OldMugwump 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: ADT Tech Spied On Women For Four Years Before Getting Caught By Accident

    OldMugwump ( profile ), 27 Jan, 2021 @ 05:47pm

    I don't think "a basic privacy law" is going to help here...

    I'm pretty sure the tech has been fired, and is likely being sued.

    And what he did is probably already illegal.

    Simply passing a law doesn't make the prohibited behavior disappear.

    See how well the War on Drugs is working? The streets of America have been drug-free since the Nixon administration!

    I remember Al Gore trying to settle concerns about abuse of the Clipper chip by promising to make such abuse...illegal.

    Come on, Karl. You're old enough to know better.

  • On the post: Bad Idea: President-Elect Biden Wants To Turn 1/6 Into The New 9/11

    OldMugwump ( profile ), 13 Jan, 2021 @ 10:22am

    Re: Demanding

    Ya, it's worrisome. We're seeing a reaction of the elites - to suppress the mob. Which will only enrage the mob further. I may have said this before somewhere, but everybody needs to calm down a little.

  • On the post: Bad Idea: President-Elect Biden Wants To Turn 1/6 Into The New 9/11

    OldMugwump ( profile ), 13 Jan, 2021 @ 09:35am

    Thoughtcrime

    Thank you, Tim.

    I've no sympathy for the idiots who stormed the Capitol, but we're getting uncomfortably close to a clampdown on thoughtcrime.

  • On the post: Wednesday, January 6th: The Day The Game Of Politics Turned Into Insurrection

    OldMugwump ( profile ), 07 Jan, 2021 @ 11:10am

    Re: A Sad day in America for sure.

    Radicals for any cause "truly" believe. If you don't understand that much, you have no idea what your opponents are like.

  • On the post: Could The Digital Divide Unite Us?

    OldMugwump ( profile ), 06 Jan, 2021 @ 02:40pm

    I'm starting to think nothing can unite us...

    ...except a common enemy.

    Who'd think I'd miss the Soviet Union?

  • On the post: Content Moderation Case Study: Google's Photo App Tags Photos Of Black People As 'Gorillas' (2015)

    OldMugwump ( profile ), 04 Dec, 2020 @ 08:46pm

    Re: 'Should we test this on non-whites?' '... nah.'

    Test what, exactly? The only way they'd find this out before rolling it out is to search on "gorilla" and discover the result. Testing it on non-white faces probably worked fine, same as on white faces. Unless they anticipated the racist "gorilla" result in advance, and went looking for it. Even for racists, that's an unlikely thing to try. All the more so for a non-racist person who never would have thought of testing for that outcome in the first place.

  • On the post: Content Moderation Case Study: Google's Photo App Tags Photos Of Black People As 'Gorillas' (2015)

    OldMugwump ( profile ), 04 Dec, 2020 @ 08:42pm

    I'm not even sure it's a "fuckup"

    I have a lot of sympathy for Google here (or anybody else who tries this). This is machine learning, where the machine learns what things are called based on already-tagged photos created by humans. The machine doesn't decide for itself what a "gorilla" is; it learns based on the tags it sees. Using that approach and scanning the Internet for tagged photos, a search on "idiot" is going to pull up photos of politicians, because lots of people tag politicians they don't agree with as "idiots". That doesn't mean those politicians ARE idiots, it just means that some people call them that. (That is, some significant number more than a few random noise tags that show no pattern.) Same for "gorilla". As we all know there are lots of racists online who tag photos of black people with names of various apes. The machine is ultimately going to learn that, and that association is going to show up in the machine's search results. It's not the machine's fault, it's not Google's fault, it's the fault of the racists who post such tags. It's not practically feasible to filter out such common, but racist, tags. The only reason this kind of machine learning works at all is because the machine can learn from (literally) millions of pre-existing examples online without manual intervention. If humans have to filter the training set to remove racist (or any other kind of biased) tags, the whole thing becomes impractical. To the extent we're going to use this technology at all, we have to accept that biases in the training set are going to show up in the outputs. Or just choose not to use the tech.

  • On the post: Content Moderation Case Study: Using Fact Checkers To Create A Misogynist Meme (2019)

    OldMugwump ( profile ), 11 Nov, 2020 @ 04:26pm

    Fact-checker baiting

    This is a great example of somebody successfully baiting "fact-checkers". I'm tempted to sympathize with the troll who posted it.

    The larger problem is that "fact checkers" can't really check most facts in any meaningful, objective way.

    Just to use this image as an example, how is "women are funny" even a "fact" that can be true or false? Obviously some women are more "funny" than others (even for the many different meanings of the word "funny"). I don't think it's possible to rule such a statement as clearly true or false in the first place, nor should anyone try.

    Are women, as a class, "funny"? Whatever answer you give, it's an opinion, not a fact. And an opinion on a awfully vague and ill-defined question.

    I've little patience with "fact checking" in general, except perhaps in the original context of internal checking within a publication, before printing a story. Most statements aren't clearly even "facts" in the first place.

  • On the post: China Micro-Censors The VP Debate In The Most Hamfisted Way

    OldMugwump ( profile ), 09 Oct, 2020 @ 09:02am

    Re: Not the answer you'd like

    "some North Korean defectors still believe that the Kim family is the best thing that happened to Korea" I'm not sure that proves anything other than North Korea has it's share of complete morons, same as every other country.

  • On the post: Texas Grand Jury Indicts Netflix For 'Lewd Exhibition' Of Children In Its Movie 'Cuties'

    OldMugwump ( profile ), 09 Oct, 2020 @ 08:49am

    Re: Marrying animals.

    So it's OK to kill and eat a pig, but not to marry it? So it's OK to have sex with a pig, but not to marry it? I think "marrying animals" is illegal because most people (incl. me, BTW) think the idea is disgusting, not because we care about the animals. (PETA excepted, of course). But there are lots of things I think are disgusting (guacamole, for example) that I don't think should be illegal. The only legitimate reason to make something illegal is to protect innocent people.

  • On the post: China Micro-Censors The VP Debate In The Most Hamfisted Way

    OldMugwump ( profile ), 09 Oct, 2020 @ 08:59am

    Unsubtle censorship

    ...is surely better than subtle censorship.

    At least people know exactly what the government's doing.

    China is running an interesting experiment. So far (since Mao died in 1976) it's been going really well - 1/3 of the population of the planet has been lifted out of absolute poverty in a single generation.

    Whether the system is stable in the long run, I have no idea. I'm glad I'm not part of the experiment. But I'm very interested in the result.

  • On the post: Texas Grand Jury Indicts Netflix For 'Lewd Exhibition' Of Children In Its Movie 'Cuties'

    OldMugwump ( profile ), 08 Oct, 2020 @ 03:26pm

    Re: Re: ...also, they indicted a ham sandwich

    What's wrong with people marrying animals?

  • On the post: Texas Grand Jury Indicts Netflix For 'Lewd Exhibition' Of Children In Its Movie 'Cuties'

    OldMugwump ( profile ), 07 Oct, 2020 @ 11:14am

    ...also, they indicted a ham sandwich

    I saw the film. It's not porno, not prurient, not sexy. At all.

    It's about foolish children pretending to be older than they are, for all the wrong reasons.

  • On the post: Donald Trump Now Wants To Repeal Section 230, Which Will Actually Make The Stuff He Complains About Worse

    OldMugwump ( profile ), 07 Oct, 2020 @ 09:56am

    Vote 3rd party

    ...ANY other party.

  • On the post: NY Times Editorial Pages Fuck Up Again: Publishes Chinese Official's Ridiculous Defense Of Stifling Freedom In Hong Kong

    OldMugwump ( profile ), 06 Oct, 2020 @ 12:56pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Remember when TechDirt supported free speech?

    Let me point out something pretty basic- Free speech isn't a good idea because it makes the speakers feel better. We don't support free speech, and enshrine a right to it in the 1st Amendment, because we want to hear what people say, or because we think it's good that people say stuff. Free speech is good because it provides feedback to the rest of society and the powers that be - feedback we need to correct things that are going wrong. We support free speech because we NEED to hear it - despite not wanting to hear it, and not wanting other people to hear it. Because that speech gives us - all of us - critical information that we need to make better decisions about the future. And history has shown, over and over, that suppressing free speech leads to bad outcomes in the long run - worse outcomes than are caused by the speech itself. This is one of the central insights of the Enlightenment. So, yes, I think we need to hear what Hitler and Goebbels say. It will help us understand them, understand what their supporters see in their philosophy, and how to undermine their support and defeat them. Shutting them up only makes us weaker.

  • On the post: NY Times Editorial Pages Fuck Up Again: Publishes Chinese Official's Ridiculous Defense Of Stifling Freedom In Hong Kong

    OldMugwump ( profile ), 06 Oct, 2020 @ 12:50pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Remember when TechDirt supported free speech?

    Better to hear those rallying cries than to ignore them. If you want to defeat an enemy, it's more than a little useful to understand him.

  • On the post: NY Times Editorial Pages Fuck Up Again: Publishes Chinese Official's Ridiculous Defense Of Stifling Freedom In Hong Kong

    OldMugwump ( profile ), 06 Oct, 2020 @ 12:48pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Remember when TechDirt supported free speech?

    Rupert Murdoch does not publish the New York Times. The NYT has, for the last 100+ years, held a special place in American journalism not exactly filled by any other outlet (the Wall Street Journal - owned by Murdoch, and the Washington Post - Bezos come close but haven't been doing the same). As I said, one can argue that things have changed; maybe they have. But the NYT is trying to act as if they haven't changed.

  • On the post: NY Times Editorial Pages Fuck Up Again: Publishes Chinese Official's Ridiculous Defense Of Stifling Freedom In Hong Kong

    OldMugwump ( profile ), 06 Oct, 2020 @ 12:44pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Remember when TechDirt supported free speech?

    Proud Boys are also nobodies (a few cranks). The POTUS thinking otherwise doesn't change that. The NTY has traditionally printed op-eds by influential people for over a century. That doesn't mean they endorse what those op-eds say, but it's a way for readers to find out what those people think - in their own words. That's a valuable service - whether it results in changing minds, or in understanding the enemy better, or some combination of both. Democracy runs on an informed public. Finally, never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.

  • On the post: NY Times Editorial Pages Fuck Up Again: Publishes Chinese Official's Ridiculous Defense Of Stifling Freedom In Hong Kong

    OldMugwump ( profile ), 05 Oct, 2020 @ 09:52am

    Re: Re: Remember when TechDirt supported free speech?

    Your position is clear, Mike. It's reasonable to argue, here in 2020, that the traditional function of a major national newspaper is moot, given that we have the Internet and everybody gets a soapbox of their own. But the NYT is still in business, and still supposedly trying to perform that traditional function. I think publishing the viewpoint of major influential players is an important part of that - unedited, in their own words. Re some of the other comments: Shiva Ayyadurai is a nobody - the NYT has no reason to publish him; nobody really cares what Shiva thinks. The head of the KKK would be a "somebody" if the KKK were an influential national movement. It's not - it's a few crazy cranks. If it was 1940 and Adolf Hitler was running Nazi Germany, I say publish Hitler's op-ed. If the NYT editors feel these viewpoints are wrong (as is obviously the case with most of these examples), they can and should print opposing editorials on a facing page - directly taking down the arguments made. But I still want to hear what Hitler, and the Devil, have to say. I want to hear it in their own words. If only to understand the enemy better.

  • On the post: Ubisoft Bows To Monster Energy To Rename An Upcoming Game Horribly

    OldMugwump ( profile ), 02 Oct, 2020 @ 11:14am

    Re: Re: Lawyers: Professional cowards who earn more than you do

    "Even odds" is a vast exaggeration. There is a risk of that, yes. But MOST of the time courts come to reasonable decisions. We can't be complete cowards unwilling to accept any risk whatsoever, and expect to keep our freedom. Otherwise some bully with a pocket knife will take over.

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