birken

19 ms·

151.
by birken 6y ago
In my thousands of games on lichess I've run into a couple of cheaters, but they are very easy to spot. You also get the rating points refunded once they are caught and removed. A standard engine is probably somewhere around 3000 stre
152.
by birken 6y ago
The public health experts didn't say "Masks don't work", otherwise there wouldn't have been such an issue to getting masks to health care workers. There also was a very robust debate at the time about whether masks
153.
by birken 6y ago
It isn't possible for bond markets to collapse at the same time as stocks?
154.
by birken 6y ago
> Another way to think about it is, what do we do if we learn that the pandemic will not end for the next 10 years? What activities do we allow and under what new mode of operation / conditions? Then we'd actually put real effo
155.
by birken 6y ago
Buying alcohol requires an ID with age information, as that is an age check. Voting does not require age information, as you cannot register to vote unless you are the proper age. Just a reputable ID that can match a photograph to a perso
156.
by birken 6y ago
This is literally just equalizing the hassle to states without voter ID laws. You are the one adding requirements for a citizen to exercise their right to vote.
157.
by birken 6y ago
A state should not let somebody register to vote unless the state confirms they are a resident of the state and otherwise eligible. As I understand the point of voter ID, it is to prove that the person casting the vote is who they say they
158.
by birken 6y ago
Question: Why does Texas allow a Texas Handgun License as an acceptable form of photo ID but not a University of Texas Student ID? It seems if we are so concerned about voting being easy with those IDs, we should let all the students with
159.
by birken 6y ago
Just as a note: if I ran an A/B test and one bucket had 8,004 visitors and the other had 6,622 visitors, I'd be concerned about the way the test was setup. There are some valid possibilities to explain the discrepancy, but there a
160.
by birken 6y ago
Ok, you have perfect hindsight knowledge of the situation. Understanding that N95 masks were in short supply, knowing the virus wasn't particularly widespread, but more widespread than people realized and health care providers are on
161.
by birken 6y ago
My understanding of the tests is they are very accurate at determining if somebody has a lot of virus, but not at detecting lower thresholds of virus. So compared to PCR tests, they have a lot of false negatives. The Abbott ID NOW COVID-19
162.
by birken 6y ago
If you want to be incredibly angry at the ineffectiveness of the current testing regime that we as a country are heavily investing in, listen to this episode of the This Week In Virology podcast: https://www.microbe.tv/twiv&
163.
by birken 6y ago
There are a lot of diseases that everybody gets vaccinated for routinely and regularly. I thought the assumption was this was going to be one of those, it is just a (currently unknown) matter of how frequently you'd need to get it. Ar
164.
by birken 6y ago
What is the difference between virtue signaling and marketing when a corporation is doing it?
165.
by birken 6y ago
If you spent 20 seconds looking at the CA secretary of state page, you'd see what they do. Yes, they have a process for it. Yes, they've thought about it. Yes it is clunky but no solution is perfect and the system is fine. Why
166.
by birken 6y ago
San Francisco has about 600 polling places, which each are required to have 4 people. That is 2400 polling workers. In the 2016 election, SF dealt with 400k ballots. Assuming all 400k ballots needed a signature match, and it took a traine
167.
by birken 6y ago
So the same volunteers who aren't able to compare 2 signatures are also your impenetrable line of defense looking at the tiny picture and tiny writing on a photo ID and verifying the ID is valid and it is the same person.
168.
by birken 6y ago
With voter ID, how do poll workers verify the person on the ID is you? The answer is the same. They look at it. This isn't rocket science.
169.
by birken 6y ago
yawn Yes, CA has a database of signatures. In order to register to vote, you need to have a signature. For most people the signature is already on file with the DMV. If you were a resident of CA you can verify this easily, just look at
170.
by birken 6y ago
When you mail in your ballot you sign it, and the signature is checked to verify it is yours. If you vote for your friend or neighbor, then you need to steal their ballot and forge their signature. You also need them to not notice that th
171.
by birken 7y ago
The problem with this interpretation is that whatever the combination of deadly/contagious the virus is, we already have direct evidence that when it spreads without any containment it causes unacceptably extreme amounts of sickness an
172.
by birken 7y ago
If you just let the virus run its course you would have so many extremely sick people at once that it would overrun the health care systems in every country. Many more people than just COVID patients would die, and the death rate of COVID
173.
by birken 7y ago
But of course there is another player who had a bad tournament or whose team didn't make the tournament that dropped from a first round pick to a second round pick based on another player rising. I'm basically trying to answer thi
174.
by birken 7y ago
It isn't likely. An NBA caliber player that is a senior will likely have played 100+ NCAA basketball games. A few good/bad games in the tournament isn't going to change their overall chance of getting picked in the NBA draf
175.
by birken 7y ago
The full text of the study is behind a paywall [1], but from the abstract we can see that: - It's 47 participants (out of 69 recruited) - The only other variables controlled for are household income and age The study's conclusion
176.
by birken 7y ago
I think it is a doubled edged sword. It was an audacious idea that made a lot of sense, and the fact that the founder could raise a lot of money based on name alone probably helped make the gamble on the audacious idea possible. If the st
177.
by birken 7y ago
> Many become emboldened and move on to other malfeasance. Order breeds order and chaos breeds chaos. Why does SF have a sizable increase in property crimes over the past 10 years but a drop in violent crimes? I'd imagine if chaos
178.
by birken 7y ago
> "In one rare, fascinating, and deliberate case, Thumbtack decided to eschew any constraint" For the record, the eschewing of any constraints was due to a combination of naivety and then later stumbling upon a successful metho
179.
by birken 7y ago
In the 2016 campaign I referenced Clinton endorsements vs total endorsements. "No endorsement" received over 3x as many endorsements as the republican candidate. Also don't oversample from the 2016 election. One of the can
180.
by birken 7y ago
> I'd say the same thing about journalists. 90%+ of journalists are democrats. I can't believe in all the responses nobody has challenged this statement. What is your source for this? Based on exit polls, in aggregate white m

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