Not awkward at all. I'm sure the family was touched that you still thought about him after all those years.

I'm not a lawyer, but I imagine something like deceptive advertising regulations could serve as a starting point.

Yes. The answer is a "config.d" directory, this has been known to linux package managers for a long time. It is the only way for multiple packages to contribute to configuration without fighting over ownership of the one true config file.

To me, that is like printing out an document and scanning it later to send to someone. It happened a lot in the early days of email.

Why should prisons be about punishment rather than rehabilitation?

You'll find lots of variations of the following:

The Purposes of Punishment:[^1]

- Incapacitation: prevents crime by removing a defendant from society.

- Rehabilitation: prevents crime by altering a defendant’s behavior.

- Retribution: prevents crime by giving victims or society a feeling of avengement.

- Restitution: prevents crime by punishing the defendant financially.

- Deterrence: Specific deterrence prevents crime by frightening an individual defendant with punishment. General deterrence prevents crime by frightening the public with the punishment of an individual defendant.

[^1]: https://open.lib.umn.edu/criminallaw/chapter/1-5-the-purpose...

There's a difference between rehabilitation and giving people access to the internet when serving a sentence for killing your wife and tormenting her family for like, 2 years because you hid the body even though everyone knew you killed her. Also, why shouldn't it be a little bit of both?

I don't have strong feelings about general internet access, but right now, I am probably spending $200k / year in tax dollars to keep him locked up behind bars. I'd be getting my money's worth.

I would much rather he be contributing to free software from behind bars. That's true more generally too. A plumber behind bars should be allowed to plumb. A carpenter to carpent.

Why shouldn't people in prison contribute back, if willing and able?

> I am probably spending $200k / year in tax dollars to keep him locked up behind bars.

At most you are spending $200K divided by the total amount of tax levied multiplied by your share of that total. Probably less than $1.

I grant you a trophy for your extreme talent for reading too literally, and then stating the obvious.

Here: U+1F3C6

They should be about rehabilitation.

That said, I think at least part of it is related to risk to the outside population.

i.e. Inmates performing illegal activity or otherwise directing people on the outside to do so.

Yes, You can do that with phones and visits as well, however those are a bit easier to monitor.

I believe you'll find a lot of people here in the US that believe prison, at least for the worst crimes, isn't about punishment or rehabilitation, but "containment".

Because human beings feel it is appropriate and fair to punish people for wrongdoing, and without the state handling it individuals are more likely to take justice into their own hands. Making the criminal justice system sufficiently punishing is one of several checks against vigilantism.

It is some of both. Hans murdered his wife, tried to cover it up, and lied about it. His actions make him a danger to society, part of his incarceration relates to the danger he poses to society. While he is removed from society he should also be rehabilitated.

It’s supposed to be both. There’s three components actually: punitive, deterrence and rehabilitation

Aren't you forgetting the most important reason for locking people up: protecting the rest of society.

“Rehabilitation” means that a person is suffering from some condition, and they are not personally at fault for their crimes. While there is some partial truth in this point of view, taking it at 100% face value is unfair, to say the least. People can be actually guilty of something.

Hard disagree. Rehabilitation means you take something that wasn’t working and you fix it so it can be useful again. Most convicts will eventually be released. In an ideal world, each of them will have learned how to participate in decent society so that they can be a good neighbor, employee, boss, friend, or whatever.

I’m not saying that from a bleeding heart “prison should be a resort campout!” strawman perspective, but as someone who wishes people came out of prison kinder and more sociable than they went in.

This is all conditional on the prison system of a country being a retributive or rehabilitation oriented element. The USA strongly leans towards retribution.

'Rehabilitation" means a few different things, depending on context. In the context of penology it means "giving a prisoner a way to integrate back into society and reduce their chances of recidivism". This is not only useful for the prisoner, but useful for society, since most prisoners are eventually released.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rehabilitation_(penology)

Even if it did mean that, so what? Shouldn't the goal of public policy be to benefit society? What's more likely to benefit society: Sticking people in big expensive torture boxes or trying to cause people to not do things that convince a bunch of other people that they deserve to be stuck in big expensive torture boxes?

Okay, if someone cannot be "rehabilitated" where is the value to society or to that person in punishing them to make them suffer more on top of separating them from the public?

This is a very hard subject and mountains of paper have been produced debating it without any clear resolution in sight. I don't think a HN discussion is going to resolve it one way or the other.

One of many possible values to society is that punishment reduces the motivation of vigilantes. For example if person A killed person B’s child, then person B (or a mob encourage by B) might be less motivated to seek vigilante punishment if there is some chance that a legal system could punish person A instead.

The value is delivering justice and deterring would be criminals

Are there any channels that do this type of analysis for software failures?

And what are your thoughts on police body cams?

Not th0mas88, but my thoughts: police body cams are a whole different story.

For one police officers are often able to turn on and off recording themselves, so it becomes as much of a protection for them as for everyone else. That is: if they are good police officers.

Secondly, unlike pilots, the police force in many countries does not have a stellar track record.

Edit: I do have some concerns. Yes, police brutality absolutely exists. But there also seems to exist a subset of the population - also represented here - who think police can be like superman and whenever they aren't that's because they are evil and enjoy harming innocents.

Police body cams are not "always on", the officer turns the camera on when they're interacting with the public and turn it off when they're in their car talking to a colleague: https://www.engadget.com/police-reform-bill-body-cameras-215...

So I guess they had similar objections to being recorded 24x7 and that was accommodated in the rules around body cams.

Maybe Disney and the record labels shouldn't be claiming so much of public culture as their own.

If they created it, they own it, why shouldn't they be claiming that?

Record labels aren't generally considered as "creators" of music, although they sometimes are to some extent.

And Disney bought most of its iconic properties, it didn't build them inhouse.

Copyright is not a universal axiom. Corporations lobbies for highly unreasonable copyright extensions to bolster their profits. Most of that stuff should have long entered the public domain.

The alternative is that software engineers are resolved of responsibility for only following orders.

Also, I don't understand why so many software engineers are willing to write code that is clearly adverse to users so their managers can get their performance bonuses. What's the upside? Narrowly escape the next round of layoffs so you can do it all over again?

The tech companies are not our friends any more than they are the users friends, they collude against us and treat us as disposable. This will continue as long as engineers do not take a stand.

> I don't understand why so many software engineers are willing to write code that is clearly adverse to users so their managers can get their performance bonuses.

In my experience, the young engineer is hired and bets his/her career on this one position, then they are told to do the dirty work or leave. That's why I resigned from my first software engineering job.

You might be right, and thank you for doing that.

I remember hearing that the number of software engineers doubles every 5 years, meaning that most software engineers will always have less than 5 years of experience. I think it was Bob Martin.

What is the fix are are you referring to?

Probably the national popular vote interstate compact.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Intersta...