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The current set of planets, we are quite confident to be complete, there are no more planets out there. The set of known dwarf planets is likely to be incomplete, we think there are many more out there. I think that's a useful distinction.

This is mathematics, the Alps is drivable like a manifold is smooth.

First they came for the niche news, and I didn't say anything because it's only 0.5% share of the viewership. Then they came for the regional news, and I didn't say anything because it's only 3.5% share of the viewership...

(How you respond to these little transgressions will determine whether your society will recover to normal or slide further into ruin)


Democracy is when you drop a ballot every two/four years, and the elected officers ignore you while they take millions of donation from wealthy donors. Dictatorship is when the unelected representatives work their ass off to better the lives of the average citizens, because they're afraid of a revolution.

(P.S.: Xi Jin Ping is as unelected as the British Prime Minister, but I don't see people calling the UK a dictatorship.)


That's because in the time since Xi took over China there's been 7 different UK Prime Ministers, most of whom were kicked out of office before their term ended.

In that same period Xi has changed the rules so that he can hold on to power indefinitely.


Why are we using British PM count like it means anything. Meanwhile, Angela Merkel served longer as Kanzler than Xi has served as President. Is Germany a dictatorship?

(Neither Britain nor Germany have term limits for their head of government, so China removing its term limit is just bringing it at par with the two most prominent European democracies)


The point is that PM count proves it was possible for other people to remove serving PMs from power.

They were not able to ignore public opinion indefinitely and could be removed from power without the need for term limits.

No one can remove Xi from power if they don't like the way he performs. No one in China can even publicly discuss his performance except to praise him.

That's what makes China a dictatorship and the UK a democracy.


> Xi Jin Ping is as unelected as the British Prime Minister

The British PM was elected, what on earth are you talking about? He won an election to his seat in Parliament just a few weeks ago.


He was not elected by the general public to the position of Prime Minister. He was elected, by a small number of UK citizens in his constituency, to the Parliament seat.

British law doesn't even require the Prime Minister to be an MP, technically Parliament could elect any random bozo from the street to be PM.


“Has no personal mandate from the entire electorate” - I suspect they mean.

But that’s not necessary or expected under the British system, being an MP and Party Leader is enough. If Burnham radically departed from Labour’s manifesto you could then argue he call a general election to establish legitimacy for that, but it isn’t required.


The UK PM change happened indirectly as a result of poor performance in the local elections. It does actually matter that the UK has multiple parties that effectively compete, even if some of them are blatantly sockpuppets for overseas millionaires.

The two-term limit for president of China and vice president of China have be eliminated been abolished in 2018. Now President Xi Jinping can rule for life.

"Deng Xiaoping put the limits in place in the 1980s as part of his effort to ensure that China was never again subjected to a crushing dictatorship like that of Chairman Mao and the turmoil it occasioned. China’s Communist system not accepting the Western notion of formal checks and balances, Deng instituted a system with Chinese characteristics designed to prevent return of one-man rule or a cult of personality by preventing leaders from staying indefinitely in power."

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/7-things-you-need-to-know...

Similar in Russia, 2020 constitutional amendment gave Vladimir Putin legal authority to stay in office until 2036.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Term_limits_in_Russia#Russia_u...


There's no term limit for the British Prime Minister and Germany Kanzler. What do you think about that?

The problem is that trigonometric functions are used in many more fields beyond geometry. The input is not always an angle around a point in euclidean space, it could be phase angle of a periodic signal. You can make an alternative set of trig functions that take turns, but you will anger a lot of people if you mess with the vanilla trig functions.

When dealing with waves you often are dealing with turns - or, as they’re called in that world, cycles. A cycle is a turn is tau is 2pi.

The SI unit for frequency after all is Hertz - cycles per second - which should really be considered equal to 2pi s^-1, but for complicated reasons, often isn’t, and most formulae that involve frequency ignore the ‘cycle’ - or it’s also hiding inside the definition of something like the wavelength or the Planck constant where it cancels out.

Meanwhile the SI unit for angular velocity is radians per second which is dimensionally equivalent to s^-1.

That said a becquerel, which measures rate of discrete events, is also dimensionally s^-1. (Next time you are measuring traffic to your website consider using the appropriate SI unit for measuring requests per second: the Becquerel.) - so dimensional equivalence isn’t the same as equivalence. You wouldn’t add a rate to a frequency, same as you probably shouldn’t add a torque to an amount of energy.


> Next time you are measuring traffic to your website consider using the appropriate SI unit for measuring requests per second: the Becquerel.

Great idea, I will definitely do this!


You'll have to bring in the 2π factor somewhere. Cant escape it. If sint is the sin function but with angle give in turns, then d/dx sint(x) = 2π cost(x). sin(x) ~ x for small x but sint(x) ~ 2πx for small x.

Functions are free. Create new ones. Sin1 instead of Sin, Cos1 instead of Cos.

It's weirdly phrased, but it just means that they don't have a tight control for battery capacity. Their device is designed to operate for at most ten hours (for example), but the battery that they use could have anywhere between 8-12 hours of supply, so the transmitter would be active anywhere between 8-10 hours.

In your scenario the device shuts done when the battery runs out, but at the latest after 10 hours. That's different from "at the latest when the battery capacity is exhausted".

Instead the implied mode of operation is that they shut down after 10 hours, but sometimes they dont and after 12 hours the battery is empty. Or maybe it's another trigger (location?) that is not always active or does not always trigger


You would think that the right to bear arms would extend to Iran developing a nuclear warhead though.

Natural rights belong to individuals, not states. Iran is a government; governments hold powers, not inalienable rights. The analogy collapses before reaching the question of nuclear weapons.

Interesting interpretation given the the 2nd Amendment gives the right to "a well regulated militia" and not to individuals including crazed yahoos and criminals. Sadly for millions of butchered Americans, US courts have agreed with your interpretation.

No, it does not. What it states is: "A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state,"

(thus shedding light on the government's interest in the matter, since anything not illegal is legal by default)

"the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed"

(thus confirming the right of people - which includes crazed yahoos, and excludes some but not all criminals - not the government, to have weapons)

This is the current understanding within American jurisprudence. People are of course free to disagree with it, but when it comes to laws, the government's understanding of what the law means takes precedence both de jure and de facto.

The Bill of Rights does not enumerate what a citizen is and is not allowed to do, but rather lays out a number of cases in a non-exhaustive manner in which it restricts the government from infringing on liberties that are understood to have pre-existed it.


But do Iranians have a right for self-determination? How about Israelis?

There are no natural rights.

Only rights you’re willing to kill to protect.

Or to force someone else to kill to protect for you.


That's your opinion, but not the opinion of the US' founders nor their cited inspirations.

I'd love if the people who put a tape over their laptop webcam could answer this.

I'd love if people stopped trying to pretend Snowden didn't happen.

It's very comforting to think that somewhere deep within the NSA is a person whose job it is to watch my face while I poop.

That's hilarious side by side with stories about cops abusing surveillance to stalk their ex, and women generally.

So you don't fear being victimised and don't plan to ever stand up for those who do. Not very unique, I'd say that's the primordial slime we all come from... but why stay in it?


> So you don't fear being victimised and don't plan to ever stand up for those who do.

Is that so? Can you show me what it was, exactly, that lead you to this determination?


Why, are you denying it?

Yes.

I further demand that you either put up or shut up, accusator.


Your reaction to mentioning concerns about mass surveillance was to make a fucking joke about you pooping. That joke's on you, says only something about you, as does how you're trying to turn this into me doing you this awesome injustice by... reading what you wrote and connecting the dots. You couldn't hold in the smirk, you can't take the smirk having been seen. Both are your problem.

I see.

>>>>> It's very comforting to think that somewhere deep within the NSA is a person whose job it is to watch my face while I poop.

I made what was clearly a fucking joke about me, myself, pooping, as you now admit.

>>> So you don't fear being victimised and don't plan to ever stand up for those who do.

You turned that fucking joke into a beliefs system.

>>> That's hilarious side by side with stories about cops abusing surveillance to stalk their ex, and women generally.

A beliefs system specifically about women, no less.

>> Why, are you denying it?

You requested that I defend the beliefs system that you invented.

> Your reaction to mentioning concerns about mass surveillance was to make a fucking joke about you pooping. That joke's on you, says only something about you, as does how you're trying to turn this into me doing you this awesome injustice by... reading what you wrote and connecting the dots. You couldn't hold in the smirk, you can't take the smirk having been seen. Both are your problem.

From all of this, I can only surmise that you are literally insane.

Do not contact me again about this or any other matter. Your harassment is both unwanted, and unwarranted. There is nothing further here to discuss.

If you have any concerns, please email them to hn@ycombinator.com


Never poop alone

To me, a stranger gaining access to my webcam to secretly watch me isn't just an "attack vector"...

Most central banks in the world hold their USD reserve in the Federal Reserve. There's no need at all for a the currency to be exportable, for it to function as a reserve currency.

Do you actually believe that the Central Bank of India is hauling Benjamins in wheelbarrow through the Delhi international?


We knew how to make synthetic hydrocarbon one hundred years ago. Nazi Germany used the Fischer Tropsch process to make synthetic fuel after the Royal Navy blockaded their oil import. The only reason we're still digging up fossil fuel is because it's cheap. According to some calculation, green hydrocarbon from atmospheric CO2 and electrolytic hydrogen could be commercially viable when fossil petroleum reaches $200/barrel , which is really not that far off.


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