A Prisoner Who Briefly Died Argues That He's Served His Life Sentence - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/08/us/prisoner-dies-life-sentence.html <comment><USER2> I see a lot of people playing language lawyer with what it means "to die."

I think another fruitful thing to think about what "for life" means. It is not unreasonable to interpret "for life" as "while living", instead of "until dead."

Indeed, the sentence if "life in prison" is logically equivalent to "no life outside of prison." No one debates the fact that this man is alive now. If his sentence is to live only in prison, then there is no issue.

The interesting case is whether declining to honor his DNR counts as cruel and unusual punishment by extending his term in prison.

<comment><USER3> But remember that this is America, where super-natural sentencing is a norm. Prisons are filled with people serving double, triple or "life plus 100 years" sentences. Logic isn't running this show.

<comment><USER4> I honestly think there's nothing more disgusting than imprisoning someone.

I've actually made this argument in my social sciences class that the reason prison sentences are so long is that people generally thought/think the afterlife exists. It's easy to take away an individuals right to life when you think there's going to be another one in another life.

I would personally much rather have the death penalty than anything above 5 years in prison. I don't understand how we're collectively okay with just caging a human being... It's so terrifying and disgusting.

The act of imprisonment for over 5 years itself is a cruel and unusual punishment :(

<comment><USER5> Do you believe that imprisonment is more disgusting that premeditated murder, rape, felony assault?

If so, can you please elaborate?

What alternatives do you suggest as sufficient deterrence to and effective punishment for the crimes of murder, rape, and felony assault?

<comment><USER4> I think in the short term we're kinda fucked. But in the long term I would like if we tried to make these crimes not happen. Find out why they're happening.

Can we help these criminals before they become criminals essentially?

And I wasn't saying we should get rid of prison, rather allow the person to choose death if they wish.

I'd also like to see if we can actually slowly introduce them back to society, slowly give more freedoms back or help them take jobs that gives their life meaning.

It's a hard problem and we definitely don't have the correct solution right now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Before you comment about the judge getting it wrong, do your due diligence and at least get familiar with the plain text of the law.

In Iowa, "death" is defined in Iowa Code §702.8 as "an irreversible cessation of spontaneous respiratory and circulatory functions".

It says "irreversible" right off the bat. IANAL but legally speaking this is an easy and uncontroversial case.

</comment><comment><USER7> It's the DNR that makes this one tricky. His lawyer should have made the argument that keeping him alive against his will instead of letting him die constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.

<comment><USER8> Even if he doesn't get release, I think he will have grounds for a substantial financial judgment. Obviously that's not very useful in prison.

<comment><USER9> On what grounds? He is serving a life sentence. He is in the custody of the correctional facility. They have every duty to keep him alive and healthy, up to the point of him expiring naturally.

Ridiculous logic games like this are a pretty good reason why excessive legalese is mocked in mainstream culture - because it is totally disconnected from reality and enthralled with their own existence.

<comment><USER10> The correctional facility's role is to incarcerate him, restrict his freedoms. I don't think it's unreasonable to think that there's a line that needs to be drawn there, from my perspective as an emergency medical provider.

There's still some role of autonomy here. Even as a prisoner he is allowed to determine what he may read, may do (within restriction), when he goes to the bathroom. Saying "No, you have no right to determine what medical treatment you do or do not receive", to me, undermines a civilized society, even for the incarcerated.

"Sorry you were diagnosed with amazingly painful metastasizing bone cancer. If you should go into cardiac arrest, be advised, though, we will not let you pass - we are going to work to keep you alive. This may result in brain damage to you. But so be it. It may result in long, expensive and painful procedures for the rest of your life. But so be it".

Note that this is different to, say, hunger strikes and force feeding, but instead about medical conditions.

Should they keep him on life support for fifty plus years, in theory, just so he can "serve out his life sentence" to the satisfaction of the state, for example?

From a medical provider's perspective, and similarly, someone with custody over another, ignoring and actively violating their medical treatment wishes (in my state, the POLST form - Physician's Orders for Life Sustaining Treatments, which has replaced and expanded upon DNRs) is just as much assault and battery as anything else, and may also be considered negligent and malpractice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It seems to me that the Ship of Theseus is relevant [1]. A temporary loss of heart beat/breathing in a body receptive to resuscitation - and which is resuscitated - shouldn't really be considered dying. We don't consider the continual loss and replacement of bodily tissue over the course of several decades to result in a new person, or that waking after sleeping is classified as a new birth.

And anyway, if the guy was declared dead, should he have expected a new birth certificate and to have his age reset to 0? Would he really suggest someone could be "born" into someone elses body? In that case, perhaps he should be "exorcised", or is he claiming he's now a zombie? Do zombies have legal rights? If not, what was he proposing was the relationship between his pre "dead" personality/identity and his new one?

You can see why the judge went the way he did...

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus)

</comment><comment><USER12> I think the biggest claim here was the clear violation of his due process rights, re DNR.

Judgement sidestepped this by saying there was no ruling in lower court so we can't rule on it, I think.

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm currently reading the book "Fall, or Dodge in Hell" by Neal Stephenson. Speaking in general terms to avoid too many spoilers, there's a scene where it's strongly implied one character is responsible for the death of another. Both end up having their brains scanned and uploaded to a simulated afterlife. (The other dying of natural causes soon after.) Not addressed (at least, not yet) in the book, but something I couldn't help wondering, is how or should this crime be punished? Perhaps the killer shouldn't have been allowed to be uploaded, but that had already occurred.

</comment><comment><USER14> Perhaps the easiest patch would be to make all life sentences "life plus 500 years". Methuselah can work around it this way; it should cover everyone else...

<comment><USER15> That would be awfully rough on their cell mates.

<comment><USER16> Put them together. In the "Hole". Problem solved :)

<comment><USER17> you still need to provide food and other services to prisoner, it would be quite pricey and lot of wasted resources

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It just so happens that your friend here is only MOSTLY dead. There's a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive.

\- Miracle Max

</comment><comment><USER19> There are all kinds of interesting implications and questions here.

1\. What is the meaning _and intent_ of a "life sentence", or other punishment?

2\. Does it apply to a singular life, or all lives a prisoner might have?

3\. What (if any) legal definitions for "life" and "death" are there, in relevant jurisdictions. And how are they treated in sentencing laws?

4\. Is clinical death the same as legal death?

5\. Is there legal precedent for obligations lifted (or privileges revoked / denied) on the basis of temporary clinical death? E.g., lifetime obligations for debt, etc.?

6\. With advances in medical technology, what are the implications of _either_ induced death (e.g., the film "Flatliners") _or_ extended / eternal life (Singularity, cryopreservation) on future legal matters -- not only sentencing but contracts and the like.

6a. If a convict were sentenced to death and were clinically but reversably killed, would that sentence be considered fulfilled?

6b. What of eternal or lifelong benefits or obligations -- government pensions, wills, property ownership, etc., in the case of immortal or resurrected individuals.

7\. Is a resurrected individual the same or a different person? Clinically? Legally? (Ship of Theseus, as @nprateem notes.)

8\. Is a person who dies naturally but is resurrected against medical directives (as in the Iowa case) considered discharged? If so, or if no, on what legal basis?

It's worth noting that the law is _not_ a system that's consistent either externally (as with science or public opinion/sentiment), or internally. It is based _somewhat_ on legislation, precedent, and gloss. But also on argument, persuasion, judicial temperment, and political and power relations. It kinda works, but is awfully creaky in parts.

</comment><comment><USER20> At some point, artificially extended life spans may become feasible and common.

It seems to me if/when that happens, a life sentence should be considered cruel and unusual.

<comment><USER19> Depends. Do immortals become more good / lawful, less good / lawful, or does it vary?

What are you going to do about the incorrigably unlawful / evil?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> If he is now alive then he has never been dead.

</comment><comment><USER17> if he was serving only one life sentence and had DNR order, then it's fair to say he served his sentence if they resuscitated him against his will

if he would be serving multiple life sentences than he would just fulfill first one, otherwise what's the purpose of multiple life sentences in US? we don't have this nonsense in Europe

<comment><USER22> >what's the purpose of multiple life sentences in US

To compensate for what was perceived to be an overly sympathetic appeals system.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> This story reminds me of an old movie called Flatliners ([https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099582/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099582/)) where medical students experimented with near death by intentionally inducing cardiac arrest. If you get a life sentence you could hire the Flatliners to come and kill you for a few minutes and then bring you back. hehehe

<comment><USER24> Or just OD in heroin and wait for a guard to come administer narcan

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> It seems to me that defining clinical death as the loss of heart beat and breathing is outdated and it should instead be defined as the cessation of higher brain activity.[1]

Alternately, it seems to me like referring to that as death is playing semantics. It seems to me that the defining feature of death is that you cannot come back from it[2].

I'd be interested to hear other perspectives or if I might be overlooking something.

[1] I'm guessing there might still be a place for the current definition of clinical death in situations where its not viable to monitor brain activity such as triaging disaster victims.

[2] As a Christian I would see an exception for a case where someone dies and and God violates the laws of nature to bring them back. However, I realize that Atheists don't believe that's possible and even from a Christian perspective it's exceedingly rare (I can think of 4 times where it potentially happens in the entire Bible) so I don't think that really impacts practical discussions of death.

<comment><USER26> re: your note 2, one might argue that secular laws have no particular business considering whether something was an act of god or not, and that a person who is alive at any given time is therefore, for legal purposes, considered to have never died in the first place.

<comment><USER27> > secular laws have no particular business considering whether something was > an act of god or not

To be pedantic, you've almost certainly signed valid legal contracts that reference "Act of God" verbatim.

<comment><USER28> IANAL but I believe that "Act of God" has a specific legal meaning in normal contracts that has nothing to do with religious miracles.

<comment><USER29> tl;dr: the term "act of God" has been around for thousands of years. Translated several times. It wasn't until only a couple hundred years ago that the term "God" was ever introduced into the phrase. And even then, it was decreed by Judges of the time that there is no religious backing to the phrase.

Long detailed version for anyone who is interested in the etymology of the phrase.

"Act of God" is a traditional term used in contract law that has existed for millennia, dating back to Roman law. Romans originally used the term 'vim maiorem' in Latin which meant "Superior Force". Contracts using this term exist as far back as 509BC. 'Vim maiorem' became standard contract terms in most Roman contracts found from this period. It released a person from liability based on actions that were unpreventable or unforseeable.

As ancient Rome fell, Italy began to disperse and adopted the same term 'vim maiorem' into the Italian language. This well-understood concept and term enabled contracts to be made among dispersed Italian villages. The tradition of this latin phrase stayed alive in italy for another thousand years until the renaissance.

During the renaissance, the French were looking to rebuild a great society like the Romans and determined that law was a critical part of the culture. Contracts became commonplace again, and the French were inspired by the contracts written between these Italian cities. They found the 'vim maiorem' term helpful is absolving liability for unforeseeable circumstances. They translated the term to "force majeure". This literally translates into 'the greatest force'.

Again... no spiritual component.

The tradition later expanded into England in the 16th century. While the English didn't like the French, they did like the concept of "Force Majeure". But they didn't want to use a French term. So they originally adopted the term 'vis maior' in contractual law, which was an alternate latin term used along with 'vim maiorem' which translated closer to "major acts'.

Thomas Wilson is the English man who translated "vis maior" into the English term "Act of God". He felt that "the Italianated [words] counterfeited the great Kinges Englishe" [sic]. As a respected judge, he sought to find an appropriate English translation that gave respect to the King instead of giving credit to the French or Italians. As Thomas Wilson was a Christian who was heavily engaged in the Christianity revolution in medieval England at the time, he coined the term "Act of God" to replace "vis maior".

This is the first time that this traditional phrase carried any religious weight. But that relgious weight was quickly dispelled by future court rulings.

> "Judges continued [throughout the 17th century] to rule that in law, an act > of God did not depend on divine influence, including violent storms at sea, > unprecedented rainfall, extraordinary floods, earthquakes, and death. In > 1609, a British court ruled that a fire caused by lightning was an act of > God. In 1785 a court ruled that a fire NOT caused by lightning was NOT an > act of God. In 1886, England's Lord Esher ruled, 'In the older, simpler days > I have myself never had any doubt but that the phrase does not mean act of > God in the ecclesiastical and biblical sense... but that in a mercantile > sense'. By the 1800s, the courts routinely rejected claims that God was > responsible for human negligence.[1]"

At this same time, contracts were being passed from England to the newly formed USA. Most of the founding fathers were lawyers by trade and "Act of God" quickly spread as a legal term in the US.

"Act of God" is defined as "any accident, due directly and exclusively to natural causes without human intervention, which could not be prevented."

[1] [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1380373/?page=4](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1380373/?page=4)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Jon Snow used the same logic to get out of the Night's Watch.

<comment><USER31> Thanks a bunch.

<comment><USER32> [https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2011/04/27/the-song-of- so...](https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2011/04/27/the-song-of-something- something)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I'm not fully convinced the courts got this one completely right.

This is a very interesting legal argument and lays emphasis on the need for legislators to express their intentions in writing more fully as opposed to writing laws with such loose and widely applicable terms such as "Life" without giving the term or their intent in using it more context.

If, as the Judge argues, that "he did not legally die as his presence in this courtroom indicates":

1\. He's indicating the existence of a written law stating that a person may only die once.

2.Additionally, there are actually legal provisions that delegate to the medically accepted definition of "Death" instead of deciding it themselves.

3\. The Judge indicates that ruling in the plaintiffs favor would cause chaos for situations where medically induced resurrections would confuse laws from insurance to banking. That is not the plaintiffs burden to bear. That does not sound like a valid reason to rule on the interpretation of a law.

Finally, and i believe the most important part here: The US Constitution lays liberty and freedom at the heart of individual rights conferred upon people from God or a superior force. All laws enforced by the Government must be explicitly legislated within these bounds since it prevents the default case moving from "Individual God given rights, unless expressly regulated within constitutional boundaries" to "Rights conferred by the Government discretion" -> The second case is explicitly prohibited by the Constitution.

The burden of legislation (And clearly elucidating intent) is upon the Legislative body. By leaving ambiguous the part within the letter of the law that regulates individual liberties for individuals found guilty of a crime, the Legislative has "given up" their jurisdiction in the edge case scenario which is in front of the court since it is "undefined" \- This would have been a great case for the courts to weigh in and restrict legislative over reach and force more clearly written laws.

For those who think this is picking on too many nits - it sets precedent. A better example for argument might be the tax code and the popular saying that there is no living person capable of declaring that they are fully operating within the letter of the tax code due to the many levels of discretionary interpretation it allows.

<comment><USER34> Legal and medical definitions of death I've seen include the terms "permanent" and/or "irreversible".

The prisoner being alive would imply that he never actually died, at least not medically or legally.

<comment><USER35> I don't think this is correct. People have been declared legally dead simply due to being missing for a long time, and there's nothing "permanent" or "irreversible" about being a missing person - sometimes they show up again.

<comment><USER36> There is a big difference between being dead and being declared dead. One is a fact about the universe, and the other is a fact about what somebody said about the universe. Seeing somebody who was dead and is now alive is cause to start a religion. Seeing somebody who was declared dead and is now alive is cause to doubt that initial declaration.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Life sentence means life in prison. If he had gotten the death sentence, then maybe he has a argument.

<comment><USER17> but he completed his life sentence when they didn't let him die and resuscitated against his will, that's just cruel and waste of money, they should held person who resuscitated him liable for all expenses regarding him until death

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> If the court finds that he is dead, the prison should follow standard procedure and have the body buried or cremated immediately.

<comment><USER39> His argument is that he was serving a single life sentence and his "dying" means it was served. Lame, but he's probably got the time...</comment></comment>


Chinese spies stole trade secrets from Dutch chip machine maker ASML: report - <AUTHOR> https://nltimes.nl/2019/04/11/chinese-spies-stole-trade-secrets-dutch-chip-maker-asml-report <comment><USER2> The CEO of ASML commented on this story in Nieuwsuur last Tuesday [1] (the interview starts at 22m35s). Caption file can be found here [2], which is not entirely correct in every sentence uttered, but translates pretty well.

Main points raised there:

1) This story is about four employees, who were not closely familiar to the core technology of ASML.

2) Looking at the circumstances, it seems far more likely that this was an action by ex-exployees with commercial motives, rather than government- sponsored spying.

3) ASMLs core technology simply remains in The Netherlands. An anecdote: 15 years ago ASML came with the most advanced lithography scanner of that time. It was copied in China to the last screw, but the device simply didn't work, because they lacked intricate knowledge on its actual operation.

[1] [https://www.npostart.nl/nieuwsuur/16-04-2019/VPWON_1297076](https://www.npostart.nl/nieuwsuur/16-04-2019/VPWON_1297076)

[2] [https://pastebin.com/Zg55qtYK](https://pastebin.com/Zg55qtYK)

<comment><USER3> >2) Looking at the circumstances, it seems far more likely that this was an action by ex-exployees with commercial motives, rather than government- sponsored spying.

Which doesn't surprise me, as that's practically ingrained in the Chinese culture, and is another factor to take into account when hiring Chinese people.

<comment><USER4> >and is another factor to take into account when hiring Chinese people.

I understand what you mean, but it's literally illegal to take any factor into account when hiring Chinese people (literal racism). It's literally a protected status.

Is there some other way to interview and test whether someone will steal your code and send it to China, other than the fact that they're Chinese?

If you can come up with an alternative test you give everyone, it's okay. Using nationality as a shortcut is not OK.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> ASML is not a chip company. They are a chip _equipment_ company. The machine they have designed is a wonder of science and engineering. It is also the only model by any company that is capable of printing the chip layers at state of the art nanoscale. Every high value chip produced in the world has its lithography steps in ASML tools.

</comment><comment><USER6> The problem with chip IP theft is the theif only has the IP they stole, not the skill to further develop or extend it (usually). The Qualcomm => Intel IP Theft that Apple facilitated is a great example, or AMD's licensing of the first gen Zen architecture to a Chinese owned company.

Intel wasn't able to get their chipset working well despite a treasure trove of Qualcomm code and documents, even with the ability to question Qualcomm engineers via Apple.

Meanwhile, Hygon (the AMD/China joint venture) has produced the Dhyana, virtually identical to AMD's EPYC chips of a year prior.

The limiting factor for Hygon fulfiling its goals (home grown, performant cores) faces many challenges, as AMD is moving to 7nm at TSMC, while the bleeding edge at Chinese fabs (and nearly all other fabs) is 14nm. Even Intel hasn't been able to jump above 14nm and make a sizeable number of chips.

Even if Hygon were to steal AMD's newer design, they have no native fabs to manufacture it, and they likely won't for another few years. Permanent industry laggard puts you in the same position as VIA, never making good profit or breaking ahead of competitors.

<comment><USER7> This isn't logic design. ASML makes photolithography equipment used in semiconductor manufacture.

The head line is confusing, but it reads "Dutch chip _machine_ maker"

<comment><USER8> dutch chip maker maker

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> _ASML CEO Peter Wennink strongly denies that the Chinese government is behind the theft of sensitive business information._ according to [https://nos.nl/l/2279983](https://nos.nl/l/2279983) (translate [https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=nl&tl=en&u=https%3...](https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=nl&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fnos.nl%2Fl%2F2279983) )

<comment><USER10> If he said otherwise, would the Chinese government sanction him?

<comment><USER11> I also fail to see the difference between Chinese corporate interests and Chinese government interests. Doesn't the government have its hands in all this stuff?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> History repeats itself...

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Slater](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Slater)

</comment><comment><USER13> Is the semiconductor industry particularly vulnerable to China for some reason? I am obviously in a news bubble but it looks like it's always the silicon technology companies that have these issues.

<comment><USER14> It's not just technology. Every industry has suffered. All the steel recipes have been stolen costing smelters billions in R&D expenses and decades of time. Chemical Industry has suffered, Auto, etc. The end game is to dominate everything.

I suppose the best approach is to avoid doing business with them.

Perhaps the current US Administrations position concerning China warrants wide spread support.

<comment><USER15> Well, I"m almost happy about the steel recipes. I'm getting really tired of Chinese-made screws and bolts that almost seem to be made of plastic.

<comment><USER16> > I'm getting really tired of Chinese-made screws and bolts that almost seem > to be made of plastic.

Supposedly, in the cheapest Chinese-produced goods, it sometimes happens that screws are made not entirely from metal, but are just a metal casing around sand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Hire local poeople and treat them as if you need them.

<comment><USER18> >> Hire local poeople and treat them as if you need them.

Wow! What a concept!

alas, that'll never work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Every cybersecurity guy I've ever met has at least one or two Chinese espionage stories--all ending with a bunch of C-level guys pleading to keep it out of the news, while being utterly unconcerned that company IP and sensitive customer information have left the building.

It could just be a case of pass-the-message, but the C-level guys often seemed so unconcerned that you'd have to wonder if they were also in on it. After all, the Chinese do have money, and everyone likes money.

</comment><comment><USER20> It's too late for western companies to stop the leakage. The Chinese regime planted their "spies" everywhere in academia & industry through multi-decade onslaught. The companies and governments just kept looking the other way and the chickens are coming home to roost.

<comment><USER21> If you're insinuating that every immigrant from China is a "spy" then a significant chunk of our tech infrastructure is built by these spies in the first place.

<comment><USER22> Read again, that's not what the OP is insinuating. In any case, this is a serious issue that deserves a serious discussion without getting angry.

<comment><USER21> I don't think you can lay claim what OP is intending to say unless you're OP. The best either of us can do is share our interpretation, and others can feel free to pile on.

I'm happy to discuss how to maintain tech superiority in America as long as it doesn't turn into a witch-hunt against immigrants. It's far easier to fan fears than to calm them, this should be reflected in how we communicate.

<comment><USER23> Speaking argumentatively, I'd assert the audience controls your meaning more than you do; after all, meaning in communication is a negotiation between more than one powers. I think of a famous author angrily leaving a guest lecture when students don't agree with the interpretation, or like with JK Rowling adding interpretation behind her characters after the Harry Potter books.

<comment><USER21> Yea I agree. You're talking about meaning, which i assume to mean "what each person derives from your words". And like I said above, I would define intent as "what meaning the author wishes for people to imbue", if you want to get crisp.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I would argue that developing countries have a moral obligation to obtain whatever intellectual property is necessary to develop their economies.</comment>


10 years ago today, these were the hardware specs we were saving up for... - <AUTHOR> http://i.imgur.com/2Q9Si.gif

<comment><USER2> Building up a system and playing games on it, getting PC gamer with demo discs, etc was all so fun back then. I seem to have lost the motivation to do so today.</comment>


Importance of 'Spare Cycles' for Web 2.0 startups - <AUTHOR> http://www.longtail.com/the_long_tail/2007/05/the_awesome_pow.html <comment><USER2> A curious and insightful view.

Those cycles however aren't really "spare", or they are spare only in terms of producing money. I'm paid for some part of my cycles, then I'm not paid for some other part (OSS, social Internet), and finally there are really spare cycles that I may enjoy as being literally spare, e.g. hanging out in a pub.

The second type of cycles, that is, when I may produce wealth with no immediate pay back are becoming increasingly important and potentially rewarding, thanks to the Internet. That's probably what Web 2.0 is about (no matter how much I hate this term :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Touche!

The irony is, we are trying to use the spare cycles effectively, such that we can generate better spare cycles in the immediate future.

The recursive nature of this relationship guarantees success to the relentless, I guess, where the quality of the spare cycles keeps getting better.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> YC runs thanks to our 'spare cycles.'

Or is it the other way round?

Our 'spare cycles' add value because of YC?</comment>


Samsung will reportedly issue worldwide recall of Galaxy Note 7 - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2016/9/1/12759912/samsung-galaxy-note-7-recall <comment><USER2> Just in time for the iPhone 7 launch.</comment>


Tesla releases 'expected price' of semi electric truck: $150,000 to $200,000 - <AUTHOR> https://electrek.co/2017/11/22/tesla-semi-expected-price-electric-truck/ <comment><USER2> So the price delta between 300 mile and 500 mile is $30,000.

2 kWhr per mile means the 300 mile is a 600 kWhr battery and the 500 mile is 1000 kWhr.

400 kWhr's for $30k means they are expecting $75 per kWhr battery costs. Last year they said it was under $190 per kWhr.

I am very skeptical they can meet that target, $75 would be pretty revolutionary in such a short time.

<comment><USER3> I'm expecting Tesla to make truck drivers pay for faster charging. this might be a way to reduce initial costs.

<comment><USER4> Tesla already said that megacharging (supercharing for trucks) will be 7 cents per kWh in all states, so that truck drivers have predictable costs (unlink Diesel, which can vary greatly).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I read "semi electric truck", and wondered what "semi electric" means. Hybrid?

But reading the article, it becomes more clear that it's about the Tesla Semi, which is an electric truck. Confusing headline.

<comment><USER6> You might not be American. I had the same confusion when I called 911 to report an accident driving across the US and they asked me if the truck was a "semi".

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semi- trailer_truck](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semi-trailer_truck)

<comment><USER5> But even if it's a type of truck, calling it a semi electric truck is weird. I would have expected it to be an electric semi truck, or something.</comment></comment></comment>


Chris Dixon, Pissing Off/On Incumbents and VC Marketing - <AUTHOR> http://www.metamorphblog.com/2010/07/chris-dixon-pissing-offon-incumbents-vc-marketing.html

<comment><AUTHOR> strangely, some people can click through and see this link perfectly, others can't. I just installed Wordpress & changed the DNS, so pls let me know if you're having this problem and any suggestions to fix it!

<comment><USER2> I'm having this problem, but can read the cached version: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.metamorphblog.com/2010/07/chris- dixon-pissing-offon-incumbents-vc-marketing.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I can't click through in Chrome but I can in Firefox (linux)...</comment>


The Internet's on Shaky Ground - <AUTHOR> http://www.internetevolution.com/author.asp?section_id=708&doc_id=166793& <comment><USER2> but that's the thing. worse _is_ better. The Internet doesn't need to be re- designed for every new type of technology that comes around. Sure, you can do a 'content centric' setup on top of IP, on the most hackish level, just set a squid cache with big disks at the head of your network. (at a more expensive level, you can put your content on akamai or the like) But you don't have to be content-centric, and this is good. How would you do VoIP over a content- centric network?

The decentralized and hackish nature of the internet is precisely why it has become so successful. Personally, I would argue that 'worse is better' is the only way to go if you need the cooperation of many people, as it requires the least agreement. more complex, more "perfect" systems can sometimes be better, but they usually need to be created and operated by a single entity. This would be completely incompatible with what makes the internet great.

</comment><comment><USER3> _You needn't do more than attempt to watch a streaming video on a busy office LAN or oversubscribed DSL circuit to understand that even the best-served markets for Internet connectivity are struggling to keep up with demand for networked content._

I don't know, I think the worst aspect of my video browsing experience at home is my ISP's second guessing of Youtube's bandwidth and streaming parameters, which end up in their DPI shapers and cause Youtube to underrun.

If the point is "see, if the internet was awesome you wouldn't need those shapers" I guess I couldn't disagree, but experience tells me to trust one smart guy on the far end of the network to figure it out and not rely on the people in between who generally seem to mess it up.

<comment><USER4> That's called "The end-to-end argument in system design", and if you Google that you'll get one of the most important CS papers ever written. I agree with you, of course.

<comment><USER5> And when I did, guess what came up as number 2 hit? Your comment!

<comment><USER4> That's fucked up right there. They ought to fix whatever's making that happen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Immediate caveats: Alex is a smart guy, and Van Jacobson (Peace be upon him) is the Interpope. I can only have an imperfect understanding of what VJ is saying with Content-Centric Networking, and I am extrapolating some of what I knew him to have been saying in the late '90s.

From the promotional material, Content-Centric Networking appears to be the combination of three major ideas in networking:

* _Multicast_ , a failed experiment from the network layer but still a possibility outside it: simply the idea that each network hop can be 1-N instead of 1-1.

* _Overlay_ , an idea that started with IRC and TIBCO (which I think invented content-addressed networking): the idea that we can build networks with ambitious service models on networks with simple ones.

* _Peer to Peer_ , the idea that if we write software that's smart enough, we can repurpose all the existing services to build networks instead of deploying new ones.

On their own, these are all good ideas. Clearly, some combinations of them are effective too. But I don't think there's a new Internet you can synthesize out of them. There are some really hard problems in here that I haven't seen compelling solutions to:

* Overlayed or not, multicast gets unwieldy as more addressable content is added. The web scales because Pitchfork Media doesn't need to know anything about Ars Technica. The services that need to know everything are all contemplating building floating offshore data centers to hold it. This is the problem that will keep IP multicast from ever happening: NSPs filter prefixes below (what is it now?) /19, and multicast wants a globally routed address for _every web page_.

* The only proven group reliability strategies are lossiness and forward error correction (a la BitTorrent), but FEC is drastically less effective for short, near-transactional content than it is for large streams of data, and lossiness doesn't work for CNN.

* The failure modes of Internet-scale, telco-reliable P2P (err, "self-organizing networks") are totally unknown.

* Group security is harder than unicast security; for example, the group equivalent to SSL/TLS involves protocols and algorithms like key sharing that are currently exotica in industry.

* Unless all you're trying to do is stream video --- in which case, why not just invest in Akamai? --- there are too many application service models to design a single network architecture to. Who knew 150 character limits were going to be a feature in 2008? Who knew AOL IM was going to crush IRC?

VJ has been talking about these ideas for over a decade, and other absurdly smart people have been working there too --- Paul Francis and Frans Kaashoek come to mind --- and I'm sure we're going to get lots of cool stuff out of this line of thought. I doubt we'll get a new Internet.

And if we do, it'll be running directly on top of the old Internet, so we better hope it's not _too_ shaky, Alex.

<comment><USER6> "I can only have an imperfect understanding of what VJ is saying with Content- Centric Networking, and I am extrapolating some of what I knew him to have been saying in the late '90s."

So you just made all of that up?

If you'd like to see the actual points (which say nothing of multicast and doesn't proclaim "group security" to be scary and magical), check out <http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6972678839686672840>

It's about providing network access to everyone from mud huts in villages to gigabit connected apartments in Tokyo. It's about making networking with content retrieval work over any medium, anyplace, anytime.

It's about being able to drop "a box of Internet" someplace and having reasonable access to content.

We could have a workable solution to what Van Jacobson describes now, but mobile devices and most computers are still too caught up in privacy and network lockdown. Being "connected" doesn't mean just having Internet access. It means being able to connect to everything around you and interact meaningfully without having to go through service providers and gatekeepers.

<comment><USER4> Of course I didn't. I read the promotional material at PARC, and I spent years obsessing about every paper Jacobson and his team posted at ftp.ee.lbl.gov, so I'm familiar with the general subject area. I also helped crater a VC-funded startup in this area. What I did not do was sit through a Google video of VJ explaining all the implications of this Great New Idea, which is why I started my comment with a caveat.

Thanks for telling me what it's about, though. I'm glad the mud huts in villages will have working content retrieval anyplace, anytime. Maybe we can get them clean running water soon afterwards.</comment></comment></comment>


You're self-medicating with one of the most dangerous drugs in the world - <AUTHOR> http://asserttrue.blogspot.com/2015/02/our-sugar-addiction-problem.html

<comment><USER2> > That way, the libertarians (and others) who want personal choice can choose > to pay 10 or 20 cents extra for "real Coke" if their delicate taste buds > can't abide Coke Zero.

Libertarians have been arguing for the end of Sugar Industry subsidies ($2 billion annually) for years. See Cato Institute > [http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/why-congress- sho...](http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/why-congress-should- repeal-sugar-subsidy)

Neither Democrats or GOP leadership have shown any political will to take on Big Sugar. So why does Kas Thomas make such an inept, asinine, gratuitous swipe at Libertarians?

<comment><USER3> Is Coke Zero any better? I thought there was some research around how the artificial sweeteners trigger the same metabolic response without providing the actual calories, causing even more appetite...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I couldn't even read the first sentence without being forced to sign up. Bad form.

</comment><comment><USER5> > and sugar denialists will claim that the correlation between sugar > consumption and obesity doesn't prove causation; and other such moronic > crap.

I fail to understand how that qualifies as "moronic crap" when this article - like the _hundreds_ of "OMG SUGAR IS BAD!!!!!!!!11111one" tirades before it - yet again fails to provide that there is indeed causation. There are a _lot_ of factors when it comes to the cause of obesity and the resulting medical concerns; chalking it all up as "oh, it's just sugar, we should just eat less of it and all our problems will disappear" is irresponsible and misguided, and demonstrates a scarcity of understanding of a topic this article's author is masquerading as an expert of.

Yes, fat people eat a lot of sugar. Yes, fat people are at higher risk of illnesses like cancer and heart disease and diabetes. That does not in and of itself prove that sugar consumption causes these things. Maybe fat people just happen to like sugar (which - speaking as a fat person - would not be a particularly-egregious stretch)?

It also falls into the same pattern as its predecessors when it comes to lumping table sugar and high-fructose corn syrup together as if the notion of cane sugar is some myth and that all sugar comes from corn.

> Have you joined the mailing list? What are you waiting for?

I'm waiting for you to write an article that's actually worthwhile instead of spewing the same pretentious holier-than-thou bullshit that every other anti- sugar fanatic likes to toss at every last passerby. You immediately barfing up a "SIGN UP TO MY MAILING LIST!!!!!!!1111one" popup and blocking the article with it certainly does not help convince me that I should subscribe to it.</comment>


MacBook Pro teardown confirms the new keyboard is just the old keyboard - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2019/11/15/20966926/apple-16-inch-macbook-pro-teardown-ifixit-keyboard-switches-scissor-butterfly <comment><USER2> Maybe we could link to the original article instead of the blogspam?

[https://www.ifixit.com/News/16-inch-macbook-pro-magic- keyboa...](https://www.ifixit.com/News/16-inch-macbook-pro-magic-keyboard- throwback)

</comment><comment><USER3> HN should change the title. The actual article title ends with "just the old, good keyboard".

Leaving out the word "good" changes the entire meaning.

<comment><USER4> Only if you think there's something inherently wrong with 'old'!

<comment><USER3> Not at all, it's a drastic change in meaning in title between original article and HN.

Given the huge breadth of complaints against the butterfly keyboard, the title saying that the keyboard of a 'new' MacBook is the same as the 'old' MacBook suggests keyboard hasn't changed. But it clearly has, which is the point of the article.

The inclusion of a single additional word "good" clarifies the new keyboard matches the old version BEFORE the butterfly keyboard.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Still a bit less key travel than the pre-butterfly MacBook Pros; apparently the last one of those (which I've personally stuck with until now) has 1.3mm. [1] 1.0mm is probably good enough though.

[1] [https://www.laptopmag.com/articles/macbook-pro-2015-is- best-...](https://www.laptopmag.com/articles/macbook-pro-2015-is-best-macbook- in-2017)

</comment><comment><USER6> For someone reading only the headline and wondering if old means Butterfly keyboard : NO. Thank God for that!

</comment><comment><USER7> That's literally all we wanted from the keyboard.

<comment><USER8> We want 12 physical function keys as well ...

<comment> t-writescode Not all of us, I just wanted an escape key. I'm happy now.

<comment><USER9> Seriously, keeping esc but dropping the function keys for something you can dynamically change is super cool. Those keys were always mapped to app specific functions anyway so now apps have a lot more freedom to do clever things like sliders, color pallets, switching out buttons on context.

This was all true before but now it's not the annoying thing that gets in the way when using Vim.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I know the wording "just the old keyboard" is meant as clickbait, but for those of us who have used the butterfly keyboard, we pretty much interpreted this as "just the old, awesome keyboard, yeah baby!"

</comment><comment><USER11> So happy Jony Ive is no longer Chief Design Officer.

</comment><comment><USER12> What is your recommendations for someone seeking to buy a 13" MacBook Pro or Air atm? Is the latest incarnation of the butterfly keyboard still as bad? Are revamped versions of those machines around the corner? Or far away? Actually asking for a friend.

<comment><USER13> I bought a 13" mpb this year and the keyboard is fine, though I don't use it much.

Biggest mistake was buying the "higher end" 2.4ghz model that's actually performing the same as the much cheaper 1.4ghz model.

<comment><USER14> I feel I must add: The 1.4 performs the same as the 2.4 ... in the role you employ it :) No contest!

In my workloads there's been a wayyy big difference from a 4-core 15" to a faster-clocked 4-core to to a 6-core.

But there's absolutely no contest from me on a modern 1.4GHz processor being a powerhouse, especially paired with SSDs as fast as in these.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Now I can finally move on from my '15 MBP! I love Linux but OSX is so great for work.

</comment><comment><USER16> I hate typing on the Magic Keyboards, they feel more like the butterfly to me than the pre-2015 macbook keyboards. :(

</comment><comment><USER17> Kudos on Apple for having the courage to get rid of those keyboards and bring back what once worked. Everyone seemed to really love the old keyboard, why did they feel the need to change it I would never understand. I'm still typing this on my MBP with two keys ("E" and "R") randomly falling off right now.

</comment><comment><USER18> Good.

</comment><comment><USER19> CMD-Z

</comment><comment><USER20> Apple is the most corrupted IT company ever existed. Look at how they make money, based on marketing and sales. There's not a single innovation in the past 10 years.</comment>


On store shelves, stealthy shrinking of containers keeps prices from rising - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-shrink9-2008nov09,0,7931122,full.story <comment><USER2> The other tactic is emphasizing container sizes that haven't been high-volume products in the past. For example, vending machines that sell canned drinks are an increasingly rare species - most of the new models are designed to sell larger plastic bottles, presumably since consumers have less specific ideas of what they should cost. Chocolate bars are now frequently sold in small 100-gram packages and larger double-bar packages.

</comment><comment><USER3> What ever happened to 'make something people want?' I was in the ice cream aisle a couple days back and it was downright depressing.

[edit: _quantity_ is very important to me when it comes to ice cream :)]

</comment><comment><USER4> The Consumerist has a lot of articles about this, grouped under the title "Grocery Shrink Ray" (<http://consumerist.com/search/grocery%20shrink%20ray/>).

</comment><comment><USER5> I wonder if official calculations of inflation take this into account...

</comment><comment><USER6> cool. maybe people will overeat less.</comment>


Cray Unveils Open-Source Big Data Box - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/05/24/cray_branches_into_analytics/ <comment><USER2> Just the other day I sat on one of the Computer History Museum's Cray I's. As much as I appreciate the fact the Cray machines come in industry-standard racks that fit seamlessly in any data center, I miss the age of exotic shapes and the immediately recognizable machines.

<comment><USER3> Computers used to be way more diverse and interesting. Unfortunately, that made using them a pain. So, industry converged on more similar things where possible. Economics factored in given enormous investments required into new chips. The drag of mainstream computing away from stuff like old Cray's is like a force of nature.

Doesn't mean a niche player can't come along with a neat box with good differentiators. Job's Next Cubes give me hope here. :)

<comment><USER2> The MacPro is a great example of how you can build a PC that is not shaped like a box.

<comment><USER3> Lol. Yeah, there's that too. You could say they have a talent for not making the usual, ugly stuff. ;)

<comment><USER2> Even with standard rack-mountable equipment, it can't be that difficult to do it when you have a couple hundred processor boards to arrange in space. And the vertical piles of boxes is, most likely, not the optimal arrangement.

<comment><USER3> That kind of thinking led to blades, Blue Gene's little cards, and later Open Compute. So, yeah, it's probably true. ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Doesn't sound like the Cray Graph Engine is available separate from the Urika- GX package. Not that it necessarily would be useful without the Cray programming environment, but the open source remarks are unclear and make one wonder if they're going to release it to the public.

[http://www.cray.com/sites/default/files/Cray-Urika-GX- Produc...](http://www.cray.com/sites/default/files/Cray-Urika-GX-Product- Brief.pdf)

<comment><USER5> It sounds like Cray is selling their hardware with several open source big data software installed and pre-configured and ready to go.

<comment><USER4> That's right and there's not much info about their graph db and if it's available to the wider public as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The Urika I got to try at CSCS was probably the easiest graph database I ever experimented with. Very single user focussed but really nicely done (single user focus might have been CSCS as a supercomputer centre decision).

</comment><comment><USER7> Forget the box, look at PiedPipper!</comment>


Why I Look for Obsessive and Competitive Founders - <AUTHOR> http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2014/11/25/in-search-of-obsessive-and-competitive-founders/

<comment><USER2> Does anyone on this site identify with this? I do, in the sense that sometimes I question why the hell I do what I do. But I have done it for a long time, and honestly don't know any other way to be. As I write this, it is Thanksgiving day and I am annoyed at my wife. She has chosen to teach two fitness classes back-to-back today, so I am with the kids. I had planned to go the to office for a few hours.....

So I am not only obsessive and competitive, so is she. So are the kids. Genetics or environment?</comment>


Dwl: Dwm-like Wayland compositor based on wlroots - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/djpohly/dwl <comment><AUTHOR> I am _not_ the author of dwl. Since dwl is based on wlroots (just like the popular Sway) it already supports making screenshots using grim[1] and screencasts using wf-recorder[2].

You can try out dwl from within your current WM. The default modkey is Alt. If you want to use the Super key, change `#define MODKEY WLR_MODIFIER_ALT` in `config.h` to `#define MODKEY WLR_MODIFIER_LOGO` and recompile. The default terminal emulator is kitty but you can change `termcmd` to alacritty if you want.

Currently, only native Wayland applications run on it. You can enable experimental Wayland support for Firefox with `MOZ_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1`, see Running programs natively under Wayland in Sway Wiki[3].

Do not hover over the edges of windows – this will crash dwl.

[1]: [https://github.com/emersion/grim](https://github.com/emersion/grim) [2]: [https://github.com/ammen99/wf-recorder](https://github.com/ammen99/wf- recorder) [3]: [https://github.com/swaywm/sway/wiki/Running-programs- nativel...](https://github.com/swaywm/sway/wiki/Running-programs-natively- under-wayland)</comment>


Don't support laws you are not willing to kill to enforce (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2014/12/05/dont-support-laws-you-are-not-willing-to-kill-to-enforce/ <comment><USER2> This is disingenuous. Few reasonable people would suggest that the police have authority to kill because someone litters, has a broken tail light, or sells single cigarettes in violation of New York law. Depending on your viewpoint and the situation, killings occur because people resist the police, because people run from the police, because the police are trigger-happy and biased, or because the police are murderers. One might even think that it is ridiculous to ban sales of single cigarettes. Even so, this piece suggests I should not support laws banning littering unless I believe the police should be authorized to kill litterers. This is ridiculous. Of course we can support a law even if we believe that a violator should not be subjected to summary execution.

<comment><USER3> I disagree. The point is that by creating a law which you by extension are asking the police to enforce, you are inherently increasing the number of times that the police will negatively interact with people.

The cigarette tax is interesting because this exemplifies a corporate entity/state which wants to protect its revenue at the expense of a person lower on the ladder trying to address a simple market situation, it's not one that I or you deal in, but this guy obviously did.

By making it illegal, the police must enforce the law. The guy then breaking said law is faced with a hard choice when dealing with the police in that situation, which is that he is going to be at a minimum fined or possibly worse. For a cigarette, which all sane people would say, "seriously?"

Our goal should be to have police enforce laws that we care about, and laws that actually matter. It reduces the chance for potential abuse of the law. Remember that most poor people are forced to work and live in more public areas, where richer people have more private property that shields potentially the same or worse incursions of the law from the police.

<comment><USER4> The discussion of cigarette sales/taxes is clearly a strawman. If you believe that we shouldn't have laws unless we are willing to kill to enforce them, you should be able to defend this argument against a law which the vast majority of people will support. For example, I would not choose to kill someone for driving drunk, but strongly support laws which ban drunk driving and remove the ability to drive from convicted drunk drivers.

<comment><AUTHOR> It is not the death penalty for drinking and driving that is on the table, but the possibility of the offender being killed as a result of a confrontation with the police over the act of drinking and driving. Engendering innocent lives is a serious felony and I imagine most people would support the police stopping the car with tire slashes and confronting the offender in case of further resistance, even though he might be killed (which is not the objective, but a possible consequence).

<comment><USER4> Thanks for your clear argument. I was definitely arguing 'past' the parent, and this helped me to see that. Won't hide my shame at completely missing the point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've been something like this for days.. Why are the police pulling people over for busted tailights/etc? Isn't having a yearly car inspection regime enough? How frequently do tail lights burn out, and is it that critical to everyone's safety that it gets fixed as soon as cop sees it or can it wait for a few months until the state inspection. Don't most cars have some kind of indicator that a light is blown? Basically the vast majority interactions most people have with the police are when they are acting like thugs/tax collectors and enforcing fee's for minor infractions of laws that weren't even on the books more than a couple dozen years ago and for the most part haven't done anything to improve safety.

Basically, the police culture seems to focus on over-policing useless things like traffic enforcement while under-policing dangerous parts of town with beat cops.

<comment><USER6> If you're alluding to the Philando Castile shooting, he wasn't pulled over because of his tail lights, which were actually working[1]. Rather, the police officer thought that Castile looked like a robbery suspect[2] and the tail light thing was just a pretext.

[1] [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3681591/That- taillig...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3681591/That-taillight- working-fine-Witness-rubbishes-police-claim-Philando-Castile-death-streamed- Facebook-pulled-busted-light-car.html)

[2] [http://www.kare11.com/news/police-scanner- audio-1/267042738](http://www.kare11.com/news/police-scanner- audio-1/267042738)

<comment><USER7> Your #2 link says that the relevant police have not confirmed the authenticity of the recording from an unnamed source..and the article was posted three days ago and contains 9 spamvertisements.

<comment><USER6> The #2 link seems to be the closest we have to the original source. It's a news gathering operation run by the CBS broadcast television affiliate in the MSP region where the events in question transpired. The person making the scanner recording hasn't posted it anywhere that I know of. If you know of a better source, I'll gladly change the link, but this is the source everyone else is ultimately linking to.

As for the police not verifying the recording, that's not unusual. Police don't tend to comment on pending investigations unless they need something from the public. In any case, the shooter's attorney has largely confirmed the information in the recording[1]. It could still be a fake, but if it is, it's a good one based on information not publicly available until days later.

[1] [http://www.startribune.com/lawyer-castile-pulled-over- becaus...](http://www.startribune.com/lawyer-castile-pulled-over-because-he- matched-robbery-suspect/386221031/)

<comment><USER7> I'd think a news gathering operation would have their own recordings to check and verify.

I don't see a quote from the attorney in support of the claim that the stop was called in.

If the call was already broadcast, I don't see why it couldn't be confirmed. Is this source the only one recording?

<comment><USER6> I linked to that additional article as confirmation that the shooter thought that Castile looked like a robbery suspect. While the article doesn't have any direct quotes to that effect, it paraphrases him saying as much.

The claim that the shooter called in the stop before he made it is unremarkable because that's standard practice. In fact, it'd be more unusual if he hadn't called it in. Doubly so when stopping a suspected armed robber. A big reason why officers call in every stop is so that if the stop goes sideways and they are never heard from again, at least dispatch got the plate so investigators know where to begin.

I'd wager most news operations use Radio Reference these days rather than worry running all that gear and archiving all that audio themselves. Some of the relevant streams were down that night[1], probably explaining why there aren't other copies floating around.

[1] [http://forums.radioreference.com/broadcastify-live-audio- lis...](http://forums.radioreference.com/broadcastify-live-audio-listener- support/336321-missing-audio-archives.html)

<comment><USER7> I'd wager you can setup a scanner and more than a year of storage for <$100. The total volume of the setup would be a very small cube that would just need to be attached to an antenna.

There is really no excuse not to be doing it at this point. Especially when third parties are proven unreliable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Police have become the threat that the Founders feared when they talked about the dangers of a standing army. Either they need to be armed with non-lethal weapons only, or they need to stand trial for each killing (severally and collectively), or both.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'd like to see more coverage of the libertarian candidates this cycle. Neither major party seems likely to fix this issue -- Republicans will dismiss it and Democrats will pander and apply band-aids (all the while increasing the scope of government).

And the libertarians this time around are serious candidates -- president and VP nominees are both two-term governors. Pretty hard to ignore when the major candidates are so bad.

<comment><USER10> Oh my! Two term governors! Well sign me up...

Gary Johnson is a neo-liberal to the core. To him everything comes down to how much it costs.

He's anti-mandatory vaccinations.

He's all about FairTax which hit the poor harder than the rich. Screw people that don't have rich parents.

He's anti net neutrality and believes incumbents should manage the network as they see fit. Of course he opposes government intervention to keep the internet "independent". Let's rely on network access providers, cause that's working out well.

He's all about the free market and anti government meddling until either argument get in his way. He says government should not subsidize or bailout industry but hey it should support building more coal (pandering to coal nation).

He supports the TPP, which is nothing but a gift to entrenched big business and the erosion of other nations sovereignty.

He's a Constitutional "originalist", which is basically code word for "screw letting people decide how to govern themselves, we're sticking to the flawed work of some long dead white guys."

In short, he's just as vague when it comes to concrete solutions, big on talking points, pro rich, anti poor, but worst of all driven by idealism versus reality.

Typical politician. Nothing new to see there.

<comment><USER9> Nothing you say is particularly radical.

I know many will disagree with his positions on some things, or maybe many things. The point is that they are reasonable politicians, and especially when the main candidates are so bad, deserve a fair chance in the media to have their say.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Before you start blaming racism and all such manner of things consider some interesting statistics.

Other western countries have much lower police fatalities, being a police officer in the US is way more dangerous than other western countries.

[http://www.nleomf.org/facts/officer-fatalities- data/year.htm...](http://www.nleomf.org/facts/officer-fatalities- data/year.html)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_British_police_officer...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_British_police_officers_killed_in_the_line_of_duty)

[http://www.npm.org.au/honour-roll](http://www.npm.org.au/honour-roll)

I could not find a source but it would be nice to see a break down of \- killed illegally \- killed by accident \- injuries \- gun \- knives \- etc

Broken down by country/per capita, I think we would find (my opinion as I couldn't find the stats) that the US is abnormally high to its peers.

<comment><USER12> A little over 50% of officers killed in the past 10 years were killed by accidents, mostly car accidents.

Feloniously Killed: [https://www.fbi.gov/about- us/cjis/ucr/leoka/2014/tables/tabl...](https://www.fbi.gov/about- us/cjis/ucr/leoka/2014/tables/table_1_leos_fk_region_geographic_division_and_state_2005-2014.xls)

Accidentally Killed: [https://www.fbi.gov/about- us/cjis/ucr/leoka/2014/tables/tabl...](https://www.fbi.gov/about- us/cjis/ucr/leoka/2014/tables/table_52_leos_ak_region_geographic_division_and_state_2005-2014.xls)

<comment><USER11> Good link thanks for finding it, I would say that 50 officers killed on purpose is even worse when compared to the other stats I linked. At face value it appears to be 5x higher.

Interestingly look at the rate of injury as well especially from fire arms.

[https://www.fbi.gov/about- us/cjis/ucr/leoka/2014/tables/tabl...](https://www.fbi.gov/about- us/cjis/ucr/leoka/2014/tables/table_76_leos_asltd_type_of_weapon_and_percent_injured_2005-2014.xls)

<comment><USER12> In 2014, according to killedbypolice.net, the number of recorded killings by the police was 1111 [1], which would mean you have about _21 times_ the odds of being killed by police in a given interaction than they have of being killed by you. I haven't found any statistics on assaults from the police, so its hard to compare apples to apples there.

I'm not saying it's not more dangerous to be a police officer than the average occupation (I think it goes without saying that we expect it to be a dangerous job). But it's important to put these numbers in global terms as well. The assault rate according to those stats was 9%, with a 28.3% injury rate from assaults. To put that in perspective, assuming injury rate remains constant (which doesn't appear to be the trend, it appears to be going down), that means you have about a 39.7% chance of serving 20 years and ever receiving an injury from a criminal. For a normal occupation that would be high, but for the police that doesn't seem especially dangerous. Especially considering that about 80% of those injuries are from "Personal Weapons" (aka, getting punched).

Weather or not its an explanatory factor in a statistical sense, I don't know, but personally I can't see how that justifies some of these incidents.

[1] [http://www.killedbypolice.net/kbp2014.html](http://www.killedbypolice.net/kbp2014.html)

<comment><USER11> ~ the stats are much worse than that it suggests that one police officer is murdered per week and 6 are injured by a firearm (PER DAY). To suggest that those arent alarming rates and just part of the job is very ungenerous to those we trust with keeping us safe from belligerents. Imagine if it was someone in your family who was killed on duty. Sometimes "fuck the police" goes too far, some of us actually like law and order.

<comment><USER13> There are nearly 1 million police officers -- these are not high numbers!

Certainly every individual one is a tragedy, and I wouldn't want it to be me, but overall these are not alarming numbers, taken in context.

<comment><USER11> Out of the 1208 people killed by police last year (2015) how many where unjust? I am just wondering because, 50 in 1 million is 0.005% and 1208 in 320 million is 0.00037% so it would appear more police die per population (total police) vs per population (total people) you are 10 times more likely to die as a police officer than you are to die from a police officer.

<comment><USER13> More dangerous still are garbage collectors.[1]

What is your point exactly? My point is that being a police officer is not as deadly of a job as they insinuate (note that most police officers die of heart attacks and car accidents).

[1] [http://time.com/4326676/dangerous-jobs- america/](http://time.com/4326676/dangerous-jobs-america/)

<comment><USER11> My point is police die at the hands of the public more often than the public dies at the hands of the police.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I don't see how this follows. Not all laws permit use of deadly force. And it's not even the laws per se as much as the circumstances and criteria around authorization of deadly force. I've been trying to learn about this lately, and it seems as though the supreme court case Graham v. Connor [1] is heavily implicated in the fact that very few of these police are convicted despite how objectionable the circumstances have seemed.

As a side note, if you're interested in this type of thing, Radiolab has just started an excellent podcast on supreme court cases called More Perfect [2].

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_v._Connor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_v._Connor)

[2] [http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolabmoreperfect](http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolabmoreperfect)

<comment><USER14> Not all laws may permit the use of deadly force, but every encounter with the police implicitly does.

The line between being pulled over for a minor infraction, and making an officer fear for his life is a very blurry one.

<comment><USER12> Except that the implication here is that the laws precipitate the use of lethal force. You may not be guilty (or suspected to be guilty) of anything in the eyes of the law and face the prospect of lethal force, considering police have investigatory powers. The laws aren't the problem here (I think there are problems with the laws and penalties in other regards, but that's a separate matter), its the wide berth we give to police to enact deadly force.

<comment><USER15> >Except that the implication here is that the laws precipitate the use of lethal forc

Which they do by proxy.

Get a simple ticket and don't pay it or show up for court and it can become a bench warrant in which the cops can go arrest you. Serving warrants is a dangerous event, as in some percentage of the time the served fight back violently.

The only power police have is the power of violence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Lots of countries manage to have all sorts of regulations and very few killings by police. I don't think the premise of this essay is valid.

<comment><USER17> In many such countries the police are not nearly as militarized.

<comment><USER18> So, instead of "don't support laws you aren't willing to kill to have enforced", perhaps, "don't support militarized police" would be the better recommendation.

Since, after all, that's the root of the problem.

<comment><USER19> Which problem do you expect to be fixed first? Every new crime can be fought right in the legislature here and now. Who can demilitarize the police?

[EDIT:] Are police unions, bar associations, and armaments manufacturers just going to sit out the session in which you get your miraculous "just do the right thing ok cops?" law passed? I can't believe that someone as knowledgeable as yourself really thinks that way...

<comment><USER18> > Which problem do you expect to be fixed first?

Demilitarizing the police takes building a coalition for a single, focused, legislative action. Preventing all new, and eliminating all existing, legislation that you aren't willing to have the state kill to enforce requires a lot more.

So, I'd say that demilitarizing the police is _a lot_ easier.

> Every new crime can be fought right in the legislature here and now. Who can > demilitarize the police?

Demilitarizing the police can be fought right in the legislature, here and now, too.

EDIT (to respond to yours):

> [EDIT:] Are police unions, bar associations, and armaments manufacturers > just going to sit out the session in which you get your miraculous "just do > the right thing ok cops?" law passed?

I don't see bar associations particularly likely to oppose demilitarizing police; OTOH, police unions are often opponents of efforts to decriminalize minor offenses that are useful as pretexts (and often are sponsors of new criminalization of this type.) So, is it easier to build a coalition to beat them on _one_ point, or _thousands_?

<comment><USER19> Actually lawyers like to work, so as a whole they like lots of complicated awful laws to keep the courts crowded all the time. Think a little more deeply about how special interests function, however. The NRA _really cares_ about gun control, and few others do, so they get their way. The teachers' unions _really care_ about public education policy, and few others do, so they get their way. Likewise, those who profit from our awful "justice" system _really_ like that profit, so any giant attempt to destroy their entire world will get demolished. We may never know who invented this "one wonderful law will save us" meme, but one doubts he worked on the side of good. We've got to start by eating around the margins of the problem.

<comment><USER18> > Actually lawyers like to work, so as a whole they like lots of complicated > awful laws to keep the courts crowded all the time.

That's a popular stereotype, but -- especially in any way relevant to the kind of criminal offenses at issue in this discussion -- its not borne out at all, AFAICT, by the actual history of bar association lobbying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This looks to be a variant of the point about applying infinities to human lives in public policy.

Basically, a tiny non-zero chance of death still means a finite numbers of lives killed by the policy. And any police encounter has some tiny chance of escalating to lethal force by either side.

But the obvious implication, to me, is "hey, everything has a cost in lives, that shouldn't be a dealbreaker". However, the author uses it in a way that implies that it's some useful heuristic for which laws are good, rather than a trivial point about the ever-present risk of death.

(I expected it to be a point about how, if you want to enforce any law, you have to apply increasing escalation against those who resist it. Refusal to comply -> arrest; resistance of arrest -> force; resistance of force -> death)

<comment><USER21> Resistance of force should only result in death if there is no other option; that is, if you resist it very well. In most cases, it should just result in enough force that you are no longer able to resist.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> "But it is also true that police abuses are far more likely to victimize poor African-Americans and other politically weak groups." -Did the author provide any evidence for this statement?

</comment><comment><USER23> >Usually they greet this advice with something between skepticism and puzzlement, until I remind them that the police go armed to enforce the will of the state, and if you resist, they might kill you.

Really seems like they are missing the obvious answer:

IF you don't want to die, don't resist police orders. Do your resistance in the courts.

<comment><USER19> Are you talking about our present reality, or perhaps about some alternate universe in which good lawyers are inexpensive?

<comment><USER21> In our present reality, if you try to resist the police using physical force rather than the courts, it may not matter to you if good lawyers are free. You may not make it far enough to hire one, _because trying to get physical with the cops is a mind-blowingly stupid idea!_ _Don 't do it._

If you have to show up in court with a bad lawyer - or even representing yourself - do that rather than trying to fight the police.

<comment><USER24> _If you have to show up in court_

Statistically, there's over a 90% chance you'll never see a court date. Because, see, if you don't sign this plea deal we'll just make shit up to pile into the existing charges. Maybe your day in court will let you dodge that triple life sentence, or maybe you'd rather just cop guilty and take the 90 days.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> But what if they completely resisted the law to the point of shooting back? Well then it's the shooting back that will get them killed. There is a rather short list of things the police ought to be shooting at, and they all boil down to endangering life. Going on a gun rampage. Going on a knife rampage. Holding hostages.

Selling cigarettes is not on that list and the only reason that cops get away with it, is a culture of fear and egregious defensive overreaction, which treats unarmed black men as threats equivalent or worse than a white guy with a pistol drawn.

<comment><USER26> Shooting _back_? So law enforcement shot first?

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> The article is mis-titled and mis-leading, and detracts from the core principle. Any law, no matter how minor, can be escalated by a resisting citizen (or a bad cop) into a bigger, more violent situation.

After a fair reading of the article the real argument goes something like this:

1) The sheer number of laws means every citizen is in violation on a regular basis. Especially for trivial things like rolling through a stop sign, selling loose cigarettes, changing lanes without a signal, etc.

2) Every violation is an opportunity for a police encounter. A population that has only 10 laws to obey will have lower encounter rate than a population that has 1000.

3) Each police encounter has a non-zero chance of resulting in violence. Be it a citizen resisting and the cops responding with violence. Or in a cop making a fatal mistake, or a cop overreacting to a situation. There is some likelihood of a violent outcome.

4) Improved officer training and tactics alone are a limited way to lower the per-encounter violence rate. Oversight and accountability are difficult to implement due to various institutional and political barriers.

5) A better, safer, long-term solution is to reduce the total number of encounters by reducing the total number of laws a citizen is required to obey. Fewer encounters mean fewer opportunities for violence.

My main objection to this argument is that #5 would be as difficult to implement as #4. Paring down the number of laws will take a lot of political will and capital. Changing the institutions of policing and prosecution will take just as much political will to change. We should probably do both.

</comment><comment><USER28> Are people willing to kill to enforce laws against petty theft or should we only make theft illegal above a certain dollar amount?

<comment><USER15> No, all theft should be illegal, otherwise that will just allow someone to abuse the system by stealing small amounts multiple times.

And no one is killing to enforce laws against petty theft, no one is killing to enforce laws against almost any infraction.

The use of deadly force comes in effect when you have a portion of the population willing to use violence against cops, which makes cops very nervous that they will 'get the winning lottery ticket' next stop and overusing force back.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I think a big part of the problem is that people want to be able to break some laws (the ones that "are wrong" or "shouldn't apply to me", or just the ones that they want to), and suffer no consequences for doing so. And then, when the police try to enforce some consequences, the people feel like they (the police) shouldn't do that, are wrong to do that, and therefore they (the people) are right to try to defeat the police, either by running away or by direct attack.

</comment><comment><USER29> There are lots of ways to enforce laws without using armed police. In the UK you have to take your car for annual inspections which covers tail lights, speeding and the like get caught by cameras, parking is covered by traffic wardens writing tickets with no guns or arrests involved, non payment of tax results in fines. Personal drug use is mostly ignored. You only really need arrests for things like theft or assault.

</comment><comment><USER30> I'd want to see how the law "don't shoot after fleeing suspects unless they pose an immediate threat to others" will need deadly force to be effective. The normal way laws are enforced is by threatening to remove privileges.

In my opinion the discussion should be around the way the police force interacts with people. If some laws get abolished in the process, that's probably good.

</comment><comment><USER31> This is silly. Breaking laws comes with penalties, which are determined by the courts. There is nothing that inherently states that lawbreakers must be forcibly moved to a government-controlled site; furthermore there's nothing that says people who try to resist arrest should be met with lethal force.

<comment><USER32> You have to at least establish the identity of the person you want to bring to court. This comes with the possibility that the person might resist and there you go - either you give up and let the person walk away without knowing who he was or you have to use some kind of force.

And there is no way around that - rules and laws are just words on paper, ultimately you always have to use force in one way or another if someone does not voluntarily honor the words, otherwise they will only be words on paper and nothing more.

<comment><USER31> You can penalize 'resisting arrest' in other ways than trying to arrest. You can fine them, or revoke licenses, or apply some other penalty that isn't based around jail time -- for which you'd have to actually perform the arrest.

<comment><USER32> How do you fine someone without knowing the identity? What do you do if they don't pay the fine? What if they continue doing what they are no longer allowed to do without the license?

There are certainly cases where you can punish someone without any cooperation on their side - like no longer giving them some benefits or freezing a bank account - but those scenarios are really far from covering all possible scenarios and you still have to determine the identity at the very least.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33>
        Carter correctly points out that the massive growth of
        criminal and regulatory law means that almost anyone can
        potentially end up in the same situation as Eric Garner.

So does Carter and author suggest reducing the number of laws? Or should we just take it that law enforcement abusing power causing deaths are inevitable?

<comment><USER34> Quoting the article, quoting Carter:

        Libertarians argue that we have far too many laws,
        and the Garner case offers evidence that they're right.

And in the same paragraph:

        But fewer laws would mean fewer opportunities for
        official violence to get out of hand.

<comment><USER33> Right below that quote, it reads:

         the scope of government regulation has grown so great

The unfortunately reality is laws are only growing NOT reducing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Draco and Hamurabi knew what they were doing.

</comment><comment><USER36> (2014)

</comment><comment><USER37> lol parking tickets ?

</comment><comment><USER38> Some of the most idiotic reasoning I've read in a long time.</comment>


Perl1line.txt - <AUTHOR> http://www.catonmat.net/download/perl1line.txt

<comment><USER2> There was a discussion on the related blog post for this last week: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3234791></comment>


Dissecting the Windows Defender Driver - <AUTHOR> https://n4r1b.netlify.com/en/posts/2020/01/dissecting-the-windows-defender-driver-wdfilter-part-1/ <comment><USER2> The post URL returns a 404 for me, so here's the correct one:

[https://n4r1b.netlify.com/posts/2020/01/dissecting-the- windo...](https://n4r1b.netlify.com/posts/2020/01/dissecting-the-windows- defender-driver-wdfilter-part-1/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Maybe it's just me but I can't read the article with that justified style. Why not just use left-aligned? (I'm on a phone too, so that may make it worse.)

<comment><USER4> Justified is standard in scientific writing.

<comment><USER5> Yes, but with LaTeX which has better algorithms than my browser. On FF preview the spacing is atrocious. At least the site didn't reimplement it's own kerning in JavaScript...I wonder if you could complete LaTeX to WASM and render the PostScript output to a canvas...

<comment><USER4> I'm convinced there is a reasonable way to do browser rendering of LaTeX. I've seen interactive LaTeX IDE webpges before and even wiki modules that allow for a subset of LaTeX features.

<comment><USER5> The ones I've seen either render LaTeX math using something like MathJax or send your code to a LaTeX process on a server and then display the results as a PDF. The dumb but tempting bit is using LaTeX to render the entire page without the browser PDF viewer.

You can export LaTeX to HTML, for example, but that gives up control of a lot of rendering, including kerning of non-math text.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


PLAYCODE.IO – Online JavaScript Editor - <AUTHOR> https://playcode.io/ <comment><USER2> Great. So clean. You should add library support as on codepen.</comment>


How to check the viability of a startup idea - <AUTHOR> I thought it would be cool to share with each other how to check the viability of your startup idea.
To kick off, I'll share with you what I do whenever an idea pops to mind.
1) Adwords keyword tool First I go to the Adwords keyword tool, to find out if people actually are looking for my idea/future product. You can check per keyword how many searches per month there have been done and if there's a lot of (SEO) competition.
2) Surveys I setup a survey for potential customers. In the survey I try to find out if my assumptions are right. I use this survey for step 3 and 4.
3) Run Google ads Running Google ads is a great way of checking my assumptions. I emphasize different benefits per ad. This way I can check what benefit appeals the most. The more clicks, the more important this benefit is, the more this should be the focus point of the product. The ad leads to my survey. Not so many people take the time to fill it in, but still it is some extra data.
4) Meet with potential customers Although I always find it hard to take this step, I know it's important. These meetings can motivate tremendously, can force to iterate my idea, or make me decide it was a stupid idea. The survey comes in handy in these meetings as well, btw.
So that's my viability-check. I'm wondering what you do to check viability. Looking forward to your ideas and advice!
ps. I'm sorry if I made some mistakes in my English. I'm no native speaker and I know that especially grammar tenses are not my forte... <comment><USER2> Henry Ford once said that, if he'd asked his customers what they wanted, they'd have asked for a faster horse.

<comment><USER3> That's not to say you shouldnt ask what they want. What you have to do as a visionary is to interpret their answers into what it is that they really need.

<comment><USER2> True. But here I agree with Fred Wilson (<http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2011/02/mba- tuesday.html>).

He says: "Early in a startup, product decisions should be hunch driven. Later on, product decisions should be data driven."

I talked to Jack Dorsey of Twitter about quite the same topic when he was in Russia last Feb. And he didn't tell me he asked people a lot before starting. He just built something around idea he had a strong obsession about and everything else is a history.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. I think we might be talking semantics here. It just depends what you consider to be asking the users. The Henry Ford quote is just meant to say that you can't take advice from users literally because they'll only tell you what they're already used to. To me, asking the users is not a literal asking, but rather, a questioning the shortcomings and potentials of the current environment.

<comment><USER4> In the UX community, it's well known that you don't ask people what they want, which is why they have all those clever UX research methods.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2232357>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2034790>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2194110>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2193075>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2115146>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2079237>

<comment><USER6> You should rename yourself RiderOfEncyclopedicKnowledgeOfHNDuplicates :-)

<comment><USER5> I know I'm giving away my secrets, but:

<http://searchyc.com/submissions/startup+idea?sort=by_date>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> You have a great method and you will one day strike the right vein.

My assessment, from being a student of entrepreneurship, is that the success stories reflect a mixed bag. Some are methodical and swear by it (ask, build, deliver), and others are hunch oriented and lucky, though the latter is clearly a much larger risk and the path to profitability akin to winning a lottery.

What do the Ivy League MBA's have to say on this?

</comment><comment><USER8> Ummm... By this method, the Ipad doesn't get made. Fail.</comment>