Mason Wheeler 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: William Barr Turns Up The Heat On The DOJ's Anti-Encryption Rhetoric

    Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 25 Jul, 2019 @ 09:13am

    Re: Re: OK, what are the real reasons?

    What do you call a being capable of hearing a dog whistle?

  • On the post: LAPD Infiltrated An Anti-Fascist Protest Group Because The First Amendment Is Apparently Just A Suggestion

    Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 25 Jul, 2019 @ 07:42am

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: ...right of the people peace

    World leaders don’t qualify as terrorists.
    Wow. You clearly don't know nearly enough about Stalin to be participating in this conversation!

  • On the post: The Death Of Ownership: Educational Publishing Giant Pearson To Do Away With Print Textbooks (That Can Be Resold)

    Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 25 Jul, 2019 @ 02:10pm

    There's an argument that ebooks have certain advantages -- and can be updated much more quickly.

    How is that an advantage? College courses are supposed to give you a sound understanding of basic principles in a field of knowledge, and basic principles of knowledge, pretty much by definition, are not chaotic things that change frequently and require quick adaptation in their learning! If your textbooks legitimately needing to be updated during the course of your studies is not an exceptionally rare occurrence, either you're in a bleeding-edge emerging field or something is very wrong with the curriculum.

  • On the post: Police Union Responds To Outing Of Officers' Bigoted Social Media Posts By Offering To Erase Officers' Online Presences

    Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 25 Jul, 2019 @ 08:16am

    “Just another savage that needs to be exterminated,” wrote Booker Smith Jr., a Dallas police sergeant, about a homicide at a Dollar General store. “Execute all involved,” he wrote separately about a group of teens who were accused of killing a 6-year-old. (One defendant pleaded guilty to aiding in the kidnapping. The alleged shooter and another defendant’s trials are scheduled for later this year.)

    I... honestly don't see any problem with that. Anyone who goes around murdering innocent people--especially young children!--absolutely is a subhuman savage who ought to be executed. (With due process of law, of course, to make sure we got the right person, but yes, when we do make sure we got the right person, execution is what should happen to monsters like that.)

  • On the post: FTC's Privacy Settlement With Facebook Gets Pretty Much Everything Backwards; Probably Helps Facebook

    Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 25 Jul, 2019 @ 08:06am

    Using phone numbers that were provided for security (two factor authentication) for advertising (a massively dangerous and stupid practice by Facebook)

    I agree that this was massively stupid and unethical, but I don't quite see how it's dangerous. Can you elaborate?

  • On the post: Instead Of Parents Spying On Their Kids Online, Why Not Teach Them How To Be Good Digital Citizens

    Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 23 Jul, 2019 @ 02:08pm

    Re: Re:

    Has it ever crossed your mind that aggressive control of kids makes then easy targets for someone who appears to offer sympathy and understanding?
    No, for two reasons. 1) The monitoring software didn't get installed until the parents started to worry about a few minor warning signs, which then turned out to be all too genuine! (And before you ask how I know that for sure, it's because I'm the one who installed it, as the tech-savvy one in the family.)
    2) Any parenting at all will necessarily involve some degree of "control of kids." It inherently establishes some baseline level of rules and norms that bad people can exploit by appealing to adolescent urges for "freedom." That vulnerability is always going to be there (barring some unforeseeable change in the fundamentals of human nature, of course) regardless of parenting style.

  • On the post: LAPD Infiltrated An Anti-Fascist Protest Group Because The First Amendment Is Apparently Just A Suggestion

    Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 23 Jul, 2019 @ 08:55am

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Bias

    Antifa seeks freedom and equality for all
    If by "all," you mean "everyone who agrees with them," then yes. Which, again, makes them exactly the same as the fascists, who seek freedom and equality (though they tend to prefer the term "liberty" these days) for everyone who is on their side, at the expense of everyone else.

  • On the post: Judge Tosses Crazy Copyright Lawsuit Over Gigi Hadid Photo

    Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 23 Jul, 2019 @ 07:27am

    Re: Re: Re:

    What "privacy right" can possibly exist relating to acts performed in public? That's literally the opposite of an expectation of privacy.

  • On the post: Dear AHL: Get Your App Shit Together Because You're Freaking Us Out

    Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 23 Jul, 2019 @ 07:24am

    Re:

    Anyone who needs an app for every little facet of life deserves to fall on their own petard
    In the past it was typical for one who had failed severely to fall on their sword. Falling on a sapper's bomb was far less common.

  • On the post: LAPD Infiltrated An Anti-Fascist Protest Group Because The First Amendment Is Apparently Just A Suggestion

    Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 23 Jul, 2019 @ 07:19am

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Bias

    It only takes once.
    If that's a real standard, it should be applied consistently, and that definitely makes the Antifa movement domestic terrorism.

  • On the post: Instead Of Parents Spying On Their Kids Online, Why Not Teach Them How To Be Good Digital Citizens

    Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 23 Jul, 2019 @ 08:00am

    Instead Of Parents Spying On Their Kids Online, Why Not Teach Them How To Be Good Digital Citizens

    A headline like that makes me wonder if you have any kids of your own. Because... seriously?

    If kids were perfect little angels who were always obedient, and possessed wisdom and experience beyond their years, that might actually be a working strategy. But in the real world, things are a lot more complicated, and I for one am very happy that parental monitoring tools exist. Without them, we very easily might not have found out that my little brother was being groomed by a pedophile before it was too late.

    My folks could not have done a better job teaching their kids about privacy and safe behavior... but at the end of the day, kids make mistakes. They don't always listen, or remember, or recognize when they're in a situation that a principle they've learned might be applicable to. (Adults make these same mistakes too, for that matter!)

    Teaching kids right is a very good first line of defense, but believing that it should be the only one ("instead of") shows a literally deadly level of naivete.

  • On the post: LAPD Infiltrated An Anti-Fascist Protest Group Because The First Amendment Is Apparently Just A Suggestion

    Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 22 Jul, 2019 @ 01:29pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Bias

    Yes, that happened. I heard of that incident too. But here's the thing: that was an incident, a single thing that happened once. That does not constitute a pattern of violent or terroristic behavior such as we used to see from white supremacist organizations in the USA back in the KKK's heyday.

  • On the post: LAPD Infiltrated An Anti-Fascist Protest Group Because The First Amendment Is Apparently Just A Suggestion

    Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 22 Jul, 2019 @ 01:00pm

    Re: Re: Re:

    Umm... because if you arrest someone without evidence, it doesn't actually work, so you need to gather the evidence first?

  • On the post: LAPD Infiltrated An Anti-Fascist Protest Group Because The First Amendment Is Apparently Just A Suggestion

    Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 22 Jul, 2019 @ 12:58pm

    Re: Re: Bias

    experts have said there is little organized far-right activity within the department’s jurisdiction
    So... basically what I've been saying all along? That these organizations, as abhorrent as their beliefs may be, simply are not big enough to warrant real concern?

  • On the post: LAPD Infiltrated An Anti-Fascist Protest Group Because The First Amendment Is Apparently Just A Suggestion

    Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 22 Jul, 2019 @ 12:37pm

    Re:

    Yes he does, because they're the police and therefore inherently evil instruments of inherently evil State Power. Welcome to the mental disease that is Libertarian thought.

  • On the post: LAPD Infiltrated An Anti-Fascist Protest Group Because The First Amendment Is Apparently Just A Suggestion

    Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 22 Jul, 2019 @ 12:36pm

    Re:

    What's the difference between matter and anti-matter? Scientists tell us that any particle of matter and its anti-matter counterpart are exactly alike in every way, except for a few specific characteristics in which they are exactly alike except for being oriented in the polar opposite direction. And when the two meet, it results in a violent explosion. What's the difference between fascists and anti-fascists?

  • On the post: London Metropolitan Police's Facial Recognition System Is Now Only Misidentifying People 81% Of The Time

    Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 19 Jul, 2019 @ 11:09am

    Re: Time for the Devil's advocate....

    This is basically correct. Also, it went from 100% false positives to 81% false positives over the course of a year. Extrapolate out that rate of improvement, and in another 4 years the false positive rate is likely to be close to 0. (And that's making the rather pessimistic assumption that the rate of growth will only be linear; in the world of computing, Moore's Law applies to most things.) In other words, this is just another typical Libertarian hit piece by our resident Libertarian nutjob.

  • On the post: Very Confused Judge Allows Bizarre Copyright Lawsuit Against Cloudflare To Continue

    Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 19 Jul, 2019 @ 12:08pm

    In the past, law professor Eric Goldman has suggested that when it comes to infringing content, courts have an uncanny ability to ignore the actual law, and make up their own rules in response to the belief that "infringement bad!"

    The courts are only following the example set out by Congress, which literally threw out centuries of precedent and Western jurisprudence when they created the DMCA, discarding our most sacred legal traditions--the right to Due Process and the Presumption of Innocence--in favor of two distinct systems where the accused is presumed guilty on accusation alone and, (particularly in the case of DRM, though we see this more and more in the DMCA takedown system as well) has no legal recourse or appeal if a private actor falsely accuses and condemns them.

    If we want to get sanity back, we must repeal the DMCA.

  • On the post: Latest Huawei 'Smoking Gun' Still Doesn't Prove Global Blackball Effort's Primary Justification

    Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 18 Jul, 2019 @ 12:46pm

    many US companies have a history of ginning up security fears simply because they don't want to compete with cheaper Chinese kit.

    Well, why should they have to?

    If it were honest competition, I'd totally agree with you. But we're talking about Chinese production, which has a long and well-documented history of creating things at rock-bottom prices by massive corner-cutting, human rights violations, environmental destruction, and industrial espionage. They "compete" by engaging in business practices that are illegal in the USA for a multitude of good reasons.

    Why should any US company be forced to compete on an unlevel playing field against a competitor with immoral business practices that, were the company to attempt to duplicate over here, would make them into criminals?

  • On the post: Drug Prices Are So Insane That The NY Times Is Recommending The US Gov't Just 'Seize The Patents'

    Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 18 Jul, 2019 @ 09:15am

    Back in the day, when we ran across someone whose business model was "your money or your life," we found the idea so thoroughly, viscerally offensive that we would put up wanted posters literally offering a reward to whoever killed this person.

    Nowadays, we make billionaires out of them.

    Society has changed a lot in the last couple centuries, but not all of it is for the better.

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