If that's the case, then why has no one been prosecuted on those grounds?

>> "The officers attempted to disarm the suspect but the armed suspect violently resisted. More details on the armed struggle are forthcoming."

You've misread your link. The "violently resisted" quote is from a tweet by DHS, not local police: https://xcancel.com/DHSgov/status/2015115351797780500

> The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) posted on X further details about what led up to the shooting. "DHS law enforcement officers were conducting a targeted operation in Minneapolis against an illegal alien wanted for violent assault, an individual approached US Border Patrol officers with a 9 mm semi-automatic handgun, seen here," the post reads.

> O'Hara said that Pretti was a “lawful gun owner” with a permit.

> "The officers attempted to disarm the suspect but the armed suspect violently resisted. More details on the armed struggle are forthcoming."

> The DHS wrote that when a federal agent feared for his life, "an agent fired defensive shots." The post also noted that the "suspect" had "2 magazines and no ID."

By any ordinary reading of prose, the article is attributing the quote to O'Hara.

Here's the facts as I see them: A protestor who had a gun he was legally allowed to carry got involved in an incident with ICE/Border Patrol. The protestor was interacting with the agents and other protestors, at which point BP or ICE pepper sprayed him and took him down to the ground. At least 4 different federal officers were physically holding him. at this point it appears they disarmed him (unclear) and then shortly after, shot him.

At no point did the protestor hold the gun in a threatening way while approaching, when he was taken down he did not have a gun in his hands, and while down, it's very unlikely he could access the gun and use it in a way that any reasonable officer would feel unsafe and be required to shoot the protestor.

Based on the videos I've watched, the protestor made some ill-advised choices getting physically involved, but there was no reason for him to be shot. I read various online conservative communities (to try to understand their reasoning) and nearly all the posts I see seem to think that ICE/BP truly made an error here, possibly due to poor training.

I understand your point about the use of emotional terms, I try to avoid them and instead focus on facts and known unknowns, but in this particular situation, it's pretty clear that ICE/BP made an egregious error in a way that is clearly obvious to everybody (even those who would normally support the federal officers) and in denying this, the federal leadership is undermining itself. This is a situation where they could de-escalate and not immediately blame the protestor, while focusing on increasing the training of the ICE/BP officers, rather than taking an aggresive posture.

This would imply it was an unintentional mistake which is far from obvious. If they recognized it was an egregious error the perpetrators would be prosecuted and they won’t be.

> training of the ICE/BP officers

What makes you think it’s something they want to avoid repeating in the future? (Not /s)

No need to read press releases, your own eyes and ears.

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross did her research solely on people who were dying: people with terminal illnesses, and she studied how they coped with facing their own mortality. Not how other people did.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elisabeth_K%C3%BCbler-Ross

And of course, even for a dying person, this may be total bunk. It is not like some programmed flowchart that people go through five stages of emotional stuff. This is just, like, a framework for further therapy.

I'm actually studying this stuff right now. In the 1980s and 1990s, "The Five Stages of Grief" were basically a household phrase, and everybody talked about them like they were real and true and invariable. But everyone doing the talking had never actually studied the research or even knew who proposed it. They were just parroting headlines.

Just visit the link I posted, this will take you two seconds to verify.

A previous example:

You can watch the video for yourself of an ICE masked thug grabbing a man's carotid artery, when NOT facing a deadly threat, against DOJ rules. You can watch him seize and his eyes roll back. And you can choose to believe your eyes or DHS' lies. What do you think, zahlman?

See full context here: https://www.propublica.org/article/videos-ice-dhs-immigratio...

> In a social media post after the incident and in its statement to ProPublica, DHS did not cite a deadly threat. Instead, it referenced the charges against Zapata Rivera’s wife and suggested he had only pretended to have a medical crisis while refusing help from paramedics. “Imagine FAKING a seizure to help a criminal escape justice,” the post said.

A fuller quote:

> To stop an individual for brief questioning about immigration status, the Government must have reasonable suspicion that the individual is illegally present in the United States ... Reasonable suspicion is a lesser requirement than probable cause and "considerably short" of the preponderance of the evidence standard ... Whether an officer has reasonable suspicion depends on the totality of the circumstances ... Here, those circumstances include: that there is an extremely high number and percentage of illegal immigrants in the Los Angeles area; that those individuals tend to gather in certain locations to seek daily work; that those individuals often work in certain kinds of jobs, such as day labor, landscaping, agriculture, and construction, that do not require paperwork and are therefore especially attractive to illegal immigrants; and that many of those illegally in the Los Angeles area come from Mexico or Central America and do not speak much English. To be clear, apparent ethnicity alone cannot furnish reasonable suspicion; under this Court's case law regarding immigration stops, however, it can be a "relevant factor" when considered along with other salient factors.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kavanaugh_stop?wprov=sfti1#Sup...

[1] https://www.npr.org/2023/02/22/1158356619/plea-bargains-crim...

If you plead guilty to an offence you shouldn't serve the same amount of time as someone who shows no remorse.

Also, included in those "plea bargains" are cautions, for children.

edit; I'm getting flagged but I should definitely mention that I'm intimately familiar with how the law can be for the underclass, I was an underclass and I have a laundry list of a criminal record from when I was a child.

Often people are given "If you plea, you will pay a few thousand dollars and get to go home. If you don't plea, there is a 50% chance you go to jail, have a black mark on your record, and have to pay $10K in court fees and fines." And when people aren't even sure how they will pay a few thousand dollars, the risk of having to pay $10K+ plus serve jail time that will cost them their job and limit future employment opportunities is a HUGE risk.

Or because they’re guilty!

The issue with plea bargains is not that guilty people are given leniency for remorse; it is that they are used to coerce innocent people into confessing to a crime they did not commit.

How often do you work on bug tickets and realize that the "simple one liner change" is actually more complicated? Okay now instead of it being a simple computer bug, you are dealing with real human lives and have the potential to destroy them quite easily.

Maybe the system isn't working as intended, maybe courts should be redesigned to be more accommodating to the needs of everyone and not just those with $100k in checking accounts.

I thought we were smart enough to realise that on HackerNews.

Parent of mine claimed that the law as practiced is unjust, I said, largely that's not true and that there's a pretty strong propaganda campaign against the legal system (due to aligned incentives of stoking up rage for clicks).

I didn't claim that unfairness didn't exist, merely that it's not the default.

I have now been told that because plea bargains exist for those who show remorse, that the law never follows due process.

Are we stupid? What's happening here?

On the contrary, I think that's one of the problems that makes plea bargains so egregious: in order to take a plea bargain, you have to plead guilty, which prevents you from further defending yourself if you didn't actually do what you were accused of. That creates the scenario where an innocent person who is not confident in the system's ability to defend them may find themselves having to plead guilty in order to stave off a much worse penalty.

The same thing applies to parole boards: maintaining innocence typically prevents you from being granted parole.

This is a perverse incentive.

The vast majority of plea bargains involve people who are, in fact, guilty and are receiving a reduced sentence for saving the court's time and showing contrition. That's not a perverse incentive, it's a reasonable tradeoff that benefits both the defendant and society.

Yes, edge cases exist where innocent people feel pressure to plead. But the existence of edge cases doesn't prove the system is fundamentally unjust, it proves the system is imperfect, which no one disputes.

Regarding parole: maintaining innocence after you've been convicted and exhausted your appeals isn't "defending yourself"; at that point, you've had your defence. The parole board's job is to assess rehabilitation, and refusing to acknowledge your crime is evidence you haven't been rehabilitated. If you genuinely didn't do it, your remedy is post-conviction relief, not parole.

The burden is on those claiming systemic injustice to show that false guilty pleas are the norm rather than the exception. "98% plea bargain rate" doesn't demonstrate that.

What proof do you have of this? Estimates I’ve read range from 2-25% of people who accept plea bargains are innocent.

And what recent age of innocent people is it acceptable to send to jail via coercive plea bargains to ensure no guilty people go free?

Here's mine for the low end: a study examining attorney perspectives on plea bargaining https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6368263/ and multiple sources citing 2-8% of felony guilty pleas involve innocent https://testif-i.com/issues/plea-bargains/ https://www.themarshallproject.org/2014/12/26/plea-bargainin...

At 2%, that's 98% guilty - which is what I meant by "vast majority." If you're claiming 25%, prove it.

You are completely sidestepping the thrust of the grandparent commenter’s comment, which is that the cost of defending yourself from prosecution is prohibitively expensive and punitive in the sense that the outcome is worse than negotiating a plea deal.

> if you took one under duress, then that would be why the higher courts exist, to invalidate your guilty plea when taken under duress.

In this hypothetical the accused doesn’t have the money to pay for a lawyer; they aren’t going to be beating the case on an appeal.

Apologies.

You're defending zealously enough, and introducing so many variables yourself, that you have burden of proof too. Show some numbers for "vast majority" and "edge case".

Are you trying to win a formal debate or have a productive discussion?

Status quo is a starting point but still needs evidence.

> The legal system processes millions of cases annually. The claim being made here is that it's unjust more often than just... that's an extraordinary claim requiring extraordinary evidence.

Define "unjust".

If someone says it's unfairly biased most of the time, I don't think that's an extraordinary claim.

If someone says it's getting the wrong answer most of the time, yeah that's extraordinary claim, but nobody made that claim.

"Unfairly biased most of the time" and "unjust more often than just" are the same claim when discussing legal outcomes. If the system is systematically biased, it produces unjust outcomes. Don't play word games.

And yes, people absolutely have made that claim. The assertion that 98% plea bargain rates represent coercion rather than efficient processing is precisely claiming the system gets it wrong most of the time. The hypothetical about innocent breadwinners forced to plead guilty isn't describing an edge case, it's being presented as how plea bargains function.

If you want to argue the system has some biases that need addressing, fine. That's not what's being argued here. The argument is that plea bargains are inherently coercive and that maintaining innocence should exempt you from parole requirements. That's claiming the system is fundamentally broken, not merely imperfect.

Pick one: is the system broken or just imperfect? Because I'm arguing it's the latter and you lot keep trying to prove the former whilst pretending you're not.

You're right that "biased in process" and "wrong outcomes" aren't the same thing. A system can have unfair disparities (wealth based, racial, whatever) without necessarily convicting innocent people at scale. That's a reasonable distinction.

But that's not what sparked this thread. Go back to the top: the original claim was "when is the law just in its application?" implying never or nearly never. My position is that it's just more often than not. That's the disagreement.

If you're saying the system has procedural problems that create unfair pressure but generally reaches correct guilty/not guilty determinations, then we probably don't disagree much. That's a claim about needing reforms, not about fundamental systemic failure.

The issue is when people use "98% plea bargains" or "inherently coercive" to argue the system is fundamentally broken. If that's not what you're arguing, then we're likely closer to agreement than it seemed.

> If you're saying the system has procedural problems that create unfair pressure but generally reaches correct guilty/not guilty determinations, then we probably don't disagree much. That's a claim about needing reforms, not about fundamental systemic failure.

An unjust system can still get the right answer most of the time.

And I think it's very likely our system applies so much pressure to take a plea bargain that it is unjust. That it is making mistakes at scale that we could avoid with reasonable effort.

I would say it's fixably broken, but it probably is broken.

And I don't think anyone on this comment page was arguing that a majority of convictions are innocent people.

You invented that "7%" stuff in a sibling thread from thin air. You claimed nobody was arguing about innocent convictions whilst spending a dozen comments defending why plea coercion is a massive problem. You say the system gets the right answer most of the time but insist it's still unjust. You won't define "broken" but you're certain the system is it.

Every time I pin you down, you redefine terms. "Unjust" doesn't mean wrong outcomes, it means procedural pressure. "Broken" doesn't mean failing, it means needs improvement. "Coercive" doesn't mean producing false confessions, it just means... pressure exists, somehow.

This is a thread about MLK describing actual injustice: arresting peaceful protesters under correctly applied laws. You've watered "unjust" down to "I don't like some aspects of plea bargaining" and expect that to carry the same moral weight.

Here's what you won't say directly but keep implying: that plea bargains routinely produce false confessions. Because if they don't, then your entire argument collapses to "the system works but could be nicer," which isn't a disagreement worth having.

My position: the law is applied justly more often than unjustly. You either disagree with that or you don't. No more semantic gymnastics. Which is it?

Yes. I said I did. Because when I openly talk about a hypothetical number, people have to focus on whether my logic is correct or incorrect. Because that part of the post was about what implies what.

> You claimed nobody was arguing about innocent convictions

No. I said nobody argued MOST convictions were innocent.

Because you keep talking about MOST convictions to make your arguments.

> "Unjust" doesn't mean wrong outcomes

Doesn't mean a specific number of wrong outcomes.

This is the key miscommunication that has caused the entire argument.

A system can be unjust in 100% of cases, but only give the wrong answer in a smaller percent of cases.

> "Coercive" doesn't mean producing false confessions, it just means... pressure exists, somehow.

coerce: To use force, threat, fraud, or intimidation in an attempt to compel one to act against their will.

Edit: To make a clearer statement, whether it's coercion is about whether there is an unreasonable amount of pressure being applied. This has no connection to whether the confession is true or false.

> Here's what you won't say directly but keep implying: that plea bargains routinely produce false confessions.

Yes.

> My position: the law is applied justly more often than unjustly. You either disagree with that or you don't. No more semantic gymnastics. Which. is. it?

Ugh, this is annoying when we're disagreeing about what "just" means.

The way you're using it, the law is just more often than not.

But "more often" is an absolute garbage threshold. We need way way way better than that.

You're arguing that a system can apply the law unjustly even when it reaches correct outcomes. I think that's only meaningful if the "unjust application" materially affects people's lives in ways that matter beyond process.

So: plea bargains. You say they apply unreasonable pressure. But what makes the pressure unreasonable? A prosecutor offering a reduced sentence for pleading guilty isn't force, threat, fraud, or intimidation. It's a straightforward trade: save the court's time and resources, get a lighter sentence. That's pressure, but it's not inherently unreasonable.

You could argue it becomes unreasonable when the alternative is so severe that even innocent people feel compelled to plead. But that's an empirical claim. How often does that happen? You've now said you think plea bargains routinely produce false confessions. That's testable. Where's the evidence?

On thresholds: you're right that "more often than not" sounds low for a justice system. But the question is compared to what? Every alternative has error rates. Jury trials have wrongful convictions. Bench trials have wrongful convictions. The question isn't whether the system is perfect, it's whether it's better than the realistic alternatives and whether the error rate is acceptable.

What error rate would you accept? Because without that, "we need way way way better" is just saying "it should be perfect," which isn't achievable.

The original claim upthread was that the law is rarely applied justly. That's not a claim about error rates being too high, it's a claim that injustice is the norm. Do you actually believe that, or are you arguing something more limited about plea bargaining specifically?

The biggest issue these days seems to be that people can't afford a proper trial. So instead of a relatively fair exchange of simplifying out the risk of trial for a certain outcome, reducing hassle for everyone, there's a five figure monetary weight tipping the balance. The prosecutor isn't causing this but the design of the system is.

> How often does that happen? You've now said you think plea bargains routinely produce false confessions. That's testable. Where's the evidence?

I don't know where the evidence is. Remember my first comment was saying you should bring in evidence for your strong claims. I don't have strong claims right now, I have worries.

> What error rate would you accept? Because without that, "we need way way way better" is just saying "it should be perfect," which isn't achievable.

We need a lot more information before I can say what an acceptable error rate.

But there's some obvious factors pushing us away from that, so we're very likely not where we should be.

> The original claim upthread was that the law is rarely applied justly. That's not a claim about error rates being too high, it's a claim that injustice is the norm. Do you actually believe that, or are you arguing something more limited about plea bargaining specifically?

If the vast majority of people feel unsafe going to trial, then the law is not being applied in a just way. And I think that is a very common feeling. The amount it pushes error rates is smaller, because a lot of those people are guilty. But often they're not guilty of the full accusation, and sometimes they're not guilty of anything.

So I think a lot of people are going through an unfair process, and some of them are getting incorrect sentences.

I think a general sentiment that the law is unjust, or that people are not getting due process, is a reasonable opinion to have about that process.

If you have a specific comment you want to refer to by "the law is rarely applied justly", I can look at that specific one, because I'm not sure who you are referring to. verisimi's crack was a pretty vague implication, and jakelazaroff was arguing that people don't get proper due process. Neither of those statements is making an extreme claim about error rates.

You're right that cost is a real barrier, and it's a legitimate concern. If people can't afford proper representation, then the "choice" to take a plea isn't fully voluntary. That's a structural problem worth addressing.

Where we differ is on scale and characterisation. You say "the vast majority of people feel unsafe going to trial." That's a strong empirical claim that needs evidence. Feeling unsafe and actually being coerced are different things, and both matter, but they're not the same.

The original claim upthread was that the law is rarely applied justly. You've now moderated that to "the process is unfair for people who can't afford defence, and this produces some incorrect sentences." That's a much more limited claim, and one I'd largely agree with. Structural inequality in access to justice is a real problem.

But that's not the same as "the system is fundamentally unjust" or "plea bargains routinely coerce false confessions." Those are the claims that sparked this entire thread, and you've now acknowledged you don't have evidence for them.

So: agreed that cost barriers create real injustice. Disagreed that this means the system is unjust more often than just, which was the original claim.

I put an "if" on vast majority. I put confidence on "very common".

> The original claim upthread was that the law is rarely applied justly. You've now moderated that

> Disagreed that this means the system is unjust more often than just, which was the original claim.

Well again, if you tell me which specific comment you mean then I'll address that specific comment.

> But that's not the same as "the system is fundamentally unjust" or "plea bargains routinely coerce false confessions." Those are the claims that sparked this entire thread, and you've now acknowledged you don't have evidence for them.

You are the only person that has used the word 'fundamentally'. And yes the plea bargain thing needs evidence but should not be rejected for lack of citations.

Now you claim your speculation "should not be rejected for lack of citations" whilst having opened by demanding exactly that from me. That's not intellectual honesty, that's having it both ways.

On "fundamentally": you've argued the system is unjust in 100% of cases, that plea bargains are inherently coercive, and that false confessions happen routinely. Whether you used that specific word is irrelevant. Those are claims of fundamental dysfunction.

You ask which comment I mean. Here's the thread: verisimi asked "when is the law just in its application?" implying rarely or never. I said more often than not. You've argued with that for two dozen comments whilst refusing to state your own position. When pressed, you admitted you "don't have strong claims, just worries." That's fine, but it's not a basis for a dozen-comment argument.

The pattern here is clear: you make strong implications without committing to them, demand evidence from others whilst providing none yourself, redefine terms when pinned down, and retreat to semantic quibbles when substantive points fail. That's not productive discussion.

I engaged seriously when you made your cost barrier point. That was substantive. But you've chosen to return to arguing about whether you said "if" and who used which word.

I'm done. You've had multiple opportunities to state a clear position. You haven't. Readers can judge for themselves whether that's because you don't have one or because you're unwilling to defend it.

And I have never redefined a term. Don't confuse disagreement with dishonesty.

I don't know why you're so offended at me using "if" occasionally. You keep trying to force me to use specific numbers even after I say I don't have specific numbers. That's not good faith on your part.

> demand evidence from others whilst providing none yourself

Dude. I made one demand for evidence. At the very start. In a comment where I made no claims.

I have made no demands for evidence since then, just one reminder that's where we started when you bugged me about evidence.

Even if that would make my later comments hypocritical, my original comment wasn't.

I need evidence and so do you.

> Now you claim your speculation "should not be rejected for lack of citations" whilst having opened by demanding exactly that from me. That's not intellectual honesty, that's having it both ways.

What do you think is dishonest?

I never rejected your argument for lack of evidence.

I don't want either argument rejected until we get more evidence.

-

And yeah I'm pretty done too. Your comments are full of false narratives about what I'm saying.

Also I stated a very clear position at the start, then you threw a big pile of half-related things at me. It's not my fault you think I don't have a "clear position", because every time I try to focus and state one, you start talking about something else.

Yes but this is just another way to describe the problem, invoking it as a justification becomes tautological.

The patent office has a similar issue where they tend to consider prior work to be just what they see in other patents so the first person to patent is declared to be the first person to express the idea. To turn that view from the default position takes a lot of resources.

Laws should be unambiguous, but they shouldn't achieve this simply by defining the resolution of the ambiguity to be different from reality.

The alternative is what, exactly? Perpetual relitigation? Every convicted person maintains their innocence indefinitely and the system just... accepts that as equally valid to the jury's verdict?

We have mechanisms for when the system gets it wrong: appeals, post-conviction relief, habeas corpus. These exist precisely because we recognise legal findings aren't infallible. But the burden is on the convicted to demonstrate error... and rightly so, because the alternative is paralysis.

Your patent office analogy inadvertently supports my point: yes, there are edge cases where prior art is missed. But the solution isn't to abolish patent finality, it's to have robust review mechanisms, which we do.

The claim upthread is that the system is unjust more often than just. That's a far stronger claim than "the system sometimes gets it wrong."

If you go to trial you are saying you are not guilty of the offence.

If you are not guilty the ideally you are acquitted.

if you are guilty, you’re hoping to get away with it.

I struggle to see how hoping to get away with it, is showing remorse. If anything I certainly think it says that it shows little or no remorse, since you believe that other people should receive no justice for crimes that you committed against them.

Consider pleading the fifth. You can't be compelled to incriminate yourself. That doesn't just mean they can't coerce a confession out of you. It also means that the law does not infer guilt from a refusal to testify, even though logically a person who refuses to testify is more likely to be guilty than one who testifies freely in their own defense. If you couldn't be compelled to testify, but at the same time your refusal could be considered evidence of guilt, then you don't really have the right not to testify.

Same sort of thing here. If exercising your right to a trial increases your penalty then in what sense do you actually have that right? To put it in starker terms, imagine if people who previously spoke critically of the President were given a harsher penalty than those who spoke positively. That's a clear free speech violation. If exercising your free speech rights can't increase your penalty, exercising your right to a trial shouldn't either.

The right to trial isn't being penalised. You get a fair trial either way. What's being rewarded is accepting responsibility and saving the court's time. That's not the same as punishing you for exercising a right.

I'll grant that when the sentencing gap is extreme, the distinction becomes academic. If you're facing 20 years at trial versus 2 for pleading, then functionally you're being coerced regardless of the theoretical justification.

But in principle, rewarding people who show remorse is part of justice. Someone who accepts what they did and shows contrition is different from someone who forces the state to prove its case. Both have the right to trial, but treating them differently at sentencing isn't inherently unjust.

The question is whether the gap has become so large that it's effectively coercive. That's an empirical question about how plea bargains operate in practice, not a constitutional one about whether they can exist at all, which, if I understood it right, is your position.

Someone who forces the state to prove its case is merely exercising their legal right to do so. Giving them a harsher sentence for this is effectively punishing them for exercising their legal rights. You can word this as rewarding people who don't force the state to prove its case i.e. people who don't exercise that particular legal right, but it's the same thing.

Showing remorse is good, yes, but holding that over someone's head as a way to force them to plead guilty is disgusting.

Also pleading guilty does not imply showing remorse.

If we can't disentangle plea and remorse, then factoring remorse into the sentence does more harm than good. It would be better to ignore it entirely and pretend everyone said they're deeply sorry.

That’s only a problem if in the majority of cases the person is in fact innocent. Otherwise that stat is red herring.

What this means is the you can be charged with almost anything, and the odds are very high you will plea guilty, regardless of your innocence. There's basically no incentive for the police or prosecutors to show any restraint, they have a "get out of jail free" card in the form of plea bargains.

Let me make up a number. 7%. I think that number of plea bargains would be a huge problem if in 7% of cases the person is in fact innocent. Would you disagree?

And even generally assuming guilt, a number that high gets worrying. Maybe we're only prosecuting the strongest of strong cases or something, but some of the other factors that could be reducing the rate of trials are really bad for justice.

That seems like a totally different problem to solve than your solution which is get rid of plea bargains.

But uh, I never suggested getting rid of plea bargains. You might have confused me with someone else.

<div> and <span> are semantically neutral, so I'm not sure what SEO and accessibility challenges custom elements would introduce?

> "shadow DOM — can be used without JavaScript" Yes, shadow DOM can be used without JS, but I was talking about web components.

> "I'm not sure what SEO and accessibility challenges custom elements would introduce?" If you replace standard elements (such as 'p', 'a', 'button', etc) with custom ones it can hurt SEO and accessibility. There are very few reasons to use custom element names and attributes if they are not full web components.

What's the point of using selector 'link-button[size="large"] a {...}' when you could do the same with '.link-button.large a {...}'?

Not necessarily. CSS alone can allow for a lot of useful complex behaviour. You can customise how something renders (or not) or is interactable based on parent elements, sibling elements, css variables, or other state.

> For example, you can't define a reusable 'host-element' tag and expect some additional elements (or some behavior) to automatically appear inside it each time your html includes or you create <host-element> ... </host-element>.

Actually you can, using <template> and <slot> elements. No JS required.

> What's the point of using selector 'link-button[size="large"] a {...}' when you could do the same with '.link-button.large a {...}'?

This is really two questions:

1. What's the point of using <link-button> instead of a link-button class?

2. What's the point of using a size="large" attribute instead of a "large" class?

To answer 1:

Classes end up being misused compared to custom elements. When you make a custom element (in this example "<link-button>"), you're explicitly saying this is a <link-button>. It is not a <blockquote class="link-button">, it is not a <form class="link-button> and it is most certainly not a <picture class="link-button>. It is a <link-button>.

Also with what was stated above, you can use <link-button> to declare default internal elements (using <template> and <slot>) without using js to say what should be inside a link-button.

To answer 2:

Because you should make impossible states impossible (or at the very least present impossible states as impossible). Size is a state, it could be small, large or any other list of predefined values. If you use classes then you can end up with something like <link-element class="small large">. If you use attributes, you end up with something like <link-button size="small"> or <link-button size="large"> but not <link-button size="small" size="large"> (since that's illegal in html and duplicated attributes are ignored).

Plus you're already using attributes for interactive aria roles (or you should be).

So with a basic collapsible menu:

<nav role="navigation">

<a href="#">home</a>

<button id="navbar-toggle" aria-expanded="false" aria-controls="navbar-menu">Menu</button>

<ul id="navbar-menu">

  <li><a href="#">Login/Logout</a></li>

  <li><a href="#">Feedback</a></li>

  <li><a href="#">Other links...</a></li>

 </ul>

You use css to style the menu being open or not with: `#navbar-toggle[aria-expanded=true] ~ #navbar-menu` and not something inaccessible like: `.navbar-menu.navbar-menu-open`.

> Bags seems to me to be offering crypto-airdrop-pump-and-dumps-as-a-service, where niche celebrities can turn their status as respected community figures into cold hard cash. The people who pay into this are either taken in by the pretense that they’re sponsoring open-source work (in a way orders of magnitude less efficient than just donating money directly), or by the hope that they’re going to win big when the coin goes “to the moon” (which effectively never happens).

Honestly, I think the first category is somewhere between "microscopic" and "nonexistent", but most people in the second category will end up holding the bag when this thing inevitably collapses.

> Honestly, I think the first category is somewhere between "microscopic" and "nonexistent", but most people in the second category will end up holding the bag when this thing inevitably collapses.

I agree. There may be folks willing to support open-source software via a crypto-friendly vehicle, but most involved in this are hoping to make money on a pump and not get left holding the bag.

Everyone involved in this scheme is fully aware of the game being played (or should be) and the risks involved. The notion that "crypto grifters" are corrupting naive open-source developers just strikes me as an odd way to describe such activity.

1. They provide tech that is used to select targets for drone strikes and apparently also for targeting violent attacks on US civilians. I don't know too much about how the algorithm works but simply outsourcing decisions about who lives or dies to opaque algorithms is creepy. It also allows the people behind the operations to avoid personal responsibility for mistakes by blaming the mistakes on the software. It also could enable people to just not think about it and thus avoid the moral question entirely. It's an abstract concern but it is a legitimate one, IMO.

2. I don't know if this is 100% confirmed but we have heard reports that Elon Musk and DOGE collected every piece of government data that they could get their hands, across various government departments and databases. These databases were previously islands that served one specific purpose and didn't necessarily connect to all the other government databases from other departments. It's suspected that palantir software (perhaps along with Grok) is being used to link all of these databases together and cross reference data that was previously not available for law enforcement or immigration purposes. This could enable a lot of potential abuse and probably isn't being subjected to any kind of court or congressional oversight.

I certainly think that Palantir has ethical issues; as I stated in my parent comment, it wouldn't be high on my list of choices for places to work.

But, when it comes to things like (2), this is a failure of regulation and oversight and needs to be treated as such. Note that this doesn't make Palantir "right" (building a platform to do things that are probably bad is still bad), but there's no reason anyone with basic data warehousing skills couldn't have done this before or after.

Essentially, I think people give Palantir specifically too much credit and in turn ignore the fundamental issues they're worried about. Panic over "dismantle Palantir" or even the next step, "dismantle corporate data warehousing" is misguided and wouldn't address the issues at hand; worry about government data fusion needs to be directed towards government data fusion, and worry about computers making targeting decisions needs to be directed at computers making targeting decisions.

If you couldn't go backwards Palantir wouldn't have a market. So, I would consider that a loophole.

Do they? I don't think they even do this, either.

I have really strong knowledge of this from ~10 years ago and weak knowledge from more recently. I'm happy to be proven wrong but my understanding is that they don't sell any data at all, but rather just consulting services for processing data someone already has.

One of those consulting services is probably recommending vendors to supply more data, but as far as I know Palantir literally do not have a first-party data warehouse at all.