grahamburger

Authoritarian is an adjective. A thing can be authoritarian without all things being so. Yes, authoritarian things have always existed, and yes, a powerful religious group joining forces to make sure kids continue to hate themselves for being gay or trans is authoritarian.

On the other hand, there is a persistent idea that schools are just making curation decisions for the children in their district, and people are calling that book banning. That's what you seem to be suggesting here. In all cases I'm aware of, that's not what's happening either; it's generally a parent, or a small group of parents, generally all from the same religious group and political party, bullying the library or school district into reversing curation decisions they had already made. A small, vocal group ultimately makes decisions about what all the kids in the district can read at school, based on their own religious and political affiliation. That comes much closer to your "banned book mental association" than I think you give it credit for.

It's a way to create constructive interference in an RF signal in a certain direction (the signal gets stronger in one direction and weaker in others without changing the hardware). It's commonly used in LTE and Wi-Fi as a way to increase SNR directionally for clients.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beamforming

It can be changed electronically and is commonly used that way in LTE and Wi-Fi implementations of Beamforming.

I learned all about this from Joe Pera: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LEJSMm1qpM

At least one time. Considering it's the only time I've been to the hospital for myself in the last 25 years, though, that's a lot! :)

Oof, that's a bad day. I've had cable stolen from a tower site like that, but it was cable we had spooled out for installation the day before, not in active use.

We had a meteor 15 years ago or so. I happened to open the side door just as it was overhead. It looked like late afternoon by the light, but it was long after dark by the clock. I had just a moment to question both my watch and my sanity before it went dark again.

I'm fairly sure that Android requires parent permission to reset a device if it's a managed child device. Overall, the parental controls on Android have been sufficient for what my family has needed.

You can do a lot with existing devices in a medium to decent gaming PC (or probably phone/laptop, I haven't tried.) I think HN tends to skew toward only thinking of LLM as useful for coding, but they are very useful for many non-coding things, and existing local LLMs are quite capable. I imagine it won't be long before apps with LLM-based features will try to run locally first and fall back to cloud LLMs just to save token costs. Actually I'd be surprised if some apps aren't doing this already.

I think I just took issue with what seemed like trite advice about what it takes to win at life or whatever. Your other comment on the thread cleared it up well enough:

> I'm absolutely not saying this alone is sufficient - particularly if you're unemployed or your job truly doesn't pay a living wage.

and I agree with that completely. I can definitely get behind not buying the hat (or buying a cheaper hat) but at some point it's not a hat, it's a vehicle that you need to get to work or a home repair or medical bill or something and your options become a) buy the cheap thing (and buy it again in six months when it breaks and is now more expensive) or b) walk away and suffer the consequences. I've done both, and neither really feels like winning.

Trying to be gentle here but this is pretty out of touch.

- I have bought a new car exactly once in my life, and likely never will again. This is the same as pretty much every other person I know personally. The last vehicle I bought had over 300k miles on it.

- Does anyone buy a new phone every year? I've never met them.

- Do you really need the fancy clothes from Target when the ones from Walmart or Goodwill are much cheaper?

Same here! If this phone made an unexpected sound I'd smash it with a brick.

Many people in the US become more liberal as they become more jaded by the (for-profit) healthcare system.

I have a Samsung Ultrawide monitor. It allows for two simultaneous video input displayed on the screen at once, in either 50/50 or 66/33 split. Combined with Barrier for mouse-keyboard switching and keyboard integration and I can use both devices simultaneously on the same monitor, almost as though they were a single device.

Sometimes, even in tech, you just need a job.

I use apnews.com, no paywall.

A list of the donors supporting the paper here: https://www.sltrib.com/supporters/

There always have been and will continue to be. The site is not hostile to adblockers, though.

The Salt Lake Tribune has always promoted the view of the opposition for Salt Lake City (and Utah). It might not be who you think.

Wow, second time this week that Utah has been on the HN Frontpage! Guess we're moving up in the world! Or, well, down, as neither story reflects particularly well on our state.

Living in Utah is so frustrating. On the one hand, we have a law that protects 'free range parenting': https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2018/03/2... as a parent, I genuinely appreciate this, especially when compared to stories from other HNers here of pearl-clutchers calling CPS for kids doing regular kid-stuff outside: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47815127

On the other hand, in addition to this draconian (and almost certainly unconstitutional, not that that's worth much these days) law, we also have a legislature that absolutely refuses to do anything the people want.

Back in 2018, Utah voters forced Prop. 2, an initiative to legalize medical cannabis, onto the ballot. The ballot initiative passed with 52% of the vote and polled with even higher support. Nevertheless, the Utah legislature, who somehow always knows better than the voters, replaced Prop 2 with their own, heavily modified and far more restrictive version, HB 3001.https://ballotpedia.org/Utah_Proposition_2,_Medical_Marijuan...

Also in 2018, voters passed Prop 4, which created an independent redistricting commission to create fair maps. The Utah legislature promptly gutted the commission, passing HB200 in an attempt to continue creating heavily gerrymandered maps. Fortunately, the Utah supreme court ruled that the legislature had overstepped their constitutional authority with HB200 and required the legislature to draw new maps or accept those proposed by the committee. When they refused, a judge put one of the committee's maps in place. Utah Republicans have been whining about this ever since. They tried to run a petition of their own, but could only gather signatures through fraud and deceit, with many signers reporting that signature gatherers told them they were signing in support of the judge's ruling when the opposite was true. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Utah_Proposition_4

And then, on the other hand, driven by Utah's highly conservative Mormon mono-culture, there is a rich and thriving counter-culture ready and waiting to accept folks who don't fit the standard mold.

In the 90s, my parents made at least 50% more than I do (for similar work, not inflation adjusted), bought a house almost twice as big as mine in a nicer area for 25% less than mine, and traveled internationally for what it costs me to take my kids camping. Well, maybe that last one is a slight exaggeration, but the rest isn't.

They don't need to come on site to sniff your traffic. US law, and likely others, stipulate that the ISP is able to sniff traffic without a truck roll.

There's also another entrance to Zion park in another area called Kolob Canyon. It's a few hours drive from the main entrance, far less developed, and there's never anyone there. Still very beautiful, though.

I work with a US non-profit that has provided both free and very low cost Internet access over the last 4 years (fixed home wifi, no phone). We have primarily used 4G/5G, including private networks built and owned by the non-profit, public/private partnerships with cities that own a 4G network, and now primarily very low cost wifi hotspots serviced by a major carrier.

So farmers who take advantage of subsidies in the U.S. to keep their farms going aren't adults? You should tell them that. To their faces.

The great thing about kids is that just when you start to miss their toddler temper tantrums, they start having teenage temper tantrums!

Looks like they may be getting fiber from Bertram Communications soon:

https://maps.psc.wi.gov/portal/apps/experiencebuilder/experi...

That or Starlink may be getting a wad of cash just to keep serving them, courtesy of this administration's NTIA.

I hear this often but I don't really buy it. Variety is good. If I had been routed into a field in first grade or whatever based on what I liked and was good at at the time my life would look completely different, but likely not better. I certainly never would have taken art history or design classes in college, both requirements that I wouldn't have otherwise considered, but among my favorite classes in retrospect.