Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

from the you-said-it dept

This week, our first place comment on the insightful side comes in response to our post about the ridiculous problems plaguing Texas voting machines. Crade was rightfully appalled:

"Hitting "submit" before it's ready to move forward causes problems with candidate selection"

Any software dev out there calling this user error isn't worth their salt.

In second place we've got Gary with a simple message about the cop being sued for a bogus arrest (with a small typo corrected):

Look and Learn

Every time this happens, it's essential to spread the word. Public awareness is important for keeping the police in line.

Cause they ain't gonna police themselves.

For editor's choice on the insightful side, we start out with James Burkhardt correcting a misunderstanding about our point that our election simulator game highlights how much goes on behind the scenes of public speeches and statements (this doesn't mean people shouldn't vote):

Yeah, that's actually not the point. The point was that a lot of what we see in speeches and debates is not speaking directly to people, but is rather signaling to various other groups.

This doesn't mean your voting choices mean nothing, or not to vote, but rather that this game gives us insight into how to assess candidates better.

Next, we've got

Dan

with a response to folks who still believe Bloomberg's supply chain hack story just because it seems like something that would be true:

There's an enormous difference between "the supply chain can be compromised" and "the supply chain has been compromised, in this way, at this time, with these targets." The former is, I think, beyond reasonable question (especially since "can be" is a very low bar). The latter? Not so much.

I haven't made it all the way through the STH piece yet, though it does appear to be very thorough. As a counterpoint, this piece purports to explain how something like this would be possible.

Over on the funny side, our first place winner is an anonymous followup to John Oliver's segment about the political grandstanding of state AGs, and a comment that technically achieved the wrong goal:

Please vote this comment as insightful because I will not steal your pen!

In second place, we've got another anonymous comment, this time parodying the ongoing efforts by big companies to deny and/or fight against cord cutting:

"What?! How are they 'cord cutting' us! It's Satellite! It's wireless! There's no cord to cut!" -AT&T exec

For editor's choice on the funny side, we start out with a comment from That One Guy about the Texas voting machine issues:

'Eh, accurate voting isn't that important really.'

The Democratic Party is blaming the government for not doing more, which is a very Democratic Party thing to do. In this case, the Republicans are in control of the state and the Democratic Party has chosen to claim the Republicans don't care enough about the problem.

Come now, that's a bit hyperbolic isn't it? I mean I'm sure they are taking the matter seriously and are deeply concerned that votes might end up going to the wrong people. It's not like they're going to just handwave something as large as bogus votes during an election or anything...

The state's government has pointed out e-voting machines only need to comply with state laws, not actually be accurate and/or idiot-proof. It points to the voting machines' certification -- which last happened nearly a decade ago -- as evidence that the bare minimum requirements have been met.

... huh. You know, they may be on to something in this case after all.

One does have to wonder if they'll be singing the same tune should the democrat candidate win, or if suddenly potential 'bogus' votes will be of huge concern, leading to calls to redo the election.

And finally, because it's a joke that speaks to me in a powerful way (and many other users too, I'm sure), we've got an anonymous take on the "broken windows" fallacy:

Is that where every time I attempt to run Windows 10, it decides to do an update instead?

That's all for this week, folks!

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team