YokoZar

40 ms·

451.
by YokoZar 11y ago
This would require lawmakers to agree on the intent of legislation in addition to its affects, which would be categorically harder because different people may favor a policy for different reasons. It might be simpler to just sunset every l
452.
by YokoZar 11y ago
This has already happened in Mountain View. Last election the "renting" demographic managed to overthrow the entire city council, who previously had been controlled by the typical "raise home prices by blocking construction&
453.
by YokoZar 11y ago
It's a good idea, and I know it's been done at least once before. For instance, the youweb incubator operates this way.
454.
by YokoZar 11y ago
The author can write well, but his main point is frankly dumb and reads like a plant from an industry pressure group. He cites two main facts: that record company and movie industry conglomerates have lost profits, and that tech companies h
455.
by YokoZar 11y ago
While the author has a great underlying point, I find this style of writing a particular disservice: "Perhaps 5% of the population has enough abstract reasoning skill to verbally understand that the above heuristics would be useful onc
456.
by YokoZar 11y ago
To be clear, instead of passing laws shirking the debt we could also "solve" the problem by inflating the currency (printing money to pay the pensioners).
457.
by YokoZar 11y ago
I'm a big fan of good descriptive names, but in practice when I run into a lint-enforced 80 character line limit names are the first thing to suffer.
458.
by YokoZar 11y ago
There are a fair amount of companies that, during their hiring process, will basically say "Oh, you have an offer from Google? Forward it to us, add 10% to the base, and we'll hire you without further interviewing."
459.
by YokoZar 11y ago
Cap-and-trade systems offer more directly defined caps. If you have confidence about how much of something is "correct", a cap-and-trade regime can just set its cap to that amount and let the price be whatever it may be. Cap-and
460.
by YokoZar 11y ago
The data seems to disagree on this point. A 10% rise in the price of gasoline, for instance, will cut consumption overnight by 2%, rising to 5% over the next 5 years or so as people make longer term adjustments. There are a surprising amou
461.
by YokoZar 11y ago
Your wireless game controller probably contributes more to latency than your in home network. Your television almost certainly does. That said, latency is additive since it all happens in serial, and if the sum of it hits a certain thresho
462.
by YokoZar 11y ago
While amusing, the anecdote is off in a very important way: it is not a single person ordering dessert, but an entire party of people who represent different conflicting majorities. In such a real situation you can get whatever "absur
463.
by YokoZar 11y ago
This is the insight. Proving "tactical voting is always theoretically possible" sounds bad, until you realize that there exist systems where tactical voting requires not only nearly perfect information about every other voters ex
464.
by YokoZar 11y ago
As long as politics is not one-dimensional, there are completely reasonable cases where you get a rock-paper-scissors situation between 3 top candidates if voters select whomever is closest to them. That in turn violates the criteria that
465.
by YokoZar 11y ago
The Farmer's Dilemma is very clearly the same as the Public Goods Problem: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good Specifically, public goods are goods where there is a temptation to free ride. As illustrated in
466.
by YokoZar 12y ago
As evidence I present the highest housing prices in the country, the relatively low population density of San Francisco, and the city's notorious reputation for particularly onerous approval requirements before construction can go forw
467.
by YokoZar 12y ago
Doesn't it defeat the purpose a bit if they know you're there? Why not cloak the inspection so you can catch the sort of fumbling of ads that happens when you're not aware you're being watched?
468.
by YokoZar 12y ago
>And then, if I pick any oracle at random, then isn't there an infinitesimal (yet non-zero) chance I could pick one which has a special structure which makes their result false? Almost surely not
469.
by YokoZar 12y ago
It's not necessarily the case that cost-lowering innovations will drive demand for labor down, even without increases in capacity. Usability innovations are often of this variety. If I can hire two people who work half as fast but at
470.
by YokoZar 12y ago
The first industrial revolution was entirely about replacing high-skilled manual laborers with relatively low-skilled factory workers. There's no inherent economic law requiring such a shift to be a net drain on employment - sometimes
471.
by YokoZar 12y ago
Let's be fair, the police are actually very concerned about privacy and ubiquitous recording when it's of on-duty police behavior.
472.
by YokoZar 12y ago
Housing and rental costs have been a substantial drain on what would otherwise be the new middle class. For the most part they don't (yet) own homes, lower prices can only help them. Consider how much doesn't get invested by th
473.
by YokoZar 12y ago
Imagine a world where there exists a perfect substitute for oil at $150 / barrel through some form of magical synthesis using renewable energy sources. Today, that world would look almost identical, since oil has never been expensive e
474.
by YokoZar 12y ago
This depends very much where you live. In some places with very expensive property markets the structure can be as low as 20% of the cost of a home (a typical downpayment amount) -- conversely, with low property/land values, the quali
475.
by YokoZar 12y ago
Planet Money's podcast was about this very company -- they just changed their name. It's mentioned somewhere midway through the episode.
476.
by YokoZar 12y ago
If you refactor in a way that you improve code readability and reduce complexity, you substantially reduce the likelihood of having an undiscovered bug that is already in your code.
477.
by YokoZar 12y ago
I always felt like this case was argued wrong. Don't argue it's not "limited", argue that it "doesn't promote the progress of the Sciences and Useful Arts". There is no possible argument not involving tim
478.
by YokoZar 12y ago
This is a bit like claiming that Google is investing in radical medical technology because people will watch more ads over their newly extended lifespans.
479.
by YokoZar 12y ago
Unless the marginal property tax rate is over 100%, It's almost always going to be worthwhile for the property value to go up. At the very worst you could borrow against the extra equity, pay off the tax, and recoup when you do finall
480.
by YokoZar 12y ago
They're not afraid of taxes, they're afraid of rents. Locking property tax rates is exactly what California does and it only makes housing supply worse by giving a very strong incentive for incumbents not to leave.

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