Resident_Geek

The Camel Has Two Humps was not successfully replicated. The authors presented http://crpit.com/confpapers/CRPITV78Bornat.pdf in 2008:

"Two years ago we appeared to have discovered an exciting and enigmatic new predictor of success in a first programming course. We now report that after six experiments, involving more than 500 students at six institutions in three countries, the predictive effect of our test has failed to live up to that early promise."

> Eventually, one day, you're trying to board a plane and you get denied because you've been known to disseminate "false or misleading information".

That's absurd. How do you picture Facebook achieving control over whether you can board an airplane?

It's important to remember that the ads you're shown on Youtube videos are controlled by the channel owner, not by Google. Youtube itself doesn't have much control over how many ads you see.

Between them, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Eric Schmidt hold a majority of Google shareholders' voting power (about 2/3 is what I usually hear). I won't link anything because I don't really know the authoritative source for this sort of information, but Googling [Google stock structure] turns up plenty of secondary sources.

Do you have multiple Google accounts? If you're signed in to one you don't use for things, that will cripple Now, because it won't have all the data it needs to do things. Same problem if you do all your searching and Youtube watching and whatnot while signed out.

Sure, but recognizing a picture of one of your friends is a matter of searching O(100) people. Recognizing a picture of any Facebook user is a matter of searching O(100 million) people. It's a totally different problem, and there's no reason to think Facebook, which hasn't solved the smaller problem perfectly, could solve the larger problem at all.

Objectively? That's a dangerous word; I hope you've got a better argument than this one. Hard drives are being rapidly replaced by SSDs, so their speed just jumped _way_ up (especially start-up and random access times, which affect sleeping and waking performance). 2 or 3 orders of magnitude, not 20%.

> We would never vote up a article where "father writes bedtime story for daughter, Sleeping Prince rescued by Princess". Because it is commonplace because literacy is commonplace, as are pens and paper commonplace and as are the legal frameworks to be allowed to alter the published version.

It's also _considerably_ easier.

> With a standard combination lock all I have to tell someone is the combination

I don't think that's fair. The standard combination lock interface is well-known, not intuitive. "6-38-16" is brief, but it assumes the listener already knows to translate that to "turn right 360 degrees, then right 6, left 38, right 16". This lock doesn't seem any worse in that regard.

Sure, but what indication is there that the comment is referring to her race?

> Calling her a monkey is unbearably and unquestionably racist

How so?

A small bit of evidence to the contrary:

http://www.reddit.com/r/coffee: 35,566 subscribers http://www.reddit.com/r/Wicked_edge: 26,612 subscribers

> I don't buy the taller buildings = more wealth, creativity and energy argument.

If you haven't read The New Geography of Jobs, I highly recommend it. It gives an excellent explanation of why having a higher density of knowledge workers increases their per-capita productivity and creativity.

My bad. Fixed.

I knew about Google's Ads Preferences page (http://google.com/ads/preferences), which lists the interests Google has inferred for me. This article taught me about the BlueKai Registry (http://bluekai.com/registry/), which lists the same thing (and a little more) for BlueKai. Does anyone know of similar sources of information for other advertising networks?

More detail here: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/CamelsandRubberDuckie...

Don't worry, I don't think there's any controversy there. Google is quite conservative, engineering-wise.

I think the fact that it's a positive review from MG Siegler means it's objective - since he's known to dislike Android devices. A negative review wouldn't necessarily be not objective, but a positive review must be objective.

> If the scalpers didn't exist, the eventual ticket-holders would still be able to purchase from the original vendor.

A lot of them wouldn't, though. If the scalpers sell the tickets for, say, $500, then the people willing to pay $500 get tickets pretty reliably. If the scalpers didn't exist, those people would have to take a roll of the dice along with the many, many more people who are willing to pay $45. A lot of them wouldn't be able to see the show.

If I'm a person who's willing to pay above face value for a ticket but didn't get in line fast enough, the scalpers provide tremendous value to me.

Nobody uses "tar baby" as a slur in America. It's like "niggardly" - ignorant people use an incorrect interpretation to try to shut down people they don't like.

From the paper (http://home.medewerker.uva.nl/s.shalvi/bestanden/Shalvi%20et...), page 5-6: "Shalvi et al. (2011a) asked participants to roll a die under a paper cup with a small hole at the top allowing only them to see the outcome, and earn money according to what they reported rolling (1=$1, 2=$2, etc.). As participants’ rolls were truly private, the authors assessed lying by comparing the reported distribution to the distribution predicted by chance (Fischbacher & Heusi, 2008). Participants were asked to roll three times but to report only the outcome of the first roll. Although all three rolls were private, the distribution of reported outcomes resembled the distribution of choosing the highest of the three observed rolls. Modifying the task to allow participants to roll only once reduced lying. Participants clearly found value in being able to justify their lies to themselves. The authors concluded that observing desired counterfactuals, in the form of desired (higher) values appearing on the second or third (non-relevant for pay) rolls, modified participants’ ethical perceptions of what they considered to be lying. Observing desired counterfactual information enabled participants to enjoy both worlds: lie for money, but feel honest."

Shalvi et. al. (2011a) is: Shalvi, S., Dana, J., Handgraaf, M. J. J., & De Dreu, C. K. W. (2011a). Justified ethicality: Observing desired counterfactuals modifies ethical perceptions and behavior. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 115, 181-190.

In the paper in question (http://home.medewerker.uva.nl/s.shalvi/bestanden/Shalvi%20et...), it does. Chi-square test shows p<0.01 and p=0.02 for significance for the high and low time pressure groups, respectively.

Unfortunately, the paper (http://home.medewerker.uva.nl/s.shalvi/bestanden/Shalvi%20et...) doesn't say whether the lower mean for the people in the low time pressure group is because they lied less frequently, or because they lied with lower numbers.

I wish they'd included graphs of the actual distributions of reported numbers. That would have been more useful than just the mean, standard deviation, and chi-square results.

The dichotomy exists regardless of your not acknowledging it, though. I have _had_ these conversations and made these comparisons. My current girlfriend and I switched from condoms to the pill, despite the extra responsibility for her and the definite potential for side effects, because it's a better form of contraception, period. The very instant we can switch to RISUG we will, because all available data indicates that it's better in an absolute sense.

What I've described is why, in my opinion, birth control methods that target opposite genders are still mutually comparable.

All right, I see what you mean. I'll explain why I think there is a best method.

For a single person considering the question on their own, the best choice is limited to what's available to them. Since there are (approximately) equal numbers of men and women considering this, neither population affects the universal rankings.

But for a couple considering their birth control options, it doesn't matter on which of them the responsibility and direct benefit fall. What matters is the effectiveness and side effects. So they can agree on which is best without worrying about who holds the responsibility, etc.

So, for example, the pill is better than condoms, because it has a lower failure rate and doesn't have the side effect of severely reduced pleasure. The fact that a single woman can't depend on condoms and a single man can't take the pill cancels out, because there's one of each of them, and the couple is making the choice for both of them.

And I disagree with that. If it's the best at controlling birth, it's the best birth control. Since all sex acts involve two people, and I have a really hard time picturing a form of birth control which targets both parties equally, which party benefits/is responsible for it/controls it is neutral for judging which form is best.

I don't see how this title trivializes birth control. Good birth control comes from controlling birth. I don't believe any other method can claim 10+ years of effectiveness, with practically no side effects and high reversibility.

> I'm convinced that watching TV is harmful to a child's intellectual development. (And there's an established body of evidence to support that.)

Is there? I dislike children being raised by television as much as the next guy, but the chapter in Freakonomics on child development says there's no correlation between children's test scores and the amount of television they watch, according to the data from ECLS (http://nces.ed.gov/ecls/).

(edited to correct typo)