Get a cable modem, go to jail (1999) • Hacker News Board

Re: Get a cable modem, go to jail (1999)

#191

Post by solidsnack9000 » Tue, Sep 05, 2023, 6:30 AM UTC

diogenes4 wrote: post #135

wkat4242 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The amount of incidents involving firearms is astonishing. I'm glad I live in Europe where literally nobody has guns except police and heavy criminals that only really use them to shoot their rivals. I thought most people in the US were proud of their firearm handling professionalism which of course includes not brandishing, threatening or murdering people. I'm really a bit surprised to hear this. I did a similar job…

I just watched someone do a sale of a fully loaded glock for a zip during a smoke sesh. Loaded straight into fairly skinny jeans without checking the safety. Bear in mind that handguns are by far the largest contributors to domestic gun-related homicide (intentional and unintentional) and that most gun control safety targets "assault rifles" and other scary shapes. I don't think this is a nightmare we can exit any ti…

"Registered to a different person" -- for the most part, guns are not registered in the USA. Was this in a state or city with a registry for AR-15s?

"Loaded straight into fairly skinny jeans without checking the safety." -- Glocks do not have safeties.

The idea with most newer striker-fired pistols, like the Glock, is that the gun goes in a hard-sided (molded nylon or kydex) holster. If it's not in the holster, it's ready to fire. If that is not safe in the situation you are in, put it back in the holster.

Rifles, shotguns, &c, are never holstered; so if it is time to fire the weapon, you deactivate the safety; otherwise, it is left on safe. Because pistols have the extra step of being holstered, it turns out be work well in practice not to have the intermediate unholstered-but-safe step.

Re: Get a cable modem, go to jail (1999)

#192

Post by picture » Tue, Sep 05, 2023, 6:31 AM UTC

psunavy03 wrote: post #176

blahedo wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firearms are the second-leading cause of death in children and adolescents in the US. 15%. [0] [0] https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsr1804754

Yep . . . just as I thought. Your source uses ages 0-19 as "children and adolescents." Guess what happens when you lump in those extra two years of 18-year-olds and 19-year-olds, who are legal adults? You also lump in a disproportionate amount of street gang-related shootings, which have different causes and different solutions, and make it look like suburban teens are uniquely at risk from firearms . . . when they'r…

Do street gangs wait until you're 18? I don't quite understand how including the two extra years would skew the data.

Re: Get a cable modem, go to jail (1999)

#193

Post by OhMeadhbh » Tue, Sep 05, 2023, 6:33 AM UTC

nojvek wrote: post #133

noduerme wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a gun owner and I believe in the rights of citizens to be armed, but I'm still not sure this is a good argument. On principle, anything that causes unnecessary deaths should be curtailed unless the benefits somehow outweigh the damage. We still have people driving cars who kill each other every day by accident, but there's a general feeling that it would be better to do away with that if we could find a way to el…

As someone who moved to the US and finds the gun culture absolutely bonkers, I get the gun culture and why they had it in the constitution. I don’t get the obsession behind open carry though. What good is people walking around in shopping malls with large semi automatic rifles on their back?

@nojvek -- also... are you seeing people in shopping malls open carrying or are you seeing news articles on TV or online talking about people in shopping malls open carrying? Also, my personal experience is you're MUCH more likely to see someone open carrying at the feed store in the rural parts of the country than at a proper shopping mall in the urban core. (I don't have enough experience with the burbs to render an opinion.) Though there are places in the exurbs and rural America where you probably want to have a firearm to defend yourself against animals or people with foul intent.

Re: Get a cable modem, go to jail (1999)

#194

Post by BLKNSLVR » Tue, Sep 05, 2023, 6:33 AM UTC

b112 wrote: post #165

kelnos wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Theft" doesn't just mean "physically taking something away from someone else, who now no longer has it". As much as you might like it to mean that, that's not what the law says.

On top of that, it takes equipment, hardware, personnel, infrastructure, power to deliver cable. The OP literally has no idea what they are talking about, and could use the same logic for electricity theft.

Many years ago the house I was living in had cable (foxtel, Australia) connected, but the residents who had paid for it had moved out and were no longer paying for it, therefore it sat as an unused plug in the wall for a good couple of years.

I got one of those old "TV cards", so you could hook up an antenna and have TV on your computer (yeah, this was before "internet" was better than TV for moving picture entertainment) and had heard about software that could decode foxtel signal.

After a lot of futzing about, and failed attempts, it started working well enough to be watchable - although most of the content was shit, it was foxtel after all.

My point being - the signal is sent through the cable either way. Whether there's a device at the end of it or not. Equipment, hardware, personnel, power was provided by me to get it working. The previous residents paid for the connection of the cable itself. The data is all sent down the pipe whether or not someone was watching it at the far end, just due to the nature of cable at the time.

I get your electricity analogy though, but I really don't know if it applies to the data being sent down the cable. I doubt it cost "faceless them" any extra as my understanding was that the cable was a shared signal by the street (or some other small-ish communal size).

Once I got it working, I mostly lost interest :)

Re: Get a cable modem, go to jail (1999)

#195

Post by hoseja » Tue, Sep 05, 2023, 6:34 AM UTC

wkat4242 wrote: post #89

thatoneguy wrote: post #31

I was a "broadband technician" around then and AT&T Broadband did not give AF if you were stealing cable or not. I only handled cable modem installs and quit after a year to go major in philosophy and because: - Getting quietly threatened once (with AR-15 up against the customer's front door) on a troubleshooting call that I wasn't able to leave until "the internet started working". - Having to increasingly go do cab…

The amount of incidents involving firearms is astonishing. I'm glad I live in Europe where literally nobody has guns except police and heavy criminals that only really use them to shoot their rivals. I thought most people in the US were proud of their firearm handling professionalism which of course includes not brandishing, threatening or murdering people. I'm really a bit surprised to hear this. I did a similar job…

I'm glad to live in Europe where people have lots of guns but basically never threaten others with them because they are generally decent folk.

Re: Get a cable modem, go to jail (1999)

#196

Post by iotku » Tue, Sep 05, 2023, 6:34 AM UTC

Doxin wrote: post #187

Humboldtsnee wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The person holding the Glock? Because a Glock doesn't have a safety lever. It's built into the trigger mechanism.

> It's built into the trigger mechanism. What, so pressing the trigger automatically disengages the safety? As a non-gun-person that seems like an insane design decision.

>What, so [pulling] the trigger automatically disengages the safety?

Correct. There's a few other internal safeties to help ensure it doesn't go off unless someone is pulling the trigger and (hopefully) intending to fire.

It's still drop safe and not going to go off by itself, but if you fire it (and there's a round in the chamber), it's going off.

>As a non-gun-person that seems like an insane design decision

There's certainly tradeoffs. It's simpler and you're not going to accidentally forget to disengage a safety at the worst possible time (when you actually need to be using a gun), but it does increase the risk when improperly handling the firearm which is a risk not everyone is cool with for obvious reasons (and even experienced operators (incl. Law Enforcement being generous, which largely carry Glocks) are human and can make mistakes).

Re: Get a cable modem, go to jail (1999)

#197

Post by sitharus » Tue, Sep 05, 2023, 6:36 AM UTC

Ylpertnodi wrote: post #190

wkat4242 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The amount of incidents involving firearms is astonishing. I'm glad I live in Europe where literally nobody has guns except police and heavy criminals that only really use them to shoot their rivals. I thought most people in the US were proud of their firearm handling professionalism which of course includes not brandishing, threatening or murdering people. I'm really a bit surprised to hear this. I did a similar job…

>Europe where literally nobody has guns except police and heavy criminals Europe? Literally lots of people have guns, where I live, from 01 Sept there's plenty of gunshots ringing out scaring one of my dogs. I know two people in the uk that have shotguns (police checked, locked away in the attic). There are many ww2 firearms in circulation (Serbia, I believe just had an amnesty), so 'literally' is incorrect. The diff…

I live in New Zealand, and many people have guns. The difference is if you point it at someone at minimum you’ll lose your gun licence and have the weapon confiscated.

I used to work at a multinational, we were quite amused when we saw an update to the US workplace rules that prohibited firearms anywhere on company property. One of my colleagues has his rifle in the office - he was going on a hunting trip and leaving immediately after work. Of course it was locked in a gun case and the bolt was stored separately, but it was amusing.

Re: Get a cable modem, go to jail (1999)

#198

Post by OhMeadhbh » Tue, Sep 05, 2023, 6:37 AM UTC

Cyphase wrote: post #184

euroderf wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The invisible hand of the free market has clearly worked to perfection.

Whatever else you think on these topics, government-enforced utility monopolies aren't the free market.

The phrase "free market" comes from Adam Smith who used it to describe "markets free from rent-seeking behaviour." So careful there, free markets may not be what you think either.

Re: Get a cable modem, go to jail (1999)

#199

Post by cinntaile » Tue, Sep 05, 2023, 6:38 AM UTC

Gud wrote: post #182

yetihehe wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be specific - Poland. We don't have enough immigrants from middle east and africa for this to be noticeable problem. It's mostly uneducated drunk idiots who target ER teams. Firefighters - I didn't heard about them being targeted yet. Edit: I don't say that MENA immigrants targeting public services is not an issue. I say that this issue exists globally too, it's a result of having a lot of uneducated demoralised p…

Maybe in Poland this is the issue, in the rest of Europe it is not.

You theory doesn't check out given the counter example.

Re: Get a cable modem, go to jail (1999)

#200

Post by flir » Tue, Sep 05, 2023, 6:39 AM UTC

Gud wrote: post #168

puchatek wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some European countries there's a recent trend to attack people perceived as "the state", such as firefighters and paramedics in certain situations. Afaik, this is usually done by low income, uneducated people that good stone grudge and then lash out. You can indeed be happy that they don't have access to firearms.

This is not done by “low income, uneducated people". This is done by 1st, 2nd and 3rd generation immigrants from the middle east and africa. Please be specific, otherwise these problems will never be resolved. I come from a low income neighborhood but native parents, this was unheard of up until the 2000s.

First five UK-based examples I found via Google were three white men and two white women attacking paramedics. One used a meat cleaver. (All found with the search "attack on paramedic sentenced ")

(Edit: full disclosure - one more search and the sixth had a common Turkish surname (no mugshot)).