maxlybbert

I have no clue where most drug research or drug development takes place. Right now the discussion tends to end up with US companies saying they charge so much for new medications to recoup the costs of ideas that didn’t pan out. Since only the drug companies know what didn’t pan out, it’s hard to refute.

If most drug research happens in the US (and, really, I don’t know if that’s true), then it suggests that the US model does a good job of incentivizing research. If another approach could get the same results, it would refute the drug companies’ argument.

I think this is what I remember reading (or perhaps a first draft that turned into this): https://www.wired.com/2004/02/stop-making-pills-political-pr... .

It was written before those drugs actually were made available to poorer countries for low cost for humanitarian reasons.

Lawrence Lessig had a blog post about this before he ran for president: drug prices are lower in places like Africa because they’re higher in the US. The rich US consumers (or insurance companies) subsidize the poorer African purchases. For that matter, they also subsidize Medicaid purchases.

Economists view this as a good and obvious way to get medication to more people.

In the US, at least, food regulations (and food packaging regulations) are relatively recent. And when they started, instead of requiring everybody prove that everything they’d been doing was safe, they came up with the idea of identifying substances or practices as Generally Recognized as Safe ( https://www.fda.gov/food/food-ingredients-packaging/generall... ), and then requiring safety analysis on new substances or practices. And things can lose their GRAS status if new evidence turns up.

In .Net, use CancellationToken ( https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/system.threadin... , https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/system.threadin... ).

The two big benefits are (1) if you pass the cancellation token to the task that might be canceled, hopefully it will be obvious that the task might be canceled; and (2) the task that might be canceled has a way to find out it’s being canceled and, if that ever happens, it can clean up.

I thought so.

If I were to develop a retail product, when it came time to put a price on the package, you can be sure that I would collect data to see how much people were willing to pay for the product. That’s hardly “stop-the-presses!” headline news.

I know this article is about price discrimination or market segmentation, but those topics aren’t secrets either ( https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2004/12/15/camels-and-rubber-... ).

In the US, there’s a concern that some alcohol company will start claiming their drinks are healthier than the others, so alcohol packaging isn’t required to say anything about the number of calories in the drink ( https://www.eatingwell.com/article/2052030/why-your-booze-do... ).

It makes me wonder how many people see that calories aren’t listed and assume “it must be small.” I don’t think anybody believes alcohol is a diet drink, but I’m sure many people don’t realize how it’s packed with calories.

I’m honestly surprised I didn’t get any “how dare you say it’s all about feeling bad if we don’t do what Stallman says?” comments. I was trying to play it as straight as I could, without sounding like a crank. I’m not always successful.

You clearly aren’t familiar with GNU or the Free Software Foundation. There’s nothing wrong with that: everybody starts out without being familiar with anything.

In a nutshell, Richard Stallman worked in MIT’s AI lab in the 1970s. The lab had a certain ethos that he loved ( https://www.gnu.org/gnu/rms-lisp.html , https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/stallman-kth.en.html ), but when it became common for software to be sold without the source code, he actually decided to start a foundation to recreate that lab ethos ( https://www.gnu.org/gnu/manifesto.en.html ). A lot of programmers agree with his view that refusing to give users source code, and legal permission to use that source code without restriction, is a terrible afront to freedom.

However, people have spent decades telling Stallman that if they adopted his principles, they couldn’t use their computers in the modern world. Every so often, he makes a declaration about various distinctions (it’s okay to use a computer even though the firmware isn’t free; it’s okay to read documents on the web, but any JavaScript should be treated as a program and you should insist on an acceptable license; he, personally doesn’t own a cell phone, but sees no problem with using somebody else’s non-free phone in a case-by-case basis; etc.). This is simply an extension to enforce one of his rules. Some programmers will feel bad about themselves if they don’t live up to Stallman’s expectations.

I don’t think anybody is surprised that college tuition has increased. They’re surprised it’s increased faster than the prices for almost every other service. So have health care costs. And in both cases, the system is designed to make it difficult and pointless to shop based on price.

I have a hard time believing health insurance costs have driven the drastic increase in college costs. They’ve certainly played a role, but I don’t see any reason they would increase the cost of education more than they’ve increased the price of everything else.

In the US, insider trading also requires a breach of fiduciary duty ( https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2017/01/18/insider-trading-l... ).

It’s material and nonoublic, but did he get it in violation of a fiduciary duty ( https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2017/01/18/insider-trading-l... )?

Insider trading requires material nonpublic information, but it also requires somebody violate a fiduciary duty. From the page you linked to (emphasis added):

> Illegal insider trading refers generally to buying or selling a security, in breach of a fiduciary duty or other relationship of trust and confidence, on the basis of material, nonpublic information about the security.

In the US, insider trading requires material nonpublic information, but it officially also requires that somebody break a fiduciary duty to the company involved. So, in your hypothetical, the person breaking cryptography algorithms knows something nobody else does (i.e., isn’t public), and that secret is definitely material. But the researcher didn’t get that information through a breach of fiduciary duty, so it’s legal to trade.

I would have said it the way you did: Christians took pagan traditions, put a Christian veneer on them, and then acted like they had something new. I think the original quote was trying to portray something different: that Christians tried to breathe “new life” into pagan holidays.

But I think your way of phrasing it matches history better. The Christians were trying to disguise the pagan sources for their holiday. Since the bottle or wineskin is in plain view and the wine inside is hidden, I personally would have compared the Christian veneer to the bottle and the pagan history to the wine inside it.

My understanding is that book publishers didn’t want the headache of knowing which printers were licensed for specific fonts, so they got a specific carveout for the shape of letters. So when they sell a book, they don’t have to worry about whether the printing company was licensed to resell the books they printed for the publisher.

The “you can have a copyright on the font software” aspect seems to be based on the idea that a particular font file is just as copyrightable as, say, a computer file of a company’s employee handbook describing uncopyrightable methods and systems ( https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ33.pdf ).

If I pay Microsoft for a cool font, I don’t have to pay extra to print and distribute documents using it, but I can’t email the font file to my friends without paying Microsoft more. It’s not clear to me how that interacts with fonts embedded in PDF files, but I believe some companies charge more to license fonts so they can be embedded in PDFs. As far as creating a font file based on the physical shape if letters: you would end up with a file similar to the original, but I doubt it would be bit-for-bit identical. So you would have a reasonable explanation of how you got the similar file without violating anybody’s copyright.

There are plenty of laws about, say, attempted murder. Also, it’s possible for somebody to be convicted of shoplifting even if they’re nabbed before they leave the store if it’s clear that they were in the process of stealing items ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attempt ).

And when there isn’t a specific law, there is a general “conspiracy to commit” law ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_conspiracy ), which is what I’m sure is involved in this case.

“Conspiracy” makes it sound funny, but the basic idea is that when multiple people (and “multiple” means “at least two”) have conversations about committing a specific crime and one takes concrete steps toward committing that crime, then all people involved can be punished for conspiracy. Of course, the ones who were undercover agents don’t get punished. And the fact that the plan wouldn’t work doesn’t matter. If the FBI sells fake explosives to somebody and that person plants them outside a building and tries to set them off, the fact that they were fake doesn’t help them beat the rap.

The issue with stalking is that there isn’t a law against being in the same area as somebody else (unless there’s a restraining order). So, unfortunately, the police can’t make an arrest until a law is broken or the potential stalker at least tries to break the law.

That’s the official goal, but it’s not necessarily what happens (“while many communities include buybacks in their overall gun violence prevention strategies, most research shows these events are ineffective at reducing homicides and suicides,” https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/sta... ).

I’m sure they’ll eventually make those available on gnu.org. This doesn’t look like an announcement that the book is generally ready, but that the first draft is ready enough for people to make suggestions. I’m sure they’ll have PDFs and webpages on gnu.org eventually, right next to their other manuals.

I have the “Primer of Algol 60 Programming” by Dijkstra. It was created ten years before K&R, so of course it doesn’t start with “Hello World.” But that fact surprised me a little the first time I read it.

I’m sure they’ll eventually make a PDF and HTML pages easily available on their site, like they have for plenty of other manuals. This announcement is more along the lines of “if you want to help us with the finishing touches, here’s where to go.”

But courts have repeatedly held that child porn is outside the protection of free speech, along with fraud, false advertising, threats, defamation, and some other kinds of speech.

I’m sure the idea is to take advantage of joint and several liability ( https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/joint_and_several_liability ). If Pornhub and Visa are declared to be severally liable, the woman will be able to collect the entire judgement from Visa, even if the court says Visa is only 1% liable and Pornhub is 99% liable.

Visa will then be able to sue Pornhub to pay its share. In theory, everybody will pay the amount they were supposed to, but the victim will get the money sooner by sending the bill to the party with the deepest pockets.

But often, the parties most at fault go out of business, so the party with the deepest pockets pays the whole judgement and the people who actually caused the injury escape punishment.

But verifying users doesn’t require publishing their names on their profile page.

Musk’s offer explicitly didn’t demand this kind of data. I assume he figured that Twitter’s statements about its finances, number of users, growth, etc. were reliable and he didn’t need to do any additional due diligence. I thought it was reasonable at the time, and now I think he’s feeling some regret.

> Everyone is nuts to talk about 'shareholders' - who cares? As a 'consumer' - I want a good service and cheap (i.e. free) with no ads. I have zero interest in 'shareholders' of a company I'm not a shareholder in, other than legal protections.

Shareholders own the company. Which is why people care what they think.

I have preferences for how my neighbors manage and maintain their properties, but since I don’t actually own those properties, my preferences don’t mean a lot.

As a customer of a company, I can decide whether I’m getting my money’s worth. As a general observer I might have an opinion about whether the company makes the world a better place. So shareholders shouldn’t be the only story. But I don’t think it’s strange to focus on what the shareholders think, or for the company’s owners to decide on corporate direction.

I also believe that Musk will walk away and the stock will tank.

Musk’s recent stock purchase and discussion about joining the board made the price jump significantly. You’re right that there’s no obvious reason that his involvement should change Twitter’s value, but the market appears to think otherwise. If he walks away, at a minimum, I would expect that the stock price will drop to what it was before he started playing around.

But if he walks away, I believe he’ll also do something to make the stock drop more. For instance, he’ll stop Tweeting, which should have a measurable impact on the number of people actually using Twitter regularly.

> By your argument, you're okay with these sorts of requests for basically any crime. It seems to me that this kind of sweeping surveillance should only be used in extreme cases.

I’m not familiar with how police departments and prosecutors (or in this case, the FBI and the Justice Department) determine how much effort to put into solving any particular crime. I’m sure they wouldn’t put as much time into solving a misdemeanor as they would a felony, and that they would put even more time into a murder than a regular felony, but I doubt they would have very many rules about whether a specific type of warrant is reasonable for a specific type of crime.

I suspect that once federal investigators are involved, they probably take the position that it is an extreme case and any legal technique is justified.

The New York Federal Reserve has a model in Julia at https://github.com/FRBNY-DSGE .

The Federal Reserve has two models ( https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/us-models-about.htm and https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/edo-models-about.htm ), written in EViews and Dynare, respectively.

The parent said

> UB problems happen only when compilers detect it, understand it is an opportunity for optimization, because they are allowed to do anything, then do that optimization.

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding the comment, but I took "detect it, understand it is an opportunity for optimization, because they are allowed to do anything, ..." to mean "detect that undefined behavior occurs and then ..."

Instead, it should be "detect that an optimization can be applied and that the optimized code will do the right thing in all cases that undefined behavior does not occur, and apply the optimization."

I've met programmers who seem to believe that compilers intentionally apply weird transformations when they detect undefined behavior. But really, the compilers are applying sensible transformations for well-defined code and ignoring whether those transformations are sensible for code that isn't well-defined.