zadkey

I can't count how many times I have seen someone effectively say "My thing is better than your/that thing" but they have not actually researched what the other thing is or how it works, they just simply like their own thing so much that they automatically assume it's better or this case different.

More than whether the icecream machines are broken, I get a clear picture of just how ubiquitous McDonalds are.

I saw this too.

I have a gmail account, but I actually blocked google.com in my hosts file on windows. So when I would click ANY link in gmail it would fail. It looks like the link has to pass through some google gateway or something before redirecting to the intended destination. Of course if I just copy the link url and paste in a new tab it works. But yeah google fiddles with the URL for sure.

It's not easy. I would like very much to be normal, feel normal and enjoy normal things. I still have hope that someday I will. I still find myself envying people who do not have to deal with the stuff I deal with.

I would not wish the pain and suffering of my daily life on anyone. Even those who are truly evil.

As for dealing with it, meditation, medication, and moderation. Also having family and friends who are supportive of you is helpful as well. I am no longer afraid of taking days off to relax and hopefully feel better the next day.

Reminds me of that one movie Idiocrasy.

It does more than that. I have heard of youtubers simply discussing it or sharing memes about it and their video getting demonetized.

It could for sure. But that assumes it is set up correctly. And even if it is setup correctly and runs realistic simulations, there are often in real life unforeseen variables like hurricanes, earthquakes, new discoveries, etc.

But how we define what is a fair tax policy is incredibly important. If the goal is not well defined how can an AI reach it?

What about other economic factors. What if a fair tax policy is not complete or possible without some other economic element(s) as a counterpart. What if a fair tax policy could only exist when Universal Basic Income is established.

But let's say that somehow magically all unexpected circumstances are accounted for. And the AI does successfully create a fair tax policy.

There will be those whose stand to loose a large amount under a fair tax policy. They are few, but they are powerful and wield massive influence over government. Would they go along with such a policy? It doesn't seem likely. It seems like even If you get a fair tax policy that is created, there will be people honestly questioning it's validity and people who are against regardless of how valid the result is.

It just seems unlikely to succeed. It may be useful economists might dissect what result it gives hoping to find new insights. But beyond that, I'm not sure how much good would realistically come from it.

The earth is not overpopulated. There is enough food, water, housing, electricity, etc for all.

In fact there is a map that shows how the entire world's population could fit into Texas or just a few states based on population densities of actual cities essentially leaving the majority of the world uninhabited.

Here is a reference for that claim. https://commonplacefacts.wordpress.com/2019/08/05/could-the-...

The issue isn't overpopulation. It's putting profits over people. There are plenty of resources, but we don't want to share, corporations want to capitalize, and enough of us don't have the balls to stand up to our governments to demand better.

We as a society have decided that even though there is a enough for everyone, we should still apply capitalism to things necessary for survival leaving those who are poor barely able to survive.

No overpopulation argument works if you take poverty out of the equation.

You could argue that we pollute too much and that if population increased the earth would be devastated. This is true, but it's not about the number of people, it's about the damage per person. It stems from our failure to demand from our governments that all products created are biodegradable or recyclable.

Not enough housing? I disagree. Here is a quote from a fact checking website. "Based on currently available numbers, there are about 31 vacant housing units for every homeless person in the U.S" https://checkyourfact.com/2019/12/24/fact-check-633000-homel...

At the individual level I agree that people are not 100% good or 100% evil. Corporations may have good people that work there and help with tasks that are mostly evil. But companies that are truly evil and offer no product, no benefit, no public good, no service, do not exist. A truly evil company offers nothing and expects everything in return. So from my perspective it's impossible for a company to be 100% evil. But some larger companies will get as close as they can.

Any for profit company that is sufficiently large enough will eventually behave in ways that are evil.

The problem here is corporate bylaws and shareholders. Many Corporate bylaws state the only purpose of the company is to pursue profits, everything else is secondary.

These things create a perverse incentive to continuously show growth.

It's not enough to be profitable as a company. The company is expected to continuously expand their market share.

If they own a relatively small market share they can innovate, improve their product, get better at marketing or sales and expand their share that way.

But eventually if they are already the dominant player in a market, to continue to grow they must snuff out competition with anti-competitive behavior and expand into to new markets often by buying companies already in those markets. And If a C level executive or board member refuses to put profits over people, they can be ousted by shareholders or sued for securities fraud.

This behavior pattern of infinite expansion of market share is the symptom created by the perverse incentives of shareholders and will eventually drive any for profit company that is large enough and has shareholders to behave in ways that we consider evil.

And while I am sure the solution is likely reclassification into B Corporations or non-profits, getting companies to reclassify is not going to be easy.

A that very airport, I had forgotten to put some sleep medication in my carry on bag. It was instead in my hoodie's front pocket.

I got searched by airport security. They found the medication. They asked me what it was. I told them. And then this guy says "Okay good, I will have some after my shift". He then opens the bottle takes 2 pills out and puts them in his pocket and hands it back to me.

I saw something in his face that suggests he was a fearful person afraid of loosing control, and looking for an unhealthy way to deal with that feeling.

I can't agree more.

Is there a place a someone could go to buy something like this?

Record types seem like a direct borrow from F#. They even keep the immutability and with-expressions.

CBP having access to this is bad for it's own reasons, but what is equally bad is a private company tracking movement of individuals without their informed consent.

Reminds me of fabricated claims in Europa Universalis 4 or Hearts of Iron 4.

This man has done nothing wrong.

What I find problematic is that for the sake of racial sensitivity universities are willing to remove teachers even if the teacher hasn't done anything wrong. I agree that racism is a sore point in the current American social atmosphere, but we should not engage in an appeasement doctrine that sacrifices the innocent.

Claims should be evaluated individually based on their merits. Overly broad labels such as conspiracy theorist prohibit meaningful discussion of the merits or demerits of the individual theories and are in general a cognitive shortcut that people use to give themselves the excuse to casually discredit and disregard what someone says without meaningfully getting to know the character or claims of the individual. More concisely, it is a term used to promote intellectual laziness over due diligence of investigation.

Citation needed. I recall the top 1% earning 50% of all income.

I don't think this explains everything about why college tuition in America has increased.

And what It did explain could have done a little bit better job.

"By banning TikTok with no notice or opportunity to be heard (whether before or after the fact), the executive order violates the due process protections of the Fifth Amendment."

The 5th amendment rights that they are asserting apply to people.

This brings us back to the question of "Are corporations people?"

"No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation."

I read the title and was somehow was expecting a guide on compiler design implementing some flavor of the the ML language such as Standard ML.

Kind of reminded me of Elder Scrolls 1 : Arena.

TLDR: "...a founder that doesn’t tell the truth is the one kind of founder that VCs will never fund.”"

Kind of reminds me of the UI for the Star Citizen website.

I'll be honest. I really enjoy Ken M's work as an internet troll.

If you haven't seen what he does, here are some of my favorites:

https://www.reddit.com/r/KenM/comments/2oy2nb/chef_boyardee/

https://www.reddit.com/r/KenM/comments/4e888v/ken_m_on_pampe...

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/39/3a/7e/393a7e7d56c65bc9afd0...

https://www.reddit.com/r/KenM/comments/8ptb4r/kenm_on_kissin...

https://www.reddit.com/r/KenM/comments/8n25qu/first_post_her...

The biggest reason I would say that the drivers are not independent contractors is that they are not allowed to set their own rates.

Uber's argument that they are not employees is based on the concept that they only a platform facilitating a connection between drivers people who need rides or in this case deliveries. But if the contractors are truly separate entities, then Uber by controlling the cost of the ride/delivery, is fixing prices.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/legal-problem-could-crash-ube...

I am not aware what the current status of legal rulings for or against Uber in this regard, but I believe my point still stands.

This was a thing.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/msdn10/bb...

Yep, that was the first thing I did.

For me, "Yeah it sounds cool, but let's see some code" is my usual response to new programming languages.

The strength of an organization is it's ability to overcome the weaknesses of any one individual. Developers don't have to have a business sense, product owners don't have to be technical, etc.

In the Dev world, there are QA engineers, code reviews, multiple environments, user acceptance testing, etc, to protect the codebase.

In the corporate world, a CEO doesn't have to know how to do everything. He knows how to make good decisions and to defer to people who are more knowledgeable than him on specific issues.

Good processes stop problems before they make it to production. And while an individual can make a mistake within an organization, the organization's processes will serve as safeguards that prevent that mistake from being propagated throughout the org's codebase.

In the case of Citibank, they should have good processes in place to prevent this kind of colossal mistake. So again the mistake of an individual should not be propagated but reviewed and fixed before affecting anything. As the other guy said, they should have had measures in place to prevent this kind of thing, especially considering it is a significant aspect of their overall business strategy.