And, for me, it recontextualizes a lot of his writing knowing his racism. Who he thought "the other" was and how they appeared in his work is colored by who he thought the other was in real life.
Related, I read Lovecraft for the first time a while back and the xenophobia was so overt it was almost humorous.
The story was basically a police detective uncovering ritual cult activity by immigrants (from some unspecified place) in a NY slum. And the narrator (the detective) goes on and on about these strange foreigners and their dark skin, weird languages, heathen religions, etc.
But it only occurred to me after finishing that, though the reader is told from the start that weird cult stuff will ensue, the detective doesn't actually find anything nefarious until pretty late in the story. So with the story's timeline it's mostly just a cop being suspicious of foreigners for being foreign, until many months later he suddenly discovers unspeakable horrors of etc. etc.
You may be interested in the novella "The Ballad of Black Tom", which is a re-telling of "The Horror at Red Hook" from the perspective of the immigrants in the New York slum, and why they decide that maybe dealing with eldritch horrors is a better alternative than trying to reason with this detective that keeps on hassling them for no reason.
If I can find more media than I could ever possibly consume that a) I'll love to death, b) has a fan community who loves it with me, and c) is written by authors I don't viscerally reject, why would I ever compromise on those?
Vanishingly few works are so good, so life altering, that I'd need to set aside my qualms with the author to read them. Like, I'm sure master and commander is a fine series of books. I'm sure it's many people's favorite series. There's no lack of historical fiction out there though. And more of it is being written every day. It's not dismissing the work, but it's more like making it a low priority. Once I've consumed all the high priority media ahead of it, I'll read it, it's just.... the amount of high priority media is effectively infinite.
None of his personal failures leak through into his books. It's not like reading someone who injects their abhorrent philosophy or ideology into their book and you're worried it will rub off on you. Imagine if you found out tomorrow that the author of your favorite book ever was an awful person - I don't see why that would change how you feel about the book.
Anyway - yes there is a ton of content out there, more than enough for 100 lifetimes. If you have two hours and eighteen minutes the movie Master And Command: Far Side of the World does the source material good justice and is an excellent film in its own right. It's quite true to the books so it is probably a good predictor of whether you'd enjoy the books.
It should just be randomly generated when the page loads. "Oh, this user has the 'dormant' flag set? Generate a uid on page load" so all their comments have consistency for that one viewer for that single page load. Then if you click that user to see all the posts by them, you get an empty set. (Have the search queries return nothing for dormant users.)
Both the null search and dynamic generation per pageload (or any other randomisation across accesses or sessions) would reveal which comments/posts have been anonymised. That might be a cue to an adversary to dig deeper.
That information might be possible to determine from a comprehensive archive of HN, but it would be much harder to obtain.
The ability to disown a specific set of content (I'm not sure HN permits this) would avoid that issue. The associated account would just have a limited history, not an empty one. That would be equivalent to an after-the-fact throwaway account, which is much less attention-grabbing.
The only thing they do is change your username on every comment you’ve ever made to something else. But they’re all the same , so you can still link all the comments to one identity, and if even one comment makes it clear it’s a real person, then they all are.
Requesting anything more results in them saying “oh yes, we respect users wishes, blah, blah” and no action.
As a third party observer, it feels like "work with" could still be hiding a lot of thorny differences in judgement over what constitutes material that should be removed. That's why I was outlining a broad-brush mechanical policy that would cover most of the cases (unlinking a user's contributions across different threads from each other).
The problem is that each case is different, and there's no one approach that would cover all of the cases. Indeed I can see that it doesn't actually address the concern in this case, now that I've been able to find out what the account is and investigate the issue.
More broadly, this is why it's extremely unfair to make public accusations the way this user has done in this thread. The way we handle these cases actually takes far more time and involves more effort and care than it would take to implement the approach being advocated here.
This feels like bloviating. You are unlikely to be subject to this law, and even if you were your lawyers probably wouldn't advise you to ignore laws in states where you operate. (If you don't operate in California or on California residents, then you are obviously not subject to this law.) And you're lawyers would definitely not recommend posting publicly that you plan to willfully break this law. Which suggests to me that you are just blowing hot air online.
If you don't know at least a few chemsex enthusiasts, you might be leading a pretty sheltered life. While I'm not into chemsex, it's not exactly uncommon either. Plenty of folks out there getting high and going at it because they enjoy the experience more.
800W peak * 3 is only 2400W which is fine, it's very unlikely to be pumping out that for long. Now if you put in 6 of them you will have problems, but this is the same problem as people plugging in multiple loads, and circuit breakers handle this fine in practice.
Perhaps the bigger risk is a mix of loads and supplies on the same circuit, which could result in large currents on runs without a circuit breaker. Cheap extension cords are are possible problem too.
Arguably the plug in PV should have to talk to a house bus controller, which controls generation and loads. Unfortunately the standardisation process is impossible.
Right. The problem is the kitchen outlets or some other heavily loaded circuit. Running the microwave and kettle and fridge. And powering via these plus the wall. Or putting three of these on an extension cord.
Where do PVs work best? Since you can't put them on the roof, out in the back yard. So you run a long extension cord and plug them into a power board. Or in an apartment, there might be one circuit with an outside outlet, so they all plug into that.
Usually it isn't sunny enough and the load on the circuit isn't large enough, so the wiring will be fine. But sometimes it won't be.
It's amazing that we actually have an IOT use case and the resistance to networking equipment is profound.
The problem isn't the battery catching fire, it's that you no longer have a circuit breaker between your appliances and the generator. Meaning you could, especially if you have several batteries, push load through wires in the wall in excess of what is rated for.
Sure, but now we're talking about some freak situation where you have multiple sources with a combined allowed load of more than 32amps with 3 or more connected devices drawing at their max rating or above, but only when on battery power when you have no grid connection. Like, it could happen but we're entering the "fun to think about" territory.
Why not when grid connected? The problem arises when you are grid connected.
You draw 31 amps from the grid, you draw 6-7 per battery or solar installation behind the circuit breaker. The circuit never trips because the amount crossing the breaker is 31 amps, but the wires could be dealing with 37+. With battery and solar that could be 43+. Some idiot puts two or three of these in their house or puts them on an extension cord, wires are going to get warm.
This is not daisy chained (HN markup hates diagrams) but hanging off wall circuits and power boards. With a situation like this (in 240v) the batteries will sink 2x10A and the PV will supply 16A through point P1. The CB will not trip, nor will appliance fuses.
Since you can just buy 800W modules from Aldi for €300 people will definitely do this by accident. However, it will likely go away because Aldi et Al are also selling their Balkonkraftwerk with batteries included (2000Wh at 1700W) for €1000.
If the comms-over-powerline standards were working then devices could talk to their CB and reserve/advertise capacity. But sadly the power companies have just been fighting to ban home automation and smart grid technology.
I mean sure but right now in the UK you can only add one 800W source without planning permissions.
I'm just not sure what we're trying to say here - can someone create a dangerous situation for themselves by ignoring the rules? Yeah of course.
My example above was for a 32+ amp source(or a collection of sources) which can operate with the grid off, like most battery systems in the UK can - they just have a relay that disconnects the grid when the grid is offline. So it's not illegal, but it's also something that would require a planning permission to have. Can someone just go any buy themselves 10x800W modules, plug them all into one ring and burn their house down? Yes,but that was never a legal setup in the first place.
Traditionally we have been quite prescriptive about what people can do electrically on their side of the meter, in the name of protecting people from themselves. (Even with a grid isolation switch.) Allowing generation that isn't wired in by a licensed electrician is a big change in regulation, so people are jittery and vested interests are using that.
So it isn't no risk and it isn't a huge risk. Some people will do stupid things. I think we could do more to protect people using plug-in generation, and simultaneously improve grid regulation and reduce costs. As engineers I think we are duty bound to achieve these objectives, but accountants run energy companies now and donate to politicians, and politicians run policy. What we have left is technical innovation that creates economic impetus.
So I'm in favour of technology that makes low cost PV+storage safe and available, economically and with just enough regulation.
With the US banning Chinese inverters, it will be interesting to see if that spawns new tech, or if they just licence build/assemble Chinese junk. Prices will be higher initially but competition should be strong. Unfortunately US standards for software/interoperability seem absent. IEEE 2030.5 is not nationally mandated in the US AFAIK, and it is weak on cyber assurance.
IEEE 2030.5 is also designed for grid to consumer and doesn't anticipate having multiple PV devices that need to talk, let alone batteries. The Germans just exempted everything below 960W, so people routinely have several panels plugged in.
