bkfunk

> I get people are sad if they get forced out of their homes for this

Wow, what a way to dismiss the humanity and worth of millions of people.

First of all, in some cases it actually IS a surprise: historical flood data was often quite limited and cities and communities formed before there were accurate estimates of flooding probability, let alone enough understanding of climate change to predict 21st century flooding probability.

If you’re thinking “this side of the street floods, but not the other side, just move across the street”, in many places that is not at all the situation. Miami (avg elevation: 5.9 ft) and New Orleans (elevation from -6.6 to 19.7 ft) are large, dense (by American standards) cities that have existed for over a hundred years. Giant swathes of them are in flood plains. You cannot move a third or more of a city’s residents in any reasonable time—there aren’t enough housing units, never mind the schools and utility capacity and businesses and everything else needed to support a community of people. Plus, most Americans, if they own a home, the vast majority of their net worth is in their house. You pull the insurance, that value vaporizes. Sure, from the perspective of the overall economy, that may seem more efficient. But individuals can use economic efficiency for a down payment. Congratulations, you just vanished billions of dollars of assets! Hope that doesn’t affect the banking system or the local economy!

And they can’t move across the street—to get out of the flood plain they may have to move a significant distance, and people already live in the higher areas of the city: effectively (especially for low and moderate income families) they have to move > 50 miles away. That means they lose their social network, support system, and likely their job. Moving a long distance is expensive, extremely stressful, and can break the few remaining social bonds that we now know are a huge factor in everything from recovering from bankruptcy to whether someone is too disabled to work, to how long people live.

> I feel zero outrage here.

I’m not sure anyone is trying to get you to feel outrage? Like it’s a hard policy problem that greatly affects millions of people. Maybe you could just…care?

If moving millions of people—functionally including entire metro areas like…oh I don’t know…Miami and New Orleans and large swathes of NYC—by forcing them to abandon their homes (with no insurance they are now unsalable) and then buy/rent (using what money?) new homes far away from their communities and jobs (if they bought close, they’d still be in the flood plain!)—if that’s “simple”, I don’t want to know what policy implementations you’d call “hard”!

Once I started learning more about biology, I realized that everything is just so complex. The body repurposes chemicals a lot, so you have things like serotonin being a key neurotransmitter in the brain, but also in the gut. And you have enzymes that are coded in genes, but then there are also networks of genes that are up- or down- regulated by hundreds of other genes, and sometimes only in certain types of cells or certain physiological environments. And then of course there are epigenetic and immune-modulated effects at the genome, gene network, and individual gene levels. Not to even mention all the feedback mechanisms and meta-feedback mechanisms (the drive toward homeostasis is POWERFUL), and effects of countless chemicals in our environment.

There are certainly clear-cut cause-effect relationships in biological systems, but even they will have edge cases and random chance to muddle the picture.

I would posit that the human body is far more complex than even the largest codebase, not least because it was jury-rigged together with no architect or style guide.

Also, in general, the more common the exposure, the harder it is to find a link; try finding a control group of people who have never been exposed to PTFEs, or HSV, and who also aren’t like hunter gatherers.

> off-patent

Well there’s your problem: no one can make money off of it, unless they develop a new delivery mechanism, etc.

Patents encourage developing new medicines, but not developing new knowledge about (never mind use of) old medicine.

The solution (in the US) is obvious: federal funding of research that stands to help lots of people but not make lots of money. Since most of these patients (in the US) are going to be on Medicare, there could be huge potential cost savings to the taxpayer: memory care is EXPENSIVE, so even the paltry amount covered by Medicare racks up (and the opportunity costs of people paying for private memory care is enormous).

But instead of increasing funding for this kind of life- AND MONEY-saving research, this administration is freezing and slashing research funding, and specifically targeting Columbia for political/Trump’s-petty-grudge reasons.

If you have termites, you don’t just light the house on fire.

So many tech people try to solve all the problems of Gov tech in the executive branch, which is intentionally slow and conservative. And yet, watch any Congressional hearing about a tech topic, and it’s painfully obvious that Congress has very little expertise in tech issues on staff.

Instead of going 12 rounds with OIRA about the PRA (which I hate as much as the author does), what if we…changed it?

The Judiciary also has no idea how to think about tech issues.

Don’t blame the executive branch for the perverse constraints and incentives created by the Legislative and Judicial.

“That today Microsoft is a giant company is irrelevant...”

I am not too young to remember the old Microsoft. To say that Microsoft is “irrelevant” is so myopic. Despite Tesla, GM is still relevant. Despite AWS, DB2 mainframes are still relevant. Heck, I have to work with EBCDIC data, a format designed to not produce holes in punchcards that are too close together. Even when we eventually move to a modern db, decades of archival data is not going to be converted from EBCDIC.

Windows might be irrelevant to FAANG or MANGA or GAMMA or whatever, but how many Fortune 500 companies don’t have a significant Microsoft presence?

Apple computers are pretty nice, but they’re expensive, and the vast majority of employees do fine with a cheap PC and Microsoft 365—why would a company pay more for unnecessary hardware that also requires rebuilding a bunch of IT systems, not to mention retraining thousands of employees.

The number of EOs is a poor measure of the extent of executive power. There are many other ways to concentrate executive power; for example OMB (part of the Executive Office of the President) issues “M-memos” (“M” for “management”) to the heads of all departments, instructing them on how to implement EOs, laws, and White House priorities.

There is a consensus among researchers of the workings of the US government and the legal context thereof that, since FDR and especially since Reagan, that the “imperial presidency” has been gaining ground.

Unless you want to “write a Shakespearean sonnet about Bayes’ rule”. Here’s what Claude sonnet (ahem) came up with:

"Bayes's Revelation"

  What knowledge held before new facts arrive,
  Our prior thoughts, though incomplete they be,
  Must yield and change as evidence does strive
  To shape posterior probability.

  Through multiplicative steps we find our way,
  As likelihood with prior beliefs combine,
  The normalizing constant holds its sway,
  While truth emerges, clearer line by line.

  O Reverend Bayes, thy theorem divine
  Shows how our minds should learn from what we see,
  Each observation helps our thoughts refine,
  Till posterior wisdom sets uncertainty free.

  In statistics' realm, this rule holds fast:
  Each present builds upon what's known from past.

  The sonnet weaves together the key components of Bayes' theorem - prior probability, likelihood, and how they combine to form the posterior probability. Would you like me to explain any of these statistical concepts in more detail?                

Although it would be an easier change now that Bard is Gemini…

Or you could read the article and use common sense?

> At first, AirWayBill’s managing director, Khaled Sehly, declined to discuss whether the app could be breaking any TSA regulations, asking to go off the record. (I refused.) He then asked me to wait four weeks until they had real users, saying that the reviews left on the app were actually from peers rather than customers. In our next series of broken calls, Sehly directed me towards the app’s terms and conditions and privacy policy, which he says were designed by a reputable law firm. Section 8 of the terms and conditions states that users must comply with technical and legal obligations and restrictions, including customs rules. However, it also indemnifies AirWayBill for liability related to shipments, stating that “any request will be made or accepted at the Members’ own risk” and that unless it’s explicitly specified otherwise within the platform, “AirWayBill’s responsibilities are limited to the correct functioning of the app and its service to the interested parties.”

> Unfortunately for wary couriers, AirWayBill is not planning on running background checks on anybody using their services. Sehly says that delivering packages for strangers—or at least friends of friends—is something that he’s seen done in an unregulated way in the Middle East and parts of Europe, with people asking if someone could deliver items ranging from documents to baby food to their families. Still, the possibility of inadvertently smuggling who knows what still remains. “We always urge people not to carry anything that they are not super confident about,” Sehly says, pointing out that deliverers can inspect the items they plan on transporting.

So the company is obviously taking the caveat emptor aka “f around find out” approach. Drug smugglers already have a lot of skill hiding drugs in seemingly innocuous items (sewn into teddy bears, etc.), so it is not at all an “aggressive assumption” to think being a courier with this service has potentially life changing (i.e. incarceration) risks.