Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit | hn_throwaway_69's commentslogin

>innocent until proven guilty and all that

To be fair, he was refusing to face trial. And he is expected to plead guilty, so he isn't innocent.

That said, there may be legitimate questions about whether the United States should be entitled to exercise jurisdiction over foreign nationals who are not physically present in the jurisdiction for national security offences.


Pleading guilty under the threat of either continued incarceration in inhuman conditions or extradition somewhere that could potentially murder you says nothing about guilt in anything but strict legal terms. It's a coerced plea.


Aren't all pleas basically coerced pleas though? The entire point is that you plead guilty to a lesser punishment in order to avoid the chance of a much more severe punishment.


When accompanied by promises of a less punishment: Yes.

And so I think even with a guilty please, there ought to be a requirement for the prosecution to prove the case. Maybe lower the bar a little bit, but not much. And that is indeed how pleas work most places.

Few jurisdictions have US-style plea bargains where the prosecutor can negotiate large "discounts" to the potential maximum sentencing and get judges to agree.

To me, a country that allows that and where they are frequently taken does not have a functioning justice system.

There's also a significant difference with respect to the coercion when sentences are long, and when the possible variation in sentence length is huge, and the US stands out as particularly bad with respect to both of those factors as well.


The usual standard in the UK is for a sentence to get a reduction of around 1/3 for a guilty plea. The situation I hear of in the US where people are threatened with a 537 year sentence if they plead not guilty or a 3 month sentence if they plead guilty is a travesty and surely leads to vast levels of injustice.


Did the US army or its participating individuals ever get charged for killing the “collateral murder” Reuters journalists? Or for doing the same to the proximate other civilians? Or for covering it all up?

The question who is guilty by a US court does not determine the guilt of an individual in any relevant or moral way under these extreme circumstances. It just indicates if you are part of the system or if you rather are uncomfortable and need to be silenced.



Definitely whataboutism, but the crew were investigated before the leak and it was found that the reporters were with armed fighters and were not distinguishable as civilian reporters. While its unfortunate, walking around in an active warzone with armed combatants and not taking steps to clearly identify yourself as a non combatant isn't wise. These things happen in war. They were not intentionally targeted and they weren't murdered. War reporters know the risk they are taking on and this is why they usually clearly mark themselves as press.


Victim blaming.

Yes the killed journalists were in a country that was being attacked by a foreign nation. This does not make it their fault that they were murdered.

While this might be a common occurrence in war, it does not excuse anything: if wars are fought in a way that these kill innocent people then they should not be fought in the first place. Something is not morally excusable only because it is expected when done.

Thirdly, sure the crew was investigated (here i admittedly only know what wiki has to offer) but there is no known outcome of said internal investigation.


I'm sorry but this is a ridiculous and unrealistic stance. People die in wars. That's just a fact of life. I have sympathy for uninvolved civilians who don't want to be there. But war reporters know the risks and willingly enter warzones to report on them. Its just like reporting anything else dangerous. There is a risk you will die. There is a risk you will die in a tragic and preventable way too. Things could have been done differently but the footage is public now. Watch it yourself, they were walking with armed combatants and didn't look any different. There is no way the crew could have known they were reporters. The US military's ROE in GWOT was very restrictive for reasons just like this. But that doesn't mean its perfect. Arguing that nobody innocent should die is some kind of realistic standard reeks of an easy life and first world privilege.


The first paragraph is whatabouttery, the second may be accepted, but the claim I replied to was he was legally innocent until proven guilty. That is what I was addressing, not some broader notion of morality.


Legal precedent is just what aboutism then. Doesn't make it any less important in a normal judicial system


It should be noted this is specific to the United States.


>password database, Linux image for installation on a new laptop

Heh. Imagine surviving a plane crash. Everyone is busy calling their loved ones, and I'm busy setting up my new Linux distribution on a laptop bought in duty free, using the Linux image in my pocket.


After six hours trying to get the touchpad working you're wishing you'd died in the crash.


Eh, price scalping sucks. This is the lesser of two evils.


You would rather not own things you buy than have things sold at market price?


It's not xenophobic, it's just realistic.

If you tried to run a fake, malware-laden website in a Western country you would eventually be shut down and prosecuted.

These scams mostly fester in nations with weaker institutions, not just Eastern Europe but also China and India. Their authorities are simply not interested in preventing this kind of unlawful activity.


Google is US based company, when we will see "eventually be shut down and prosecuted" for spreading malware?


Can you somehow quantify it or is it your gut feeling? Any articles out there?

I don't know if they catch small fish as in this example, it just isn't in the news. The bigger fish happens to be in the news, like shutting down international scam call center - 2 in LV, 1 in LT. Video from police cam if anyone wants to see smashing windows: https://www.vp.gov.lv/lv/jaunums/verieniga-starptautiska-ope...

We are also being educated in many places including schools, government institutions, posters, jobs etc about the risks, about how scammers work and stuff like that.


At least for Russia itself there's plenty of articles about it. Here's one:

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2021/05/try-this-one-weird-trick...

> In Russia, for example, authorities there generally will not initiate a cybercrime investigation against one of their own unless a company or individual within the country’s borders files an official complaint as a victim.


> Eastern European countries, including Ukraine and Russia.

Okay, the term is used in geographical context and not geopolitical.


Eastern Europe hosts 'em while big American tech advertises 'em.

International cooperation for mutual profit.


I only have a modicum of respect for this company after they butchered CentOS.


Which honestly is going to bite them. The on-ramp from CentOS when small and RHEL once you’re big enough to need support is gone. It’s Ubuntu/Debian all the way down now.


This… it was a natural flow.

I’ve switched to Ubuntu too but my muscle memory is Redhat so still sometimes annoying- never got into Debian though


IBM's acquisition caused this, don't blame only RedHat


Ah yes, IBM: the software company that still thinks Rational ClearCase is a great version control system.


Given the amount of money in the bank versus many wannabe startups, they are somehow right.

And yes, ClearCase does stuff that many alternatives to this days still has issues dealing with.

With ClearCase I already had object files caching across the build cluster without extra stuff, a nice graphical management tooling, and I never messed my view specification files, like I routinely need to fix my Git repos.


ClearCase doesn't even have the concept of related changes in multiple files being part of the same commit. How you can even compare that to a modern VCS I have no idea.


It clearly supports changesets, maybe you're were holding it wrong.


Keyword: UCM activities.


They bought CentOS in 2014 which was long before IBM.


Australian here. I find the excessive emotive flair throughout the judgment as pressing the boundaries on occasion. A court is supposed to act impartially and emotions kept in check. This kind of language could be appealable in Australia, see for instance, this news report from yesterday:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-03-10/dismissal-of-assault-...

Maybe it's just more common in Canada for judges to be more forthright with their opinions.


> A court is supposed to act impartially and emotions kept in check

What are you talking about? The whole point of a court is, by very definition, to judge


This is in a very different vein than the language in that story and not equivalent


Reminds me of the line in VeggieTales, In the future, entertainment will be randomly generated. [0]

[0] https://youtu.be/j4Ph02gzqmY


That's a good one!


Having seen far too much Veggie Tales, I'd say that show already feels randomly generated. With bible inputs too heavily weighted.


This often doesn't work and backfires. The school will just warn them, the target will be characterised as a snitch and it will just strengthen the bullies' mutual loathing of the target.

Generally the only way to stop bullying is to build resilience and fight back.

There are extreme cases where I agree it should be reported, including infliction of physical violence.


Then sue them for not doing anything. Or start a rightful social media and media campaign so it cannot be ignored. Get them fired. This is clearly a situation where adults failing to do their job should get their careers ended permanently.


>where I am pretty sure they copied my hard drive

What evidence do you have, leaving aside speculation or conjecture? Can you state it any higher than it was possible they copied your hard drive? Is this a routine occurrence where you live?


> What evidence

Well I am pretty sure the personnel liked GP’s laptop colour and just wanted to admire it in privacy. Or maybe lick it as well; and possibly passing around among themselves so that more could lick it.


Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: