actusual

Hackernews is an interesting example, as it is HEAVILY moderated, and some would say that this leads to a much higher level of commenting quality.

> I think the basic unit of democracy is the citizen, and the citizen is not a private person. Being a citizen means participating in public life, and public life brings with it, trust, accountability and reputation.

I disagree with this, mostly for the reason that the requirement for trust, accountability and reputation to exist in a society is different person to person when conditioned on wealth. If I have massive wealth, I can participate in society and democracy entirely anonymously. I vote, which is anonymous, and that's it. I have no requirement for trust, accountability and reputation.

Not only that but trust, accountability and reputation are all subjective measures based on who is measuring them. Mark Zuckerberg is trustworthy, accountable, and has high reputation for some folks at FB, while a large number of other people would disagree with that. Who's opinion matters? Has his measures of trust, accountability and reputation changed over time? Additionally, trust, accountability and reputation don't matter to him if he's still one of the richest people on earth.

Took away the ports just to bring 'em back and play the hero. Apple playing 5d chess.

Sure, and I understand this sentiment. But in practice/industry, it's best not to build/deploy models you don't understand. Edge cases in ML models that are fully automating business decisions can be pretty dangerous. I think the likelihood of a penicillin level discovery happening when I'm trying to train a model to make better marketing budget decisions for a company is quite low.

Instead of saying "I'm going to try this, maybe it will work", you should instead be asking if wavelet transforms are appropriate given the domain you are building a model for. Don't just transform data in the hopes that it will magically work.

The comparison to HN is wrong. Moderators would first have to read the comments and let them through.

Who would be in first here?

As an aside (mostly to add some perspective around Scandinavian comments), my Swedish friend moved to America and became a citizen exactly for this version of the American dream. As far as he's concerned, it's FAR more difficult to become wealthy in Sweden.

> The only purpose of the salary taboo is to keep rich people rich.

While it is part of the motivation, calling it the only purpose is just hilariously wrong, completely lacks any nuance/empathy, and a single case of something existing outside of the "only purpose" statement proves it wrong immediately.

My brother ex-communicated my dad because he wouldn't stop hounding him for money. My brother became wealthy at a young age, and made the unfortunate mistake of divulging his finances to my narcissistic father. My father made terrible financial decisions in his life and subsists entirely on social security. He also bragged routinely about cheating on my mom, who got the courage to pull us out of that situation when we were kids. Any extra money I have would go to my mom, not my piece of crap dad.

I can't imagine how terrible it would be if he simply knew how much money I make.

Is the FBI missing a lot of bomb plots?

I think Steve was a product guy and Cook is more likely a business guy. I'm not making a value judgement either way, but I do see a lack of product vision/innovation under Cook, and I believe product vision/innovation is what excites me most about consumer electronics. I think the fact that Steve released several "once in a lifetime" level of success products in such a short time span is evidence enough for this.

Something that Steve jobs did well was understanding that building great products and successful business metrics aren't necessarily always aligned, especially in a product's nascent period.

But this isn't the point, and comparing the two eras is useless IMO. It isn't where we were that matters, it where we could have been if Steve were still driving the ship.

Steve quotes in the video "I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been" which is of course a Wayne Gretsky quote, and I think it captures this sentiment very well. Moving from leader to follower is such a classic move for an incumbent like Apple, and with Steve they never seemed to lose that insurgent mindset, even when they were absolutely enormous. They've steadily stagnated and truly lost that founder's mentality, and it sucks. I miss Steve Jobs a lot, and think about him often.

Still down here.

I'm experiencing this as well.

For those unfamiliar with IAP as a term of art: IAP = In App Purchases

Ah yes, the ol' app interstitial where they hound you to download the app by interrupting whatever you were trying to do on their site. I hate websites that use these.

We're trying to maintain the puritanical simplicity of the internet, didn't you hear?

On a more serious note, I tend to agree with you and would add one more thing: I have several friends who have explicitly asked for more websites with this paid model. My friends want to pay to not be advertised to or have their data sold. It also happens to be the case that those same people all express their opinions in a very similar style as this website's copy.

The idea that an AI must have the ability to learn how to do anything in order to learn how to drive seems like an extremely pessimistic and misguided goalpost. That is also not how iterative development works.

Definitionally, the achievement of self driving vehicles does not require AGI. Doing one task very well requires a subset of AGI called Weak AI.

This is interesting, and I have a more mathematical way of thinking about this.

If we were somehow able to segment evolutionary pressures, and normalize their values such that they sum to one, I'd hypothesize that as the average evolutionary pressure goes to zero (meaning high number of evolutionary pressures that are generally uniformly distributed), then this author's hypothesis is true. But as the average evolutionary pressure grows (fewer pressures, or highly skewed distribution of pressures), I imagine it would lead to VERY different looking life. I'd also hypothesize that as the average value increases, it leads to system instability.

My grass is in heavy agreement. Mushrooms pop up in my yard within hours of watering.

What is "netto"?

There is an edge case I see. When I set downpayment == to purchase price, it assumes I'll still be making payments, when there actually wouldn't be a loan. Not sure this matters.

My favorite jackass prank was the Valentine's day card pasted to the hotel wall. The gag was simple, but incredibly well executed. The Valentine's day card was supposed to be written to Jackass stars from someone staying in the hotel, and the hand written scrawl would get progressively smaller as the "writer" ran out of room on the card, which caused the reader to lean in closer and closer to finish reading it. Then WHAM a giant boxing glove would fly out of the card, punching the reader in the face.

Long live Johnny Knoxville, American hero.

He's not saying the net result of the housing bubble was positive. He's only pointing out that there was a non-zero upside despite the heavy heavy downsides.

Honestly, comments like this make general discourse so much harder. At the mere mention of a controversial topic, the top commenter likens the experience to living in hell.

His point still stands. Lack of evidence for one thing shouldn't be confused as evidence for something else. A man is home alone during a murder, and there is no evidence for this, did he commit the murder?

How much of a negative impact did Google see when it was shown that their smart speakers were recording and sharing that data 100% of the time? Probably wasn't zero, but it also wasn't enormous.

In theory, no. The Federal Reserve has a mandate from congress to achieve full employment and stable prices, but can do so how they see fit. Their actions need not be ratified by the executive branch. The board of governors are also appointed for 14 year terms.

I think it depends on who is explaining the complex topic. The main goal for the "explainer" is to implant ideas in someone else's head in a way they can understand and relate to. This is done through a shared vocabulary. If someone knows nothing about a topic, then the entire explanation must be done in the listener's vocabulary (while slowly and deliberately introducing new terms, and clearly defining them), which OP didn't really attempt to do.

Not allowing exchanges to exist as US companies or interface with US banking institutions would be two very obvious steps towards "outlawing" Bitcoin. I make no value judgements on whether this is a good thing, but want to point out that these steps would likely cripple Bitcoin.