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tablewatcher

43 karma · joined May 14, 2015

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tablewatcher··on Finding Your Soul Mate Online May Be Harder Than the Dating Sites Suggest
I'd argue the same that marriages rates are down, I'd like to see some stats on it. The prospect of marriage has no benefits when you look at it unemotionally. You get marginal tax benefits when you are married but these are completely offset when the cost of divorce is considered. Its quite a risky proposition for a young successful entrepreneur, escpecially the Californian alimony laws.
tablewatcher··on Howard Marks obituary: 'Britain's most charming drug smuggler'
He had involvement with the IRA to smuggle drugs through Ireland, they used the money to buy guns to kill loyalists.
tablewatcher··on Making Salt Water Drinkable Just Got 99 Percent Easier
This is from 2013. Anyone come across recent development from it?
tablewatcher··on SpaceX just landed a rocket on a drone ship for the first time
I agree it's insane but looking at the few previous attempts it seems its a regular expected sea state so I suppose there is no option but to work around it.
tablewatcher··on Self-driving truck convoy completes its first major journey across Europe
The lead trunk has indicators that the convoy is platooning, sure some people with interfere with it but for the most part when drivers start to recognise this on the road they are mostly going to stay out of the way.

>This technology looks hardly any better then Tesla's lane keeping assistant

So? It's the first step in removing a human driver. Are you assuming that this technology is not going to ever improve? The end game is a head office operator that controls a network of 50 trucks across a country remotely. It's just a matter of time until they get there.

tablewatcher··on Five hundred days using Ubuntu Phone
I suppose you tell it how many minutes you plan contains and it subtracts used time accordingly.
tablewatcher··on Google Also Has Been Ordered to Help Unlock Phones, Records Show
As someone who is not American it doesn't matter to me how it's worded or under what category it falls, but that the three letter agencies can completely silence individuals so that they can do whatever they want with immunity is absolutely terrifying. Lavabit, and the Ross Ulbricht case are particularly bad examples that spring to mind.
tablewatcher··on BlackRock Plans to Cut About 400 Jobs in Coming Weeks
As a guy who has recently started to come out of debt and starting to prepare for pension and savings, the more I learn about the financial industry the more it scares me. It seems like a zero sum game and nothing more than sophisticated gambling.
tablewatcher··on The End of Sex and the Future of Human Reproduction
>how would we know which mutations are broadly beneficial or not?

In general terms we know what a good specimen looks like and the specific traits that they have. We can only build to that because:

>sickle cell syndrome are also more resistant to malaria

This is evolution by process of elimination, and unfortunetaly elimination means lack of breeding from disadvantaged phenotypes. We've largely uncoupled reproduction from evolutionary advantages anyway, and just like humans are so dedicated to controlling the world in they inhabit, we'll insist on controlling the finest details of reproduction too.

tablewatcher··on The one hundredth anniversary of the Irish Easter 1916 uprising
The window tax, along with the Chimney tax was implemented in a lot of countries in that era, including England. The current effective rate of tax is 55% in Ireland along (with a sales tax of 23%) for people earning the highest level of wages (the entry criteria into this highest rate is the lowest in Europe). You get minimal services for that, including a passable heathcare system where everyone still needs private health insurance. Road taxes, Property tax, Water charges, Capital gain are all exceptionally high so I really don't see the current situation better than past times except for material changes. The low corporation tax rate utilised by foreign multinationals is another slap in the face where the citizens are charged one rate and the corporations another.
tablewatcher··on The one hundredth anniversary of the Irish Easter 1916 uprising
Irish guy here who was taught all of this history in school. My overriding sense is that of disillusionment with the commemorations. The media outlets are trying to induce a sense of patriotism that I cannot feel because it's too far removed from our modern lives, the internet has brought the world closer anyway so these acts were for what? Being branded one nationality instead of another. What difference does it make when the vast percentage of my Irish friends live in Canada, Australia, UK, Germany anyway, forced out by a government that nationalised banking debt and ruined my generation's chance of a normal life that the previous one enjoyed. My friends won't return because none of them can afford a house and could never raise a family on the taxes we have here. Its like being told by an abusive partner that "No, I wont hit you again". Maybe others will have good counterpoints but this is my perspective on it.
tablewatcher··on Make elites compete: Why the 1% earn so much and what to do about it
Completely hypothetical but what would happen if those 62 people were "taken out" so to speak, would debt forgiveness happen or would there be more equality in the world or how do you see it play out?
tablewatcher··on Decoding the Enigma of Satoshi Nakamoto and the Birth of Bitcoin
There is no way back to fiat from cryptoCurrencies. They work 24/7 with minimal overheads. Technology has disintermediated a lot of other industries, why do you think it wont do so for banking (other than your cultural beliefs)?
tablewatcher··on Decoding the Enigma of Satoshi Nakamoto and the Birth of Bitcoin
Before Satoshi's invention the concept of pre-mining didn't exist. I think the inventor of the worlds first decentralised currency is allowed to do whatever he wants. If you dont like it, make your own currency and stop bickering.
tablewatcher··on The rock-paper-scissors game and the evolution of alternative male strategies
Your questons are very basic, if you actually want an answer start reading some books on evolutionary biology.