@feld @mpjgregoire
Diesels from the 90s and earlier have no electronics at all to control the engine, they use a mechanical plunger pump to time the fuel injection and it has a bunch of internal linkages and fly-weights to regulate it.

@mpjgregoire @feld
Not 100% sure if there are some electronics which are resistant, but normally it's considered that anything with a chip inside a certain radius is gone. Beyond that radius, stuff that's turned OFF is safe but on = gone.

@mpjgregoire @feld
Supposedly the US army has something the size of a pringles can which will do 1 city block.

@mpjgregoire @feld
Fortunately for our fragile society, there aren't a lot of ways to pull a military victory out of wiping out absolutely everything.

@mpjgregoire @feld
Think nuclear blast, but has no effect on anything except all electronics are destroyed.

@freakazoid @sean
More like 1 law, but in infinitely variable gradient of likelihood whether that law will be applied based on many circumstances.

@freakazoid @sean
I think that's a bit of a simplification, it's more like:
Law is where all of the powers that be find common ground, but every one of them will try to corrupt that law as much as they possibly can to their own interest. Unfortunately the West is not significantly different, just perhaps not quite so overt about it.

@freakazoid @sean
It is true that judges in the West have an impressive amount of integrity. If there's one thing that gets us through these times, it'll be people like them. Everyone else, and yes, across the whole political spectrum, seems to see things based on their politics.

@freakazoid @sean
You make a good point. Seeing the problems with one's own country is a sort of national pastime in the West. And we're all better off for it.

@freakazoid @sean
I pity anyone who thinks they have to hate themselves otherwise they're a white supremacist, what a terrible way to live life. But I'm Irish, so in the House of Whiteness I'm only a guest.

@freakazoid @sean
These days Irish are very accepted, but wasn't always like that. My great grandfather was a refugee from a famine which turned out to be intentional genocide. They also had to train themselves to speak w/o Irish accent to avoid discrimination in the US. I may be considered "white" by many people, but I'm under no illusion that I'm the same blood as British aristocracy.

@freakazoid @sean
Winners write history. I think even the Armenian genocide remains disputed by Turkey.

@freakazoid @sean
Does Stalin's starvation of the Ukrainians pass your test of what is considered deliberate ?

@freakazoid @sean
I would, and I would. Also don't forget the Bush family's crack epidemic.

@freakazoid @sean
Incarceration grew massively under Clinton, all of these people are monsters. This is why I have mixed opinions about Trump, he's a lot of things but he's not them.

@sean @freakazoid
I think china has a unique definition of "illegal".

@amolith
I've spent a fair amount of time on both sides of this argument.

Perhaps the disconnect here is between where a person is on the learning curve. One might be more interested in getting good at making the software performant, well documented, or robust, but another might be more interested in the art of pushing things out the door really quickly.

@meejah @natecull
Stuff like "or get a test" goes a long way. You take as an example a guy who took the first shot and had a massive heart attack (it's rare, but it does happen). That guy is not going to want another shot of the same stuff, you can't change that. And if you make a law that he has to, he will be your enemy, and his family, and his friends, and his co-workers. Now instead of 1 guy who, honestly, probably shouldn't get the shot, you have dozens of people ready to take you to war.

@meejah @natecull
And when you have some sketchy extreme right people ready to take your side, and you're put in a corner, well guess what "enemy of my enemy" applies. Also foreign interference is almost certain at this point, and it's a tragedy because tone-deaf policy put the west into this weak geopolitical position. Also the fact that there's interference doesn't invalidate the protest, there was USSR interference in the Civil Rights movement and I hope nobody will try to invalidate that.

@natecull
Even if we accept that the nature of the pandemic is such that right now, we must abridge human rights. It's not obvious that any particular policy is the right one.

In fact the entire 20th century is littered with big government policies which abridged human rights, because science said it was necessary, but it ended up being wrong and killing people.

It should be a hint that the most stable countries in the world are the ones structured to not be able to do these things at all.