Recent submissions

Comment · 4 years ago
I may be missing something, but if there is no competitive pressure/monopolistic market, why would these businesses need the excuse of inflation/cost increases to increase their prices? Wouldn't we expect prices to have gone up before inflation?

Or is this a specific criticism of a regulatory blind spot for reigning in market power? Monopolies can get away with price increases now, but they wouldn't normally?

Comment · 4 years ago
Do other QM interpretations predict that quantum computers wouldn't be able to benefit from superposing N qubits over 2^N (possible) output states? As far as I understand, it's not just Copenhagen that allows for this.

Would an interpretation need to reject Bell's theorem to get there? Or could it not include superposition but still keep all of Bell's theorem?

Comment · 4 years ago
I assume fabrication refers to semiconductor fabs, not factories assembling computers together. None of the world's most advanced semiconductor fabs are in China, and whether they can catch up to TSMC/Samsung remains to be seen.
Comment · 4 years ago
Comment · 4 years ago
On my Thinkpad x13 there was an option to use "Linux sleep" or something like that in the uefi (bios?) Settings. I think this just gives it the normal sleep behavior, and definitely reduced how often my laptop would come out of my backpack hot and on low battery (running Linux)
Comment · 4 years ago
As a poor college student, I was surprised hearing the stores I went to described as fast fashion. For me, thrift stores or hand me downs were the sensible choice for clothes, and h&m or forever21 were splurges for $30 pants or whatever. Obviously the price points and quality that these fast fashion brands output don't lend themselves to being deliberate, long term "investments", but spending twice as much on pants that I was already hesitant to buy was unthinkable.

I also think buying some chinos or button down shirts at these places made it a lot cheaper to get business casual work clothes as I transitioned from fast food/retail to actual internships etc. I think it's really good for young people or people turning their life around to have very low barriers to entry when it comes to "looking respectable" or fitting in with the workplace as they grow, and fast fashion helped do that for me (and some of this could be addressed by loosening dress codes if you're hiring college students/young people/whatever).

Comment · 4 years ago
Housing isn't finite, if Americans are willing to spend money to increase the value of Mexican housing, Mexican builders/government can build more housing to take advantage of the increased demand. I don't see much reason why any country would need to ban foreign investment, especially when supply is artificially constrained by unjustifiable regulation (true of western US and Canada, no idea if true of Mexico)
Comment · 4 years ago
I know anta sports (Chinese) owns Arc'teryx and Salomon (and other brands as well), which are both big deals in very niche parts of outdoors companies (mountaineering/climbing and trail running/skiing respectively) but I don't think there's any single Chinese company that owns all the outdoor brands, unless anta is owned by some other company. Luxottica, the eyeglass company gp referred to is also Italian, not French (afaik), and their stranglehold was weakening with online retailers breaking in (last I checked was ~5 years ago, this might have regressed since).
Comment · 4 years ago
Comment · 4 years ago
This website is incredibly helpful for quick simulation. My favorite design detail is that the circuits are stored in the url, allowing easy bookmarking or sharing of some specific circuit.
Comment · 4 years ago
The number of rays is determined by the number of aperture blades, as well as whether there's an even or odd number of aperture blades

https://phillipreeve.net/blog/best-lenses-for-sunstars/#The_...

Interestingly, some modern photography lenses have achieved aperture mechanisms with much rounder geometry, sometimes with near perfect circles at multiple apertures. This can result in a more desirable bokeh, at the cost of well defined sun stars.

Comment · 4 years ago
right but corporate lobbying isn't the only way in which America is unique. Concerns about concealed research results could be very true, but that's an entirely different question than corporate lobbying. My position isn't that companies don't do anything wrong or aren't trying to influence policy, I'm just skeptical how successful political donations are at subverting democracy.
Comment · 4 years ago
Well, the American public is an outlier when compared to many other democracies in other ways as well, in general I'd guess they'd view environmental/health regulations less favorably than most other developed nations. "Just don't lick the walls lol" is something I've heard regarding lead paint here in America, which sounds insane to me, but it's the insanity of democracy, not anything else.
Comment · 4 years ago
When I look at these health care charts, I don't see a real consensus, even when oversimplifying health care to 4 broad categories (36 20 30 6 percent respectively). I don't know who the respective corporate interests would be for each of the categories, though I'd guess that there's big corporations that favor 2 or 3 of these potential solutions, and only a third (at most) of Americans that support one of them. A third of the populace doesn't make a popular mandate, and it certainly isn't enough for a senate majority (especially for democrats).

The climate change one might be more convincing, but I actually think we've seen some real progress on this. Alternative energy is getting cheaper, there's tax incentives for installing solar panels or EV chargers in many areas, and tax incentives for buying EVs. There's certainly more we can do, and the polls were phrased to suggest that the general public thinks so too. But if the admittedly significant oil and gas lobby is trying to hold this issue back, I'm not sure how successful they've been. Finally, this isn't an actual bill or anything. Every "green" bill I've seen is opposed by conservatives based on their constituency, whether they're a red conservative from texas, or a blue conservative from west virginia. I don't know if Joe Manchin takes donations from coal companies, but he'd unquestionably support coal either way.

Comment · 4 years ago
I may have heard of this once on a reddit philosophy post or something, I think this really isn't an example of a popular idea that's squashed by corporate interests. That's not to say it's not a good one (I have no idea), but I don't know if we'd pass this (or if there's even any corporate opposition).

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