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alehul

Re:U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord on Wednesday November 04, 2020 @08:59AM (#24989077)
> A third option would be to increase demand response at the industrial and customer level. Meaning, power isn't generally expected to be 100% available in that scenario. If there isn't enough generation capacity, those that aren't willing to pay the high prices are shut off (or something along those lines). That is generally how supply/demand is supposed to work anyway

I don’t think any of these solutions are viable to prove we can be reliant on renewables, and this one especially would not resonate with a populace.

Just at a consumer level, think of everything you use power for on a daily basis. It’s a cornerstone of modern life, and you can’t expect society to backtrack.

Re:Activists turn facial recognition tools against the police on Thursday October 22, 2020 @05:26PM (#24863474)
We should reduce it as much as we can, but this is a country of >300,000,000 with >6,000,000 crimes occurring each year.

Of the percent I cited, >90% of that lethal force is against an armed individual.

I don't know what sensory approach could prevent every single death, when there are so many cases of violence in this country.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6080222/

Re:Activists turn facial recognition tools against the police on Thursday October 22, 2020 @05:13PM (#24863373)
Seeing a high crime rate doesn't automatically call for radical reform — and in a way abolition — of the status quo of law enforcement.

Why is the crime rate high? Is it really because of police, or do they help? How will some radical restructuring reduce it?

There are many questions here.

Preventative policing, while effective in social democratic countries with low inequality like the Nordics, isn't on the table when we see violent crime that mirrors African and South American countries. Disincentivizing homicide in a country rife with inequality and materialism is a harder task than we imagine.

There are ~900,000 police officers in the United States, and 240 million 911 calls, and 50 million police-public interactions. That's an average of over 50 interactions per day for a police officer.

Re:Activists turn facial recognition tools against the police on Thursday October 22, 2020 @04:48PM (#24863131)
They may not have the obligation to enforce a restraining order, but I imagine >99% of the time they do, and they have for me.

Wasn't an open warrant for violating a restraining order what led to the Jacob Blake alteraction?

Re:Activists turn facial recognition tools against the police on Thursday October 22, 2020 @04:46PM (#24863118)
General crime rate will decrease as you legalize recreational drug use, but there's no reason to believe that will resolve the many issues that lead to homicide in the United States.

It will reduce the profitability of the drug trade, which may result in less crimes or an increase in other crimes. It may also increase the number of people addicted to drugs, which, in the United States, leads to an exponential increase in both violent crime and property crime [1].

There's many other forms of crime and homicide than drug-related, and plenty of people need the police for reasons that are not related to drugs.

Separately, those people would not be making their living "not outside the law," they would be out of work. Drug legalization doesn't mean we allow existing supply chains from violent cartels.

[1] https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/DRRC.PDF

Re:Activists turn facial recognition tools against the police on Thursday October 22, 2020 @04:35PM (#24863032)
It's a good distinction, so I asked what would happen in each of the three cases. I think that's one of the trickiest parts of this concept.

In a country as armed and violent as the United States, escalation happens quickly and dangerously. We've all seen videos of officers pulling a car over for speeding and being executed the moment they look away, there's been more than a few in the past couple months alone [1] [2] [3]. Nearly any situation can become lethal for the officer and civilians [4], so I think it's fair to ask in what situations there would be an armed responder.

Edited with sources as it was downvoted:

[1] https://nypost.com/2020/09/15/police-release-footage-of-fata... [2] https://apnews.com/article/808248ed232ca2a83dad8780359bf69b [3] https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/20/us/south-carolina-deputy-kill...

[4] https://www.scotusblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/16-153...

Re:Activists turn facial recognition tools against the police on Thursday October 22, 2020 @04:34PM (#24863008)
Total U.S. police spending is around $100 billion, which is around $285/person/year.

Considering over 240 million 911 calls are placed in a given year, at a surface level this feels extremely efficient — certainly more so than other parts of our bureaucracy.

Crime occurs for social, cultural, and/or financial reasons — focusing on the financial, we have a giant bureaucratic and inefficient government, an incredibly large population, and a lot of waste. I don't think one could argue the $24/person/month we pay for police would make a substantial difference / stop a ton of crime.

Re:Activists turn facial recognition tools against the police on Thursday October 22, 2020 @04:26PM (#24862925)
> omnipurpose paramilitary law enforcement

U.S. civilians own nearly 400 million firearms, which is larger than the country's population. The intentional homicide rate is comparable to Kenya, Pakistan, Ecuador, or Argentina (5x higher than Western Europe). Are you sure that police will be able to operate effectively without being armed in a somewhat militaristic manner?

> redistribute law enforcement responsibilities among domain-specific entities

What will happen if I call 911 and report someone stole from me at gunpoint? What if I report that someone violated my restraining order against them? What if I report that someone is yelling threateningly at waitstaff at a restaurant?

> not violate the public trust

While we absolutely need more oversight, there are over ~55,000,000 documented police-public encounters in a given year, and ~1,000 cases of lethal force used by police (vast majority were people attempting to harm the officers).

The rate of lethal force as a percent of interactions: 0.0000206473%.

The rate of lethal force against the total U.S. population: 0.00000343477%.

Re:Activists turn facial recognition tools against the police on Thursday October 22, 2020 @04:11PM (#24862784)
One of the most interesting points here is that people are looking at the United States, comparing it to Western Europe, and saying "we need to defund police" or "we need to disarm police."

The metric we should look at is not GDP per capita (which is how the U.S. bears similarity to Europe), it is crime.

If you look at intentional homicide rates among large countries (>1m population), the U.S. is comparable to countries like Ecuador, Argentina, Kenya, and Pakistan [1].

The U.S. intentional homicide rate is bigger than Western European countries by a factor of 4 or 5.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...

Re:Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting on Wednesday October 14, 2020 @09:09PM (#24783661)
Buzzfeed has been deemed left, which is a category beyond left-leaning, by an objective fact-checker [1].

As one example of why:

> In June 2016, the left-leaning media watchdog Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting found that in 100 BuzzFeed stories about Barack Obama, 65 were positive, 34 were neutral, and one was critical.

[1] https://www.allsides.com/news-source/buzzfeed-media-bias

I have, maybe naively, always believed that the U.S. operates at a level of secrecy and complexity where dozens of terrorist attacks are thwarted every year, and that this surveillance plays a hand in it (but to admit that would hinder its effectiveness).

Is it really possible we only have <5 terror plots against our country in a given year, considering the population of our country, the amount of ideological extremism domestically and internationally, and the States' interventionism?

Maybe it is possible, in which case the U.S. has been very successful at convincing my generation it's a larger issue than it really is (I was a toddler when 9/11 happened, so it's all I know).

Re:Why I bought a voting machine on eBay on Tuesday October 06, 2020 @08:26AM (#24696968)
After reading, I’m convinced that this must be a draft mistakenly published. Wow.
> Did you know that other countries have grocery stores too?

In the countries destroying the rich in revolution, grocery stores are empty.

> how are welfare and immigration related?

Welfare and immigration are related because increasing both are fundamentally incompatible.

If you substantially increase welfare, you must avoid mass immigration that collapses the system.

If you substantially increase immigration, you must avoid welfare that collapses the system.

The United States is rare, as a wealthy country, in generally choosing substantial immigration over substantial welfare.

> There is no way they'll be able to stop the upcoming revolution.

As someone who grew up poor in America, these talks about “revolution” have always perplexed me.

We have one of the highest median incomes in the world, and we live in a country that pushes much of the world forward in terms of technological progress.

People have always flocked to America for opportunity, and if we cut welfare so we can expand immigration again, I guarantee there will be another giant influx.

This country allows people of virtually all income levels access to an abundance of food and pleasures through our capitalist system. Grocery stores with packed shelves aren’t something you should take for granted.

Revolution isn’t the path to become like Sweden. It’s the path to become like the USSR.

Re:Mark in the Middle on Thursday September 24, 2020 @02:40PM (#24581996)
Please don't use a term like "anti-racist" for someone who says "Whites are $NegativeAdjective."

It's really disingenuous rhetoric.

Re:Apple Watch Series 6 on Tuesday September 15, 2020 @01:35PM (#24484103)
The link is still a 404, so I'm not sure you can say that yet as we don't know what the features are.

Watching the event, it may only be the Series 6 that functions with Fitness+, so that's a huge differentiator.

It also measures blood oxygen levels, measures elevation, can call 911 if you experience a fall, etc.

Re:I Want to Fix Goodreads on Saturday September 12, 2020 @05:35PM (#24455984)
> I wish there was some way to note books that I don’t want to read.

Minor point but there is a "Not interested" button in the screenshot shown above this paragraph. While Goodreads' initial suggestions were off-the-mark, I wonder if using that would help?

> It is absolutely dangerous to speak

Dangerous for who, though?

It was the founders who were supposedly acting against the Belarusian government, and the employees who are paying the price. The founders are safe in San Francisco.

My outrage is certainly directed at Lukashenko, but the commenter above us may have a point about whether it was responsible to be acting against a dictator while your employees are subject to his government. It's a tough situation.

Re:What I Learned Going Through YC as a 17 Year Old on Friday September 04, 2020 @07:35AM (#24374011)
I should’ve only quoted the first part of the sentence as relevant to me, but:

Better for whom?

I agree it could result in better average returns for the firm, but it likely isn’t better for moving society forward as a whole.

Re:What I Learned Going Through YC as a 17 Year Old on Friday September 04, 2020 @07:25AM (#24373958)
I lost the domain of the email address a while back so I can’t even see it anymore... Will try to guess his email address to send a thank-you later today; better late than never even if very late?

One of those funny situations of “ah, yes, now with my own domain Gmail can never take my email away from me!” but then my payment failing and my domain going to auction before I notice.

Re:What I Learned Going Through YC as a 17 Year Old on Friday September 04, 2020 @07:12AM (#24373887)
> East Coast VCs are much more conservative, which is ultimately bad because it results in less moonshots succeeding.

This is really accurate, at least from my experience as someone of a similar age working on my first startup at the time.

With cold outreach to VCs in NYC I had zero responses, and only two meetings with BigCos curious about us; they seemed easier to get the attention of.

When I reached out to investors on the west coast it was entirely different. I still remember getting my first reply. It was a rejection, but a super-detailed one from Topher Conway of SV Angel that stuck with me. Despite it being a cold email, he offered up a lot of points that helped me adapt my strategy and address what investors may be concerned about.

I was a kid with anxiety and never replied back to that rejection email (pains me to this day), but I have so much appreciation for people like that, who are aplenty in the Bay Area.

That's the thing - the livable wage is changing in San Francisco.

SF is seeing a steep reduction in cost-of-living, yet these extremely high salaries won't decrease accordingly.

Also, the herds of people moving out and companies shifting remote will mean lower revenue for the city, meaning these high salaries won't be fiscally sustainable.

Does China include its secret camps in its prison numbers?
The community here is understandably very anti-surveillance, but you're right about the purpose of intelligence.

When we talk about intelligence and counter-terrorism, it's more about preventing terrorist attacks than reacting to them.

The UK is more open with statistics than the US — their most senior counter-terrorism officer claims that they foiled 22 terrorist attacks from March 2017 to September 2019 [1].

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/sep/09/foiled-terro...

Re:Persisting as a solo founder on Sunday August 23, 2020 @05:14PM (#24255346)
The more simple your MVP can be, the more indicative it is that you have a market.

If you need to build for years to release something [1], it's less likely that you're addressing a real need. The best products can start dead simple, even ugly, but still solve the problem.

[1] Deep tech is the obvious exception here.

Re:Facebook account now required to login to Oculus devices on Tuesday August 18, 2020 @05:43PM (#24204700)
While your points are reasonable and I’d normally agree with them, Palmer as a person seems to be the opposite of this.

Look at his exit from FB and his funding of Trump groups in 2016.

His life, in its successes and failures, has often been the result of what appears to be optimistic naivety.

He believed BigCo FB would keep their word to him on FB login not being required. He believed FB wouldn’t essentially fire him for his political opinions as well.

Re:Redefining what sustainable fishing means on Friday August 14, 2020 @11:40AM (#24159346)
> It's not the job of non profits to figure out how to feed endless amounts of humans

It's the job of governments to not create regulations that starve them.

> why Google continues to try to use algorithmic solutions for content moderation

When people assume malice so often as you mentioned, it, at least intuitively, feels easier to fault human moderation than algorithms.

Algorithms offer a black box which protect against accusations of bias. If accused of bias, an algorithm's biases can just be labeled unintentional accidents, whereas a human's biases are malicious.

Here's a Euler diagram on planets, dwarf planets, minor planets, so on and so forth from Wikipedia [1].

Alan Stern, who coined the term "dwarf planet," initially wanted it to be under the umbrella of planet as a distinct subtype. [2]

The International Astronomical Union (IAU), however, believed that what we call a dwarf planet — it was referred to as a planetoid — should not be considered a type of planet.

The IAU later held a session where they decided to use the term dwarf planets in place of planetoids, however they decided that a dwarf planet is not a type of planet.

It's semantically inconsistent, but that's where we stand right now per the IAU.

[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fc/Euler_di... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwarf_planet

Just an FYI, your link uses dwarf planet as a modifier.

From the Dwarf Planets section: "These planets are Pluto, Eris, Haumea, and Makemake."

(Not commenting on whether this is correct in this comment, just what the link says).

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