wafflebear

Hitchens called himself an "antitheist" and certainly expressed that sentiment freely, I don't see why someone shouldn't express anti-atheism freely.

Violence is obviously already illegal, as is anti-semitism in many western countries.

Really? Name one NSA cipher that is better than an equivalent academic-designed cipher? DES? SHA2?

In other words, the best system of government is a sham democracy where the public are mollified by frequent elections, but prevented from changing the status quo.

OK but then we're not talking about the real world where teenagers are able to access anything on the internet (regardless of filtering), but a hypothetical world where adults have total control over teenagers.

I guess what I'm saying is that the premise is false.

Teenagers can get jobs and buy their own devices. Any age restriction past 13 or so is kind of pointless in the 21st century.

Not applicable to Telegram, but if the app is open source and you have a Mac (!) you can install it using Xcode.

Since Signal is actually open source, you can install it even if Apple decides to block it in the future (if you have a Mac).

The users of Coq and Isabelle are generally people with mathematics degrees who check their work. Not your average programmer.

Only criminal laws are prohibited from being retroactive, because the Supreme Court works in mysterious ways.

How about adding the number of days in the current month?

It seems very implausible. Anyone with that level of sophistication may as well look for exploits in bitcoin exchanges and steal the bitcoins directly.

I believe "persons" is similar to "people" but differs in register.

For example, there is a UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Obviously, native speakers would say "people with disabilities" in almost every situation, but that would be too informal for the title of a treaty.

Likewise, law enforcement use formal speech such as "persons of interest" to bolster their authority, but nobody would ever say "I sat next to two Australian persons on the flight".

You must live in a very safe country if you think it's reasonable to post your home address on the internet for all to see.

The problem is that there is essentially no limit to how detailed a map can be. As long as Google continues to add detail to their maps as fast as Apple does, Apple will not be able to catch up.

Most other products have a plateau where adding more features ceases to make the product better.

Apple Maps definitely has improved a lot since when it was introduced in 2012.

It's completely absurd. If it transpired that China had been attacking the foreign missions it was hosting, it would instantly go from superpower to pariah state. Countries would pull their diplomats out of China. China would lose credibility even among its allies.

Do you dispute that Russia poisoned Litvinenko as well? Enemies of the Russian state just seem to be poisoned by incredibly rare substances every now and again.

That's just it, doing something unbelievably stupid for marginal gain is the Russian M.O. right now. There are still people in hazmat suits cleaning up leftover nerve agent in Salisbury.

An attack on diplomatic missions in China is an attack on China too.

If it is an attack rather than an accident, then after the Skripal poisoning, Russia should be the #1 suspect. There is only one country in the world that is brazen enough to attack a US consulate in China.

You are thinking of ADSL, which is limited to 24mpbs. BT does sell VDSL as fibre, but usually the distance of copper connection is only out to the street.

Climate modelling on Earth generally refers to the scale of tens or hundreds of years, not to billions of years. Our climate model for the next few billion years is essentially "Eventually the sun will turn into a red giant". And we live here.

edit: Apparently it's not even certain whether the Sun will engulf the Earth or not!

The Guardian has always been a newspaper with politics most closely aligned with the Lib Dems. In the past, this meant that they were left of Labour. Labour has shifted waaay to the left[1][2], past the Lib Dems and past the Guardian, so the Guardian no longer finds themselves in political alignment with Labour. I don't think the Guardian have changed their political stance substantially.

[1] https://www.politicalcompass.org/images/uk2015.png [2] https://www.politicalcompass.org/charts/uk2017

Should we install security cameras in public toilets? It would certainly reduce crimes such as assaults that occur in public toilets. There would be very little impact on our personal security.

Privacy is an fundamental aspect of our quality of life. Privacy is not of secondary importance to security but exists alongside it. If that were not so, then there are plenty of places we could be putting surveillance cameras in order to improve our security.

Only if you consider privacy as a means to an end rather than a goal by itself. Facial recognition has a negative effect on literally everyone's privacy.

It would be like learning origami without ever folding a sheet of paper.

HN cleverly flips this around to its advantage. Even comments that are categorically wrong often contribute to the conversation. Some of the best comments on HN happen when a comment is so wrong that it baits a sleeping expert into responding.

You should be far more worried that desktop apps don't require permission before eavesdropping on your conversations using the microphone (including 3rd level sub-dependencies of that NPM module you installed), than that Android or iOS is secretly recording your conversations under the guise of "ok Google" or "Hello Siri".

Regardless of the device form factor, if you don't want the OS to have access to the microphone then you have to physically disable the microphone (but if you are that paranoid you should probably live in the woods away from all electronic devices).

> Which to me seemed to be a very niche goal, hanging a network of guys who were desperate to be with her.

It's fairly common. People with narcissistic or borderline personality disorder have a very fragile sense of self, and have an excessive need to be wanted by others. The network of guys is probably a kind of self-medication. Needless to say, these disorders generally have detrimental effects on the people around them.

Many stone age people definitely lived in constant stress 24/7. A rival tribe could raid your village at any moment and kill/rape/enslave you.