hugh3

Entropy always wins. Mountains erode, eggs rot, and social news sites get filled with rubbish.

My new year's resolution: no more commenting on things on the internet. Bye bye, everybody!

The protesters should adopt this tactic widely: sit on the ground, link arms, and force the hand of the police: "pepper spray me, I dare you". The police are entitled, indeed obligated to arrest them, after all.

First off, "obligated" isn't a word. The word is "obliged".

Secondly, what do you mean "they should"? They already do. It's the number one move in the left-wing activist's playbook -- provoke the police until they use force, and then go play the victim card to the media.

Blame for the widespread nature of this tactic belongs partly with the protestors, and partly with the media who go along with it. Sensible people should reject this game, because it just makes life worse for everybody.

You got pepper-sprayed? Diddums, mate, that's exactly what you wanted to happen.

The Tea Party proved that you can have a mass protest movement that doesn't get in the way of others, and doesn't break the law. Unfortunately it also proved that a nonviolent protest needs to be ten times larger than a violent protest in order to get the same amount of media attention.

I though cops //theoretically// weren't allowed on campus?

lolwut? UC Davis has its own police force.

The main thing you got out of this long article about quantum mechanics was a parenthetical aside in the first paragraph?

Lubos Motl is a smart guy, but he's known for having his own somewhat strongly-held opinions on quantum mechanics. I don't believe his assertion that it's a "crackpot paper", but am sympathetic to his argument that Nature is over-hyping the paper.

I would really need to sit down and read the paper carefully (as well as Motl's rebuttal) before I can have a more informed opinion than that, though.

I don't mind the bit which calls people cunts (and I apologize for the fact that I deleted that particular bit in favour of a pithier bit while you were writing your own comment), it's everything else.

In theory, college students are adults.

These kids, though, don't seem to be acting like it. They think they're playing a game.

And comments like these are the reason that this story should never have been submitted, and hopefully will be removed asap.

That's an interesting example. But if an opportunity exists in the market for somebody to come in undercutting me and selling cotton balls for a mere 500% markup, then I think it's still okay.

It's not a question of whether it's interesting, it's a question of whether it's on-topic. Certain things are off-topic, because they have a tendency to invite bad comments which drive out good discussion.

I'm interested in pictures of cute cats and big tits, as well, but they're not suitable subjects for this site either.

If you're in a situation where a police officer is entitled to arrest you, but he physically can't arrest you because you're sitting on the ground with your arms linked with somebody else, then the police officer is entitled to use reasonable force in order to arrest you. Pepper spray is the least dangerous way (to you) to do this -- all other possibilities run the risk of breaking your arms.

I'm really sick of this game, though. The game where protestors deliberately work as hard as they possibly can in order to provoke a police response, and then whine about the police response. This is a game the police can't possibly win, and the protestors know it; that's why they play it. If the police don't respond, then the protestors will just escalate their douchiness until they do.

I know this game, it's the game I used to play with my older brother. Harass him until he hits me, and then go whine to my parents. It was pretty douchey of me, but hey, I was a kid. These kids are supposed to be grown up, what's their excuse?

Indeed it is. That's a tech story, of direct relevance to the core topic here, since it's an important milestone in the internet and entertainment industry. Netflix has never before exclusively acquired a show, particularly not a popular one, for streaming purposes. The story generated an interesting discussion about the future of these two industries.

This story, on the other hand, is not just a political story but political activism, and needs to be nuked off the face of HN with extreme prejudice, because they're like weeds and have a tendency to take over.

The distinction is that people submit and upvote stories like these not because they think they're intellectually interesting, but because they're trying to make something happen politically.

Very very very very very very very flagged.

Seriously, this got 76 upvotes? What do you think this is?

Actually I've never seen one of these. Maybe my friends are less annoying than this woman's?

This might be an interesting subject worthy of a proper treatment. I was somewhat put off by the fact that there were giant tangentially-related pictures between every paragraph, though.

The answer is: "Depends". Though if your business model is immoral when applied to poor folks, it's still immoral when applied to rich folks.

It's a possibility, but probably a lot smaller than your chance of being killed by, say, lightning. Or a bee.

I don't know why some people vastly overweight certain low probabilities.

Seriously, this kind of conspiracy theory "fuck the pigs man" stuff doesn't belong here. Reddit is that-a-way.

That doesn't actually solve anything. Except, perhaps, the fact that it's dinnertime.

Right. But if they're innocent, then the evidence won't incriminate them.

Aw geez folks, are we getting so offended nowadays over a flippant piece of exaggeration?

No, not all poor people are pumping out a dozen crack babies. But they do seem to find it possible to have children in rather inauspicious circumstances while those of us further up the social food chain bite our nails and prevaricate about breeding under any circumstances other than perfect. And that's not a good thing on either end.

Or because as civic-minded folks they're happy to help the police to do what they can in order to catch criminals and protect the innocent?

I don't know. Apparently a lot of the people here are master criminals, because they seem to be awfully paranoid about the idea that police detectives can, if sufficiently motivated, deduce some information about their activities. (These sorts of folks must really hate Sherlock Holmes stories.)

Personally, as a law-abiding citizen, I'm really not too concerned about being the target of a police investigation, and if I ever am the target of a police investigation I'll be happy to hand over as much evidence as possible since it will assist the police in ascertaining the truth that I am not, in fact, the guilty party.

Further, I believe that this strategy would be employed as an argument to not ever giving up the passphrase. You would tell the judge, or whomever, that the phrase is a literal confession of a crime, and thus, by doing so, invoke 5th amendment protection.

I'm not assuming the confession is for a false crime, but nonetheless uttering the phrase "my password is $string' where $string is a true confession is still not a confession.

In your strategy, there are two parts to your confession:

1. The information that your password is the string "$s", and

2. Your volunteering of the information to the judge that the strong $s is in fact a confession of a real crime which you did in fact commit.

Part 1 is not testifying against yourself, unless in conjunction with part 2. Since you voluntarily threw Part 2 into the discussion, you're voluntarily testifying against yourself, and there's no rule against that.

A physical equivalent to your strategy would be to write out a letter of confession, leave it in your basement, and tell the police that the existence of this letter means they're not allowed to search your basement. It's not gonna work.

I am totally cool with the FBI lying, coercing and otherwise trying to convince criminals to give up the evidence against themselves, as long as they don't actually break out the wrench.

The idea that you can't be compelled to testify against yourself, present in many western legal systems, is a good one, and is designed to prevent both torture and false imprisonment due to torture-induced false confessions. But that doesn't mean it's not a good thing in those circumstances when a guilty person does incriminate themselves.

Boucher ended up having to unlock the hard drive, because he had previously unlocked the drive for border agents. Had he refused, the court likely would have held that he could not be compelled to produce the password or the hard drive contents

So it sounds like the actual legal question here, of whether the government can compel you to hand over your password in the general case, has never actually been tested?

Full marks for lateral thinking, but I don't think that works.

It's the use-mention distinction. Uttering a set of words is not the same thing as asserting that they're true. If you say "My password is 'I killed and ate a young girl in Tucson'" then that does not count as a confession, and could not be taken as one by any court (thankfully, because I just typed out that sentence myself...). Therefore, uttering that sentence does not count as testifying against yourself.

Both of you, stop it.

Take it to reddit/r/particularlyinaptandodiouspolitics

Parental income and child intelligence are correlated, but the direct causal relationship is (I suspect) extremely weak except at the low-end extreme. The real relationship between these two variables is dominated by parental intelligence: smarter parents have smarter children (with a very strong correlation), and smarter parents earn more money (with a reasonably strong correlation).

Once the parents are picked, earning a little more money won't do much to make the children smarter. If anything it might make them dumber, since those extra hours spent at work are much better spent with your children.

The trouble with these articles is that they actually affect some folks' lives. No doubt, for years to come, there will be couples sitting there and planning out how they want to space their families based on a half-remembered article that they read in the New York Times one day about how they'll ruin their kids' lives if they're spaced less than three years apart. Some of these couples will no doubt go on to delay their second child until they wind up infertile. Others will probably delay their second child until they're so old that the second child winds up with Down's syndrome (that being vastly more common for older than younger mothers). And basically, it's just another one of those random factors that really don't matter much for middle-class parents to agonize over (while lower-class parents keep pumping out a dozen crack babies to get more welfare).

Actually if I'm reading his post correctly, his $2 million net worth is imaginary, and is based on an estimate of how much money it would take in order to passively generate the $60K per annum-ish which he currently works for. Kindof an odd way of putting things.