_archon_

Who owns a patient's medical records?

This was done with a replacement on hand which was more functional, more reliable, and easier to use. BT is not any of these things.

Is Harvard not a private school? Discussions of affirmative action/race aside, if they're a private institution, can't they do pretty much whatever they want? By what basis does anyone have authority/standing to sue?

A private club can refuse admittance for any reason, or for no reason. Is this not the case for private schools?

What's your point? Nothing says a nonprofit can't overcharge. If the hospital wants a few doctors and a new MRI, it's looking at many megadollars. Nothing says a nonprofit hospital would bill less aggressively than a for-profit one.

What prevents a seller from giving a cash discount line item for cash transactions?

So you're choosing a seat. What determines who from the party takes that seat?

This is an interesting problem. I believe that the migration of demand from sedans to mini-SUVs is largely the result of decades of marketing, which itself was an attempt to increase profit margins by creating a new class of vehicles (SUVs) to escape CAFE regulations. In the late 1990s (when the first SUVs hit the mainstream market), advertisements were screaming from every speaker about SUVs, and the market responded.

The Volvo V70 XC/XC70 is the Volvo V70 with a taller suspension to escape CAFE standards and increase profits. The only difference is height. The V70 had to be special ordered for the US market.

People also like to be able to see from a higher vantage point while driving, another advantage of a taller car. This problem has compounded itself; since more people buy SUVs, you need to be progressively taller to see around them.

When you look at an SUV, especially a mini-SUV like the Honda HRV or the Mazda Cx-5, realize what you're actually seeing is a modern station wagon that's been raised a couple inches. The modern consumer wants a wagon that's tall, because wagons are the ultimate in utility per dollar, and being tall is reassuring.

There are ways to deter such thinking. Imagine a tax on all non-commercial vehicles with hoods more than, say, 3.5' from the ground where they meet the windshield, or taller than 5.5' over the driver seat. If that tax were, say, 10-15% of the cost of the vehicle, the market would eventually adjust to wagons rather than tall wagons. The road would be safer due to better visibility for all, and the air would be cleaner due to better aerodynamics.

P.S. If you'd like an interesting exercise in the power of marketing, go to a dealer and look under the hood of a new full-sized truck. Note how much space there is between the top of the engine and the hood when it's closed. Then imagine the fuel economy gains if the hood was lower, and the visibility gains of both the driver and all the cars around the truck. The tall hood only exists to make the truck look more butch, and makes the truck worse in every way.

Most power systems in space are far from cutting edge technology. If you're going to spend many dollars to put hardware into space, your priority shifts away from peak performance and towards steady, proven reliability. Lots of old tech is robust and well-understood.

Also, work on robonaut was initiated 20 years ago.

Correct. Your democracy is not his laboratory. His website, however, is. If you want to control the behavior of Fbook, buy it. If you want pageviews from people's news feeds, make things which people decide are worth sharing.

From a user perspective, doesn't moving non-person-related (actually social media) things to a separate feed make the ux better?

MIT doesn't have to act in loco parentis for anyone over the age of majority (18). Anyone over 18 is an adult, and making their own choices. This happens to be the baseline age for most college entrants.

I don't know what agreements are in place, if any, for younger students.

How fancy are modern cars compared to the original cars?

I anticipate the engine's control computer will be able to adapt in any case. It's like the Mercedes driver who puts in 87... it'll work, and the gas is cheaper, but the tradeoff is the engine runs in "poor fuel" mode and is less efficient, eliminating any savings.

Mazda shot themselves in the foot reliability-wise with the first generation RX-8 because they:

* Underspec'd the ignition coils

* Didn't do enough on-road reliability testing

* Lowered the oil pressure and removed OMP ports

* Designed the oil filler breather in a way that allowed oil into the intake

In '04, the first wave of RX8s were coming in to the dealerships after 30k with severe misfire from the coils going bad. Mazda didn't have this failure mode in their factory service manual, so the cars got replacement engines (poorly reman'd in Mexico, not made on the Mazda Japan line). These didn't last because of poor manufacturing. Once the coil issue was figured out, the 8 became much more predictable and reliable.

As noted by Busterarm, they fully got their act together with the series 2 update.

[I own an '04 RX8 with ~130k miles)

My 8 made it to 127k before compression mandated a rebuild, and one of the previous owners is a documented idiot. Been solid ever since.

I have an 8 (and am involved in sports car things as a hobby) and I find the back seats to be superior to almost all sports cars and most mid-sized normal cars for seating adults.

On the RX8 at least, if you hold the gas pedal to the floor while cranking, it disables the fuel injectors. No need to pull fuses. * Foot to floor, crank for 10 sec, * let it rest for 30 sec to cool off the starter, * foot to floor and start to crank, pull your foot off the gas pedal.

If we have an AGI equivalent to a mouse, wouldn't it iterate itself to a human intelligence pretty rapidly? Safeguards and intelligent thinking now could be the difference between:

Mouse -> cat -> shark -> Evil human mastermind -> problems

and:

Mouse -> cat -> dolphin -> helpful friendly human -> better world

The end situation is highly theoretical, but a self-modifying AGI will think differently than a human does, so it's hard to predict what could happen with our existing preconditions. With such a broad range of potential divergence, and a steep difference in desirability of potential outcomes, it seems reasonable to ask some pointed questions sooner rather than later.

> Once electrics reach double-digit market share, they are probably unsustainable. They will probably need to find a replacement for petrol tax too.

I agree. What form would such a tax take? You could tax tires, which is stupid because it encourages people to buy less safe long-life tires, or you could roll it into property tax, or a VAT, or grocery tax, etc. Even a part of a sales tax could make sense, since logistics for the supplier is included in the cost of the product anyway. Logistical infrastructure tax makes sense.

What is best practice here?

Note: I'm in the US, so my left lane is for passing, my right lane is for cruising/exiting. If you drive in another country, your sides may vary.

If your recommendation is that everyone travel at the same rate in all lanes of traffic, creating a rolling checkerboard pattern, I wish you luck. I predict that we won't see this behavior until humans don't drive the cars anymore. The closest thing in real life, with human drivers of all temperaments and motivations, is a traffic jam. If even one person wants or needs to travel more rapidly (or more slowly) than the mesh, the clash of priorities, expectations, and behaviors can create a dangerous situation.

If we assume that human drivers are not uniform in needs, motivations, skills, and equipment, then we can assume that their desired speeds may vary. In this circumstance, we should arrange the rules of the road such that all drivers are predictable and can navigate the roadway in a safe and efficient manner. So far, this is done by telling slow traffic to stay right, unless they must change left to pass someone slower* . Exits are typically on the right, so the slow can always transact with exits without having to change lanes. If someone fast wants to exit, they simply match speed with the right lane, change right, and exit. Everyone is predictable, Everyone knows what to expect from everyone else, and as such hazards are sparse. Imagine a sand dune on a treadmill in a heavy wind. The bulk of the sand moves steadily along (bottom of dune = right lane), but the grains that want to move faster due to wind (top of dune = left lane) bypass the glut and blow over the top of it. This evens out the dune into a flatter hill, then into a long, low rise. The dune treadmill can fit into a smaller tunnel after a long time of faster grains passing the slower grains. As grains pass, they recycle down to allow faster grains to pass. This theory should allow for the most efficient flow of traffic in a multilane system.

In such a system, if you have a car going slowly in the middle or left lane, the system becomes less predictable. The faster cars have to slow to avoid them, and may not be able to change left to pass due to faster cars. If there's room, they can pass right, but that's not a common situation, it's not what people expect, and it's therefore risky. This obstruction has the effect of slowing down the entire system, creating a rolling road block, and eventually a traffic jam as everyone following has to react to the obstruction and find a way around it. Hazards are high in such a situation. Traffic can't flow like water around the obstruction. One driver has made the roadway less safe and efficient for all.

I'm not interested in downvoting you, this is good discussion. However, although maximum throughput is theoretically achieved when all cars are uniformly traveling at a high rate of speed in a mesh, there are several factors that cause this to be an untenable ruleset right now. If someone on the left has to exit, problems begin. If someone is in a hurry, or can't keep up, or is limited in speed by equipment, law, or regulation, traffic begins. If any traffic begins to take effect, it rapidly compounds into a slower mesh in the best case, and a traffic jam in more realistic situations.

In all situations, the frequency of exits is inversely correlated to the efficiency of transit.

*: Whether the right lane is entitled to change lanes left, or must wait for an oncoming faster car to go by, varies. In the US, if the car can get in the next lane safely, they're legal. In Germany, if they cause a car to have to slow down for them, they're illegal. I favor the German system, as it forces awareness and has less reactivity, which can be hazardous. My personal rule is to never merge, turn, or change lanes if someone else will have to react to me in any way. It is infuriating when someone turns from a secondary road with barely enough time to get their car into the lane before I would have hit them if I hadn't braked.

TL;DR your anticipation of the proposed policy being derided was correct, and such derision is merited both from a safety and an efficiency standpoint. When machines are handling transit, it may become a more feasible solution, but that time is not now.

This seems like the sort of behavior which can be disincentivized with steep fines. You, a developer, built a large building not to code? You have to pay to have it re-worked, and in addition you pay the local town $1000 per domicile affected per day it's delayed. Made-up example, but you get the idea.

Perhaps- but the reaction every common person has to the possibility that the next name will be theirs would incite involvement. Switch to the congressman every Friday or something, and randoms in between.

Why would they do this?

EDIT: Data customers would pay for access on an individual basis. Helicopter-parent countries might cry foul, but what leverage do they have? It's not like they were going to launch things with SpaceX and they can threaten to stop.

Why do we call proposed Acts by the name their creators gave them, instead of choosing a more appropriate (and accurate) name?

  "Internet freedom Act" - Empowering Telecom Companies Act

  "SOPA" - Criminalize Ordinary Internet Behavior Act

  "Patriot Act" - Remove Guaranteed Rights In Favor Of Empowering Central Authority Act

  "Affordable Care Act" - Essentially Romneycare

etc. Why should these names not have colloquially adjudicated corrections applied to them the way anything else does?

Looking at it historically[1], it would appear that marriage rates have been declining steadily since the '80s, as have the subsequent divorces. It would appear that the baby boomer generation didn't pass on the desire to marry that they inherited. They also didn't pass on legal racism, having enough money to buy something before you buy it, leaded fuel, and a world without space travel or widespread nuclear proliferation among wealthy countries.

>the attack on marriage was successful I suppose.

I propose that things like marriage cannot be attacked; marriage is a choice between people. It is a covenant, and its meaning is unique between any couple. The children of boomers aren't reacting to someone slandering the idea of such a covenant, we're reacting to seeing what our parents did with such covenants. Caution is merited.

[1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/06/23/144-y...

I hadn't seen any discussion or mention on HN. This is an important milestone in increasing the availability of space, both for commercial and human ventures, and possibly for extraglobal habitation in the future.

I found the WaitButWhy series on Musk and his companies to be interesting and enlightening (as someone with no aerospace background):

Part 1: http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/05/elon-musk-the-worlds-raddest-m...

The SpaceX post (part 3): http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/08/how-and-why-spacex-will-coloni...

Additional SpaceX post: http://waitbutwhy.com/2016/09/spacexs-big-fking-rocket-the-f...

Edit: line breaks for links.

An interesting set of images. What's the deal with solar in Massachusetts? The state seems to have much higher density of solar than I would anticipate.

I keep in touch with a group of friends via FB's Messenger app. Recently, several posts on the chat would have greyed-out boxes on them with an "add to story" button on them. While I understand that FB's looking to centralize and capitalize on what and how people communicate, I'd love the option to turn some of this more intrusive stuff off.

No, I don't want to put the contents of my chat into an FB post. If I did, I would copy and paste them into an FB post. To some degree, these changes degrade Messenger's usefulness as a chat app. I want to see content, not buttons begging me to become content.

I currently believe that birth control should be actively employed by all parties. I look forward to a viable male contraceptive making it to market.

Thanks for this update! I had a vague notion that such a product was in the works, but having trials in the next year or two is fantastic progress.

There's likely a subset of men who wear condoms when sleeping around so they can decrease their risk of babies (a measure so they don't have to trust that the woman they're with is both on the pill and taking it regularly). They might not wear them if this contraceptive decreases pregnancy risk in a similar way. STDs may not seem risky enough to merit condoms for a portion of this subset.

This smaller subset would be at higher risk of STDs if they adopt use of this contraceptive and stop condom use while still sleeping around. If the trend continued, the incidence of STDs would increase, which would change the risk factor of STDs, which would sway a subset back into condom use.

All is balance.