Wissmania

The photos are public too...

I wonder how many people with a profile picture of their face on their Twitter/Facebook accounts are seriously concerned about this

old man yells at cloud

You just assume every Muslim in that region is a terrorist? Based on what exactly?

I'm a similar age group / community and this sort of perspective is not at all uncommon, and it's legit. There is no "performative wokeness" going on in my experience.

I was just making a general philosophical point. Whether Prop C specifically is a good idea depends on a lot of empirical information that I haven't researched.

There is a pretty good Utilitarian case for taxing the rich to help the poor too. No sense of entitlement needed.

Honestly pretty pathetic that investors hadn't priced in the existence of bots into their valuation of the company. Perhaps I expect too much.

It is true that multiple parties (which first past the post prevents) would make forming coalitions around issues like this easier.

Saying "this isn’t a conspiracy by one party or group" is pretty silly though. The economic policies advocated for and enacted by the two parties point in completely opposite directions.

I think this is just way too simplistic of a view of it. People won't just follow two exact patterns of behavior regardless of their environment. We all have, to varying extents, a proclivity to instant dopamine-based gratification.

The difference now is that the technology that now exists makes this sort of gratification both constantly available, and better than ever at scratching that dopamine itch.

The evidence the article presents also points towards something happening after the advent of smartphones, and not before.

I agree with the authors points about blogging on facebook and having a decent logged out experience, but I want to push back against him lumping in anti-adblock pop overs.

Every publisher of high quality content is dependent on advertising to stay in business. When you are using adblock, your eyeballs are freeloading off of all the users who are using the website as intended.

I certainly understand the urge to use adblock, but it's amazing to me that people would feel entitled enough to actually expect publishers not to try to prevent this.

This is just semantics. You get to use Facebook in exchange for having the info you share there used for advertising, and having those ads show up on the side of the page. Who cares what you call it.

"Philosophers, he posited, would be better off if they stopped trying to prove things like scientists, an impulse he believed led thinkers to overlook how philosophy might stimulate the ‘mind’s excitement and sensuality’. Rather, they ought to limit themselves to explaining how a system of thought is possible."

Can someone explain what this last sentence means?

Another thing: If Uber really wanted to charge their customers more, they could just raise their rates relative to distance (which would be identical to the user since they only see the final fare and not the components of it). I think they probably just pick a long route to be conservative in the time estimate they give to the user.

I am not sure about the legality here, but I will say that I see this arrangement as good for both the driver and the passenger.

As a passenger I can know exactly what I'm paying ahead of time, and don't have to worry about my driver intentionally increasing the time/distance of a trip to charge me more.

As a driver, you are compensated on a time/distance basis, which means you don't have to worry as much about special requests/traffic/other issues messing with what you earn.

Uber is the one accepting the risk here, which the chance that the payout to the driver exceeds the flat rate the passenger paid because of an extra long trip.

Just as a response to the first section, you can't say that Uber is subsidizing both customers and drivers like they are separate costs. There is some margin, which is the difference between what the customer pays and what the driver gets paid. Currently this margin is negative, which means that Uber is "subsidizing" the transaction by paying the difference themselves. For any given ride the customer subsidy and the driver subsidy are same thing, Uber doesn't pay twice.

One advantage of nuclear power relative to other renewable sources is that it that unlike wind/solar, it can provide consistent energy 24/7. Our energy storage solutions are simply not good enough to provide sufficient power in downtimes.

If your concern is safety, then nuclear power seems to be the best choice: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents

There is so much irrationality in this thread and in public opinion in general... it makes we wish I could personally bet on Uber's future success.

However, Uber is staying private, so they don't have to cater their long term plans to the whims of random people who have no idea what they are talking about. (I include myself in this category)

While it gives me hope that legislation is at least acknowledging that the suffering of animals is something we might care about, it still is sad to see the same arbitrary pet/livestock divide.

Of course extending such legislation to farm animals would be politically impossible, but it still hurts to read

> the animal's dignity must prevail over the profitability of the industrial activity

when we all know it's not true.

How would you handle the market that emerges between the two currencies? If Gresham Money is deemed less valuable, and some market exists between the two currencies, it seems that GD would just weaken relative to USD. I'm not sure how you could stop merchants from then just inflating GD prices, neutralizing the viral effect.

I don't see how someone can credibly argue that raising income tax rates discourages innovation. As if Zuck or Gates wouldn't have started their companies if they only would have made $25 billion instead of $50 billion.

He even argues in earlier writing that most of the innovation comes from genuine passion for solving a problem, rather than profit motive.

People who have worked a lot to increase their wealth understandably don't want a portion of it taken away, even if it probably won't make them less happy, or motivate people less in the future.

The rejection rate was for non-penn applicants. Any Penn student who wants to can attend.

How is this supposed to be a scandal exactly?

The issue seems to be that she could of hid something in her personal emails by not turning everything over. But couldn't any official have just used their gov email for "official business" and use their personal email for stuff they want to hide? Doesn't every politician actually do this?

The fact that Clinton is letting personal correspondence mix with government correspondence indicates to me she has less to hide, not more.

The only issue that has the possibility of being legitimate in is the Benghazi stuff. Technically, it could have been a deliberate move to make emails related to Benghazi un-searchable during the investigation. Of course, this only actually matters if those emails contain anything significant/damning, and they probably don't.

It's actually featured on the front page! Looks like twitch is branching out.

What was the previous best conversion rate? This doesn't get us all the way to electricity, so its not really interesting info without a point of reference.

These critics overestimate the impact of Ebola. Even with this current weak system, the recent Ebola outbreak has had a death toll of 7,645 as of Dec 23. A million people die every year from Malaria, and some (optimistic) estimates say that the Gates' efforts could save 5 million lives.

This seems like a classic example of our tendency to overestimate the importance of singular, cataclysmic impacts, as opposed to predictable, systemic ones.

I cannot recommend highcharts enough. The API is extremely easy to use, and the documentation is excellent. Basically, each time I was wondering whether I could customize some feature, not only was highcharts able to do it, but I found it in the docs extremely quickly. Building a great looking custom graph takes very little time. It can't do too many super fancy things, but i still like it.