big_chungus

6 years agodiscuss

I'm right there with you. A model based on race would be racist. The issue is that in urban areas, crime rate is often a good proxy for race (particularly when looking at, say, muggings or carjackings rather than white-collar crime). I consider that irrelevant, but as the two articles I linked show, the "disparate impact" type folks don't care about which stat is being used.

big_chungus

6 years agodiscuss

> On our way back from the restaurant, we used Apple Maps. It took us on what looked like a longer route but lo and behold, it took a wiiiide berth around the Tenderloin. We saw not a single sketchy thing on our entire night time walk.

Microsoft patented such an "avoid ghetto" idea year ago, but people got mad and called it racist:

https://www.npr.org/2012/01/25/145337346/this-app-was-made-f...

https://www.cnet.com/news/the-joy-of-microsofts-avoid-ghetto...

Because, as we all know, trying to avoid getting mugged or carjacked is racist.

big_chungus

6 years agodiscuss

There's certainly a case here. If Barr goes forward with his nutty anti-encryption push, I hope the opposition uses this argument. Google lists definition #1 for "arms" as "weapons", and definition #2 of "weapons" as "a means of gaining an advantage or defending oneself in a conflict or contest."

I doubt any would argue that un-breakable (at least, theoretically) comms would provide no tactical advantage. If anyone would, I'd refer him to the second world war as a prominent example. This argument could help built a bi-partisan pro-cryptography group by pulling in support from the 2A crowd. I support cryptography remaining fully legal (even if classified as a munition or armament) for the same reason I support the 2A, practical security considerations aside.

big_chungus

7 years agodiscuss

Yep, the other good ones are for "commercial signage displays". No one wants to pay for smart garbage on those, so they're usually just good panels with ports.

big_chungus

7 years agodiscuss

Those are enforceable via extradition treaty because tax evasion is a crime in every nation in the world; if you want to extradite someone, the act in question must usually be a crime in both nations. The GDPR imposes regulations which have not parallels in other nations, so extradition is not an option. The Europeans are, however, free to arrest those who enter their nations, so it's still worth following for most people.

big_chungus

7 years agodiscuss

I'll second detaro, when I was a student, I just had to re-verify and I think re-activate, though I believe the re-activation is automatic if activated with an account rather than a license key.

big_chungus

7 years agodiscuss

Vim support is still pretty meh, though better than some others. The onivim guys are still plugging away at libvim [0], and I'm really hoping once it's stable, someone integrates it with vscode and other editors.

[0]: https://github.com/onivim/libvim

big_chungus

7 years agodiscuss

I have used CLion, and would say JetBrains did an excellent job with making a C IDE. The issue is that C is not much of an "IDE language"; my experience has always been to just use a text editor (vim or vscode), and it seems to be the same for most C devs I know. Looking at newer languages, they seem to pair closely with IDEs; I'm still not a big IDE guy, but most use them for python, java, etc. I'm not enough of an expert to quantify the reasons behind this, but I think it's hard to build a stand-out good IDE for a language with which IDEs often aren't used or are just used as glorified text editors.

big_chungus

7 years agodiscuss

This thing looks like one of those low-poly svgs used while loading the full thing; I keep expecting an actual truck to appear, but no dice.

big_chungus

7 years agodiscuss

Looks like it was manufactured by the soviets. And oh my gosh I was hungry, but looked up teratoma, and am no longer hungry. Not safe for life. Yike.

big_chungus

7 years agodiscuss

> I know that if my kid screws up, they'll still be comfortable (have healthcare, pension,...)

There are a few issues with this, the most glaring that people live longer. You can't live till 80 and expect to stop working at 65; pensions are supposed to pay for the last year or two if you live longer than usual.

> Higher education is free so It's not an "investment" or a "risk" that needs to pay off for me or them. I hope they'll study because they find it interesting. If they do, they won't need a great career to pay of student debt.

It is an investment by some one. If free, it's an investment by society. If suddenly I'm paying for Joey's college, I'd feel I get to tell him to study engineering (or some other high-paying field) rather than poetry, as it's my nickel on which he's going. That's society's right when it pays, because the return would be payed later on in taxes to fund my retirement, in your vision of how this works. In any case, this is always an investment. Putting in years of a life is investment for the student; tuition is an investment for whoever pays. How else do you justify spending many thousands of my tax dollars to let some kid study what's "interesting" and go to parties? Why ought I to pay for that?

> Admission to higher education is never made on soft or arbitrary values such as past participation in extra curricular activities. If my kid scores better on the standardized test, they'll snag a position at the best school over any a kid that is the child of a billionaire who was always president of all clubs and plays 24 musical instruments.

How do you propose to force this? The best schools are private. Also, standardized tests are a poor predictor of future success [0] [1] [2] [3]. Finally, the idea of one "all-or-nothing" test for which you can just cram for a few months (while slacking off for the rest of high school) is silly.

> Education isn't very competitive. In 20 years of school I never saw a "ranking" where anyones results or grades were published, e.g. where someone was declared "top of class" or similar.

Depends which part you're in. The best is always competitive. Also, I thought many teachers (and definitely profs) posted grade lists publicly?

Here's the core problem: every one keeps demanding an economic system that provides not liberty but essentially "freedom from hardship". Every one just wants to eat, and have health care, and a house, and vacation, and retirement, and a stable, comfortable, life. No economic system can guarantee you that. We have limited wants and unlimited needs. Population is growing, and may well out-pace economic growth. Many issues simply cannot be directly controlled by governments. Voting for utopia usually leads to disaster.

[0]: https://www.edsurge.com/news/2017-08-31-what-happens-when-st...

[1]: https://news.psu.edu/story/165456/2010/08/23/standardized-te...

[2]: https://qz.com/853128/grades-not-iq-or-standardized-test-sco...

[3]: https://www.pennlive.com/opinion/2016/03/test_scores_arent_a...

big_chungus

7 years agodiscuss

This is what is called a "positional arms race". A comparable situation can be seen in football players and steroids. One does it, so all feel they must do it or be "left behind". For all this struggle, no one is better and most are where they started. Now they must also deal with the huge medical issues that steroids can cause. If every one stopped, all would be better. However, no one wants to be the "sucker" who stops: the first to do so actually will lose.

It's the same issue here: interesting opportunities have a limited number of slots. My benchmark for getting in is not an "A" or a "B+", it's whatever my classmates have and then some. We all study more, but are not any better for it.

There doesn't seem to be a solution that has been devised for this sort of issue in this sort of a case, as it's tremendously difficult to find any viable means of regulating how much free time a child receives (leaving aside the ethical/moral questions about such a practice).

It's not just childhood, though. Higher education [0] has experienced it. Indeed, any "positional good" which has a limited number which go to the "best" is likely already experiencing this or will soon.

Again, no one has yet found a perfect solution for such an application as this. We've tinkered with the positioning in certain cases (e.g. higher education and affirmative action), but it often doesn't work (in the instance of higher education, while all kids' childhoods may be screwed up, certain groups have theirs screwed up in the "right ways") [1].

I believe another example is the rise among millennials of "experience" vacations. Increased social media usage fuels envy and a perception of being lesser, meaning john doe now feels he needs to take a more exotic vacation and get more pictures with more retouching.

I see no easy solution to this. The normal mitigation is government regulation, but I see no "arms control" type solution for number of math problems done. Ideas, any one?

[0]: https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED474473

[1]: https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/10/the-pai...

big_chungus

7 years agodiscuss

I'm not sure of exactly why ordering the same dish with three different balances of nutrients is appealing. People usually eat different foods and get nutrients that way. I'm pretty sure forcing people to eat the same thing every day was ruled some form of cruelyy [0]. This seems very niche and very gimmicky. You're offering exactly one thing with very little variety; even those who say they could eat this every day will eventually get sick of it. I hope you add products; that is how you will grow.

[0]: https://gizmodo.com/lobsters-were-once-only-fed-to-poor-peop...

big_chungus

7 years agodiscuss

In fairness to you, I wouldn't really call this "offensive". It does possibly play into the "fat, game-addicted neckbeard" stereotype, but this is more likely a case of a startup not having the resources to do extensive testing on different imagery. You could try running some a/b tests with different logos, though, and measure your conversion.

big_chungus

7 years agodiscuss

Oh trust me, "Big Water" is very much a thing. I've met a guy who runs a coke bottling plant; he could hardly believe his luck. They literally just run the existing stuff dry, and it's got massive margins.

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