caylus

> I can no longer edit the original comment

Okay, great, we're getting somewhere. So you concede that the true number of human birth defects is on the order of 4-5 nines.

We know this because we've observed a huge sample size of human births. Meanwhile, the experiment you reference only observed a small set of planarian worm amputations. So we can't conclude there are even 4-5 nines of reliability there, let alone "100%".

Otherwise, we could simply observe a few hundred human births, observe no defects, and conclude that human births are also "100%" reliable.

In our original debate, we were both slightly wrong about the number of nines of reliability in human births. However, you are now infinitely wrong by claiming an infinite number of nines of reliability in planarian worm amputations. I don't know whether the actual number of nines is 5, or 10, or 20, but I can be certain that it's not infinity, because that would violate the laws of probability.

I'm not sure how the math works for 3D games, but I would think that for 2D games, a curved monitor actually reduces distortion.

In a flat monitor centered in front of your head, the distance between your eyes and different pixels on the screen varies depending on how close they are to the edge, thus distorting the sizes of the rendered sprites. Curving the edges reduces this effect (depending of course on the exact curvature and distance to the monitor).

I guess the key question for 3D is whether the rendering engine already attempts to compensate for this effect. It seems difficult for it to do so, since monitor sizes and distances vary so much, but I suppose that's what settings like field-of-view are for.

In general yes, but I think Prop 13 complicates matters, because it's not just a lower tax rate, but rather applies unequally to different properties based on their transaction history. (e.g. a property built or sold recently gets high taxes, while one that's been unchanged remains low)

So we can divide the rental market into high-tax and low-tax properties. The landlords of high-tax properties must incorporate the tax into the rent. Meanwhile, the landlords of low-tax properties can set their rents just as high, since they compete in the same market, and pocket the tax difference.

In contrast, a flat property tax reduction would increase the profit margins of all landlords equally, and any one of them could start undercutting the others and be undercut in return, which over time in an efficient market will tend to lower prices back to a similar margin before the tax reduction.

This goes far beyond a "working definition" in that it encompasses literally every game that unlocks content in any way. /Some/ distinction is needed to differentiate a "loot box" from every other game mechanic.

It would be like using "a metal object that can harm people" as a working definition of an assault weapon. If the definition also includes ladders, cars, and push-pins, it's far too broad to be useful in any discussion.

Even worse, the definition doesn't even say anything about an element of chance!

If when my character levels up through gameplay they unlock a new ability, that would also seem to meet this absurdly overbroad definition of a "loot box".

Even if we added the requirement of real money purchase, offering some features of a game only as part of a paid expansion also has nothing to do with "loot boxes".

There may be thousands of banks, but all but a few manage their funds at one of the big few, essentially acting as resellers of the big banks' services. For example, I my bank is "Ally Bank", but if I ask them for instructions on how to receive a wire transfer, they instruct me to direct it to "JP Morgan Chase Bank, N.A.", the largest bank in the U.S. I previously used the brand "Simple Bank", which provided accounts via "The Bancorp Bank", the 5th largest.

It's a similar case to cell phone providers: although there are hundreds in the U.S., all but four do not operate their own network, but rather resell the network of one of the big four.

It's an interesting question, though, how much this consolidation is due to regulation versus being a result of a natural monopoly, i.e. high barrier to entry for the type of business.

Sure, banks can create money "out of thin air" because the liability created when the loaned money is debited is balanced out by the asset of the loan owned to them.

But if the loan defaults, the asset disappears, and if this happens enough the bank risks becoming insolvent and no longer being able to repay other liabilities like its deposits unless bailed out.

Maybe that's what you're alluding to - the Fed will always bail them out so deposits are never lost? That's probably true in practice, but a loan from the Fed can't in of itself restore solvency, since it's still both an asset and a liability. In the most extreme case, the bank would still go bankrupt, investors would lose their money, and depositors could also lose some of their money unless individually bailed out by the FDIC.

Back to the original discussion - the key question here is are people who hold cryptocurrency at Coinbase considered "investors" or "depositors", and are they protected by the FDIC? The latter is almost certainly no, and the former determines how much they can expect to get repaid if Coinbase goes bankrupt.