chki

My armchair theory is that this is not some kind of advanced market manipulation but Musk actually changed his mind about this after initiating his carbon capture challenge. He seems like somebody who changes his mind a lot and he is fully in control of Tesla. It's pretty stupid that he "forgot" about the negative environmental impact of Bitcoin but it doesn't seem that far-fetched either.

Which makes sense, right? Otherwise I'll declare my stock and property to be currency and directly exchange it at the dealership for a new car, avoiding the capital gain tax.

>That said, email clients have a concept of an outbox where messages that were sent are placed until an internet connecton is established. At that point, those messages are actually sent to their recipients

This is also possible with WhatsApp. Messages can be sent while not being online and will be delivered as soon as you go online.

I want to point out something from one of the articles which is so far from the truth that it somewhat undercuts the authors credibility:

> For instance, if WhatsApp goes down, not only can you not send/receive messages, you won’t be able to see your old ones, and no one else on your network will be able to either. You could argue that a single email provider has the same effect, but you’d be wrong. If Gmail goes down, I can still send emails to Gmail recipients and I can still see past messages from Gmail users.

Obviously you will be able to see all your WhatsApp messages when WhatsApp goes down. The same is true for Facebook Messenger and many other applications, because everything is saved locally. It's even possible to send WhatsApp messages while being offline which will then be delivered later on.

I agree that incarceration is a necessary compromise and of course I don't want a killer to strike again. Forgiveness doesn't mean that I'm against all punishment. But I think that it means there always has to be a chance for somebody to change – no matter what they did. Even life sentences without any chance of parole should not be possible: if somebody is no longer a danger to society they should be allowed to return at some point.

Because I care deeply about everybody – no matter what they have done. Because forgiveness and love are my core values, even if it doesn't usually show up in my day to day life. Because revenge is always bad. Torturing somebody no matter their crime would go fundamentally against those few things that I feel very deeply about – not that different from loving my family or caring about the longterm wellbeing of humanity.

If that sounds irrational to you: That's because it is irrational. Whether we choose to end another persons life is fundamental in our understanding of life itself, which is highly subjective.

But your belief that we should kill other humans is also irrational and subjective.

Edit: Also this paragraph in your first answer

>> I also think that pain should be part of the death penalty... that a murderer doesn’t deserve a quick and painless death but rather a healthy period of searing agony to experience the anguish that they themselves wrought on another."

is actually terrifying to me. Even reading it causes me some physical discomfort.

Please note that it is actually unclear why his video was taken down. It's extremely common for chess videos to Feature the words "white", "black", "weak" and "strong".

But if you actually need more accuracy (which I do not in my daily life) you can simply add a decimal point? Also, that's a difference between 60 and 100 data points, which is not really that much.

You should watch the full video – that's the point.

I'm not sure if this is a joke I don't get but speaking about weird cultural mix-ups: Copenhagen is not related to the Netherlands. I'm actually glad that people are getting EU states all mixed up but we're not there yet, guys ;)

I would follow your logic if the english pronunciation of the word Volkswagen was actually phonetically consistent. But while "Volks" is pronounced in an english way, isn't the word "wagen" pronounced in a weird German way?

"Wagen" on its own would probably be pronounced like way-gen, if my english intuition is not fooling me. Instead it is pronounced like wuh-gen.

I don't really care about this either way but if you are bothered by something the weird mixture is.. a bit annoying.

Gert Postel (a German mailman) also managed to be a fake psychiatrist for 17 years; it's a very unsettling story https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gert_Postel https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gert_Postel

Because if you destroy the boat and it sinks that will make the passage unusable for a long time? I mean currently it seems possible to drag the ship out of this problem but if it's no longer floating you might need to start sawing it into pieces like this example of the sunken Tricolor https://youtu.be/0ENOJBLVgjw . That will take months and will have a serious global economic impact.

I'm also just speculating but my understanding is that there is already a lot of money behind this and that it simply takes time for companies specialized in salvaging ships to physically get there with their equipment and also develop a solution that works.

I don't think more money would make those companies work faster and I don't think there is some reasonable alternative solution available other than using these companies.

Wow, the same ship with a very unusual accident just 14 Months ago. A very bad look and hints to a deeper systemic issue that was not fixed.

Does the US have the justification to ban vaccine shipments to other countries in your opinion?

Sorry, I meant to say: Because the EU allows vaccines to be exported. The EU could in theory stop all exports which is what the US has done.

There are a lot of things not true in your comment; I will point out a few things:

The EMA did not get any additional power delegated to it by Merkel or anybody else. Maybe you are talking about the joint vaccine procurement by the European Commission? An instrument that does actually allow EU member states to purchase additional vaccines.

If you are talking about EMA: the EMA does not even disallow countries from using other vaccines not approved by the EMA (Hungary is using Sputnik V for example).

The EU is not a "hotbed of excess politicians who've been "early retired"". That might have been true on some level in the past but everybody has realized for quite some time that the EU has real powers and people want those jobs. There are many young MEPs and very competent members of the European Commission.

We are not witnessing incompetence: Vaccine production is very difficult and the EU is not running a nationalistic scheme like the US or the UK who are not exporting any vaccines whatsoever. In four-five months most adult people in the EU will have the chance to be vaccinated. That's an enormous success story. Other developed countries don't have any significant amount of vaccines at all. All western countries with vaccines (except for US and UK) only have them because of the EU.

That's not true, all three vaccines authorised in the EU are approved under a conditional market authorisation, which is a sped up process but not an emergency authorisation.

The United Kingdom did authorise (some?) vaccines for emergency supply.

Interesting points, I did not know about these actions in South America. I don't want to be too generous to Pfizer/Biontech and you rightly point out the need to be cautious with these companies especially if they are in such an influential position. However my guess would be that legal risks in countries with weaker rule of law protections (for reference see this report https://worldjusticeproject.org/rule-of-law-index/) is a lot higher. You might find yourself in a position where a court rules against you although you did not commit any crime – or you might presume that there is a possibility that you will be in such a position. If you want to protect yourself and have an extremely strong negotiation position, you might write very far-reaching liability clauses.

This in itself could – imo rightfully – be seen as a deplorable strategy because you are dictating these rules for a life saving vaccine. But it does not imply that you are committing any crimes at the moment.

This is not completely correct, at least in the EU there have not been any emergency vaccine authorisations by the EMA which means that pharmaceutical companies will be liable for mistakes that cause adverse health effects.

In the UK there was an emergency authorisation which means that they will not be liable to the same degree.

As for why they do this: There is always a small chance that the vaccine will cause adverse health effects because pharmaceutical stuff is very complex. Minimizing legal risks is a completely normal thing in all industries and part of the negotiation process. I would not draw the conclusion that they aren't 100% convinced of their vaccine but instead that their team of highly paid lawyers told them what was a good business decision.

In some jurisdictions (I can only speak for Germany with some authority) if you've made a serious effort to get legal advice on a complicated topic and the legal advice was wrong this will (probably) mean that you're not guilty of a crime caused by the bad legal advice. Civil liability is a different topic obviously.

(But the "probably" is there for a reason: it really does depend on the specific topic at hand and whether you actually tried hard enough to comply with the law)

I agree. I'm at a similar chess rating level, I would add that it is very weak in the endgame. I guess if it only looks four moves into the future it's difficult to see pawn promotions.

So you believe in some sort of conspiracy theory where the media and the government want to enact a strict lockdown because...?

(of course "the" media and "the" government don't actually exist, but just for the sake of simplicity)

If a new variant emerges during a "recession" of the original variant, it will automatically hide within the high case numbers of the original variant.

> The only advantage I can fathom for being able to unlock and start a car over the Internet instead of only by being within radio range seems more oriented towards attackers and other user-hostile scenarios

Your car might be parked further away than the radio distance, especially if you're living in a big city with few parking spaces. There are also a lot of scenarios where you are not at home but want to preheat your car anyways.

There were/are multiple vaccine candidates with different production needs. How do you decide which factories to build? I think there are a lot of unrealistic expectations when it comes to these highly sophisticated vaccines. It's not comparable to your average electronics product.

To contradict your suggestion that Germany does not see any bike usage at all: In a somewhat recent survey (2019) 44% of people claimed that they were using their bicycle as a transportation method more than once a week (up from 38% in 2015). 61% were using their car as a transportation method more than once a week (70% in 2015). There were more sales of bicycles last year than diesel cars.

It can be used against you in Court if you were to make a statement that the company is a "scam solicitor".

Maybe an analogy to sales would make this more understandable: If I was selling computers and the laptop I sold you had some serious issues, you cannot immediately turn around and call me a scammer. Because it might not be true, actually there is a more likely explanation that I didn't know about the issues with the laptop.

Now if you would talk to me instead and I would insist that there couldn't possibly be an issue with the laptop and charge you for the faulty product, you _might_ call me a scammer. (Maybe one single instance of this wouldn't even be enough. Maybe you would even need to prove that I did in fact know about the problem with the laptop)

On the other hand you can definitely leave a review saying that you received a bad product. You would not be required to talk to the company to be able to do that.

Edit: To further elaborate a bit because I think people in this thread are having some weird reactions to this ruling: It's pretty normal that you cannot go around and tell lies that hurt somebody's business. If you think about it this is very normal. I cannot stand in front of a bakery with a sign that says "The bread in this bakery contains dangerous amounts of lead" if that is not in fact true. And if nobody buys bread anymore because of my sign, I will be liable for the damages incurred.

This is less clear if my sign says: "In my opinion the bread in this bakery tastes funny." Because this is an opinion rather than a fact.

But in the case at hand we are talking about somebody calling a company a "scam solicitor". That's mostly a factual statement, you could prove that the company is either doing regular business or that they are scamming people. If the defendant is not able to prove that they are in fact a scam business, it's very reasonable to assume that he is liable. The concrete damages incurred are however debatable in my opinion.