Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

Techdirt

from the hat-trick dept

The rest of you commenters have got to start competing with That One Guy! He’s back this week with a triple win, taking the first place spot for insightful and both top spots for funny. His first place insightful win came in response to the overhype about 5G wireless:

Probably the best dose of reality to quench the enthusiasm for super fast connections can be summed up in two words:

Data caps.

It doesn’t matter if you have a blindingly fast connection speed if simply using it to any real extent quickly eats through your monthly data allowance, either dropping you right back down to a drastically slower speed or charging you out the nose to maintain your speed.

Advertising how insanely fast your service is(or will be), while having penalties in place for people who use it to even a notable fraction of it’s capabilities is like advertising an all you can eat buffet… and then charging by the plate past the first one.

In second place on the insightful side, after we pointed out the desperation of those attempting to tear down the recently-nominated Librarian of Congress Dr. Carla Hayden, Jessamyn West showed up with a library-insider’s perspective:

Sometimes it can be complicated to explain our anti-censorship and pro-privacy professional values in the library world to outsiders. These values sound so out of line with standard business practices that people feel that they must be hiding some sort of nefarious other agenda.

Internet filters don’t work. The ALA is a 60,000+ member organization which works very hard on a regular basis to ensure that people have access to the information they want and need in order to solve problems in their lives or just … because they want it. It’s no one’s business bus theirs.

Dr. Hayden is a staunch advocate for libraries and the people who libraries serve. We are lucky she’s been nominated and should hope she’s chosen to lead the Library of Congress into this century.

Thank you for this article.

For editor’s choice on the insightful side, we remain on that post for one more comment. We listed Hayden’s qualifications and boggled at the fact that anyone could find reason to criticize her, but one anonymous commenter noted that the qualifications themselves provides plenty of reasons to those with certain motivations:

And she’s out! (they hope)

“she seemed immensely qualified for the position”

Strike 1.

“having successfully run and modernized the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore”

Strike 2.

“She also clearly recognized the importance of open access and access to culture.”

Oh, hell no!
Strike 3!

Next, we head to the story about AT&T’s ongoing attempts to buy state law and block municipal broadband. They raised concern about the government having an “unfair advantage”, and one anonymous commenter pointed out that this is a weird way of looking at it:

If it’s really the case that the government has an ‘unfair advantage’ perhaps that’s an indication that this is a service better served by government. Isn’t the point of allowing government to provide certain services exactly because they have an ‘unfair’ advantage and can better serve us than the private sector? If it’s the case that the government has an ‘unfair’ advantage this is something to be embraced. The point whole point shouldn’t be to ensure that businesses maximize profit it’s to increase aggregate output and consumer surplus.

I’m not saying that broadband is something better served by government. Just that the argument that government needs to ensure that government doesn’t have an ‘unfair’ advantage is no reason to hinder government developments. There is no such thing as an ‘unfair’ advantage, no advantage is ‘unfair’ and any advantages government does have is a reason to embrace municipal broadband.

Over on the funny side, we’ve got the remaining two comments from That One Guy‘s hat trick. After the San Bernardino DA expressed concerns that there might be a deadly “cyber pathogen” on the shooter’s iPhone, he won first place for funny with the realization of what a goldmine it could be:

Also possibly on the phone:

– The entire collection of the Library of Alexandria, digitized.

– The script for the tv show ‘Lost’, explaining everything in full detail.

– Full translation of the Voynich Manuscript.

– Winning numbers for the next 100 lotteries.

– A copy of an email from Quentin Tarantino explaining exactly what was in the briefcase in Pulp Fiction.

– The cure for all forms of cancer(but not the common cold).

– An absolutely superb, made-from-scratch BBQ sauce recipe.

– The last will and testament of Emperor Norton, revealing that he was a genuine emperor the entire time.

– A file containing approximately three dozen slightly offensive jokes, every single one of which ends with ‘… and that’s why you don’t ask.’

– Half a dozen funny cat gifs.

– Schematics for a machine capable of producing endless free energy, along with instructions in making a material that acts as a perfect conductor of electricity.

Meanwhile, his second place win came in the form of an explanation for Amazon’s contradictory decision to remove encryption from the Fire while supporting encryption publicly:

Strange form of support

Ah, but don’t you see, clearly this is a move designed to help Apple in their fight by making it so that the security minded customers stop using Amazon tablets and move over to the ones that Apple is selling.

By driving their customers into Apple’s waiting arms they’re making sure that Apple has the funding needed to continue to fight for encryption, it only seems like an incredibly stupid and contradictory move on their part.

For editor’s choice on the funny side, we’ll start out with another “reader nomination”. After Rep. David Jolly rather mangled his already-silly words in condemning Apple, AricTheRed felt it was a gaffe worthy of recognition:

I nominate Jolly for funniest comment of the week!

“Taxpayers should not be subsidizing a company that refuses to cooperate in a terror investigation that left 14 Americans dead on American soil,” David Jolly…

Definitely gets my vote for funniest. Saddest, but funniest.

And finally, because I can’t resist a good Trump gag once in a while, after someone described him as looking like “a fucked up carrot”, one anonymous commenter drew the line:

Fucked up carrots around the world are shouting their outrage at being compared to Trump.

#notallcarrots. That’s all for this week, folks.