"Why did you shoot me? I was reading a book" - <AUTHOR> http://www.salon.com/2013/07/07/%E2%80%9Cwhy_did_you_shoot_me_i_was_reading_a_book_the_new_warrior_cop_is_out_of_control/ <comment><USER2> I knew Sal Culosi.

He was a nice enough guy that used to hang out at Fast Eddies Sports Bar in Fairfax, VA. I saw him there often just tending a beer and minding his own business.

If you can believe it, he was an optometrist at a Wal-Mart that just measured eyeballs and wrote prescriptions. If he was a bookie (as alleged) then I never saw anything that gave him away.

I followed his story in the paper and was surprised to hear that a 17-year veteran of the Fairfax County Police was the one that shot him. Apparently, he said he was bumped and accidentally discharged his gun DIRECTLY INTO SAL'S CHEST.

The police department eventually settled with the family for negligent homicide. That was only after they fought tooth and nail to protect a cop that didn't know how to control a deadly weapon.

In the end, I think the cop got a 3 week suspension. AFAIK, he's still on the FCPD.

<comment><USER3> It's shit like this that flies in the face of all those "but most cops are not bad guys" arguments.

If an organization fights to protect bad guys, I don't care how much good they do: they are complicit in furthering criminal behavior. And they're in a position of trust, at that!

It's an open secret that cops lie to protect other cops.

Why do we allow this? Any other person in a special position of trust and responsibility that contravenes their duty gets _extra_ punishment.

Lon Horiuchi was an FBI sniper that shot Vicki Weaver in the back while holding her infant daughter in her arms: case dismissed. That cop that pepper sprayed those protesting kids at UC Davis, John Pike, was never even charged for "lack of evidence" (nevermind that video of him doing so was on every news show in the country that week). The FBI and BATFE set the Branch Davidians' home on fire, burning up the children inside.

Instead of meaningful outrage, we simply let cops get away with murder, literally.

Fuck the police.

<comment><USER4> Cops have no legal obligation to protect you.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columbia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columbia)

<comment><USER5> You make it sound much worse than it actually is. The court ruled "a government and its agencies are under no general duty to provide public services, such as police protection, to any particular individual citizen." If the opposite were held true any person who was ever the victim of a crime could sue the government agency with jurisdiction for damages. Warren does not hold that the police have no duty to protect you if they are witnessing a crime being perpetrated upon you.

<comment><USER6> I disagree.

This ruling, and others like it hint at a fundamental flaw in constitutional law and how most people perceive their relationship with the state, particularly in regard to social contract theory. These rulings call into question the very legitimacy of state authority.

Let's assume for a moment there is a social contract with the state. Then, as in all contracts, there is a reciprocal obligation. Specifically, as a citizen, I have a duty of allegiance (obey state laws, pay taxes, etc.) in return for the duty of protection, from my government. Since the state itself has ruled it has no constitutional duty to protect, then the contract is inviolate, and long since void. In other words, there is no duty of allegiance to the state per the rulings of the courts if one takes social contract theory to be valid.

In my opinion, police corruption is one example of a foundational flaw in our current institution of governance: rule by means of coercion.

<comment><USER5> I disagree.

I think you are assuming Warren has a broader impact than it does. The state does have an obligation to protect the public at large, and to do so uniformly (unless a special relationship is created). The state has not ruled it has no constitutional duty to protect you, it has ruled it has no constitutional duty to prevent every crime that occurs. Again, if the opposite were held true the state could be sued out of existence in its own court. There was no other way for this case to be decided.

Essentially the state has ruled it cannot be perfect in terms of crime prevention, and considering the backlash against the NSA wiretapping that much of HN has been extremely concerned about, it seems that the state is not frequently rewarded for attempts to get closer to proactively preventing crime. You can't have your cake and eat it too.

I don't disagree with you about police corruption, but it has absolutely nothing to do with Warren.

<comment><USER7> Actually, our cake was taken away, and we can't eat it, or whatever.

The public is caught in a catch-22: it is illegal to defend ourselves physically against attackers (we can be held liable for harming an attacker, and often for posessing a self-defense weapon, and so criminals are emboldened, knowing we are defenseless), and yet the police provide no guarantee of protection against crime, and in fact are frequent perpetrators of violent accidents against civilians.

Like sheep to slaughter we go.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is this really the America that America wants?

The article mentions one case where a judge refused to issue a search warrant for a narcotics investigation and instead the police brought representatives from the Virginia Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control and raided the place with a swat team to conduct an alcohol inspection. What did they find?

Two sample bottles of beer that weren't labeled as samples and a bottle of vodka in the office. The fourth circuit court of appeals upheld the search. According to the article: _So for now, in the Fourth Circuit, sending a SWAT team to make sure a bar's beer is labeled correctly is not a violation of the Fourth Amendment._

<comment><USER9> Sadly, yes, it _is_ the America that America wants, as far as I can tell.

I think this is where efforts to fight these problems fall down. They're almost all based on the assumption that the populace doesn't want this stuff to happen, but that the government pushes it through by abusing power, subverting democracy, etc.

But from what I see, this is not the case. Most Americans want this. Whether it's gun-wielding maniacs, drug dealers, or international terrorist masterminds, they feel _unsafe_ , and want the government to help. They _like_ heavily-armed SWAT teams available at a moment's notice. They _like_ the government spying on every communication they can get their hands on. They _like_ x-ray machines and body scanners in airports.

There is a sizable minority where sanity remains, but it is a _minority_. I think that efforts to fight these problems need to recognize this, and realize that you have to convince the _people_ as your primary action. Fighting the government won't help, because the people will insist that these things be done, as long as the majority feels this way.

No, I don't know how....

<comment><USER10> They do not "like" it. It's just that, to be very blunt, most people are basically peasants at heart. They're going to go along with whatever the king says. Twenty years ago, on that side of the line on a map, the people believed in capitalism, while on the other side the people believed in communism. On this side of the line people believed in this god, on that side, they believe in that god.

It has nothing to do with some kind economists' "rational utilization maximization" function and everything to do with basically a "k-nearest neighbours" algorithm on their social graph for assigning beliefs.

And that is precisely why control of the media is so important.

<comment><USER11> This is a somewhat ugly and self-aggrandizing view. It's easy to let people you don't know and will never meet become sub-human, but it's dangerous and harmful. The relevant xkcd is of course, [http://xkcd.com/610/](http://xkcd.com/610/).

I don't presume to know why most people are not particularly vocal on these matters, but it's certainly not because they lack critical thought.

<comment><USER12> Here in Brazil not only people are usually like that (the "shocking" protests here, were still a minority... 1 million people in total, spread over the entire country, when the country has 200 million people... Compare that with european countries with a history of population fueled government changes, that regularly do protests with more than 1 million people and have less population), but people in Brazil are PROUD of it.

Here when you attempt to talk about politics, a common reply is: "Dude, I don't care, and I like it that way, don't come with that politics bullshit toward me."

This applies even during the elections...

In fact, here vote is mandatory, because when it wasn't, less than 5% voted at all, but making vote mandatory only made the thing poisonous, people vote because they must, usually on whoever they see most on TV, or some random candidate or another, if you ask a random brazillian who he voted for as representative, most of them don't remember at all, not even the party they voted for.

Also we have plenty of proof, that all elections since electronics ballot were introduced here, were cheated, and people DON'T CARE. I show videos of people hacking our machines and showing how they can steer election to whatever way they want, and most people react with complete apathy, they feel that politics is irrelevant, that all politicians are the same, thus it does not matter if whoever wins won cheating or not, because the result is not important to them.

<comment><USER13> >In fact, here vote is mandatory, because when it wasn't, less than 5% voted at all

But voting being mandatory, is a very alarming thing. Does not sound like democracy at all. What happens, when one does not vote?

<comment><USER14> Mandatory voting is essential for a healthy democracy.

<comment><USER15> It's scary, because what do you do when 58% of the total electorate tick the "None of the above" option?

2001, 2005, and 2010 UK elections had less than 70% turn out. That's a scary 30% to 35% of people forced to tick a box.

I'm not sure having that many people randomly ticking a box is good for democracy, especially because it's probably not a random choice but determined things like position on the ballot paper.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> In order to stay safe from the government,

1\. Don't buy sparkling water if you're a college student

2\. Don't bet with friends because an arbitrary threshold of about $2k warrants your execution

3\. Don't tell American citizens that their government abuses its power, or you'll be charged with espionage

4\. It's probably a bad idea to bear arms these days, because saying "Officer, I have a weapon in the trunk of my car" might give him reason to shoot you in self defense

5\. You don't actually have free speech anymore, so be careful about that. If you threaten to shoot up a school, even jokingly and totally within your rights, you will be incarcerated for half a year before your trial. And who knows if the judge will let you off? You just have to pray for one who knows and abides by the constitution.

<comment><USER17> _3\. Don 't tell American citizens that their government abuses its power, or you'll be charged with espionage_

Point 3 is patently false. All of my Facebook friends, and I, regularly say that the United States government abuses its power, some from the right, some from the left, and many from a general freedom-loving perspective, and we all go on posting as we please. All of these statements are exaggerations. Many of these statements refer to problems that are much worse in other places. (If you think that arbitrary abuse by the police is the worst it can be in the United States, you haven't traveled very much.) Sure, protest fearlessly about any abuse you find anywhere. But don't lose sight of reality.

AFTER EDIT: People who follow my comments on Hacker News

[https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=tokenadult](https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=tokenadult)

will be well aware that I participate in public protests here in the United States, in full view of TV news cameras and police observers. (The last protest I participated in was across the street from the headquarters of the Minneapolis police department.) I am an equal-opportunity democracy movement activist, desiring more power for the people in every country of the world. As one of the grandchild comments to this comment has now said, it's silly to exaggerate conditions in the United States, as that just robs a comment of credibility. If you want to establish a better trend line for United States policy, be specific in your policy proposals, and make your policy proposals public fearlessly, early and often. Don't be an anonymous coward. Put your name behind your convictions.

People power democracy movements that nudge countries from dictatorship to democracy can really work. I have seen it done. A successful movement for greater freedom requires great courage, and a degree of social trust among the movement participants that is not easy to find. Allow me to repeat advice I have shared here on Hacker News before. If you really want to be an idealistic but hard-headed freedom-fighter, mobilizing an effective popular movement for more freedom wherever you live, I suggest you read deeply in the free, downloadable publications of the Albert Einstein Institution,

[http://www.aeinstein.org/organizationsde07.html](http://www.aeinstein.org/organizationsde07.html)

remembering that the transition from dictatorship to democracy described in those publications is an actual historical process with recent examples around the world that we can all learn from. You can find publications in more than a dozen languages there to share with your friends around the world.

<comment><USER18> Oh yeah it's all much worse in other places. We're still "better" than all the dictatorships and authoritarian governments in the world, and that makes it all just fine and dandy. The only people losing sight of reality are the ones deluded into thinking that America/ns is/are immune to what appears to be a fundamental feature of power: corruption.

By point 3 he meant actions by USG whistle blowers with access to classified information, not a civilian's facebook account.

<comment><USER19> There is a problem with broad statements like the grandparent comment. College students buy water everyday without trouble, people own guns without being harassed daily, people makes bets daily without any trouble, people make joking threats daily without incident. There is plenty bad going on without the need for exaggerations and outright lies.

If you want reality to change, you have to accept reality. Skewing it to the most sensationalistic interpretation only makes it easier to dismiss.

<comment><USER18> If you're going to talk economics, politics, sociology, or just about any massive and complex systems, you cannot avoid broad statements. I dislike them, but that's just the way it is. I notice a lot on HN that broad statements generally are called out and (usually without being defensive) clarified in the discussion.

However, in this case, there is no clarification needed. Compare the United States across whatever subjective experience and online indices you can find (economic freedom, press freedom, happiness, quality of life, etc but take them with a grain of salt) and make up your own mind.

After having traveled a little bit and lived in circumstances very different from my current life in SF, I have become less concerned with the water, guns, bets, and bad jokes and more concerned about the creeping changes in massive institutions like the US government. After all, one of the hallmarks of a democracy is how it protects the minorities from the tyranny of the majority.

<comment><USER20> > If you're going to talk economics, politics, sociology, or just about any > massive and complex systems, you cannot avoid broad statements.

Of course not, but they need to semi-accurately reflect the way things are going on a broad scale. If someone steps on my toe at the convenience store and doesn't apologize, I don't start a rally cry about how America is full of toe-hating assholes. If it starts happening systemically then I might be more willing to make that charge.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Again and again we see questionable or outright illegal police shootings of dogs and people and nothing ever comes of it. The responsible parties are never charged with manslaughter or even fired. I want to support the police, but the thin blue line bullshit has to stop!

I get that police work is often dangerous but individuals that have shown poor judgement are retained on the force. That police officer that shot the dog 4 times had already shot and killed a developmentally disabled guy who was brandishing a knife but could have been tazed or bean-bagged.

These are not the sorts of people to be handing out guns to.

<comment><USER22> Are there any reliable statistics quantifying this? I found some numbers for Germany on Wikipedia [1] but not for the US. The article states that per year for the period of 2007 to 2011 the German police fired between 36 and 57 bullets at humans killing between 6 and 12 of them. Older numbers are less reliable but similar regarding the number of people killed (peak since 1970 24 in 1983) but with a larger number of bullets fired where reported. Are the numbers for the USA way worse after compensating for the difference in population?

[1] [http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waffengebrauch_der_Polizei_in_D...](http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waffengebrauch_der_Polizei_in_Deutschland)

<comment><USER23> I'm astonished by the total lack of conversation around the actual data here. Both the article itself and the discussion below are predicated on the assumption that this is a rampant problem in the USA, but not a single subthread on the actual incidence of this.

I'd expect better from Hacker News.

For what it's worth, Wikipedia has a complete list of people killed by US Police Officers and the police reports from them. In 2012, there were 587 people killed by police [1]. This is much, much larger than in Germany, even accounting for population difference.

I would argue that more relevant than pure population is differences in homicide rate. By the data you've given, approximately 1-2% of all homicides in Germany are by police officers (6-12 officer killings, 690 homicides in germany [2]). It's worth noting that in the USA, approximately 3% of all killings were by police officers (547/14748[2]) which seems in line with what my understanding would be -- it's worse in the USA but not ridiculously disproportionate.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enforce...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enforcement_officers_in_the_United_States)

[2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentiona...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate)

<comment><USER21> We (US residents) haven't posted annotated lists because this is in our face via newspapers and TV news and viral videos passed around on the Internet.

[http://hiphopandpolitics.wordpress.com/2012/04/06/29-black-p...](http://hiphopandpolitics.wordpress.com/2012/04/06/29-black- people-have-been-killed-by-policesecurity-since-jan-2012-16-since-trayvon/)

Here's one take, which is focused on black folks shot and killed over the past year. Note how many were armed.

<comment><USER23> I'm american as well.

When TV news and viral videos and newspapers make us feel like terrorism or kidnapping is more prevalent than it actually is, we call it sensationalism. Why is this any different? Is it because it confirms things you already believe to be true?

I looked at the list you provided, and tried to correlate it against the Wikipedia list. Many of the dates etc don't match up but I tried. A number of the cases where the suspect is listed as "unarmed" don't jive with the police reports, at the very least. Others involve things that are clearly assault even if there was no gun (like assaulting someone with a car).

That said, I do think in particular if you are a black male you are likely to be mistreated by police. That's not justifiable. But I still don't see real evidence that this is an epidemic or particularly pervasive.

<comment><USER21> Well, believe what you want to believe.

I have friends who are police officers so it's not like I hate cops. I do hate the fact they close ranks and protect the bad ones though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> We have to ask ourselves: where is the money? Our rights aren't being lost to a sprawling military-police state just because there's a Big-Brother wannabe conspiring to destroy the constitution. Police departments grow the same way our project departments grow in engineering companies: by managers arguing for bigger budgets and spending more, sometimes wastefully, to justify bigger budgets come next fiscal year.

These hyped-up (sometimes roided-up) SWAT teams do what they do to justify their existence....no manager wants to preside over a shrinking department. It takes a lot of thinking and long-term policy making to reduce this perverse yet basic economic incentive

<comment><USER25> Don't forget all the war-on-terror funding and politics that have provided even rural police departments with armored personnel carriers and the like.[1] Or outfitting police departments with tons of equipment in advance of protests planned there which then filters down into daily use. In some cities, there is so little for the "anti-terror" cops to do that they have been conscripted into arresting drunk people and pot smokers.[2]

1) [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/12/police- militarizati...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/12/police- militarization-9-11-september-11_n_955508.html)

2) [http://www.startribune.com/local/209811381.html](http://www.startribune.com/local/209811381.html)

<comment> alex-g There's another side to that, which is that overfunding of the police is coupled to underfunding of other institutions; too many social issues are framed as law-enforcement problems, and tackled with a militarized version of the law enforcement mindset.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Reposting this from the killed-dog-thread. It certainly won't help when the SWAT team is already in your home, but for the creeping sense of out of control cops everywhere:

"Most of us carry video cameras in our pockets now. Filming police needs to become ubiquitous. There should be no police officer in the United States that doesn't know that at any time they could be being filmed and held accountable for their actions by the public they are paid to protect and serve. It is one case where I think constant citizen surveillance could be useful. After a few years of it and constant court rulings that it is protected, perhaps cops would stop yelling at people and arresting them for doing nothing wrong. Yes, I'm talking to everyone on this site. If you are walking back from grabbing a burrito and see the cops "talking to" a homeless person on the street, or pulling over a driver for running a red light or detaining someone, /you/ need to stop for 5-10 minutes, get out your camera phone, and start filming. Please. For the love of a police state run amuck."

<comment><USER26> Is there a service to record live streams online (easily, cheap/free) from phones? The key is to send the live stream out for storage. Common "we'll sync after the video is recorded" services are no good if you get your phone destroyed half way through trying to record.

<comment><USER27> I _just_ read about a service that covers this use-case _(sorry, I can 't for the life of me find it now)_. It streams low-quality video to a server to cover for the eventuality that the phone is destroyed. I'm pretty sure it was some sort of open-source software that wasn't Bambuser.

<comment><USER28> OpenWatch: [https://openwatch.net/](https://openwatch.net/) iOS: [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/openwatch-social- muckraking/...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/openwatch-social- muckraking/id642680756?ls=1&mt=8) Android: [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.ale.openwa...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.ale.openwatch&hl=en)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> It seems like every day, more and more political posts about the US are made here. It's getting to the point that it seems that 35% of the point of HN is about getting opportunities to make political statements about the US. There are so many, so so many, places to have on-going political arguments.

I'm of the mind that any place that allows free commentary ultimately becomes a political discussion board, and HN is proving this well. It used to be that HN was a place to get away from that - but it looks like these days it's becoming not much different than the comment section on any political newspaper.

<comment><USER23> It's hard to comment on this post considering how many times we've seen the "HN-is-dying" meme, but for me this time it really resonates.

What has made HN interesting is the fact that it was boring to the vast majority of people on this planet. The topics were generally speaking on a very specific set of subjects that you largely had to be in the technology world (and of a certain technical disposition) to relate to.

The relative boringness of these topics led to comments by folks who found them particularly fascinating, setting a high community standard and discouraging soapboxing (comparatively speaking, of course -- I'm under no illusions that HN was ever the most pristine and idealistic place). For a long time I thought PG did a good job of enforcing that culture by shutting down off-topic conversations and keeping the focus fairly intense.

The problem with political posts is that they are often extremely relevant to hackers, especially these days. But everyone finds politics interesting, and everyone (myself included) believes their political beliefs are equally valid. Watching snarky posts and soapboxes get rewarded does send a message that this is how to get noticed. Long-term, I fear this fundamentally coarsens the level of discourse by making it easier to dismiss the beliefs of others and making it easier to participate in situations where I feel ignorant.

Unfortunately, I think there's only one way I know of to stop this -- which would be for PG and/or the moderators to take an active role in enforcing the "no politics" rule that's already in the guidelines. But I think they're perhaps legitimately concerned about censorship -- anathema to hackers -- and have kept a loose hand. Beyond that I'm not sure what they can do.

<comment><USER30> I thought pg was just waiting for this stuff to blow over post-Snowden, but maybe he's happy with the direction the community has taken. That's fine, it's his site, and I've noticed an interesting inverse correlation between the quality of hn and /r/programming posts which will hopefully continue.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> The article's photo is from the 2012 RNC in Tampa, FL. Despite an army of police with all the equipment a paramilitary outfit could wish for, there were almost no arrests. In total for the week there were 2, far fewer than there would have been in a normal week.

A year later and they're still riding around in their RNC purchased bicycles, cruising in RNC speed boats and zipping around in RNC bobcats. The high-tech CCTV system is also still in use (and has yet to actually solve a single crime). It's bizarre.

<comment><USER32> They did the same thing in Toronto after G20 in 2010 (where 700 were arrested).

The police petitioned to keep all the CCTV cameras and all the equipment they spent millions of dollars on to prepare.

<comment><USER31> Similar situation here. I spoke up at the city council meeting about keeping the cameras and the Mayor used some budgetary magic to make it something the council couldn't rule on (they bought the cameras with RNC money and built in a maintenance contract--the council could only get rid of them if it were a financial decision). Once you give a police force a new toy you will never be able to take it back.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> End of the day, swat teams exist because the guys on the department like cool toys, and the Feds pay for them via grant programs.

My local police department has a "command center" rv and telescopic lookout post that the Feds paid like $3M for. The machine guns are usually bought with seized drug money, and tactical training paid for try the Feds. Most cities don't need paramilitary squads, so they end up using them for stupid stuff because they get to have fun, or they get extra overtime for a detail.

Fire departments are similar. A local volunteer fire department near me got a $1M state grant for some insane fire truck with all sorts of gizmos and an aerial platform that can reach 5 stories up -- in a town with no buildings higher than 2 stories and about 70 total calls per year. (I think they had to call in another department for a fire because the thing is so big that it cannot make it down roads) Total waste of taxpayer resources, but at least the firemen won't kill you!

<comment><USER34> I think a point you may not be considering is that the reason why they use these paramilitary squads for stupid shit is not just to have fun, but instead to justify the purchase of all of this gear and training in the first place. If you never use the stuff then it stands to reason that it may not make the budget in the future (assuming budgeting competence).

<comment><USER33> The training/gear isn't a budget issue, because it's externally funded via grants and seizures. Except for the largest cities, nobody is going to the mayor for $1M to buy something like this: [http://gs.flir.com/integrated- systems/skywatch](http://gs.flir.com/integrated-systems/skywatch) . But when the Feds are giving away money for lookout towers, speedboats, etc, everybody needs two.

What they DO need to justify is the overtime and the extra pay for being in the SWAT detail. That's where driving tanks through buildings to liberate and euthanize chickens comes in.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Sorry if this is off topic, but: I think that taking reasonable steps for both protecting our rights as citizens and not screwing up the environment are sort-of the same topic: making sure that future generations have life as good as our generation (or my generation, I am in my early 60s) have it.

Native American Indians have a philosophy that our actions should be guided by what is best for future generations. Being apathetic and sleep-walking into a less free future society, and screwing up the environment are selfish acts.

<comment><USER21> Not to take away from your message but you can just say "Native Americans" and leave the "Indian" part off.

Otherwise I totally agree with your post.

<comment><USER36> This comment sums up what Hacker News has become perfectly.

Front and center is the sentence correcting some slight, inconsequential anachronism that has nothing to do with the overall point of the comment and only serves to show the perceived intelligence of helpfulness of the commenter. Then there is a short sentence, more of an afterthought, addressing the point of the comment.

<comment><USER26> Well, have you met these people? It's common in work/life too. "You're smart and do good work, but stop being so pedantic and socially inept!"

You can't break out deep thinking from the surface layer aspie absent-social- mindedness. Just smile, accept them for what they are without pitying them, and keep making the world a better place together.

<comment><USER21> Maybe I made a simple mistake of unintended rudeness in a post, how does that make it worthy of me being autistic? Fuck you douches!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> _After overhearing the men wagering, Baucum befriended Culosi as a cover to begin investigating him. During the next several months, he talked Culosi into raising the stakes of what Culosi thought were just more fun wagers between friends to make watching sports more interesting._

All the more reason to never speak to the police. Ever. What happened to 'protect AND serve'? The police have made their jobs harder by systematically turning every citizen into a criminal and forcing every person to not trust them. If I were ever to witness a crime I would hesitate to contact the police at this point out of fear that I would somehow be blamed/included/railroaded/etc... I starting to see how in other police states throughout history the citizens did and said nothing.

<comment><USER38> Wouldn't this be reason to never speak to anyone, ever? It doesn't sound like Baucum identified himself as a police officer.

<comment><USER39> No, I think the logic is straightforward: If talking to "anyone, ever" can become a fatal problem involving the police, that makes talking to the police directly an even worse option. "You shouldn't talk to anybody, especially not the police."

<comment><USER38> While I don't think the conclusion ("don't talk to the police") is necessarily wrong, I don't think the logic is valid at all, much less "straightforward".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Isn't the first story in the article a clear case of entrapment? The cop encouraged the guy to do something and then killed him for it.

<comment><USER41> Entrapment laws are a defense from prosecution, and they're different in every state. _Normally_ it's only entrapment if the cop is enticing someone to break a law he wouldn't have broken otherwise. In this case if the guy was betting on games every Sunday the jury probably would have taken a dim view of an entrapment defense.

The shooting is another issue. The cop is saying it wasn't deliberate, and that's probably true.

<comment><USER42> I don't know the applicable state law, but from the story he was betting 50 dollars on games every Sunday. The cop spent several months pretending to be his friend and convincing him to bet more and more.

It seems to me that he would never have bet anywhere near that much without several months of persuasion by the police.

Therefore, if it weren't for the cop pressuring him it is very unlikely he would have ever broken that particular law.

Granted it's a moot point, because as you say entrapment is a legal defense and the would-be defendant is dead.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Slightly tangential, but Ted Dziuba makes a good case for gun control for these over-armed local police forces in this post [http://teddziuba.com/post/37961127287/i-am-a-gun-owner- lets-...](http://teddziuba.com/post/37961127287/i-am-a-gun-owner-lets-talk- gun-control)

Police forces seem to be totally exempt from, say, the ban on assault weapons or such in some of the States. Possibly a law that limits the weaponry that police forces can carry along with a reduction in civilian-owned guns might help curb some of these incidents involving trigger-happy cops.

</comment><comment><USER44> >Since Seattle, this had become the template. At the 2008 Republican National Convention in Minneapolis, police conducted peremptory raids on the homes of protesters before the convention had even started. Police broke into the homes of people known to be activist rabble-rousers before they had any evidence of any actual crime. Journalists who inquired about the legitimacy of the raids and arrests made during the convention were also arrested. In all, 672 people were put in handcuffs.

And people question why the government collecting intelligence on innocent civilians is a problem.

</comment><comment><USER45> Excellent article but it fails to ask the question why. Why is this happening? Who benefits? Why isn't the people's will being realized politically? Why do the courts no longer protect our Constitutional rights?

There's a critical piece missing in these discussions- the global banking cartel that has corrupted all of our political and social institutions. Until their agenda and activities are included in the scope of our analysis, things will just keep getting worse.

</comment><comment><USER46> It almost sounds like the situation in unstable Central American or Arab nations where the police are hated by the people, while the military is seen as their protectors.

<comment><USER47> That is the POV of many in the US.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> _In the Fourth Circuit, sending a SWAT team to make sure a bar's beer is labeled correctly is not a violation of the Fourth Amendment._

[http://www.restorethefourth.net/](http://www.restorethefourth.net/) comes to mind.

</comment><comment><USER49> So Shaq, Matt Damon and Steven Seagal participated in SWAT raids. Is this for celebrities only or anyone can sign up? Not that I would like to participate though.

<comment><USER50> You have to convince a sheriff to deputize you first. For some reason this is easier for celebrities. Go figure. What does that say about the judgement of the sheriff that approve that sort of thing? Not sure what a sheriff's responsibilities are in the US system, but if that's the same person responsible for deciding that a SWAT team is necessary to investigate a poker game going on in someone's house, it's not surprising to see poor decisions being made in that area too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Wow that was some article. If these kind of things happened in my country, I would get the fuck out of my country. Actually, I didn't like the way the UK was going, so when the opportunity came about, I moved.

<comment><USER17> To where did you move?

<comment><USER51> Finland. It's not paradise, but I had a choice to stay in the UK or move. I moved and have settled here quite well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> When you have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.

<comment><USER53> In this case, I think the original "when you _are_ a hammer" feels more right. Imagine what kind of person you must be to pretend to be someone's friend, make him commit crime and them murder him in cold blood, while thinking you did the right thing.

Even then, hammers have uses. People like this don't.

<comment><USER54> The victim here was _not_ "murdered in cold blood", and the policeperson who shot him by accident was not the same one who'd goaded him into committing the crime.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> I wonder if anyone is considering or doing any kind of studies correlating the lack of investment in government (i.e. low taxes) and these kinds of problems with law enforcement? It seems like if we're investing less in government, which means less in police, fire, and the agencies that train and oversee them, we're not going to get the quality of service from our law enforcement officers that we're accustom to. Shorter training programs, fewer applicants due to lower pay, less oversite, higher workloads, etc.

I don't know if this is the case, but in a country where we barely get that A leads to B, we might want to start taking a hard look at A to B to C to D.

<comment><USER7> That doesn't compute. Spending goes up, not down, to buy all the war toys and pay back the campaign contributers.

No one is complaining that the fire department sucks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> _But the Occupiers, who tended to be young, white, and middle-to upper-middle- class, knew social media like few other demographics. They knew how to live- stream video directly to the Internet. They all had smart phones, so police couldn't suppress incriminating video by confiscating one or two or ten phones—someone was bound to have video of not only the original incident but also of police trying to confiscate phones to cover it up._

Looks like another good use of Google glasses, if used by protesters en masse.

<comment><USER57> The US police have already learned! I have already seen articles about cell service being suspended to stifle protests.

For example:

[https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/08/barts-cell-phone- shutd...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/08/barts-cell-phone-shutdown-one- year-later)

<comment><USER56> Hmmm, then they'll need to use local wifis.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> Cool to see Radley's writing in the HN top ten. He's a great guy and a hacker at heart.

</comment><comment><USER59> The lack of accountability here disgusts me.

Therefore, I propose a rule:

Discharge a firearm while serving as a cop, no matter the reason, and that's it, you're no longer a cop. Take your toys and go home, thank you for your service.

Yes, you'd fire good people, but you'd also remove any incentive for less- than-good people to act irresponsibly and ensure they thought twice about using lethal force. I'd argue that by far this is the greater good.

<comment><USER60> So in an actual dangerous situation the cop would have the choice to either run or to fire his gun and lose his job.

Would you really want someone to protect you at the risk of losing their job?

<comment><USER59> I think that if this were the rule, this would be understood going in, and it would be fair. The nature of police service would change. Why should being an officer be a lifetime career?

We ask people in the military to protect us at the risk of losing their lives, why is it so much to ask for a cop to risk his job?

Edit: I'm coming from a military background and the lack of accountability there is disturbing too. I think people with responsibility to protect and/or kill other people should be risking their jobs regularly. Otherwise, there is no real accountability. See here:

[http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/11/general-...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/11/general- failure/309148/)

<comment><USER61> > _Why should being an officer be a lifetime career?_

Because it's an occupation that takes training and experience to do well?

But by all means, if you _want_ a bunch of untrained newbies running around with guns and the legal standing to use them on the citizenry, your idea's a great one.

The problem isn't police using their guns. It's the Blue Wall of Silence when they do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> Watching Hollywood movies, I often wondered if they weren't exaggerating the diffusion of SWAT teams in the US. Looks like they are not.

<comment><USER63> Not to mention the heroic worship of characters who break every law and human right going to get the bad guy. Well, I say get, I mean kill.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> Serious question: why are private bets on private games illegal? Is it because money changes hands without the gov't taking a slice?

<comment><USER65> I think it's part that, part that private games are easy to rig.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> > Llovera's suspected crime? Cockfighting.

Well, he had it coming. Excessive use of police force for sure but I can't feel sorry for the guy, only for the animals harmed before and during the police raid.

Edit for the downvoters: the fact that you're not affected by the suffering of animals, even for the ones that you barbarically eat, says a lot about your degree of civilization.

<comment><USER7> Care to wager how many of the cops that destroyed Llovera's house, and euthanised his chickens, were vegetarians?

<comment><USER66> > I can't feel sorry for the guy, only for the animals harmed before and > during the police raid.

I didn't think I had to repeat myself on HN.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> To me it seems that there are a lot of issues at play that led to the death of this man, but temporarily ignoring the fact that it seems hypocritical for a state to both punish gamblers while promoting a state lottery, it appears necessary that SWAT teams are required to arrest people within their own homes given the fact that people are free to own weapons and use those for protection.

I'm not saying that firearms need to be outlawed for anyone but government agencies. I'm just arguing that when people need to be arrested (lawfully or otherwise), police officers want also want to protect themselves in their line of work, so they necessarily need to create an imbalance of power for their own self-preservation. The victim was unarmed, so the use of SWAT teams certainly was unnecessary and he could have been arrested by two officers and a single patrol car, but given any other case, he might have carried a weapon and gunned down an officer.

<comment><USER68> Well, you're wrong. From the same article:

Indeed, that's exactly what happened to seventy-two-year-old Aaron Awtry in 2010. Awtry was hosting a poker tournament in his Greenville, South Carolina, home when police began breaking down the door with a battering ram. Awtry had begun carrying a gun after being robbed. Thinking he was about to be robbed again, he fired through the door, wounding Deputy Matthew May in both arms. The other officers opened fire into the building. Miraculously, only Awtry was hit. As he fell back into a hallway, other players reporting him asking, "Why didn't you tell me it was the cops?" The raid team claimed they knocked and announced several times before putting ram to door, but other players said they heard no knock or announcement. When Awtry recovered, he was charged with attempted murder. As part of an agreement, he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to five years in prison. Police had broken up Awtry's games in the past. But on those occasions, they had knocked and waited, he had let them in peacefully, and he'd been given a $100 fine.

Summary: people who are committing minor crimes don't want to trade up to major crimes. Be reasonable and most people will be reasonable in return. The police _increase the risk to themselves_ and to the citizens they are supposed to be protected by using unreasonable force.

<comment><USER67> > "Thinking he was about to be robbed again, he fired through the door"

Yeah, that appears to be a pretty foolish thing to do. What if it were firefighters who noticed a fire through his upstairs window? I don't think that they would just ring the bell and wait for an answer. I know that this a hypothetical situation, but it just seems a really stupid thing to just blindly fire at whatever is behind the door.

The only people who claim that the police did not first knock on the door are the friends and associates of the victim. One of the two groups is lying, and both can be lying to cover their asses. I have too little information to know whether this is an actual case of police brutality, sorry.

Edit: As a correction, the victim and his friends don't need to be lying. Perhaps the doorbell was broken, perhaps they didn't hear the police officers pounding at their door. I don't know, why should I jump to conclusions?

<comment><USER69> >> "Thinking he was about to be robbed again, he fired through the door"

>Yeah, that appears to be a pretty foolish thing to do.

Definitely. Reminded me of the part in Major Payne when the little boy is scared because he thinks there's a monster in his closet. The first time I saw this, I figured it was one of the other boys in the movie playing a prank on him and hiding in the closet. Major Payne draws his pistol and unloads it into the closet door, exclaiming "if he's still in there, he ain't happy." At this point, I was like OMG he probably killed a kid (there's no one actually in the closet). Point being, if you fire a gun through a door knowing someone is on the other side, you should be held as accountable had you aimed the gun directly at them and fired.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> It is actually kind of sad, coming from Australia, Police are usually seen as a force of good. Granted we do not have as much corruption in this sense as America does but sadly these sorts of positions are built on power and violence (eg non compliance) I think the question you have is if the police stop protecting their own people when they are trying to do their jobs how will they attract new police? as a profession where you will have someone that will be in that sort of job for 10-20 years+ getting sacked does not really mean you will be able to get into another police force (quite the contrary) you will most likely end up in a very low end security position.

This is not really a justification of all the shit they do rather an attempt to explain the insanity.

</comment><comment><USER71> It's becoming a frequent occurrence that the top post on r/conspiracy is the top post ok HN

</comment><comment><USER72> I think the real problem behind this is quite simple - studies have shown what we probably know from personal experience, that when you wear a "mask" \- whether one of anonymity, or a "Robo Cop"-like getup, it makes you behave more aggressively.

The reasons behind why every PD has all of this paramilitary gear is well- studied but best left for another thread; the fact is they have it, and when they wear it they are more likely to behave like any other human being who finds himself suddenly hiding behind full body armor.

It's not the police that's the problem, it's the gear, and departments who ignore the mental impact of having it & don't adjust their training to match.

</comment><comment><USER73> I know this doesn't necessarily belong in THIS article, but it's a general response to a lot of these governmental articles. Where are the debates at in the government? I never see debates taking place in Congress. I hear speeches and "thank yous" and even opinions, but no true debate. I know that I tune in to watch the presidential debates because even though they aren't always held accountable for what they say, there is the opportunity to be. I wish we had more debates like i see in these comments.

</comment><comment><USER74> Given that the police have decided to, essentially, wage war on the people why don't we try fighting back? The majority might not care, but "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world." (Margaret Mead)

Dump money into personal lawsuits against officers committing negligent attacks such that they are financially ruined. Attend town meetings and demand sever cutbacks in the budgets of police departments acting this way. Put lobbying dollars to work and get change from the top down.

<comment><USER75> While that would probably work to some extent, it doesn't really solve the mentality of violence or outright ignoring Constitutional rights. (Assuming people have money to dump, which is not usually the case)

</comment></comment><comment><USER76> > A columnist at the Fayetteville Observer remarked, "They were there to play > cards, not to foment rebellion. . .

What the hell do you think they're training for?

</comment><comment><USER77> Has anybody had a difficult relationship with her parents? This, essentially, is what the dynamic is. Except the government is not actually parents and thus the guilt of hurting their children under the rationale of protecting them, though it exists, doesn't last very long. But the good thing is, their children will eventually forgive them too.

<comment><USER7> No one forgives them. But ultimately, destroying the lives of 10% of Americans is an epic tragedy, but leaves the vast majority unaffected.

</comment></comment><comment><USER78> "In January 2011, the Culosi family accepted a $2 million settlement offer from Fairfax County. That same year, Virginia's government spent $20 million promoting the state lottery."

Lotteries like this are a tax on people bad at math. How is this morally superior to an office pool?

Though I do think viewing this as a "hit" enters the realm of tinfoil hats,

<comment><USER79> _Lotteries like this are a tax on people bad at math_

Most of the time, yes. Some lottery games with fixed odds and variable payouts have rare moments when the expected value of a ticket turns positive. I'm fairly good at math and I always play powerball every one or two years when this is the case.

<comment><USER7> Powerball shares winnings, right? So you better hope the play-rate is levelling off, and not increasing exponentially until jackpot.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER80> The problem is that many Americans don't see anything wrong with their government depriving people of their human rights. And if you are an American that doesn't agree with this, you might just be detained or killed. And, of course, the first group sees nothing wrong with this.

</comment><comment><USER81> At the risk of sounding like a broken record (stuck cd player?), the foundation of this abuse is the War on Drugs.

If you want these abuses to stop then you should be actively supporting the end of this war. By actively supporting, I mean be willing to discuss it with anybody who is willing to listen.

</comment><comment><USER82> Was he reading Dreaming in Code? For everyone unfamiliar with this book, the co-founder of Salon.com, Scott Rosenberg, wrote a book called "Dreaming in Code" that's basically about why writing software is so hard.

</comment><comment><USER83> It startles me that law enforcement can go over the top like this in their efforts. I've been trying to get a (bad) drug dealer arrested for over a year and the Seattle Police won't even return my communication.

</comment><comment><USER84> This is not about out of control police. This is the fight between rational people against irrational insanity. We started the fight for ratio hundreds of years ago, called it Enlightenment, and its not over yet.

</comment><comment><USER85> We get the government we deserve. If we haven't been doing our jobs and keeping the State in check by asserting our rights whenever the State tries to impose upon them, then this is what we get.

And we'll deserve it.

</comment><comment><USER86> Is there a place where we can get this fact checked. I ask because this is cementing my opinion about, and fear of, the United States and I would love to know how true this all is.

<comment><USER87> Search for the names on the internet and find credible corroborating sources.

</comment></comment><comment><USER88> America the land of the brave. The land of the free.

</comment><comment><USER89> USA you are a police state, and as long as this state of affairs continues I will never come near your country.

</comment><comment><USER90> Why is this on the front page of HN? I just don't get it? Fantastic Reddit fodder? Yes. But here?

<comment><USER34> Perhaps it feeds to a so called hackers lust for anarchy, rebellion etc. I don't know, maybe it is le reddit cancer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER91> In my country hardly anyone has a gun but you can gamble all you want, no one gives a shit about that.

</comment><comment><USER92> Can't even believe this happened. We need to raise the IQ score of our police force.

</comment><comment><USER93> Are the police as para-militarized in other first-world countries? Canada? UK? Japan?

<comment><USER94> Define "para-militarized" but France has the Gendarmerie, which is an army branch that does policing in small communities as well as over arching national task such as anti-terror and mountain rescue. The Italians have the Carabinieri.

</comment></comment><comment><USER95> Could this be related to the heavily armed citizenry? [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_guns_per_capita_by_co...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_guns_per_capita_by_country)

Cops in UK don't carry guns.

</comment><comment><USER96> It could be a good story but after 3 pop up ads which were almost impossible to close on this device I gave up. What was the story, anyways? The first two paragraphs sounded interesting. I just couldn't get to the rest of the story to read it.

<comment><USER97> Yes I'm sure it takes more effort to close those ads than commenting here expecting someone will tell you all about the article...

</comment></comment><comment><USER98> Foreign America, coming to Homeland America.

</comment><comment><USER99> We have a saying in my country, smoking weed gets you killed - if the police caches you.

</comment><comment><USER100> We're being hunted down by our own government. Time to repay the favor.

</comment><comment><USER69> Restore the Fourth!

</comment><comment><USER101> This is a good argument to repeal most criminal law.

</comment><comment><USER102> Just a side note: certain countries in Europe have much more military style uniformed police force, including police living in barracks. None of them have the track record of armed violence the police in the US have.

I'm just saying, the militarization is at most a symptom (one of many), not the root cause for the US "war against the people".

<comment><USER103> Are you sure? Another possibility is that you're just not hearing about it, if they're disproportionately targeting groups that you aren't a member of.

The U.S. is a weird case, because there are these very clear abuses, and yet there's a culture of uncovering these abuses even when they're not happening to one's own group.

</comment></comment><comment><USER104> "Botched Paramilitary Police Raids": [http://www.cato.org/raidmap](http://www.cato.org/raidmap)

<comment><USER105> From the description of one of such "botched raids":

"With an accidental weapon discharge, police fatally shot the 68-year-old retiree, who was not the target of the warrant. Police instructed Mr. Stamps to lie on the floor, and Mr. Stamps complied. One officer moved towards Mr. Stamps to check for weapons. The officer's tactical equipment made his movement awkward, and he lost his balance and fell. As he did so, his weapon discharged. Mr. Stamps died from the single bullet wound to his upper chest."

Seriously? This is sick.

<comment><USER106> The "I tripped" explanation is used in many of the stories. Including when multiple bullets were fired. Either it is a lie or they are very careless.

<comment><USER105> Yes. Sort of like a dialogue from a random comic strip I heard about long ago:

\- Why did you shoot the suspect?

\- My finger twitched.

\- Eight times?

On the more serious note, I still can't imagine that report in any other way that the person was either accidentally shot or executed. I mean, what kind of tripping you'd have to do to shoot a person on the ground in the chest? Geometry doesn't add up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER107> when your police department's funding depends on what you catch, coupled with a low crime level, you start SWATing things harder

<comment><USER108> Yeah, it's no so much mission creep as mission search.

</comment></comment><comment><USER109> Thanks to the new immigration bill, the whole border with Mexico will become militarized, and will employ more people than the whole FBI, and will be under DHS. This is what the "war on terror" post-9/11 culture has created.</comment>


Facebook - Can it defeat The Google? - <AUTHOR> http://www.clickz.com/clickz/column/1794314/facebook-google-killer

<comment><AUTHOR> Really, Who will defeat The Google? Facebook?

Cuil thought about doing that, but got cuilled (read killed) themselves a while ago, apparently not the Google killer we were hoping for.. [http://www.fool.com/investing/high- growth/2010/09/20/death-o...](http://www.fool.com/investing/high- growth/2010/09/20/death-of-a-google-killer.aspx)

MS Bing is not really up to the task either.. 2011 is going to add 2 big players to the market: Ipad search and Facebook search..

Ipad could really become a Google killer, even the guys in Mountain View could see that coming.. Thats why they named their device Ipad-killer.. <http://www.helium.com/items/1730715-google-ipad>

Facebook had their $33 billion valuation by Google last month, but is bound to grow into even more intensive figures [http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/08/20/the-case- for-a-50-bil...](http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/08/20/the-case- for-a-50-billion-facebook/)

Facebook will have to catch up fast with their cash and innovate even faster. Maybe even buy more engineers from Google Plex..</comment>


Ask HN: How long is mandatory WFH going to be in effect? - <AUTHOR> It seems with the social distancing strategy we are looking at several months of this new normal.
The company I work for is mandatory work from home like most other tech companies in the bay area; officially until end of March, but it seems likely this will be extended quite a bit.
With broad testing will we be able to get into the office much sooner than post-infection peak?
It seems to me we will all be working from home deep into the summer, what does HN think? <comment><USER2> Right now we're WFH until mid-April but planning for it to last as late as July or even longer.

China started quarantines _much_ earlier than we did, so our infection curve will get much higher. When public transport was shutdown in Wuhan ~Jan 23, there were only ~500 cases there (and just a small handful outside of Wuhan). The entire city was shut down soon afterwards.

There are currently 700+ cases in both New York and Washington, 3800+ throughout the US, and people are still out and about and many aren't taking it seriously. A week or two from now we will look much like Italy, Iran, Spain, and France do right now. They will likely look worse than China did when the virus peaked there.

</comment><comment><USER3> It seems driven what the local government is doing which (at least in US) is going to be dictated by how much federally funded relief money they can get.

In some states it will take a legislative act to cancel school and/or significant funding and training to go all-digital. Public schools are there legally for all and they need to have solutions for all - inclusive of poorer people that don't have internet/computers.

Once there are reliable tests and ability to test for residue (computer geek here, forgive my ignorance on biology) that someone had the virus then I would imagine more things return to normal-ish. From what I'm reading, this does look like a multi-month adventure.

<comment><USER4> > ability to test for residue (computer geek here, forgive my ignorance on > biology)

I came across the correct terminology recently. The tests that test if you were infected within a certain time period, even if you did not have symptoms, are called serological tests.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Looking at the infection curve for China, I'm expecting to WFH for the next 3 months, with things getting better around June.

</comment><comment><USER6> I think if the rate of new cases doesn't slow down by mid April, no state will go back to business as usual. Given the state of things, it's best to just do the national shut down instead of dragging this out past mid April.

Our economy can't survive this kind of pause for 3 months, who are we kidding here?

</comment><comment><USER7> Our initial period is until April 1, but I have a feeling this will be expanded as the situation progresses.

</comment><comment><USER8> Nobody knows, I'd guess many months.

If WFH is effective for the company, then it can last longer, or forever for some people.

If the health care system collapses, then it lasts longer. If the health care system figures out a way to deal with this, then it lasts shorter.

The health care system can deal with it by flattening the curve by social distancing / quarantine, building herd immunity, having a vaccine, massive testing, checking temperatures all the time everywhere, or something else.

Vaccine is probably out for 18 months, but testing seems to be ramping up, so I'd guess that after several months there is going to be massive testing plus temp checks everywhere, and that stays around until herd immunity happens (which is some larger % of the population gets infected), which could be like year?</comment>


How Eugene Jarvis created arcade masterpiece Robotron 2084 – Polygon - <AUTHOR> https://www.polygon.com/2014/3/21/5531242/how-eugene-jarvis-created-arcade-masterpiece-robotron-2084 <comment><USER2> [http://content.atalasoft.com/h/i/90847833-robotron-and- oop](http://content.atalasoft.com/h/i/90847833-robotron-and-oop)

Quote:

So why is this all notable? In 13 instructions or roughly 23 bytes, we have the core of a non-preemptive multitasking operating system. That's the same amount of memory to hold the phrase, "Eugene P. Jarvis rocks!" in ASCII.</comment>


Cljs2go – A ClojureScript to Go compiler - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/hraberg/cljs2go <comment><USER2> Very neat project, will be keeping an eye on it to see how it grows and progresses.

I love the idea behind this project. The clean and intuitive project structure and layout is exemplary.

At present the emitted go code is quite nasty looking [for human-readable purposes :D]. Not meant as a complaint, just an observation.

For an example of what the outputted go code looks like check out [https://github.com/hraberg/cljs2go/blob/master/cljs/core/cor...](https://github.com/hraberg/cljs2go/blob/master/cljs/core/core.go)

</comment><comment><USER3> And clojure's reach grows larger!

<comment><USER4> It's pretty exciting to watch the community grow. The community feels much larger than it is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interesting project! May I ask why you chose ClojureScript over straight Clojure?

My understanding of ClojureScript is that it's Clojure syntax for a simple single threaded environment (probably an oversimplification), but with Golang you have a lot more reach in terms of concurrency.

Please forgive me if I haven't phrased this very well. I certainly don't mean to put a negative spin on this or anything; I'm just curious.

<comment><USER4> A contributing reason is because Clojurescript compiles down to javascript, which can compile down to anything JS touches. It's harder in the Java version because it compiles down to the Java bytecode.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Technically speaking it is a _transpiler_ , not a _compiler_.

<comment><USER7> This one statement could easily trigger an avalanche larger than all the other comments combined. I'll start:

What is the difference between a transpiler and a compiler?

<comment><USER8> A transpiler is a compiler that will transform a high level language into another high level language. Examples: Coffeescript, Sass, this thing.

Compiling is a more generic term that includes transpiling, but is usually used to mean the kind that transforms into assembly/bytecode/executables.

Edit: Since I have no interest in furthering a thread on a legitimate question, let me just answer to the replies here: There is no reason to make the difference other than pickiness, and there is no legitimate claim as to what is or isn't high level. Use your common sense, computers don't care whether it's a transpiler or compiler.

<comment><USER9> If compiling includes transpiling, then isn't it both? Why make the distinction?

<comment><USER10> Many argue that there's no difference. However, if I were to attempt a definition (not that I use the word), I'd say that transpiling is compilation from a language to another language with same or similar level of abstraction, whereas compiling might be to a language with lower level of abstraction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> fascinating project!</comment>


Mapvelopes - <AUTHOR> http://mapvelopes.appspot.com/ <comment><USER2> I keep getting:

Traceback (most recent call last): File "/base/python_runtime/python_lib/versions/1/google/appengine/ext/webapp/_webapp25.py", line 701, in __call__ handler.get(*groups) File "/base/data/home/apps/mapvelopes/main.341084165938999830/handler.py", line 274, in get start_loc, end_loc, route = get_route(start_address, end_address) File "/base/data/home/apps/mapvelopes/main.341084165938999830/handler.py", line 104, in get_route start_geocode = decode_geocode_response(route['legs'][0]['start_geocode']) KeyError: 'start_geocode'

<comment><USER3> I do as well, even when I type in the addresses provided in the example.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> mmm transparent cloud scaling. This kind of handling doesn't make app engine look like a good option for hobbyists...

<comment><USER5> AppEngine is great, until you get HN scale traffic. The user should have been prepared.

<comment><USER4> Traffic from an HN link is a lot over the course of a few hours, but it isn't that hard to handle. A single dedicated server usually won't even break a sweat. That's why this looks really bad.

<comment><USER6> What do you want for free? "A single dedicated server" costs something... this guy is almost certainly running on the free quota.

I don't think this looks bad for Google -- it looks bad for the author. The fact that he's using the freebie *.appspot.com rather than a dedicated domain gives you some indication of his dedication to the project.

<comment><USER4> A single server not breaking a sweat means that this can be handled by a middling VPS that is breaking a sweat, and that load only lasts a few hours. That means that it's stupidly cheap for Google to provide for a few hours of load like this, and the ability to absorb a huge spike on a cheapo plan is supposed to be one of the main points of cloud hosting.

Lots of people make cool stuff without dotting all the i's. That doesn't look bad on them - it just means they're doing the hard stuff and skipping the grungy parts of a project until it seems necessary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> More than a decade into hosting-as-a-business model, I still don't see why 'temporarily over quota' messages aren't replaced with an offer to let the audience sponsor a bump in quota, either for just the current viewer or however many viewers the next quantum of hosting can support.

<comment><USER8> It's quite inconvenient for audiences to spend money. They have to enter credit card information and such.

<comment><USER9> Paypal payments are only a few clicks.

<comment><USER10> And they already have Google wallet

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've pinged the developer on G+. (At least I think it's him.)

Hopefully he can get it fixed ASAP.

<comment><USER11> He is traveling and on holiday so he can't fix it right now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I am also getting a server error, which is a real shame, this is pretty awesome.

Suggestion: let me email/upload a photo or two, as well as the addresses and print retro postcard like views of the scaled down photos on top of the map.

</comment><comment><USER13> For an idea of what this app does, check out google envelopes:

[http://www.yankodesign.com/2010/03/30/google-envelopes- beta-...](http://www.yankodesign.com/2010/03/30/google-envelopes-beta-of- course/)

</comment><comment><USER14> You killed it HN!

</comment><comment><USER15> What was this before it went over quota?

<comment><USER16> It seems to be a "an App Engine app that generates customized printable envelopes with the map to your recipient on them". Here's the developer's blog post about it: <http://bit.ly/sVgTGh>

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Works for me; very clever service!

</comment><comment><USER18> Same here.

</comment><comment><USER19> me too - :(</comment>


Initial Performance Benchmarks of Linux's x86 Security Changes - <AUTHOR> https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=linux-415-x86pti&num=1 <comment><USER2> Really glad to see some more useful benchmarks here from Phoronix!

Anyone who has done a lot of storage, or NFS, etc.. knows that the du usecase is pathological and likely the worst case.

Staying tuned for additional updates, for example he could use the boot flags to disable/enable the support for this in order to eliminate other changes within the kernel.

</comment><comment><USER3> Is it possible to sue Intel if you need ~30% more web servers because Intel built faulty processors? The argument would be that you had bought AMD if you had known about the flaw.

<comment><USER4> Meta question: Why is everyone so eager and trigger-happy to sue these days? It seems like awful attrition on both humans and the economy. Has this always been the case? Or has it truly exploded in the last 50-70 years (which is my assumption)?

<comment><USER5> They aren't. Most of what you hear about people being "eager and trigger-happy to sue these days" is due to two factors.

First, the US has weak consumer protection agencies, which means when a company does do something wrong, the only effective resolution is through the civil court system.

Second, companies hate class-action lawsuits and have spent decades promoting the idea that people sue too much and that the court system is full of frivolous cases.

Remember, most people can't afford a lawsuit. It's very expensive, and there's always the chance of failing. Class-action lawsuits are the only way to make it practical when a company actually does something seriously negligent.

Which is why companies don't like it. What they really want is to minimize consumer protections. Hence the trend to switch customers to mandatory arbitration, which keep people from being able to file class-action lawsuit. Hence laws like the Texas damage caps, which make it easier for a company to carry out grossly negligent practices with out worrying about punitive damages.

And why they publish lists of "outrageous" court filings. They want people like you to think it's a problem, so be biased against lawsuits and those who file for lawsuits.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Historical context:

"The mysterious case of the Linux Page Table Isolation patches"

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16046636](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16046636)

</comment><comment><USER7> With what is known about this bug so far, wouldn't it be possible to mitigate it by locking the kernel to one CPU core, and run user processes on the other cores?

Also, if this bug lets the kernel leak data to user processes, would it also not be the case that different processes would leak data to each other? If that is true, then it seems that just isolating the kernel wouldn't be enough.

<comment><USER8> That might improve single core performance.

But you lock up two entire cores doing so.

For multi-core workloads, performance obviously decreases, mostly because you are missing an entire CPU core. Also, you would introduce locking between cores as only one user core could call the kernel at any one time.

Additionally, we have no idea how this bug (whatever it is) interacts with hyperthreading.

<comment><USER9> It's quite common on HPC systems to schedule jobs on every logical CPU _except_ cpu0, and give the OS cpu0 for doing OS stuff. In many workloads it actually improves performance since your job is not stalled waiting for something on cpu0, which was preempted for executing OS tasks.

<comment><USER2> I once debugged a pathological case of this where OnApp would configure Xen with a CPU limit of 200% on a 24 core machine for Dom0, so it could only spend 1/12th of the time in Dom0 - this is measured in time spent but also applies to all 24 cores. It would more or less totally lock the machine because 1 core was waiting on a spinlock or similar from another core, and they just scheduled so slowly it took FOREVER. Combine that with minimimum timeslices of 30ms.. basically each 30ms if would spinlock and do nothing useful. Good times.

Even their support team couldn't figure that out despite having other customers running into it, I managed to figure it out using xenalyze or something basically tracing the scheduler actions and found that all the dom0 cores were only being scheduled something like once per second each. Was kinda crazy.

No Batch Core scheduling in that version of Xen either. I think newer versions might have it? Might not work when you have every core assigned to a domain though.

The solution was to only plug 2 CPUs into Dom0, rather than plug all 24 and give it a 200% slice of them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It is interesting to see how posts and comments are written in a way that so far hides or downplays the severity and owner of this flaw.

<comment><USER11> The RAM manufacturers, for building their circuits too small? Or Intel, for allowing a side-channel attack to exist? Or Linux, for assuming that randomizing some pointers would mitigate any side-channel? This bug is definitely a product of lots of different issues coming together.

<comment><USER12> > Linux, for assuming that randomizing some pointers would mitigate any side- > channel?

Windows, *BSD and macOS are having the same kind of patches.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> So, as I understand it, the only way to avoid the rather huge performance hit is to use the pti=off switch, in effect opting out of KASLR on any Intel CPU newer than Pentium. Is this correct?

</comment><comment><USER14> These cache vulnerabilities can probably be mitigated with lower performance penalties on CPUs with Intel CAT. It's only available on Intel's Xeon SKUs though.</comment>