cedilla

By that argument "dickhead" is just a britishism meaning "unreasonable person" and just as appropriate.

It's hard not to react sarcastically to this. But I will try:

There's nothing special about EU regulations vis-a-vis other laws. China, Russia and the US also have laws, many of which are also perceived as overly bureaucratic.

The problem is: you never get to have your goals or arguments listened to when you fail to represent yourself as a basic human. That means not putting weird stuff in your mouth on camera, not looking too unkempt, not being too belligerent before you get to your points – and never, never, never discussing the fine differences between ephebophilia and pedophilia on a mailing list.

His point of view and his goals are completely besides the point that he is unfit as a spokesperson for them.

Sadly. Because I agree with him quite a lot, and he does have good arguments.

People who just ignore big banners will just tell you that "they have been hacked", as if getting hacked is like a weather phenomenon. They won't even connect them getting hacked with the big red banner.

If they even notice, that is. It's just as possible that they play open relay for a year before they move to a new phone because their battery is always dying so fast for some unknown reason.

Stallman actively hurts the cause with his behaviour. I'm not only talking about his eccentricities, but also the adversarial and combative language. Yes, Amazon is trying to swindle us, but few people will be convinced of that when you start your argument by calling the kindle an "Amazon swindle" every time, directly implying that anyone who has one is an idiot or even malicious.

Yes, it's unfair that someone can be 100% correct but people won't listen to them because of their appearance or mannerisms. But whining about that unfairness is unproductive. People will never listen to someone who can't stop themselves from eating stuff from their foot in public.

"Displaying an angry warning message" is one of the tools we've used for decades, and never with much success.

Wow, that looks to be very well-lit. The bad lighting was the only really spooky thing about the station.

What does it mean for a quantity to be linear?

"The Bell Curve" is, let's say, highly controversial and not a good introduction into the topic. Its claim that genetics are the main predictor of IQ, which was very weakly supported at the time, has been completely and undeniably refuted by science in the thirty years since it's publication.

Isn't a bit premature to jump to "it's BS" just because one random commenter on some forum says it's wrong?

Journalists make lots of mistake, and it's good to keep that in mind, but random people in forums are even worse.

Also; most sex work as it happens is exploitative, but there is no reason why sex work must necessarily be exploitative. Criminalising sex work makes it far more likely that sex work is exploitative. So there is really no contradiction at all.

(Though as nations where sex work is legal show: decriminalisation is not sufficient to make most sex work non-exploitative)

Flood myths are much more common than that. But the easy reason is that floods are extremely common, and flood plains are among the best places to build a city.

Is 80% even that high? I thought the idea behind VC was to fund companies where 90% are doomed to fail, 9% might do okay, in order to cash in big on the 1% that have stellar success.

Am I way off with my numbers there?

What's your point besides whining about the general state of "delevopers", whoever that is? Are you volunteering to take over maintenance of GNU Screen?

Really, the gall to complain about "laziness" when all you're doing is spreading negativity on a forum.

Because it's interesting?

The 3DES saga is still ongoing...

The distance completely changes the dynamic. If I tell you there's a crazy axe murderer in your house, you should be afraid. If I tell you there's a crazy axe murderer on Venus, how afraid are you?

And unless we are completely wrong about physics, the maximum speed of a weapon will be the same as it today - very close to 1c.

The only reason why we can't out sentient protons folded out of 28 microdimensions into our 3 macrodimensions is the same reason we can't rule out that our universe is actually the works of a giant hand puppet player called Zquaarx.

The problem is just - if any of what happens in 3BP was to actually happen, we would not have to be a little wrong (like Newton was in regard to celestial mechanics) but so wrong that it doesn't even make sense to apply what we know at all.

This is, by the way, the exact point of the first part of the first book: physicists discover that all off the known physics are completely wrong.

Yes, but the next bush is dozens of light years away. The analogy breaks down because the distances are different in quality.

The only reason why this becomes such a problem in the Three-Body-Problem is the existence of magic in that universe. Thinking protons, instant communication, folded dimensions, easy interstellar travel, it's all interesting speculation inspired by physics, but incompatible with our actual universe.

The dark forest theory makes for a great book premise, but it probably doesn't apply in real life simply because the distances are so far.

The universe is not a forest. It's a gigantic, empty ocean. The next, dangerous tribe is not lurking behind a bush 2 meters away, but is sitting on an island that's so far away it will take centuries to go there, if it is possible at all

I don't think I disagree on any of this, but is there any actionable advice in this post? I don't think I really understand what point the author tries to make.

Maybe it's advocating against overly clever but inscrutable code, but I think clean code does that better. Yes, "clean code" is underspecified, but so is CRISP. And I can turn that opening argument right around: who wants to write incorrect, unreadable, idiosyncratic, complicated or slow code?

Software is mediocre today? You should have seen it back in the day. It was a brittle, arcane mess.

Software isn't as exciting any more, but that excitement isn't gone because newbs don't have to look up what -O stands for anymore. It's because it's wildly more reliable.

Italy does have protection from repeated prosecution as a fundamental right (not least due to the directly binding charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union).

And as the US population currently finds out, what's written in a constitution is not worth much when there is inadequate rule of law (and the US constitution offers comparatively few protections as is).

It's always a good idea to ask for a lawyer (and to demand that the embassy of your home country gets informed).

However, the consequences of not talking can vary wildly. In some countries, police might torture you. Some countries might hold silence against you or even punish you for withholding exculpatory information.

> The number of text-based web users may be shrinking

I wouldn't be surprised if it's growing in absolute numbers, in relative numbers it stays at essentially 0% where it always was.

I want to to be charitable, but still: the idea that media company invest as much money as they possibly can into creating media, and thus anti-piracy measures would have any impact at all on the amount or quality of art created is just ridiculous.

Especially if you talk about abandoned media. Do you really think not selling old TV shows on dvd is a way to finance new art?

It also always lead to the same downward spiral of prosecutors complaining that the data they need to investigate drug trade is right there, but they can only access it for terrorism reasons, so why not add drug trade to the list of exceptions. Repeat with homicide, then fraud, all the way down to traffic infractions.

And when I change a setting in a program, where does it set that environment variable?

The question may be genuine but its phrasing probably suggests an allegation to most readers.

It's both funny and tragic that people like the owner of that place go through life constantly meeting people who are unprofessional, ungrateful, mean zombies who miss the best deal of their life due to their bad behaviour. Stepping on the same rake again and again. Tragic is that there will always be new victims who start out by giving the owner the benefit of the doubt, and they will be losing time and money to him.

It would be, but that advantage was with very specific lamps that are now obsolete for more than 100 years.