robertpateii

Joined 16 years ago

Karma
144
Submissions
66
Member since
Dec 14
contact info, blog, and projects: http://www.robertpate.net/
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Recent submissions

Comment · 4 months ago
Yeah, intentionally misleading consumers should always be at least somewhat illegal. Sure caveat emptor, but consumers having accurate information is implied and a cornerstone of a competitive market.
Comment · 4 months ago
Read the article. It doesn’t even ask if dextromethorphan and phenylephrine should be illegal. It asks if intentionally misleading consumers about their efficacy should be.
Comment · 1 year ago
Being physically fit past your 30s is a series of building habits and making hard choices that obviously is a challenge of its own that many in sedentary jobs have skipped or fallen away from. OP may be fit, but yeah for average office worker (especially in locations that are car-bound on long commutes) I’d bet there is indeed more going on than just autism.
Comment · 1 year ago
Having to select self care and breakfast every morning (and meds on some routes) is a good reminder for me of the importance of those things in the long run of a whole day. I don’t think I’m any farther on the spectrum than the average software developer, but it’s still a daily decision to be made. (Of course for those people with different breakfast patterns - you still have a best approach for yourself that you must decide to follow every morning.)

Similarly for the masking meter, I don’t know what it feels like exactly to have mask. However isn’t it hard, in varying degrees, to constantly determine and go through with the right forward-looking choice in real life? My guess is what’s a challenge for some is also a heavy toll on others.

Habits help with much of the daily decisions, but are of course their own challenge to implement and maintain.

Comment · 1 year ago
Fiction still has ideas to get across and internal consistencies it needs to maintain to be enjoyable and get those ideas across.

When characters do things that beggars belief built upon their previous actions, it can ruin the whole story.

Even poetry has some truth and concept inside the poet to which it’s bound.

Comment · 1 year ago
Imo, that quote is clearly a train metaphor. But to your point, I do vaguely recall being unclear plenty when I read Moby Dick decades ago.
Comment · 1 year ago
> to see what an individual is working on, what they’ll be working on next, *and what they done recently.*

This last bit is useful, but tricky to get reports on in a single assignee system. Say it’s the end of the week and I want to show off myself or my team. The system would need to track assignee at resolution or at re-assignment, or let me filter all of one user’s activities down.

Does any single-assignee system handle this well? I’ve always had to manually take note of bug IDs mentioned in standups to achieve a good list of who did what when only using one assignee at a time.

Comment · 6 years ago
Charity events have always had a suggested donation amount for this reason. If a project doesn’t suggest a donation amount then they intentionally or unintentionally ignoring conventional wisdom.

Disturbing a donation pool is interesting but not far off patreon.

Comment · 6 years ago
Now we’re back to the opening comment: who’s job is it ethically to ensure people receive a living wage? The companies that employ some people or all of us?
Comment · 6 years ago
Ohhh by “it” you mean lifespan not quality of life or standard of living which are the relevant measurements of what we should be gaining from productivity. I didn’t realize you were going to nit pick a couple of very specific examples among many.

p.s. also didn’t expect you to nit pick examples I gave that I thought would better serve your original point: big life changing stuff has improved. I expected us to move on to discuss what is of major value that we should expect from productivity.

Comment · 6 years ago
Are you saying that right now the quality of life for all Americans has reached a its asymptotic limit in regards to productivity?
Comment · 6 years ago
Vain and selfish people probably aren’t going to sit around and live on the basic level. It’s more about providing for the ignored, the sick, and enabling people to take risks in the market without putting their family’s lives at stake.
Comment · 6 years ago
I don’t understand how UBI forces you to stop working at your job. Wouldn’t you potentially be paid even more if everyone who does that job but hates it stops? And the compensation to do it increases to compensate?
Comment · 6 years ago
Those examples save us minutes but don’t make humans more free or happier or safer. Better examples would be increased lifespans and lower infant mortality. Stuff that ties into the standard of living definition. Which is the point: our standard of living has not increased at the same rate as productivity.

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