unishark

In engineering a MS pays best, at least historically. Lately PhD's are becoming very common and much more product-oriented I'd say (as opposed to long-term high-risk research). So may be a better ticket to the upper ranks of technical tracks at large tech companies.

Question 81 mentions problems caused by US soldiers.

Crimes by foreigners generally cause a lot of outrage, regardless how common they are. I saw stats a few years ago that had the crime rates of US troops in Japan lower than the native population. While the crime rates of immigrants was higher than natives. But one of these topics is politically correct and the other is not.

When the USSR broke up, I had a school teacher at the time who said Russia will cease to be an enemy and become like France, an ally that opposes us a lot and causes headaches just out of national pride.

Well you aren't supposed to, you mean to say. It does sound like a good idea for someone who has just been risking it, to get self-driving as a backup.

Generally if the state finds out you have epilepsy, you'll need to be seizure free without medication for some period of months or more (depending which state), and perhaps need a doctor to sign off, before you can get a driver's license.

In return for the 100+ million dollars he got out of it?

Li's role would only have been in the sequels anyway, not the one good movie...

Seriously though, for such a deal if one gets a percentage as royalties perpetually too, then it may be a good arrangement. I think Li's objections could have al been addressed as terms in the deal. Apparently what Li is saying is the terms offered were one-sided and he didn't like them.

We don't know that anyone lied. The guy had two ex-wives and a girlfriend. Perhaps they didn't ask enough family members for someone's taste. But as others noted, an objection from one ex-wife doesn't really make that case very strongly.

I used to see only that, but lately I've been seeing cases where once you choose the "manage cookies" option, all the nonessential cookies are opted out by default.

In this case they're actually being consistent. Your privacy is so important to us that we won't allow you to access our website and get tracked.

I think having roommates should be the default living situation for people unless/until they have a family (which are technically a form of roommate of course). Besides being wasteful of space and resources, there's the (now well-known) mental health downsides or being alone. Humans aren't really made to live that way long-term. Personally I had roommates when I was single even when I had a good job. I viewed it as a way to meet people when I moved to a new city, which it was. It is important for roommates to view it this way though. People view it as purely financial can make bad roommates.

Now you seem to be arguing for a complete set of welfare benefits comparable to whatever minimum wage is?

Because a job is obviously more than a "box check". It's an income. Otherwise, anyone could turn their nose up at those soul-sucking low-wage jobs and choose that unemployment alternative willingly.

I thought the primary argument against it was that the alternative is unemployment. You're implying the options are to pay the same person high or low wages. I don't think this is universally accepted at all.

There are systems, such as international shipping and financial technology that simplify many of those difficulties for you, at least to the point of making revenue from a great many countries. Complying with the local laws (including paying taxes) is indeed where it gets hard.

You're the one who brought national origin into the thread. The arguments on both sides were made just fine without it.

As for the second point, yes and those examples are also cases of restricting their own citizens. Hence the discussion is still about rights of the citizenry versus their own government restricting them, not "rights" of companies as you put it.

The world is free to not use YouTube and always has been. And by the way I don't agree with many of the major websites' censorship decisions in the last couple years either. They depict only what a loud subset of America thinks is right.

Companies generally make money by serving people. I suppose there are business models where this isn't so (e.g. they exist to sue people or something, but exploiting govt's ability to take money by force instead), but in YouTube's case, they entice people the consensual way.

So using "foreign" as a pejorative is cool as long as the foreigners are Americans?

Companies can only provide products and services to willing customers. To restrict them is to restrict the choices of your own people to choose products they prefer. So what you're really arguing for is the majority in a country restricting the freedom of a minority in that same country.

As I recall, extraordinary rendition occurred precisely because the interrogation techniques they wanted to use were illegal in the US but legal in the other country, which was by the way a willing participant. It may have involved kidnapping or it may not depending on the case, but certainly denotes an important distinction as compared to simply violating some foreign country's laws to bring someone to (your idea of) justice. The zinger simply doesn't fit well here.

"Average" on HN obviously means average SV software engineer, if not average FAANG employee (slightly joking).

But seriously it can also get tiresome when people constantly have to call out others for failing to formulate every observation in globally inclusive terms that cover all humans rich and poor.

A PI can be just a guy with a car and a camera though. You can't expect them to be able to handle the degree of regulations banks have. Your link says they were hired under false pretenses.

There's more detail on the allegations here: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/iranian-intelligence-official...

> As alleged, Bahadorifar provided financial and other services from the United States to Iranian residents and entities, including to Khazein, since approximately 2015. Bahadorifar facilitated access to the U.S. financial system and institutions through the use of card accounts and offered to manage business interests in the United States on Khazein’s behalf. Among other things, Bahadorifar caused a payment to be made to a private investigator for surveillance of Victim-1 on Khazein’s behalf. While Bahadorifar is not charged with participating in the kidnapping conspiracy, she is alleged to have provided financial services that supported the plot and is charged with conspiring to violate sanctions against Iran, commit bank and wire fraud, and commit money laundering. Bahadorifar is also charged with structuring cash deposits totaling more than approximately $445,000.

> Farahani, Khazein, Sadeghi and Noori are each charged with: (1) conspiring to kidnap, which carries a maximum sentence of life in prison; (2) conspiring to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) and sanctions against the government of Iran, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison; (3) conspiring to commit bank and wire fraud, which carries a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison; and (4) conspiring to launder money, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. Bahadorifar is charged with counts two, three and four, and is further charged with structuring, which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison. A federal district court judge will determine any sentence after considering the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.

Yeah I don't think we look all that disfavorably on things like amputations to save someone's life if it's the only lifesaving option available on the spot (in the past or present).

Depends how far ahead you want to look. National borders, the use of lethal weapons for self-defense or law-enforcement, the entire education system. It may not always be fair since the problems these things are meant to address may be mostly gone.

A very interesting perspective to me is how many things start out as improvements in society or quality-of-life, but end up viewed as the opposite after history progresses enough to take their benefits for granted and pick out flaws in them.

That guy and technique notwithstanding, the appeal of "banned techniques" isn't just about bringing back the injuries that got them banned, but the fact that they were often very effective. In Judo they made some pretty controversial decisions to ban a bunch of popular moves from competition a few years ago. However they're still part of Judo. A dojo that is concerned about teaching self-defense (as opposed to just competition) might be better if they taught them.

I think the biggest consideration for young (up to middle aged or so..) males is self-defense against bullies. Where there will be unwritten rules to a degree.

Obviously it depends on the dojo, but the ones I've interacted with were genuinely concerned with real-world self-defense too, even if it wasn't their primary focus. So they included days and discussions that focused on it.

Full-contact always implies dangers, hence the need to differentiate it from light sparring or whatever. I once read somewhere that high school wrestling has the highest career-ending injuries of any major sport, at 40 percent. Football was closer to 30.

But I agree head injuries are a far bigger concern than elbow/knee etc. And making striking arts safe tends to make them unrealistic. So grappling sports like Judo are a much better combination of self-defense and safety.

You mean Cobra Kai were supposed to be the real heroes?

I think the west may put a lot less emphasis on competing honorably or whatever. But playing fair is still morally better than not. E.g. people get viewed negatively for real cheating in pro sports (steroids, the "Cheatriots"). In some sports, however, the ref and what they catch is just part of the game.

The tolerance of cheating/bending-rules as a general cultural issue is very interesting though. Generally ethical behavior is sort of a luxury, which is harder to maintain as it goes against one's economic benefit. Japan seems like something of an outlier in that regard.

But the only way the monopoly on technology can make money is by sharing the benefits. The point of technology is to make the production of goods and services more efficient; it's not a scarce resource in itself. If a technology is not commercialized then this efficiency gain is not achieved and benefits no one. If someone commercializes it and monopolizes it but charges too high a price, people wouldn't buy it anyway, since they can always use older technology, and the monopoly also earns nothing. If transactions occur, it means both buyer and seller feel they are getting a benefit.

>This is a recent idea, dating back to the late 70s and implemented through the 1980 Bayh-Dole Act. Before that research was research; development (and private research of course) was the province of business.

I don't think federal funding of research is that much older in the US, only really starting in the 50s apart from military research. How exactly were the early QM researchers funded anyway? (apart from Einstein's famous day job at the patent office). I know at least a few of them had fellowships at universities, meaning rich benefactors.

But I started this thread talking about students pirating these cheap textbooks, which got hijacked to feed the expensive textbooks narrative.

If you want to argue that IP is not real ownership and should not exist, then I cannot make a good counter-argument. Except to say that it is the system we have and to eliminate it would simply shift the debate to whatever new business model the video game or textbook publishers switched to.

As for your price-gouging case, an ethical quandary would remain if you were completely broke and dying of thirst no matter how reasonably the water was priced. And/or if the seller was just a neighbor who actually didn't want to sell at all but just keep it for himself. How is it more moral to keep and refuse to sell at any price than to keep unless someone offers you a high enough price? You must either think theft when needed to preserve life is morally justified or not.

I don't see this as defending myself from an attack but as debating the logical basis of an ethical position that strikes me a purely emotional. In my initial comment I already pointed out trying to pick cheap textbooks. But people wanted to go after the easier target of expensive textbooks, so fine.

The more people pirate textbooks the more publishers will pivot to a business model where they can make money. Such as with online software instead (they're already doing some of that with software like Pearson's MyLab, which forces students to buy the book anyway to get a license). At which point we're back to the same argument about the freedom to set prices.

What are you saying was the cause though? And either way, people still got healthcare and negotiated payments thinking they were close to their deathbeds prior to that era of increase.

Also 1986 was the emergency room mandate, which used Medicare payments as leverage. And of course the obesity epidemic and the low-fat diet (blaming fat for heart disease) started around then. The ACA started in 2010 but phased in over four years.

The reason I sidestep the IP issue is I am personally much more favorable to that argument, however I didn't see it as relevant when people are labeling market behavior as "predatory". It's not to corner people into an easier target so much as to restrict the debate to the issue I take actual exception with. This idea of labeling something as "price gouging" as a moral defense for anything really. If someone owns something then they are free to ask whatever price they want, up to refusing to sell it at all. That's what ownership means.