random28345

vor 9 Jahrendiscuss

> For what it's worth, a lot of people like myself consider Snopes a source of leftist propo, not truth.

Is this more "reality has a known liberal bias" sarcasm? Or as you saying the entire concept of objective truth is leftist propaganda?

random28345

vor 9 Jahrendiscuss

> It's a good strategy, if you can afford not to withdraw from the fund on the year (and for several years after) you 97% bet turns sour

If the bet turns sour, you close the fund. The idea is that you grow the fund and take your two and twenty while your bets are winning, and you keep your prior years' two and twenty after your fund collapses.

random28345

vor 9 Jahrendiscuss

The idea is that you can simultaneously be protected by the laws of nation-states that you like (protection from pirates), and are free to break the laws of nation-states that you don't like (taxes, drug laws, etc.)

It's an example of Libertarian paradise syndrome; where you want all the comforts of modern civilization with none of the obligations.

random28345

vor 9 Jahrendiscuss

I want to move to this libertarian paradise where I'm not affected by externalities and acting selfishly is always pareto efficient. I want to live in this magical place where we don't need government. Where is it?

random28345

vor 9 Jahrendiscuss

> I think the EITC uniquely incentivizes those in the program to work themselves out of it, unlike other programs. That's why I like it so much, because I think other programs do fall under your critique.

This experiment has never been done, but I think we could probably agree on the outcome of this thought experiment: In the absence of any other social programs, the net effect of EITC would be higher employment and lower (employer paid) wages as the demand for labor is (somewhat) elastic, and employers and labor will settle on a lower clearing price for hourly labor at a higher employment level.

I also agree that many welfare programs have a negative impact on work and personal income, as many social services have cliffs that reduce a recipient's net income if their wage income goes over a certain amount. That's not necessarily bad; some people do not have the option of meaningful work, a problem that many think will be exacerbated by automation. If we start actually seeing the 42% unemployment rates that were recently promoted by Trump, then tying social services to income would be devastating.

random28345

vor 9 Jahrendiscuss

> I'm going to need a cite for that.

You're going to need a citation for... employers seeking lower wages? And that these lower wages are subsidized by government benefits?

The citation would be nearly every company, ever. So start with Walmart and work your way down, I guess.

https://americansfortaxfairness.org/files/Taxpayers-and-Walm...

tl;dr: Taxpayers pay $5/hr in benefits to allow the employees of Walmart to be paid a wage under the poverty line.

== EDIT ==

You would agree that rent subsidies flow to landlords, and mortgage tax deductions flow to sellers, right? Why would you not understand that wage subsidies flow to employers?

random28345

vor 9 Jahrendiscuss

> My expectation would be that employers would offer lower wages so that employees will have roughly the same take-home pay.

You are absolutely right, in the absence of a reasonable minimum wage, this is exactly what happens.

random28345

vor 9 Jahrendiscuss

> Objecting to the redistribution of wealth isn't the same as trying to do away with the rule of law.

The rule of law depends on the redistribution of wealth. Courts, public defenders, police, regulators, juries don't magically appear out of nowhere.

Therefore, it seems obvious that if you are absolutely opposed to the redistribution of wealth, you are therefore absolutely opposed to what most people would consider civilization: rule of law, education, public services, etc.

Do you agree that being part of a functional modern western civilization is impossible without the redistribution of wealth (paying taxes, serving on juries)?

random28345

vor 9 Jahrendiscuss

> we as a society don't understand that the purpose of automation is humanitarian.

The purpose of automation is humanitarian in the same way that politicians serve the needs of their constituents, and police protect their communities.

While I reap the positive benefits of all of the above, there are plenty of marginalized people who are harmed by exactly the same forces.

In the gap between theory and reality, there's a lot of misery.

random28345

vor 9 Jahrendiscuss

> Lower the taxes and don't let government get their hands on it at any stage of the process. This smacks again of redistribution of wealth and I'm totally against this.

Brilliant! I'm sure that startups will flourish in an environment where there is no functioning government. What I don't understand is why the movie Mad Max didn't show a vibrant startup community with flowing rivers of lattes and soylent, rather than the human misery that comes from the absence of rule of law, retirement, and health care.

Serious question, do you really want to live in a world devoid of "redistribution of wealth", where life is cheap, the working class is treated like disposable trash, and treatable illnesses are a death sentence?

What would it take to convince you that the wealthy contributing some of their riches back to society is the foundation for a functioning civilization?

random28345

vor 9 Jahrendiscuss

I second this. It's usable.

random28345

vor 9 Jahrendiscuss

You know, I think it would be a shorter list if the systemd guys were to enumerate the things they didn't want to control on a Linux system.

random28345

vor 9 Jahrendiscuss

> So Netflix has a six year lead and attendant network effects in it's favor.

I completely agree with you. I personally have a Netflix account, and do not subscribe to other services.

My point is that right now, today, this very instant in time, Netflix is not primarily differentiated on technology, but on having content that their subscribers want; that online video distribution is now a commodity.

random28345

vor 9 Jahrendiscuss

Intel still has a good edge on single-core performance. And productivity software is about pushing lots of instructions through a single core.

random28345

vor 9 Jahrendiscuss

> The original success of Netflix depended on being the first company with a fixed-price-no-ads streaming business model

Actually, the original success involved putting DVDs in mailboxes.

> I remember being astonished at watching a Netflix movie on my iPhone (when I was still an iPhone user) while riding a train in 2011'ish.

Right, but you're going to be equally astonished in 2017 if you don't get the same level of service from Prime Video, Hulu, HBO GO, YouTube Red, et. al. And in 2019 a YC company will offer a one-click media publishing company that will allow any random joe on the planet to publish a DRM-protected movie available through a world-wide CDN with a pay-per-view payment system.

In 2011 tech was a major differentiator, today not so much. Netflix is moving with the times, that's why they are offering original content instead of being content to provide a good platform to stream other people's IP.

> This answer is in the same category as "Actually, Google is an ads company". That is to say, it makes a plausible case but ultimately wrong.

https://qz.com/607378/were-live-charting-googles-first-alpha... (tl;dr: the overwhelming majority of google's revenue comes from ads)

random28345

vor 9 Jahrendiscuss

> [Netflix's] edge is in software alone, nothing that causes a huge barrier to entry like custom hardware.

Actually, they are a media company. Their "edge" is in content creation and licencing deals. They might have been first-to-market for mass-scale streaming, but streaming video technology is a commodity, and they know that they will live or die by the desirability of their media catalog.

> Netflix for example, is completely at the mercy of Amazon.

Amazon and Netflix were symbiotic for years, as Netflix was a headline corporate customer, and I'm sure they received preferential pricing. And given the quality of Netflix's engineering team, I would be very surprised if they don't have a plan to migrate by the expiration of their contract if necessary.

random28345

vor 9 Jahrendiscuss

Why not get a modern (Haswell or later) Intel CPU and a motherboard with DisplayPort output? You don't need a discrete GPU unless you're MLing or gaming, and you can splurge a bit and get something with DDR4 and/or NVMe. Having faster IO is the best way to make "productivity" software like spreadsheets and editors faster.

== gratuitous shilling below ==

For Christmas I got a new CPU/motherboard combo with a Samsung 960 EVO SSD, and it's ludicrously fast, decently cheap, and a noticeable improvement over my old (heh) SATA SSD.

http://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/minisite/ssd/product/co...

random28345

vor 9 Jahrendiscuss

> Right here on HN is an example, where the comment reply chain is indicated with indentation.

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          <span class=user>random28345</span>
          HTML is a tree of element nodes, the identity of the post being replied to can be determined by 
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----------------------

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random28345

vor 9 Jahrendiscuss

> Over the last two days the major news sources have been pushing a blatantly false "truth" ("Muslim Ban"). Intention of this post is not to get into a political discussion of this!

Well, if you're going to try to build a mechanism to hold the mainstream media accountable, you'll really need to create a standard on when a summarization is inaccurate.

If the media was reporting on, "a ban on travelers from majority Muslim countries by a president who has promised his supporters a ban on Muslims" would that still be misleading? And if opponents of the ban called it a "Muslim ban", would media outlets be allowed to report on that fact?

For the record, I've seen NYT and BBC call this a "travel ban", "Trump's ban" and in quotes designed to indicate attribution "'Muslim ban'". All of these seem reasonable and factual.

Your thoughts?

== EDIT ==

A headline that reads simply "muslim ban" shouldn't be considered fake news (in my opinion), so long as it provides a full explanation of the ban and who is affected.

It is an editorializing title, but there's a massive difference between editorializing and fabrication. I believe calling something "fake news" should be reserved for publications that create falsehoods out of whole cloth. (e.g. "warehouse full of votes cast by illegal immigrants found")

random28345

vor 9 Jahrendiscuss

> What city/state was this in?

New Jersey. But it's fairly universal behavior.

> Is there no place to report such behavior to? The manufacturer?

The manufacturer is at the mercy of the dealers. Do you really think it's in the best interests of auto manufacturers to have their customers bent over a barrel on surprise fees and gouged on maintenance? There have been a number of attempts for auto manufacturers to make things less shitty for customers (Scion, Saturn, etc.) but at the end of the day, these attempts were not in the dealer's interest, and failed.

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