slyfocks

I’ve wondered about this for years. Given the obviously misaligned incentives between a for-profit dating app and its users, dating seems like a perfect area for a non-profit to operate.

I actually find it refreshing that Wikipedia doesn’t cater to the lowest common denominator in the theory section of technical subjects. For sufficiently popular subjects, they often have more accessible explanations on their “Simple English” version of the page.

It is indeed a taxable event. People who exchange crypto for “stable”coins are generally doing so to stay out of the KYC banking realm so they can lie about their transactions to their country’s tax authorities.

And then everyone stood up and clapped.

One could argue that the airline CEOs acted rationally and strategically—they know the airline industry’s importance to the US economy gives them great odds of a bailout if a black swan event were to occur, so there was more value to shareholders generated by stock buybacks than reserving cash for a worst-case event.

> I can assure you if tomorrow we woke up and the world was 2 degrees hotter and people were dying left right and centre from it, the same thing would have happened with climate change.

That’s the point he’s making though, we’re overcommitting resources to this problem because we can see it. Once climate change is apparent enough for people to panic, it’ll be too late.

> Thousands of people are already dying from this in one small concentrated area in Italy, in a matter of weeks. Shall we just say fuck it and let thousands more die here too? Should the whole world say the same thing? Shall we let the entire economy hit the sort of fucked levels we haven't seen since like WW2?

Looking at the data from Italy, 98% of the people who died were retired, had pre-existing conditions, and were making no noticeable economic contribution. I’m not saying that economic utility should be what determines someone’s value of life, but the argument that spending trillions of dollars to save the lives of some 85-year-olds “avoids economic disaster” makes no sense. If a world leader were acting in a purely Machiavellian manner, they would let the virus run its course as quickly as possible so productivity could return to normal.

It’s quite alarming that no country (as far as I’m aware) is taking a more rational approach towards coronavirus policy.

Any attempt to make an argument of this sort in the current panic is being seen as insensitive and met with outrage (“you don’t care about me/someone’s parents/grandparents”).

If the consensus ends up being that we need to put an 18 month hold on all activity and spend trillions of dollars to extend the lives of a few hundred thousand octogenarians, this will be a mistake that resonates for generations.

Also, the current policy being pursued isn’t a simple “spend x, save y lives” trade-off. An extended period of isolation will not only have economic effects (greater poverty, on average, will reduce life expectancy for many), it’ll also result in a higher incidence of mental health issues and suicide. Children will have their educational development severely disrupted. When the calculus on this policy becomes clear, it could be possible that we end up trading many millions of years of aggregate future life to save a million people who’ve already lived very full lives.

I read it that way as well—-words do have secondary and tertiary connotations, and any competent journalist knows how to use composition and careful word choice to more effectively convey a particular narrative.

The Chicago metropolitan area is not only the third most populous in the U.S., it also has the third highest GDP by a fair margin.

More generally, it tends to be regarded as a much more global city than SF or DC. New York is clearly #1 as far as international importance, but Chicago generally places third behind LA in any serious ranking of U.S. cities based on economic and cultural importance.

Not sure why this is getting downvotes, it carries a lot of truth. Internet-based tech companies like Google have matured to the point where many innovators have left and MBAs have invaded, favoring short-term profit over user experience.

Lately, it has felt like Google has become more optimized for less intelligent/tech-savvy users (i.e. people who search using natural language e.g. “tell me the store policy for target please”). In these cases many of the words used are either irrelevant or counterproductive.

I’ve noticed Facebook’s search has started catering to the lowest common denominator as well. Searching for (made-up example) “Louis Potter” used to give all exact matches priority. Current results look something like 1) Louis Potter 2) Luis Porter 3) Louis Potters 4) Louis Potter (#2). I don’t like when search engines assume that I’m misspelling words/names, and it would be nice if they adapted for individual behavior in this regard.

They’ve hired specifically for this project, and based on the friends I know working on self-driving at Apple vs. Siri at Apple, the self-driving team has a much greater concentration of talent.

Unless I’m missing something, timestamps seem to be HappyOrNot’s only defense against malicious users.

While that works against a toddler who relentlessly taps the unhappy button, it’s an ineffective defense against a manager intent on manipulating feedback.