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distant_hat

1,016 karma · joined February 10, 2018

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distant_hat··on Pornhub requires ID from Louisiana users to comply with state’s new porn law
The problem with this statement is people are individuals, and murder, thankfully, is still a rare event. You might as well claim, white people hate serial killers, but still per capita, have more serial killers than almost anyone else.
distant_hat··on Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes
The thing is in the US driving is essential to having any sort of life for the most part leaving tiny enclaves like NYC aside. And freedom is an important part of US ethos. Autonomous cars as long as they are better than humans would be accepted by a range of people especially by elderly etc because what they want is to get from point A to point B, not necessarily to drive.
distant_hat··on Transformational therapy cures haemophilia B
The virus vector doesn't implant in the bone marrow. Hemophilia is caused by deficiency of Factor VIII (Hemophilia A) or Factor IX (Hemophilia B). The factor is produced in the liver and they use a virus that specifically targets the liver to get the gene in there. I agree though that transformational is a superlative and there have been other gene therapies that showed in initial promise for Hemophilia but the effects fade out over a few years.
distant_hat··on Transformational therapy cures haemophilia B
The actual paper. Unfortunately paywalled.

[1] https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2119913?query=re...

distant_hat··on I'm “still afraid to use spaces in file names” years old
via GUI in OS X.
distant_hat··on I'm “still afraid to use spaces in file names” years old
I had a guy in my team use forward slashes in filenames. Terrible idea, caused all sorts of weird issues.
distant_hat··on Why women lose the dating game (2012)
This is a somewhat disingenuous way of looking at it. The dating game, over men and women is either win-win or lose-lose. What the article is saying is that women in their 30s and above are losing but missing out on the reality that at the same time the majority, if not the vast majority, of men are losing in their teens and twenties. Personally, a lot of this doesn't matter if people give up on exclusive relationships.
distant_hat··on Every (US) cyclist who was killed by a driver in 2020
I think the speed limits are more for the benefit of riders than for things they collide with.
distant_hat··on Hawala traders are being squeezed by regulators and Covid-19
https://outline.com/8AfK3c
distant_hat··on A 4-month online dating experiment using 10 fictional singletons (2012)
Polyamory is fairly rare in human societies, the link you pasted talks about polygamy. Polygyny has been practiced in a few societies and the numbers would be too few to conclude anything.
distant_hat··on Vitamin D Supplementation Improves Cognitive Function: 12-month RCT
In India, I can get almost any blood test with no requirement to get a prescription. The phlebotomist will even come home to collect the blood sample. The prices are fairly reasonable and most tests will be under $20.
distant_hat··on Americans are more worried about their sons than their daughters
As someone who grew up similar to you, I now realize the advantages of aggression. A few friends of mine took up coaching in boxing or MMA and the difference in confidence and dealing with completely unrelated situtations was visible. They were less afraid to be confrontational and more likely to get their way at work and other places. They got more dates and a lot more sex. Women and people in general will demonize some kinds of aggression but reward people who engage in it.
distant_hat··on Americans are more worried about their sons than their daughters
The audience of NPR is fairly small, there's a lot of other channels that cater to white males.
distant_hat··on Pfizer's CEO sold $5.6M in stock on same day of vaccine news
Its not that they would move more or less, it is that they would move a large amount. And would not trigger a news item like this.
distant_hat··on Amazon destroys $1.5m of sellers inventory – now homeless
I once had something not delivered properly and when local reps (India) were useless I emailed Bezos directly. I had a message shortly from an Amazon staff saying Bezos asked them to look into it and the issue was fixed promptly. This was in 2015 so things may have changed since them.
distant_hat··on iPhone 12 Pro so costly in India, you can fly to Dubai to buy it and save money
Its mostly taxes and duties, though Apple products are generically costlier in India. When Apple used to charge for OS updates, if you paid in Indian Rupees it would be somewhat more expensive than you would expect for exchange rate considerations.
distant_hat··on Covid virus ‘survives for 28 days’ in lab conditions
Good thing most of us do not live in a lab.
distant_hat··on When do we become unable to learn a language like a native speaker? (2018)
This is simply false. E.g., my kid is around speakers of 4 rather different languages. At age 3, he has grasped all 4 languages to a good degree and even translates pretty well between them. I don't think he's particularly unusual and 3-4 language speaking kids are reasonably common around here.
distant_hat··on Hacking Grindr Accounts with Copy and Paste
The reason is that bi men round off to gay whereas bi women round off to straight. Bi women are even sought after by straight men so even women who aren't bi will sometimes claim to be, there is really no such equivalence to bi men. This will give the kind of distribution you are talking about especially when done by surveys as this kind of research often is.
distant_hat··on Indian robot climbs trees to harvest coconuts
In India, dangerous stuff often pays less due to caste and other considerations. Manual sewage cleaners have a really high death rate in India and are paid peanuts.
distant_hat··on Laid Off, Now What?
yea, its more of a quirk of where you were born rather than nationality though both are almost often the same. I have an Indian friend who was born in Iran because his dad was working there when he was born. He lived in Iran less than a year but got his green card in less than 3 months.
distant_hat··on Lending app publicly shames you when you’re late on loan payment
The problem here is that naive people think organizations which essentially have a blackmail model to recover dues will stick to purely legal means when they discover you have stiffed them.
distant_hat··on Porn Sites Still Won’t Take Down Nonconsensual Deepfakes
This argument doesn't work in more traditional societies. There was a actress in India who had demonstrations against her because someone morphed her face onto a nude pic.
distant_hat··on Patreon Raises $90M Series E at $1.2B Valuation
YouTube has a huge number of bots on it as well. Patreon is less easily gamed.
distant_hat··on The dual PhD problem of today’s startups
The problem with finding jobs is that the work is far less translatable to other fields unless you take care to make things general which is not really encouraged in academia. As a Physics, Math, or computational PhD you can apply your skills to any domain with a few weeks of learning. You can't really apply PhD level mice work or yeast work to another domain that quickly.
distant_hat··on Young children would rather explore than get rewards
This is completely expected. If you look at multiarmed bandits, getting rewards would be exploiting and the other option is exploring. If you have a longer time horizon as children will, it is better to explore and find a better return than exploit something already known which is likely to be suboptimal.
distant_hat··on How long does a freezer stay frozen when the power goes out?
Why not cook everything at that point and throw a feast. We've done this in India with an extended power cut.
distant_hat··on Why the U.S. government is allowing bears, wolves to be hunted in their dens
Malnutrition is rife in India with some 40% of children malnourished and stunted. Indian diet is not very nutritionally balanced and as a result, lifestyle diseases like diabetes and heart disease are quite common in the upper income brackets and malnutrition in the lower income brackets.
distant_hat··on Alcohol as a social technology to check the trustworthiness of others (2014)
But they do benefit employees. I am not a smoker but a number of people in a former company were and they shared a camaraderie that if you didn't hang out with them you wouldn't get. It also cut across levels, so you could be an intern and it was an easy time to hang out with some mid level manager and get noticed.
distant_hat··on DeGoogle My Life
Yea, my employer is on Google, it is impossible for me to transition out completely. Even though we would like to move out of Google, it is a herculean task since it is so deeply embedded into the organization. E.g., just having all your Google Docs with Google means there is no straightforward way to retain all the docs, along with all the links etc scattered around in emails, and be able to retain access permissions to the docs in any meaningful way. It is much easier to not get sucked in if you are starting a new company.
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