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saraid216on Are the benefits of moderate drinking a myth?

So... what did you think of? I can't think of any industries that would directly benefit from people drinking less.

If you don't think that people having sex in public should be ashamed, why did you bring it up?

I licked pussy. Since you're asking.

I'm perfectly okay with others knowing that. Why do you want to shame me for that?

I firmly disagree. Hiding things is a hack; the actual solution is to change society such that exposure entails no significant consequences.

Sure, as a band-aid to make existing real people feel secure? Hiding things and keeping them hidden is fine. It's just an indicator of how far we as a society still have to go.

Do remember: "it's our responsibility to hide things to support freedom and democracy" is the exact argument used by the government against things like Wikileaks. The exact argument.

saraid216on The Earl Grey programming language

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8150346

saraid216on The Earl Grey programming language

Javascript will run anywhere you have something to run it on, same as Java, or any other language.

saraid216on The Earl Grey programming language

  style['border-width']

saraid216on Group Currency

What exactly is it you think the problem is?

saraid216on Group Currency

It's a noble attempt at compromise, but at that point, you're not talking about UBI anymore. The entire point of UBI is a rejection of the notion that a person must contribute before they have permission to live. It's a statement that the right to life is inherent to every individual, details on the morality of suicide or abortion aside, and that if we can't simply provide those necessities, then we can at least provide the means to get them through guaranteed income.

Basic Income is, by itself, already a compromise. To compromise again is to no longer be a separate concept.

At the point you're talking about, it's not actually different from the situation as it stands now: what you're really saying is that the minimum wage needs to be sufficient for living expenses. Nothing more.

saraid216on Why Do We Play Video Games That Feel Like Work?

He didn't cite http://theoryoffun.com/ either.

saraid216on AltSchool, an Experiment in Education, Raises $100M

They're not expected to go to the mill to help support their family.

saraid216on The Most Diverse Cities Are Often the Most Segregated

> And what are those benefits, exactly?

The fundamental offering that diversity brings to a society is plurality of opinion. This presents us with a mildly interesting paradox: a segregated society has no use for plural opinion, but a highly integrated society flat-out lacks them: diversity is the middle ground at which plural opinion is available.

As an aside, mainstream "controversy" is a segregated-society phenomenon, not a diverse-society one. You can tell the three kinds by their reaction to a reasonable alternative: a segregated society reacts with hostility or contempt; a diverse society reacts with toleration or moderation; an integrated society reacts with confusion or ignorance.

saraid216on Giving Everyone in the World an Address

Dammit. I thought I had been careful enough to get the correct number.

Alright. Picking the simplest formula off Wikipedia, cosine of 85 degrees is ~0.0871557 times a (6378137m) times pi is ~1746383.9m for the circumference. That's still approximately 500k squares at the exact latitude. My point is one of the sheer magnitude still available.

What I should do is calculate how many decimal points down from 90 degrees 3 meters is and get that circumference, since that's the low bound, but I'm not really feeling up to the number-plugging.

I could be incorrect about what a is; I presumed it is the semi-major axis on WGS84, but I might have picked the wrong thing.

...

Ooh. I forgot there's a Wolfram|Alpha. ... And 10 minutes later I haven't convinced the input parsing to give me what I want. Oh well.

saraid216on Giving Everyone in the World an Address

That's true for large chunks, but I'd imagine 3 meters is small enough to remain useful well past the 85 degrees latitude mark. Straight Dope informs me that the circumference up there is approximately 24k miles, which becomes 38,624,256 meters which means approximately 1 million divisions.

As long as the system works, what's the big deal?

saraid216on This Is How Fast America Changes Its Mind

Oh dear, no.

Legislature is the business people. The executive is the developers. The judiciary is the test team. That's how it's designed in the Constitution. The "original intent" of the judiciary was to be the guys waving their hands frantically saying, "Uh, this is a bug," while being completely ignored because there's a ship date to meet.

saraid216on Secret Shuts Down

A clique, a subreddit, a treehouse, a coffeehouse, a salon, a third place, a safe space, inside the magic circle...

saraid216on Six works of Computer Science-Fiction

Computer science is a science in the same sense that political science is.

saraid216on This Is How Fast America Changes Its Mind

Well, yes. So do I. That's why I felt I had to say it.

saraid216on This Is How Fast America Changes Its Mind

In America, there's no longer much legitimacy placed in legislation; we generally look to the judiciary for any actual governing thought these days.

Legislation is mostly seen as a stepping stone; it's not until it's been tested in court that a law is really valid.

saraid216on Defenders think in lists. Attackers think in graphs

It's a meaningless buzzword clickbait. You can't denigrate "list thinking" and provide a 10-point list as your response and expect to be taken seriously.

The actual point Lambert seems to be making is, "Recognize the existence of security dependencies between your assets." I wouldn't be terribly surprised to learn that there are a number of security professionals who fail to do this, but I'm not surprised to learn there are well-paid programmers who can't do FizzBuzz either. It's not a useful thing to point out unless most of your audience isn't already aware.

saraid216on Russian Hackers Read Obama’s Unclassified Emails, Officials Say

Fun fact: hackers are never American citizens somehow. It's 'cuz Americans are all model patriots. Obviously.

saraid216on Forgotten Corners of World of Warcraft

I don't want to turn this into a sales pitch for GW2, but GW2 pretty explicitly rewards you for exploration. Following the quest chain through an area (to the extent that there is one; the chain is slightly orthogonal) only reveals an incomplete picture of the zone. The zone itself explicitly informs you that there are a number of Things Left To Do Here. Collecting all of those is a necessary component to crafting legendary weapons.

So there are a couple levels for exploration: if you don't want to do it, then hurrying through the quest chain gives you lots of XP and you can move on. If you're mildly curious, you can go collect the stuff that interests you, without any real damper on your experience if you decline. If you're gung-ho about exploration for its own sake, there are also plenty of hidden bits and pieces everywhere that aren't necessarily collectibles.

saraid216on Forget Rand Paul, Let's Talk Paul Rand

I get:

  (Sidebar: Paul Rand)
  Paul Rand
  Paul Rand
  Rand Paul
  Rand Paul
  (News: Rand Paul)
  Paul Rand
  Paul Rand
  Paul Rand
  Paul Rand
  Rand Paul
  Paul Rand
  Rand Paul

So... 8/12 or 75% of the first page of results are Paul Rand. Plus a thing underneath the sidebar saying "See results for Rand Paul".

That's seriously not a disservice.

saraid216on ‘Gods’ edging out robots at Toyota facility

Out of what?

saraid216on Marvel Avenged: From financial ruin to the biggest film franchise in history

Huh. That describes your comment, too. Well done.

saraid216on Existential crisis at Railsconf

Using introspection in Ruby is generally against convention. There's no reason to care about the class name if it #responds_to? the method you care about calling.

saraid216on Existential crisis at Railsconf

I got interested in Clojure because I felt I needed to learn something LISPy. Similarly, I got interested in Elixir because I felt I needed to learn Erlang. I have yet to have any kind of similar motivation for Scala.

These are not good reasons, but they are my reasons.

saraid216on GitWikXiv: Toward a successor to the academic paper

> One or more authors present their particular view of a topic, and other researchers join the discussion by writing their own papers.

I am interested in solutions in this space, but for a completely different practical effect: democratic discourse.

See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9245772

saraid216on Seattle Police Will Hire Programmer and Prolific Records Requester Tim Clemans

You're completely missing my point.

Activism can very frequently involve being fired from your job (which is why many activists end up forming organizations and getting paid specifically for their activism) and being threatened with charges pressed.

Having to deal with this inside the organization you're trying to change rather than outside of it isn't actually different. It's a different psychological experience (namely, it's far more hostile), but the threats don't change.

saraid216on Seattle Police Will Hire Programmer and Prolific Records Requester Tim Clemans

> If you refuse to toe the line, then you'll find yourself fired or pressed with criminal charges.

The difference between this and activism would be...?