An "Assault Rifle" is an automatic weapon with a detachable magazine. One trigger pull = more than one bullet. Contrary to popular belief, an AR-15 is not an Assault Rifle (AR = Armalite Rifle, Armalite being a company). It is possible for individuals to own an automatic weapon, but the legal supply there of was frozen in 1986. If you want one, you need to reside in a state that allows individuals to own one (not all do), you also need to get a Class III firearms license from BATFE (prepare your butthole for a thorough examination for 6+ months). Since the supply is frozen at 1986 levels, you can expect to spend $10-40k for a single automatic rifle. All of this is outlined in the National Firearms Act (NFA). I am not aware of any legally owned NFA rifle being used in any crime because they are so expensive/rare.
An "Assault Weapon" is a semi-automatic rifle with a detachable magazine and 2 of 5 cosmetic features that do not in any appreciable way effect the dangerousness of the rifle (pistol grip, telescoping stock, etc . Semi-automatic means one trigger pull = one bullet. Assault Weapons like the AR-15 are frequently demonized because they look scary and are functionally identical to most non-bolt-action hunting rifles. They are used in very few crimes. For more information, google "Federal Assault Weapons Ban".
And depending on who's looking at the material, it could be considered offensive. If you get away with it, great but some companies like USAA require all employees and contractors pass drug tests so suggesting the universal stoner hour might not be the best decision.
There's a reason designers use lorem ipsum in mockups – it's because once upon a time a designer thought they were clever with their fake text, and an account manager had to deal with a pissed off client because of what it said.
So I take it you support the Uighur genocide in China, the Maduro regime in Venezuela, the current covid crisis in India, the humanitarian crisis in Yemen, and the persecution of the Rohingya in Myanmar? Or are you doing something to actively fight against them?
Spam, google bombing, and related activities. These are noise, generally.
Misinformation is slippery. Often this gets conflated with differences of opinion. That is happening a lot right now as moderation is politicized and weaponized. More than we think is debatable and should be debated rather than legislated or canonized into an orthodoxy, flirting with facism.
Clearly criminal speech, kiddie pr0n, inciting violence, etc. These are not noise and can be linked to either real harm as a matter of the production of the speech (kiddie pr0n), or can be linked to the very likely prospect of harm. Material harm, is an important distinction segway to:
Offensive material.
Being offended is as harmful as we all think it is. Here me out, please:
To a person of deep religious conviction, some speech can offend them just as deeply. They may struggle to differentiate it from criminal speech, and in some parts of the world this is resolved by making the speech criminal anyway. Blasphemy.
That same speech might be laughable to some who are not religious, or who perhaps hold faith of a different order, sect.
Notably, we have yet to get around to the intent of the speaker.
Say the intent was nefarious! That intent would hit the mark sometimes, and other times it would not.
Say the intent was benign. Same outcome!
With me so far?
Before I continue, perhaps it makes sense to match tools up with speech.
For the noise, rule based, AI type systems can help. People can appeal, and the burden here is modest. Could be well distributed with reasonable outcomes more than not. Potentially a lot more.
Misinformation is a very hard problem, and one we need to work more on. People are required. AI, rule based schemes are blunt instruments at best. Total mess right now.
For the criminal speech, people are needed, and the law is invoked, or should be. The burden here is high, and may not be so well distributed, despite the cost paid by those people involved.
Offensive material overlaps with misinformation, in that rule based, and AI systems are only marginally effective, and people are required.
Now, back to why I wrote this:
Barring criminal speech, how the recipient responds is just as important as the moderation system is!
I said we are as offended as we think we are above, and here is what I mean by that:
Say a clown calls you an ass, or says your god is a false god, or the like. Could be pretty offensive stuff, right?
But when we assign a weighting of the words, just how much weight do the words of a clown carry? Not much!
And people have options. One response to the above may be to laugh as what is arguably laughable.
Another may be to ask questions to clarify intent.
Yet another option is to express righteous indignation.
Trolling, along with misinformation share something in common, and that is they tend to work best when many people respond with either righteous indignation (trolling), or passionate affirmation and or concern. (Misinformation)
Notably, how people respond has a major league impact on both the potency and effectiveness of the speech. How we respond also has a similar impact on how much of a problem the speech can be too.
There are feedback loops here that can amplify speech better left with out resonance.
A quick look at trolling can yield insight too:
The cost of trolling is low and the rewards can be super high! A good troll can cast an entire community into grave angst and do so for almost nothing, for example.
However, that same troll may come to regret they ever even thought of trying it in a different community, say one where most of its members are inoculated against trolling. How?
They understand their options. Righteous indignation is the least desirable response because it is easily amplified and is a very high reward for the troll.
Laughing them off the stage can work well.
But there is more!
I did this with a community as it was very effective:
Assign a cost to speakers who cost more than their contributions deliver value! Also, do not silence them. Daylight on the whole process can be enlightening for all involved as well as open the door for all possible options to happen.
People showed up to troll, stayed for the high value conversation and friends they ended up with.
Others left and were reluctant to try again.
The basic mechanism was to require posts conform to one or more rules to be visible. That's it.
Example costs:
No 4 letter words allowed.
Contribution must contain, "I like [something harmless]"
Contribution may not contain the letter "e".
And they have to get it right first time, and edits are evaluated each edit. Any failure renders the contribution hidden.
Both of these did not limit expression. They did impose a cost, sometimes high (no letter "e"), sometimes subtle (no four letter words)...
But what they did do was start a conversation about cost, intent, and
The tap-problem depends on how the input integration is done, I've been running into similar problems in Dear ImGui (and Nuklear too). You need to implement your own little input event queue which tracks button up- and down-events and still creates a "click" even if both happen in the same frame. TBF, it's a common oversight when creating an input polling layer over event-based input, and usually it only shows up with touchpads, because physical buttons are usually too slow to trigger up and down in the same frame.
Check the sokol-headers integration example here, this should properly detect short touchpad taps:
You're committing an extremely common mis-representation of what Popper wrote about his paradox.
As Popper wrote, his conception of 'intolerance' was not "sexism, racism, homophobia, and transphobia". In fact, none of these words had even been invented when he was writing!
Popper was very clear that he conceptualized 'intolerance' as people who will use violence and force and power to silence others. This he was specifically referring to intolerance of other beliefs, whether religious or political. This is exactly the kind of intolerance you are committing.
Please read what Popper actually wrote about the paradox before misrepresenting it - I see this error all the time.
>you're making assertions about opinions that I hold, not based on opinions that I've stated, but upon those of "people like [me]."
No, just about opinions you plainly stated - that you think cancel culture is cool because only people on your list are getting cancelled.
I sympathize with police wanting to identify bad actors within protests, as they really can terrorize an entire neighborhood and often undermine whatever just cause was being fought for.
I also think the road to the surveillance state will always be paved with ‘good reasons.’
I think criminals need to be held accountable.
I think endless footage of protestors could be used to at some point retaliate against people who are peacefully protesting. This has already happened to people who peacefully attended Trump Rallies, I see no reason why it couldn’t just as easily be used to discriminate against BLM organizers if that movement ever falls out of favor.
So I am conflicted.
Mostly I am still sad we’ve had so much violence in our protests over the 8 months or so.
Location-based pay is remarkably offensive, and for the exact reason you state:
> you have basically handed your wallet to the "wallet inspector"
By accepting location-based pay, you concede that your employer has the right to treat you like a child receiving an allowance; that your remuneration is based on the lifestyle that they think is appropriate for you, and not on the market value of your work. But your choice of lifestyle, your needs, etc, are strictly none of their business and it's exceptionally inappropriate for employers to act like your parents. Once you let these people "inspect your wallet," you are establishing an abusive relationship and will get hustled around the clock.
No it's not. The British disarmed colonial India to make it easier to control. This resulted in tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths in Bangladesh, when the Pakistani army was able to commit genocide against a disarmed populace: https://www.thedailystar.net/backpage/bangladesh-liberation-...
> Most of the weapons used by the Mukti Bahini were taken from defeated soldiers. Then, there were homemade bombs, knives and even instances of the use of bows and arrows.
> Walking along the gallery of the Liberation War Museum in Dhaka where a number of weapons, including rifles and machineguns used in the Liberation War of 1971, had been put on display, Shahzaman Mozumder Bir Protik, a guerrilla freedom fighter, reminisced saying “They had to earn their weapons.”
Correction: The Fed's policies have taken $50T of wealth from the Bottom 90%.
When you bail out irresponsibly over-leveraged and nearly bankrupted banks and corporations, and pay for those bailouts with tax-payer money, you steal from the poor and give to the rich.
Most importantly, when the Fed decides to print money ad nauseam, they create massive asset inflation, which steals from the poor and gives to the rich. This is because those dollars that are printed go directly into bonds, equities, and assets that only a small amount of the population owns a significant amount of. When money is "printed" the Fed actually injects money into financial markets through buying assets. This asset inflation caused by money printing gives more money to the rich to buy more assets, thus driving up the prices of financial products, real estate, and all other valued assets in society. Thus, cost of living skyrockets, but only the rich are actually increasing their net worth (which is increasing exponentially). All of this happens while minimum wage, and most wages, are stagnant.
Wealth inequality and social unrest in America is DIRECTLY related to corrupt and/or incompetent (you choose) Fed policies. It amazes me why most people do not grasp this. I think it is lack of education.
It's a little concerning to see Huawei involved so closely in Rust, given the concerns about them silently including spyware in their products to give access to the Chinese government. I don't think I'm being a total conspiracy theorist; for example the UK, US and Sweden all ban Huawei equipment from their countries' mobile phone networks. Hopefully since this code is all open source there is sufficient scrutiny to avoid any shenanigans.
And (another fun fact) if you want to email EPUBs to your kindle, just make the file extension .png (!?) and it will be automatically converted, without the need for Calibre.
Minor note---you can get much tighter theoretical minimum latencies than the ones listed in your table.
1. The table's mins divide straight line distance by the speed of light. This gives you the time it takes for light to travel in a straight line from, say, London to New York. However, your "real latencies" are roundtrip ("ping") latencies. Thus, you need to multiply all the theoretical latencies by two.
2. Data does not travel through a fiber optic cable at the speed of light. This is because light actually bends around the cable when transmitted. These are called cosine losses, and mean the light travels roughly 5/3 the actual cable distance. So, multiply again by 5/3. (This is why HFT firms use microwave links for long distances.)
If you multiply the theoretical maxes by 3.33, you'll see that they're very close to the actual latencies you're observing. New York -> London becomes 62.7 ms optimal, so you're only 13% slower than the theoretical max.
Here on the west coast, I typically see within 10% of the theoretical min for data going over the Seattle -> Japan submarine cables.
Even if you leave aside the abysmal track record of the state of California in managing your taxes (most of it is basically wasted), this will do nothing but arm.
Thomas Sowell [1] has spent his entire life on this topic.
It's the practical erosion of Free Speech. Liberal (small "l" liberal) democracy and liberal science thrives on members:
1. Being willing to admit they may be wrong
2. Having access to a diverse information diet
But the past two decades have shown erosion of not only legal Free Speech, but practical free speech:
* Whereas previously they were just ignored (or even rebutted), today employees, students, and professors are all punished administratively for saying something that contradicts the narrative of the predominant members, or that may be offensive to someone. "If the federal government won't do it, let's restrict free speech on the ground-level."
* It is difficult to broaden your information diet, even intentionally. The platforms of yore that provided a place for free debate are empty, with everyone having migrated to social media where they can form disjoint sets defined by their ideology. Ever try having a dialectic on Twitter with someone of an opposing ideology? Haha, good luck.
* Expanding on ^, folks that aren't actively seeking diversity of thought have no natural avenue of exposure to information that contradicts their ideology. Whatever information delivery mechanism they choose today is, by default, going to agree with them.
* All of the above results in: staunchly maintaining your correctness in the face of opposition is rewarded far more strongly than admitting the possibility of wrongness
* Online radicalization makes in-person dialogue even harder; there are fewer and fewer opportunities for two moderates to debate when the possible participants are further across the spectrum than ever
Although restricting offensive speech has the upfront benefit of not hurting our iddly-widdly-fweelings, this is the price we pay for abandoning free speech.
For further reading, I recommend Kindly Inquisitors: The New Attacks on Free Thought [0]
I once watched someone crash every fingerprint reader in an extremely high traffic border crossing. The police kept asking him to try the next one, much to the dismay of everyone queueing. The machines would BSOD and they'd shut that kiosk. At the time, I joked that his fingerprints were malware or specifically designed to cause a buffer overflow somehow.
The concept of data ownership is questionable. When you do business with me, and I observe you, are not my own observations my data?
I am all for privacy, but I don't think that we get to dictate what other people are allowed to do with "our" data, legitimately obtained through the course of normal business. Observations are our own data, including observations about others.
Imagining getting indicted for having to bribe a local official to exercise an essential right, specifically listed in the Bill of Rights, and held up repeatedly in the courts (Hello DC v. Heller).
It's a situation where there are two classes, the haves and have nots. If you aren't politically connected in NJ, NY, CA, etc - good luck. If you exercise these rights, you will end up in a prison cell.
Even places like PA - a very gun friendly state - this is working its way through the courts for other reasons. For example, in Philadelphia they have closed the permitting office repeatedly for COVID, bystepping the law which requires them to issue a permit in 45 days, by simply not accepting applications.
That's America.
I can only hope the SCOTUS will take up new cases on this.
I believe that the author of this paper paints a simplified view of the world, and the examples they draw on do not imply the conclusion they are proposing.
For example, in the case of big tobacco, the stance that "smoking is safe" may have more similarities to the "Covid-19 is an existential threat and we must do everything possible to minimize death". Why do I claim this? Well, both positions rely on dogma in the guise of science, both positions are the commonly accepted cannon of the time, and both positions are propped up by bureaucrats masquerading and scientists to further their own self interest.
I would advise readers to not see the world in such a black and white fashion. We should actively be discussing the scientific literature, disseminating facts and figures, and discussing how to prevent public health risk without infringing upon individual freedoms and causing economic (economic factors have a downstream health and human cost too, particularly those in lower socioeconomic strata) damage.
So in summary, science is not dogma. Science is a toolkit we use to investigate the natural world. Caricaturing those holding different worldviews as "science deniers" is not constructive to public discourse.
Be compassionate in your world-view, open-minded to new evidence, pragmatic about solutions, but do not yield your faculties for rational thought and skepticism to the "expert class".
Your post actually exemplifies why this is so fraught. The first part of your post is hard to criticize—every workplace has to think about how they’re accommodating and trying to foster quality amongst employees with different backgrounds. Companies should be talking about how their promotion practices affect working mothers, etc.
But your example of HN endorsing “Black Lives Matter” is different. Taken literally it’s a straightforward slogan, but it’s also the name of a specific political organization with a broad political agenda: https://thepostmillennial.com/exposed-blm-quietly-scrubs-ant.... It’s not just an articulation of a single problem. It identifies the problem as being a symptom of an entire system, and advocates radical changes to our whole society to solve that problem and others.
What part of the various political ideologies that could be deemed to fall within the umbrella of “BLM” are you asking HN to endorse? And what aspects of the platform do you think others will perceive HN as endorsing?
This is not a criticism of BLM—I go to a church that has a BLM banner and I understand what’s being conveyed and not conveyed in that context. But demanding this sort of expression of ideological alignment from organizations that aren’t ideological and activist to begin with is very problematic.
> Such talk has scared many young people. Shortly after the 2016 presidential election, a young Clinton volunteer named Zach was upset the Democrats failed to beat Trump. According to cbsnews.com, at a meeting of the Democratic National Committee, Zach yelled at a senior official: “You and your friends will die of old age and I’m going to die from climate change. You and your friends let this happen, which is going to cut 40 years off my life expectancy.”
> Do scientists agree with Zach? The federal government’s Fourth National Climate Assessment was released last November. Hundreds of scientists from 13 government agencies compiled the 1,500-page report. It finds no existential threat from climate change. Zach is likely to have a long life.
Yeah, I was making a Nixie tube clock with an STM32 and I was debating what I should use for my RNG...
I was trying to write a decent implementation for a LFSR PRNG and my friend was like fuck that, STM32 has a HW multiplier, just use an LCG and I wrote one from memory with like 2 lines. Just needed to grab the magic constants from wikipedia... (which I needed to anyway if I wanted to use an LFSR)
Strongly recommended, if you don't care about quality, LCG is simply unbeatable in terms of quick n dirtiness
Strong agreement. xorshift or even a basic LCG work far better than Mersenne Twister. The only reason MT has persisted in the public consciousness for so long is because it has a memorable and cool name.
That sounds like a stretch. MT got its fame when LCG is the most popular PRNG in the world, and being the first popular PRNG that is measurably better than LCG did help. In fact the current "war" of PRNGs [1] hinders the adoption of both competing generators because MT is still good enough (in spite of its known throughput issue) and people doesn't like the choice.
An "Assault Rifle" is an automatic weapon with a detachable magazine. One trigger pull = more than one bullet. Contrary to popular belief, an AR-15 is not an Assault Rifle (AR = Armalite Rifle, Armalite being a company). It is possible for individuals to own an automatic weapon, but the legal supply there of was frozen in 1986. If you want one, you need to reside in a state that allows individuals to own one (not all do), you also need to get a Class III firearms license from BATFE (prepare your butthole for a thorough examination for 6+ months). Since the supply is frozen at 1986 levels, you can expect to spend $10-40k for a single automatic rifle. All of this is outlined in the National Firearms Act (NFA). I am not aware of any legally owned NFA rifle being used in any crime because they are so expensive/rare.
An "Assault Weapon" is a semi-automatic rifle with a detachable magazine and 2 of 5 cosmetic features that do not in any appreciable way effect the dangerousness of the rifle (pistol grip, telescoping stock, etc . Semi-automatic means one trigger pull = one bullet. Assault Weapons like the AR-15 are frequently demonized because they look scary and are functionally identical to most non-bolt-action hunting rifles. They are used in very few crimes. For more information, google "Federal Assault Weapons Ban".