would just be entitled.
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