bubblewrap

"In the end, the study group consisted of 291 patients (330 knees). Younger surgeon age was correlated with fewer complications"

There is a danger in such statistics in that for example older surgeons may have been assigned the more difficult cases.

Meaning what?

Could be global warming, or at least warm winters (whether due to global warming or not).

You can buy cheap solar panels - cheap, because they are produced with energy created from fossil fuels.

You are hopelessly naive. There is no such thing as a free lunch.

Yes, solar panels exist. That doesn't prove you can fulfill all our energy needs using them. And it doesn't tell you anything about their CO2 footprint.

There is also the tiny problem of energy at night, that has no good solution yet.

Not yet, it doesn't. That's a pipe dream.

In the same way, you could claim we have no plastics problem, because we don't need plastic. That would be the same logic as saying we don't need oil because we could use solar power.

Maybe in theory it is possible, but it is not a reality yet.

And it is not even proven that it is possible, either. Solar power is not zero impact, either, it may just have a slightly smaller CO2 footprint than oil.

Wasn't there a reason why we shouldn't burn that much oil anymore? I can't quite name it, but it is all over the news lately.

In comparison, plastic is actually mostly just an aesthetic issue.

We are not resource-constrained? What on earth makes you think so? It is genuinely news to me. Has fusion power been discovered?

And even if we were only attention constrained, a project that doesn't work would draw attention away from more promising ideas.

How so?

If it fails, it is a waste of money and resources. What about that would we "need"?

Also, if it works, why not dump more plastic into the sea. After all, apparently we can simply fish it out again.

So counterfeits are an invention of Amazon? Amazon's business model is counterfeits, and they have no interest of curbing the practice?

What a bullshit article, in the usual fashion: collecting a bunch of anecdotes, to convince readers "emotionally" that Amazon is the devil.

The reality is probably that at the scale of Amazon, some issues are bound to happen. "Journalists" looking for "evidence" can always find some anecdotes to relay.

Counterfeiting is big business in China and other places. It's presumably a difficult problem. It would exist with or without Amazon. Article does not give any indication that it would be easier for Amazon to fight it.

I guess it didn't age well.

To me the magic is gone because I feel that even if I create something good, I still need the permission from Google to make it popular.

Just curious, how long does the outlining take? I've read a similar notion before (Doctorow claiming to write a book in a year by writing 20 minutes per day - but he also has a plan what to write beforehand).

I am curious if outlining doesn't really count as work in the minds of many writers?

You have to start somewhere.

I received a rent increase today, with an apologetic letter that the government is forcing their hands. I suppose I could technically turn it down, but since I have always been on good terms with the landlord, I a not yet sure that I will. I sympathize with his cause.

Other than that, there are also restrictions in place for how much rent may be increased, so I doubt they would be able to make up for the 5 years.

People being willing to pay high prices to live in Berlin is what causes prices to rise. It has been a popular place to live in for a while.

Rent freeze will limit available housing and lower the quality of it.

Prices are rising because that is what people are willing to pay. You can in fact get very cheap housing in Germany, outside of the big cities.

They are not building as fast as possible. They actively drive investors away. Before this rent freeze, they discussed expropriate big investors.

Is there any data on AirBnB affecting the prices?

The city probably simply got more popular, which leads to rising prices.

That would be a spectacular finding, implying everybody could become a good coder with a little bit of practice.

I'm not saying it isn't so, but I think the word is still out in that.

In any case, the solution seems simple: just practice some leetcode before the interview.

I wonder if Chinese Medicine would know? They seem to extract medicine from anything that lives on the planet, so perhaps they would notice if supply dries up?

That's all nice and well, but I am not convinced that it scales yet to a level where you can say anybody not doing it like that is evil.

In any case, if you decide on that logic, everybody who shops at HM is evil, too.

At very basic level: have these "sustainable fashion" people figured out a way to grow cotton with less energy and less pollution? If not, they don't really have a solution for anything. If they have, they will probably prevail on the market anyway, without the "fair" marketing.

And the use of "fair" usually just implies that some people want to make the rules. I honestly don't care for that label, at least when it is used in marketing. In my opinion fair prices can only be determined by markets (with externalizations being paid for via laws).

So you admit that not all second hand clothing is still very desirable?

It is nice to have such initiatives, but I am not yet convinced that they would be enough to make retailers of clothes superfluous.

I don't see where in the article they show it is green washing? They only mention some criticism H&M received, including the ridiculous uproar about the "coolest monkey" T-Shirt. If that is proof for green washing, it is not very convincing.

Fast fashion - it depends on how much gets thrown away at the end of the day? Just because clothing has a heavy toll on the environment, doesn't mean companies producing it are evil. Toll on the environment or not, people need clothes.

As I said, we give away the clothes that are not broken.

H&M is not "the beast". Having kids, I am very thankful for their existence, otherwise merely buying new clothes every year would probably bankrupt us.

Before you say I should buy Second Hand: many kids clothes simply break by daily use. It is already common to give old children's clothes that are still OK to friends with smaller children, so it is not like the clothes are wasted by excessive consumerism.

This site used to be called "startup news", it is run by a startup accelerator.

Many people here maybe have or hope to have their own company one day. It seems normal to me to defend the concept of companies.

Personally I think blaming big companies is just lazy thinking that prepares the path to socialism. Of course companies, or the economy in general, aren't perfect. People are still trying to figure out how to do things better. That's normal. There is no need to assume evil greed behind everything.

I would expect most of the time the counts actually are a pretty good indicator. There may be good content that is overlooked, but if something is successful, it probably has something going for it.

My guess would be zero.

I guess you could compare it to criminals using the telephone. Invention of the telephone helped a lot of people, but unfortunately it also helps criminals.

Likewise the YouTube algorithm helps many people, but criminals or unwanted people (like pedophiles) can also use it.

It's ok to think about ways to prevent it, but I don't think it should be the first concern. Imagine outlawing telephony, because criminals could benefit from its use.

There seem to be some extreme cases where the algorithm fails. That doesn't imply in general it doesn't work well.

Sounds again like hyperbole from the NYT.

I find it more interesting to consider what would actually be a good outcome for the viewers. I suppose originally all those recommender algorithms simply optimized for viewer engagement. Obviously that may not be the best outcome for consumers. Perhaps enraging content makes people stick on a platform longer, for example. But it would be "better" for a viewer to see more educational content and even to disconnect after a certain while.

But how would you even quantify that, for the algorithm to be able to train for it?

The son of a friend of mine taught himself programming from YouTube videos, which YouTube had recommended to him. I wouldn't complain about a result like that.