Hacker News Reader

cnnsuckson Qualcomm Report on LTE for Drones

I see. So they're operating in the ISM portion of 2.4 and 5GHz. In that case they can encrypt. So the original question seems a good one; why haven't they yet?

cnnsuckson Qualcomm Report on LTE for Drones

Many of these systems are using the amateur radio service bands. Often 5GHz for video, 2.3-2.4GHz for control and telemetry and less frequently 1.2GHz, 900MHz and 70cm are also used. The FCC doesn't allow encrypted traffic on amateur bands except for specific cases such as satellite telecommand. I suppose that has discouraged adoption of cryptography.

What are commercial operators doing? Another limitation of Amateur bands is that they can't be used for commercial purposes, so licensed commercial drone operators must be using commercial bands where cryptography is permitted. Don't know myself; haven't looked into it.

cnnsuckson Puerto Rico files for biggest ever U.S. local government bankruptcy

"but inappropriate to cut obligations to creditors we call 'bondholders'?"

The part where I said bondholders should be held harmless is a fiction inside your head. When the gears finally strip the bondholders in these cases (Detroit, GM, etc.) take epic baths, and I don't shed any tears for them either. $7 billion in bondholders’ obligations in Detroit were erased, for example.

So I suppose there is little difference between supposed "creditors we call pensioners" and actual creditors; everyone gets wrecked.

cnnsuckson Puerto Rico files for biggest ever U.S. local government bankruptcy

Well that's not the precedent. When these mismanaged governments finally throw in the towel and hand the reins over to grownups what happens is the pensions and retiree benefits get cut. Detroit just had this happen after the state stepped in and dealt with that mess. Cleveland is in the process of cutting benefits before it goes bankrupt. CalPERS cut pensions last December for retirees from Loyalton. Same thing in the private sector; GM cut retiree benefits with the help of the Federal Government. Last year the Iron Workers union saw huge pension cuts. USPS is going to have this happen as well, probably very soon; you can be very, very sure Trump and the Republicans aren't going to bail out that hot mess.

We're actually getting pretty handy at cutting retiree pensions and benefits. The deals negotiated decades ago predicated on fantastic rates of growth aren't really plausible and they eventually have to be reworked. That means cuts. That's reality and reality has, at long last, arrived for Puerto Rico.

So expect cuts. Don't believe there is some pot of gold out there filled with untaxed entities that just need to be tapped to fix everything. Its fiction and it won't happen like that.

The big reckoning after Puerto Rico is going to be Illinois. Producers are straight up evacuating IL while the state government just keeps digging itself deeper into the hole. That situation is going to set all sorts of precedents for how this nonsense gets resolved.

cnnsuckson Facebook to add 3k people to community operations team to improve moderation

Seems to me that keeping the labor cost reasonable isn't really that difficult. The only real problem is concealing the process well enough that it doesn't provoke outrage. Understand as you read what follows and the hairs on your neck stand up that this is --- after enough layers of BS are applied --- very close to what will evolve.

Just yesterday we read about how Facebook 'helps' marketers 'track when people were feeling overwhelmed, worthless or insecure' [1]. Focusing on people that exhibit this frequently, particularly if they're being bullied, would catch a bunch of these online suicide cases without squandering labor on everyone else.

Then all you need to do is invent enough euphemisms to enable a degree of profiling; the rape streams that go unreported for days are almost always gangbangers. Should be a trivial job to factor that group out, by their grammar alone.

There you go; the chronically depressed types and the gangbangers account for probably 95% of the headline making cases Facebook has to worry about. Focus a small workforce on those two groups (and possibly a few others; extremists, etc.) and Bob's your uncle.

[1] http://www.moneyandmentalhealth.org/facebook-mental-health/

cnnsuckson Who Defines Expertise?

Experts are those employed to say what The Powers That Be (tm) prefer to hear, regardless of how wrong they get it. Others get no play.

cnnsuckson Southwest to Stop Overbooking as United Uproar Echoes

The first claim in your first link... exactly what I expected to find: "By overbooking it actually does help keep the fares down"

Money. Low low prices. That's why people that have paid for tickets are getting beat up and kicked off planes.

In all sorts of other aspects of our world we're expected to gladly accept higher costs as the price of our "values." Higher energy costs, mandates for various types of insurance, taxes to fund one agenda or another and on and on. Perhaps you haven't considered this yet but delivering the seat that a paying customer has paid for and not subjecting any of these otherwise compliant paying customers to the possibility of being thrown off a plane --- by martial force if necessary --- is a "value" we might aspire to.

And if that means maybe you are a little more careful about just how often you bop across the continent in a 600 mph jet because the cost is a little higher, or you can't play ticket games with as much abandon as you're used to well... perhaps that isn't really the end of the world.

cnnsuckson Why Criminals Target Patient Data

Indeed. If you believe HIPAA has ensured everything is encrypted you've been suckered by the potemkin village that is EHR compliance pencil whipping. The work is farmed out to all sorts of fly-by-night shops that are expert at passing the audits and filling out the applications that make the grant money flow and get the necessary boxes ticked with the feds.

cnnsuckson Why Criminals Target Patient Data

Add no point in this piece of clickbait will you learn "Why" criminals target patient data.

cnnsuckson Chicago's About to Get a Lot Less Orange

It's isn't important. This is what you dwell on and write about when you find yourself living in paradise and all your actual problems are solved.

cnnsuckson USA Facts – Federal, state, and local data from government sources

"Can you explain the obsession people have with the Constitution?"

It's the foundational document of the most powerful, prosperous nation in the history of the species. Things like that attract allegiance. It would be strange if it didn't.

"It seems like some people believe all new laws shouldn't exist if they're not in the Constitution."

Your "some people" straw man is likely fictional, or at least very rare. Laws that conflict with the constitution can be struct down via Judicial Review. Otherwise new laws are entirely compatible with the constitution. The US and its various states have no difficulty producing reams of new laws that survive the constitution just fine.

cnnsuckson Mexican Newspaper Shuts Down, Saying It Is Too Dangerous to Continue

yes, that's why Canada is just as bad a Mexico, with Canadian drug cartels mass beheading their rivals in the streets of Toronto.

cnnsuckson Everyone loves Bernie Sanders. Except, it seems, the Democratic party

You're waving around your favorite poor white trash hit piece, just like you haters have been doing since it was published.

cnnsuckson Everyone loves Bernie Sanders. Except, it seems, the Democratic party

The "comfortable professional class" doesn't like having their contempt and hate called out, so they mod down their critics.

cnnsuckson Everyone loves Bernie Sanders. Except, it seems, the Democratic party

"comfortable professional class"

cnnsuckson Everyone loves Bernie Sanders. Except, it seems, the Democratic party

"So basically increase the cost of goods for everyone so more people can be employed at a higher wage?"

Whenever the topic happens to be energy higher costs are offered as proper penance.

cnnsuckson Everyone loves Bernie Sanders. Except, it seems, the Democratic party

...and it wasn't actually that difficult to pick up on either.

cnnsuckson Everyone loves Bernie Sanders. Except, it seems, the Democratic party

If someone in establishment media wrote with such contempt for any aggrieved minority in the US, for instance the millions of black Americians that destroy themselves, their families and their communities with drugs, alcohol and aggressive anti-intellectualism, they'd be drummed out of the elite bubble as 'racist.' But you can shit on white trash if you want; the Internet will cite your hate for years when you single out those people.

How brave.

cnnsuckson Everyone loves Bernie Sanders. Except, it seems, the Democratic party

"increasing minimum wage, make it easier to unionize, universal health care, protecting/expanding social security, and a bunch of other policies"

Despite what every source of 'truth' that you have self selected has trained you to believe, we don't actually want more bennies. Subsisting on the bennies you decide you can afford for us is not our aspiration.

cnnsuckson Everyone loves Bernie Sanders. Except, it seems, the Democratic party

"compelling message for the working class"

They have a compelling message for the working class. It's a message of contempt and hate. The long marriage of the working class and Democrats has ended and it wasn't the working class that walked out the door. The Democrats are down to the comfortable professional class preening its "values" and a coalition of grievance groups. Everyone else is on the other side pulling back on the stick to stop the dive before we run out of altitude.

cnnsuckson Netflix Replacing Star Ratings With Thumbs Ups and Thumbs Down

I read that headline too, but the actual story didn't provide any evidence to support it. Schumer's 'Leather Special' was your usual tedious progressive lecture disguised as comedy with a few laughs and a lot of porn, and was modded appropriately, but that doesn't connect it to the Netflix rating change as far as I can see.

cnnsuckson “Eurocentric modernist” thinking is exploding

Kanth, like many, senses that a global financial crisis, or some other equivalent catastrophe, like war or natural disaster, may soon produce painful and seismic economic and political disruptions.

"many" "some" "like/or" "may" "soon"

That's about the safest prediction I've ever seen; whatever discontinuity the future brings Kanth and his "many" are right!

And no, the Western world is not a failure because Trump got elected. Calm yourself. A little push back on the Progressive Project (tm) isn't the end of the world. The truth is that if you could find some way to tolerate not overwhelming your precariat with foreigners you could have your way for the foreseeable future, unchallenged. But what good is power if you can't inflict "our values" on the plebs, right?

cnnsuckson Lethal Opiates Delivered by Mail from China, Killing Addicts in the U.S

Indeed, "some" do. Also, some would have you take your Blame America First group-think elsewhere instead of shitting up HN with it.

cnnsuckson To fix L.A.'s traffic, we need tolls

Here is the article covering that:

"Tolls may disproportionately burden the poor, but so do sales taxes, gas taxes and every other way we pay for roads."

It then goes on to sort-of suggest that despite this new pain the net benefit will be better for "working-class" people......somehow. No thoughts were offered on how to keep the toll revenue from just padding out civil servant pensions and benefits while the traffic and roads muddle on.

cnnsuckson Comcast-Owned Vox Runs Commercial for Comcast’s $500M Snapchat Investment

Indeed they are; Vox has improved the Q factor of the left wing echo chamber like nothing since the rise of huffpo.

cnnsuckson The story of Heady Topper, Americas most loved craft beer

>> general American public does not enjoy quality

Even in midwest Trump country where I live atm I have my choice of three excellent craft brewers inside a five mile radius, operating for years now, the places are packed full of "general Americans" every single time I visit. The "general American public" is driving a $22 billion+ craft brewing market and nearly every podunk cow town big enough to have a WalMart also has a "brewing company" now. Tilt your head forward so your snoot isn't so high in the atmosphere and maybe you'll be able to spot some actual "general Americans" as opposed to the knuckle dragging rice beer drinkers you decorate inside your mind.

I've been through all the brew pubs in the Boulder/Fort Collins "Front Range" area as well. Never heard anyone so much as mention "Heady Topper." The story is just hype. Someone buffing up the trademark for a sale maybe.

cnnsuckson The story of Heady Topper, Americas most loved craft beer

>> Heady Topper isn't sold outside of Vermont

And yet it's "America's most loved"... Never heard of it myself.

Beer hype. I've no doubt someone's gone off the deep end to get their hands on some; people do a lot of stupid things on behalf of the cliques they aspire to. There just seems to be a lot of this when it involves crafty beer stuff.

cnnsuckson New Rust hash table leads Benchmarks Game

>> while Rust is fairly young based on the 1.0 release date, there was a large amount of time prior to that where the language underwent a number of changes.

Both Rust and Java had similar intervals between start of development and 1.0 release, which is what I carefully referenced my claims to. The comparison is fair; deliberately conservative actually given Java 1.0 in 1995 (now 22 years ago.)

>> I don't see a reason that both Rust and Java's results can't be impressive in their own right.

The state of the art has moved on. There was a time when Java pulling to within 50-ish percent of a 45 year old programming language was impressive; back around 2005 or so. It's old hat now and there is little evidence the gap is going to close much further.

cnnsuckson New Rust hash table leads Benchmarks Game

>> Java is showing quite impressive numbers!

359% more RAM isn't very impressive. Even less so when one considers the 20+ years of effort spent to achieve it.

You know what impresses me? A 22 month old language besting everything else while guaranteeing no segfaults or NPEs at compile time. That's impressive.

cnnsuckson Americans Hold Over $4.1T in Consumer Debt

>> forced

There is no force involved; please maintain perspective. There are no debtors prisons filled with 20-something Berkeley graduates. Every penny of every student loan was voluntarily assumed by the debtors. The terms for much of this debt allow payments to be deferred based on income. The average amount of student debt being carried is typically less than the cost of a new car. We deal here with "first world problems."

>> but it never seems to happen

2008? TARP? "Great Recession"?

It clearly registers on every measure of economic activity I've seen. Rather hard to miss, really. You can have a look and the 07-08 collapse of property values over here if you missed it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_housing_bubble#/...