unishark

11 ms·

91.
by unishark 5y ago
> Of course none of that justifies robbery, but in all cases it does justify every effort to prevent artificial scarcity from being established and maintained. But why is it your problem? Suppose I just wrote a sonnet sitting here in my
92.
by unishark 5y ago
So property ownership is protected as long as you don't feel you need it?
93.
by unishark 5y ago
Of course I chose an analogy which sidestepped IP questions to focus on the moral issue of defending piracy based on the price. If your argument is against IP though, why is the price relevant? You support IP laws as long as the price is on
94.
by unishark 5y ago
No we don't do that. One of the most popular questions the first day of class is whether a prior edition of the textbook will suffice. It is very commonly accepted, especially if changes are minor. Authors offer big sweeping improvemen
95.
by unishark 5y ago
Sin taxes are opposed by the argument that they disproportionately affect poor people. If they could target them based on your income bracket or something, they might get a lot more popular.
96.
by unishark 5y ago
Diamonds are sometimes absurdly expensive with no valid reason. Do you believe this justifies robbing diamond stores?
97.
by unishark 5y ago
By the same logic a broken lock on a store's door does literally nothing except prevent customers from entering the store to buy stuff. Sure, but this is just a risk of having security. The solution is to fix the problem, not discard l
98.
by unishark 5y ago
I see this same issue with books Particularly with international students (who are ironically paying the most in tuition and housing oftentimes). Though I go out of my way to find cheaper textbooks sometimes, or accommodate older editions t
99.
by unishark 5y ago
Sure but you can make such an argument about every single medical issue. People can drop dead in a few days due to an unexpectedly aggressive toe infection. At some point we need to compare risks to costs. There will always be a trade-off b
100.
by unishark 5y ago
Even for ER visits alone, it's not true that patients are "usually" incapacitated or on the verge of death. Something like a third aren't even urgent and only a small percentage are admitted to the hospital. And the most
101.
by unishark 5y ago
It is also possible that some which are rejected can actually help people, but that the study targeted the wrong outcomes or included subjects with the wrong disease. Alzheimer's is especially difficult because there are many dementias
102.
by unishark 5y ago
I think the "not a pandemic" was a reference to the WHO's month-plus delay in declaring a pandemic. There was definitely a mindset of potential panic being worse than the disease itself early on. Perhaps not downplaying per s
103.
by unishark 5y ago
It is pretty weak though. There were only 109 seropositive kids in the follow-up according to the table, so you're talking about 2 more kids reporting a cough or headache as the entire basis of your concern.
104.
by unishark 5y ago
A little defense of the pseudoinverse here, it's often a fine tool, far more so than the true inverse. If the matrix is not full rank the psuedoinverse provides the least squares solution. It can also be done efficiently and may well a
105.
by unishark 5y ago
More granularity is still valuable though, since in topics where deep understanding is needed, the shallower levels of understanding are required to master the deeper. E.g., you need to be able recognize an integral before you can solve the
106.
by unishark 5y ago
I can't begin to count the number of books I am partway through when left to my own motivation. Signing up for a class with a hurdle at the end I need to jump over is exactly what I need. Free online classes are like gym memberships, b
107.
by unishark 5y ago
Then it's like a job interview. If the answer doesn't pop into your head the instant after you hear the question you go into panic mode and can't even answer questions you should know. Though I suppose it would make people a
108.
by unishark 5y ago
instead let's teach them that if they cheat, nothing adverse happens.
109.
by unishark 5y ago
Universities will definitely expel cheaters, though they may give a couple chances first (with increasingly-worse penalties like failing grade and violation on transcript). One of the things people are complaining about with this software i
110.
by unishark 5y ago
You need to give a range of questions from challenging like that to easy regurgitation to discern their level of understanding and be able to assign them an appropriate grade.
111.
by unishark 5y ago
Speaking of the list and set comprehensions, they also mimic formal mathematical notation e.g. {f(x) | x>0, x in reals} or whatever
112.
by unishark 5y ago
In California my understanding is they are required to accept the first qualified tenant due to anti-discrimination laws. I thought NY was similar in that regard (and hence the income=3*rent or whatever the popular advertised rules are ther
113.
by unishark 5y ago
Subleasing is kind of a red herring. There are particular reasons landlords might want to avoid letting that happen willy-nilly. But if the company finds a tenant that conforms to the landlord's requirements, the landlord can agree to
114.
by unishark 5y ago
Yes playing with regulations might help some renters to the detriment of others, but on average landlords will probably make the same.
115.
by unishark 5y ago
> FiveThirtyEight predicted a 28.6% chance of a Trump victory: This is cherry-picking of the highest widely-known prediction by far, practically an outlier. And I don't think they do any actual polling, just analysis using others&#x
116.
by unishark 5y ago
Unless it's a temporary trend driven by speculators. Looking at CA house prices is like looking at FAANG stock. People will keep jumping in to join the ride until it finally crashes.
117.
by unishark 5y ago
I'd suspect CA pays somewhat better, though it'd be countered to a degree by the high number of academics preferring to live in CA. But either way, Berkeley and UCLA versus UTSA and UTD? Are the latter two even ranked in the top 1
118.
by unishark 5y ago
Certainly if one's goal is to live somewhere cheap while remotely-working at a high-paying tech company, you'd pay the highest state income taxes in California at the top bracket. If we're just talking about random middle cla
119.
by unishark 5y ago
Hawaii is not much of a defense as it has logistical reasons for its high cost, and anyway has a smaller total population than most major metro areas. I'm not necessarily in the camp that thinks California isn't worth the cost. Th
120.
by unishark 5y ago
If locals are leaving a place and being replaced by international immigrants then it explains the anecdotes. Everyone is more likely to know more people that left a place than moved there. Also it will show in other stats. People in other s

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