Hacker News Reader

Actually, no company _really_ pays taxes. Taxes are another cost of doing business which is passed on to the consumer

ja30278on Earth may be headed into a mini Ice Age within a decade

umm...you did notice that the article was talking about temperature variations caused by the GIANT NUCLEAR EXPLOSION AT THE CENTER OF OUR SOLAR SYSTEM THAT PROVIDES ALL OF OUR HEAT AND LIGHT....right? or are you suggesting that our pesky first-world lifestyles are somehow causing a decrease in sunspots.

ja30278on Cable-backed anti-muni broadband bill advances in North Carolina

Of course the price is lower. If Time Warner had the power to levy property taxes in addition to charging for internet services, they could probably get away with charging less for internet access.

ja30278on Cable-backed anti-muni broadband bill advances in North Carolina

   * having tax-subsidized government entities competing with private business doesn't exactly lead to a vibrant competitive marketplace

   * I'd rather not have any facet of government in an easy position to monitor my internet traffic.

ja30278on PS3 Master Key Found and PS3 Dongle ID Key Generator Released

Not yet leaked, but apparently derived due to Sony's poor random number generator. See the presentation here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6CA4fqAdsc (part 1...money shot is in part 3)

ja30278on Ron Paul: Airport Scanners: Enough is Enough

Airplanes only represent a unique terror target if they can be used as weapons to inflict greater damage. Putting a bomb on a plane will kill several hundred people, but so will putting a bomb in a mall or train.

Thus, securing the cockpit gets you more bang for the buck by removing a whole avenue of attack, with relatively low cost (the lock and the gun). While I agree that firing a gun in a pressurized cabin isn't the best idea, having it there makes it very likely that the pilots would have an advantage over any potential hijacker, since keeping other guns off the plane is relatively easy, and doesn't require overly invasive searching.

ja30278on Budget Puzzle: You Fix the US Budget

Weirdly omitted from the cut options:

Medicaid: $290 billion HUD Programs: $47.5 billion Unemployment: $106 billion Any part of the giant 'Other mandatory' block (~$600 billion) which makes up Food Stamps, WIC, Welfare, etc.

ja30278on An Open Letter to Wired Magazine: We're breaking up

I've never understood how it's possible to be offended on someone else's behalf, particularly on a perpetual basis, as your tone leads me to believe you must be.

Your pejorative reading of "complicated" is far out of proportion to the original comment. Like it or not, gender differences extend beyond just having different sex organs. Men and women differ in lots of ways, including in typical emotional response. It's entirely reasonable to point out that women may respond differently to visual depictions of nudity in the same way that it's reasonable to point out that they tend to be less hairy.

ja30278on Ask HN: Searching for jobs sucks.

It depends.

Do you have a solid resume? Do you know your stuff backwards and forwards? Are you willing to relocate pretty much anywhere for the right job? If so, pick the companies you'd _most_ like to work for (even if you think you'd never get hired there), and apply directly. If the company has a job listing on their website that matches well with your skill set, then all the better ( ex. http://www.google.com/intl/en/jobs/uslocations/new-york/swe/... )

If you're just starting out, or have a weak/varied work history, then your goal should be to end up somewhere where you can grow your skills, or where you can work your way into managing some larger projects. Even if the pay isn't great, or the commute sucks, a job can be worth if it fills some otherwise lacking spot in your resume.

Also, try to think outside the box. Do you have other bits of expertise in your background that might make you particularly attractive to a particular niche industry? i.e., if you know a bit about cars, then try to find a company that does something related to cars, and see if they have an internal development team. Often, domain-specific knowledge can make all the difference.

ja30278on Review: Amazon Kindle 3 Wi-Fi (pics/vid)

I've found that over time, I prefer services like rekindle.it to instapaper. Mostly this is because I only tend to push _really_ long content to my kindle, and I usually want it titled correctly (everything coming from from Instapaper ends up on the kindle as 'Instapaper', and the new content pushes out the old).

ja30278on Being Poor by John Scalzi

Following your comment through to it's logical conclusion: why not make the minimum wage $1,000,000/yr?..that should take care of poverty altogether.

ja30278on People have no bloody idea about saving energy

I thought the real issue here was biodegradability. Since most disposable cups are not recycled, the ease with which they could be recycled matters a lot less than the fact that styrofoam is forever. Then again, in the absence of oxygen and light, I'm not sure that paper cups will ever degrade much in a modern landfill....

I've never really understood why people get worked up over landfills. Digging a giant hole and filling it with trash is a perfectly rational solution. It isn't as if we're importing mass from space and converting it to trash...we're digging up stuff from the ground, using it for awhile, and then putting it back in a slightly different form. If we ever find a use for the styrofoam in landfills, we can mine it back out again.

ja30278on How to Write an Operating System

Surprised not to see "Design and Implementation of the FreeBSD Operation System" mentioned yet (http://www.amazon.com/Design-Implementation-FreeBSD-Operatin...).

McKusick's 'Kernel Internals' class is based on this, and is well worth your time (though it's a bit pricey to purchase the videos on your own: https://www.mckusick.com/courses/advorderform.html)

ja30278on G.M.’s Electric Lemon

That it be better than previous offerings in some measurable way that's valued by the consumer?

ja30278on Ask HN: Share a gem. Teach me and you.

echo 'alias mysql="mysql --i-am-a-dummy"' >>~/.bashrc

ja30278on Why Parents Hate Parenting

This is contradicted elsewhere in the article by the observation that families who could afford more childcare were _not_ necessarily happier.

ja30278on Andy Grove: How To Make An American Job Before It's Too Late

"Hig labor prices" = "High Prices"

Imagine the cost of a Big Mac in a hypothetical world in which fast-food workers are paid 10x as much.

ja30278on Andy Grove: How To Make An American Job Before It's Too Late

Enjoy _your_ third world economy, free from pesky pollutant-causing industry and manufacturing.

The poster has correctly identified the value proposition that causes companies to locate their manufacturing facilities elsewhere, and points out (also correctly) that making our tax codes as unfriendly to business as our labor laws will only encourage _those_ bits of the business to relocate as well.

You cannot have all of:

   * high wages for manufacturing workers
   * cheap products for consumers
   * high taxes on business
   * large profits that make it attractive to operate a company.

You would probably respond by saying that you'd prefer higher priced products and low-profit corporations, to which I'd reply that:

   * cheap products for consumers = higher standard of living. 
   * higher profit potential = more business growth.

ja30278on Giant Plumes of Oil Forming Under the Gulf, decreasing oxygen levels by 30%

How about: "You hear the one about the people who thought they could maintain a first world standard of living while replacing cheap means of energy production with happy thoughts and butterfly power"?

ja30278on Why Aren't There More Terrorist Attacks?

A good point. The obvious alternative to terrorists being stupid and/or scarce is that their motives are quite different from what's usually assumed.

That being said, I'm also not sure I buy the 'terrorists hate freedom, so they want more big-brother security' theory. That seems much more likely to be a combination of a frightened populace and opportunistic government.

ja30278on Why Aren't There More Terrorist Attacks?

But part of the reason they were caught is that they were purportedly targeting airplanes, which are closely watched.

If they had 18 people willing to act as suicide bombers, why not cruise ships or trains, where security is much lighter?

ja30278on Why Aren't There More Terrorist Attacks?

Either there are groups of terrorists who are willing to kill and die, or there aren't. My question is: why do they seem to prefer complicated plots involving heavily guarded airplanes instead of simpler plots involving lightly guarded [anywhere else].

The UK liquid terror plot resulted in 25 arrests: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_transatlantic_aircraft_plo... It was complex, required coordination, and failed utterly, resulting in 0 casualties.

In contrast, the Lod airport massacre ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lod_Airport_massacre ) was only 3 guys. It was a pretty simple plan, which would have been hard to foil completely, and resulted in 26 dead and 80 wounded.

ja30278on Why Aren't There More Terrorist Attacks?

Think of the drug trade, which manages to organize far larger groups in disparate cities who actually have to transport large shipments of physical goods, and have to do it _repeatedly_.

There are backwoods meth labs that display at least as much coordination as would be required for the type of attack I'm describing.

You're asserting that no terrorist organization has the resources to coordinate a group of 10 people to act in concert.

The alleged U.K. 'liquid explosives' plot resulted in 25 arrests: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_transatlantic_aircraft_plo...

My core question is: why would terrorists choose such a complicated, risky, hard to execute method of terror when easier avenues are available?

ja30278on Why Aren't There More Terrorist Attacks?

"poor Latin" immigrants have many disadvantages, which is why they depend on coyotes. Presumably, a terrorist organization could:

   * pay well enough that the coyotes would forget their principles
   * provision their agents well enough to cross on their own.

Or, leave Mexico aside. Why not Canada? Why not Cuba? via boat from Haiti, landing in some god-forsaken part of Louisiana? I can't accept the proposition that getting into the country presents any serious difficulty for someone with means and motive.

ja30278on Why Aren't There More Terrorist Attacks?

Even assuming they were incapable of finding their own way across, surely a copy of 'Rosetta Stone: Spanish' and a few thousand dollars would find them a guide.

Or why not Canada? Hundreds of miles of rural, unguarded border.

ja30278on Why Aren't There More Terrorist Attacks?

> If you've managed to coordinate 10 different homicidal suicidal maniacs in 10 different cities to kill a bunch of people on the exact same day (and somehow managed to find 10 who won't tell anyone anything that suggests they're doing something suspicious,) aside from the fact that that is very hard, you've definitely evolved to a large-scale attack.

I'll counter by saying that if no terror group exists that is capable of obtaining:

   * 10 people willing to kill for their beliefs
   * 10 hand grenades
   * 10 cell phones

Then we have been vastly oversold on the dangers presented by terrorism.

Forget the hand grenades. Just 10 suicidal guys with semi-automatic rifles. This seems stupidly simple to pull off and impossible to defend against.

ja30278on Why Aren't There More Terrorist Attacks?

I've been increasingly wondering about this, and I'm not sure I agree with the article.

Schneier asserts that "It's hard to sneak terrorists into the U.S.", which is hard to swallow given the essentially unchecked flow of immigrants coming across the Mexican border every day. Why would a terrorist fly into a major US airport, when he could just as easily fly into Mexico and then walk across the border (carrying as much cargo as he liked). Think of the vast drug shipments that cross this border, and then tell me that sneaking across a small suitcase of biological agents would be difficult.

I also disagree that "small attacks aren't enough". If you and 9 of your friends coordinate to roll grenades into 10 elementary schools in 10 different cities, I can assure you that you'd make headlines, and bring daily life to a standstill as parents refused to send their children to school.

It's also increasingly bizarre to me that terrorists would target airports or airplanes at all. Airports are the one place where security is most concentrated. Practically speaking, blowing up a plane is probably the most difficult option you could choose if you wanted to kill 300 people. Why not pick one of the other myriad unguarded 'soft' targets where people gather?

Either terrorists are incredibly stupid, vanishingly small in number, or both.

ja30278on US court rules against FCC on net neutrality

to nitpick: the government doesn't 'enforce' the first amendment. The first amendment prohibits congress from creating laws which would abridge the free speech rights of the people (which they possess inherently, independent of government)

ja30278on What's really driving the Toyota controversy?

The argument against 'too big to fail' presumes that such a thing doesn't exist. I.e., it isn't government's role to prop up corporations, regardless of the effect their failure _might_ have on the economy. In that view, deregulation, even if it encourages companies to become large, isn't a 'problem', so there isn't any inconsistency.