pochamago
Re:Study That Impregnated Male Rats Stirs Controversy
on Sunday July 04, 2021 @04:51PM (#27732521)
There's no rational reason to care about non-human lives at all. When we talk about pragmatic, secular ethics, we do so for the purpose of creating a stable and happy society. We know that by training other humans not to harm humans we reduce the likelihood that we will face hardship. There is no reason to include animals in this system other than that some people feel more sympathy for them. But animals can't engage in ethics with us, treating lab rats better will not make the rat species less likely to cause damage to us. Animal rights are a purely emotional impulse
Re:Libertarian Party of Colorado First to Officially Support Ending IP
on Friday July 02, 2021 @07:48PM (#27718190)
That sounds super interesting to me, do you have a link to something about where and when that happened?
Re:“Older unlisted videos will be made private unless you opt out”
on Wednesday June 23, 2021 @09:33PM (#27612857)
That sounds extremely feasible to me. One of the companies i used to work for will definitely have a bunch of their training videos lost this way, and it's totally reasonable to believe that a new hire for the warehouse would not bother telling anyone that the video wouldn't play. I don't know that any real injury will result from this, but i wouldn't call the scenario absurd
Re:Warren Buffett donates another $4.1B, resigns as Gates trustee
on Wednesday June 23, 2021 @01:04PM (#27606893)
I think it's good that taxes can solve problems a decentralized, and therefore disorganized, system will struggle with, but in the same way i don't think that a centralized economy will run as efficiently as a free market, I think philanthropy will make greater gains if a variety of parties are allowed to spend their money on what they think is important without needing collective approval.
Re:Warren Buffett donates another $4.1B, resigns as Gates trustee
on Wednesday June 23, 2021 @12:04PM (#27606089)
The alternative is letting Congress decide how to spend it. Decentralized philanthropy seems to me like a better system
Re:Facebook Launches Podcast and Live Audio Room Services
on Monday June 21, 2021 @01:10PM (#27581169)
Yeah, it was weird to completely lock out anyone without an iphone.
Re:Ring provided 100 LAPD officers with free devices to influence adop...
on Thursday June 17, 2021 @09:33PM (#27546480)
I don't think you need to be too worried about that, young e-commerce competitors still pop up and seem to do well at taking a slice of the market. Shopify is larger than Amazon for my workplace, and Etsy is definitely getting bigger month by month.
Re:“YouTube is shutting down dissenting Biology PhDs and MDs”
on Sunday June 13, 2021 @05:17PM (#27496585)
There's a very common misconception that libertarians believe that what should be legal and what is beneficial are the same thing. It's not difficult to believe that YouTube should have the ability to remove these people from their platform, but also that they're wrong to do so. The libertarian preference for decentralization actively presumes that many actors will make poor choices, but that because it's not enforced top down it will be easier to persuade them to change those policies. New competitors are one way that you can create that pressure, but it's not the only one, simple dialogue is another viable avenue and the purpose of critiques like this one.
Re:Diabetes Drug Metformin Reduces All-Cause Mortality and Diseases of...
on Saturday June 12, 2021 @04:30PM (#27487225)
My dad actually switched doctors because his original one refused to prescribe metformin to anyone who wasn't fully diabetic
Re:Bitcoin becomes Legal Tender in El Salvador
on Wednesday June 09, 2021 @05:06AM (#27445810)
The only other legal tender in El Salvador is the US Dollar. If, for any reason, you have qualms about the US financial system, especially as someone foreign to the US with little priority in its decision making processes, it might be desirable to opt for a different currency. Is BTC the right currency for their government to bend to that purpose? I guess we'll find out.
Re:Seasteading Creates RPG
on Tuesday June 08, 2021 @02:25PM (#27438923)
There are other laws libertarians would like to circumvent. Occupational licensing, over scheduling of drugs, civil asset forfeiture spring to mind. Starting a new country on the ocean is a pretty drastic way to fight back, but i can't deny the impulse to opt out when change appears impossible.
Re:Once a bastion of free speech, the ACLU faces an identity crisis
on Sunday June 06, 2021 @06:36PM (#27416989)
There are limitations, but yes.
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas...
I would also personally draw a line between access to a military prison and what is effectively a refugee camp
Re:Once a bastion of free speech, the ACLU faces an identity crisis
on Sunday June 06, 2021 @06:22PM (#27416901)
The press freedom index places Burkina Faso, a country that bans journalists from visiting displacement camps, higher than the US, so I'm a little skeptical of its findings
Re:El Salvador to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender
on Saturday June 05, 2021 @08:18PM (#27409547)
The smaller countries who don't want to be beholden to either the US or China's fiscal policy. We seem to be building up a second cold war, and I imagine for many countries being able to back your economy with a currency that isn't controlled by either of the two major players is tempting. China may well end up regretting discouraging its miners from holding the majority stake, given the Sino power that could project. This is all very heavily speculative, though, I'm just spitballing an interesting potential chain of events
Re:G7: Rich nations back deal to tax multinationals
on Saturday June 05, 2021 @03:32PM (#27407886)
These seven countries have a lot of sway, but even if it's only these countries that implement it it will likely affect a number of corporations. There are benefits to being legally located in stable modern economies, so this at the very least minimizes shopping around for the lowest tax rate among them.
Re:Why workers are calling BS on leaders about returning to the office
on Thursday June 03, 2021 @07:58PM (#27388914)
Inertia, perhaps. We certainly have been seeing reports of digital nomads growing over the last decade, but major shocks can be useful in speeding up transitions. Likely very few CEOs previously imagined how robust the remote work infrastructure had become, and certainly didn't have obvious incentive to implement all the tools until now.
Re:Why workers are calling BS on leaders about returning to the office
on Thursday June 03, 2021 @07:53PM (#27388881)
I'm not sure I'd classify licensed professions as rare, frankly most US states have an overabundance of occupational licensing in my view.
Re:Apple asks staff to return to office 3 days a week starting in earl...
on Wednesday June 02, 2021 @08:21PM (#27375666)
There are also plenty of people who like their coworkers and enjoy spending time with them each day. I don't think everybody finds work to be an unfulfilling drain on their leisure time
Re:Tech groups sue Florida over content moderation law
on Saturday May 29, 2021 @07:23PM (#27329120)
It sounds like his argument is that moderation isn't speech, and the posts on these sites, due to 230, aren't attributable to the would be moderators, therefore the tech companies don't have a right to claim that their first amendment rights have been breached. I'm unsure what the caselaw on site moderation looks like, so i have no idea if the assertion is correct
Re:Strong Towns Has Filed a Lawsuit Against the Minnesota Board of Eng...
on Wednesday May 26, 2021 @05:07PM (#27296120)
I legitimately think we should consider replacing all licenses with certifications and just require anyone who practices a profession without a certificate to be totally upfront with their clients about that
Re:AirPods Max and AirPods Pro Don't Support Apple Music Lossless, App...
on Tuesday May 18, 2021 @02:42PM (#27199162)
I just upgraded from a Pixel 2 to the 4a, and I love having a 3.5 back so much. I really hope the removal of them is a temporary blip in tech history
Re:Twitter's subscription service might cost $3 per month
on Saturday May 15, 2021 @08:00PM (#27170054)
I strongly recommend using any unofficial Twitter app. My experience significantly improved once I stopped seeing "liked" tweets from people I follow. I don't even understand what the point of that is, if they wanted to share those with their followers they'd retweet it
Re:Chiropractors are bullshit
on Saturday May 15, 2021 @02:03PM (#27167450)
No, that's not how burden of proof works. The default assumption is that a given event has zero effect. If you want to assert that it's actively harmful then the burden is on you to show that.
Re:"I’ve kept silent on the Apple situation; they broke silence, so wi...
on Friday May 14, 2021 @07:36PM (#27160800)
He's Cuban
Re:Writing books is not really a good idea
on Monday May 10, 2021 @11:53AM (#27107425)
Web novels seem to do just fine releasing chapter by chapter in Korea and Japan.
Re:California appeals court finds Amazon responsible for 3rd party sel...
on Saturday May 01, 2021 @08:18PM (#27011190)
This article doesn't really delve into the ruling at all, so I'm not sure. It's quite possible narrower than that, having to do with something specific about how Amazon does business, in which case I would expect them to do doing whatever makes them liable rather than fixing the reliability issue. Honestly, I mostly just wish they'd put country flags next to sellers names so I could avoid getting products from China
Re:“About one-third of Basecamp employees accepted buyouts today”
on Friday April 30, 2021 @05:51PM (#26999832)
I think for the people who are so passionate they can't imagine not engaging with politics at work should look for careers in NGOs. I don't feel any disdain for activists, I just don't really want to work with them, and I think we'd both be happier if they were engaged in work that had first order effects on their beliefs instead of second or third
Re:Prospectus On Próspera
on Wednesday April 14, 2021 @10:06PM (#26815444)
It seems like, initially at least, you are buying the land and air from HPI, and they don't have to sell you it at all if they think it is an area that ought to be developed
Re:Prospectus On Próspera
on Wednesday April 14, 2021 @09:59PM (#26815394)
I hope this succeeds and grows large enough that we can see the serious effects of some of these experiments. Medical reciprocity and pick your own regulatory framework are such very, very interesting ideas and I want to see what happens when they are applied to millions of people
Re:Prospectus On Próspera
on Wednesday April 14, 2021 @09:53PM (#26815371)
Yeah, if you own the air space no one can build there without your permission, that's basically the point. It allows people who want to protect their ocean views to do it in a way that doesn't require spending years pushing silly environmental impact studies.