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coffeevradar

80 karma · joined June 3, 2015

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coffeevradar··on Chinese activist Ai Weiwei says Credit Suisse closing foundation's bank account
Hi there, if it's ok with you I'm going to address subsequent commenters for a moment. Anyone smarter than me, let's focus on this comment. Isn't this the type of social media post that would be immediately dismissed as self-serving propaganda that has the effect of undermining both democracy and the dollar? What is the essential difference between this post and the kind of nonsense that is now being patrolled on other social media platforms?
coffeevradar··on Bitcoin Tops $24K, Setting New All-Time High
With the important distinction that most investment vehicles represent tangible ownership (of equity in a company, of a debt obligation, of real estate, etc.)

Bitcoin exists primarily as something people buy in order to hopefully sell to someone else, all with the underlying value intangible and arguably nonexistent beyond scarcity.

coffeevradar··on Disney claims anyone using a Twitter hashtag is agreeing to their terms of use
Copyright is fairly applied to Disney. There were many beneficiaries to its extension, large and small. In any case, it is a matter of law, just like earlier, shorter copyright protections were.

It's totally legitimate to favor shorter copyright, but essentially any duration is an arbitrary one. It strikes me as odd that you would be interested in applying the law fairly while also referring to the law as a perversion.

coffeevradar··on Japan to subsidize 100% of salaries at small companies
>The unemployment benefit extension and hack (unemployment + $600) was the real critical mistake that we'll spend a long time fixing.

What was the alternative? Existing unemployment benefits are insufficient for households to pay bills and the PP program at best would have saved a small portion of the overall jobs lost.

coffeevradar··on Reddit CEO Cracks Down on Abusive Content to Protect Users, Attract Advertisers
I was responding to a comment that conflated the worst excesses of admittedly terrible communities on Reddit with the whole of the 'modern right.' My goal was to explain the thinking of those who are accusing Reddit of systemic bias against the right. Their assertion is that subreddits advocating violence against right-wing activists are tolerated, while right-wing subreddits are condemned for similar infractions. Whether this is objectively true I do not know. In fact, my interest in politics is minimal and I should probably leave these discussions alone in future. I hope Hacker News does not devolve into another online community overrun with political arguments and petty antagonism.
coffeevradar··on Reddit CEO Cracks Down on Abusive Content to Protect Users, Attract Advertisers
You'll note that I said that there was an 'apparent' double standard. If may not be apparent to you, but it certainly is to some. You seem like you spend more time on the political parts of Reddit than I, so I'm sure you're well equipped to investigate this yourself.
coffeevradar··on Reddit CEO Cracks Down on Abusive Content to Protect Users, Attract Advertisers
There are plenty of left-wing subreddits with equal measures of vitriol. Somehow they avoid earning the same opprobrium that the right-wing ones do. This apparent double standard creates the appearance of bias.
coffeevradar··on Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983
People that do any kind of data entry or work in finance learn to use it too. The number pad is not just for cashiers.
coffeevradar··on Can Germany Fix Facebook?
Without the Bill of Rights having already been drafted and clearly having enough support for success, the Constitution would not have had enough support to have been ratified because of opponents that were concerned about the very rights that the Bill of Rights enacts (including freedom of speech).

It is obviously true that the first amendment is an amendment, but it is not accurate to suggest that it is (or was viewed at the time as) less essential than the document it amended.

This is something that is covered in most U.S. civics classes.

coffeevradar··on Dollar General Hits a Gold Mine in Rural America
Except that they charge $1.50 for everything.

Which is only annoying because similar stores in Japan (which for me are a highlight of any trip to Japan) only charge ¥100.

I don't know if it's because of proximity to China or because Daiso knows they're offering better stuff than their literally $1 competitors here in the U.S.

coffeevradar··on Training crows to pick up cigarette butts for food
I think they've solved it in Singapore.

Not that I'm in favor of the methods used.

coffeevradar··on The Depression Thing
Is that when you store it in bottles for later?
coffeevradar··on Switching to e-cigarettes could save 6.6M American smokers
But vapor isn't smoke.
coffeevradar··on Average IQ scores seem to have been falling and population ageing may be why
There's already the WC test. Which as one gets older one is less likely to pass.
coffeevradar··on Physical recovery from binge TV-watching gets harder as we get older
To be clear, the hot coffee warning is there because a particular McDonald's franchisee elected to keep their coffee at boiling levels and then serve it to unsuspecting customers at the drive-thru. This practice resulted in extremely serious burns to the genitals of the woman who famously sued.

I take your larger point, but I feel your example is one better suited to Seinfeld or a comedy act.

coffeevradar··on Apple Scales Back Its Ambitions for a Self-Driving Car
Reasonably sure their buying all three automakers would attract the attention of antitrust regulators.
coffeevradar··on Trump Strategic and Policy Forum, Which Included IBM and GM CEOs, Disbands
If you're suggesting that Hitler also placed all of the blame on immigrants, you must mistakenly believe that the Jewish people were immigrants to Germany and Nazi-occupied Europe. This was not the case. The Jewish victims of the Holocaust were targeted for being Jewish, not because they hadn't been born within certain borders.
coffeevradar··on First Human Embryos Edited in U.S
Life, uh, finds a way.
coffeevradar··on Why did AirAsia fly a crippled jet away from a nearby airport yesterday?
Some AirAsia pilots are religious!?

My word!

coffeevradar··on The Holder Report on Uber
What's wrong with doing that"
coffeevradar··on China Can’t Sustain Its Debt-Fueled Binge, Moody’s Says
Yeah, it's more like people have been waiting for decades for a day of reckoning for Japan in the sense that the country is still very productive in many senses but has yet to escape its extremely long-term recession. Japan has been punished enough.

It's quite tragic.

coffeevradar··on What Do Millennials Spend All Their Money On?
According to Wikipedia, for Generation X "demographers and researchers typically use starting birth years ranging from the early-to-mid 1960s and ending birth years ranging from the late 1970s to early 1980s."

So any members of Generation X were still children in the 70s or not yet born. I think you mean a different cohort or a different time.

coffeevradar··on Can Wal-Mart’s Expensive New E-Commerce Operation Compete with Amazon?
I think to the extent there's a bigger game it's that Amazon wants to present to its customers a minimally curated selection of products (and sellers) that includes the full gamut of what is available in the wider world.

If they are seen to offer this selection, shoppers will at least begin their product searches on Amazon. Even if many customers opt to eventually buy elsewhere, Amazon will end up with a substantial share of the purchases that result from the initial searches.

coffeevradar··on If you opened your PayPal account before you were 18, close it
Since Venmo is a subsidiary of PayPal, it's not surprising that the two have similarly anti-consumer policies.
coffeevradar··on Audrey – A smart personal assistant app that helps you to get things done
I also noticed a minor mistake on the automatic email acknowledging a signup to the waiting list.

Instead of saying 'merrier', as in more merry, it says 'marrier'.

coffeevradar··on Google has reportedly stopped developing its own self-driving car
The Uber Pool service doesn't require you to actually be matched. If there doesn't happen to be another rider going in the same direction, you still get the cheaper fare and it's counted as an Uber Pool ride.
coffeevradar··on How Google’s Blind Lawyer Does His Job
It's interesting to me that he uses an iPhone instead of an Android phone. Apple must be fairly far ahead when it comes to accessibility.
coffeevradar··on Book Piracy as Peer Preservation
You do make some convincing arguments. I think, though, that you may be overlooking that it's not just ancillary participants that spend man hours on intellectual property matters. In a broad sense, artists of all kinds (that is, the authors of the copyrighted works) do the same thing. It seems undeniable that if it isn't possible to make a living as an artist or author, we'll have a lot less art to consume as a society. So even accepting your arguments, the decision to pirate a given piece of content is not one that is unambiguously virtuous.

I apologize for being rude earlier. I remember once feeling very self-righteous about my own disregard for copyright, and as my feelings have now switched to the opposite side of the issue I think I may have projected my own hang-ups onto you. It's a complicated topic, and I certainly don't think that always complying with copyright law makes anyone a saint either.

coffeevradar··on Book Piracy as Peer Preservation
Rationalizing your own behavior of downloading content you like and enjoying consuming it as being a "benefit to society" is quite a stretch.

Thinking that everything you do, even selfishly, is somehow ethically laudable is not a sign of maturity.

coffeevradar··on Skimmers Found at Walmart: A Closer Look
The most important difference is the presence of encryption in the case of chip cards. Magnetic strips offer their data in plain text form when swiped through any card reader.
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