The first DuckDuckGo search I did turned up our last discussion. But thanks for jumping to wrong conclusions that are easily disproven and then basing a series of false accusations on them. I've come to expect nothing less from you.

(quick aside: while I know others have multiple accounts, this is my only one, and the only time I post as AC is when I post sensitive information)

Anyway, I have no intention of getting dragged into another discussion with you. You and I have already said what we want to say to each other, both in that last discussion and in the one that preceded it (which is linked from the last one). I have nothing more to add, and I'm frankly not interested in hearing anything else you might have to say.

Have a good day.

I don't know that I'd call it "inexcusable". Maybe "ill-advised". He was using a shotgun, and given that he was almost certainly shooting at a steep angle with a line of fire that was clear of any targets that could suffer collateral damage, by the time the pellets would have landed, they'd be no more harmful than hail the size of shot pellets. Which is to say, not dangerous.

For some additional facts regarding shotguns, the effective range for most sizes of shot is just a few dozen yards, since at 50 yards out, the pellets will have lost over 3/4 of their energy and over half their velocity. Again, given that he had a privacy fence and waited until it was over his property, we can assume a steep angle, meaning that they'd basically go straight up and then just fall back down harmlessly, but even if we assume that he aimed just barely high enough to clear the neighboring house, shot pellets are unlike bullets in that they don't have spin from barrel rifling to keep them from tumbling out of control, so they lose the VAST majority of their energy to wind resistance. By the time they'd have fallen enough to actually hit a rooftop or window, they'd have spent almost all of their energy, rendering them harmless.

I'd actually be more concerned about any pellets that ricocheted off the drone, since they would have the potential to be significantly more dangerous than the ones that missed the drone.

Not so. It depends on the circumstances and local laws.

In many states, the question of whether or not it's legal to discharge a firearm within city limits is left up to the cities themselves to decide (and we don't know whether the homeowner was even within city limits, since he could be living in an unincorporated part of town outside the city limits, for all we know). And even in cities where discharging a firearm within city limits is unlawful, almost all of them would carve out an exception (whether written or unwritten) for a homeowner defending their own home. Moreover, in most (all?) states, firing a weapon into the air is not, in and of itself, illegal. After all, that'd make quail hunting, duck hunting, skeet shooting, and other similar activities illegal too. It's generally "random" or "celebratory" gunfire into the air that's illegal.

All of which is to say, shooting into the air is not necessarily illegal, and it's entirely possible that the contents of that card may provide evidence to support his case.

No, that would still be destruction of property. The fact that it's on your property does not give you the right to destroy it. If the neighbor's kid kicks a soccer ball over your fence does that give you the right to slash it with a knife before you return it to them? Of course not.

And that makes it OK?

I see nothing wrong with it, actually. People want — and have a perfect right — to know, who they are about to trust with powers over them and/or their businesses. And the higher the position, the greater the powers and, consequently, the greater the extent people might go in their investigations.

The "opposition research" is just another facet of this. If it is legitimate for all of us to study, how Donald Trump parted with his ex-wide 30 years ago before we hire him, it is certainly legitimate for a would-be employer to check criminal history of a candidate, or inquire, whether he has done something, which may betray certain things about his character or judgement. Did he torture animals? Is he prone to binge-drinking? Has he burned the national flag? Is he a racist, sexist, or communist?

So long as private employers' hiring decisions remain their own, they ought to remain free to base them on whatever considerations they please — with the specific (if regrettable) restrictions imposed by the law, of course.

Well clearly I'm not going to have such studies to hand, not sure how you would study such a thing

Well, you made a wide-reaching statement about a certain fact. If you can not cite anything to confirm the fact, your statement remains unsubstantiated and the "fact" — highly suspect.

there is inbuilt racism / nationalism in CV selection

I can believe that — and in my not-so-humble opinion, those concerns ought to remain up to the employer as well. Both from the principled standpoint — being free must imply freedom to be wrong, as well as practical — the war on thought-crimes, waged in this country since the 1960-ies, is even less winnable than the coterminous war on drugs.

Unjustifiable? He's spamming.

Proving him wrong? He's generally not wrong. He's attempting to mislead people by being selective about the information that he chooses to present.

His claims are mostly sound (I'd quibble over a few of the more subjective ones), but he's only presenting information that supports his product, while ignoring similar information that supports competing products. He's presenting this as some sort of a rivalry between hosts and ad-blocking extensions, and only talks about the benefits that hosts has, when the truth of the matter is that each of them has different capabilities and excels in different areas, so they're best used in a complementary fashion, rather than mutually exclusively. There are a number of things that ad-blocking extensions can do that hosts can't, but you'll be hard-pressed to get him to acknowledge them. Likewise, you'll be hard-pressed to get him to acknowledge that ad-blocking extensions may be a better solution for certain people who aren't technically-inclined and would have trouble using a tool such as his (assuming they can use it at all, since his tool doesn't run on OS X, for instance, last I checked).

I had a long back-and-forth with apk a few months ago. I largely agree with him, except inasmuch as he sets it up as an "either/or" rivalry between extensions and the use of a properly configured hosts file, rather than recognizing that extensions and hosts are best used in a complementary relationship with one another.

For instance, there are a number of features that extensions can do that hosts simply can't do (e.g. outright removing elements from the DOM so that they doesn't waste screen space), yet apk was reluctant to acknowledge those benefits in the discussion we had, though he was very quick to acknowledge the things that hosts can do that extensions simply can't do (e.g. blocking malicious traffic outside of the browser). He's not wrong about the benefits of hosts, but it makes it a bit hard to take him seriously when he's only willing to acknowledge facts that point towards the benefits of his product and is quick to dismiss valid use cases that don't align with how his product gets used.

As an example of that, when I suggested that one benefit of extensions was how easily they could be recommended to and used by non-technical users, since they're widely compatible and setup generally consists of just clicking a download link, he continued to insist that hosts was easier to setup, use, and keep up-to-date, and held up his product as proof of that fact. He didn't have an answer for me when I pointed out that his software can't run on my primary PC at home since it's booted into OS X. Nor, would I imagine, would he have an answer for me if we started discussing iOS, since users don't have access to the hosts files, whereas they do have access to extensions.

Meanwhile, you're engaging in what appears to be a non-ironic use of ad hominem to suggest that someone isn't skilled enough to make their point. Ouch.

I don't agree with the murder of unborn children either.

Well, you may not, but the country's laws see nothing wrong with it — and it certainly is not considered "murder". And yet, what you do with that same child only a few years after he is born, is suddenly a matter of police concern. That's the inconsistency — in the general thinking, not yours — of which I'm trying to raise awareness here.

I am not trying to claim [...] I think

Wouldn't it be nice, if people applied their opinions on rearing children to their own children only?

And this is why we have privacy. That people have disconnected lives where they are one person at work and another with their friends

If, for whatever reasons, an employer wants to know, what sort of a person you are with your friends — and they all will, once the positions they are considering you for reach a certain height, they'll find out. With private investigators, if need be.

What you present to the employer being separate from your personal life is actually a really important part of how we function as a society.

Is it? How so? Can you cite any studies showing usefulness of such separation? Or how this separation changed over the years — for the betterment of society, or otherwise?

The problem isn't embarrassment, it's judgemental people with the power to affect your live.

Oh, thank you for identifying "the problem". For a while here, I thought it was the irresponsible statements and other behaviour of certain people. Turns out, it is the other people's opinion of same...

there may be some issues there for good reason

If we, as a society, trust parents with the decision to abort their children before birth, what possible "good reason" can there be for us to intervene in the decision to let them wonder in the park until dinner after the umbilical cord is cut?

Of course it was open membership.

True. Thunderstorms come up quick enough to beat your drone home.

Around here, RC Planes generally do NOT fly from airfields. The mostly fly form large fields or industrial zoned parking lots. Usually on weekends.

Certainly no reason to suspect drones flying around industrial parks on the weekends, eh? Nor anyone flying a kite t the park or the beach, right? Drones will spot the kite string fine of course.

Drones are going to have to be pretty clever to avoid the kites at the beach while they count the crowd, offer real-time surveillance to the authorities, or tow around some advertising banners.

This is a bit more interesting than it may have seemed earlier.