Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit | jlongr's commentslogin

>he's nerd-famous enough to not warrant an introduction

What is nerd-famous supposed to be. He's at the center of some subjective in-group that exists in your head?


To be fair, we are on hacker news. I did once use on of his programs, American Fuzzy Lopper (fake advertisement lawsuit incoming if its not american). So he is not nobody apparently


He wrote the American Fuzzy Lop fuzzer, which was extremely influential – pretty much put fuzzing on the map.


You concede that monthly inflation is volatile but then proceed to assume it is has grown uniformly and speculate that it will continue to grow uniformly? Umm...


The point is that the annual number is often rather confusing from a reporting perspective.


And that an annual number is diluted and will only feed in slowly over time.

If we knew inflation was permanently at 5% from now on, a blend with 2% for 11 months and 5% for 1 month, is not informative.


Pointless observation.


They said: "12*0.4% is 4.8%. Inflation is running at an annualised 4.8%."

This is patently wrong.


Because it's 1.04^12?

Or are you addressing some other flaw?


No. What he's describing is like covering your face with your hands and thinking that you're invisible.


It might help obscure your physical address in public records and keep private companies from finding it as easily, but yeah, it's not going to keep the government-wide database from locating you.


You're on social media.


I get most of my news from NPR or BBC. I don't subscribe to either but I used to subscribe to Economist. It's still good but the writing style and tone is cloying.

I've been considering Financial Times to replace it.


I would like to plug for npr. If you listen to them, set up recurring donations to your local affiliate. They really do need your support. Local stations are at risk.


Bait used to be believable.


Tried this and now I'm senior dev.


Convoluted and unreasonable workarounds for a growing police state.

Please don't try to minimize the egregiousness of having your personal documents searched for the sake of security theater.


> Convoluted and unreasonable workarounds for a growing police state.

Well, those are _basic_ OPSEC for people whose life/safety/freedom would actually be threatened by a search ("good guys", "bad guys", it doesn't matter). If the only things threatened by a search are your pride/moral principles, then yeah, those might seem unreasonable.

> Please don't try to minimize the egregiousness of having your personal documents searched for the sake of security theater.

I don't know if that term has been coined before, but "privacy theater" is also a thing, and it is just as grotesque as the other theater.


I don't see anything convoluted it unreasonable in the suggestions the OP made. They're based on reality, irrespective of whether you like it or not.


This isn't a court. Due process?? Politics cannot be avoided, it is part of the fabric of our lives.


Can you share your thoughts without being so hyperbolic?


Not the GP, but I'll give it a go:

You may be familiar with the layer structure of communications: Internetwork layer,below that transport, below that link layer, and at the bottom the physical layer. The physical layer is where it gets really messy: noise, interference, reflections,whatever.

In human interaction, at the bottom layer is the simple fact that at any time, any human can just not follow the rules. That's not necessarily wrong. Maybe the rule just isn't important, and everyone recognises that. Or maybe some deep moral principle should override it. But at that point, other people have to make a moral call - do they ignore this breach of the rules? Do they object? Do they assess the moral principle as overriding?

The military have some usefully neutral terms for behaviors, one of which is 'revisionist'. A revisionist power wants to change the rules, a status quo power wants to keep them. It's fairly clear that the US government is presently a revisionist one. That means that pretty much everyone has now to make the call as to whether what they see is allowable or, given the scale and power of the US federal government, a five-alarm fire. And they will often want to take that to places where they have some kind of trust in the intelligence or good will of the other people there. For a lot of engineers, that's right here. If this were a workplace or uni, there would be break rooms and water-coolers where this kind of discussion could go. But HN has none of that - there's only one category of discussion. So if you flag every such discussion, you're denying them the opportunity to do that. And that's not keeping politics out of HN - that's a political act itself.


I'm not hyperbolic, you're obtuse.

If you think you can bury your head and ignore politics for any amount of time, you are mistaken. Your purchases, comments, and actions are all political and strategic, whether you want to believe them to be or not.


That argument doesn't hold. HN itself has no obligation to be a political forum. There are many other forums for that already.

It's good to compartmentalize topics. Your argument is like complaining you're not learning Geography in your Physics class. The subject of the site is not politics and that is by design.

This design has absolutely nothing to do with the merits of any given submission related to the topic of politics. Conflating "people who want to keep conversations on-topic" and "people who support policy X" is not fair, helpful or accurate.


> There are many other forums for that already.

Could you recommend some other forums where politics are allowed but people also have a deep technical knowledge and understanding? With also an expected level of mutual respect and effort given to discussion?


I never said they were as well moderated as HN, and I think that's the case for a variety of reasons, but primarily because people like dang (and now tomhow!) are very hard to find... and because people for some reason struggle to keep emotions in check when discussing politics


So there are many other forums available but you recognise that none of them are actually as suited to the kind of discussions we might want? It's very "but we've got Hacker News at home."


Amazon Submits Bid for TikTok with US Sale Deadline Nearing

Go flag this one then.


Why? That's a technology company buying another tech company, and so many people here either work at tech companies, have founded companies or some variation thereof. Very much on topic for hacker news.


Why flag it?


Sounds political to me.


You’re more than welcome to, of course—but that feels like a rather trite response to what could have warranted at least a bit more substance.


I am not obtuse I just have no desire to get into political debates on HN. It’s been beaten to death already. Now if something new happened or if there was a different way to look at something then it makes sense.


Huh? You must not have seen the thread. I recognize that politics pop up everywhere but in HN they usually end up being low signal. There is no nuance or discussion to be had. And that’s why they get flagged. I am not the only member of HN that has no interest in brining political debate into HN.


Facism is taking hold. There's no hyperbole. Everything will be affected. We need to respond. The only over-reaction is here in choosing to bury your head in the sand.


Who did you vote for in the last election?


Does it matter? Both candidates promised to deport gang members. You think it’s possible to do what Harris promises to do by giving each one a jury trial?


If adhering to rule of law is inconvenient, the state doesn't get to ignore it. What if I were to anonymously report you as a gang member? Surely then we'd want to remove you from the country expeditiously, in fact so expeditiously that allowing you to make your case in court would harm public safety. Have fun in CECOT!

That's the strength of the evidence that this individual was a gang member. If it can happen to him it can happen to you or to me.


> You think it’s possible to do what Harris promises to do by giving each one a jury trial?

Due process has been working mostly fine for the last 200+ years, no need to switch to fascism.


Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: