dbasedweeb

Nothing about SpaceX except marketing hype has to do with Mars, can we just stop it with the Mars talk? It belittles what SpaceX actually is about, which is amazing in its own right. Launch demand, cheaper LEO/GEO/GTO, and a willingness to push the industry out of the 60’s is almost unbelievable, as is the journey they’ve taken to get this far. Throwing Mars into the mix makes it all sounds like bullshit, because anyone who actually understands the challenges of Mars beyond the big rocket portion rolls their eyes and sighs.

I’d also add that competing with the likes of Comcast and Verizon could be very profitable in the long term. I don’t think we need to assume it doesn’t serve its own obvious purpose of being th first big step in getting that sweet ISP money.

Edit api: It makes sense for a lot of things that a demand actually exists for, like heavy loads, launching a number of different contracts in one reusable rocket to save on overhead, defense contracts, and more. Those will actually make them money, and are all technically feasible today.

Jeremy Clarkson really really doesn’t represent the world of “car enthusiasts” or journalists in general. He’s an entertainer, part of a latter day Three Stooges and tarring an entire branch of journalism with his brush is like saying that because Sean Hannity is a fuckwit, so was Walter Cronkite.

It is when they’re not even owned by Time!

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19678982

At least the conspiracy theories have moved on from “the shorts” to a more typical group.

It is bad, but I’ve seen one worse: metacritic. That site is hot garbage.

I didn’t just google “boop snoots;” I googled that, googled “furries” and went down the rabbit hole a bit.

...A decision I now heartily regret. The two major things I found is that some people are very weird, and some other people hate the weird ones disproportionately considering their prevalence and general demeanor.

GR was amazing, but it wasn’t well known and accepted until the first measurements confirmed it. Quantum Computing is still very much up in the air, but it’s also weird to bring it up in this context, because QM is one of the most tested theories of all time. QED In particular is tested to the most decimal places of any prediction, ever. It’s also weird to act as though GR and QM started out in a vacuum, instead of what they really were, which was based on centuries of math, theory, and experiment.

Edit: Unrelated, but I see you’re a fellow Greg Egan fan, good to meet you! Planck Dive has to be one of my all time favorites.

Please just stop. Even your attempt at mitigation through edit is wrong, and it would have been trivial for you to correct your misapprehension. There are an estimated 10 million Catholics in California compared to between 27-58 million in France. Besides, the value of the place as a cultural institution visited by 13m+ a year just to see it isn’t something you should dismiss along with its centuries of cultural significance just because it offends your religious sensibilities.

It’s also a miserable stance to take while the place is still literally on fire.

I googled this, and was very very sorry that I did. Suffice it to say this terminology is specific to a subculture of people who dress up as animal mascots. Booping snoots apparently means touching the nose, I think? I also ran across something called “cub porn” and now I need a shower so hot it can melt glass.

They’ll also be damned disturbing if you tilt your head at all, and screens start fading in and out of existence.

I’m a mere consumer, and my only option in reaction to the abdication of personal responsibility is to never use the product again.

Adding to Tomalpha’s list (I especially endorse The News Quiz, and the new host Miles Jupp is hysterical)

I’d add Victoria Coren-Mitchell’s run of ‘Heresy’,

‘Cabin Pressure’ (John Finnemore is a genius, and Cumberbatch does a great comedic turn),

‘It’s Not What You Know’ (more Miles Jupp excellence),

‘The Unbelievable Truth’ (Many seasons of comedic brilliance hosted by David Mitchell),

and to a somewhat lesser extent ‘The Rest Is History’ hosted by Frank Skinner, ‘Fags, Mags and Bags’ (helps to actually have spent some real time in the UK to appreciate), and for long car journeys ‘Just A Minute’ can be fun.

I think you may be confusing synapses and neurons.

Thanks so much to everyone who responded! I’m going to try (over time) all of your suggestions, including DIY. This is a great community and I appreciate your help.

It’s not that I didn’t hear you, it’s that I don’t believe you. Your own behavior and manner of presenting yourself raises manynred flags that are only confirmed by the activities you admitted to.

https://casetext.com/case/united-states-v-channon-2

Basically he was nailed for wire fraud and his defense was... exotic. Upon conviction he sought a writ of certiorari so that the SCOTUS would hear his case on some pretty weird grounds.

http://mattchannon.org/petition.pdf

At a glance it seems like a situation in which someone thought they found a technicality to enact what amounted to fraud, and are pissed that the law doesn’t work like a compiler. Their response is another “I found a bug in the code” move and again, the law isn’t working like a compiler.

I don’t think making over five thousand accounts and returning tens of thousands of ink cartridges was really behavior that anyone could have thought was honest. It does seems like the government responded pretty harshly, but the system is rough. As to guilt, he would appear to be guilty, and his argument is that despite committing fraud, no one was actually hurt. That might even be true, but also not how breaking the law works.

Edit: tptacek said it better: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16926663

I wonder how the people who thought the concern over what seemed likely to be a permanent “vacation” will spin this? Some were downright conspiratorial, selling the usual “shady forces putting out hit pieces” and “most shorted stock” limes.

Just once I’d like the conversation around Tesla to boil down to something other than tribalism.

Tesla has done some amazing things, and they show some really worrying signs. Too often though the conversation seems to be a kind of hyper-negative view posed against what increasingly feels like a Tesla/Musk cult. Nothing useful can come out of that, and it borrows the worst parts of something like the Blockchain discussion.

It’s been axiomatic for a while that if you care about privacy and security, a generally paranoid outlook is helpful where telecommunications are concerned. Just assume that unless it’s e2e encrypted and you trust the recipient to be as paranoid, that someone else is reading your communications. Assume that if it has a microphone and an internet connection someone else could use it to listen in. Assume 5-Eyes partners archive absolutely everything and may someday have a smart enough system to really use the data. Assume FB and Google and your ISP are spying on you and building profiles of you.

I’m not sure what else to say, but aside from people who have a stake in Google, or take skepticism to illogical extremes, this news can’t be surprising.

Japan is also a unique case in that they have a 99% conviction rate in criminal cases. The best research I’ve seem explains this in terms of extremes of prosecutorial discretion: only sure-win cases are taken to court. If you end up in a Japanese prison, you really really fucked up, broke the law, and provided the government with an open and-shut case.

As a result the “low crime rate” and “high conviction rate” are both somewhat artificial. A lot of crimes go unreported, or at the very least unprosecuted. Japan does have a relatively low crime rate, but the criminal element can often get away, especially if the victim is homeless, another criminal, or in some other way an outsider.

...which vampire hunk is going to hook up with which vampire babe (or so I presume -- I actually haven't read/watched Twilight or any other supernatural romances).

With the sole exception of an added vampire/werewolf hunk you nailed it. The subject matter though is less problematic than the really abysmal writing. PKD didn’t always have the best writing style, but made up for it with content. Twilight is derivative content delivered in appalling fashion.

Off this topic, Is this article flagged for being politics, or some other reason? With a few exceptions the discussion seemed substantive.

He lost the presidential election, but was then appointed chancellor by Hindenburg after the Nazis won most of the government through the electoral process. Chancellor of Germany is roughly equivalent to president of the US (Angela Merkel is chancellor). After that civil liberties were revoked.

So he was not elected, but he was legally appointed and as a result of overwhelming electoral victories by his party. Just another example of the non-equivalence of “legal” and “moral” in all cases.

It is a salient point as a response to the post: There are already checks and balances. Unfortunately Congress and a sizeable portion of the public are with him. He is not a dictator, he legitimately won the election and I can see good support for him on my Facebook "friends"

The failure of government to stand up to a dangerous and deranged populist is relevant IMO. When that populist then leads the government, it’s time to at least be concerned. I doubt that Trump is worthy of direct comparison to Hitler beyond that point, but I’m also glad that I don’t live in the US right now!

IIRC Mythbusters had an episode about this “son of a gun” myth and concluded that it was essentially impossible. It still makes an amazing story. Like all virgin births I expect the truth was either that it was entirely fabricated, or it was real insofar as the woman in question didn’t want to publically give up her “virtue” (which given the periods involved, is understandable). Plus you as a bonus you get long odds on starting a religion.

It would be mean-spirited to want that to be the case, it’s somewhere on the skeptical-cynical spectrum to think it’s likely. Don’t be so hard on yourself.

This is a really important lesson to internalize (the first one).

The second is too! I’m telling you, peanut butter is an amazing savory ingredient! You don’t have to go full Hemingway (peanut butter and onion sandwiches), but at least satay is the way. Peanut butter is especially good when it’s spicy.

Plus yes, the other stuff, but I just can’t say enough about peanut butter.

Most people believe whatever they want to believe, and it’s a massive waste of the limited time that is life to try and change their minds.

Peanut butter is best in savory applications.

Heh, I walked face-first into that one. Touché.

Elon says a lot of things, and some of them even turn out to be true. The ones involving money though, seem to be less likely. This could work though, I think it’s more likely to never get off the ground. At least it’s just a tunnel, and not that Hyperloop crap. I actually have some faith in their ability to dig a tunnel, and zero faith in making a vac-train feasible.

Question: Who is the queen of England?

Aristo is not sure about this one...

Aristo's best guess: Carol Burnette

Confidence: 19.35%

Oooook, I’m not super impressed. Confused, yes, but not impressed.

Utopias are always justified this way, and the worst crimes are committed as a result. After all, if a potentially limitless number of lives are saved in the future, you can argue for sacrificing millions today. Somehow people never seem to understand that nothing real or worthwhile is down that road, and as a species we go down it repeatedly.

I think the best argument against this, is to demand that the person willing to let many die is the first to die.