wyager

233 ms·

1. 2581.▲
   by wyager 9y ago

   > Also keep in mind the day will come that all roads will only permit electric vehicles, That would be pretty dumb. This is a very strange claim from an overlander (assuming you agree with it); surely you're aware that batteries are
2. 2582.▲
   by wyager 9y ago

   Steering system, suspension, tires, wiring, brakes, boots, joints, etc... There's more to a car than the engine. Electric vehicles shave off engine, transmission(?), and fuel system, but add batteries, high-power electronics, and elect
3. 2583.▲
   by wyager 9y ago

   CO2 is fungible.
4. 2584.▲
   by wyager 9y ago

   That's not any of the stuff I'm talking about. Francis is, by far, the most outspoken supporter of homosexuality in recent papal history. Francis changed church policy in favor of divorces and annulments. He's also made many
5. 2585.▲
   by wyager 9y ago

   The current pope is overturning hundreds of years of catholic doctrine. He's not a benchmark of a traditional Christian. Also, most American Christians aren't catholic.
6. 2586.▲
   by wyager 9y ago

   I'm a huge fan of the knock-off chips that are just a piece of copper connecting all the pins. I wonder why they bother with the copper, instead of just using a block of plastic.
7. 2587.▲
   by wyager 9y ago

   Could you explain your reasoning further? Are you just saying that because you see "photon" and "silicon" in the same place? The answer, unless I misunderstand you, is "probably not"; I don't see how this
8. 2588.▲
   by wyager 9y ago

   All emotions must be eliminated from public interaction. All social processes must be bureaucratically authorized. Don't forget to take your Prozium and sign your consent forms.
9. 2589.▲
   by wyager 9y ago

   This is true, but what has the higher net social utility: a system that treats the 1% of social deviants equally at the expense of a loss of social cohesion, or a system that treats the 1% of social deviants poorly while maintaining a frien
10. 2590.▲
    by wyager 9y ago

    Having lived all over the US, I believe that small homogenous rural towns are the most empathetic/friendly places available. The human brain didn't evolved to form strong, productive social bonds in the presence of millions of peo
11. 2591.▲
    by wyager 9y ago

    Then why use the Sia coin instead of just paying someone to (provably) host your stuff using Bitcoin? Not being snide, I just don't know what the platform offers if you're just doing direct contracts anyway.
12. 2592.▲
    by wyager 9y ago

    Have any of these storage coins figured out how to deal with the fact that it's easy to collude with yourself and efficiently pull off a Sybil attack to make it look like you're hosting lots of data?
13. 2593.▲
    by wyager 9y ago

    Great, this opens up an opportunity for Bitcoin transfers to Kinakuta.
14. 2594.▲
    by wyager 9y ago

    Some cars (like the Miata) are still specifically meant to remain more or less tinkerer-friendly, but yes, unfortunately the trend seems to be doing everything possible to force you to visit the stealership for even the most basic of repair
15. 2595.▲
    by wyager 9y ago

    €2.4B is a very large chunk of Google's annual profit. How much do these companies gain from having a legally vulnerable physical presence in the EU? I'd guess not more than a few billion dollars a year. The primary benefits are h
16. 2596.▲
    by wyager 9y ago

    > sites with more that two million users in Germany must take down posts containing hate speech or other criminal material within 24 hours. Censorship and fines galore. Just this week: a €2.4B fine from the EU for Google's integrate
17. 2597.▲
    by wyager 9y ago

    > you wind up with groups too small for insurance to work. This is quite simply not true, and I can't help but think that this statement comes from a very fractured rule-of-thumb understanding about how insurance works. Insurance wo
18. 2598.▲
    by wyager 9y ago

    When you say "we've historically benefitted", what do you mean? Surely you can't be referring to me, because I wasn't around "historically". > We pay the same health insurance rates as everyone else. Di
19. 2599.▲
    by wyager 9y ago

    I'd rather not "contribute to society" by having my money taken from me at every conceivable opportunity. I'd rather that everyone in society contribute more or less equally (or, at least, according to their means and
20. 2600.▲
    by wyager 9y ago

    > Car and homeowner's insurance only works /because/ insurers have imperfect data No, this is wrong. Common misunderstanding about the value of insurance. Even with perfect data, where your cash EV from buying into the ins
21. 2601.▲
    by wyager 9y ago

    I missed that footnote, thanks. And yes, that's my point; many people mistake "health insurance" for an insurance market because of the name.
22. 2602.▲
    by wyager 9y ago

    As far as I know, there is no strong relationship between race and lifetime insurance expenditures. Hypothetically though, yes, insurance companies should be allowed to make optimal decisions based on full actuarial information. Anything el
23. 2603.▲
    by wyager 9y ago

    > Insurance carriers set their rates based on actuarial models designed to predict the likelihood of future events. Sure, until the government says that you are no longer allowed to set rates based on actuarial data; maybe you aren'
24. 2604.▲
    by wyager 9y ago

    Who said anything about the third world? The GoogleBoat(tm) would probably be very nice, especially without the overhead associated with paying taxes and "fines". Even the €2.4B the EU is trying to extort from Google would be more
25. 2605.▲
    by wyager 9y ago

    Google has $64B cash reserves as of 2015. More than enough to purchase a decent military deterrent arsenal (up to the Samson Option, if they wanted) and/or the cooperation of some small money-hungry nation.
26. 2606.▲
    by wyager 9y ago

    First a frivolous €2.4B "fine" from the EU, now some insane global censorship attempts by an aggressive minority market. That's just this week! How long until Google moves to a boat nation or something? I'd live on a boa
27. 2607.▲
    by wyager 9y ago

    Great book. I'm reading Echopraxia now. My shortlist of hard sci-fi authors that have really interesting ideas about extraterrestrial life: Peter Watts (above) and Greg Egan. Liu Cixin has also become popular recently, but he's
28. 2608.▲
    by wyager 9y ago

    Physically leaving the EU doesn't mean giving up all of their EU revenue. That's the magic of the internet. The hypothetical friendly nation wouldn't be the US, for the reasons you mention.
29. 2609.▲
    by wyager 9y ago

    What would Google have to do to ignore this fine? If they cut any physical presence in the EU, would the EC have any way to enforce this fine? Put another way, if the EU tried to take money from some random e.g. American or Japanese company
30. 2610.▲
    by wyager 9y ago

    Maybe I'm being myopic here, but is there any sane (as opposed to red-tape based or political) reason to use Windows in an application like this? HMS Queen Elizabeth wasn't ordered until 2008, and construction didn't even beg