Declanomous

I guess this means we must be mortal enemies!

Honestly though, as William Wrigley Jr once wrote, "When two men always agree, one of them is unnecessary." I have one friend that I disagree with about literally everything, and I respect him a lot because every discussion we have is thoughtful, and my ideas and beliefs are better for having discussed them with him.

Anyways, your political bent is probably based on what types of posts you've read or liked, or even who has liked your comments, even if they were apolitical.

> boulder selections

Would that mean more rock and less bluegrass? (I'm kidding, of course)

In all seriousness though, the problem probably is the data set to a certain extent. I am pretty adventurous, true, but at the same time I think the problem is that regardless of what data we collect, we only have the ability to determine if something is inoffensive.

All you need to do is look at a site that aggregates reviews like Yelp or Amazon, and read some reviews. 95% of reviews are either 1 star or 5 stars, and it's obvious from reading the text that the rating is meaningless. "I ordered the wrong item by mistake, 1 star" "Food is overpriced, but the bathrooms are clean and wait staff is attractive, 5 stars."

I find star ratings most useful because people who rate things 2-4 stars generally have the most nuanced and productive things to say about the product, and actually rate things what they think they should be rated, rather than using the rating system as a vote for "rate this higher/lower."

I don't think it's possible to actually come up with good recommendations based on user-reported like/dislike rating. It's not wrong for a user to dislike a song because it reminds them of an ex, but using that as a basis for a recommendation to someone else is entirely useless.

Systems like Rotten Tomatoes works really well in this regard, but almost has the opposite problem, which is that it tends to underrate movies with broad appeal, but that's generally not a problem since users will be exposed to those movies anyways.

It's entirely possible that Facebook found that your comments caused less engagement for other people on Facebook, and therefore doesn't want you to comment.

It's also possible that Facebook determined that this person has substantially different politics than you, and has put you in different 'boxes'. You can actually check what groups Facebook thinks you belong in. For instance, Facebook thinks my peer group is 'Starting Adult Life', and my US Political Stance is 'very liberal'.

(Facebook also thinks I work in a production occupation, like mining, or lumber, which couldn't be further from the truth, which explains all the ads for industrial equipment)

I went to high school in a really conservative place, and I'm friends with a lot of people who have wildly different views on religion and politics. A few years ago I stopped seeing their posts, even if I added them to the group of people I see first on Facebook. Meanwhile, I started seeing a ton of posts from people who I barely knew in college, presumably because their 'beliefs' were much closer to mine.

I'm extremely cynical, and I find dogmatic people of similar beliefs as annoying as people whose beliefs I disagree with, and my Facebook feed became a personal hell of dogmatism, especially leading up to the 2016 election. As a result I check Facebook at most once a week. It's entirely possible that leaving the platform improved the experience for some of my more conservative peers from high school, who no longer have to see my posts on the walls of mutual friends.

I can't stand the fact that organizations hide behind "algorithms" as an excuse for every unintended side-effect.

It's no surprise that algorithms create an information bubble for us. I like to use music as an example: the best music recommendations I've ever received have been from friends. I'll describe music I'm listening to and like, and they'll recommend something for me. I'd say 50% of the time I find it unobjectionable, 30% of the time I hate it, and 20% of the time I love it.

Sites have been trying to replicate this functionality using algorithms for a well over a decade. Last.fm used to be a great way for me find music. As far as I could tell, it would just pick music from people who listened to the same artists as you. I'd say I found 30% of the music unobjectionable, 50% of the music terrible, and 20% of the music great. Functionally, this was remarkably similar to my friends recommending me music, because I only care about the music I loved.

Over time their algorithm got 'better' and nearly stopped recommending music I disliked, however I found that it mostly just recommended me music that was in the unobjectionable middle ground of 'meh'. I stopped looking for music on Last.fm because it stopped giving me music I loved.

We've positioned machine learning as a replacement to curation, but what it really does is put forth the least objectionable content. Machine learning lacks the ability to deal with the nuances surrounding controversial or challenging content. It never takes the leap of faith that a person would when recommending you something.

I am really interested to see how this all plays out over the next few years, because I think people are beginning to realize they are addicted to the perpetual stream of 'good enough' content. The network effect will probably protect Facebook for the time being, I assume the first sites affected will be content-driven, like YouTube.

Of course, XKCD addressed the issues I have with algorithms far better than I could ever hope to:

https://xkcd.com/1831/

In context, I believe that OP was arguing for eliminating capital gains from our current system, not totally rewriting the way our taxes work such that capital gains was eliminated but we recovered those taxes in another manner.

My argument accounts for this:

> Of course you could argue that you can account for all of this using negative externalities. In that case you might as well tax capital gains to account for the negative externalities. I suppose you could tax something else, like lifetime earnings, but the point is I feel comfortable making the claim that not taxing capital gains is idiotic.

I mean, ideally we would have a system where negative externalities were taxed appropriately, however that is a monumentally complicated task, and I somewhat doubt it could be done efficiently. This is especially true when you start dealing with externalities that arise from situations like "the reason why eliminating capital gains tax is productive is because people will continue to reinvest their money because it's the most productive use for their money," where reinvest effectively means you end up buying more and more of the economy.

What regulations do you enact to prevent this from devolving into feudalism? How do you ensure that system you have put in place isn't destroyed by regulatory capture? What if having a ton of money is a negative externality in and of itself, even though it means you contribute more efficiently to the economy?

I know that capital gains tax is inefficient, but it's an easy tax to levy, it's hard to evade, and politicians can understand it.

Removing capital gains tax and accounting for the externalities is not idiotic. However, removing capital gains tax in our current system would almost definitely be an idiotic move.

My topic statement was thus:

> Economic theories that only looks to maximize economic productivity while ignoring philosophical or ethical concerns are idiotic.

I did not claim that economic theories cannot address philosophical or ethical concerns, I claimed that economic theories which do not take these in to account are idiotic.

I am not an economist, but I took quite a few economics classes in college. I am confident that I know enough to say that eliminating the capital gains tax is not a policy that would be pursued by someone looking to address concerns of regarding equality or the environment.

The economic theory that supports the elimination of capital gains tax is one that focuses on maximizing productiveness above all else. It's the type of policy you come up with if you got your hands on a macro 101 textbook and you forgot other people exist.

I never said that less efficient resource allocation would result in more utility. That's a straw man. My claim is the argument that more efficient resource allocation would result in greater utility is almost certainly false in a hypothetical situation where capital gains tax is eliminated.

What evidence have we ever seen that allowing wealthy individuals to make more money results in increased utility? There is literally no reason to believe that any of the marginal increase in resources would be expended on environmental and social concerns.

The only reason you could justify eliminating capital gains is if you literally believe all government is evil.

I'm familiar with the theory, but I think economic theories that only looks to maximize economic productivity while ignoring philosophical or ethical concerns are idiotic.

If you don't take into account what is being produced and why, you are left with a line of tautological reasoning that more productivity is good because more productivity is good.

The reason this is idiotic because there are a lot of ways to maximize productivity where the vast majority of people do not benefit. Not only that, but there is absolutely no reason that maximizing the productiveness of an economy results in maximum utility (in the philosophical sense).

Even if you could demonstrate that economic productivity was positively correlated with (philosophical) utility, you'd have absolutely no guarantee that utility would be distributed equitably. You could literally have 1 super happy person with everyone else on the planet enslaved in perpetual (productive) agony.

That's even before you get into the fact that maximizing production now probably ends up creating a hellscape of a planet tomorrow.

Of course you could argue that you can account for all of this using negative externalities. In that case you might as well tax capital gains to account for the negative externalities. I suppose you could tax something else, like lifetime earnings, but the point is I feel comfortable making the claim that not taxing capital gains is idiotic.

The only point that seems unfair is point 3, which can be mollified by adjusting for inflation.

If we reduce points 1 and 2 to their logical conclusion, capital gains should not be taxed at all. This is idiotic. Due to the structural advantages individuals with money have investing, you'd basically be creating a system where people with money would capture almost all of the wealth.

The end goal shouldn't be the most efficient economy possible, it should be the highest standard of living for the individuals in your country. To that end, a certain amount of taxation is necessary.

I got a Kindle for Christmas, and I've been reading through Discworld chronologically. I'm on Raising Steam right now, and I already feel like I'm going to have to reread the series with a list of references open. There were a lot of places where it was apparent there was a reference to something, but it was completely inaccessible as an American in his late 20's.

At the same time, I almost feel like I shouldn't read the last book for a while, it's going to be really bittersweet.

The island natives in the pacific got a lot of fantastic things from the servicemen who visited their islands during WWII. In an effort to bring them back, they emulated everything they saw the servicemen doing. In effect, they were just going through the motions without purpose.

They built runways and carved wooden headphones like they saw the aviators wearing.

Here's a summary from Wikipedia:

With the end of the war, the military abandoned the airbases and stopped dropping cargo. In response, charismatic individuals developed cults among remote Melanesian populations that promised to bestow on their followers deliveries of food, arms, Jeeps, etc. The cult leaders explained that the cargo would be gifts from their own ancestors, or other sources, as had occurred with the outsider armies. In attempts to get cargo to fall by parachute or land in planes or ships again, islanders imitated the same practices they had seen the soldiers, sailors, and airmen use. Cult behaviors usually involved mimicking the day-to-day activities and dress styles of US soldiers, such as performing parade ground drills with wooden or salvaged rifles.[14] The islanders carved headphones from wood and wore them while sitting in fabricated control towers. They waved the landing signals while standing on the runways. They lit signal fires and torches to light up runways and lighthouses.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult

Windows actually are used for visual inspection in flight in a number of cases. You can actually see markings above certain rows where a pilot or a flight attendant could look out and inspect something.

I think the types of things they would be looking for are flap deployment, icing, damage to the wing, gear deployment (though there is usually a window in the floor for this), etc.

There's a great YouTube channel called Mentour Pilot that covers a lot of stuff like this, but I can't find his video that discusses visual inspections.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwpHKudUkP5tNgmMdexB3ow/fea...

I think there are a lot of ways to make the rules explicit that don't require formal reviews. A formal review process can be equally biased by incentivizing people to game the system by targeting easy wins rather than tackling harder, more important problems.

For instance, tackling existing bugs or documenting code often seems to be undervalued compared with writing new code, when writing new code often just introduces new bugs and requires new documentation. If you start tracking bugs, people will benefit from creating and tackling easy bugs, while tackling harder bugs is effectively a punishment.

Goodhart's law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law

My dad managed to kill a 2 year old Samsung SSD; it wouldn't even show up on the bios. Tech support was so incredulous they actually had an Electrical Engineer on their staff call him.

I didn't believe him either. I was like "Dad, SSDs are designed to fail in a way you can recover data. What SATA cable are you using? Is the port dead?"

Turns out it was literally the drive.

From my understanding, wage scale is often a point that is negotiated, so it varies from union to union.

Some unions have rules where you can get more pay based on performance, holding certain certifications, or experience. Other unions have rules where pay is related to tenure, and employees compensation is directly proportional to their tenure.

The concept of white-collar unions is really interesting. I know a lot of white-collar workers think unions would mean that their crappy coworkers would abuse the system to make the same money while doing just enough work to avoid being fired.

I can understand the argument behind that, but I think unionization could help certain white-collar workers force their employers to support changes that improve quality of life and reduce burnout and stress.

For example, a sysadmin union might be able to dictate only a certain number of on-call nights a month, or prevent companies from calling sysadmins while they are on vacation. A developer union could mandate a certain number of hours a developer could work before getting comp time or paid overtime. A union could give developers who are worried about what they are being asked to do might be illegal or immoral the ability to say no without being punished (think the VW scandal).

A lot of white collar fields already have a body performing the role of a defacto union because they have licensing bodies. I can see why techy types don't have a licensing body, since techy types are a bit more rebellious than engineers as a whole, and we haven't had any 'major' disasters to force regulation of the profession. That being said developers are constantly working in environments that hurt their productivity and the quality of their work and at some point we need a way to enforce better working standards on organizations.

The difference is he basically figured out that sometimes you should knock the bone crud off, and sometimes you should drill a hole in the skull.

According to other sources he did a bunch of research on novel ways to access the inside of the ear, so that may have played a part.

But no, it doesn't really go that deep into what make the operation unique.

To understand what is going on, you need to understand the anatomy of the ear. Normally the eardrum vibrates, which moves the little bones in the ear, which transfer the vibrations to the cochlea, which sends sound to the brain.

The issue at hand is that the small bones (the staples in this case) can basically get gunked up with bone stuff, which prevents transferring vibrations from the ear drum to the cochlea.

Early on they used staples mobilization to knock the bone crud off. The problem is sometimes mobilizing the staples caused the fluid to leak out of the inner ear. This fluid is used for balance, so this would cause vertigo.

The next step was completely bypassing the staples and the ear drum by drilling a hole in the back of the head that lead directly to the cochlea. Not only is this not as effective at hearing as a fully-functioning ear, but people feel strongly about having extra holes in their head, to the extent that extra holes in your head are used as an example of something that is extremely undesirable in a common figure of speech.

This guy comes along and decides he should maybe test patients to see if they have bone crud on their staples before he drills holes in their heads, so as to make sure that they are actually treating the right problem. This involves pushing on the staples a bit to see if they are frozen.

While preparing to drill a hole in the head of one patient, he determines that he indeed has bone crud on his staples. He decides to see what happens if he pushes a bit harder. He breaks the staple free, thus eliminating the need to drill a hole in his patients skull.

His patient is really excited about getting his hearing back without increasing the number of holes in his head. He is so excited, he asks the doctor to push gently on the other side.

Shkreli messed up by continually taunting US law enforcement. He probably wouldn't have had the book thrown at him if he wasn't constantly talking about how great it was to be an evil capitalist, and instead gave the mealy-mouthed platitudes that every other CEO of pharma companies does.

Ah, I saw that the Dell XPS came with Linux and had a touch screen, and I was kind of wondering about that. I guess I'll have to try Linux with a touchscreen again.

My Surface Pro 1 is the only computer I have with a touchscreen right now, and it has enough other driver issues (the wifi and the Wacom drivers suck) that I probably won't be trying again on that.

I bought the original Surface Pro the week it came out. I actually really like the interface and thought that it was great. I didn't really understand why so many people hated Windows 8 until I tried to use in on a desktop. Even with a touchscreen it's pretty annoying.

I'd been using Linux as my primary OS for years at that point, so I think I'm pretty critical of Microsoft in general, however they did a good job building a touchscreen interface.

The state of touchscreen support in Linux was pretty bad the last time I checked though.

Costco doesn't do this as far as I'm aware. I think their only profit comes from their membership fees, they intend to break even on everything else.

That doesn't mean they are always the cheapest option, but they aren't messing with prices to gain customers and then making a profit, since they aren't pricing things to make a profit in the first place.

I assume in most places the cables are put on poles. Have you ever seen poles in some cities? It look like a 200 foot tall bird is using them to build a nest.

I don't understand why New York has two employees per train. Nearly everywhere else in the world has 1.

The person in the middle's job seems to be operating the doors and making sure the train is berthed correctly, but all you have to do is put a line where the front of the train has to line up and the driver can do it. As for the doors, it's not like the driver has much else to do when in the station.

That definitely doesn't happen in Chicago. Nothing drives me nuts like pushing on the back door of a bus when it's completely stopped only to jam it cause I jumped the gun by like .2 seconds because the light hadn't come on yet.

Location: Chicago

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: No

Technologies: Linux, Docker, Python, Django, OAuth, Azure

Resume: I'm currently in the process of updating it to reflect what I've been doing in my most recent role.

email: dylan \ datafication \ com

I've been working for a startup that's running out of runway. I built the REST-server using Django with Oauth, JWT, and Azure/AWS storage. The services are dockerized and deployed automatically on Azure.

My previous experience was database marketing, and working with the other engineers on this project has made me realize how much I enjoy working with the IT/devops side of things, as well as how much I actually know about Linux/server-side technologies. Experience-wise I'm probably junior-level.

Wow, you have to be 14 to be home alone for a lengthy period of time in Illinois? That's stupid. Maybe like, overnight, or for any meals that require substantial cooking, but my parent left me home alone with my younger brother way before then.

It's not very hard to make breakfast or lunch, and any issue that would need a parent to solve is probably something they would have to call 911 or bring us to the hospital for anyways.

The thing is that a lot of suburban areas are much younger than high-density areas. So they have borrowed for capital projects such as infrastructure and new buildings. They aren't paying the true costs of maintaining those things yet.

Cities on the other hand have to pay for the upkeep on their existing infrastructure, as well as replacing that infrastructure.

Replacing infrastructure is much more expensive than building it out in the first place. A lot of suburbs will fail when it comes time to replace their infrastructure. It just hasn't happened yet because in the United States you can keep building out forever. Furthermore people move away from areas burdened by the costs of replacing infrastructure.

The entire rust belt is being brutalized by the fact that formerly suburban areas have collapsed. The urban areas were already brutalized in the 50s, 60s and 70s by white flight.

23andme and ancestry.com use a process which needs more genetic material than is available from hair or toothbrushes. You have to get a fair amount of spit in a tube.

Ignoring practical issues with obtaining the sample, I think a good lawyer could probably find a way to sue you for any damages that you caused. As for whether it's a criminal act, I think that it might be a form of assault, maybe.

I know it would violate certain state laws regarding biometric data, but the penalty for violating those laws appears to be civil by and large, not criminal.

Biologically speaking, blue light performs a very specific function in your circadian rhythm. It's possible that your lights and phone are not bright enough for it to be an issue; the sun is insanely bright. I do kind of doubt that the contrast has anything to do with it though.

There are a lot of feedback loops in your body though, so it's entirely possible that your body produce the protein that triggers the breakdown of melatonin though.

Other theory: you bulbs are blue, but are missing the particular blue that causes meletonin to be broken down by the body.

I have 6500k 92 cri bulbs for most of my lighting and it definitely screws up my sleep cycle if I don't remember to switch to my 3000k area lighting. I have a really flexible schedule so I didn't notice how screwed up my schedule was for a while.