Hacker News: mdpopescu

New comment by mdpopescu in "The cesspool of the internet is to be found in a village in North Holland"

mdpopescu — Sun, 04 Apr 2021 07:03:33 +0000

Seriously, stop with this crap. The people on this forums are some of the people who have the know-how to actually DO something about the internet. If they can't discuss these things, we get the situation that your company seems to like - SV decides what's allowed on the internet and what's not. Those of us outside of the US don't like it very much, and we'd prefer to - you know - talk about it.

New comment by mdpopescu in "The cesspool of the internet is to be found in a village in North Holland"

mdpopescu — Sun, 04 Apr 2021 06:51:42 +0000

> But the answer is not to stop having laws.

Why?

Serious question. When are laws too many? (According to some history, 10 laws were too many and most people were ignoring them.)

Are a trillion laws too many? A billion? A million? A thousand? What if we had a thousand laws, but each law had a million pages?

(I'm pretty sure we're at over a billion pages of laws if we take into account all the laws in the world - as multinational companies are supposed to do.)

When, exactly, should we say "this is excessive"?

New comment by mdpopescu in "China pressured Concordia University to cancel event with Uighur activist (2019)"

mdpopescu — Sat, 03 Apr 2021 17:02:30 +0000

Almost right. On the basis of their political affiliation, mostly.

New comment by mdpopescu in "Atomic structure of a glass imaged at last"

mdpopescu — Fri, 02 Apr 2021 16:27:11 +0000

And yet, the number of otherwise informed, intelligent people I've talked to who believe that the frequently-used image of the Covid virus is an actual picture is astonishing.

New comment by mdpopescu in "What the Heck Happened to John Ioannidis?"

mdpopescu — Fri, 02 Apr 2021 13:06:17 +0000

Yes. The reason is the most people are idiots. Like a ruler says in one of our books, "stupid, but many".

New comment by mdpopescu in "Zero click vulnerability in Apple’s macOS Mail"

mdpopescu — Fri, 02 Apr 2021 09:24:02 +0000

All blackmail involves exposing something that someone doesn't want exposed - usually because the "something" is illegal. And yet, blackmail itself is illegal.

Most countries have a culture against whistleblowers, starting from childhood ("don't be a tattletale", "don't be a rat").

New comment by mdpopescu in "What the Heck Happened to John Ioannidis?"

mdpopescu — Thu, 01 Apr 2021 13:26:17 +0000

He went against the consensus. You cannot go against the consensus.

New comment by mdpopescu in "Don’t use environment variables for configuration"

mdpopescu — Thu, 01 Apr 2021 12:56:18 +0000

There are a lot of use cases. For example, I have 17 applications running on a system that need a connection string. When I need to change that connection string, I can 1) change 17 config files; 2) change 17 shortcuts containing command-line arguments; 3) change one env variable.

New comment by mdpopescu in "Suppressing a gene by using its antibody can lead to tooth growth: animal study"

mdpopescu — Thu, 01 Apr 2021 05:36:49 +0000

It's difficult :)

New comment by mdpopescu in "Apple's Cooperation with Authoritarian Governments"

mdpopescu — Wed, 31 Mar 2021 14:55:12 +0000

The US government sends people to prison for owning the wrong plant or the wrong type of lobster. It assassinates political opponents - definitely foreign, likely domestic. It snoops on, disrupts and if necessary curtails any serious efforts at political organizing (they actually called Zuckerberg in front of Congress because Facebook was not censoring enough people! Facebook! That was freaking mind-blowing.)

Yep, the difference is amazing.

New comment by mdpopescu in "The uninvited Internet of things"

mdpopescu — Wed, 31 Mar 2021 12:45:54 +0000

Eh, unlimited data plans might still be valuable to someone.

New comment by mdpopescu in "The uninvited Internet of things"

mdpopescu — Wed, 31 Mar 2021 12:45:13 +0000

Really? So I can send anyone I want to jail, as long as they have one of these? Wow, that's definitely not going to cause problems!

New comment by mdpopescu in "Suppressing a gene by using its antibody can lead to tooth growth: animal study"

mdpopescu — Wed, 31 Mar 2021 12:44:05 +0000

Huh. Almost as if a company would provide a guarantee and only get paid if they kept the servers running for at least 99.999% of the time.

Weird, huh?

New comment by mdpopescu in "Suppressing a gene by using its antibody can lead to tooth growth: animal study"

mdpopescu — Wed, 31 Mar 2021 12:42:30 +0000

> ... but the counter incentive is the free market.

Yes. Which is why the free market is ILLEGAL in the medical system, in the police system, in the educational system, in the judiciary system...

New comment by mdpopescu in "Suppressing a gene by using its antibody can lead to tooth growth: animal study"

mdpopescu — Wed, 31 Mar 2021 08:52:33 +0000

As a general rule, the entire medical profession has the incentives set up the wrong way - the more problems you have, the more they benefit.

I have read that there was a time, in the distant past, where you paid a doctor only as long as you were healthy. I can come up with some problems even in that case, but I can't help but think it might still be an improvement over the current situation...

New comment by mdpopescu in "The uninvited Internet of things"

mdpopescu — Wed, 31 Mar 2021 08:49:50 +0000

Huh. Would it be possible for someone to hijack the SIM card in such a device and use it to get free calls all over the world, including long-distance? Would that be illegal? Would anyone care? :)

New comment by mdpopescu in "The uninvited Internet of things"

mdpopescu — Wed, 31 Mar 2021 08:47:38 +0000

I have no idea why you believe TV makers won't handle this market.

Here's a list of non-smart TVs on the local equivalent of Amazon[1], which includes this 75" 4K Samsung TV[2].

[1] https://www.emag.ro/televizoare/filter/tip-tv-f9181,non-smar...

[2] https://www.emag.ro/televizor-samsung-75-189-cm-75ru7099-4k-...

New comment by mdpopescu in "Sega Lawyers Demand “Immediate Suspension” of Steam Database over Alleged Piracy"

mdpopescu — Tue, 30 Mar 2021 18:54:54 +0000

> Or if that doesn't work, then torches and pitchforks.

It's America. I think the Matrix quote "guns; lots of guns" is more appropriate :)

New comment by mdpopescu in "YouTube can now warn creators about copyright issues before videos are posted"

mdpopescu — Tue, 30 Mar 2021 18:10:38 +0000

Off-topic: this is one of the few comments you have that aren't dead.

New comment by mdpopescu in "The Antiscience Movement Is Escalating, Going Global and Killing Thousands"

mdpopescu — Tue, 30 Mar 2021 17:27:55 +0000

> Or half of antartica disappearing? Or Australia, and Western United States constantly on fire?

I rest my case.