Actually, they do. All employees of a company have to pay themselves a minimum wage, at least. Founders are employees in their own company. And they (usually) own majority stock in the company - if there is a payout for YC, founders make more money than YC does.
Costly, yes. But do those costs out-weigh the immediate benefits of slave ownership? Probably not.
I have a hard time thinking slave-owners were hurt by slavery; they made out like bandits, but their gains don't counter all the harm done to those enslaved.
That's a more difficult question to answer. Slaves are only good for the lowest menial labor, such as picking cotton. Up until the introduction of the cotton gin, slavery was dying out in the US because it was unprofitable. The cotton gin made slavery profitable again, but it was again dying out by the time of the Civil War. One of the causes of the Civil War was the southern states trying to erect trade barriers to protect the economics of the slave plantations.
Businesses run on slave labor just could not compete with those run with free labor.
(For example, it was illegal in the slave states to teach slaves to read, and any slave who could read would do well to conceal the skill. The southerners were fearful of an educated slave, because that made them more dangerous. But an illiterate slave was also less useful as a worker.)
>during which she run the company into the ground.
That might be an exaggeration, but yeah. It's hard to fathom that someone could sock away enough wealth to last generations for accomplishing so little (from an investor's perspective).
If I'm deaf, I know that you have no advantage over me merely because you can hear. I think that's "good". The laws are in place to protect minorities.
At the risk misinterpreting what may be an obvious attempt to be sarcastic...
Surely you jest. As the parent noted, such reasoning is squarely on the path to insanity.
What a society could possibly attempt to ensure is "equity". What you are suggesting should be sought is "equality". Since this is (trivially) impossible to attain, to attempt to do so is a fool's errand.
You may be measurably more intelligent than me. Should society force some crippling drug on you, to ensure I am not relatively hindered, merely because you can think more effectively than me?
>Surely you jest. As the parent noted, such reasoning is squarely on the path to insanity.
What's insane is people comparing the government drugging us to equalize our IQ to the enforcement of a law that requires a publicly funded institution to put closed captions on their videos if they're to be publicly available.
I'll bet a reasonable solution comes from this, sets a precedent for the future, and the huffing and puffing will be for naught.
Yes, but deaf people are always at a disadvantage. The law cannot eliminate that. All it can do is make reasonable compromises to mitigate it. This compromise is very clearly not reasonable.
>Yes, but deaf people are always at a disadvantage.
I agree.
>The law cannot eliminate that. All it can do is make reasonable compromises to mitigate it.
I also agree with this. And I believe that's what this law is doing: saying "you may be at a disadvantage in these ways, but you won't be in this way if we can help it."
First of all, I agree with you. I think most others do as well.
The problem is, we can look at a case like this and say, "Obviously we shouldn't lose access to this." Then there's a next time, and a next time, and a next time. And eventually the deaf are at a measurable informational disadvantage to those who can hear. That's why these laws exist.
So, everyone should take a step back and figure out a reasonable solution. I hope that's the reason for the judgment.
> Then there's a next time, and a next time, and a next time. And eventually the deaf are at a measurable informational disadvantage to those who can hear. That's why these laws exist.
While I can sympathize, I'm not sure holding back the progress of an entire society just to not disadvantage a subset of it is as reasonable as you seem to think. I agree that a better solution would be ideal though.
Perhaps they should just fund a machine learning program for closed captioning, instead of punishing people who are advancing social interests.
"I'm not sure holding back the progress of an entire society just to not disadvantage a subset of it is as reasonable as you seem to think."
I think that's a hard argument to make when Encarta 95 was more advanced than this. I'm all for making information public, but a video of the presentation that's not searchable, can't skip from slide to slide, doesn't show the presenter, doesn't have an index, can't click on links etc. isn't exactly the future. And with all the information available these days the standard should really be higher.
> I'm all for making information public, but a video of the presentation that's not searchable, can't skip from slide to slide, doesn't show the presenter, doesn't have an index, can't click on links etc. isn't exactly the future.
Are you so sure that the learning style you seem to prefer is really ideal for all people? Because you sound really sure, but I'm not sure how that could be.
I have no idea what you are talking about. Exposing the data, that is already there, is what gives people the choice how to learn. If you just have a blob of video there's no practical way to e.g. search for something.
You can't search lectures you attend in person either, yet that format has endured for quite some time. This video format provides a certain kind of structure that may be suited to some, but not to others. For those others there are alternatives.
"You can't search lectures you attend in person either, yet that format has endured for quite some time."
There weren't really an alternative, so whether the format has endured or not isn't really relevant. Many other schools are doing this differently. At this point your statement about "holding back the progress of an entire society" seems rather hollow. I can't convince you data exposing data is more useful, but I also shouldn't have to. It's one of the fundamentals of computer systems if not the Internet.
Until society as a whole recognizes the imperative to uplift all its members it does not deserve to move on.
In this case a reasonable response from society, for example, may have been "ok UCB how much will it cost you to sub those? alright, we'll give you the funds from tax money." Lacking such a response all UCB could do was go "oh society, you don't want to help? then you don't get to keep this."
Keep in mind that only a short-sighted person would say UCB messed up here. They didn't. The USA as a whole messed up, so the USA as a whole gets the stick.
> Until society as a whole recognizes the imperative to uplift all its members it does not deserve to move on.
That's a hard argument to make too. Some of the people that may have learned from these lectures might go on to champion disability rights, or may go on to invent tech that may address some of those disabilities. We simply can't all progress in lockstep, and trying to force that is probably harmful to all.
"how will they make their content easy enough to grasp for the guy with an IQ of 60? He's disabled too, after all..."
Not only is it false equivalence, it's also addressed in the first (and second) paragraph in the letter from the DoJ: "The ADA prohibits discrimination against qualified individuals with disabilities by public entities. [0]".
"If it feels insane, it's because it is insane"
It only "feels insane" because they violated the law in so many instances. If we consider all the effort, time and cost that went in to making the content in the first place, the cost of compliance is marginal.
> If we consider all the effort, time and cost that went in to making the content in the first place, the cost of compliance is marginal.
Nonsense. The content is normal undergrad lectures recorded using no special techniques, with YouTube/Google providing automated captioning. The DOJ letter states specifically that the automated captioning is non-compliant (at least it was in March 2015) and that additionally, the videos would need to be edited such that all relevant visible content is described by the lecturer, and poor color contrast is avoided etc. For 20,000 hours of video the cost of doing that manually is huge relative to the funds available to such a project in a public university struggling with a budget deficit and generally with the difficult financial climate for public higher education.
I would still say it's small compared to the size of the activity. But let's not argue that and take another approach.
Someone below said that they assessed it would cost (at least) $1,000,000. There are 20,000 lectures so that's $50 per lecture, which seems reasonable. With a $3 CPM on youtube, that's ~16,000 views per video. I'm sure there's some hurdle in the way to enable ads, but the point still stands. The costs here per video is small enough that it's hard to at claim that the videos are both very valuable and at the same time impossible to make compliant.
Wouldn't you say that something on the internet can be valuable without attracting page impressions at a rate high enough to generate advertising revenue?
Many things are valuable. The problem here is that the school don't want to, or can't, pay the full price that it costs to legally distribute the videos. Maybe it's actually fair that the people who want the videos contribute to the cost in some way. Whether that is donations, ads or labor in the form of transcription.
1. UC Berkeley is an entity that uses the internet
2. The internet can be used, to great advantage, for distributing video files
3. The video files in this case were made with the best intentions of improving the world, and this is also the reason for wanting them to be available to the internet-connected world, for free. They harm no-one, and they make the world a better place.
4. So they should be able to use the internet to distribute their video files, without any special extra costs.
I don't think anyone disagrees that the videos are good to have, but it's not the issue of whether or not Berkley should have been distributing the videos, it's that Berkley was not fulfilling its obligations. As outlined in the Department of Justice report [1], Berkley was making these videos after the guidelines were put in place and after Berkley adopted its own guidelines and had a required signoff for all such projects going forward. They also had and have a resource on campus that assists with compliance as required and conceived by Berkley itself.
The issue isn't 20000 formerly made videos aren't compliant, it's that Berkley was making the videos out of compliance while claiming to be compliant.
THe DoJ's assessment is that Berkley has the resources to correct their error without "undue ... [burden]", so their options were take the videos down or engage in a program to meet compliance witht he videos, less they be penalized.
Berkley opted to just take the videos down. I get this from a financial standpoint, even though it'd be nice if they aimed for compliance.
But don't mistake them taking it down as an order so much; they weren't making the videos accessible as they had pledged to, they claimed they were, and they were continuing not to comply. The complaintants called them on it, and it's unfortunate, but they should have been complying from the beginning before they had a video queue of 20000.
I hope from here on out they will make compliant videos and use their on-campus resources; Berkley's response certainly seems to suggest interest in compliance, so I hope that this can just be a tragedy that we can move past.
You're trying to tell us the judgement follows the law.
We're saying the judgement lacks discernment and does more harm than good. I feel the prejudice suffered by everyone far outweights the justice brought by this case.
I disagree with that conclusion. I'm trying to say Berkley has the resources as determined by a third party, has been lying about compliancy, violating Federal and their own implemented procedures, and during the production of these videos had the resources to do what they said they would. They just did not for whatever reason.
Berkley made a mistake, and their solution to correct it is to just take it down. The Justice Department made it clear in their report that it wasn't an all or nothing outcome and they were willing to work with Berkley on a palatable solution, Berkley just chose the easiest option.
This thread is getting old, so I'll respond collectively to the comments since my last comment.
They produced videos that can't be distributed. This isn't much different from say having an electronics project that isn't FCC certified, not having licensed the content in a video or not distributing source files with software containing GPL code. I can produce all those things all I want, but I can't distribute it and I can't continue distributing it just because I've already started.
I guess, in closing this thread, I'm just going to admit that fundamentally I do not recognize the moral right of a minority of disabled people to demand that video lectures be produced in any particular way. It's great that steps are being taken to make things accessible for as many people as possible, and that new technology is constantly being developed that helps that happen with less effort/cost. But, the video files can be distributed: they are computer files; that is what the internet does.
At the end of the day, for any given resource, there will always be a subset of people who can benefit maximally from that resource, and everyone else who is impeded in some way (can't understand target language, don't have appropriate education; suffer from a mental or physical disability that is relevant; don't have personal freedom to view resource, etc). And though it may seem childish to you, in fact the people are absolutely correct who say "This is political correctness gone mad. If you take your arguments to their logical conclusions we'll never be able to distribute anything because some minority group will be saying it's unfair."
I've spent quite a bit of time over the last few weeks following this saga. I get the impression that national-level organizations like the National Association of the Deaf approve of the sort of selfish, spiteful litigation that was carried out. It doesn't make one think positively of them at all.
You can still distribute them, they aren't illegal. It's just Berkeley that can't, because of their mandate as a public entity. If Berkeley could continue distribute the files without compliance there simply would be no way to enforce that what public entities are distributing is accessible. You're of course free to think that they shouldn't have to produce accessible content, but I don't find that to be a particularly noble standpoint.
Fair enough, however there's a false dichotomy in what you say there. Berkeley did take the decision, in 2015, to stop releasing material of this sort and to focus on producing specialized material that satisfies all access concerns (e.g. their edx.org material[1]). So what we're talking about here is pre-2015 material that, as a matter of fact, exists. Neither they, nor necessarily I, are arguing that they should be free to produce non-compliant material henceforth. However, I am arguing that they should be free to distribute material that already exists. It exists, it was produced with the best intentions, it makes the world a better place. Some people on the disabilities rights side seem to think that public access to this innocently-produced material should be taken away, despite their full awareness that the world will be strictly worse off after doing so. I don't find that to be a particularly noble standpoint.
[1] Their edx.org material is depressingly dumbed-down relative to their video lectures, but that's a separate topic; welcome to the future I guess.
A minor point to correct though - the complainants at no point sought to take down the videos, nor was the order from the DoJ to take down the videos. Never did the case order that Berkley had to stop distributing them - it was Berkley's response which allowed them to avoid the damages they would owe under Title II and to avoid having to implement the system to help ensure compliance going forward.
It's why their decision is really so strange, as per the order from the DoJ, the Department looked like it was being fairly reasonable (there wasn't an immediate timeline produced, there wasn't a mandate to change structure that didn't already exist).
Again, I think everyone agrees that the world is better with the videos online - even the complainants. What the complainants wanted was for Berkley to start enforcing their compliance, not to take down the video.
My gripe with the LBRY guys and most opposition to the DoJ/Complainants that brought the issue to a head is that everyone seems to think it's two blind people demanding that Berkley take the videos down when that was never the case. It was two blind people pointing out that Berkley was not doing what they committed to and promised to, and wanting that to change going forward. The 20000 videos were evidence, not property that anyone was going after.
Truthfully, the LBRY guys blew this out of proportion and I feel like they either misunderstood or misrepresented the facts in their post. I'm glad they mirrored it all, but the hype built around it is not appropriate given the actual story.
So all in all, it's this concept that I think needs to be corrected:
> Some people on the disabilities rights side seem to think that public access to this innocently-produced material should be taken away, despite their full awareness that the world will be strictly worse off after doing so.
Since no one proposed or wanted that. The removal was just a legal solution, not a legal demand from the complainants.
> What the complainants wanted was for Berkley to start enforcing their compliance, not to take down the video.
Although, again, Berkeley has already started enforcing their compliance, since 2015 in fact. So what the complainants/DOJ said in effect was "It's not enough that you have started to only release accessibility-compliant videos, we want you to also go back through 20,000 hours of historical video, and change those, presumably via painstaking manual editing since we deem automated captioning to be insufficient". To which the response of the vast majority of people who've commented on this issue, including many kind-hearted liberal types, is "Sorry, nope".
The deaf are already at a measurable disadvantage. They're deaf. We should take steps to mitigate that. We should make their lives easier in whatever ways are practical. This is obviously not one of them.
We can't make being deaf the same as not being deaf. Disabled people will always be at some disadvantage to their abled counterparts. All we can do is make reasonable compromises. And it should be utterly obvious to everyone involved that this is not a reasonable compromise.
It's unfortunate that this is the sort of means by which these issues are addressed, but it's more unfortunate that are society does not take action on issues like these until these sort of means are used.
It's horrible that these were taken down, but it's far more horrible that disadvantaged populations are ignored, and put at further disadvantage.
And ultimately the files are still available in a more egalitarian way than they were before. The outcome is arguably better than the way things were before!
> It's horrible that these were taken down, but it's far more horrible that disadvantaged populations are ignored, and put at further disadvantage.
What about blind people? Or people who cannot afford internet access? Or people who don't speak English?
If you take your reasoning to its ultimate conclusion, nobody can give anything away for free, because there will always be some minority that is put at a disadvantage.
>The deaf are already at a measurable disadvantage. They're deaf. We should take steps to mitigate that.
Which is why we're not trying to cure their deafness. Instead, we're trying to ensure that the deaf have access to the same information those who aren't deaf have.
That doesn't change the fact that the outcome here is illogical. If you want to make things accessible, you need to penalize the institutions that don't make things accessible. Instead, we gave them the option to take it down. So the general public got penalized and UC Berkeley's incentives didn't change at all. Now they just won't make their lectures public.
And indeed they already stopped making them public, in 2015. This latest thing is them being forced to remove public access to their historical collection.
Really the right answer was to be taken way back when they decided to put their courses online. They should have budgeted the right amount not only to record and serve these courses, but to also observe this applicable law.
Having come this far without doing so, this situation becomes a reasonable response. And I think everyone knows that it is not ideal.
What would be even better is if the new host would make them ADA accessible, or ask someone to do so for them (or other solution).
My understanding is that most of this material was made for use in UCB classes. If a UCB class that used it had a disabled student they would spend the money to accommodate that student. It was not intended at the time for release to the general public.
Now, years later, they released it for free to the general public as is.
>Then there's a next time, and a next time, and a next time. And eventually the deaf are at a measurable informational disadvantage to those who can hear. That's why these laws exist.
Maybe the laws should specify a tax-funded department to go around close-captioning everything then.
The fact that that people writing the law had good intentions doesn't change the fact that they're morons who wrote a demonstrably terrible law. With due apology due all deaf people, I'd rather repeal the law and leave deaf people at a disadvantage than leave it in place and throw the baby out with the bathwater.
> Maybe the laws should specify a tax-funded department to go around close-captioning everything then.
Berkeley had one. It was called BRCOE. People creating content before 2015 had the option, or not, of using BRCOE, but had to "self certify" that the content was accessible.
> UC Berkeley’s faculty creates and publishes courses for the public on UC BerkeleyX. Faculty developing UC BerkeleyX courses can, but are not required to, develop courses in collaboration with the Berkeley Resource Center for Online Education (BRCOE). BRCOE follows best practices in design for accessibility and also has a quality assurance process that includes deploying various accessibility evaluators; remediating layout, page structure, downloadable or styling accessibility barriers; and obtaining transcripts of all audio and video files associated with a course.
> Prior to July 1, 2015, UC Berkeley also allowed faculty and instructors to design, develop and publish courses through a self-service model, which did not include support from BRCOE. Beginning July 1, 2015, UC Berkeley advised the Department that all faculty using the selfservice model will be asked to sign off on a list of accessibility resource reviews prior to publishing the course. The sign-off statements include:
> 1. I have reviewed and implemented edX’s “Guidelines for Creating Accessible Content.”2
> 2. All PDFs attached to my course follow the University of California Office of the President recommendations.3
> 3. I have reviewed and implemented applicable guidelines into my course from the Web Accessibility team’s resource “Top 10 Tips for Making your Website Accessible.”4
> 4. All mp3 and mp4 files in my course have been submitted for transcripts for SubRip Text (SRT) files.
> 5. All video and audio in my course have accurate captioning available to users through the edX HTML5 player.
>Going into debt to vacation in the Caribbean (which is what he did) is not the same as using it to say start a business or get an education.
They differ only if the metric you choose to measure against the debt is "money". But some of us do things for other than money; happiness comes to mind.
You're very right. If you need a vacation for mental health purposes (doesn't even have to be clinical) that's still an investment. But if it's your typical entertainment oriented vacation then that's a poor use of debt.
>Tesla's YTD return more than matches the overall market
What is so significant about YTD?
You can arrange the data in any number of ways to tell a story: A Tesla investment since 2014 has lost money (and been diluted). Go back to 2013 and suddenly it's a goldmine.
Tesla having been a "good purchase" depends on what you paid. But I have a feeling that more people are sitting on a cost basis >$250 than <$100, in which case a TSLA investment has been mediocre.
And if you owe bond holders a billion dollars and your company has a billion dollars in assets when it goes under, the bond holders get your company and the stock holders get nothing. Or perhaps the assets are sold to another party to pay off the bond holders and it's that other party that gets the company for the price of paying off the bond holders.
You realize you can do everything you said, without living in someone's closet, in 99% of the world, right?
YC is making billions and their workers are living in closets. That's insane.