Hacker News: downerending

New comment by downerending in "What ‘less lethal’ weapons do"

downerending — Tue, 23 Jun 2020 17:16:32 +0000

I don't think they are using significantly more force. Looking at the riots across the US, the police appear in general to be showing an almost saintly level of restraint, and being killed and severely injured as a result.

This is simply too much to ask.

New comment by downerending in "What ‘less lethal’ weapons do"

downerending — Tue, 23 Jun 2020 17:14:16 +0000

This is one of the things the protesters did, and they bear responsibility for it.

https://www.lawenforcementtoday.com/watch-man-tries-to-help-...

New comment by downerending in "What ‘less lethal’ weapons do"

downerending — Tue, 23 Jun 2020 17:10:25 +0000

You should start looking at the videos. I've seen a couple of unconscious people being kicked in the head this week by "protesters". These people are nothing like law-abiding.

New comment by downerending in "The Value of Life"

downerending — Tue, 23 Jun 2020 17:08:33 +0000

To quote the movie: Gotta be rich in the first place to think like that.

New comment by downerending in "What ‘less lethal’ weapons do"

downerending — Tue, 23 Jun 2020 17:04:35 +0000

The "targeted medical tents" part sounds rather dubious, but yes, "less lethal" most certainly does not mean "harmless".

What would be better, though? How do you get people to obey the law, in a way that is safer for all concerned?

New comment by downerending in "What ‘less lethal’ weapons do"

downerending — Tue, 23 Jun 2020 17:00:28 +0000

> I think protestors should be able to be armed with whatever police are.

That's insane. A fundamental tenet of (US) law is that using a weapon while committing a crime is itself a crime.

We're not at war. There are a lot of people breaking the law, and we need to reduce that with as little harm as possible.

New comment by downerending in "Narrative Collapse"

downerending — Tue, 23 Jun 2020 05:14:31 +0000

This sounds incisive, but I'm not really smart enough to follow it. Certainly narrative as "story-telling" seems crucially important. And probably like many, it's hard for me to see a really satisfying story coming out of what we're going through. People screaming madly, people being senselessly maimed and killed. It seems more like tragic chaos.

New comment by downerending in "The systemic racism black Americans face, explained in charts"

downerending — Mon, 22 Jun 2020 23:30:03 +0000

These charts point out a lot of issues, most real problems, in my opinion. It's far less clear that this is the result of "systemic racism", though. The idea that "poverty begets poverty" could explain a lot of it more simply.

Also, I am very dubious about survey questions. Asking someone how they feel about the police is going to draw a lot of noise and crosscutting motivations. It would be far more useful to know what they do in a situation where they need a policeman.

New comment by downerending in "Mathematicians urge colleagues to boycott police work in wake of killings"

downerending — Mon, 22 Jun 2020 23:21:33 +0000

No doubt, and at least anecdotally, that seems to be happening in real time.

As to the larger question, I'm having a very hard time seeing adding knowledge and science as a bad thing. Without those, any proposed improvement to policing (including abuse) is simply flailing guesswork.

New comment by downerending in "The Art of Prolog (1994)"

downerending — Mon, 22 Jun 2020 23:15:55 +0000

You may well be right. As far as I can recall, though, as of the last time I was regularly using Prolog, trying to do serious work on a (say) 1000x1000 array was a recipe for disaster.

The exception would be Turbo Prolog, but it was a rather restrictive subset of the language. Fast as hell, though.

New comment by downerending in "Reddit started banning accounts that voted for content “against their policies”"

downerending — Mon, 22 Jun 2020 23:12:18 +0000

I grew up in a very fundamentalist (Christian) area, so the lack of it feels very familiar.

New comment by downerending in "Most employees of NYT won’t be required back in physical offices until 2021"

downerending — Mon, 22 Jun 2020 17:21:31 +0000

What they want is everyone's butts back in their chairs, in the office. The rest sounds like pretext.

It remains to be seen how that will play out at my job, but I am very seriously considering a "100% remote" policy myself (as in, no office, no travel at all), even if I have to switch jobs.

New comment by downerending in "Reddit started banning accounts that voted for content “against their policies”"

downerending — Mon, 22 Jun 2020 17:16:21 +0000

Arguably in 2020, you should be very careful about expressing any opinion that is in any way unpopular. Or that even could be construed as such.

New comment by downerending in "Reddit started banning accounts that voted for content “against their policies”"

downerending — Mon, 22 Jun 2020 17:12:44 +0000

My impression is the reason is that there really isn't widespread agreement on the harmfulness of such communities, so they're sort of trying to split the middle. And perhaps also to advocate for seeing them as awful, per corporate sentiment.

The principal example that comes to mind is TD, which seems more obnoxious and tasteless than some sort of evil.

Subs that truly are beyond the pale by wide consensus seem to get dropped immediately and without objection.

As to not wanting to win, well, yes, dropping everything controversial means losing a lot of page-hits, and as a business, they're likely wary.

New comment by downerending in "NYC passes POST Act, requiring police department to reveal surveillance tech"

downerending — Mon, 22 Jun 2020 17:05:30 +0000

No, it's not. But there is a lot of such painting going on, and you can't solve one evil by committing a second.

New comment by downerending in "The Art of Prolog (1994)"

downerending — Mon, 22 Jun 2020 17:03:55 +0000

In Prolog, backtracking is a fundamental feature of the language, and idiomatic code can do it places you might not think of.

Part of writing efficient Prolog is doing things to avoid such backtracking (by adding cuts or rearranging code).

Bit-blitting is just an example I made up for "large-scale manipulation of array data". There are such cases where backtracking would likely make more sense, though I'm not thinking of an obvious one right now.

New comment by downerending in "Is This Life Real? (2016)"

downerending — Mon, 22 Jun 2020 02:41:52 +0000

This is an almost meaningless question. About all we can add is that in light of current technology trends, it looks possible. Which may well mean that it is certain.

What can we hope for? I dream of an endless dreamless sleep, soon. Every alternative I can think of sounds like horror.

New comment by downerending in "Canadians working from home permanently should expect salary changes: experts"

downerending — Mon, 22 Jun 2020 02:37:10 +0000

This is all rather beside the point. If you can get a better offer elsewhere, take it. Ideally, develop two or three good offers and take the best.

New comment by downerending in "Why people hate contemporary architecture (2017)"

downerending — Sun, 21 Jun 2020 22:24:57 +0000

Christopher Alexander's A Pattern Language is not only a great book on architecture, but one of the best books on any subject I've ever read. Highly recommended.

That said, once you've read it, you will forever find the flaming garbage dump that is contemporary architecture severely wanting. These days, and architect could almost be summarized as someone who designs buildings and hates people.

New comment by downerending in "Odds of communicating with 36 other possible intelligent civilizations are small"

downerending — Sun, 21 Jun 2020 22:20:46 +0000

Even worse, what sort of conversation are you contemplating with a round trip on the order of 10K years?