shasta (u/shasta) - Readit News

shasta commented on “But he does good work.” medium.com/@violetblue/bu... · Posted by u/jarcane

DanBC · 9 years ago

> Drug use damages the credibility of any party.

I agree that victims are often doubted because of drug use. (I think that's an error by police; instead of doubting the victim they should be treating the victim as a vulnerable person who was more likely to be abused)

But can you show me any examples where a rapist who claimed he had consent was doubted because he had been using drugs?

It feels as if the doubt only goes one way.

shasta · 9 years ago

Isn't that mostly because of the legal process? When a guy is accused of rape, he's the one on trial. Mentioning his drug use might be excluded as prejudicial, even though the jury might find it relevant.

shasta commented on “But he does good work.” medium.com/@violetblue/bu... · Posted by u/jarcane

lusen · 9 years ago

> "well, she wore a sexy dress and followed him up to his room so maybe his claims that it was consensual are true."

how is that reasonable? maybe we should ask what she claims and what he wore.

but wait, what clothing indicates whether someone is a rapist? tshirts and tatty jeans? polo shirt? suit? of course clothing implies nothing.

why does her wearing "sexy" clothing -- to say nothing of "sexy" being all about the male perception and desires, as if her own clothing can't be worn for her own reasons -- imply anything about her desire for sex?

> "isn't it just as/more important that they correctly figure out who the victim is?"

if you're only asking men their opinion, and believing whatever assumptions you want to make about women based on their clothing rather than their word, the system is already tilted towards men getting want they explicitly want, and women not being listened to.

i'm not saying believe rape victims without scrutiny. i'm saying have a little more compassion and support and actually listen to their words as much as you listen to the man's words, and care about their clothes as much as you care about the man's clothes.

shasta · 9 years ago

Of course it's not reasonable to conclude that he's telling the truth on the basis of her clothing. But my point is that it's also not reasonable to treat any mention of her clothing as off limits. It's just one piece of evidence.

If a woman is raped, and the guy claims it was consensual, do you think a woman should be able to point out that, "if I had any intention of sleeping with him I wouldn't have been wearing those underwear?" Or should that piece of evidence be excluded because clothing is never relevant?

shasta commented on “But he does good work.” medium.com/@violetblue/bu... · Posted by u/jarcane

panic · 9 years ago

What someone is wearing has nothing to do with consent.

shasta · 9 years ago

Your claim is that P(consent | sexy clothes) = P(consent | not sexy clothes)? Seems counterintuitive. Do you have evidence to support this claim?

shasta commented on “But he does good work.” medium.com/@violetblue/bu... · Posted by u/jarcane

shasta · 9 years ago

Is there really a big problem with acceptable/legal behavior not being agreed upon? Isn't the problem usually that the guy claims "it was consensual?" Similarly, when police consider what a woman was wearing, isn't usually in the context of figuring out who's story they believe? In other words, the police aren't thinking "well, she wore a sexy dress and followed him to his room and therefore deserved to get raped" but rather "well, she wore a sexy dress and followed him up to his room so maybe his claims that it was consensual are true." I get that you don't want police to blame the victim, but isn't it just as/more important that they correctly figure out who the victim is?

shasta commented on The limited value of a computer science education nathanmarz.com/blog/the-l... · Posted by u/dekayed

spraak · 9 years ago

This analogy is really good:

> Whether someone can or cannot solve some cute algorithm problem in a high-pressure situation tells you nothing about that person's ability to write solid, clean, well-structured programs in normal working conditions. This practice is akin to hiring pilots based on how they do on an aeronautical engineering exam. That knowledge is relevant and useful but tells you little about the skill that person has for the job.

There's a lot of talk and debate about whiteboard interviews and this, for me, succinctly sums it up

shasta · 9 years ago

Is the analogy really that good? A pilot will never be called upon to engineer a plane. Lots of good "hackers" will get stuck if they have to design an algorithm.

shasta commented on Ask HN: Did anyone use ruinmysearchhistory and get Google account suspended today? · Posted by u/WhatIsThisIm12

DanBC · 9 years ago

I think Google has some monitoring for images of child sexual abuse and terms used to find those images. I'm not sure what they do if you search for those terms or if they just return blank pages.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/nov/18/uk-us-dar...

shasta · 9 years ago

Well, what did it do when you tried?

shasta commented on Mathematicians are chronically lost and confused (2014) j2kun.svbtle.com/mathemat... · Posted by u/Halienja

thevardanian · 9 years ago

Simple profit incentives.

You can't really make a living off of being a self-taught mathematician, whereas you can by knowing how to program, and run your own business.

The only way to make a living as a mathematician is to into academia, so that why you see all mathematician in academics. Basically it isn't that academia produces mathematician, although it helps, but that it attracts mathematicians. Just as, say, Y-Combinator attracts good startups.

shasta · 9 years ago

I think this is it. To be good at mathematics you need a considerable amount of time to sit and do mathematics. The only way someone is going to fund this as part of a job is if you're already a mathematician.

shasta commented on Being sued, in East Texas, for using the Google Play Store [video] youtube.com/watch?v=eatfg... · Posted by u/egb

pdabbadabba · 9 years ago

Well, first of all, I have to confess: I'm not a patent lawyer. I'm a regulatory lawyer.

And, just so we have our terminology straight, summary judgment is actually different from the motion-to-dismiss phase I was describing. In super simple terms, the latter happens after the parties have has the chance to gather evidence and seeks to determine whether it is legally possible for a party to win at trial. Therefore it occurs late in litigation, after parties have already spent a lot of money (but still before trial). The former typically occurs before evidence is even gathered to determine whether the plaintiff could legally win even if all of his or her allegations were factually true.

As for the threshold fee-shifting idea: I think it's probably not a good one. There are cases where it could help, but if the judge gets her threshold determination wrong, then it makes life even harder for a less wealthy litigant. The simplest solution, which many countries have implemented, is simply a loser pays system for legal fees. I'm not sure this is ideal either, but I think it is at least better.

There also is usually a possibility that the judge could require the loser to pay after the fact, if she determines that the case was especially un-meritorious. Another possible reform would be to loosen the standard that judges apply in choosing whether to award fees in this way.

shasta · 9 years ago

Patent lawyer or no, you're still more qualified than the average participant.

I'm not sure what criteria you're using to judge that the proposal would be worse for a less wealthy litigant. Surely the proposal would be better in cases where one side is clearly right? The cost of patent litigation is currently huge. The only way a non-wealthy litigant can participate is with lawyers on contingency. No?

But I suspect fixing the legal costs is only a part of the patent problem. My understanding is that cases like the OP regularly go to verdict and find for the troll.

shasta commented on Being sued, in East Texas, for using the Google Play Store [video] youtube.com/watch?v=eatfg... · Posted by u/egb

pdabbadabba · 9 years ago

I'm one of those hated attorneys. And, in my experience, while there are issues that sometimes may seem to outsiders like pointless minutae that keep people from getting at the real issues, the rules of civil procedure (especially at the federal level) are designed to do exactly what you want: to facilitate getting to the core of the issue as fast as possible (of course, if the core of the issue is a factual question, this can take a while due to pesky things like discovery and jury trials). Without more detail, the problems you describe sound, with respect, like the complaints of someone who does not really understand how litigation works. Maybe if you could put a little meat on the bones I (and we) could understand your criticisms of the system a little better.

In this example, as you say, "there is a question as to whether this patent is valid or not, and whether it covers this particular issue or not." If the defendant thinks those are real issues, then one of the first things the rules would have you do is to file a motion to dismiss arguing exactly those points. If the judge agrees with you, the case is over and you go home. (Of course, there is the possibility that there are other claims that aren't subject to those arguments, or that the plaintiff could amend the complaint to add new legal theories, but that's another story.)

To the extent it is true that courts "completely front-load all these arcane minor points" this is usually true only to the extent that these arcane issues are actually dispositive.

EDIT: Try thinking about it this way: whether an issue is arcane, and not what a person might think is the "real" core of the issue, is sometimes orthogonal to whether that issue is dispositive. And there are usually good reasons for this--though reasons that may not be obvious to non-lawyers. This can, and should, result in courts spending what may seem to the untrained eye like too much time on arcane but dispositive issues in an attempt to resolve a case efficiently.

shasta · 9 years ago

Wow, a real patent lawyer in a patent law thread. You don't belong here, but I'll upvote whatever you have to write.

I have a comment and a question:

The comment. Summary judgement does not accomplish what I think sheepleherd was proposing. As you say, if you get a summary judgment against you, you go home. That means that a judge has to be convinced that there is definitely no case in order to issue one. What's needed, rather, is a speedy determination of who seems to be in the right. It should not be final but should determine who pays going forward.

The question. What do you see as the problem in cases like this? Or do you see a problem?

shasta commented on A Guaranteed Income for Every American wsj.com/articles/a-guaran... · Posted by u/hourislate

gizmo686 · 9 years ago

This proposal decreases benefits between $30k and $60k. The total delta in benefits would be $6.5k. Assuming this decrease occurs linearly, this comes out to a marginal tax of 21%.

The current marginal tax rate for someone (unmarried) making between 37k and 91k is 25% [0]

This means that over this $30k interval, people would be facing about a 46% effective marginal tax [1]. The current top bracket is only 39.6% and does not kick in (for unmarried individuals) until $415k.

While this proposal does create a silly marginal tax rate, it is still below 100%, which means that making more income still leads to more money in your pocket. Our current system, if you count the value of non-monotary aid, often exceeds a marginal rate of 100%, which is a far more serious problem.

I agree that the UBI should be flat, because anything else is equivalent to changing our tax brackets; and if we want to do that, we should just change our tax brackets.

[0] https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-drop/rp-15-53.pdf

[1] This number might be slightly different if the two taxes interact with each other.

shasta · 9 years ago

> I agree that the UBI should be flat, because anything else is equivalent to changing our tax brackets; and if we want to do that, we should just change our tax brackets.

This was such a dumb sentence in an otherwise interesting post.