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docdeek

4,532 karma · joined January 20, 2016

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docdeek··on Leak Exposes 41,000 Homeland Security Workers–Including Undercover ICE Agents
> I think my idea for this is that a candidate doesn’t win the election unless they get more than 50% of all eligible votes, not 50% of the votes cast.

This would think out the representation significantly, and applied to presidential voting would be rather dificult. The highest share of eligible voters in US history to support a US President is 42.6% for Ulysees S. Grant (Harrison and McKinley both close behind with +40%). Not one President has ever broken the 50% of eligble voters mark, and even those presidents that won in relative landslides in the EC (Washington, Monroe, Roosevelt, Reagan, Nixon) all had shares of the eligible votes that were in the 30%’s.

docdeek··on Mossad Has Devices Like the Exploding Pagers in "Every Country You Can Imagine" (2025)
More than 40 dead bodies in Lebanon would suggest the capacity described is far from hypothetical.
docdeek··on Ilhan Omar investigation seeks to denaturalize and deport congresswoman
>> I'm confused what you think you're arguing with.

That the congresswoman has been investigated by the DOJ under different administrations, Democrat and Republican, is a fact. Your claims about the competence of the DOJ - whether true or not - don’t change that fact.

docdeek··on Ilhan Omar investigation seeks to denaturalize and deport congresswoman
No, my implication is that this is not the first time that this congressperson has been investigated by the DOJ, and the last time it happened the DOJ was under the control of her own party’s president.
docdeek··on Ilhan Omar investigation seeks to denaturalize and deport congresswoman
The same Congresswoman was previously investigated by the Biden DOJ in relation to "her finances, campaign spending and interactions with a foreign citizen, according to people with knowledge of the matter."

NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/26/us/politics/ilhan-omar-in...

docdeek··on Smart people don't think others are stupid (2012)
My first-year philsophy professor gave a similar warning. He offered words to the effect that if we (the students) started thinking that the philosophy we were reading made no sense, was idiocy, or just nonsense, pause for a moment and imagine whether we thought it was likely that Plato was an idiot and everyone hasd missed it for millenia, or that we might be misinterpeting something. There’s always the chance that we’ll have an insight that others might not have had, but there’s a reasonable chance the the philosophers we were to study might not be exclusively stupid.
docdeek··on We are going to kill "unalive"
>> I’ve heard people say, out loud, “he unalived himself”, in reference to someone dying by suicide.

I also grew up in the previous century and it is equally strange to hear ‘dying by suicide’ when it used to be more common to say ‘committed suicide’ or just ‘killed himself/herself’. The author does a reasonable job of explaining why people might use ‘unalive’ and why he thinks that is a bad idea, but what was the reason a person started ‘dying by suicide’ instead of ‘killing himself/hersself/themselves’?

docdeek··on Shimano Bicycle Museum Review
We’ve interacted on r/peloton before - your father is a giant and I am glad the biography is out. :)
docdeek··on Shimano Bicycle Museum Review
Love that this is on Hacker News! INRNG has some of the best commentary about professional cycling online, as well as book reviews and travel pieces around famous climbs and races. If you are a fan of professional cycling, it’s a must-read.
docdeek··on Intellectuals Are Fucking Idiots
The Just Stop Oil website’s FAQ suggests their goals are far more ambitious than now new projects:

WHAT DOES JUST STOP OIL WANT?

We demand that the UK government commits to working with other nations to establish a legally binding treaty to stop extracting and burning oil, gas and coal by 2030 as well as supporting and financing poorer countries to make a fast, fair, and just transition.

https://juststopoil.org/faqs-updated/

docdeek··on The President's Power to Pardon Friends and Allies Must End
Also a non-American but, when it comes to pardon power, both Democrats and Repiblicans have pardoned close friends and family members (Clinton his brother, Biden his son, for example) and the pardon of Mark Rich by Clinton and Edwin Cox by GWB both appear to have a smell of quid-pro-quo about them. Perhaps Obama stands out in recent history as a president that, while pardoning or commuting the sentences of some controversial people, didn’t seem to stoop as low as blanket/unconditiaonl pardons for family and associates, but this is more than just a Republican or a Trump problem.
docdeek··on iPhone Duo
Thanks, I missed it on the event presentation.
docdeek··on iPhone Duo
How do you put a case on a foldable phone? Or do you not put one on, rely on the ceramic to protect the screen, and pay for Apple Care for cheap replacement screens?
docdeek··on Xcancel and Nitter have been taken down
There’s likely some information on there that some people must want to share if services like Xcancel and Nitter exist and allow you to share it without being on X itself.
docdeek··on U.S. gov't moves to suppress pushback on data centers
> How many deaths would go from minor to major? How much impact to quality of life that isn't death would there be?

That’s a good question. It seems in this case that 3 to 6 deaths a year qualifies as ‘minor’ for the government. I don’t know where the line should be but, based on the number of people that suffer and die from air pollution related causes in the US each year, I thought that 6 additional deaths probably meant it qualified as minor. I’d be just as interested as you to know what the answer is.

Edit to add: ‘minor’ in this case doesn’t mean people deserve to die or that we should be happy they are suffering, just that compared to some other even worse projects, this one is less important.

docdeek··on U.S. gov't moves to suppress pushback on data centers
I’m not suggesting it is OK or not OK, just that ‘minor source’ of air pollution is probably the right term to use in context for this single site.
docdeek··on Social media use on the rise among Australian under-16s after ban: data
AFP is where France24 got their information, and both AFP and France24 are reliable sources of news. Maybe you had an issue with the source AFP relied on?
docdeek··on U.S. gov't moves to suppress pushback on data centers
FTA: 'The largest estimate for any single facility ever.'

From the researcher: 'We estimated between $53 million and $99 million in annual health damages from associated air pollution — among the largest health-damage estimates produced for a single facility to date.' [0]

Still enormous, but there is a significant difference between being 'THE X of all time, and being 'among the X of all time'.

Regarding 'minor source', in this case the expected additional premature deaths in the research range from 3.4 to 6.5 annually. [1] At the same time, air pollution leads to about 100,000 deaths a year in the US. While tragic at an individual level, adding 0.006% to the annual premature death count is fairly minor, just as reducing the deaths to 999,994 would be considered a pretty minor fix to the issue.

[0]: https://hsph.harvard.edu/news/analyzing-air-pollution-health...

[1]: https://www.pecva.org/wp-content/uploads/Health-Impacts-Vant...

[2]: https://sustainability.stanford.edu/news/identifying-sources...

docdeek··on Social media use on the rise among Australian under-16s after ban: data
It’s an AFP story - that’s a reputable news service.
docdeek··on New York Times Loses Defamation Lawsuit in Alabama
FTA for context: The Times had not lost a defamation lawsuit brought in the United States over one of its articles in more than 50 years.
docdeek··on Windows brings out the Rorschach test in everyone (2003)
[2003]
docdeek··on Banned Words List
Not an American but, if I had to guess, it would be 'Black' with a capital letter (as in the list of words) and not 'black' all in lowercase. It is likely to align the use of capital letters with other races in the US (white and black, for example, instead of white and Black).
docdeek··on US conducted mass spying campaign against leftwing and anti-ICE protesters
> one party consent doesn't necessarily authorize you to secretly record a meeting just because you're present.

Isn't that exactly what one party consent laws allow you to do?

docdeek··on France to ban unsolicited telemarketing calls
A business can call another business it there’s an existing relationship. This means you can introduce an upgrade, a new product line, or something unrelated to their current contract - but the contract needs to be there first.

Other than that, the business needs the call receipient to opt in. They can dop this on a webform, a physical form, or by initiating the contact and, say, leaving a message for the vendor asking to be called back. It means the business needs to concetrate on avenues other than cold calling for getting themselves in front of a prospect.

docdeek··on Grok CLI uploaded the whole home directory to GCS
Isn’t a file browser running locally, while Grok is running on someone else’s server?
docdeek··on Scientist who cleaned space toilet on work now leading Mars exploration
The title is probably truncated because of the rules on length, but it is mising the key term ‘experience’ after work: Scientist who cleaned space toilet on work experience now leading Mars exploration teams

It’s a nice story of someone who has always been ineterested in space and undertook her school work experience (usually a week in a workplace, and often observing the work going on, making coffee, or indeed menial tasks like cleaning toilets) in the field.

docdeek··on Google changes its search box
How does a media company stay in business when there is no one visiting the site, and people are only getting the quality information from Google?

Advertising on the media site (assuming digital media, no physical media) is going to disappear because people probably won't be clicking through to read the source material that the Google AI answer relied on. No traffic, no advertisers, no money to produce the original journalism. That's going to impact the Google results eventually as these media outlets shut down to be replaced with...AI slop, maybe?

Is the subscriber model the answer? It could work for a niche subject or a single journalist with a following, and it wouldn't be sucked into Google results, either, if it was effectively gated/paywalled.

docdeek··on Google Search as you know it is over
How does a media company stay in business when there is no one visiting the site, and people are only getting the quality information from Google?

Advertising on the media site (assuming digital media, no physical media) is going to disappear because people probably won't be clicking through to read the source material that the Google AI answer relied on. No traffic, no advertisers, no money to produce the original journalism. That's going to impact the Google results eventually as these media outlets shut down to be replaced with...AI slop, maybe?

Is the subscriber model the answer? It could work for a niche subject or a single journalist with a following, and it wouldn't be sucked into Google results, either, if it was effectively gated/paywalled.

docdeek··on [dead]
Video is actually titled, "FIU Student Arrested After Threat in WhatsApp Chat Involving 200+ Classmates"
docdeek··on [dead]
It’s exactly what was said in the chat in the video linked.
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