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jp555

923 karma · joined December 25, 2013

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jp555··on Why People Fall for Conspiracy Theories
If you think facts persuade people then you do not understand how people work. That delusion is what is frustrating you.

Facts require three things:

- observation (the temperature is 15°C),

- omission (the temp outside my home, omitting the rest of the universe), and

- trust (my thermometer is probably working).

Almost all disagreement about Facts is really about what we’re omitting & what we trust, not the observation.

jp555··on Survey shows people no longer believe working hard will lead to a better life
These results are not ergodic.

ensemble average != time-series average.

In order to make this claim you need to follow the same people and survey them throughout their lives, as opposed to a group snapshot in time.

jp555··on CPB director: The Netherlands must ban Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies
Bitcoin is a public ledger. I dont understand how a zero-privacy blockchain would be the biggest enabler of ransomware? Isnt TCP/IP a bigger enabler?

SHA-256 came out of the NSA. Didnt the FBI retrieve the Bitcoin from the pipeline ransomware attack? They have lots of tradecraft at their disposal that we cannot know of.

jp555··on German environmental groups file objection against Tesla gigafactory permit
Hustlers gotta hustle.
jp555··on Why are house prices rising so fast in a pandemic?
I just mean that generally when supply is limited and demand goes up (which I think is the case in the UK as well), prices rise.
jp555··on Why are house prices rising so fast in a pandemic?
I heard there are more realtors in the US than listings.

That'll do it.

jp555··on China allows couples to have three children
Ah that's new to me thanks! I recently saw numbers showing something different (wish I could find that link), and I was remembering this interview from 2019 - https://www.tvo.org/video/the-worlds-shrinking-problem

I found it interesting that the authors looking at the history of efforts to financially simulate birthrate found that it has never worked to reverse the decline. @21:15

jp555··on Cities with the Best Work-Life Balance 2021
Not in July :P It can get very hot (>40C) & sticky in the valley.

Can be very cold in Jan/Feb, but often too cold to snow so it can be more sunny than say Toronto, and there's a ton of outdoor activities nearby to enjoy like ski hills & trails, snowshoeing, and skating.

jp555··on China allows couples to have three children
US has one of the best demographics in the Western world. Millennials are larger than Boomers. Plus the US can use immigration to decide what population they want. Countries not built on immigration cannot really do this in practice. see Japan.
jp555··on China allows couples to have three children
It's not meant to be bigoted (that's you mind reading) - it's meant to give context to non Canadians. But I probably should have said "Quebec Families".
jp555··on China allows couples to have three children
Good luck.

With a shrunken generation of family to help due to 30+ years of one-child policy, and almost no social support (China does not really have socialized healthcare in practice) there's no one to help take care of larger families. But there is a HUGE number of rapidly aging parents and grandparents to take care of.

Add a culture that puts accumulating wealth as the #1 virtue, and it becomes nearly impossible to reverse a low birth rate.

In Canada Quebec has been paying French families to have more kids for a very long time. Today Quebec has the lowest provincial birthrate in Canada.

jp555··on Cities with the Best Work-Life Balance 2021
In a lot of ways Ottawa is hard to beat.

But dont tell anyone, the "boring" reputation is a feature not a bug.

Watching the value of my house double recently suggests the word is getting out - although I get it that it's also that there's more realtors than listings, and of course money printer go Brrrr.

jp555··on YouTube approves ad by Belarusian gov with journalist from hijackd Ryanair plane
Belarus controls 20% of the world's potash, so nope.

Geopolitics is much more a game of Go than Call of Duty.

jp555··on The problem with Free Software is capitalism
Ah so it's worse for poor people than rich people. Unintended consequences I guess.
jp555··on The problem with Free Software is capitalism
Does this not just drive people to organize their finances to have less income and more capital gains?

Sweden has a Gini coefficient of 0.867. Only Russia and The Netherlands are higher - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_in...

jp555··on Internet Explorer 11 (IE11) to be retired on June 15, 2022
As a web developer, I might have billed 3x more hours thanks to IE 6. :P

I hated it but it made me a lot of money for many years, mostly thanks to governments requiring IE 6 support. LOL

jp555··on Bitcoin’s plunge intensifies, tanks 30% to $30k in single day
How is it not an agreed-upon way to settle IOUs? It's not only this, but it is this as well.
jp555··on Bitcoin’s plunge intensifies, tanks 30% to $30k in single day
You're mind reading.
jp555··on Bitcoin’s plunge intensifies, tanks 30% to $30k in single day
Kind of like when you create money:credit out of thin air when you run a tab at a bar. But with code.
jp555··on Bitcoin’s plunge intensifies, tanks 30% to $30k in single day
Your self-admitted lack of understanding is not evidence there's no value in Bitcoin.
jp555··on Germany bans Facebook from handling WhatsApp data over privacy concerns
That's just obtuse. It’s clearly not selling user data at all. When I buy FB ads I cannot not get any user data. I can pick they type of user I want to see my advert, but I cannot know who they are.

If you have a FB account you can try this and see for yourself right now for a few bucks.

But maybe I'm wrong. Can tell me how they do sell user data?

jp555··on Germany bans Facebook from handling WhatsApp data over privacy concerns
Right, Facebook’s ability to make money comes from how well it keeps user data secret, so it can sell abstracted access to advertisers.
jp555··on Germany bans Facebook from handling WhatsApp data over privacy concerns
I might gave this wrong, but only the users saw their own data in the ads they were served. Signal can choose lots of parameters for who should see their ads, but they dont get to see who those people are.
jp555··on Germany bans Facebook from handling WhatsApp data over privacy concerns
How does Facebook "sell user data"?

When I buy ads on Facebook I cannot access any user's data.

Do they have another product offering where I can buy user data? I dont see anything like that.

jp555··on Workplace Wellbeing Is a Scam?
"one of the biggest causes of stress in the workplace is a lack of decision-making power among workers."

You know what's also more stressful? Having to make more decisions in domains outside my circle of competence.

Give me total autonomy in my area, while also not burdening me with having to contribute to EVERY decision.

jp555··on Climate change may have pushed ancient humans into extinction
"Over the long term, the future is decided by optimists." Kevin Kelly
jp555··on Anime2Sketch: A sketch extractor for illustration, anime art, manga
There are lots of very good techniques to do toon shading in Blender. Here's a few:

BEER NPR (MALT renderer) - https://blendernpr.org/beer/

Lightning Boy shader 2.0 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fHZcnTFYEI

Procedural hatching and manga shaders - https://gumroad.com/l/tcKOI

jp555··on Teachers’ unions reduce gender pay gap among US public school teachers
Not ergodic. Just because "women still earn 18% less than their male counterparts" does NOT mean any one woman will earn 18% less.

Paying someone less because of their sex is illegal.

jp555··on Jetoptera VTOL aircraft design features “bladeless fans on steroids”
Imagine how loud even just a few of your skateboards would be. Much louder than jet skis.

That's a bigger problem than the propulsion.

jp555··on The Pentagon will have to live with limits on F-35’s supersonic flights (2020)
Also forces adversaries to divert money into counter-F35 activates (or copying the f-35), and this is also a type of geopolitical weapon.
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