MadeThisToReply

My thoughts exactly. Why suffer through 1-2 days of sickness every 6 months to protect myself against an illness that I've already had and poses no threat to my demographic anyway? Sounds like the cure is worse than the disease. I smell a rat.

That's really interesting and tells me that I need to do more research into this case before forming an opinion. (Don't I always?) Thanks for sharing.

Sorry, but you don't get to decide what words mean. "Tax evasion" is illegal by definition. "Tax avoidance" is legal.

According to Wikipedia, the term "tax noncompliance" (or "tax avoision"... bleargh) can be used as a general term to refer to both of those things

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_noncompliance

But it is worthless garbage, unlike a lot of torrents.

How do you pronounce "Tvix"?

So why didn't they skip "Mu", which as others have pointed out is a far more common name than Xi?

Everyone knows the real reason they skipped Xi, you're not fooling anybody.

They skipped the Greek letter "Xi"; no prizes for guessing why.

Anything you recommend instead?

Personally, I got a lot of value from Designing Data-Intensive Applications by Martin Kleppmann.

> There’s no way this ends well

How do you think it will end?

What does "due care" mean here? Does it have a specific legal meaning? How is it possible to kill someone with your car while exercising "due care"?

For starters, here's the relevant part of Texas penal code which GP mentioned. You can read the whole thing, it's very short:

https://texas.public.law/statutes/tex._penal_code_section_9....

IANAL, but it seems you can shoot someone in Texas for stealing your catalytic convertor if you "reasonably believe the deadly force is immediately necessary" and the catalytic convertor "cannot be protected or recovered by any other means."

> If you're buying diamonds or bananas or cobalt, and you need a provable supply chain though.. yeah.. it fits.

I've heard about this supposed use for blockchain before and I genuinely don't get it. So what if you have a tamper-proof blockchain containing information about a supply chain? How does this prove anything about the particular diamond you're selling me?

Again, this is a genuine question. Can someone please walk me through this? What information do I need to verify about the supply chain and how does blockchain help? How were people solving this problem before blockchain?

> There absolutely are good uses for crypto, and even for things like NFTs

What do you think are the good uses for crypto and NFTs?

(This is a genuine question; I've never been sure what to think about crypto.)

It all starts with the dubious (to say the least) premise that men and women are exactly the same. Both sexes on average want the same things, like the same things, are interested in the same things, and have the same priorities and proclivities.

Therefore, in a just world, we'd see an exact 50/50 ratio of men and women in every possible occupation, because there are no differences between men and women, therefore the only possible explanation for non-parity anywhere is because some kind of "systemic" factor is unfairly preventing one of the sexes from achieving the career results that they obviously want.

And if men and women don't want the same things on average, then that itself is a symptom of some kind of systemic problem. Because biology plays no role in human psychology; we're the only species in the animal kingdom to come into this world with no pre-programming and absolutely everything that we do is the result of cultural conditioning. So men and women could be exactly the same if only more parents would let their sons play with Barbie and their daughters play with GI Joe.

> Ottawa is itself closer to Havana than is Barbados.

Wow, this looks really wrong on Google Maps (Mercator strikes again!), but I looked it up and you're right.

Havana to Ottowa: 1585 miles. Bridgetown, Barbados to Havana: 1644 miles.

No idea, but the theory is as plausible as it is hilarious.

I don't think the resemblance is that strong: https://www.startpage.com/av/proxy-image?piurl=https%3A%2F%2...

I'm a big fan of this theory of royal offspring: https://medium.com/@leibowitt/of-course-fidel-castro-is-just...

Do Appalachians say "just" a lot? I don't get it.

> I’m honestly surprised people still exist who support lockdowns.

18 months of relentless one-sided fear porn will do that to a mind.

I highly recommend Laura Dodsworth's recent book A State of Fear for more on this. It's about the UK but I'm sure a similar story could be told about most Western countries.

Remember: vaccine passports are only a temporary measure until we've got the virus under control.

Oh, and you're going to need a booster jab every six months, but stop asking questions.

> and then it happened again.

Did it happen again? We haven't had anything close to another Chernobyl, and that was 35 years ago (more than 50% of the entire history of the nuclear power industry.)

> when they whip up paranoia for ratings

Wait until you learn about a thing called COVID-19.

Increasing the CO2 concentration in the air we breathe, even by the relatively small amount caused by burning fossil fuels, has been shown to lower human cognitive function. Does that count as poisoning?

(Source: it's discussed in the book The Uninhabitable Earth, although I don't have a copy to hand so can't find the exact citations.)

Any podcast recommendations?

Enjoy this brief respite, because it won't be long until he's center of attention again.

So when are Apple going to make phones that use the same charging cables as everyone else?

Are you open to hiring part-time contractors?

You two are discussing this as if it's specific to Germany... is it really that rare? Every tech job I've ever had in the UK (admittedly not a huge sample size) has had some kind of probationary period baked into the contract, although the exact details vary (e.g. number of months considered probation, notice period while on probation.) Are there countries where this isn't a thing?

Does it? Most people I know use computers daily, but they can't touch type.