leot

29 ms·

241.
by leot 13y ago
What, precisely, do you want your economic system to do for you? What does everyone, speaking openly, attest to when speaking of their common economic goals? Once you've answered those questions, on what time scale would you like those
242.
by leot 13y ago
So the fact that the monopoly failed "eventually" means that the incredible toll it took from the economy was ok?
243.
by leot 13y ago
I think Bitcoin's extremely cool, and I think it will take off and increase in value, but it's not yet obvious if it will be a net positive or negative for the population as a whole.
244.
by leot 13y ago
Things aren't so clear cut. Laws have to draw boundaries around things all the time, even if the particular location of any particular boundary cannot be easily justified, the necessity of the boundary's existence most certainly c
245.
Wikifying scholarly canons(blog.scholarpedia.org)
7 points by leot 13y ago|0 comments
246.
by leot 13y ago
In the 1950s the financial sector amounted to around 2.5% of GDP. It now amounts to more than 8%, and more than 30% of corporate profits. Anyone who is an apologist for such an increase needs to be able to convincingly argue that this incre
247.
by leot 13y ago
The conclusions of this video depend on an idealized view (and thus a poor model) of research and science. In fact, there are many different kinds of results (associated with different levels of confidence and which almost all require a nua
248.
by leot 13y ago
More evidence for Waterloo's "specialness" can be found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Lowell_Putnam_Mathemat... Its teams have finished among the top five 18 times since 1968, twice as many
249.
by leot 13y ago
Things aren't that simple. Certain rights can certainly override others (your right to life overrides my liberty to shoot you), which implies, if not a ranking, at least complexity. My liberty was only legally maximized when I turned 1
250.
by leot 13y ago
If privacy is a human right, it's not (to me, at least) of the same caliber as "life, liberty, and security of person". People behave best because they have internalized social norms, those arguments and attitudes that we pro
251.
by leot 13y ago
Every state privileges its own citizens. There are good reasons for doing so that have nothing to do with bigotry or exceptionalism.
252.
by leot 13y ago
In particular, domestic surveillance is a completely different beast vis-a-vis foreign surveillance: spying outside one's own state comes with it the almost total absence of state's monopoly on force (and, furthermore, the protect
253.
by leot 13y ago
If you can recommend a more information-rich resource on world affairs, I'd be delighted to hear of it.
254.
by leot 13y ago
Wouldn't it? E.g., what if you did the derivation from the PIN in combination with a securely stored random salt (that could, as an added bonus, change every time you changed your key code)? That was, incidentally, what I meant by &quo
255.
by leot 13y ago
Because the world's climate is a public good, game theory predicts that this kind of thing won't ever work. We are semi-rational actors in a dynamic competitive system. We can all want X to happen, and be willing to spend money to
256.
by leot 13y ago
It's not as useless as all that. Assuming Apple has properly used their key derivation function, and the phone locks you out after ~10 failed attempts, and there's no way to access a locked phone's data, then a four digit pas
257.
by leot 13y ago
[I should apologize for getting hot under the collar, previously. I should have been much more circumspect in composing my reply.] Granted, science is imperfect and all too human. I'd even go so far as to argue that it's deficient
258.
by leot 13y ago
No one is saying that we should devote 100% of GDP to mitigating global warming. Go ahead, factor in the uncertainty. What % of GDP should we spend to avert the very real possibility catastrophic warning occurs? What % are we spending?
259.
by leot 13y ago
Do you have any freaking clue, whatsoever, how science works? Do you? I'm pretty sure you freaking don't. Because if you did, you'd understand that everyone is out to prove each other wrong . And these aren't clueless d
260.
by leot 13y ago
Actually, the parent was arguing that we can't trust the one figure that is in TFA. It's a picture of a warming trend. Surprisingly enough, the fear, uncertainty, and doubt about anthropogenic warming claims have come from peopl
261.
by leot 13y ago
You know, nearly everything is a "proxy". Kitchen thermometers use bending metal as a "proxy" for temperature. All that matters is accuracy and precision. This is how science works, at its base. There's no such thin
262.
by leot 13y ago
The compromise they have in Ontario is that infractions get you demerit points as well as fines. Get enough demerit points and you lose your license.
263.
by leot 13y ago
Hmm. Ok. I'm thinking there might be some strategies to mitigate the anchoring effects, which definitely exist. It seems to me that it's a tradeoff, however, and it's not obvious to me which circumstances lead to one or the o
264.
by leot 13y ago
How sure are you about the negative impact of "early-bird". The purpose of it is to create a sense of urgency in the first group of people who visit the page, to make sure that the campaign takes off right away. Doesn't this
265.
by leot 13y ago
I'm actually suggesting that if we're going to trust Gmail completely anyway , we might as trust them to encrypt-and-decrypt everything server side. No need for any fancy PGP in JS. Gmail still gets to read your emails and genera
266.
by leot 13y ago
So, you think the U.S. would be much poorer today if it had implemented tighter vehicle emission standards, as Europe did, in the 70s? Do you think human development requires Lincoln Navigator-sized cars with zippy acceleration? Would progr
267.
by leot 13y ago
There are two concerns: 1) Security of email messages in transit, assurance that you're receiving emails from the person who claims to be sending them, etc. 2) Preventing your email service provider (and any MITM) from reading your ema
268.
by leot 13y ago
Webmail services could have jump-started WoT a decade ago, much like Hotmail jumpstarted popular email usage. [1] Had they "turned on" PGP for all their users, and then made it easy to tell when messages were being sent securely a
269.
by leot 13y ago
When those in power (in the U.S.) take as a prior that gov't can't/won't work, then they're given an excuse to not really act in the public's interest in good faith, or to try hard to design a regulatory framew
270.
by leot 13y ago
Whoa. This hadn't occurred to me, and it seems totally likely that they were looking for a way to, in effect, hold Greenwald's partner hostage. Despicable.

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