rweir | 5 years ago | on: Police killings more likely in agencies that get military gear, data shows
why do any police forces get military hardware at all? it seems mad to take an already over-armed group and then give them APCs and even more guns.
rweir's comments
rweir | 5 years ago | on: New York City thinks up to half of restaurants will close permanently [pdf]
blimey that's some niche spam!
rweir | 5 years ago | on: Deaths due to Covid-19 compared with deaths from influenza and pneumonia
London was under lockdown until June, everyone is already acting like it will be locked down again in the next week or so, and has had strict mask and hygiene and social distancing rules for six months, had a government direction for everyone "who can" work from home to do so for ~4.5 of the last six months (it was briefly rescinded then reinstated), crash built hospitals in convention centres to try to handle overload from hospitals and still is currently at the same new case rate as April[0]. Fortunately death rates are still fairly low. I don't know if a vaccine/other interventions will prevent it being a yearly disaster but it certainly currently is.
[0]: https://data.london.gov.uk/dataset/coronavirus--covid-19--ca...
rweir | 5 years ago | on: 'Long Covid': Why are some people not recovering?
the US hasn't even been able to match the measures[0] Sweden put in place, though? there's still thousands of people showing up with no masks to breath on each other at rallies etc
[0]: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2251615-is-swedens-coro...
rweir | 5 years ago | on: Trump administration announces overhaul of H1B visa program requiring higher pay
uh because presumably if you ask people if they want safe water, they say yes, and yet ...
if Flint isn't an indictment of US democracy, what would be?
rweir | 5 years ago | on: NASA Funded Scientists Claim Breakthrough in Propellantless Propulsion
Could we all just wait until there's a (reviewed) paper in Nature or something?
rweir | 5 years ago | on: Argonne National Lab Breakthrough Turns Carbon Dioxide into Ethanol
It seems very unlikely they'll be able to resist burning it, though.
rweir | 8 years ago | on: UK parliament to get binding vote on final Brexit deal
It shouldn't have been a vote without an actual /plan/. "Would you like to 1) no change or 2) SUMMARY OF A DETAILED PLAN INCLUDING E.G. WHETHER THE U.K. REMAINS IN THE SINGLE MARKET OR THE CUSTOMS UNION OR HAS A HARD 1980s STYLE BORDER WITH IRELAND ETC" is one thing. "Would you like 1) no change or 2) some vague thing everyone can project their desires upon and scrawl fantasies on the side of a bus" is not a great way to make policy decisions.
rweir | 8 years ago | on: Under iOS 11, authorities won’t be able to image your device without a passcode
yes
rweir | 9 years ago | on: Ask HN: How do you offer your startup employees 100% health insurance?
> Are there no provincial or city income taxes?
no. there are "rates" paid to city/town for garbage collection, etc, but that would be on the order of $2000 more, for home owners only, for the nicest parts of cities.
rweir | 9 years ago | on: Grateful Dead Fan Timothy Tyler Has Been Granted Clemency
well then lobby to get your electoral system fixed instead of copping out. not voting for Hillary Clinton increases the chances of Trump winning, and who even knows what his actual policy on drugs are?
rweir | 11 years ago | on: CVS Disables NFC Terminals, Stops Accepting Apple Pay, Google Wallet
note that in practice EFTPOS is getting beaten down by still not doing contactless, while Visa Debit/Mastercard Debit contactless cards are ubiquitous in Australia, and banks pushing Visa/Mastercard Debit for the higher interchange fees.
rweir | 11 years ago | on: iOS 8 reviewed
eh, totally ditched? the 5s and 5c remains available.
rweir | 11 years ago | on: Georgia dealers want Tesla store shuttered for selling too many Teslas
think of Bell or the oil companies of the early 20th century.
rweir | 11 years ago | on: Georgia dealers want Tesla store shuttered for selling too many Teslas
it was initially to stop manufacturers vertically integrating all the way from building cars to running stores.
rweir | 11 years ago | on: Mosh: A replacement for SSH
> I feel like mosh is fixing problems at the wrong layer. Instead of making application protocols connectioness, we should make Mobile IP work
I look forward to using regular SSH to connect to my servers hosted in the floating city of New Chicago!
rweir | 11 years ago | on: Submarine Cable Map 2014
pretty well documented, too: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Halibut_(SSGN-587)#Special_...
rweir | 11 years ago | on: Why The iPhone 6 Will Be The Device Of The Year
it's techcrunch.
rweir | 11 years ago | on: Reserve your favorite username in new startups
perhaps state that on the signup page, so people don't bother, then? there are identical sites that actually exist already, so why would anyone be interested in signing up here?
edit: to be clear, I mean: there isn't value in "testing a market" when the market is already tested.
rweir | 11 years ago | on: Reserve your favorite username in new startups
would it be fair to say that your site currently does absolutely nothing except for take usernames, email addresses and passwords?