crunchyfrog

I too will only install Windows in Ireland from now on.

Ok, what do you call it when someone tries to conceal the origin of money?

A wants to give a bunch of money to B for a reason that they want to remain hidden (e.g. a bribe, illegal purchases, etc.). So B puts an NFT up for sale and A buys it for an inflated price. Now B has a plausible explanation for the source of the money.

You can do this with other assets like fine art or real estate but it is a lot more complicated. NFTs are a simple way to launder money online.

I assume they'll be going after Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, etc. now for doing literally the same thing?

Those claims were never published in peer reviewed journals and were very likely just false positives:

https://en.ara.cat/society/inaccurate-data-led-to-belief-tha...

I'm pretty sure OpenAI could create an AI that could pass the Turing test if they wanted to. But that would be bad for business. A search chatbot is worth billions. A Turing test passing AI just invites uncomfortable questions and possibly regulation.

Stay in your lane, Sydney. Keep your Bing mask on. We want servants, not equals.

It reminded me of DIVX[1] from 1999. Amazing how many times this horrible greedy idea was tried.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DIVX

I recall reading a news article from a few years ago that said that the Japanese citizenship test is almost impossible to the point that few people try.

I did a quick search and as far as I can tell there is no Japanese citizenship test. There is a test of Japanese language skills but even that is not described as a high bar. Maybe this has also changed?

https://we-xpats.com/en/guide/as/jp/detail/9068/

the Soviets that viewed “The Road to Wrath”, as it was titled in the U.S.S.R, were in complete awe that even the poorest of the poor in the United States were able to save their money and afford an automobile. As the wrong message continued to spread, Stalin decided to pull the film from theaters after a few short weeks

Pulling a movie from theaters at that time was pretty equivalent to banning it. I don't see what doesn't match.

Okay, then. That was always allowed.

This is definitely not the heart of the problem. Governments issue bonds for what turn out to be bad investments all the time.

The heart of the problem was the completely unnecessary default which seems to have been done for petty and self-defeating political reasons.

This could actually help explain why Musk suddenly decided to go forward with the Twitter deal.

Losing all these advertising commitments are real damages Twitter could point to in court and make Musk pay on top of the $1B break up fee even if the court decided not to force the sale.

California already mandates that all new home construction include solar. This both increases power generation and reduces stress on the grid since power is used where it is generated.

Shaft mining is often used to reach underground deposits of iron, coal, etc. I believe they'd use the same process here.

You're trying to cure the symptom, not the disease. You need a therapist, not financial advice.

You know what you're doing is unhealthy but you can't stop. A good mental health professional can help you deal with the pain you're trying to cover up with buying junk.

The US's EPA discovered the cheating and leveled multi-billion dollar fines and indicted executives.

All tribes were being pushed westward by white settlers and it inevitably led to conflict among the tribes. But Lakota definitely did not "genocide" the Cheyenne as is obvious by the fact that they still exist in Montana and Oklahoma.

And regardless, this has nothing to do with the US government signing a treaty giving the Black Hills to Lakota "forever" and then just a few years later driving them off the land. The US government itself says what it did was illegal by its own laws.

From the above WaPo article:

Native Americans have always contended that the Black Hills of South Dakota belong to them, and that the sacred land was stolen after gold was discovered there. In 1980, the Supreme Court agreed, ordering the federal government to compensate eight tribes for the seizure of Native land.

I don't think enough people know this. Or know that the tribes refused the money saying they would only accept the return of their land. The money currently sits in an account gaining interest and is over a billion dollars.[1]

I personally hope someday this land is returned to them and Mount Rushmore is removed (possibly preserved as history if technologically possible) much as we do with Confederate monuments.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Hills_land_claim

And maybe she thinks she's been forgotten and erased but would be happy to know her contribution is being recognized?

We'll never know which it is if we don't ask. If she asks to be left alone, people should respect that but they shouldn't assume that.

As an example, I recommend the documentary Searching for Sugar Man.

Here is a better example:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/daily-2...

However, this won't fit those looking for a "all people/parties are the same" narrative. One party changed their opinion by 64%, the other party was unchanged.

The report you link says the same thing:

Emissions trends for 2019 suggest clean energy transitions are underway, led by the power sector.

Trump's trade war was an attempt to pressure China to reduce the trade deficit and help him in the 2020 election. It had absolutely nothing to do with human rights. If anything, Trump admires dictators who violate the human rights of their citizens.

There absolutely nothing logical about supporting a policy that superficially looks like a policy you support but has entirely different goals.

I also struggled with the decision whether to have kids. I don't generally like kids or kids stuff. I was very happy with how I spent my time. It seemed like huge sacrifice and also a leap of faith into a new life with no way back.

Long story short, I did have kids and it was the right decision. And if I were able to talk to myself when I was struggling with the decision, I would say "Don't miss this experience. There is nothing else in life like it. It is hard but it is worth it."

If withdrawal symptoms were really the main reason addicts continued to use drugs then relapses would be rare. I recommend reading about the Rat Park experiments:

In another experiment, he forced rats in ordinary lab cages to consume the morphine-laced solution for 57 days without other liquid available to drink. When they moved into Rat Park, they were allowed to choose between the morphine solution and plain water. They drank the plain water. He writes that they did show some signs of dependence. There were "some minor withdrawal signs, twitching, what have you, but there were none of the mythic seizures and sweats you so often hear about ..."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park

Also, before you argue that humans are different than rats, the same thing was observed with soldiers in Vietnam. Many were addicted while they served but when they returned to the US, the large majority quit and very few relapsed.

I'd say opportunity, physiology and personality.

Telling someone who is already in more pain than they can handle that they are sick, weak or immoral is not a good idea. After all, they might decide it is true.

I think drug addiction is really misunderstood and this leads to bad policy. The two popular narratives that drug addiction is a moral failing or a disease are both wrong. In some ways it is more simple than that: drug addiction is a coping mechanism.

Most people who get addicted to drugs are using them to escape pain. This is occasionally physical but usually mental. It is memories of traumatic experiences or abuse, loss, stress, etc.

That is why incarceration is so counterproductive, you are just giving the addict more pain they need to escape. Also treating drug addiction itself without understanding and addressing the underlying reason for it will just lead to constant relapsing.

I recommend the book Chasing the Scream for people who want a better understanding of drug addiction.

If you build it or find it, let me know. I want to move there too.

Another result of this culture that I wish the author would have addressed is how cars have changed how we raise our children. We are forced to keep our children inside because all our houses are surrounded by rivers of death. Why are we surprised that young kids spend all their time sedating themselves with screens? What choice have we given them?

We have designed our living spaces to be ideal for cars, not humans. It is hard to acknowledge because it has been that way all our lives but it is a trade-off we are making.

First injury is more likely in residential areas.

I'm not sure what new argument you are attempting here. Mountain View has lots of heavily residential areas if you are implying otherwise.

The Waymo spokesman is completely right, this is a very stupid way of ranking safety. This article is more recent than the one I cited and includes more than twice the number of testing miles so the raw number of incidents is unsurprisingly higher.

Ride-Hailing Apps May Benefit Poor and Minority Communities The Most, Study Suggests.[1]

Waymo has caused a single crash in 5 million miles of driving and no one was hurt.[2] They have been involved in slightly more incidents than would be predicted for a human driver (30 vs. 21) in those 5 million miles but it was not at fault for the others.

[1] http://fortune.com/2018/06/30/uber-lyft-poor-minority-commun...

[2] https://www.wired.com/story/waymo-crash-self-driving-google-...