liber8

This guy is wrong, which is why he isn't citing any legal authority.

As anyone who has gone to law school will tell you, you can only acquire the title that the seller has. If seller stole the goods, he doesn't have any title, so he can't transfer title to a subsequent buyer. See, e.g. UCC § 2-403

There are exceptions when it comes to those who have voidable title (thieves do not have voidable title).

There are also cases where courts have more or less created exceptions close to those OP has described. For example, if Best Buy receives some stolen merchandise and sells it to good faith purchasers, courts have held that the victim needs to pursue the thief/Best Buy, not the end purchaser.

But generally, OP is wrong: if you buy a stolen bike at a flea market, you don't get title and the owner can get the bike back. Think of the policy implications if the rule was as OP claims. All thieves would have to do is immediately sell stolen goods and the owners could never get them back. That would be absurd.

Coming from an American perspective (where, when you are in public, you have basically no expectation of privacy), this seems insane.

Does this mean that if I'm filming a vlog at Brandenburg Gate (which inevitably includes video of other people in the background enjoying the area), I'm in violation of privacy laws?

Does that mean if I take a video selfie of me and my family members (which, again, includes images of others in the background, and which is automatically uploaded to icloud) I'm a data processor and am in violation of privacy laws?

I assume there is some line here, but I can't think of the logic separating a person's dashcam from my examples?

If people do not "make" money (i.e. create value), how do you explain the increase in the standard of living over the last 100 years?

None of the celebrity endorsers committed fraud. You didn't answer the question.

How do you view public companies that have never paid a dividend and never intend to do so?

>it doesn't offer any meaningful advantages that would justify the enormous effort required<<

I'm blown away by the complete disregard most of this community has for crypto. Yes, it is currently full of scams and charlatans. But you honestly believe there are no meaningful advantages to decentralized currency?

Is anti-censorship not an advantage? I'm not a huge fan of the government's ability to seize assets without any due process (See, e.g. Canada https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-60383385), which corporations are starting to get interested in (see, e.g. Paypal https://fortune.com/2022/10/10/paypal-users-fine-misinformat...). Bitcoin and other coins go a long way to solving these issues.

How about effectively free, instant transfers at any time of day or night? Traditionally if I wanted to wire money oversees, it's a full-day affair. I can transfer any amount of crypto I want in seconds to minutes, for far less than a wire fee.

How about the ability to instantly settle debts and contracts? This was literally impossible just a few years ago.

I know it's easy to shit on crypto (and there are many legitimate reasons for doing so), but you guys need to dream bigger.

>the notion of magic essentially means the ability to use willpower to modify physical laws<<

It's interesting that this is how you defined magic, because in a very real sense the ultimate purpose of most science is precisely to use our willpower to modify (what we previously believed to) physical laws.

Physical laws prevent human beings from flying, or breathing underwater, or viewing individual atoms. Until we literally used our willpower to design machines to overcome these "laws."

I have no doubt that eventually our collective willpower will be used to modify other "laws" we believe today, like the law that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. Pretty magical if you ask me :)

If a lender is facing bankruptcy, how are they going to fund the infrastructure necessary to negotiate with tens of thousands of borrowers? If a lender is not yet on the brink of bankruptcy, but sees it coming, don't you think if this was a viable business model for a lender to avoid liquidation they would pursue it?

Your proposed law wouldn't even make life easier for anyone but the richest debtors, who don't need a law to protect them. The vast majority of people live paycheck to paycheck and have de minims savings. If you offered them a 30% discount to pay off their mortgage (or even a 50% discount), they have no way to come up with that payment without going out and obtaining another loan.

I genuinely can't tell if this is satire or not. Assuming it's not, unless your "own research" consists of actually buying a wide swath of competing products and testing them against each other, then at some point you are indeed relying on "influencers", whether those influencers are Consumer Reports, Amazon reviews, your parents/neighbors/friends, etc.

You don't need to tell your CC to pay some entity on a set schedule. I don't think my initial post was clear enough.

Credit cards are paid in arrears, usually with a 15 day grace period, so you are effectively getting a 15-30 day interest free loan on all purchases. When you set up a credit card, you can select any payment date you want. So, if I get a new AMEX, I can choose to have the bill due on the 1st, or 12th, or any day I want.

If I pay all my bills (i.e. Netflix, car insurance, etc.) with my AMEX, I know the AMEX bill is due every 12th (or whatever day of the month I choose). For any bill paid by the credit card (i.e. Netflix, car insurance, etc.), it doesn't matter what day of the month that particular bill gets charged to the AMEX. I only pay AMEX once a month, on the day I selected. So, by choosing what day my AMEX gets paid, I am effectively choosing which date I am required to pay all of the bills that got charged to my AMEX.

There are very few things that you can't pay by credit card. For those (i.e. mortgage, some utilities), you can schedule auto-payments on any day you want, through your bank.

I've never seen a credit card that did not allow you to schedule your payments. If you auto-pay everything with credit cards, then by default you are scheduling your payments. Same with mortgages. For the few things that don't accept cards (rent/water/gas/electric?) you could schedule payments whenever you want through your bank, though you'd likely be paying in advance rather than in arrears.

I have a brokerage account at Fidelity, which I can write checks on, but I only use the account for investing. I guess theoretically you could use it as a primary bank account? I have some auto-transfers into the account each month, that automatically get invested, and some auto-transfers out to non-Fidelity accounts so I can invest proceeds in things Fidelity doesn't offer.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but nearly every bank I've ever used offers this feature. I currently have auto-transfers and auto-investments set up in Fidelity. If you receive a paycheck, you can easily set up Fidelity so that it automatically transfers $xxxx dollars per month to whatever account you like. You can also set up each account to automatically purchase $xxxx dollars worth of whatever equity you want.

I agree. When I got my first pair roughly two years ago (after years of using various versions bluetooth earbuds you could buy on Amazon for $20) they seemed like magic. Take them out, they automatically and nearly instantly connect, and almost never had any issues.

I just bought v3, and while the sound is noticeably better, the connections are all over the place. At least once a day, the connection simply dies. Multiple times a day it decides to connect to another device that I'm not using. If you answer a call and then put an airpod in your ear, it's got about a 50% chance of connecting, after a multi-second delay. Sometimes it says its connected, but it's not, so the iphone isn't emitting sound from its speakers and nothing is coming out of the airpods, leaving me sounding like an idiot repeating "can you hear me now?" until I manually kill the connection and use the built in speakers. Absolutely infuriating.

It sounds like you've discovered the secret to travel. You don't have to see all the sights or cram everything into each day. Usually you get more out of it if you take things slowly, be intentional about what you really want to do, and savor each experience. With two small kids now, we usually pick one city per trip and plan (at most) one morning activity and one afternoon/evening activity. Sometimes it's one activity per day, sometimes it's none (maybe we just meander around a neighborhood between meals, like your Virtual Japan experience). Like you said, if you see 10 different Roman churches in one day, the Sistine Chapel becomes just another fresco.

I think the "anti-vax" are drawing the opposite conclusion: Covid (for most people, and particularly for young people) is orders of magnitude less dangerous than measles, polio, diptheria, and the other compulsory vaccines. The feeling is that for this large subset of the population, it's on par with, or less dangerous than, the flu. Given that belief, it's understandable to question the logic behind compelling vaccinations.

According to reports, the original BioNTech vaccine was developed in a matter of hours: https://www.businessinsider.com/pfizer-biontech-vaccine-desi... Moderna's was done in two days.

The fact that you have to repeatedly and expressly clarify that you're not equating cancel culture with holocaust denial is apt given the topic at hand. No intellectually honest person reading your analogy would be able to conclude that you're equating the two topics. And yet almost all of us feel the need to include these kinds of disclaimers so we don't face backlash from anonymous strangers on a tiny message board. If we feel this way here--when we're almost all anonymous to some degree--that's an indictment as to where we are culturally.

This is not what pumaontheprowl said.

You are right, simply presenting people with data doesn't work. If it did, you would never see a fat nurse, or a doctor who smokes, or... the list is endless.

pumaontheprowl's suggestion is to design a (thought) experiment that involves the skeptic. There are various ways to do this, but history is literally built on this exact phenomena. Getting people to change their mind on an issue requires that you have a real conversation with them. You can't just shove data in their face and see "See, look dummy you're wrong I'm right!" There are all sorts of people that do this for a living: helping people leave cults/white supremacy groups/etc.

I would appreciate a simple "keep-distance-wrt-speed" function for bumper-to-bumper situations.

This has been widespread for at least a decade. I'm not even aware of a mainstream auto brand that doesn't offer adaptive cruise control at this point. Every one I've used works in stop and go traffic.

The other features you want are exactly what Tesla has basically perfected in their autopilot system, and work almost exactly as you describe (not the FSD, just the standard autopilot).

To be fair, it still felt like magic. My car would drive me 20 miles without me really having to do anything, other than make sure it didn't kill me at an interchange.

And I'm now trying to remember, but I think autopilot was initially free (or at least was included with every car I looked at, so it didn't seem like an extra fee). Auotpilot is now standard on all Teslas, but FSD is an extra $10k, which IMO is a joke.

I'm on my third Tesla. FSD on highways has improved so much in the last 6 years. On my first Tesla, autopilot would regularly try to kill you by running you into a gore point or median (literally once per trip on my usual commute). I now can't even remember the last time I had an issue on the highway.

Anywhere else is basically a parlor trick. Yes, it sorta works, a lot of the time, but you have to monitor it so closely that it isn't really beneficial. As you point out, its going to take some serious advances (which in all likelihood are 30+ years away) for FSD to reliably work in city centers.

I think the issue you've highlighted is one of governance. There's only so much Tesla can do regarding highways. You really need the government to step in to mandate coordination of the type I think you're envisioning. And the government is pretty much guaranteed to fuck it up and adopt some dumb standard that kills all innovation after about 6 months, so it never actually becomes usable.

I think automakers will eventually figure this out themselves. As you say, there are too many benefits for this not to happen organically. Once vehicles can talk to each other, everything will change.

This is not how the three-strike law works. You don't get a life sentence for petty theft.

Under Penal Code section 667(e), you can receive a life term if you are convicted of a serious or violent felony AND you have twice before been convicted of serious and violent felonies. See https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio...

I think all tourists are. In the last few weeks I've seen numerous offers for free nights and free meals if you'll come stay in Sardinia.

According to the European Commission, tourism is a key industry: https://ec.europa.eu/growth/tools-databases/regional-innovat...

Interesting that there is no mention of hydrogen peroxide. About 10 years ago, there was a flurry of news that greying hair was a result of a buildup of hydrogen peroxide[1].

Many scientists guessed that this buildup was caused in part by lack of sleep, as they believed that one of the benefits/purposes of sleep was the removal of hydrogen peroxide, and other waste, from cells. The lead photos in many of these articles was side by side photos of presidents at their inaugurations and at some point during their term.

[1] See, e.g. https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2013/05/reversing-hair-g...

...Who do you think ultimately owns these companies? Something besides people?

Your statement begs the question. The OP said "Hollywood" doesn't produce as much original content as it did decades ago. When I point out that there is more original content being created today than ever (probably on the order of several magnitudes) simply because it's cheaper than ever to produce original content, the only thing you mention is "blockbusters". Clearly, the production of blockbusters has nothing to do with the amount of original content being created. Why differentiate Netflix from the rest of "Hollywood"? (Remember, Netflix won an Oscar last year.) For that matter, why overlook the dozens of smaller or independent shops that are producing original content in staggering amounts, regardless of how that content is being distributed?

But, if you want to talk about more traditional blockbusters, Netflix makes plenty of those (arguably more than many traditional studios).

"Hollywood" has never, ever taken more risks than they are taking today.

Netflix alone spent $12 billion on new content in 2018. They expect to spend $15 billion in 2019, and expect this to hit almost $18 billion in 2020.[1] There is more new, original content being produced than anyone could ever expect to watch in one lifetime. Compare this to a few decades ago when you had 3 or 4 networks on TV each making a dozen or so shows each year, and a handful of studios producing movies (many of them remakes from the 30s, 40s, and 50s).

Everyone seems to view "Hollywood" with rose colored glasses. The medium through which people consume entertainment certainly seems like it is starting to change, but that doesn't mean "Hollywood" is dead or dying. The exact opposite is happening.

[1] https://variety.com/2019/digital/news/netflix-content-spendi...

If construction takes longer, costs increase. This is indisputable.

Imagine you buy a piece of land for $100,000 with the intention of developing it. Until the property is developed and sold, you have numerous carrying costs (taxes, insurance, debt payments, etc.). In California, your annual carrying costs may easily be $8,000-$10,000 per $100,000.

If it takes you one year to develop the property, you need to sell the property for $108,000 just to cover the carrying costs (i.e. this doesn't account for the actual construction costs or selling costs). If it takes you two years to develop the property, you need to sell the property for $116,000 just to cover the carrying costs.

Keep in mind, the time to develop isn't idle time where the developer incurs only carrying costs. It's endless drafts, consultations, and meetings. It requires actual money to be paid not only to the city, county, and state, but to architects and planners and contractors to comply with increasingly byzantine and mercurial requirements. The longer this goes on, the more money a developer has to spend.

The longer a developer is forced to carry the property, the more they need to charge to recoup their investment. Since no one is going to develop property without anticipated profit, this means prices necessarily rise.

Nader may be right about some of this, but just claiming that evil "reckless" Boeing executives caused this is pretty silly. Boeing execs are probably the least reckless execs in any field, because even tiny failure rates can have massive consequences.

What's scariest about this is that it highlights the fact that many pilots are just regular schmoes. Average intelligence, adequate training. That's fine 99.9% of the time, when equipment failure isn't catastrophic. But it's crazy how many, when they're actually faced with catastrophic failure, forget how to fly the damn plane.

The runaway trim problem has been happening for 50 years. This isn't new, or unique to the MAX (same thing can happen on the small jets I fly). Anytime something like this (or any other autopilot failure) happens, every pilot is trained to disengage the system and fly the goddamn plane. Apparently the pilots on these flights didn't know how to do that. It's tragic.

For some more reading on the other end of the spectrum, see: https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-news/2019/march/20/c... (this is probably equally as bombastic as Nader's article, but offers some good perspective from that side)

edit: Apparently Nader's niece died in one the crashes, which would certainly explain his outrage: https://www.cnbc.com/video/2019/03/22/ralph-naders-niece-die...