nick_riviera

This has plenty to do with the article, you know if you read both.

Popped up to explain myself. It appears that certain themes on HN attract down votes rapidly. Such as:

1. Criticising Apple's policy on repairability.

2. Suggesting that drugs are bad for you.

Two pretty pragmatic things on which I have a lot of experience of as a) an electrical engineer who did a lot of work with power conversion, charging and energy efficiency and b) someone who is married to a mental health nurse. Well when you attract a -4 instantly for both comments that suggests that there is a group opinion on HN. Rather than discuss the matter sensibly like adults, the prevailing approach is to quickly down vote a post so it is seen as irrelevant and to push the group think. Perhaps a worse thing to down vote is someone who asks for proof of an argument past an anecdote i.e. "shit or get off the pot".

This is as damn near religion as anything else and is not what I expect from a news site which is primarily technical. I expect a degree of intelligence.

Now this is an experiment for me as well because I have another account with the ability to down vote and over 2000 points against it. NEVER have I down voted a single post as I don't feel that is appropriate. Unfortunately it appears that anyone with a green label is treated as unfortunate fodder and easy money for the entrenched elite, the agenda-ists or the company shills (Google, Apple for example which are hard to say something bad about here without attracting down votes).

To solve this, I would rather that the down vote link is removed from HN and that if anyone finds content objectionable then they should flag it rather than spank it to oblivion.

I understand this forum has extreme moderation and dubious policies regarding such things but there is no excuse to be a pit of elitist assholes of the technical community. That is currently the only badge that HN can wear.

I expect better and I'm sure the majority of people do as well.

Reddit has a better moderation policy, a more rational and open minded user base and arguably better technical content in some subreddits. That's saying something.

I bet this gets down voted or flagged.

Thanks for a constructive and well thought out reply.

One question to bear in mind when doing this sort of thing: just because it works in SPICE doesn't mean it's going to work as intended when you build it. SPICE is very ideal world. That may or may not invalidate this approach.

Source: several years of arguing with SPICE in a professional capacity.

Fair points.

Regarding your latter points, I assume you have never talked to NHS mental health staff who have to deal with addicts on a regular basis? Not a pretty job and actually puts you right in there to see the effects in action.

I fear no one, but "freedom" should always encompass the ethic of reciprocity.

That point is what's missing from all discussions on the subject otherwise it is just self-interest.

Doesn't that depend on how far my neighbour is away? Perhaps we have 500m long gardens...

The analogy is valid as is "pissing over my fence onto my head", "kicking a football through my greenhouse", "catapulting dog shit into my garden" etc etc.

Isn't prevention better than cure?

People keep saying "prohibition didn't work" but I'm hard pressed to find a conclusive paper on the subject. Perhaps you could enlighten me?

Edit: Ask for proof/sources = down vote. Hey everyone, fuck science.

I purposely avoided explaining it to demonstrate a point: the average user doesn't know this or understand it. They understand the outcome only.

Sorry, you are 100% correct with the SSID vs MAC. If I'm in my car with the handset externally powered, does it use course location or does it use all three sources because on KitKat on my Moto G, it gives me the option to use all three at cost of battery life?

I disagree with your assessment of the location ability. It's definitely better than you explain it. I can go through at least 100 previous data points in my history and it's spot on each time.

Very much so. Isn't public health about reducing avoidable risks and keeping the population healthy?

1. Yes I do think that it should be made illegal on the basis that it causes a number of deep social problems in the UK. If you've ever seen an English town after closing time, you'll know what I mean.

2. I completely agree with you but do you think that legalising it is going to reduce the health impact? No, it's going to make it socially acceptable.

Shit or get off the pot: Cite your sources regarding addiction.

Edit: Ask for proof/sources = down vote. Hey everyone, fuck science.

You are quite clearly an absolute dire example of a complete fucking moron if you think that smoking weed doesn't affect your driving.

It affects your judgement, your motor skills, slows your reaction time and so can the withdrawal symptoms.

I'm not even going to link a page because it's that easy to find supporting information that is credible.

Actually I'm half German and half English so that's a bit of a hard one to answer isn't it?

Do I support Europe or do I avoid getting my family killed by the German authorities for refusing to fight the other half?

War is ugly. Everyone refusing to fight is the only answer.

Well I'll add one more:

The physical and mental health problems and associated healthcare burden.

This is not insignificant and totally shrugged off by the "pro-legalisation" side of things.

Yes I know this is idealist. I'd like people to act responsibly and consider others but to be honest this is beyond a not insignificant proportion of the population. I live in the UK. This class of drug is banned and it should stay so. The police don't go around locking people up - they do slap wrists and that keeps it under control.

When it gets too much or puts people in danger, through drug driving or mindless paranoia caused violence, they have the power to say "stop - that's enough" and solve the problem there and then through the courts. If legalised, that power diminishes into a non-absolute method of control.

We have laws against drinking and smoking in certain places as well already and things have improved massively since these were introduced.

The deep problem we all know, and this is written in many a paper freely googlable, is that smoking, alcohol and drug consumption have observable and statistically obvious negative health effects and negative effects on society. In the UK, this means healthcare budget being sucked up.

Let's use an analogy:

What if someone was burning a tyre in my neighbour's garden directly affecting my health?

Strangely enough I get the same from £1.75 T-shirts off Amazon and they fit better and last 4 years longer than the expensive Gieves and Hawkes (tailored) shirts I had a few years ago...

I think this is all YMMV territory and subject to mystique like wine tasting, watches (jewellery class watches) and crazy expensive HiFi products.

Actually yes it does know I stopped at both of those location.

1. The BP garage has a wireless AP with a known SSID to them. Location services uses this, the cell network and the GPS to build an accurate location. There are no other wireless networks at that location. I was at this location for around 10 minutes. Google location history shows this location on the mark.

2. They know that I was at the Pizza hut because I left a review in Google+ and was approximately near it at the time and stayed in roughly the same location for about 90 minutes. Google location history shows this location on the mark.

It's all about correlating events and data, not specifically accurate bits of data.

Granted these are all assumptions but they would stand as evidence in a court of law.

Now I'm not fussed about this myself as it's something I trade for the service, but the data is there.

I admire your stance on this.

I too would do the same if drafted for national service. I'd rather sit in a prison than fight because someone told me to. I'd defend my country at the border but nothing more. If I don't have that choice I'd rather not fight.

In the UK, we have a nut job politician[1] who recently tried to bring national service back. There are several crackheads trying to roll this back in periodically sponsored by the likes of Help the Heroes, Clarkson, Daily Mail, The Sun and a rather moronic populous. It's all propaganda driven by the armed forces themselves and utterly sickening to watch service glorified like it is.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Hollobone

No. Small technicality here.

How comfortable you are has a real effect on how you perform.

How you present yourself is someone else's problem. If it is a problem for someone else then they are affecting how you perform.

It's at the forefront of people's minds at the moment so it is written and posted about frequently and people are interesed in historical articles as a baseline.

It's good that we're thinking like this. It's simply critical thinking.

Perhaps not yet but they have amassed all the data the author describes and much more.

For example, I just drove half way across the UK. Google knows that because I was using Google maps.

I stopped at Pizza Hut. Google knows that.

I stopped at a BP garage. Google knows that.

I searched for houses in an area in the UK via right move. Google knows that because the embedded map knows my Google cookie...

And so forth...

Now I'm not saying they have done any evil but perhaps it's fair to consider that the past doesn't always hold true in the future and by then you've already hung yourself.

Edit: why down vote facts? Someone work at Google?

No. Use what you are comfortable with. There is a cost incurred for changing (time) that may or may not have a sensible return as an editor is a very personal thing to choose.

My point exactly. To make a rational judgement about a statistic we need statistics (plural) otherwise it's an isolated piece of data.

Inner system effect for you that is.

I don't really want masses of extensibility but what I want is something that works out of the box, is understandable and doesn't require masses of customisation that I have to drag around with me everywhere.

On this basis using viper with Emacs is as illogical as using vsvim with visual studio. One should use vim (or vi which I'm equally happy with)

Unless you need neither at which point less is more.

How many times does a drone (operator) not locate the person? All statistics are relative to something unless there is a political spin.

Edit: add operator in brackets.

Until it goes wrong or you have to delve into elisp or you get carpal tunnel...

After 20 years of switching back and forth I decided I wanted an extensible editor not a programming language with an editor built in. That's worked well for me.

I really always just want the simplest thing that will work as I need to rely on it entirely and understand how it works. If I was to use emacs, I'd probably use mg as shipped with OpenBSD.

The bit that gets me is that I have as shonky and relatively unreliable internet connection and work from home. This is not an issue when my toolchain sits locally.

I really couldn't risk using an entirely online service for direct productivity.

Isn't that still forwardly deterministic i.e. you can apply the same algorithm to it but at a higher resolution?

How do you propose adding music to your iDevice like that?

Not all things are equal on iOS which is my point above.

This problem is solved pretty easily:

1> Buy a shit Nokia, use the 2 pin charger. TBH if it goes flat it won't charge off USB anyway. Then use a microSD for transferring music/photos.

2> Buy an Android handset with USB OTG. Transfer files on and off via a USB stick that you control. Charge it with a USB cable with the data pins shorted (you can buy these off Amazon).

Both of these ignore the main attack vector that I'd be concerned about which is over-the-air (via GSM/packet data) and a fuck load more scary than plugging your USB thing into a dirty USB hole and getting some USB STD.