Hacker News Reader

Eelongateon Why thieves love to steal catalytic converters

Texans decide for themselves what their social contract is. Texan law is not dictated by the French.

Eelongateon Why thieves love to steal catalytic converters

Coaxing a cat with a cordless angle grinder? Your hypothetical concern might seem plausible the way you've written it, sparse on descriptive details, but in real life there is a lot more information to consider that will almost certainly disambiguate the situation.

> your hypothetical "legal to shoot thieves" law.

Not hypothetical in Texas. So if you've got any real examples of teenagers looking for cats under cars getting shot, by all means trot them out.

Eelongateon Why thieves love to steal catalytic converters

All you've done here is reiterate what he said and insult him for thinking it. That's not even remotely persuasive.

Eelongateon The Kessler Syndrome: Space junk in orbit

That's a usefully expansive definition of ecology. Next time somebody in my household forgets to put the toilet seat down, I'm going to lodge an 'ecological' complaint with them. After all, I am an organism and bathrooms are an environment; it ticks all the boxes.

Less snark: I think definition (or more accurately, your expansive interpretation of it) misses the spirit of the way that word is generally used.

Eelongateon Vertiwalk Vertical Walking

If the user has a medical emergency while between floors and is unable to continue using this device themselves, will it be easy/safe for responders to get them down?

Eelongateon Amazon Ion – A richly-typed, self-describing, hierarchical serialization format

Did anything ever become of the lispy language that was being built using Ion as its homoiconic syntax? I'm afraid I can't recall what it was called. Fusion maybe?

Eelongateon FDA wants 55 years to process FOIA request over vaccine data

This country has more than 300 million people. Any federal agency having a bottleneck of merely ten clerks for processing FOIA requests is unreasonable to the absurd.

Eelongateon A concept that took hold in the ’70s haunted everything from seat belts to masks

Getting the wording slightly wrong? The US Surgeon General was quite clear:

> "Seriously people- STOP BUYING MASKS! They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus"

I don't think typing "NOT" is a slight error in wording. The message was deliberate, and it wasn't just the US Surgeon General either. All the center/center-left media, which is what I read, was echoing the same message. Fox News and Trump telling lies is par for the course, but I don't consider that a license for everybody else to start telling lies as well.

Eelongateon FDA wants 55 years to process FOIA request over vaccine data

I'm starting to get a sinking feeling in my gut that much of our modern society is a house of cards built out of people hoping nobody else notices they have no clue what they're doing.

I know competent people exist.. but how many are in the positions that really matter? How many of our intuitions are held aloft by loony-toons inertial, like a coyote who ran off a cliff and hasn't looked down yet?

Eelongateon A concept that took hold in the ’70s haunted everything from seat belts to masks

WHO isn't part of the US government though.

Eelongateon A concept that took hold in the ’70s haunted everything from seat belts to masks

I'd guess both, and my guess is part of the problem is fat people who think diet soda is an alternative to actually dieting. Which seems like the sort of risk compensation the article is talking about.

I tend to consider reality TV to be fake, but I think people like this really do exist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIAFe7zaCRU

> "Our mom told us when we were younger, if we ate a sugar you drink a diet coke afterwards and it will cancel out the sugar"

> Do you believe that to be true?

> "I did when I was a kid."

Eelongateon A concept that took hold in the ’70s haunted everything from seat belts to masks

There was no shortage of t-shirts and even if wrapping a t-shirt around your head wasn't effective, at least it would have been logically consistent with the eventual messaging of "wear a better mask now that you can get them."

The experts decided to burn their own reputations for a short term benefit, and are paying the price now with vaccine hesitancy and growing ire towards experts.

Eelongateon A concept that took hold in the ’70s haunted everything from seat belts to masks

> diet soda (what if people chug the stuff and it makes the obesity epidemic worse?).

Isn't that one true though? Anecdotally, since the introduction of the stuff Americans have only gotten fatter. It makes intuitive sense to me that artificial sugars also contribute to insulin resistance, increasing the risk of diabetes. And while for any X you can pretty easily find nutrition studies that say "X kills you" and "X makes you live longer", it's not too hard to find studies linking diet soda to obesity: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4498394/

Eelongateon Spy camera detection using smartphone time-of-flight sensors

Just try to remember the spiders protect you from the other bugs.

Eelongateon Seattle residents launch Approval Voting initiative for representative elections [pdf]

The most important objective of a democracy should be the peaceful transition of power, facilitated by a perception of legitimacy and fairness. Anything else is secondary to that perception. Peaceful transitions of power are important foremost because political violence is abhorrent. Secondly, systems with established track records for peaceful transitions of power encourage people to feel confident about the future, which in turn encourages long term investment and robust economic growth.

Eelongateon Microsoft gaming chief calls for industry-wide game preservation

Gameboys had backwards compatibility as well, at least for a while. Probably half the games I ever played on my gameboy color were released for the original gameboy. Playstations also had backwards compatibility at around the same time.

Eelongateon Dark Humor in the Dark Ages (2014)

This really puts the guillotine into context.

Eelongateon YouTube takes down independent court livestreams

They're about as long medieval maces, with a similarly heavy bit of metal on the end. And when either is held in the hand and swung, they have substantially more leverage than the hand itself. Unless you think he was swinging a skateboard from his armpit?

This conversation is getting ridiculous.

Eelongateon YouTube takes down independent court livestreams

You've heard of levers, I'm sure. One classic 'simple machines'. Skateboards have more leverage than fists.

Eelongateon YouTube takes down independent court livestreams

"Machine gun? Not a machine gun? What's the difference?"

You may not appreciate it, but there is a substantial difference, not just practically but legally. If you're ignorant of that difference, that's fine. Everybody is mistaken or ignorant some of the time. We're all human after all. But if you know the difference and choose to use the wrong terminology anyway, then you are being deliberately deceptive. Either way, it warrants a correction.

Eelongateon Space debris forces astronauts on space station to take shelter in return ships

Main battle tanks still get destroyed by missiles, the "appropriate armor" you're talking about is fantasy.

>Space debris isn’t going anywhere

It literally is. Space debris in low orbits falls back into the atmosphere. Just stop making more of it and the skies will clear up over time (a few years at most, for most stuff in LEO.)

Eelongateon YouTube takes down independent court livestreams

> I think people only have opinions because of what they have heard from the media.

While I think there is doubtlessly some truth to that, I think it misses the bigger picture which is: People weren't blank slates going into this story. Most people who care about the trial one way or the other already had opinions about subjects relating to the trial before they ever heard of this particular incident. People already had opinions about gun control, self defense, protesting, etc.

Media companies, knowing there are already a bunch of people inclined to feel one way or the other, find it convenient to pander to people with these preformed opinions or biases.

Eelongateon Corded headphones are making an unexpected return

Sometimes when it's dark and I don't know exactly where the socket is, I'll hold the plug by the prongs itself so I can feel both the prongs and the socket at the same time.

Eelongateon Corded headphones are making an unexpected return

> Easy to mispolarise

I've never given polarization any thought and never had any problems, so I don't buy this being an actually a problem in practice.

> not earthed

NEMA-1 aren't earthed, but NEMA-1 sockets have been forbidden since the 60s, so that fails the "unchanged" part of coldtea's assertion. NEMA-1 plugs may still be used on Class II double insulated appliances, which is fine. And NEMA-5 does have a ground.

> not safe when partially inserted.

I've never worried about it, never been hurt by it, and never heard of anybody being hurt by it. This is a "problem" that I often hear described by Europeans online but it's totally alien to me. Please remember that we only put 120V through these things, which is substantially less nippy than 240V.

Eelongateon China and India will have to ‘justify’ watered down coal pledge–Cop26 president

> “But, ultimately, of course, what we need to ensure is that we continue to work on this deal, on these commitments, and on the issue of coal, China and India are going to have to justify to some of the most climate vulnerable countries what happened.”

'Have to', or what? What leverage does he or his organization have over these sovereign nuclear armed nations? If he said 'should' I would not have batted an eye, but talking as though you're in a position of power when you really aren't just makes you seem weak and out of touch.

I think this matters, because we need to be realistic about the limitations of a diplomatic/political approach to solving this problem. I am becoming increasingly convinced that a technological solution is more viable than a diplomatic one. A solar sunshade would cost hundreds of billions of dollars, which is not an insurmountable amount of money given the magnitude of the problem. It would not solve the acidification of our oceans, but it would address rising sea levels and temperature-driven severe weather. It's not a great solution, but it might be the best solution that doesn't hinge on diplomatic impossibilities.

Eelongateon There may be a steep privacy cost if you park here

Parking garages only make economic sense when the cost of enough land for a parking lot exceeds the cost of making a parking garage, which is almost never true except in urban areas. I'm sure there might be rare exceptions, but the Trader Joe's in question (Trader Joe’s at Hollywood and Vine) is definitely not one of those exceptions.

Eelongateon There may be a steep privacy cost if you park here

If my share of the cost is insignificant, then car drivers shouldn't be too bent out of shape about me not having to pay it.

Eelongateon There may be a steep privacy cost if you park here

If it's walkable, the car drivers have made their choice and can pay for it. If they don't like the price, they can walk instead. Or, use their cars to drive a few more miles to a grocery store with more agreeable parking. There are more than a dozen Trader Joe's in LA, surely one of them has agreeable parking terms. And that's not counting all the other grocery stores in town.

You should look up the specific Trader Joe's the article is talking about on google maps. It's smack in the middle of Hollywood, within walking distance of numerous businesses and tourist attractions. Expecting free parking in that neighborhood is completely unreasonable.

Eelongateon There may be a steep privacy cost if you park here

> In a lot (most?) of the US most places are far enough away [...]

I've never seen a grocery store with a parking garage (opposed to a parking lot) that wasn't in a city. If the grocery store has a parking garage instead of a parking lot, then it is almost certainly in an urban area and public transit and is within walking distance of many residences and businesses.

This is in fact the case for the particular Trader Joe's in question. Look up "Trader Joes’s at Hollywood and Vine". That neighborhood is easily walkable, has at least some public transit, and their parking garage is within easy walking distance of numerous other businesses.