bandofthehawk

Ever been to a shooting range? It's basically a bunch of random people with loaded guns.

Can you give up citizenship of the old country? Not being willing to give up your old citizenship could be one example of "not integrating enough".

Does that also apply to people living under oppressive governments? Anonymity can be a useful tool for sharing information that those in power don't want released, for example whistle blowing.

The only "system for payoff" I've seen with software patents is patent trolls. Are there cases of software inventors being rewarded for their software more fairly because they had a patent?

In addition, software is also copyrightable, which makes much more sense than patents for protecting unauthorized use. IMO, patents for software should be mostly eliminated, and even copyright terms should be much shorter.

A person born in a war torn country who is killed at a young age doesn't get much opportunity for good or bad choices. That's what I think of regarding bad luck.

Wouldn't a declining student population mean more money per student? And it seems like it would often (but not always) be cheaper to maintain existing buildings vs building new ones? I'm also wondering how much of the new suburban buildings are financed with debt, and the costs just haven't really caught up to them yet.

I think it might be less about left/right and more about suburban and car culture vs. urban or rural. People living in the suburbs tend to drive everywhere anyway and perceive things outside of the car as dangerous.

> Tangentially, the author forgets that the reason cities like Baltimore adopted such policy was to encourage the bulldozing of uninhabitable structures lest they become less than legally inhabited.

This is interesting, do you have a source for this? Normally the assessors are tasked only with setting a value of a property and not with any type of policy related to rate or discount.

One way to measure fair market value is too look at similar recently sold properties, which they did in the article.

> How do you connect the policy with the intended effect without magic or lying?

Assess the empty properties to their actual value, and then lower the overall rate.

In many places it's parking minimums that are preventing a more efficient use of space.

That doesn't sound like a problem of inflation. I think it's related to people migrating out of rural areas and into big cities. When you have a decreasing local population, home prices tend to fall.

That doesn't solve the issue of housing being unaffordable to new buyers. How do you address affordability if the prices stop dropping before they reach a price at which an average young worker can afford to buy a starter home?

As someone not familiar with these libraries, image_get or image_read seems much clearer to me than imread. I'm wondering if the convention is worse than your instinct in this case. Maybe these AI tools will push us towards conventions that aren't always the best design.

Pennies and nickels cost more to make than they are worth.

The is a really good, IMO, Saturday Night Live skit about this where the contestants try to guess Republican or not of various people. Some of the bits do a great job of pointing out how some of the values people claim to believe in are only applied selectivity when it benefits their side.

I pretty much agree with everything you said, but trying to think of a counter example I'm reminded of the movie Moneyball. Reviewing the detailed stats of each baseball player vs. the cost of hiring them seems pretty close to measuring "time doing useful things on the field". I'm not sure how common this practice is in general in current professional sports.

Before TSA existed we could get through security without paying the extra $85. Why doesn't the TSA just pre-check everyone? It just feels like a scam to me.

I don't think he's saying no one should get rich, just that wealth inequality is already too large and seems to be on a path to continue growing. I think most people would agree there is some point where there is too much wealth inequality, we just disagree on whether we're already past that point.

When the grandparent post said:

> Fact checking organizations proved themselves wildly left-biased

I think they implied that this bias also ran counter to objective reality. When someone calls out something that is objectively false, it's not usually considered bias.

I find it refreshing that this post actually calls out specific problems and people. IMO, too many of these company culture posts keep the complaints somewhat vague which makes them harder to evaluate.

I noticed that comment also. It seems like the point of view of an engineer that doesn't really think about security.

Reminded me of when I first discovered that major browsers allow third party cookies by default. And thinking I can't believe they allow this massive privacy leak.

> Should we tolerate people that advocate the murder of civilians?

What do you mean by "tolerate" here? You don't have to support their views. But they should absolutely be allowed to speak. In a society that values free speech, we often have to tolerate speech we don't like.

Is there a legitimate reason for the liquid ban? AFAIK it was a response to a failed terrorist attempt similar to the shoe bomber, but it's likely that the ban has little to no effect on overall safety.

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2020/03/tsa_admits_li...

Basically the local politicians were suckered in by the promise of massive investments, and made some terrible decisions including forcing out some local residents to make room for development that never happened. It's definitely worth listening to the whole thing, as it's a pretty compelling story about why local communities should be very cautious and skeptical about these types of investments promises.

Even if the park includes a skate park and a bike trail? I guess it depends on what size/type of park you are familiar with.

> That's ridiculous -- of course benefits can outweigh psychological side-effects.

I understood the grandparent post to mean that the harm can sometimes outweigh the benefits when the vaccine is forced. Not that it's always the case.

> If a vaccine for a deadly, highly communicable disease can completely stop transmission

Are you suggesting that the COVID vaccines were able to completely stop transmission?

Right, that's kind of the point of the article. The government should tell us that number with a pre-filled form. Then we can either accept it as is, or make whatever corrections are necessary.

> This is not due to lobbying by Intuit.

Do you really believe this? There seems to have been quite a bit of lobbying by Intuit. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CalFile