Parking tickets aren't meant to be an income stream
Some DMVs are selling customer data to private companies. People who are supposed to wear ankle bracelets are charged rent by private companies with govt contracts to do so. Those are just two examples that I could think of, without even googling. They are gonna do whatever they can, for revenue.
A good percentage of the population believes government should be run like a business, without understanding the implications. Also people don't like taxes, even justified ones. All this leads parking tickets style situations.
Immigration - degrees help a lot, if you are trying to get a work visa.
Resume filtration in big companies - many companies have policies that they will consider someone for a software development position, only if they have a degree. You probably do not want to work for such companies, at least not for long.
Learning theory - personally I find it easier to learn theory in a classroom from a teacher, with peers.
A lot depends on the school and the curriculum too. If your goal is for immigration, get any approved degree from any school and be done with it. If you truly want to learn, then it would make sense to look for tough courses from reputed universities.
Everyone's situation is unique. It is kinda hard to give a generic answer.
Not to disparage your point or the parent comment's but I think part of that is that HN operates to a much lesser degree like an echo chamber (as the majority of social network are wont to steer toward) so it might come as more of a surprise when someone disagrees. Of course I feel I should highlight the obvious fact that discourse is far more valuable than trying to quietly silence a differing opinion...
Many DOJ attorneys resigned from this case in protest
Wouldn't this give Barr the opportunity to bring in people who always agree with him and make the situation worse? Not just this case against Google, but in general.
Yes, but that doesn't mean the case will gain the approval of judges. Of course, this is why the current administration has worked very hard to place as many judges as possible on the federal courts, but since federal judges hold lifetime appointments they sometimes develop an unexpected degree of independent thought once they land on a suitably comfortable bench and fail to please their erstwhile patrons, instead pursuing the respect of their judicial peers or their legacy.
There's an interview where Barr is asked about his legacy that's worth looking up, it's a great example of the conflict between short-term expediency and long-term sustainability.
> Since federal judges hold lifetime appointments they sometimes develop an unexpected degree of independent thought once they land on a suitably comfortable bench and fail to please their erstwhile patrons, instead pursuing the respect of their judicial peers or their legacy.
Isn't there a contradiction between independent thought and pursing the respect of their judicial peers?
> There's an interview where Barr is asked about his legacy that's worth looking up, it's a great example of the conflict between short-term expediency and long-term sustainability.
I think you're referring to him saying "everybody dies", and you take this as short-term expediency? I don't agree. I think it's a statement of independence: I will not be manipulated by the people who write "the first draft of history", I'll do what I think is right.
Resigned from the case, but not resigned from the dept?
When you argue a case in court, you have to be a "zealous advocate" meaning you have to believe what you're arguing. I don't think a lawyer even employed by Justice Dept. can be compelled to argue a specific case.
Of course he can probably cook up whatever reason to fire them.
edit: in case it wasn't obvious, IANAL - thanks for clarifications
Attorneys argue positions they do not agree with or believe in all the time. Their job is to represent their client and bring about the best case possible, in the interests of a system designed to be adversarial.
The concept of “zealous advocacy” is such a minor part of the ABA’s Rules of Professional Conduct to begin with. Attorneys just like to use that one term as an excuse to be assholes, while forgetting the myriad of other ethical requirements in the Rules.
While I commend them for taking a stand, they should absolutely be fired for failing to refusing to represent their client, aka the Federal government. They have effectively terminated their relationship with the client and should no longer be representing them.
In fact, the first footnote in Rule 1.3 (where the text for “zeal with advocacy” occurs outside the preamble), it reads:
“[1] A lawyer should pursue a matter on behalf of a client despite opposition, obstruction or personal inconvenience to the lawyer, and take whatever lawful and ethical measures are required to vindicate a client's cause or endeavor.”
For private attorneys, you refuse to represent your client on ethical grounds, you do not get to continue billing them. Not sure why it should be any different here.
They're not private attorneys who have the US as their client. They work for an organization (DoJ) that has the US as its client. That organization can have whatever policies it wants about how cases are allocated among its staff.
Yes, I am fully aware that they are not private attorneys. I am also aware that Federal employment laws are unlikely to support firing them on account of recusing themselves from a case.
However, that does not mean the ABA's Rules of Professional Conduct do not apply to them, nor does it mean they should not be fired for choosing to terminate representation of their client.
It sets a terrible precedent in a system that is designed to have someone willing to fight on each side for their client. If the government wants to bring about a weak case, let them. The opposing party has their own representation point out those weaknesses, if that is truly the case.
So whether they can be fired or not, doesn't change the fact that they should be, or that they should resign from the Department.
> Their job is to represent their client and bring about the best case possible
To be clear, the current issue is not that they do or don't believe the case on its merits, but that they don't believe they have enough time to push the best case possible.
Fair enough, but I think that reasoning is akin to a public defender saying they won’t defend their client because they are overworked and didn’t have enough time to prepare. Someone else is still going to have to do it, only now they will have even less time to prepare.
There are legal processes that can be used to continue trials and other hearings, which they’re fully aware of. Their client said to go, it is not their job to decide when, only to offer advice against such a decision (in theory).
It's more like the public defender's boss is deciding when to schedule the trial, and deliberately schedules it before their performance review instead of scheduling it to improve the chance that the case is successful.
I’m not sure how that example negates what I said. Regardless of the circumstances as to why a case is tried sooner than you would like, it’s still happening. Sometimes it is a judge, sometimes it is a boss, sometimes it is a strategic maneuver by opposing counsel, etc. That doesn’t make it an acceptable excuse to not represent their client’s interests given the time they do have, nor does it make the decision any less impactful to the client they represent.
I guess it is a difficult position to be in, especially in the current administration. If you leave, you know your replacement is likely going to be unqualified, yes men. If you stay, you conscience will bother you and you won't be able to do much good anyway.
That is the modus operandi of this entire Administration. Trump has fired advisors and cabinet over and over until almost all the current positions are filled with yes men and women or not filled at all and just have people holding the position and maintaining status quo.
I am actually interested in what goes into building such a product. It would take tremendous resources to crawl millions of websites, not to mention fingerprinting tons of libraries and accounting for all the edge cases...
Why use FB at all? I understand they have the audience, but if they treat you so poorly to the point of bankruptcy, what is the point? Aren't you encouraging bad behaviour by sticking with them?
therefore I’m moving for a year or so until things fully reopen
Do you see an end to this pandemic in the next year or so? A good percentage of people are still refusing to wear masks, we aren't anywhere closer to a vaccine etc. I am trying to be optimistic, but the situation isn't improving from any direction and we are already 10 months in :(
It's a fair question, and for me the answer is open-ended. I expect this to last at least another year, but I really have no idea when things will feel "normal" and "safe" again.
In what sense are we not closer to a vaccine? I’m not following vaccine development closely, but my understanding is that many candidates are progressing along nicely.
It's important to point out that while these trials appear promising, there has never been a vaccine developed for any coronavirus before that eradicated the illness in humans[0]. Influenza vaccines, for example, work to fortify the immune system from various strains of influenza, but they do not prevent illness. There's a lot of political and commercial pressure to make this happen, but the reality is that this is an incredibly hard problem to solve and we may be dealing with COVID-19 in some form for the foreseeable future.
Covid has already got to the point where it's more likely that you'll die in a car accident than of covid... so I think with something like the flu vaccine is probably good enough.
Motor vehicle deaths per year in the US are under 40,000. In less than ten months, more than 210,000 people in the US have died of COVID. You're an order of magnitude off.
That’s extremely routine procedure for any trial. When there’s an u explained illness the trial is halted to investigate if it is linked to the vaccine or not.
I don't think the downvotes here are fair. Drug development is hard. Most candidates never make it to market. This is a vaccine for a virus that's never been successfully vaccinated against.
Expect a majority of the vaccines in trial to fail over the next 6 months, either for safety or efficacy.
> This is a vaccine for a virus that's never been successfully vaccinated against.
For lack of economic need. Most coronaviruses only cause mild symptoms, so there's not been a need for one. SARS vaccine efforts died early because the disease itself died out and there was no impetus to continue searching. MERS is similar in that, even though it hasn't gone away, it burns itself out so quickly that the need for a vaccine is relatively small, and therefore research efforts have been limited.
> Drug development is hard. Most candidates never make it to market.
For vaccines, something like 80+% that make it past Phase 2 end up making it past Phase 3. Its unlikely for most vaccines that make it that far to fail. We already have half a dozen candidates around the world at that point, with more on the way. If anything, its highly unlikely we won't find some kind of vaccine. If not one that grants sterilizing immunity, one that provides enough protection that it makes the disease far less deadly, like the flu vaccine.
Exactly, and because of lack of economic need our experience with creating vaccines against coronaviruses is pretty minimal.
And yes, I agree that we'll get something, but people should be prepared for a few of the vaccines to fail, a few to be pretty mediocre (are they worth even getting) and a few that actually have some utility. The challenge is the ones in development are strung out along a pretty long timeline, so if we're lucky, one of the earliest ones works and we don't have to wait until late 2021 for something worthwhile.
And not only that, but people should expect something promising to be approved and then likely pulled off the market 6-9 months post-approval. It's just the nature of trying to accelerate a vaccine and then once approved, dosing tens of millions of people with it.
Wearing masks won't make this end any sooner. Reducing transmission rates flattens the curve meaning smaller spikes but likely longer presence of corona virus.
I think if you have a genuine interest in this topic and some basic understanding of maths (probability, etc.), textbooks can be quite accessible. Read, for example, "Coporate Finance" by Berk and DeMarzo or have a look at the CFA study material.
