jsmthrowaway

Orbits only really decay due to atmospheric drag. Other tiny bits of cosmic, rarified gas can slow the spacecraft on a long timescale, and solar radiation pressure can perturb an orbit (occasionally dramatically, if the Sun is unhappy), but the effect is far smaller than constant drag. If a small satellite is orbiting Earth at a high enough altitude which was calculated to consider the broader gravitational system (Earth's natural satellites, the Sun, and fainter perturbations from nearby celestial objects have to be factored in), orbit can be designed to be stable on a long, long timescale. Millions of years, or more.

The real fly in your plan's ointment would be exposure to space, which sucks a lot for electronics.

> Can't watch ALL games live right? That's hardly completely superior.

You can't on television, either.

It’s an important conversation to have and I was disputing your characterization that people routinely plead out when innocent, which is a tenuous claim and strongly argues for reform which perhaps we should be slower to adopt. It’s a key point. I’m trying to remain civil and substantive, and I wish you’d extend me the same courtesy.

(Edit: I’m out of posting quota for today, but I at no point said what you’re claiming I’m trying to tell you in even the most uncharitable interpretation.)

I’m aware and do not need explanation, because I was one of them. I could not afford $80,000, even with a 10% bail bond, and I plead guilty to a crime I did commit to get out of jail faster (I was in about five months). I realize that it might be startling to hear me argue for the status quo having been in that very position.

What you allege, that people happily plead out while innocent, does not happen. It just doesn’t, and it’s something I’ve heard repeated a lot by people who haven’t been inside. I was in a position to advise dozens of inmates on their cases during my time, and not once did that ever happen.

The truly innocent folks (and it’s hard to tell) were happy to sit to get their day to prove it or wait for the charges to get dropped. I’ve seen inmates rip up a plea bargain and throw it in the prosecutor’s face after sitting in county three years. Inmates are not dumb cattle looking for the first door. They understand what signing a plea bargain does. Even beyond that, innocent people are almost never arrested in the first place. There are very, very, very few innocent people in jail. I hate to break it to you, because I know it undermines liberal sensitivity and view on the world (which I know because I’m liberal, I’m not critiquing). You’re also coming at this from the perspective that assumes everyone should be able to bail out, which isn’t true. Would you revisit total bail denials, too?

Re: $10, how can you make that assumption? It’s disappointing that I’m being downvoted so heavily for pointing out that a seemingly minor change which is reactionary to one case could have implications far beyond intention. Being upset and changing things because of one billionaire is the very definition of mob-style reactionary grievance. There’s more to consider than just him, and I agree it sucks. This is a complicated issue and the easy engineering fix is very likely not the right one.

Should we adjust criminal justice or adjust wealth? What you describe is a well-known inequality that comes with being wealthy; bail is built for the 99%, and being rich is a good, unfair way to remain in control of such a situation. But is altering the impartiality of several elements of the criminal justice system to pursue the occasional unjust rich guy the right answer? I don’t know. Is there any country in the world that does bail that way?

It seems like there could be a lot of unexpected drawbacks to such an approach, since on the other end it’s harder to justify a high bond for a destitute, transient murderer, for example. If you’re okay with $100 million for this guy, it follows that you’d also have to be okay with $10 for him. Otherwise justice is partial and biased, even more so than it is now. Ignoring net worth seems safer, but again, I don’t know.

Bail is set independently of net worth considerations and in a relatively impartial manner, which is the point. Judges do not have the flexibility to set a bail that high. Destitute murderers get $5 million+ bails all the time, which we would have to revisit if we started factoring in net worth (think about it).

Bail is to guarantee appearance to respond to the crime, not insure against the accused, and reflects the seriousness of the crime and how much the state would care if you don’t answer for it. That’s why if you go in on multiple sets of charges you have multiple bails. That’s also why your DUI bail was five figures or less. In most places there is a table for bail amounts that can be stiffened, softened, or denied entirely at the judge’s discretion, but it is all based on the crime and flight risk only.

$1 million is a fairly high bail, generally in the ADW/manslaughter/sexual assault neighborhood. A court is not set up to handle a $1 billion bail, as you’re suggesting. That sort of money isn’t just moved around like that ($1 million is difficult enough), and the court would almost certainly mishandle it.

Have you been here long? We call it a “Michigan winter” for a reason. Yes, Detroit suffers less for a few reasons, but I still wouldn’t agree with your assertion.

It doesn’t sound like you’re describing the Detroit I grew up in, where dozen+ car pileups are a regular occurrence, particularly the big hundred+ ones on 94 out your way. That’s even discounting the wide-area ice storms that knock out power from everything getting coated in three to four inches of pure ice, which I can remember happening at least four or five times when I was younger. The last couple winters have been relatively light. We are due for a whopper.

Seriously, Michigan winter is accelerated natural selection for drivers. You learn quick or you die.

Even simpler than that, really: treat a conference and the outside social stuff that rides along as a work environment regardless of your status or role. You’re not at a knitting convention. You’re meeting professional peers. I had to fuck up to learn this, and I think it’s extremely important.

Q: Would I do $thing if this were at my office?

A: No.

Done.

Don’t worry about not having heard of Robert Scoble. After this, you almost certainly never will. Going forward, anyone who supports him, finances him, gives him a platform, or even acknowledges his existence positively is themselves culpable for unleashing such a horrific, unapologetic person upon our industry.

I almost vomited reading this abhorrent statement in its entirety. I’m still stunned, and very little about sexual impropriety in SV stuns me any more. This is a whole new level that I didn’t even think possible, and one of the sibling comments correctly points out that we will be talking about this for years, and years, and years.

In what sense? An attacker can already see the endpoints of a TLS conversation, and worrying about hostname disclosure is security through obscurity; the client already divulged the destination hostname with a probably-cleartext DNS query, too. Not worth worrying about. SNI is fine. If hostname disclosure is a security threat, the system needs rearchitecture.

Systems that hostname their customers (mycompany.example.com) should use wildcards for that scenario instead of SNI, among other reasons. That’s the only possible concern I can imagine.

No. Again, I’m refuting your claims, which I repeated back to you, with personal experience and am attempting to do so civilly. If I misunderstood your claims, I’m not the only one; sibling points out the same point I’m making back to you. (You’re also not addressing that misunderstanding at all, if so, and are instead throwing malice around and assuming people aren’t reading even when they repeat the exact claims you seem to have made.)

I care much less than you do whether they’re “legitimate,” I assure you. You’re projecting not reading on me, to be perfectly honest. Why on earth would I litigate my account status with you, of all people? It’s amusing you think I need to be reminded that you’re the wrong person for that, because I already know that. To me, just to be direct about this, you represent among the worst of HN’s qualities as evidenced all over this thread.

You’re just wrong about HN changing. It hasn’t. Yeah, dang and sctb announce bans now. There’s more to it, and in my experience, many of those decisions are just as arbitrary as they were when pg ran this place.

Everything else is an uncivil sideshow you’re dragging me into. Endgame: you’ll remain you, I’m probably stacking up further penalization rising to it, and life will go on. How about sticking to the fact that you’re wrong instead of exploiting your status to be as uncivil as you are with no fear of the exact repercussions you claim have softened because you’re not exposed to them?

And your point is wrong. You seemed to claim that in the dang era rank penalization is a thing of the past. You seem to claim that unsubstantive comments will no longer get you penalized. You are claiming that these decisions are more transparent and less arbitrary than under pg. All three are completely false, but you're just not subjected to them. I was not informed that I had been quietly penalized in any way until I noticed something was amiss, because the fact that that facility even exists is not common knowledge. Sir_Cmpwn didn't even list it in his moderator tools.

The entire second paragraph of the comment to which I replied is wrong. Your followup (which ascribes motive to me, something I note you've gone after others for doing in this thread) is also wrong. I'm not litigating anything. I'm pointing out that you're wrong. You're also forgiven for not being aware of this, given your typical comment quality and status.

Rank penalization is alive and well in the dang era, I assure you. It's variously applied to my entire account, and I was penalized so heavily at one point that I appeared below every gray comment. Lately, it seems to oscillate with no rhyme or reason.

> Yes, your account has a penalty that accounts get when they post too many low-quality comments--specifically ones that are uncivil and/or unsubstantive and/or tediously argumentative.

That's how it was explained to me, by Dan. He didn't stop the practice, and I'd contend he's probably doubled down on it.

OTOH, even modern Jeeps are fine to wash out with a hose or leave in the rain. It seems weird, but there is even a drain plug under the carpet on each side. The only two components to watch out for are the clockspring in the steering wheel (which lasts about 50 miles on a Wrangler anyway) as well as whatever radio head unit came with the trim. Nothing else seems to care. It's awesome.

I've inadvertently driven mine with the top off in a persistent downpour, where I learned that (a) windshield wipers don't work on the inside, (b) wearing glasses presents an annoying set of challenges, (c) expect an especially wet left butt cheek from the tire flinging water past the fender at speed, and (d) other drivers will take pictures at traffic lights. Fun, though. Radio still worked and everything. Just drained it when I got home and let it dry in the sun. I bet your Element would do better than you think.

> If creating that and getting it bought by Apple is failing, I hope I'm lucky enough to fail like that.

Careful, though, because one has to consider life after the acquisition if one loves the technology.

Sorry, that is not true. Apple documents all of its platforms quite thoroughly, and Safari is one of them. Theirs is simply not an analogue to MDN.

https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/Ap...

“Apple doesn’t attempt to document general-purpose Web technologies without an eye on its own platforms” might be a more accurate statement, but even that is shaky because they spent a lot of time explaining HTML5 media while killing Flash.

Verizon on the first link worked just fine here, but they made up porting dates and a few other things.

Yep. Definitely maintenance involved and a culture of care and feeding of faders on high-end gear.

That would make DJ gear the exception, then. There are slide pots for that purpose which do quite well with audio across them, they’re just in bigger mixers for sound reinforcement and radio gear. Digital obviously negated needing them to work the same way — it actually rearchitected how an entire mixer works — but analog pots got very good toward the end of their “run”. Lots of quality radio gear out there with beautiful 10Ks, much still in use. I wouldn’t call it “old” like that article does. Then again, DJs also beat the shit out of faders when they work, so it might be a good idea from a reliability perspective.

Coming from the reinforcement side, a lot of DJ gear baffles me. They look at audio much differently, which I suppose is understandable when you’re mixing two decks with an occasional bandpass versus a 50+ channel metal band with subgroups and racks of outboard effects.

> I love pretty ladies but have little affection for infinitely needy paycheck spending helpers.

> A simple short weekly group reading and writing exercise keeps the illiterate criminals away.

I can’t even fathom the lack of self-awareness or empathy for other people in someone who would type such things with a straight face. You’re trolling, right?

Wow, Pharaoh. That’s a while ago. Pharaoh’s gameplay deserves a modern, deeper treatment. Badly. That pathing and routing mechanic was really fun to optimize and figure out, and jived oddly well with programming. I easily invested hundreds of hours into it, and really wished you could scale the cities up further.

The Westwood alumni showed up last time there was a thread about them so Impressions alumni, if you’re reading, thanks for a great series of games (Caesar too). Kickstarter!

Headphones are a solvable problem. There are people who wear headphones to work, as opposed to while working. All day comfort is a bullet point because radio and media people look for it. I guarantee you can find a set of cans that agrees with you for more than 8 hours.

I wore a pair of Sony MDR-7506, the ubiquitous radio cans, for 8+ hours every day while operating and editing talk radio and didn’t even notice, despite the job calling for constantly necking them and then putting them back. And I have a large head. They’re ubiquitous in radio for a reason.

NSL is a statutory authority document issued directly by the executive without judicial involvement. It is not a legal proceeding nor a warrant, nor is it even on court letterhead. There are no statutory penalties for noncompliance set out in the law defining NSLs, but it has provisions to request a court order to enforce if the recipient does not comply. That requires filing a federal case, bringing the intelligence operation to the attention of the judiciary, and probable argument with an opportunity for the target to argue. This is where you hear about folks like EFF defending an NSL, since replying to an NSL usually does nothing.

After a court issues an order, contempt of court is a possibility. Just clarifying that the route to contempt is not quick. It’s also largely untested. Writing an NSL is two pages in a Microsoft Word template, while arguing a federal case to get your way is a much bigger prospect; if the investigation is small enough, or they’re not totally legal in how they got intelligence, etc., etc., they might not wish to argue and calling the bluff might be smart.

The gagging facility of NSLs actually has a non-coercive purpose: as designed, an NSL basically invites an unknown third party into a sensitive intelligence or counterintelligence operation. Tipping off the target or anyone else could lead to a collapse of the investigation, burning other sources that were used before you got your NSL, diplomatic repercussions, and so on. That’s the thinking that went into it, and it’s actually understandable. Two problems are that (a) the gag is indefinite, with no circling back once the operation concludes and (b) NSL is horrifically abused for stuff it shouldn’t be, since FBI realized the gagging lets them mostly get away with it.

Source: Have held more than one and read the citations.

Hetzner is a long-running social experiment to frustrate other Internet network administrators trying to hail it on all frequencies, so that sort of thing doesn't surprise me. We should all be better actors on the Internet, as this thread underscores, and it's just too bad you sound like you're wearing a sandwich board when you advocate for it. The incentives don't line up with running a business, much like with IPv6 and BCP38.

It'd be cool if we could throw RADb, PeeringDB, RFC 2142 contacts, WHOIS data, the routing table, courtesy phones, spam blacklists, and all the other tools available to administrators in a blender and come up with a nice, centralized way to instant message the right person with root at another Internet company for any possible scenario from any possible identifiable resource involved in the Internet without having to possess the tribal knowledge you pick up after doing it a while. Such a facility doesn't line up with the decentralized nature of the Internet, which is why I think it hasn't happened yet. How would you talk people into using it, too? There's a critical mass problem. I've always wanted to build exactly that thing, but I fear nobody would use it.

Until that exists, it's important to watch your abuse mailboxes. Only point I'm making. The Internet moves fast.

postmaster@ exists for many, many more reasons than non-deliverability. Again, multiple RFCs dictate its existence and management. Advice to the contrary demands a better rationale than you're providing, and is ill-advised.

If you operate SMTP and I can't get through to you on postmaster@ ("yo, back off your retries," for example), I'm probably going to blacklist you. I'm not unique in the slightest. The decentralized nature of SMTP demands that I have a hotline to you, the MX operator, without having to navigate a Web site to maybe find you.

If you're one person with a vanity domain, maybe. If you're running a business that operates mail, it's mandatory.

> If you're worried about spam, build in a bounce-back

This is really bad advice. Always disable spam filtering outright on abuse@ and postmaster@, never filter them, never bounce anything. Read every one. I'm not saying hook those mailboxes up to automatically make a JIRA case on each inbound -- there is screening to be done. However, the idea of abuse@ is that spam is often forwarded directly to it if it's originating from you; if you are catching spam to abuse@ or postmaster@, well, do the math.

abuse@, postmaster@, security@ and friends are discussed in RFC 2142, with a couple "must" directives that are important:

> However, if a given service is offerred [sp], then the associated mailbox name(es) must be supported, resulting in delivery to a recipient

Emphasis mine.

https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2142.txt

Did you identify yourself as a Google employee? Just asking because re: consistency, I could believe a blue badge might pull some weight in that situation. Speaking from experience, badging at an Apple Store will often change a conversation, sometimes dramatically, despite that ability not really being intended at all. Neither here nor there, just a data point.

And passports are cancelled and taken after a felony conviction. Not many know this.