ausvisaissues

With noise, with garbage sorting, etc...

Japanese people tend to follow all rules, written and unwritten. I guess Americans follow only rules that can be enforced (cf. Uber, Airbnb, etc...)

Probably from a culture of rebellion against Britain colonial government... In some cases it is good and in some bad.

In Japan there is also no tolerance for the 1% that ruins public spaces for everyone (compare Tokyo subways against San Francisco subways). This allows true public spaces that can be shared by everyone.

It is also culture that plays a big part.

I've lived in very high density housing in Japan (20 floor manshion type apartment) and medium density in US (2 level apartment).

Higher density in Japan is much more pleasant due to the culture of being considerate of others.

If I have to live in the US, I will choose suburbia for that reason.

Processing time for highskilled visa is 5 days guaranteed. It is a refreshing change compared to US h1b lottery.

Perhaps that is true, but some incremental steps have the possibility of making driving infinitely better.

Imagine cars that refuse to tailgate, drive at excessive speed, drive with drowsy owners, drive on the right-hand side of the road in non-emergency situations, skip red traffic lights, etc...

If you have a highskilled visa with 80 points, it is 1 year (however, it takes 10 months after application to get it).

High-skilled visas are not connected to an employer and there is no lottery system.beats the hell out of US policies...

Most gates are automatic now in Japan (with a conductor sometimes checking tickets on Shinkansen after gates).

When I was in the US there was a guy handing me a towel in the bathroom. That is an incredibly meaningless and superfluous job!

In China, the poor living in rural areas cannot easily move to cities (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hukou_system). In India the poor can move to cities.

The problrm is that Japanese journals are less competitive. So, second-rate researchers can continue to publish in these and "work" (i.e., look productive).

The biggest problem with Japanese universities is not funding (there is to much), but the old chaff with tenure.

Unfortunately old second-rate researchers has a lot of institutional power (and funding).

Just deleted AccuWeather. I am 100% convinced by the blog post -- but the DarkSky App is unfortunately not available outside USA.

I really wish that the user could selectively switch on or off what permissions an app receives -- Instead of a blanket list of permissions at the install. For instance -- "lie to the App and give location obly within 100m".

I said "just" a rural urban thing. No doubt there are more leftwingers/liberals in cities. But it is not nearly as uniform as your experience would suggest.

Polling also said that Hillary would win the election, and brexit won't happen. People, including me, lie to pollsters.

Don't for a moment think it is just a city/rural thing (with a bunch of conservative country bumkins).

Many people having non-leftwing ideas simply hide it. Since most workplaces have become politicised and hostile to conservative/right/slightly right of center views, people just hide it. Some people (including me) even engage in fake virtue signalling.

I will immigrate to US in Dec. and think it is a vast improvement.

H1b lottery is a broken system which is gamed by outsourcing companies.

The current H1b system has a cap, with more applications than positions. This is resolved via a "lottery". If you apply, you have a 30% chance of being selected. Indian outsourcing firms started to game the lottery (for every position have 3 applicants).

The new system will resolve the above problem by selecting applicants with the most points (giving points for skills, etc...).

From person experience H1b lottery is heart-wrenching, and makes it difficult to plan. The Australian system (which is similar to this system), is much better.

Japan has a backwards view of mental health, and one of the highest suicide rates in the world.

Yet public places are immaculately clean.

The fact is that western people and law enforcement tolerate vandalism, littering and antisocial behaviour.

Recently, on Seattle's airport train, I saw a person openly taking garbage out of their bag and throwing it on the floor. No one said anything - just another day on the dirty train.

I don't think someone would dare do that in Japan or Singapore.

IMHO, Paris is fairly dirty (like 60% San Francisco dirty). Especially the subway is a mess, and there is no law enforcement (e.g. minor children begging during weekday and no-one does anything). Many of the trains are vandalized.

St. Petersburg is much nicer than Paris (at least in the summer). Surprisingly, the it is cleaner even though the country is poorer.

Japan has public pools (run by wards) and they are lovely. The only minor complaint is that sometimes they are overrun with old people ;)

Two questions:

1. What is the harm for different drugs once addicted? (health, possibility to lead normal life)

2. What percentage of people addicted can successfully quit?

Yes, Japanese people drink a lot, and it is a social issue. But there are a lot of functional alcoholics in Japan.

Japanese people also are major users of over the counter drugs

Japan is much stricter with medicine than US. Several medicibes that are OTC in US are illegal in Japan: https://jp.usembassy.gov/u-s-citizen-services/local-resource...

I am sure that there are abuse of prescription drugs. But I have not heard anything about a systematic, widespread problem (comparable to prescription drug abuse in US).

A cursory reading of the WP says that the legal status of the drugs you mentioned is more or less the same as the US:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benzodiazepine

whether drug abuse is what lead them to the behavior that you disapprove of.

I am pretty sure the needles on the sidewalk is just there because everyone suffers from diabetes, right?

I think that, fortunately for most IT people like us, we can live in nice neighborhoods, where none of the social ills of drug-ridden neighbortlhoods affect us. So, we can support drug legalization, without being affected by the consequences.

The model of inhumane prisons and death sentences?

Japan/Singapore imprisons much less people for drug crimes than the US - due to the USA's lenient laws on drugs (grey line vs. red line). The ill effects of drug use in japan is virtually non-existent.

You can moralize all you want, but it is a better system with less actual harm.

It's people like you who don't really care that millions have been imprisoned over a personal choice.

Japan imprisons a very small percentage of people compared to the USA.

Furthermore,it is a personal choice only if the other individual's choice does not have negative externalities.

Yet, a casual stroll through San Francisco 's mission district would tell you that this is not the case.

Who would have thought that drug use by the mentally unstable would result in a bad outcome...

You are an authoritarian,

Perhaps. But when I compare the outcomes of Japan/ Singapore to that of the US, it is simple to see which model is the best.

You are wrong: it is a big moral failing. Why is it impossible for Westerners not to use drugs, while the Japanese manage not to use it fairly well?

Should we set the bar for behaviour so low?

Even if drugs were legalized, the cost for treatment would be high (and presumably be bourne by the tax payer).

Or they get harassed until they quit or kill themselves. Power harassment and maternity harassment is fairly common in Japan.

Zoos had quite big success at breeding back THE African wild dog.

The "war on drugs" was largely won in Asian countries that have proper enforcement (Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, etc...)

Just compare the streets of Tokyo to that of San Francisco and tell me it is not working!

Also, compare driver (and pedestrian) behaviour in Japan. In urban areas, both largely follows the rules and it is safer.

(Strict liability for drivers may also be a part of it...)

I am not completely following what you mean by "98% is of an unknown class, but pulled from a known distribution".

Are you suggesting that: 2 percent of samples are positive, drawn from p(x|y=1)

98 percent of samples are drawn from a distribution p(x), but may be either positive or negative?

The setting that you described above is called "positive and unlabeled (PU)" learning. This paper: http://cseweb.ucsd.edu/~elkan/posonly.pdf is one of the seminal articles on the topic (although the equation on the bottom of page 214 contains a statement that may not necessarily hold true). There are quite a lot more recent papers on this topic.

And considering forgiveness is such a core tenant of Christianity,

In civilization, individual members give up the right for revenge to the state, who punishes perpetrators. Individuals may forgive a perpetrator, but that doesn't mean he/she should not be punished by the state.

Compare this with societies with practices such as qisas or blood money: if an individual (or family) forgives a perpetrator, they are not punished.

Having the government punishing people and the main religion stopping revenge cycles is a really good system!

Furthermore, the USA is lenient in sentencing and family are forging towards convicts. Compare this to Asian countries (such as Japan). In Japan, parents will break off all ties to their children if they are sentenced for a crime -- even a fairly minor one.

Try to do some petty vandalism or other anti-social behaviour in Japan, Korea or Singapore and compare the result with the result in the US.

It is not possible to block downloads of updates or to switch of daily update reminders on new iOS devices. This is a well known problem: http://osxdaily.com/2016/01/04/stop-ios-software-update-noti...

The only option is to avoid Wifi or configure your wifi router to block Apple.

Providing simple access to the NFC antenna by banking applications would fundamentally diminish the high level of security Apple aims to have on our devices.

This is what I hate about Apple. I am fairly certain that the customers bought these devices -- so isn't it their customers' devices?

Apple wants to sell iPhones, yet keep complete control over it. Simple things such as disabling updates is not possible -- because it is not in Apple's interest.

They completely redefine what ownership means -- you "own" it, but Apple "controls" it.

If computers replace doctors, and I get better care for cheaper, aren't I better off?

Doctors have a state-guaranteed monopoly that is created via lobbying. That is why, in many countries, doctors are extremely expensive -- even though most of the miracle of healing is done by medicine.

In the future it will probably be a doctor owning and "supervising" the machine. Patients use the machine (paying $XXX). A doctor will take 30 seconds to one minute to look at the results, sign it and your prescription and then charge you exactly the same as before.

The only way the general public will benefit is from more accurate prescriptions. But I sincerely doubt that the cost of a doctor's visit will be reduced significantly. But don't worry, the laws will the there for your own good.

PS: MYCIN was already developed in the 70ies, and showed higher accuracy than doctors. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycin

A poor attempt at obfuscation.

Just because Russia is guilty of some things, does not mean that they are automatically guilty of others.

nothing to do with with Litvinenko's murder

Probably the Russian government was involved.

Nemtsov's murder,

Nothing has been proven, it is just pure speculation. I really don't think the government benefited by killing him on red square -- it created a huge embarrassment.

Shooting down MH-17,

Russia may have provided assistance to rebels (e.g. in the form of air defense). But there is no proof at all that a civilian plane was shot down on purpose on orders of the Russian government. In most probability it is a tragic accident (as happened earlier: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siberia_Airlines_Flight_1812). These accidents are bound to happen when civilian planes fly over warzones.

comment about Stalin (Russians always did adore their Tyrants),

Russians have a complex and tragic history. It is not that easy to reject all of your history (the good and the bad).

I wonder if you are equally vocal about neighbouring countries who still adore their Nazi independence fighters...