You hear horror stories about poor accusations of harassment. And then you hear things like this. That's disgusting and I hope you pressed charges. Nobody (men nor women) should stand for that shit.

It really sucks that men are expected to make the advances in this area. It just opens the door for a lot of misunderstanding, hurt feelings, and serious repercussions. It would be better for everybody if there was an equal chance of a woman asking a man out. But unfortunately, sitting and hoping isn't a viable strategy for men, so it creates a pretty fine line to walk. Obviously continuing in the face of a clear rejection is far, far over the line (and starting with overt sexual contact has left the line beyond the horizon) but there's a lot more grey area than is really comfortable for anybody. Men have been conditioned since childhood to pursue women despite initial rejection, by everything from Disney movies to award-winning sitcoms to classic novels, and women have been conditioned to wait and be pursued by those same influences. Obviously there's a right and wrong way to pursue, and once again your (and countless other) examples are beyond the pale, but I think women tend to underestimate how much power they wield here. It's even a trope, a woman who "can't find any good men" because only the jerks are brave enough (or don't care enough) to risk going over the line.

And - don't forget - people ripped her company a new asshole for daring to fire her, whereas the blowback to the company that fired the guy was negligible. Despite the fact that she was clearly, unambiguously, and disgustingly in the wrong. I'm sorry, but overhearing some private conversation does not give someone the right to chime in - or take a picture to shame publicly. And "sexual" is not "sexist", and she was so caught up in her own narrative that she misinterpreted innocent talk about wanting to "fork the repo" (that the on-stage developer was talking about) as something sexual. A dongle joke is vaguely distasteful, but it's hard to see how it affects anybody at all unless you consider the idea of sexuality to be violence against women. Yes I know some people actually think this, but then there is no conversation to have.

And yes, what the trolls did to Ms. Richards was despicable and completely out of line. Rape and death threats are never appropriate, but (on the internet) rarely threatening. There's no getting around the fact that had a man done this to a woman, there would be few rape threats - maybe some death threats. But the overall amount of, and substance of, the blowback would be far, far greater. Look at what they did to Larry Summers for stating a scientifically uncontroversial fact (men have a higher standard deviation of intelligence, which leads to more men at the highest and lowest ends of the spectrum despite average intelligence being the same). It cost him his job and a presidential appointment. And it's only gotten worse since then!

The lesson was: if you're a man, don't ever offend a woman or your life will be ruined at a distance. And you don't know what might offend a woman, and there is no recourse if you didn't mean to cause offense (or can't understand how something could cause offense) since it's in the eye of the beholder and (explicitly - it's offensive to suggest otherwise) not open for critique. Ms. Richards lost her job as well, but her job was as a "developer evangelist" and none of the (predominantly-male) developers would ever risk speaking to her after that incident, rather compromising her effectiveness.

I'm very much a feminist, but "feminism" is no longer about the simple idea that "women and men are equally capable of both good and bad". Hint: how often do you hear "feminists" say in the same breath that we need equality and more women in a field, because women are better? No, I don't mean "diversity of opinion" (which I completely agree with - we need more women, black people, older and younger people, etc to make sure we make the best decisions), I mean things like "sexism is bad and we should have a woman president, since there would be fewer wars". Even if it were true that women in power act differently than men, which it's not, the proponents obviously don't at all think women are equal.

If you think men are equally good at it, you've never seen teenage girls. Holy shit, the cruelest guys I ever met in high school (and we had a few beat-you-until-you're-bloody-and-leave-you-under-a-bridge class acts) weren't one tenth as cruel as *dozens* of the girls. They organized a campaign against this one girl so vicious and drawn-out that she tried to kill herself. Eventually her parents put her in a different school a half hour away, and this clique was thrilled that they'd "won". Even after she'd left, they had a great old time continuing to undermine her in her absence by spreading the rumor that she'd gotten pregnant and had to a special school. About a month later, they'd picked a new member of that clique to ostracize. I knew 17 year old girls who weren't talking to other 17 year old girls because of some insult that happened when they were 4 years old. The guys would have a fight and get it over with, or if it were more of a bully-type situation they'd set their terms and the target would abide by them and be left alone - but the girls actively tried to find their target to inflict more pain. I eventually ended up unpopular enough that nobody bothered me, and wise enough not to care, that I managed to make it through alright.

I'm just going by my experience here, but it's been corroborated by almost everyone I've ever asked, including other women (who had horror stories that were more private and went far, far beyond anything I'd ever seen).

Hear hear. I went to a school that had this mentality, that there are two sides to every fight by definition so it's easiest to just suspend both parties. My brother was assaulted by some bully and didn't even fight back, and was suspended since "they had a fight" - thankfully, my parents had enough sense to rip the administration a new asshole.

We have a real problem with this mentality in this country - the cable news outlets and others have decided that there are always two equally legitimate viewpoints (or sides to an argument) and present them equally in the interest of fairness. Unfortunately, this is unfair if the arguments are unequally valid, which is often the case.

Hang on a second. One of the smartest things I ever read on the topic had nothing to do with tech - it was a female psychologist who also happened to be a private pilot, and she was talking about getting more females interested in flying. (I don't think somebody could write such a candid article about tech, unfortunately.)

Her basic premise was that females need more encouragement from other women who've "been there" in order to feel comfortable taking that path. Basically, the "odd one out" thing you mention. But males are more apt to do something even in the face of active discouragement. I've certainly observed this in myself and other males, barely (if ever) observed it in females, and it makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint as well (intuitively - I don't know if there are any studies that explicitly show this, but if risk-taking is on a bell-curve like most traits, in general the standard deviation in males is greater than in females). In professional flying, there's a lot of discouragement - it's hard, pretty thankless, the pay is crap for a long time despite needing a lot of expensive training just to start, and you're away a lot. Most pro pilots I know are in it for some version of prestige, which we know motivates women less than men.

In other words, to use your language, women are "herding creatures" to a greater extent then men (though I'd probably say "social creatures"). Men are more likely to find a niche in which they can excel, while women are more likely to stick to a "tried and tested" path. Note that I said "more likely", not "will always" - there are plenty of men who go into some boring average field, and plenty of women who don't, but on a societal level the averages and characteristics are important. And I don't think either of these characteristics are necessarily bad, or desirable to change. Both approaches to live have substantial downsides, and it's probably better to have a mix.

As a guy who actually drives an ambulance, please please *please* don't go through a red light. We have a siren that allows us to break traffic laws, and warns other vehicles that they need to do something unusual. In fact, there's a school of thought in emergency vehicle operation that says that you really shouldn't use the lights and siren at all, since some percentage of people will do something stupid in their presence and some percentage of those will get hurt or worse. And those few seconds just aren't that important - minutes, sure, but it's rare that the siren saves minutes. I try to do most of my driving without the siren, and only use it to make someone pull off to the side or break a traffic law (e.g., running a red light) that requires its use - but if traffic is moving, there's really no need (and using it is poor driving).

If some emergency vehicle is right behind you with the sirens blaring and you're at a red light, flip him off and stay put until the light changes. He can and should turn off the siren so as to not induce people to do something stupid. It would have been even better to have not gotten himself stuck in the first place, since he's allowed to go into opposing traffic so as to not require extraordinary measures of the other drivers.

No they won't.

From here:

In addition, Google Public DNS engineers have proposed a technical solution called EDNS Client Subnet. This proposal allows resolvers to pass in part of the client's IP address (the first 24/64 bits or less for IPv4/IPv6 respectively) as the source IP in the DNS message, so that nameservers can return optimized results based on the user's location rather than that of the resolver. To date, we have deployed an implementation of the proposal for many large CDNs (including Akamai) and Google properties. The majority of geo-sensitive domain names are already covered.

Getting into orbit isn't about height, it's about speed. The vast majority of the work an orbital rocket does is to get going fast enough - getting the height is pretty easy by comparison.

https://what-if.xkcd.com/58/

It's all defined by the manufacturer and the FAA, who basically work together on airworthiness - the key word. You can only fly an airworthy airplane, so anything that affects the airworthiness of the airplane must be signed off on by a certified mechanic before further flight. The manufacturer has extensive and highly detailed rules (which they're required to enumerate for certification) relating to exactly what kinds of damage, wear, and modifications affect the airworthiness of the airplane. A bent fairing might not require anything at all. A popped tire probably requires inspection of the wheel and brake as part of the tire replacement procedure. There's all sorts of "must check X while fixing Y" rules, and everything has a lifetime - including the prop and engine. Furthermore, the FAA occasionally publishes "airworthiness directives" (ADs) which, usually in response to some sort of accident or failure pattern, must be addressed in a timely fashion (at next inspection, within 100 hours, before further flight, etc - whatever is specified). Non-compliance with an AD means that the airplane is unairworthy.

Most small planes will never need an X-raying - I think the reason that the big boys use it is because they have more exotic and high-stress components (e.g. compressor turbine blades in a jet engine) or they're trying to take a more evidence-based view of failure than "replace after 2000 hours".

(IAAPilot)

Doctors aren't walking prescription pads that you go to after you diagnose your symptoms online. Doctors are supposed to do the best thing for you, whatever that is - what you think you want from them is obviously a very strong factor, but certainly not absolute. A physician may absolutely be taking the ethical high ground by refusing your demands - say, for antibiotics for a cold, or a medically-unnecessary amputation for apotemnophilia, or even seeing you at all if you're stupid enough to be unvaccinated by choice.

In fact I'd say that the doctor would be remiss if he didn't bring up adoption in a discussion of options - how could he ensure that he was obtaining informed consent for whatever he ended up doing otherwise? And it's clear that he was doing the GP a great service by getting him to think about it.

People like you who want them to be are what's wrong with medicine nowadays, frankly. We need more doctors with the stones to tell off idiots who think a doctor is a guy that hands out pills. Most people don't treat their car mechanic like that.

Almost *ANY* CGI is vulnerable, because the way CGI works is by environment variables. And the attacker can control them. You don't have to be doing anything stupid or wrong to be affected. It looks like other ways of executing web applications (e.g., mod_php) are safe - to the extent that they don't use a popen or a system() or something, which is a pretty common thing to do.

Your DHCP client (on a Linux) machine passes data to its hooks via environment variables. These can be set by the attacker. Even better, it's running as root. Boom, connect to a rogue AP and get rooted while receiving an address assignment.

You probably do Git commits via a (locked-down) SSH login. That's compromised.

Shells are everywhere. Again, this doesn't require your application to have screwed up. This is a flaw in how environment variables are parsed and set, which is something that was presumed safe, so nobody thought about it. Bad bad bad bad. Not Heartbleed bad, but close.

Fair enough. About the most concise thing I can say is: airplanes are not permitted to fly into structures on your property, but you are also not allowed to put up structures to prevent airplane flights. Things like "spite poles" are illegal because they're aren't connected with "reasonable use". You can build a 2000 foot tower, but you need to have some legitimate use in mind (like "providing TV to North Dakota") that's not "keep airplanes away". And if you try to do it near an airport, it gets more tricky - even 100 feet might be well inside an approach path.

A court might well decide that your right to build a 10 story apartment building just past the airport fence is outweighed by the public's use of the runway you're interfering with, and take away those "air rights" via eminent domain (really, an easement). If you're interested in reading more about this stuff, the Wikipedia page on easements is a good place to start. Easements can be created in many ways - explicitly or implicitly or "by accident". Trying to build into a flight path that's been in use since before you bought your house (which most have) may be viewed by the courts as similar to putting a gate in a driveway you share with the lot behind yours. That's if your "air rights" aren't already restricted by statue - and they are in most places, especially near airports.

tl;dr - Most people who attempt to exercise far-reaching ideas about their property rights discover that they aren't as far-reaching as they'd imagined.

You're simply not correct. Minimum safe altitude over populated areas doesn't apply for the purposes of takeoff or landing, which "the surface area around the airport" most certainly is. And Class B airspace extends to the ground for several miles around an airport. Hell, Class D airspace (for a small towered airport) extends to the ground as well - and there's a *ton* of D airports in the country.

As far as the GP was talking about, you can check the surface area yourself: here. You'll see the 110/SFC areas - it goes from the surface to 11,000 feet MSL (not 10k, though it is about 10k AGL) anywhere in that border. You'll note that it includes much of Dallas. In general, Class B surface areas seem to have a radius of about 6 nautical miles, though it varies with the runway layout, altitude, and traffic patterns. Look at Chicago for instance - much of the city is within that border. I'm pretty sure it's not all owned by the airport. D airspace extends to the surface for a range of (generally) 4nm, again that's a huge chunk of land that I'm pretty sure the airport doesn't own. My landing approach at my home airport takes me about 300 feet over a large mall.

Well, good thing it's not you judging, right?

Um... this is exactly how pilot licensing works - same aircraft, same actions, difference is money? Bam, you need a commercial pilot certificate, a private pilot certificate won't do. Commercial operators are held to a higher safety standard, which makes sense - money brings with it a set of pressures and constraints that your average weekend pilot doesn't have, so their skills should be better.

Would you prefer the FAA require certification of all drone operators, commercial or not? Because they'll do that before they allow commercial usage of drones without at least some oversight.

You're misreading the regulations. Over a sparsely populated area there is no altitude restriction, there's a distance to "person, vessel, vehicle, or structure" requirement. You can fly as low as you want over e.g., a cornfield (say, for crop dusting) or the desert or ocean so long as you don't compromise the "emergency landing without undue hazard" rule. I'd argue that it's not reasonable to expect everyone who buys a drone to become intimately familiar with 14 CFR 91's requirements, so some general rules are warranted. For instance: what if someone wants to operate a drone within a Class E surface area (which is within several miles of many airports, and explicitly goes all the way to the ground because it's for the purposes of taking off or landing) - should they be subject to visibility and cloud clearance requirements? The reason they exist is because instrument traffic coming in to land may be coming out of the clouds and VFR traffic needs to stay clear enough to see-and-avoid them. Seems fairly reasonable, right? But a drone might be below 500 feet and still kill someone if they don't follow these rules.

But that's not really the point. Something makes an aircraft subject to these regulations, right? You can't just get a plane and say you're not an airplane and as long as you fly it below "navigable airspace" you're fine - in fact that's the exact opposite of the rules. The FAA certainly doesn't assert authority over hovercraft or other "ground effect vehicles" - it seems reasonable to assume that the FAA considers its authority over aircraft to begin when they can and/or are designed to be flown into the "navigable airspace". Many drones can fly over 500 feet just fine. I suspect the FAA would be less concerned about a drone with a GPS map magically kept up to date that prevented it from flying into any airport's approach path, and kept it below the minimum altitude for manned flight (including refusing to take off from a field or other "sparsely populated area").

I think the regulation just hasn't caught up with drones, but they're working on it. It won't be the free-for-all some people want it to be, but the FAA isn't some antagonistic supervillain of a government agency. They just want to make sure these things don't get sucked into someone's jet engine or going through a windshield, and they also don't want commercial operations without a higher standard of safety. I'm a private pilot and there's all sorts of rules about money changing hands in regards to my flight, and while it's occasionally obnoxious the intent to prevent a bunch of "Billy Bob's Charter" services from popping up everywhere. If you're in a manned aircraft and you want to be compensated for flight, you need to be a commercial pilot, which has higher standards. I don't see why the same basic principle of having higher standards shouldn't apply to commercial drone operations - and neither does the FAA, which is why they're going through the rulemaking process as we speak.