mdpopescu (u/mdpopescu)

mdpopescu commented on The cesspool of the internet is to be found in a village in North Holland nrc.nl/nieuws/2021/04/02/... · Posted by u/ahubert

dang · 5 years ago

Please don't perpetuate flamewars on HN. They're tedious and nasty and we're trying for curious conversation.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

mdpopescu · 5 years ago

Seriously, stop with this crap. The people on this forums are some of the people who have the know-how to actually DO something about the internet. If they can't discuss these things, we get the situation that your company seems to like - SV decides what's allowed on the internet and what's not. Those of us outside of the US don't like it very much, and we'd prefer to - you know - talk about it.

mdpopescu commented on The cesspool of the internet is to be found in a village in North Holland nrc.nl/nieuws/2021/04/02/... · Posted by u/ahubert

InCoffeeWeTrust · 5 years ago

Almost every entity has oversight measures implemented to safeguard it from criminal negligence.

The laws in the Netherlands need to be updated to ensure that data hosting centres and their owners can't get away with criminal negligence.

And to everyone complaining about this with a "but my free speech" excuse - there are extensive legal procedures which ensure that allegations of criminal negligence are conducted openly and fairly.

How the Netherlands managed to avoid creating criminal negligence laws for these scenarios is beyond me.

If the laws did exist, they would require data centres to be aware of the content which is hosted and promptly remove clients if the law is violated. No, this isn't "snooping" or an infringement on your "free speech" - in fact, these measures ensure that free speech flourishes while removing the illegal garbage.

Now, once again, is the rebuttal of "but the government uses laws to unfairly censor people" - so then are you all for not having any laws? We have laws, they work - even though governments have abused them. But the answer is not to stop having laws.

mdpopescu · 5 years ago

> But the answer is not to stop having laws.

Why?

Serious question. When are laws too many? (According to some history, 10 laws were too many and most people were ignoring them.)

Are a trillion laws too many? A billion? A million? A thousand? What if we had a thousand laws, but each law had a million pages?

(I'm pretty sure we're at over a billion pages of laws if we take into account all the laws in the world - as multinational companies are supposed to do.)

When, exactly, should we say "this is excessive"?

mdpopescu commented on China pressured Concordia University to cancel event with Uighur activist (2019) cbc.ca/news/canada/montre... · Posted by u/baylearn

kspacewalk2 · 5 years ago

To do what, cover up an ongoing totalitarian oppression of millions of people on the basis of their ethnicity?

mdpopescu · 5 years ago

Almost right. On the basis of their political affiliation, mostly.

mdpopescu commented on Atomic structure of a glass imaged at last nature.com/articles/d4158... · Posted by u/pseudolus

RupertEisenhart · 5 years ago

Imaging doesn't necessarily produce 'images' in the common meaning of the word.

You may think that those 'images' of proteins you see sometimes are 'real images', because they are grey and grainy, but they are just computer-generated diagrams.

I'm not really sure if this comment has any substance. What do you want/expect to see?

"have used a method called atomic-resolution electron tomography to determine the position of every atom in a nanometre-scale sample of a metallic glass" assuming the accompanying diagram is exactly that, it's as much of an image as you will ever get, of anything, afaic.

Edit: formatting

mdpopescu · 5 years ago

And yet, the number of otherwise informed, intelligent people I've talked to who believe that the frequently-used image of the Covid virus is an actual picture is astonishing.

mdpopescu commented on What the Heck Happened to John Ioannidis? sciencebasedmedicine.org/... · Posted by u/amirmasoudabdol

N1H1L · 5 years ago

Most of the time, consensus exists for a reason. The obviously troubled panhandler at the stop light also technically goes against the consensus, as do anti-vaccers and flat earthers.

mdpopescu · 5 years ago

Yes. The reason is the most people are idiots. Like a ruler says in one of our books, "stupid, but many".

mdpopescu commented on Zero click vulnerability in Apple’s macOS Mail mikko-kenttala.medium.com... · Posted by u/jviide

ClumsyPilot · 5 years ago

I dont think apple is entitled to that information on any basis, and i dont think its a legitimate threat to expose actual ill behaviour

mdpopescu · 5 years ago

All blackmail involves exposing something that someone doesn't want exposed - usually because the "something" is illegal. And yet, blackmail itself is illegal.

Most countries have a culture against whistleblowers, starting from childhood ("don't be a tattletale", "don't be a rat").

mdpopescu commented on What the Heck Happened to John Ioannidis? sciencebasedmedicine.org/... · Posted by u/amirmasoudabdol

mdpopescu · 5 years ago

He went against the consensus. You cannot go against the consensus.

mdpopescu commented on Don’t use environment variables for configuration nibblestew.blogspot.com/2... · Posted by u/ingve

sedeki · 5 years ago

I hope I don't get downvoted, but I think the OP has a point. Command line arguments will do, and perhaps even be better.

Why are there so many harsh comments about this post?

mdpopescu · 5 years ago

There are a lot of use cases. For example, I have 17 applications running on a system that need a connection string. When I need to change that connection string, I can 1) change 17 config files; 2) change 17 shortcuts containing command-line arguments; 3) change one env variable.

mdpopescu commented on Suppressing a gene by using its antibody can lead to tooth growth: animal study u-fukui.ac.jp/en-news/670... · Posted by u/elorant

dennis_jeeves · 5 years ago

Lol, how do you manage to keep your sanity on HN? Everyone else thinks that medicine/police/education/judiciary is so special that the free market cannot deal with it.

mdpopescu · 5 years ago

It's difficult :)