bmistree's comments

From the little I've read on the topic, there are many good reasons to be skeptical of the 600,000 copy figure cited here.

This [0] article summarizes some of the debate.

At a high level, the number seems to be derived from Thomas Paine's assertions that he sold 120,000 copies in the first three months of Common Sense's release. However, Paine had no way to measure this number and likely didn't even have a way to reasonably estimate it.

The article mentions a historian that analyzed data from the time (number of known printings and maximum batch size for a print run): "Putting all this together–twenty-five printings at a maximum of 3,000 each (even though most print runs were probably much less), Loughran places the far upper limit at 75,000, but she thinks the true number was much less than that."

I don't know much about Gatto or Dumbing Us Down. However, I personally don't find this quote persuasive, given the uncertainty around the 600k figure.

[0] https://allthingsliberty.com/2013/03/thomas-paines-inflated-...

Let me preface this by stating that I don't actually have any special knowledge of the art or criminal world beyond what I've seen in the movies, so the following is pure speculation.

I could imagine that if a thief's motive were purely financial, he/she could ransom the painting. "This is a priceless piece of world heritage that is heavily insured. Send XXX BTC to this wallet or I'll burn up the painting and send you its ashes."

I just wanted to piggy-back onto the parent’s comment with a concrete example.

I’ve always been told that it’s good practice to take periodic backups. In the absolute worst cases, you can simply restore directly from these.

If a customer requests that their data are deleted, in addition to my production instance, does that mean that I have to remove their data from my backups? If so, I’m uncertain of the best way to do this. I’m uncertain if many managed services will allow me to mutate backups. And even if I were managing my database and backups directly, it seems painful to load each backed up database, remove the data, and rewrite the backup.

Note: I’m not saying that any of this is impossible. However, it does require a lot of ancillary engineering work difficult for a small company that’s just trying to get to product market fit.

The ethical challenge this New Yorker article presents is that:

  - Members of the Media Lab knew at least some of Mr. Epstein's transgressions (to the point that some of them were concerned he may have brought trafficked women into the lab)
  - Subsequently solicited funds from him, despite knowledge of these transgressions
  - Actively concealed the source of these funds

Additionally, it seems that members may have intentionally broken MIT administrative policy that disqualified Mr. Epstein as a donor.

I googled around a bit, and maybe didn't find the entanglements that you're referring to. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I could only find that Harvard accepted money before knowledge of Mr. Epstein's attacks could be expected to be publicly known [1]. Articles also mention personal relationships that Mr. Epstein had with individuals at Harvard. However, those don't seem to have involved Harvard the institution directly.

Again, I could have missed something, but these seem to be different situations. And it makes sense that the Media Lab would attract more attention in this case than Harvard.

[1] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/07/11/harvar...

4. No actual consequences for anyone demonstrated to be lying.

Until officials are held accountable, why wouldn't they continue lying and denying? It's starting to get to the point where I'm more angry at congress members who should provide oversight, than the lying officials themselves.

As a simple example, if I'm an NSA official and contrast how James Clapper experienced absolutely no real consequences for perjuring himself [1], with how Snowden has been treated for rocking the boat, I honestly don't know what decision I would make.

[1] http://www.salon.com/2013/06/12/how_james_clapper_will_get_a...

Another version of the story posted on CNN [1] has a slightly different version of events.

> Concerned that attorneys did not have all the information they needed to prepare the case, he said, he reported his concerns to a State Attorney's Office investigator and later to prosecutor Bernie de la Rionda.

Ie, before contacting the defense through a lawyer, he talked to the prosecutor in charge of the case as well as an investigator with oversight of the attorney's office. Maybe he should have discussed the matter with the attorney general directly after these first two attempts, but his disclosure seems a little more reasonable knowing that he seemed to make an early effort at following the "chain of command."

As a side note, this article was fairly confusing for me. I had to read key passages several times and I'm still uncertain of the basic sequence of events. Many useful hn comments on this post seem to be just clarifying what the article should have reported in plain language. Ugh.

[1] http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/13/justice/zimmerman-it-firing/in...

I don't really get the argument that President Obama and Candidate Obama were somehow different people.

In 2008, Candidate Obama first promised that he would not vote for retroactive immunity for telecom companies that had opened their networks to the NSA. And then, a matter of weeks later, he did so anyways [1,2].

This vote was inextricably linked to the issues we're discussing today. In 2008, companies were on the verge actual accountability: they would have had to pay millions and billions of dollars in fines to their customers (or at least their customers' lawyers). If that had happened, it's easy to imagine those companies' modern incarnations being more adversarial with regards to new surveillance laws, court orders, and appropriate process.

It was clear then that Candidate Obama would easily cave on core issues for political expedience, just as it is now. I'm not saying that there were better alternative candidates. I'm just saying that if you'd really have followed "2007 Obama anywhere." you either weren't paying attention or willfully deceived yourself.

[1] http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9982898-7.html [2] http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-9986716-38.html