George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter - <AUTHOR> https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/1/d/1YmZeSxpz52qT-10tkCjWOwOGkQqle7Wd1P7ZM1wMW0E/htmlview?pru=AAABcql6DI8*mIHYeMnoj9XWUp3Svb_KZA <comment><USER2> If there ever was a case of "don't comment unless you've RTFA" this it: people extrapolating their viewpoint on a list of 700 things from watching 1, 2, 3 ...

At a minimum, watch 100 videos. I did last night, only took about an hour, it's easy to find some to nitpick, some which are ambiguous ... and plenty that are totally horrifying.

If you can watch 100 videos in a row from Greg Doucette's list and say, "the militarization and use of force tactics of US law enforcement are not a problem" then I'd like to hear why you think so given this evidence.

Otherwise you're not speaking from an honest grappling with what these videos contain.

<comment><USER3> This is a clear attempt to manipulate opinion, I don't know why HN leaves it up. You could watch 100 videos of disgusting malpractices in restaurant kitchens and begin to think you should never eat in a restaurant again. If after watching carefully select and cut videos on a Twitter propaganda account you believe the police has a systemic issue, you're falling for the same trap. It's the same way media manipulate you with their carefully chosen "interviews" with random people on the street.

<comment><USER4> I don't think society is looking for police to be an average good. That is, we're not looking to optimize on the statistical mean of police interactions. We are concerned particularly about the tails. The outliers _are_ the problem, particularly when they're not as uncommon as we expect them to be. You may call them propaganda, but that's a strange thing to post on an enumerated list of recorded evidence.

<comment><USER5> I agree, but also, calling them "outliers" is exactly the foregone conclusion that people in the streets are questioning.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The fact that is even possible is insane. Imagine there being over 700 videos of pilots messing up in one month, 700 crane operator mishaps in a month, 700+ food poising by a chain in a month. The also imagine you believe there's no problem.

This is Ba Sing Se levels of delusion for some people.

<comment><USER7> >This is Ba Sing Se levels of delusion for some people.

A reference I never expected to see on HN.

It's insane, but then you realize that a significant portion of the US population _still_ only watches television news media and refuses to spend extra time looking at other sources, like Twitter.

<comment><USER8> Neither you or the parent poster explained what "Ba Sing Se" is. I quickly discovered that it is a reference to a city in "The last Airbender" [0].

I don't want to watch three seasons of it just to understand the reference. A very obscure reference might deserve an explanation to make the remaining 99.9% of the readers able to understand what you mean.

[0]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avatar:_The_Last_Airbender#Ba_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avatar:_The_Last_Airbender#Ba_Sing_Se)

<comment><USER9> Not really very obscure. It's an incredibly popular show and I would be willing to bed that at minimum 50% of coworkers would understand the reference.

I don't think it's very difficult to use context to understand what's being said by the commenter.

<comment><USER10> > at minimum 50% of coworkers would understand the reference

Quick spot check in my company's Slack channel -- One person in our team of 12 knew what the reference met.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> When one 737 Max crashed, some pointed the finger at the pilots.

When a second one crashed, the focus quickly shifted.

It is a common attitude in aviation that even pilot error is really a systems fault. Perhaps opposing buttons are too close together, or some control requires attention to be diverted at the wrong time, or pilots are allowed to fly too many hours without adequate rest, or plenty of other things that could contribute to predictable human failure.

It seems obvious that we can predict human failure in current policing. If two incidents with a 737 lead to an indefinite grounding, what's the right number for this situation?

In the case of the airplane, grounding does not create a public safety issue. And there are, of course, many alternatives that can keep the overall system up and running in the meantime. The solution to police brutality requires much more thought.

<comment><USER12> "Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times." Its a cycle we already saw so many times, I believe with so many movements asking for rights, that this is "weak men" part creating hard times.

Mexico did a while ago what so many people is asking for, disband a security corp, result? The Zetas.

Why people is ignoring statistics? People kill people of the same race.

Many of that videos is just a bunch of violent people being put as victims by others people agenda. Is like your big brother hits you, then you hit back and just you are punished.

Be careful and thoughtful in your judgments. If possible try to look back in history and search an alike situation outcome.

<comment><USER13> I don't think any reasonable person is suggesting we fully defund or disband the police. They are suggesting that by giving police military style gear it incentivizes them to use it.

Instead of giving the police this crazy gear, we should redirect that money into training for the police. Or maybe some of it should go to schools.

<comment><USER14> There is a pretty good argument around fully disbanding the police; and it appears to be the stance that Minneapolis is taking.

The idea being that for the roles you'd traditionally want police to cover (response to violent crime), they've successfully received case law that doesn't require that to be one of their duties. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columbia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columbia) And nearly everything else is better handled by social worker like positions addressing the root issues. Police shouldn't be mental health professionals. It's just cheaper to give homeless housing than constantly fine and jail them. The war on drugs has been a policing failure, just like alcohol prohibition was. Low level traffic infractions tend to just be an extra revenue generation scheme aimed at the poor. etc.

We've also got data on the idea that the policing causes crime, from when the NYPD went on strike 2014-2015, and the crime rate plummeted. [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-017-0211-5](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-017-0211-5)

And we've spent decades trying to reform in place, without much progress, because structurally they don't want reform and kneecap the reforms at every opportunity. Better to dump the whole system and it's nomenclature, and rebuild what pieces we want with new roles.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The thing that really makes things worse is that the police are causing most of these protests and riots with their violent, unwarranted behavior.

This triggers riots and protests, which require the police to work overtime.

They get paid for causing all these problems, and well paid. Their overtime costs must be tremendous. And who ends up paying? We do.

We should claw back police overtime pay for any protests or riots that are caused by the police themselves. I think that's fair and equitable.

<comment><USER16> Don't throw all police officers into one bucket.

You have some outliers that are violent and the rest just does their job - keeping the city more safe.

Also don't assume all cases of police officer shooting a person are cases of police brutality - this is for court to prove.

<comment><USER17> If this would be the case, the rest would report the violent ones, would testify against them and violent ones would be removed. This would happen in cases where is no video and no public outcry.

That it does not seem to be happening unless there is video and public outcry suggest the issue is cultural and institutional, not just individual. The good cop is not reporting bad cop and is not testifying against him. Maybe the good cop would be retaliated against, maybe nothing would be done, and all of those are reasons why bad cops are empowered.

<comment><USER16> Would you report your fellow in company that e.g. goes late to work? Or uses corporate assets (printer, laptop) for personal things?

This is similar, if you know someone you have less incentive to report on one.

The better you know them, the higher is the bar for reporting.

<comment><USER18> No, someone showing up late to work and someone else violently beating or murdering a citizen is not the same thing. At all.

Those two scenarios are so far apart, attempting to draw a comparison is disturbing.

<comment><USER16> OK, let me make it more clear.

Let's assume two cases:

1\. A programmer, his work involves programming (obvious), going to meetings, printing some reports/codes etc.

The biggest problem he can do is introduce bugs in code by mistake (yes, lives can be lost that way), would you expect his peers to tell on him that he was the guy that introduced a bug that killed 300 people in a plane crash?

2\. A cop, his job involves preventing crimes, event violent ones, so he sometimes need to use his gun to prevent some of it, and sometimes he has to shoot a criminal.

His mistakes might be killing innocent person. Same thing can happen to his colleagues, so they protect him (just like any sane community would, like your family) - at least unless he turns out to be some sick sociopath.

Do you see relevance now? If you play with code you can just break code, if you play with guns you can break lives.

A side from that I don't get it why there are so many people that trash cops, but don't say a bad word about looters.

Cops protect us from crimes, small and big. They provide order, there are always black sheep, but there are less of those than you think - good guys also make mistakes.

Without a force that provides protection from crimes we would turn into vendetta like justice - have you been to countries that just went out of war? e.g. after the fall of Yugoslavia, there was no police there only tribe and vendetta justice.

Each utopia turns into dystopia sooner or later (CHAZ).

<comment><USER18> Your example excludes intent.

If I thought my coworker had deliberately introduced a bug that killed 300 people, I would absolutely turn them in. There is absolutely no question in my mind that I would do that.

But cops do not turn in their own when they deliberately abuse their power. They in fact _resign in protest_ when their own are investigated (Buffalo, NY), and turn out in support when their own are arraigned for abuses of power (Philadelphia, PA).

<comment><USER16> Intent is not obvious, unless you have evidence and that is to court to prove, beyond any reasonable doubt.

Intent to kill is something a sociopath does, do you think police force has more of them than the rest of society?

There was a time when vigilant justice didn't need court, but I don't think we want that to return (witch hunts in middle ages or lynching in 19th and early 20th century USA).

<comment><USER15> > Intent to kill is something a sociopath does, do you think police force has > more of them than the rest of society?

Actually, yes, they are filled with sociopaths. It's well known that lower- intelligence people become police. The police actively reject candidates with higher intelligence because the theory is that they become bored.

Also, it's well known that the occupation attracts bullies, who love the idea of bullying people and having power over regular citizens.

What you end up having is a group of low-IQ bullies, and they control the entire police force, because the "good" cops don't want to rock the boat. The stupid, boisterous bullies are the ones that create the culture of silence and complicity, and ultimately violence. I believe that cops love the idea that they are at war against the common citizen, which is why they draw their guns and escalate situations even before anything has happened.

<comment><USER16> > It's well known that lower-intelligence people become police.

Any data?

> Also, it's well known that the occupation attracts bullies, who love the > idea of bullying people and having power over regular citizens.

Again, data? Isn't it easier to become crook? More pay, less control, more freedom.

I know they are not PhDs but come on.

What you are doing is exactly the same what others do to different races/genders/nationalities, just replace "police" in your sentences with "black", "yellow", "women", "jewish" etc.

Hate against whole occupation, thousands of people. People start poisoning them (have you seen what happened in NY?), their children are bullied at schools.

Pure and simple hate crime.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I know politics isn't the usual HN topic, but I think this goes beyond politics at this point. Until I saw this list, I had no idea how out of control this situation has gotten here.

I'm saddened for my country and hope that this can be a turning point for all of us.

<comment><USER19> Is it out of control though? The police has 700K members in the US. Millions of daily interactions with people of all kinds. All you could find is 400 cases from ALL the years. And I guess the claim is brutality wasn't justified in every single case. In reality there are not 400 cases on that list, and in many cases the violence was justified.

I'm not saying the police doesn't do wrong, they absolutely do. We have examples of rapes, unjustified murders and beatings, entrapment. They are extremely rare. I think last year the police in the US killed 9 unarmed black men and 21 unarmed white men.

<comment><USER20> > All you could find is 400 cases from ALL the years.

These aren't from all the years, they're from approximately May 26th of this year. It's 400 cases in the last 3-4 weeks.

That is a startlingly high number, made worse once you actually start digging into the individual incidents, because you realize they're not just isolated. A lot of these videos aren't, "a single police officer does something shifty", they're, "an entire police unit starts firing tear gas at protestors who are kneeling on the ground." And then you start to read the responses from police unions, some of which outright lie about the incidents or contradict the videos. This isn't a problem with individual officers, it's a problem with high-level commanders and police union leaders -- it's a problem that spans entire units.

I personally went through about 200 incidents for a separate project I was working on, some more in-depth than others. I think people are looking at these lists and thinking, "oh sure, but if you zoom in and examine each incident, it gets better." It really doesn't. It didn't take me long to get accustomed to seeing people tear-gassed, those videos don't even make me blink now. But even with that, I was regularly shocked while I was combing through videos with incidents that I wasn't prepared for.

"Tear gas, tear gas, tear gas, holy heck that police officer just body slammed a protestor! Tear gas, tear gas, holy crap they just punched a reporter in the face!"

And again, 4 weeks. Not years. I would challenge anyone who's saying that these are extremely rare or over-dramatized to sit down and devote an evening to just watching the videos in series. It weighs on you. And it quickly becomes obvious that these are not individual rogue officers, these are police units operating in an environment where they know they will not face consequences for hurting protestors.

<comment><USER21> >These aren't from all the years, they're from approximately May 26th of this year. It's 400 cases in the last 3-4 weeks.

But... aren't there riots everywhere right now? This isn't exactly a normal situation.

<comment><USER22> What does the existence of riots have anything to do with these instances of police brutality on _peaceful_ protestors?

<comment><USER21> Everything is connected to everything. If you have riots everywhere then people, including police, are on the edge.

Also, are you suggesting that the riots are peaceful?

<comment><USER23> > Also, are you suggesting that the riots are peaceful?

So apparently you haven't watched any of the videos, huh?

Guess what? The problem is that _police are frequently "on edge"_ in their normal jobs, and as a result _innocent people are seriously injured or die_. And worse, police are "on edge" far more around blacks than whites, meaning far more blacks are injured by police than whites.

It doesn't matter what the cause is, it's a problem and is has to stop.

<comment><USER21> >So apparently you haven't watched any of the videos, huh?

Yes, I watched a few from this link, and that admittedly small sample didn't show a single peaceful protester being abused by cops. I suppose you watched more of them?

>Guess what? The problem is that police are frequently "on edge" in their normal jobs, and as a result innocent people are seriously injured or die. And worse, police are "on edge" far more around blacks than whites, meaning far more blacks are injured by police than whites.

Could there be a reason for some of that that is not linked to racism? Are only white policemen more on-edge around black people?

>It doesn't matter what the cause is, it's a problem and is has to stop.

I can agree with that certainly.

<comment><USER23> > Yes, I watched a few from this link, and that admittedly small sample didn't > show a single peaceful protester being abused by cops.

TGD #1 shows a woman standing with a sign being run over by a horse. That's absolutely peaceful.

TGD #2 shows a woman who was walking backwards in front of a police officer being shoved so hard she flies several meters back and hits her head on the curb. She was in the officer's face, but she certainly wasn't doing anything close to rioting.

I'll watch more later, but so far that's 2/2 at the top of the list showing peaceful protesters being abused.

> Could there be a reason for some of that that is not linked to racism? Are > only white policemen more on-edge around black people?

Depends on what you mean by "racism". There was a series of studies a few years ago that put people in classic "shoot / no shoot" scenarios that police are trained on (i.e., you go through a scenario and have to shoot someone before they shoot you, but only if there's actually a gun). They randomly changed the color of the skin of the people involved. Civilians shot far more blacks than whites in "no-shoot" scenarios. Police shot about the same, _but_ there was a longer delay: meaning, their impulse was to shoot blacks faster, but their training allowed a secondary impulse to come in and moderate the first one. (Sorry I can't find a link just now.)

But there are a host of other issues as well.

<comment><USER21> >There was a series of studies a few years ago that put people in classic "shoot / no shoot" scenarios that police are trained on (i.e., you go through a scenario and have to shoot someone before they shoot you, but only if there's actually a gun). They randomly changed the color of the skin of the people involved. Civilians shot far more blacks than whites in "no-shoot" scenarios. Police shot about the same, but there was a longer delay: meaning, their impulse was to shoot blacks faster, but their training allowed a secondary impulse to come in and moderate the first one. (Sorry I can't find a link just now.)

That sounded interesting, so I tried to find some.

First one I found was this [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/235256692_Results_f...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/235256692_Results_from_experimental_trials_testing_participant_responsesto_White_Hispanic_and_Black_suspects_in_high- fidelity_deadlyforce_judgment_and_decision-making_simulations)

\-- the conclusion seemed to be exactly counter to what the research you were talking about showed. "In addition, where errors were made, participants across experiments were more likely to shoot unarmed White suspects than unarmed Black or Hispanic suspects, and were more likely to fail to shoot armed Black suspects than armed White or Hispanic suspects."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> There needs to be a psychology study done with cops to understand why they act the way they do. I believe there's an underlying problem in how they are trained or something else because police brutality is kind of a global phenomenon. When someone kills or severely hurts the people they are supposed to protect, it seems like there's something else going on. I've been in a few protests and I can easily say that I have never seen more hatred in someone's eyes other than the cops that were beating up people.

<comment><USER25> > because police brutality is kind of a global phenomenon

No it's not. Police in Europe is, on average, very kind. When they stop you, you don't have to be afraid of anything, and more often than not you stop them to ask for help, even if it's just to ask for directions.

<comment><USER26> You don't have to worry about getting killed, even though that's changing slowly [0][1], but many of them are authority abusive pieces of shit that have no place in the police.

I've been stopped on my motorcycle for no reasons by officers in an unmarked car, they kept me 30 min on the road under full summer sun and didn't provide me any reason for stopping me whatsoever. "don't do crimes and the police will leave you alone" doesn't exist

My dad got a ticket for using his mobile phone in a stopped car (engine off, parked) even though he didn't own a mobile phone. I can't come up with a single good interaction me or any member of my family had with the police and as far as I can tell I'm far from the only one.

A quick look at the yellow vests protest will tell you that French riot police are just the same as the American one. They killed a grandma by shooting a tear gas canister into her 4th floor flat [2].. Dozen lost hands, eyes, & c. The only reason it isn't worse is because they're less equipped and have more legal constraints

Potentially nsfl, lost of yellow vests injuries with pics: [http://lemurjaune.fr](http://lemurjaune.fr)

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

[1] [https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.lexpress.fr/actualite/socie...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.lexpress.fr/actualite/societe/mort- d-un-livreur-apres-une-interpellation-le-plaquage-ventral-une-pratique- decriee_2113719.amp.html)

[2] [https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.leparisien.fr/amp/faits- div...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.leparisien.fr/amp/faits- divers/marseille-deces-d-une-femme-blessee-par-une-grenade- lacrymogene-03-12-2018-7959639.php)

<comment> saiya-jin I've got stopped close to midnight by Swiss border police once, coming from rock climbing session over the border. You would expect Swiss politeness and correctness, right?

I got held at the (utterly empty otherwise) border for 40 minutes. They went through my whole backpack (just wet stinking climbing clothing equipment), did some obscure exercises like taking out all my cash & cards from wallet, counting it, putting into envelope and then back to me and so on.

I was super thirsty, when I asked them for a cup of water they repeatedly ignored it. They yelled at me and were generally super unfriendly, treating me like a criminal. I cross normally (non-covid times) that border several times a week, never anything similar. You can't do much, they have all the power, and they make you feel it.

This is Swiss, don't hold your breath for other european places. There are sane normal policemen, just like everywhere, but there are also fucked up power tripping assholes. They just can be more trigger-happy in places like US.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> There's also a Github repo [1] which was posted a while ago containing various instances of police brutality as well as other sites using said data to better illustrate the problem.

[1] [https://github.com/2020PB/police- brutality](https://github.com/2020PB/police-brutality)

</comment><comment><USER28> Some ideas:

\- Less immunity, and discharge without pension for blatant violations, for example being caught on camera hiding a badge, or deliberately bumping into someone to be able to argue that they were "assaulted".

\- Longer police traning. A 6-12months is how long you should train to be an unarmed mall security guy. Two or three years for a policeman seems like a minimum if you want qualified officers.

\- Federal overview of all police and common frameworks for what is allowed and expected by police officers.

\- Only qualified policemen should be allowed to be managers anywhere in the hierarchy (e.g. running for a Sheriff should require police traning and N years of experience).

\- More training focus on deescalation, dialog and avoiding dangerous situations.

\- Mental health screening. You don't want anyone who would become violent when in the wrong situation.

<comment><USER29> Yes. And this is quite the opposite of the current "defund the police" initiative. We actually need to fund them more to get the above to happen.

<comment><USER28> I think people are sick of departments getting more funds and buying mine protected vehicles instead of sending officers to deescalation refresher classes.

<comment><USER30> Most of those military vehicles are actually extremely cheap, they are given to the police by the military when the military no longer needs them. I think this was partially as a response to the north Hollywood shooting, where two bank robbers outgunned the police and injured a couple dozen officers and civilians before being killed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> We might not be able to agree about everything, but can we at least agree that it's in everyone's best interest to have an increasing amount of the world have a generally secure, stable, unconditional personal access to food, housing, education, healthcare, and a labor market and can lives in a society with reasonable laws that they can practically obey?

Even if we don't contribute to that personally, can we at least agree to try to avoid doing things to other countries that get in the way of doing that, in really obvious ways like not randomly bombing them and pretending? Can we just admit to ourselves that a lot of global military expenditure is just a certain kind of make work? As Americans, can we then really not think of a slightly more efficient way to allocate the $7.3T that the American government raises every year from tax revenue, much of which we just light on fire policing things parts of people's lives unnecessarily?

Come on. I'm sure we can. This is like taking your hand off the literal stove. I know how horrible this all looks, and it is horrible, but it's also really easy to propose a solution to it. Divest and reinvest. It could be so many flavors of divest and reinvest, and still be a good enough improvement over how things are right now that it would be the most impressive piece of legislation for probably a 100 year span of time if not 200 years. There has to be an opportunistic, ambitious K-street lobbyist or two reading this, right? Wanna take credit for bringing America out of the dark ages? Come on...you know you want to. Now's your chance.

The bar is at the floor. You could write the dirtiest honker of a bill you've ever seen that it could make the ACA look clean. As long as it achieves the right divestments (global windmill fighting) and reinvestments (domestic production infrastructure), you're on the right track. You don't even have to get it completely right the first time. Perfect is the enemy of done here. Just something major and timely, which lets you evangelize divest and reinvest. You can even rebrand it as "digital transformation" if you really want. I would promise to never judge it as management consultant grifting again.

Because if not...I don't know how long this situation will hold. Those riots are just a taste of unease to come, and eventually, the federal branches of the government will understand how much more powerless they are with dislocation of their local constituencies. Someone is going to figure out how to relocate those constituencies.

<comment><USER32> > Can we just admit to ourselves that a lot of global military expenditure is > just a certain kind of make work?

Being the imperial power has vast benefits, do you think Rome ruled its provinces just so they had a way to spend money? Being the global power is literally worth money. It's hard to say how much, but I'm pretty sure it's larger than your military expenses.

That said, I'd love to see the US cut back, because your benefit comes at somebody else's cost.

 _If_ the net benefit to the US is positive however, do you believe the majority of people would be happy to work more to have the same standard of living, or the majority of well-off Americans would be happy to pay European level taxes to redistribute wealth within the US? I have sincere doubts on both fronts.

<comment><USER33> While I agree it's worth money, I'm skeptical that the average American sees any of that money.

All the money made being an imperial power just lines the pockets of the rich.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> From what I understand, all of these people are breaking curfew and ignoring instructions to leave the area, and in some cases are acting belligerent when confronted, and this is happening at scale.

Is the expectation that curfew is an order that should not be enforced in the strictest sense?

From what I could see on the news, parts of your country were being burned down and looted by some rogue elements who used the cover of peaceful protests to spring into action. To protect the lives and livelihoods of those affected, a curfew was imposed, which was then violated. If I lived in those areas I would have liked to see the curfew enforced as harshly as possible because if it is not enforced then I will lose the local businesses who I depend on to live in that area.

What is the expected approach to law enforcement when extreme measures like curfew orders are not obeyed, particularly during a pandemic?

A lot of these videos seem to be omitting the all-important context. In my country I would _want_ the police to beat the ever loving expletive out of people who do go out in large crowds during a pandemic. I would _want_ the police to use all measures available at their disposal to injure and dissuade people from breaking a curfew and unwittingly providing cover for criminals.

Perhaps in first world countries life has become soft and comfortable so there is some expectation of civil behavior from everyone in society, but clearly that has not happened in the USA and many other countries.

Many of the protests are peaceful, and a lot of anger can be easily empathized with, I can't imagine anyone who was not furious after seeing these horrible videos of police inflicted killings. Under no circumstances can I be convinced that looting and rioting is an acceptable outcome. If protesters know that their peaceful assembly is being hijacked by criminals who go out and loot and riot under the cover they provide, and they go out and protest more, then they are complicit in the rioting.

Perhaps these are cultural differences, but coming from a police where the police are infinitely more barbaric, corrupt, rude and ruthless than the USA, I find the police doing the best they can to manage the absolute mess that the citizens are creating.

You all live in a country where many police wear body cameras. That is privileged beyond anything I can hope to imagine for my country. It's weird to empathize with you when you have it so good.

<comment><USER35> >In my country I would want the police to beat the ever loving expletive out of people who do go out in large crowds during a pandemic.

Maybe in your country blind, extrajudicial violence is not a no-no. This is not the case in democratic countries.

>To protect the lives and livelihoods of those affected, a curfew was imposed, which was then violated.

This is a) a slippery slope (a corrupt government would declare a curfew every time it wanted to stop protests) and, b) it prioritizes material wealth over a movement that wants to achieve social change (in the grand scheme of things, decreasing racism is much more valuable that the stores of some neighborhoods).

>Under no circumstances can I be convinced that looting and rioting is an acceptable outcome.

Really? Under no circumstances? Social equality movements have produced riots since time immemorial. Do you denounce the acts of Spartacus? The peasants revolt? The French revolution?

People who claim this are usually ignorant about how social change is made.

<comment><USER34> > Maybe in your country blind, extrajudicial violence is not a no-no. This is > not the case in democratic countries.

Police all around the world use non-lethal force when the law is being broken and the perpetrator is not cooperative. This is absolutely not blind or extra- judicial. The whole point of this is to deter this kind of behaviour, and police are equipped with batons etc. for this reason.

> This is a) a slippery slope (a corrupt government would declare a curfew > every time it wanted to stop protests)

I would agree if this was the case in this instance but this is not the case - there was a very obvious need for a curfew given the breakdown of law and order. Death, destruction of property, theft, loss of livelihoods. This is not what one expects in a civilized place.

Material wealth is a disingenuous framing. Someone's grocery shop is not accurately categorised as material wealth - it is their source of livelihood and it is a resource for the neighborhood. As President Obama pointed out in his letter, we all watched that poor old lady sobbing about the fact that she had nowhere else to go to buy groceries. To dismiss this kind of destruction as loss of material wealth is not at all accurate.

> Social equality movements have produced riots since time immemorial. Do you > denounce the acts of Spartacus? The peasants revolt? The French revolution?

I denounce anyone who sets the shop of a small storekeeper or restauraunteur on fire, destroying their livelihood. You can go out into the streets and protest but this kind of behaviour is unconscionable and wrong. Setting fire to low income housing? How does this behavior help anyone? It's despicable. Your country can afford to build actual homes for low income folks while millions live in abject poverty and some rioter burns it down, and others justify it as a legitimate protest.

You can enact social change through all sorts of violence but it is most certainly not something that decent and civilized people ought to support. Everyone is rightfully furious at the incident that sparked this entire ordeal. The police presence on the streets was essential given the degree to which people were misbehaving and committing crimes.

<comment><USER35> >Police all around the world use non-lethal force when the law is being broken and the perpetrator is not cooperative. This is absolutely not blind or extra- judicial. The whole point of this is to deter this kind of behaviour, and police are equipped with batons etc. for this reason.

a) That it happens around the world (which by the way it does not, protesters broke curfew laws in e.g. Germany and there was not nearly as much violence), does not make it right and b) there was a lot of indiscriminate violence against non-violent (just breaking curfew is non-violent) protesters. The police have in no way the right to act violently upon just because you have broken the law, the bar is much higher than that.

>I would agree if this was the case in this instance but this is not the case...

Do you understand what "slippery slope" means? __This time __it was maybe not the case.

>Death, destruction of property, theft, loss of livelihoods. This is not what one expects in a civilized place.

While police stepping on the throat of an innocent civilian until he dies is expected in a civilized place? Those riots did not spring up spontaneously from nothing, they are a reaction to a situation.

>Material wealth is a disingenuous framing. Someone's grocery shop is not accurately categorised as material wealth - it is their source of livelihood and it is a resource for the neighborhood.

So... Material wealth. I don't see where I was disingenuous. Societal progress is much more valuable than any shop.

>I denounce anyone who sets the shop of a small storekeeper or restauraunteur on fire, destroying their livelihood.

So you do denounce all those things I mentioned. You understand that by not having those things we would still live in a pre-feudal society, right? There is no such thing as non-violent change, read a history book.

Should we be happy that a small storekeeper lost his shop? Absolutely not. But we should see it from a historical perspective that this is how change sometimes looks like.

>How does this behavior help anyone?

Again, read a history book. No one is focusing on the poor Roman store owner who had his store burned down by rioting slaves in 70 B.C. No one is focusing on some restaurant being burned down during the Watts riots in 1965. Those are transient events that impact the few (as devastating as they might be for the owners, they are but a drop in the ocean for society as a whole).

>You can enact social change through all sorts of violence but it is most certainly not something that decent and civilized people ought to support.

Until you invent a better way, I will support social change by any means necessary. You focus on the 10 owners who had their stores burned down once. I focus on the millions who are repressed and killed every day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Disgusting. After things settle down, in addition to all the systematic reform that will hopefully take place, I hope we can look back at these videos and put all of these officers in jail for violating the constitution and betraying their oath to protect and serve their communities.

It's finally time to put all that facial recognition tech to good use.

</comment><comment><USER36> Is there any effort being made to archive these videos? They're actual history, and given the ephemeral nature of data on online platforms, most will probably disappear in a few years without effort to preserve them.

<comment><USER37> This repo has a nice data API and multiple different video download archives + an open source download tool for the data

[https://github.com/2020PB/police-brutality](https://github.com/2020PB/police- brutality)

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> It would be good to stick these videos somewhere where they can't be taken down.

<comment><USER39> Suggestions? It seems like anyone that is able to provide a service to host video would be just as likely to remove them for the same pressure. P2P torrent with enough people seeding them to make it impossible to remove them is the only thing that comes to mind.

<comment><USER38> Yeah I was thinking a torrent too - seems like the only way to guarantee it stays up.

<comment><USER40> > Yeah I was thinking a torrent too - seems like the only way to guarantee it > stays up.

I'm up for helping, we did the same thing during HKs police brutality videos, please consider seeding this as well; let me know how I can help.

[https://torrentz2.eu/9b85dd223c8f92c923f516ed77bbdfcb770f4dd...](https://torrentz2.eu/9b85dd223c8f92c923f516ed77bbdfcb770f4dd8)

Oh, also worth noting the HKPF/PLA just used the same knee-to-neck choke hold on an unarmed female protestor during the 1 year Anniversary protests on June 12th [1].

1: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxDKfxFrEuY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxDKfxFrEuY)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> honestly... the biggest problems with the police is unions. you de-unionize the police you will see all this stop in no time. over my life i have witnessed personally numerous times when an officer should have been fired for brutality or another offense, but the union used their negotiation power and saved their job. cops know that as long as they have the power of the union legal team behind them, that 99% of the time there will be no punishment or it will be minimal.

cops are entitled because unions make them this way. take away their safety net and you seeing more terminations and less bullies and entitled people applying for the job.

</comment><comment><USER42> HN should stay away from this garbage.

Most of these videos are carefully edited to show one side of the story. Others are stories sharing only their side of the story.

Protester brutality far exceeds police brutality. Criminal brutality faaar exceeds police brutality. Yet the extremist leftists are calling to defund the police, which leads to complete chaos and anarchy. Pathetic reasoning from a stone-age, low-IQ perspective.

</comment><comment><USER43> Try building an app around it with glideapps.com for easier consumption by journalists, activists, etc., I tried to add it to my drive so I could build it but your settings will not allow me to do it

<comment><USER39> You can understand why a document like this would need to be pretty locked down I hope. While you might think an app is required, I'm pretty sure just about anyone on a computer can read a spreadsheet. Also, I'd rather not need an app to present the data in a spreadsheet in a manner the developer thinks is useful. Just present the data, let the viewer consume it as they see fit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> There are lots and lots of mishaps in many professions, sometimes with deadly consequences. The United States is a country of 330 million people. Suppose an event is so unlikely it only has 1 in a billion chance of happening--it will happen once ever 4 days on average!

Medical errors, for example, are estimated to cause as many as 250,000 deaths per year [1].

There are millions and millions of daily interactions between police and civilians every year. Sadly, there will be some mistakes, some of which will be caught on camera.

It's important to be aware that what the media can be random, and media coverage is not always correlated with how important or prevalent a problem is.

[1] Johns Hopkins: [https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/media/releases/study_su...](https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/media/releases/study_suggests_medical_errors_now_third_leading_cause_of_death_in_the_us)

<comment><USER45> > Suppose an event is so unlikely it only has 1 in a billion chance of > happening--it will happen once ever 4 days on average!

Ok, the EU has 445M citizens[1] which means, by your logic, there should statistically be 40% more police "mistakes" than the US. Except there isn't. It is _radically_ lower[2] (1536 for the USA in 2019 vs 51 for the EU in 2018/19).

[1] [https://europa.eu/european-union/about- eu/figures/living_en](https://europa.eu/european-union/about- eu/figures/living_en) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enforc...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enforcement_officers_by_country)

<comment><USER44> That's an interesting and valid point.

First, a disagreement. Your base assumption that police activity should scale linearly with population. This is just obviously not correct. There are huge, huge differences in countries and crime rates. You can look at differences in homicide rate, for example [1]. The united states has a pretty shockingly high homicide rate for a developed country (4.96 per 100k). This is 5x higher than France or Germany. On the other end you have Japan, which is about 5x lower than France or Germany (25x lower than United States).

But that aside, the important question is: is crime driving police activity, or are the police widely malicious and corrupt? I'll admit that I'm not knowledgable enough to give a good answer to this question, but I'm very skeptical of jumping to a conclusion based on selective evidence on social media or recent news coverage.

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> This is in the same vein as the cross word puzzle database mentioned yesterday.

"When you get the data into a nice, clean, dense form, stuff just falls out of it" \- Saul Pwanson

</comment><comment><USER47> I have no idea why people discussing these protests aren't focusing more on this. How else do you capture "systemic problem" better than widespread thuggish police behavior during countrywide protests about police brutality. Of all the black civil rights activity in recent memory, this is probably one of the most powerful methods of conveying to people the gravity of the issues that black activists talk about.

</comment><comment><USER48> Are there any videos of morons destroying private property, looting, stealing, burning?

<comment><USER49> [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVKDKWKR498Ut2m8H5oUEcA/vid...](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVKDKWKR498Ut2m8H5oUEcA/videos)

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> One related issue, is that right now, in COVID times, unnecessary arrests, jailing, busing, etc. is in some abstract sense an application of potentially lethal force -- since enclosed spaces and close contact makes COVID transmission significantly more likely.

It seems important to understand how much that is happening and where. If that data, in combination with protest size/type data is available, it can help us better understand if protests or police are actually impacting COVID transmission (if either).

If we don't have that data available as case numbers come in, it makes the narrative of blaming protesters much more likely to stick, even if it turns out to be inaccurate later, and e.g. the primary cause is unnecessary police actions.

Is anyone doing this? (Does anyone want to start if not?)

<comment><USER51> Where Covid rules apply:

Home, Banks, Retail, Restaurants, Hospitals

Yes

Jails, Police station

No

Can you sue police if get sick ?

<comment><USER52> I assume that is part of 'qualified immunity'.

There is also the issue with police chiefs publicly declaring that they will not enforce the orders of their governor.

So, that is a bigger problem to me...

Deciding to only enforce the laws you 'like'.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enforc...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enforcement_officers_by_country)

The US looks more like a third world country than a developed nation.

</comment><comment><USER19> I opened a couple of random ones. The first one was this link:

[https://twitter.com/greg_doucette/status/1270402748895412224](https://twitter.com/greg_doucette/status/1270402748895412224)

Which isn't an example of police brutality.

The second one was this:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsTkAOe5UTE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsTkAOe5UTE)

Basically a bunch of thugs attack random drivers. One of the thugs jumps into a random car, the car stops, police come, pull the thug out, he resists, they deal with him. I have zero sympathy for the thug.

If you want to create a list for this cause, at least make it good, make it solid. Don't fill it with random junk to inflate the numbers.

<comment><USER27> You're being massively disingenuous in the second example. A 'bunch of thugs' means one person who was being chased by a group of officers and beaten while he's trying to run. He's trying to get into a car to escape (admittedly a bad idea), then when they catch up to him they beat him up, throw him to the ground AND arrest the driver.

The fact that you chose to take the video so far out of context means you're not here to argue in good faith at all. Said list isn't for people such as yourself, where no level of evidence could convince you.

<comment><USER54> You are probably also taking it out of context. You have no idea what has happened in that neighborhood in the last year or decade. You have no idea what those perps and officers have experienced. Right?

<comment><USER20> > in the last year or decade

> what those perps and officers have experienced

Both totally irrelevant to whether or not it's appropriate to punch a handcuffed prisoner in the face while they're not resisting.

If a cop is suffering from PTSD or stress to the point where they can't keep themselves from assaulting a handcuffed prisoner, then I am genuinely very sorry for them, but they're still in the wrong job and they still need to be let go.

<comment><USER55> If the police officer is suffering from PTSD, a mental illness, and it originated at work, the police department as their employer should look into other options first before firing the unfit officer.

Treatment combined with appropriate work should be the first option. Treatment combined with sick leave should obviously be the second.

<comment><USER20> I'm willing to compromise on how treatment/employment is handled, especially if the problem originated at work, but I assume we're still in agreement that the officer shouldn't be on the street making arrests?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Here is a project set up to review each of these individual reported incidents.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/GeorgeFloydUnmasked/](https://www.reddit.com/r/GeorgeFloydUnmasked/)

There will need to be a lot of discussion // more than be traced using Twitter // to solve any one of these incidents.

That's why we set up a Reddit for threaded discussion. This is Don't Fuck with Cats style.

</comment><comment><USER57> Anyone thinks this is just a US issue is mistaken. This is what power does if you really challenge it. The friendly face disappears pretty quick.

<comment><USER28> I don't think the problem of police brutality is nearly as big in western Europe or other comparable places.

<comment><USER57> You maybe right but I'm just saying people would do well to remember that this is what the police are for. To control you. The idea their treatment of people is down to "the law" is obviously false. They exert the power of the state. This, brutality, this abuse of power would happen anywhere people have learnt to dehumanise each other.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> I have always wished there was a platform where we could upload such videos and collect evidence on certain cases of police brutality. With the use of facial recognition software, it would also easily be possible to identify when the same cop is involved in multiple conflicts.

</comment><comment><USER59> Watched first 10 videos with youtube links in the list:

url - description - what I see in the video

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4_yJjdsJ_0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4_yJjdsJ_0) \- trampling a peaceful protestor with a horse - protester stepped into the horse's way without looking in that direction, nobody's fault

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suTGneu7tZU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suTGneu7tZU) \- Shoving an unarmed woman to the curb, prompting a seizure that put her in the emergency room - police pushed somebody away from them, clip is cut right at the push, we have no context on what prompted that

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eu1KRskL-0E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eu1KRskL-0E) \- doing an intentional hit-and-run with a car door to an unarmed protestor standing in the non-vehicular bike lane - protesters standing in the street in front of emergency vehicles with their lights and sirens on, but the door hit (minor) was definitely intentional and unnecessary

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOzn6rWbpwU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOzn6rWbpwU) \- NYPD were just beating a variety of people earlier tonight because they could - police try to arrest some people who are resisting, some other protesters jump the police, police hit people with sticks, get them on the ground, handcuff. No unnecessary violence I can see.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESAl1OK5V8Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESAl1OK5V8Y) \- beating a variety of unarmed protestors for sport - line of policeman pushing protesters back, nothing more

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8CPc_R5iEI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8CPc_R5iEI) \- pepper-spraying a variety of unarmed protestors for sport - police pepper spray protesters who got in their face insulting them, but where not violent. Pepper spray unjustified from what I can tell

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGlRSPE2lL0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGlRSPE2lL0) \- Minneapolis PD officer in an SUV indiscriminately sprays random citizens with pepper spray from his car window - yes, because people where getting in the way of police vehicles with lights/siren on in the middle of the street

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VH0HPW8Eagk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VH0HPW8Eagk) \- detonating flashbang grenades in a docile crowd of unarmed protestors for sport - video shot from very far away, we can see nothing of what is going on there

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8G0WhaqBRb0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8G0WhaqBRb0) \- shooting a random protestor in the neck with a rubber bullet, then detonating more flash-bangs - people surrounding a building with policeman on top, video of low quality with fingers in front of camera, from far away, nothing I can understand

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftLzQefpBvM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftLzQefpBvM) \- Police arresting CNN reportes on air - reporter gets arrested in a very peaceful manner, both him and police are very chill. No context on why.

<comment><USER60> Just watched the first video. "protester stepped into the horse's way without looking in that direction, nobody's fault". This is clearly not true.

<comment><USER59> And what is your interpretation of the video then?

<comment><USER60> I don't believe you are asking in good faith. I am not going to engage with you on this. I am just responding so that other people actually watch the video rather than listen to your spin on it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> It's really just one bad apple.

Unfortunately the apple is the police and it's everywhere and armed.

<comment><USER62> "Okay, so there are a few bad orchards..."

<comment><USER63> okay, so there's a couple of deep genetic defections with apples themselves.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> There have been several posts in the thread advocating violence. Is that allowed here?

</comment><comment><USER64> I've downloaded these clips and compiled them into a single video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ckSnRrOhZ4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ckSnRrOhZ4)

</comment><comment><USER65> the problem is not police violence. the problem is what they are legally allowed to do VS what they are not.

the notion of "resisting arrest" allow police to do pretty much whatever they want from the moment you said "no" to one of their asks.

Hell even getting out from your vehicle when a cop tells you to stay in it is "resisting arrest".

this is the main problem. if you give people a way to be legally violent you are responsible for the deaths. its is beyond politics, democrats or republicans allowed these laws and procedures, the neck restraints and other dangerous things for decades.

</comment><comment><USER66> There should be psychological evaluations of those in politics/judiciary/law enforcement [https://archive.vn/YXDP8](https://archive.vn/YXDP8)

<comment><USER67> I agree with the premise but unfortunately the mental health system in America is itself prone to abuse of patients and bigotry against patients. We need to be able to hold psychologists, nurses in psychiatric wards, psychiatrists, and other licensed mental health workers with a similar set of accountability if we are to hope that they can be useful filters.

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> Cops shouldn't be afraid to do their jobs, and citizens shouldn't be afraid of the cops.

</comment><comment><USER69> Polarization, scary stuff :(

<comment><USER70> elaborate please?

<comment><USER71> I think they're referring to this thread itself.

I've been lurking on hacker news for years and I've never really seen anything quite like it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> Insane

</comment><comment><USER73> I am the CTO/co-founder at Loom (loom.com). I would like to upload these videos to my personal Loom account to be preserved. Anyone know of a location where I can download them without having to write a script to export them?

</comment><comment><USER74> Just move to Seattle or Minneapolis for anyone that hates police so much. They won't be there anymore so you'll be safe.

</comment><comment><USER75> Most posts on this subject keep getting pushed off of the front page by mods. It's pretty sad to watch, especially with the number of posts about coronavirus. They're both major issues, but one is nerdier than the other so it gets to stay.

<comment><USER76> Mods didn't touch this post, or see it, until I turned the flags off just now.

<comment><USER75> Got it, thanks. Since that's that's been a big trend recently, is there anything that can be done to make sure posts like these don't just immediately get flagged into oblivion? I can absolutely see campaigns against HN that flag these sorts of posts to get off the front page.

Not expecting the answer to be yes, but figured I'd ask.

<comment><USER77> I personally don't want to see this here, and I flag this kind of subjects when I see them.

One of the great things about HN is that is manages to be an interesting website that usually keeps out of flamewar american politics.

There are plenty of those pretty much everywhere on reddit/internet, and I appreciate that this kind of 'us vs them' posts usually don't stay up long on HN.

I'm a bit disappointed dang unflagged it this time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER78> I don't see much discussion of root causes here. But a lot of "police ought to be this or that".

Perhaps the best solution is to have more democracy or community input into policing. It seems like it's happening now in the US (it would be quite different in other countries, where the police is national and considered civil servants; in France you can't elect sheriffs, and police is beyond the responsibility of mayors).

In the end, some communities will vote for a police that's tough, and other communities will vote for a police that's less tough. There will still be issues when criminals used to non-tough cops cross into an area with tough cops, but that's life.

<comment><USER28> > a police that's tough

Tough is having courage and compassion while being firm. Tough not being an insecure bully. Please don't use "tough" when relating to US police brutality.

Having a decent police force is a solved problem. Just look around for a country with a decent relationship between population and law enforcements. Look what made that happen (Was it 2-3 year police training? mental health screens? No qualified immunity? Central/federal authority governing all police forces? perrhaps ALL OF THE ABOVE?).

<comment><USER78> Do you really think we can apply the policing methods of Iceland or Japan to the areas of Mexico where you have cartels chopping up people? Crime and violence are not homogeneous around the world, so I don't think police can be either.

See how far you go with a compassionate police in Brazil.

<comment><USER28> I think this is a false dichotomy. "Police brutality" isn't when police use force when required, it's when they use more force than required.

> Crime and violence are not homogeneous around the world

It's also a bit defeatist to say that somehow the US is infested with crime and violence and that must always be the case. This isn't a problem that will be solved in just one or two generations. Attitudes take a long time to change, but perhaps Police culture is part of the propblem and not just the solution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER79> It's worth noting hundreds of police officers lose their life a year in the line of duty: [https://www.odmp.org/search/year](https://www.odmp.org/search/year) and many more than that receive serious injuries, even permanent spinal damage:

One cop was paralyzed from the neck down in Vegas protests: [https://www.bostonherald.com/2020/06/14/police-officer- shot-...](https://www.bostonherald.com/2020/06/14/police-officer-shot-during- las-vegas-protest-paralyzed/)

Retired police chief killed at 77 by looters in St. Louis: [https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/500839-retired- st-l...](https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/500839-retired-st-louis- police-captain-killed-outside-looted-pawn-shop)

A federal agent was killed in Oakland in connection with the protests: [https://patch.com/california/alameda/fbi-ids-federal- agent-4...](https://patch.com/california/alameda/fbi-ids-federal- agent-43-fatally-shot-oakland-courthouse)

The one-sided narrative against cops is getting out of hand. It's an extremely dangerous job and you cannot treat gangsters with kid gloves while they pack serious weaponry. It's a joke to talk of nerfing or defunding the police for the handful of bad incidents that occur meanwhile over 15K people a year are murdered in the country. It's completely disproportionate and not aligned with statistical reality: cops often have to make split second life or death decisions and they don't get a second shot.

<comment><USER80> Policing is not a dangerous job.

According to the FBI, which publishes the data in the Uniform Crime Reports, from 1980–2018, an average of 85 law enforcement officers were feloniously killed per year.

In 2018 there were 686,665 police in the US.

<comment><USER79> That's only a function of how good they are at what they do. They have to engage in over 10 million incidents a year. Any one of those could be a routine traffic stop that suddenly turns into a gang bust and an attempt is made on their own life. They don't have the luxury of foresight of knowing if they're coming home today or not. They know they're a target. Contrast that with your average aeron chair programmer and I'd say their job is incredibly fucking dangerous.

Edit: It's number 15 and only because 2019 was a near record low year, following decades of decline and improved equipment and training. That's a function of how good they are. And if you make them worse or non-existent, crime will go up.

While the construction industry is accidentally dangerous, cops are victims of intentional violence and hatred. They have to deal with drugged out, abusive, angry people all the time. They have to console rape victims. They have to help assess suicides, murders, deadly car accidents and all kinds of unpleasant bullshit. They see death on the job every single day. It's not a walk in the park. It causes unbelievable stress (especially in high crime districts) and it pays 1/3 of what a junior JS dev makes and they don't get stock options or grants

It's 5x more deadly than average occupation and 6x more injurious. It also causes loads of psychological and emotional stress because they have to deal with people going through some of the worst episodes of their lives...all the time.

[https://www.bls.gov/iif/oshwc/cfoi/police- officers-2014.htm](https://www.bls.gov/iif/oshwc/cfoi/police- officers-2014.htm)

<comment><USER81> Pizza delivery drivers have to deliver over 10 million pizzas a year. Any one of those deliveries could be cut short by a drunk driver that causes a head-on collision at 60 miles per hour. They don't have the luxury of foresight of knowing if they're coming home today or not. They know they're at risk. Contrast that with your average cop issuing citations and filling out paperwork and I'd say their job is incredibly fucking dangerous.

<comment><USER79> Pizza delivery can be dangerous in certain neighborhoods, for sure. At least one or two were killed in my home town. However, let's not pretend that the emotional and mental weight and responsibility of being a pizza delivery driver is anywhere close to what a cop has to deal with on a daily basis:

"Police respond to murder-suicide in Durham" [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ei4D2toAHQ4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ei4D2toAHQ4)

"Man shoots, kills police wearing body cam" [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssARbfxqTh0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssARbfxqTh0)

"Police respond to reported armed robbery on South Hill" [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7iOelX_0kY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7iOelX_0kY)

"Bodycam Footage Shows Woman Falsely Accused Cop of Sexual Assault | New York Post" [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTv5VkX_T8o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTv5VkX_T8o)

"Police seek man who tried to rape elderly woman" [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWPvXsUmZik](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWPvXsUmZik)

You let me know what pizza delivery driver has to deal with shit like that.

<comment><USER81> This is bordering on the absurd. Almost all police officers go through their career without being in objective danger of dying. If they do run in to danger, they call for backup and are trained to handle it. You can find examples of death in any profession. Like it or not, policing is not one of the most dangerous jobs out there, it's just filled with scared people.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Yet another music website? What do you think of it? - <AUTHOR>

Hi,
Weezic is the website we are currently working on. And it is not meant to be "yet another music website".
Weezic is the online resource for musicians who play classical music. And we believe weezic.com is going to change the way people practice, learn, and play classical music.
That's what we are trying to build. For the moment, what we have is just a start: a fresh beta release that needs to be criticized.
Whether you are a musician, a designer, a developer, an entrepreneur, no matter the point of view from which you review it, and the more diversified, the better.
Have a look at it on http://weezic.com...
... and please tell us what you think of it!
Thanks a lot in advance for your comments on
- the idea - the app itself - the content
The Weezic Team Weezic, We. Play. Music <comment><USER2> Clickable: <http://www.weezic.com>

1\. What's with the name? It reminds me of two things: Weezer, the band, and Weezy, as in the rapper Lil Wayne. Neither of which have anything to do with classical music. But I'm no musician, so I might be missing a reference.

2\. I'm no designer, but I think you have slightly too many colors on the home page. Try to limit it to no more than 5, total (including the background, borders, etc.)

Other design issues: the "become a weezician" shouldn't be in all caps, as the "Learn more..." isn't. On the same button, I'd reverse the colors; blue seems to indicate "You are here," but you're using it as a link.

3\. I like the idea, but again, I'm not a musician, so my opinion means nothing. That said, the intro lines definitely need to be re-written.

 _Are you looking for a classical work to play? For each work, enjoy instantly all the quality resources you need._

I'm not quite sure how to reword it, perhaps something like... "Classical sheetmusic at your fingertips."

It is a lot more polished than most beta-type sites though, so good work!

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, Thank you very much for your feedback. 1\. Your are right, Weezic doesn't mean anything specific to classical music. But we have really good feedback on this name for the moment and we are planning on keeping it. The name is simply based on We Play Music shortened and written in a way everybody could read it the same way, spell it easily and remember it. Thanks for the reference to Weezer and Weezy. Nobody had mentionned it before but it could possibly become an issue for us, at least in certain regions/countries. 2\. Thanks also for the design advice, this is a tricky part but we will try to look at simpler ways of showing things. 3\. And for the intro line, I agree we could/should do better. "Classical sheetmusic at your fingertips" sounds good start but we will have to include more (mp3 accompaniments, interpretations, etc)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Nice name playing both on music and "we", I guess more social functionalities to come. Value proposition sounds pretty fair as one can get music sheets and play along tracks. Content volume should be key to gain visibility and traffic. Well polished beta for a beta! Cheers.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi,

Thank you for the feedback.

About the name: the "we" is key, exactly. That's what differentiates us from a simple content site with free sheet music. We are definitely planning on going much further in terms of functionalities.

About the content volume: we want to build our first user base on our content, because this is how people will get to know about the site: musicians are looking for data (sheet music, mp3s, other interpretations) around a musical work they play, they find this data on Weezic. But in the end, what we really want to show to musicians who come to Weeizc, is that it is possible to go much further than just sheet music, or even play-along mp3s.

I hope this ambition of bringing a new dimension to classical music practice is clearly visible. Because that is what we would like visitors to understand.</comment></comment>


Independent TSA Audit Finds Alarming Security Failures - <AUTHOR> http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/11/03/new-tsa-chief-vows-fixes-after-ig-airport-inspections-find-missing-security/?intcmp=hpbt1 <comment><USER2> > a recent covert audit of U.S. airports found layers of security were "simply > missing,"

Not to mention that no one noticed a covert surveillance operation. They were essentially "casing the joint." You'd think we'd have noticed.</comment>


Making of Second Reality / Future Crew - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIIBRr31DIU

<comment><USER2> This is awesome.

I grew up to the sound of Panic and Second Reality, frequently staying up all night trying to download the latest from nic.funet.fi, using a crazily overloaded 64Kbps bitnet<->internet gateway for the entire state, and then transfer the last mile via my (then) "ultra fast" 1200bps dial-up.

I haven't been following the demoscene lately, but there are some folks still doing amazing things. The last that I saw was fr-041_debris, developed by Farbrausch, and announced during Breakpoint 2007: <http://j.mp/11ETcY0></comment>


Ask HN: Why companies first ramp their features in Brazil? - <AUTHOR> I've noticed that companies like Facebook, LinkedIn, Google roll out/AB test their features first for Brazil audience. Why Brazil?<p>For e.g. Instagram Reels, LinkedIn Stories <comment><USER2> It's one of the biggest economies in the world and a very diverse landscape. Early adopters of new technology and features. Almost all the population uses smartphones. Diverse landscape in computers as well. High latency and low latency connectivity to the internet. From 5G to 2G connections. From high speed broadband to satellite internet. It's a mix of the world scenario in one country. The're also a local saying that if something goes good in Brazil it can rollout to anywhere in the world. WhatsApp Pay is coming next.</comment>


Why Google is Evil - <AUTHOR> http://www.gardenstatepol.com/?p=1

<comment><USER2> This should be called "How Google is actually a business, trying to provide a service, and their automatic software incorrectly analysed my site, but it's unfortunate that there isn't a decent way of getting this revoked"

It's a shame when this kind of thing happens, but people seem to think it's personal, like there is some person at Google looking at web sites saying "nah, I don't like that one" and opening up a big trap door on it.

</comment><comment><USER3> It'd be interesting what google deemed to be bad about the website.

Also, when the author writes "In the end – I had to ditch the entire site. So we're starting over." i am _really_ wondering. The only reason i can think of, to rewrite a whole wegsite for google would be if the website was horrible anyway and i planned to restructure it anyway. I have the feeling that the admin didn't really look into unblocking his site. Quick google gives a lot of resources of what to do when a website is blocked by google.</comment>


As the internet turns 50, we must protect it as a force for good - <AUTHOR> https://webfoundation.org/2019/10/as-the-internet-turns-50-we-must-protect-it-as-a-force-for-good/ <comment><USER2> Wishful thinking unfortunately. I feel it's too late unless someone makes a hard fork from a new net of satellite internet providers who too may have the incentive to stick with the primordial/ongoing-net</comment>


x86 is a high-level language (2015) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.erratasec.com/2015/03/x86-is-high-level-language.html <comment><USER2> > This means any attempt to get smooth, predictable execution out of the > processor is very difficult.

The point of the article isn't about the language capabilities of the x86, but how processors (x86, in this case) evolved for efficiency that you can't consider that a FIFO rule applies while it's executing instructions.</comment>


Cloud cost estimates in pull requests - <AUTHOR> https://www.abar.tech/articles/infracost-gh-action/ <comment><USER2> This is brilliant!</comment>


Create an AI bot for Hack-Man and join the competition - <AUTHOR> http://booking.riddles.io/ <comment><USER2> i recently tried to implement a monte carlo ai for four in a row, so i thought i'll give this a try

</comment><comment><USER3> Is it possible to upload bots in JAVA?

<comment><USER4> I'm pretty sure that it is! :) They normally support around 11 languages for their competitions: C Clojure Common Lisp C++ C# D Elixir Go Haskell Java JavaScript Lua Pascal Perl PHP Prolog Python Python 3 Ruby Rust Scala Tcl</comment></comment>


The TSA are operating in the UK 'for the Olympics' - <AUTHOR> http://news.sky.com/story/961071/us-security-agents-at-heathrow-for-olympics

<comment><USER2> And what's the first thing I read on the Guardian's site today? A tongue-in- cheek Olympics etiquette guide that starts with:

 _Welcome, and before we begin – please accept our apologies. Your four-hour nightmare wait at passport control should not be taken as a symptom of Britain's contempt for foreigners. It is merely a symptom of a woeful lack of spending on a key aspect of travel infrastructure in the run-up to a hugely important event. In other words, it's the government that hates you. Don't worry, they hate us too._

[http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/jul/16/etiquette- guide-...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/jul/16/etiquette-guide- visitors-london-olympics)

<comment><USER3> Ha this reminds me of an American guy I saw on the train near London talking to his kids - \- They were impressed how fast the trains were (just the normal ones) ... then: "Daddy do people love the government here" "People love the government here".

I was tempted to put him right, but it was too funny.

To clarify: We like stuff like the NHS and the BBC which are paid for with public money, but like other countries we never like the current government and how they spend our £.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interesting as I thought the TSA was to stop bad people getting onto planes, not getting off them.

As somebody who lives in London in the UK I can say that like most people who have had to pay a extra tax to pay for this without no extra chance to get to see it, that I will be glad when it's all over. I think the Olympics has lost the spirit of which it was started and that if the sponsors and finances were held to the same standard that those competing have to maintain of no drugs, fairness etc then things would be alot more inline with the spirit of the event.

Still TSA or G4S (UK's lamentable try at haliburton or however there called); Who would you pick, so fair enough.

</comment><comment><USER5> A useful single link to give to people to illustrate why the TSA are a bad thing: <http://boingboing.net/tag/tsa/>

<comment><USER6> Can't tell if this is real or parody.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I guess they finally brought in the outsourcing experts.

</comment><comment><USER8> This sounds like they have a masterplan to "get all global citizens" used to this sort of searching, until it becomes common sense for everyone. What's next? TSA agents in all NATO countries to check for "terrorists" because they are oh-so expert at it?</comment>


Programs and Probability - <AUTHOR> http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/2015/5/programs-and-probability/99999?

<comment><USER2> This got me thinking about the future of ML. Right now ML solutions are like large blocks (centerpiece), which we feed with data and extract "value" from.

Perhaps rather than making ever more powerful ML "monoliths," maybe the future is with "ML modules" that can be glued together meaningfully (i.e. beyond data proc. pipelines). It would make sense that probabilistic programming languages will be useful for gluing such modules together.

Link to church in js book from the article: [http://dippl.org/chapters/02-webppl.html#and- inference](http://dippl.org/chapters/02-webppl.html#and-inference)

</comment><comment><USER3> Practical applications of Probability Programming Languages?

<comment><USER4> Probabilistic Models of _Cognition_ was mentioned in the article.</comment></comment>


The Crimes of SEAL Team 6 - <AUTHOR> https://theintercept.com/2017/01/10/the-crimes-of-seal-team-6/?source=Snapzu <comment><USER2> The article is about the failure to make something honorable of the worst actions a person does to another. What is so surprising of that fact other than the US spending billions on their Navy SEAL brand and exceptionalism? They could spend trillions on prettying up the act of war on men who only find killing another to be their only solution and they will still have the same problem if not worse.

"Canoeing" itself is a tradition in the US armed forces long before the SEAL Team 6 undisciplined actions. It was common for US military soldiers and Americans to refer to Chinese and Koreans as "zipper heads" because they used to shoot those civilians and PoWs for sport in the same manner as the Navy SEALs practiced in their desecration and mutilation of enemy combatants.

</comment><comment><USER3> Let's not beat around the bush here. These guys are government authorised death squads. Many of them are psychopathic or deeply scared by what they've seen and done. They learn to treat the enemy as subhuman. That leads to a lack of respect of the dead and any war conventions. Is it really so surprising that this was the outcome?

<comment><USER4> They are essentially equal to the terrorists they fight against in my eyes.

<comment><USER5> So blowing up a bomb in a market thats specifically designed to target innocent civilians = shooting an enemy combatant corpse after its dead

Great logic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The article basically says that some members of elite military units are psychopaths and acting as such.

How ... unsurprising, given their choice of occupation.

<comment><USER7> The contents of this article notwithstanding, I'm not sure I feel comfortable with that kind of broad generalization. I'm sure there are a number of reasons why individuals would chose to serve in such roles, and like any large organization or industry, I'm sure there are people who fall within a wide spectrum of ethics or morality. I wouldn't necessarily think there are any more psychopaths in the military than there are in Silicon Valley.

As a counter point, albeit one steeped in personal anecdote, one of my best friends whom I've known since childhood, served a number of years in an elite military unit, and continues to do so in a slightly less elite Air National Guard unit, and he's probably the most honest, charitable, and fiercely loyal person I've had the privilege of knowing.

<comment><USER6> I am sorry if you feel your friend was offended.

I did not say all members of elite military units are psychopaths. Some are.

And after all I've seen, the concentration seems higher in those military units than in the general population. We are talking percentages here.

<comment><USER8> I read half or quarter of top 500 public companimy ceos are considered psychopaths clinically. I think for anyone to reach such high level of achievement, you are crazy to begin with.

<comment><USER9> I think it would be worth providing a reference with a claim like this, as a courtesy rather than as proof, so to speak. If it's interesting enough to post in a comment, it's likely interesting enough that others would want to read more about it.

<comment><USER8> I apologize for not including source as I was typing it on my phone.

I just googled "public company ceos are psychopaths" and found [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/09/13/1-in-5-ceos- are-p...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/09/13/1-in-5-ceos-are- psychopaths-australian-study-finds/) among others.

"Australian study has found that about one in five corporate executives are psychopaths – roughly the same rate as among prisoners.

The study of 261 senior professionals in the United States found that 21 per cent had clinically significant levels of psychopathic traits. The rate of psychopathy in the general population is about one in a hundred."

<comment><USER9> Cheers. I wasn't able to find details of Brooks' research online. Looks like it's yet to be published in the European Journal of Psychology.

[http://www.inc.com/zoe-henry/one-in-five-ceo-s-are- psychopat...](http://www.inc.com/zoe-henry/one-in-five-ceo-s-are-psychopaths- study-bond-university.html)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


For Anarchist, Details of Life as F.B.I. Target - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/29/us/29surveillance.html?hpw

<comment><USER2> I know we don't say "!HN" around here any more, but I'm bringin' it back!

!HN

<comment><USER3> If it was about Anonymous, would that be OK?

<comment><USER2> Probably not.</comment></comment></comment>


Exploring Preact with React – Netlify - st-fresh https://www.netlify.com/blog/2017/01/26/exploring-preact-with-react/?utm_content=bufferb9022&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer <comment> st-fresh I'm still waiting for the bundler that makes a Reactive app for me like a JQuery UI bundler would.. why hasn't anyone made it yet? The DRY points you'd accumulate by not having to manually add new pieces to an MVP right now and just click to get the components you need and all as a PWA would be amazing. Imagine you could just point-n-click to setup your initial source download choosing the capabilities that your app will need and then getting a properly sized(KB) file to start building on top of.. instead we're weaving together from multiple git repos preact, inferno, etc... why not just strip it down to nothing.. and then add what's needed and get the .zip file.. done.. now code out your features that you intended for when you chose your bundle options.. and then start making your app.. No, its because so many folks are trying to convert to PWA for speed.. and adopting a new view controller system into an old system isn't easy.. so instead we're piecing apart.. literally one ternary statement at a time!! I mean to add I think the top benefit of Preact is literally to just add a Ternary statement to one of my js files.. that's about it.. but to adopt other progressive features will take time. So, I think that any bundler of this nature needs to account for both "from scratch" and "from previous" .. @mrdignitty</comment>


Agner: A Giant Nebula of Erlang Repositories - <AUTHOR> http://agner.github.com/

<comment><USER2> About damn time for Erlang to be getting this kind of thing. Ruby is not "all that" in terms of performance or its concurrency story, but Erlang feels a bit like the stone ages without all the nice gem stuff.

<comment><AUTHOR> well, no more — agner is pretty much providing a seamless experience to erlang users.

For example, in order to use entop command line utility, you had to clone two repos, build both of them and use that script from the directory where you built entop. And lots of erlang packages are like that.

With agner, you just do $ agner install entop and you're done, it's in your PATH

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> One thought.. is it really necessary to create separate repository just for holding agner.config file? Can't author just add this file to his original repo and move on?

<comment><AUTHOR> There are multiple reasons for this architecture:

1\. central index/indices

2\. granular overlaying (you can overlay specific packages and don't have to maintain your fork of a global repo)

3\. granular permissions, allowing maintainers to work on their packages without going through the hassle of pull requests and associated bottleneck problems (the "homebrew problem")

4\. usage of tags and branches for versioning primitives

5\. independence from original repository

6\. ability to use multiple repositories

7\. (in the future) ability to use non-SCM fetching methods (aka "tarball")

That's for starters. Good enough? :)

<comment><USER3> Well I can see your motivation and technical background. The question is: will coders bother ;) It's the people who finally decide so you'll probably have your bit of advertising/explaining to the community..

<comment><AUTHOR> Most of people I talked to seem to be ok with this; also it only is important for those who decide to maintain or create their own packages — agner users don't have any hassles with it. And it's not that bad anyway :) — plus if the package author doesn't want to bother, he doesn't have to — anybody can submit a specification.

<comment><USER3> That's cool.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> how does this compare to a system like <https://github.com/erlware/faxien> ?

<comment><USER5> There does seem to be a bit of a community fracture between rebar-centric- world and Erlware-world. I'm not sure I really understand it's origins, or why it persists.

It would absolutely benefit Erlang to heal over this gap -- not that having separate tools is a bad thing at all, but the fact that both ecosystems often seem so blissfully unaware of the other :)</comment></comment>


Where Can It .Be - Tracking Done Easy - <AUTHOR> http://www.wherecanit.be/ As a first step in the works of a complete solution for package tracking, Where Can It .Be gives you an integrated interface for practically every tracking company around. <comment><USER2> Easy way to track a package... Simplify everything :)</comment>


Let's Build a Global Power Grid - <AUTHOR> http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/the-smarter-grid/lets-build-a-global-power-grid/?utm_source=techalert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=073015

<comment><USER2> Easily missed gems:

 _And superconducting DC cable requires even smaller rights-of-way than does HVDC with traditional cables._

Some of the biggest obstacles to ensuring grid stability are rights-of-way fights. There's abundant power just north of NYC in Canada, and NYC has one of the most fragile grids in the US. A major project to implement the obvious solution was tanked because of NIMBY fights all along the corridor. The compromise was to try to build a buried line (under a lake!) at about a tenth the capacity (essentially not helping) at about ten times the cost. Now Albany is fighting against the buried line plan too. HVDC doesn't make these problems disappear, but when you finally get anyone to agree to one thin line, at least you can transmit a lot of power over it.

* * *

 _Although [supercooled transmission lines] do need to be cooled to liquid- nitrogen temperatures—below 77 kelvins—the losses from refrigeration and other sources are less than half those of conventional AC and DC overhead transmission lines._

Moving power around the country through frozen ice lines, it's like magic in some unbelievable fantasy novel (ie, the best kind of science).

* * *

 _China, which is now the world leader in the development and deployment of grid technology, in particular HVDC._

* * *

 _The cost of the generated power with the HVDC supergrid would almost certainly be much lower than what's available today because operators would be able to buy electricity from the least expensive source._

* * *

 _...governments and grid operators will need to agree on the rules for free trade in electricity. Electricity trading through a wholesale market, perhaps broken up into regions, would enable the kind of efficient power flows a global supergrid would offer._

While baking in strong protections against ENRON-style disasters.

* * *

Not mentioned: DC converting stations serve as a firewall for blackouts. Post- Fukushima, the southern part of Japan's grid was unaffected. It operates on 50 Hz, because it was mostly built on German tech, while the northern grid operates at 60 Hz, because it was mostly built up on American tech. There's a massive AC-DC-AC conversion system in the middle. Problems with balance or shortages don't infect the other part of the system.

[http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2011/07/19/reference/japans...](http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2011/07/19/reference/japans- incompatible-power-grids/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Er... no. Just as homes and business that can should be moving to solar and wind, so too cities should be moving to next generation nuclear. Interconnected grids to provide redundancy is good, but a global super grid is unnecessary.

<comment><USER2> HVDC and long transmission is actually one of the best ways to encourage the expanded investment in solar farms, wind farms, or nuclear facilities.

Usually greatest output potential is far from people, be it offshore wind, desert solar, or even nuclear near large lakes for cooling. Hydro or pumped hydro and geothermal too. If it was easier to move this power from remote regions to population centers with lower losses, clean power would boom.

The megaprojects cited in the article are extreme versions of this, but we could build up to those gradually.

Development of better interconnections and long transmission lines even within countries would be a start, and would encourage better siting for new plants.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desertec](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desertec)

<comment><USER4> > If it was easier to move this power from remote regions to population > centers with lower losses

Loss isn't really the motivating factor though: at about 330kV transmission losses are < 3%[1].

Building transmission towers, the land/access corridors, and dealing with the supporting infrastructure is the biggest barrier by a long shot: it just costs a lot of money to build terrestrial (power|communications) networks.

[1]: [http://www.e-ijaet.org/media/9I9-DETERMINATION-OF-BUS- VOLTAG...](http://www.e-ijaet.org/media/9I9-DETERMINATION-OF-BUS-VOLTAGES.pdf)

<comment><USER2> Current systems emphasize short trips between generation and consumption to minimize line losses.

Per your cite, Nigeria has a little over 5,000 miles of transmission lines. The US has over 450,000 miles. [http://www.naruc.org/grants/Documents/Silverstein%20NCEP%20T...](http://www.naruc.org/grants/Documents/Silverstein%20NCEP%20T-101%200420111.pdf)

Neither of these systems transmit power from one end straight to the other end, but you can do neat things if you can increase your range.

The losses from AC compound rapidly with distance. There's a good bit here: [http://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/archives/003223.html](http://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/archives/003223.html)

"In aggregate, the example system comprised of Argonne National Laboratory plus a factory in Nebraska refining corn syrup suffers transmission losses of 785kW, or 0.52%. America is like this. The transmission efficiency looks high (losses of only 10%) because most of the power we use (normalized to capacity) travels only short distances (normalized to length). This does not mean that line losses per distance are low. Mostly it means that the lines are short - not at all adequate to carry power from North Dakota to someplace useful.

So, this is a nice, simple explanation, but is it true? To test it, this site has a useful model of an electrical distribution network. There is a little bit of math ahead, which I only include because I think some readers will like it.

Following the diagram and the text below it, Ohio Edison operates 5757MW of electrical power generation (let's call it 6000MW). The source voltage is 18kV; this gives 300,000A of current in the generating facilities (rounding for convenience).

The ratio of the step-up transformer to the transmission line is 350/18, which we'll call 20. This means that the current in the transmission line is 300,000/20, or 15,000A. Current is stepped down in this manner in order to minimize transmission losses, but they cannot be eliminated.

In order to calculate the transmission losses, we'll assume that the transmission cable used for this application has a resistance of around 0.1 Ohms per km of length. This is at the low end of the range (so the loss estimate will be low) according to a couple of spec sheets I looked at.

This yields (P=I^2R) 22.5MW lost power per km of length, or 0.4% per km. That's 0.6% per mile, or 10% of the total energy lost over a transmission distance of just 18 miles. After 115 miles, only 50% of the power remains.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The world is your casino. But bettors beware–the house always wins - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/28/2050/know-when-to-hold-em-rp <comment><USER2> Fascinating. This MircoRisk Insurance market is closer than most people think. If Ethereum[1] and Augur[2] are successful(a big if), then these types of mirco insurance contracts are just around the corner. The possibilities seem endless if this technology can work.

1\. [https://ethereum.org/](https://ethereum.org/)

2\. [http://www.augur.net/](http://www.augur.net/)</comment>


Huawei Equipment Has Major Security Flaws, U.K. Says - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-k-says-huawei-gear-has-major-security-flaws-11553765403 <comment><USER3> > We have no real (at least not this in depth) assurance that products from > rival vendors are more secure.

This. Huawei may be bad but most embeded devices (routers, switches, motherboards, etc) are just bad accross the board. The fact that embeded devices are treated like black boxes allows to ship messy code and out of date libraries. Hopefully, governments and companies will wise up and start demanding realeasing (a portion of) the source and/or requiring 3rd party audits/code review which would insentivize manufacturers to consolidate code bases and fix bugs not individual products.

<comment><USER4> I suspect using really old and shoddily cobbled together software is one of the reasons vendors usually don't like you looking under the hood.

I recently figured out how to poweroff a brocade switch (there is no native command for it) and ended up enabling a hidden command that allowed me to run poweroff via bash.

Bash was version 2.04, almost 20 years old! Now, it _hopefully_ isn't used in any security-sensitive contexts to enable exploitation (or maybe it's a custom patched version), but it is sort of indicative of how these things get built.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I like this quote from theregister's take on the story:

> "I think this presents the UK government with an interesting dilemma - <USER2> > HCSEC was set up essentially because of concerns about threats from the > Chinese state to UK CNI (critical national infrastructure). Finding general > issues is a good thing, but other vendors are not subject to this level of > scrutiny. We have no real (at least not this in depth) assurance that > products from rival vendors are more secure."

I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of other vendors would exhibit the same sort of issues if observed under the same lens.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is really funny:

#define SAFE_LIBRARY_memcpy(dest, destMax, src, count) memcpy(dest, src, count)

</comment><comment><USER7> They probably mean it has less exploitable security flaws than local HW, for which they can add their own backdoors at will. Huawei is known to be better than most other router vendors, esp. Cisco which is just laughably bad at security, and which does expose the government mandated "lawful" interception and control methods, Huawei refuses to add.

</comment><comment><USER8> Possibly relevant? [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19513727](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19513727)

</comment><comment><USER9> The Reg (no paywall): [https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/03/28/hcsec_huawei_oversi...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/03/28/hcsec_huawei_oversight_board_savaging_annual_report/)

</comment><comment><USER10> Don't bother it's just FUD with zero detail nor does anything to acknowledge US or UK are as bad as China.

<comment><USER11> Why would the U.K. be concerned with the U.K. as a security risk?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> One thing that makes Huawei really suspicious is that they lock the bootloader and offer no way to unlock it. This makes it impossible to root it and xiaomi is even making it harder; they make you wait 15 days after first try.

They are making it harder and harder to remove the crapware that comes preinstalled in their phones that blatantly send all data back to their server

<comment><USER13> xiaomi is possibly among the best vendors on Earth for unlocking a bootloader, there's a reason LineageOS supports nearly all their models.

Absolutely bizarre statement, who are you comparing them to? Samsung? Apple? Virtually every phone company on Earth provides no unlock support.

Theres no wait time for Android one models either.

<comment><USER12> They are making it harder to unlock bootloader. The latest ones including mi9 have waiting period of 15 days.

I always had a Nexus or OnePlus and they both are pretty easy to unlock.</comment></comment></comment>