patdennis

Here's a good demonstration of the kind of tech we're talking about here from Greg LeMond https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKgJ_Uhwfno

1) If you put all of your money in exactly 17 years ago, then, yes. You would be at the same place.

2) It still would've been paying you dividends that entire time

3) If you, rather than investing an imaginary lump sum at the top of the market 17 years ago, invested slowly as your savings accumulated over time, you would be ahead.

The FTSE hasn't exactly been sitting still all those 17 years.

Ehhh gonna have to nitpick again

there's no resource to allow the citizen to drill down into the actual argument as deeply as they'd like, so they can try to understand it to the depth that a close adviser would.

There are tons of resources [one example: http://www.vox.com/cards]. But the reason we have a republic is so that individuals don't need to become policy experts. They can rely on heuristics and the system is robust enough to handle it. This usually works pretty well

go back to voting while uninformed. Which is really what the politicians want, anyway.

Most pols don't want this. Politicians want informed voters so people will be aware of the extreme efforts they go through to make their constituents happy. Election positions are determined based on polls, and extreme rigorous scientific effort goes into shaping candidates who are able and want to represent the policy desires of their constituents. (sure, the politicians might not actually believe these things, but to me that's usually irreverent. They want to be hired to do a job, which is representing the views of other people) The problem is, uninformed voters are more willing to switch sides based on emotion, ruining the math.

Informed citizens would be bad for some politicians (for example, blue state republicans who have to walk the line between the demands of their extremely conservative donors and their more moderate constituents). While some would do better with more informed voters (conservative red state democrats, for example, would be more able to shed the reputation of their national party and run on their conservative values if fewer people voted on policy as opposed to heuristics)

Basically, it's complicated

most politicians have private meetings where they talk about what they actually think is going on, and then translate it into brain-deadening messaging for the public

Yes, sort of, but the reality of these things are so well understood all politicians that there's not often that much of a reason to discuss these things outright.

When a politician (and by "politician," I do not mean a single person. I mean an amalgam of the politician, their staffers, and their advisers) are weighing an issue, the actual merits of the arguments are just a part of the equation. They're weighing the interests of various groups and constituencies, they're considering coalitions and alliances and favors, and making a pragmatic decision. Usually a mix of their conscience, their constituents, their fundraisers, and their party.

Rand is a bit of an outlier on this front because he is a legitimate True Believer, but he's still a pragmatic true believer.

Then they hire someone like me to turn it into the soul deadening messaging.

But, yes, these people understand both sides of the issue. They are usually very smart. And if they don't understand the other side of the issue, their close advisers do.

This has been national news all day. It's been the top news story in Ohio all day. National news has moved on.

As a professional liberal, it pains me to have to do this. But since nobody else is, here's the conservative take. Because, seriously, there are real debates about this stuff.

Imaginary Cato institute position: "Leaving higher education to the free market is always more efficient. People naturally make the most rational economic decisions in their journey to achieve maximum happiness. Government interventions, such as confiscating money through the threat of violence (this is what they call taxes) to support free higher education will always distort this market, leading to inefficiencies on the path to maximum happiness. Governments are incompetent and inefficient because of the lack of market incentives, while markets are ruthlessly efficient."

Imaginary Mitt Romney position: The financial support I have received from for-profit colleges is immense. Seriously, those places basically print money. We need more of them.

Real Heritage Foundation positions:

http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2010/01/ways-to-mak...

http://blog.heritage.org/2010/08/10/the-assault-on-for-profi...

I really do agree with the above comic strip. But liberals like me don't operate on a vacuum. Donate some money to us, you rich silicon valley types.

For those of you who, like me, didn't know that autonomous mining trucks existed, here's a video of them in action

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHtMNFZLMWE

It's an interesting philosophical question, but intent is something that judges are much better at deciding than computer programs. And laws are generally written to be executed by judges (or, by extension, the threat of litigation).

Fun to think about, though. Especially if you start thinking about writing alternate endings, etc.

That's where the Kiss Trust's attorney is located, according to the posted letter.

I always base my opinions on complicated policies and legal proceedings based on one second hand anecdote about "this guy I know"

I use duck duck go as my default in my search bar, but I rarely actually use it to search the web directly. Instead, I use the !bang features to get where I need to go faster without taking my hands off the keyboard. Some examples:

ctrl-t !w cyclocross

ctrl-t !g site:ohio.gov filetype:pdf economic development

ctrl-t !image sad reaction gif

You're suggesting there are groups where I don't support targeting such a culture?

Edit: Yes, I support targeting a culture of violence, period. Areas of disproportionate violence, like vulnerable minorities, need disproportionate targeting.

Edit2: You admit that there's been a cultural change away from gay bashing. Doesn't that indicate that cultural change can and does work in preventing sanctioned violence against vulnerable minorities?

Edit3, in response to below: I'm on Hacker News for fun. Do you really think it never occurred to me that nerds get beat up?

Of course violence has to be targeted and stopped, regardless of the reason.

But cultural change is important. Lynchings were bad because of the violence, but just as bad was the culture that lead to such violence being sanctioned. Gay bashing is horrible, but the culture that sanctions it is also horrible. Same with trans bashing, but there has been less progress at targeting that culture. Include nerds in the targeted groups, there.

Sure, maybe you don't agree that targeting the culture that sanctions violence is important, but a lot of people disagree with you there, including me.

Stop treating everything like its holy ground, and learn to laugh at a joke, whether or not it targets your minority or majority class.

The main reason people get upset about transphobic jokes isn't that they don't have a sense of humor. It's because trans people are disproportionately targeted by violence because of their orientation. People get beat up, people get killed.

This is pretty serious, and a lot of people think part of the problem is a cultural sense that demeaning trans people is ok. You can call them "it", or a "thing".

These people aren't going to be mad if you make a joke around your trans friends. But they see it as a problem when a whole generation of 12-13 year olds are being culturally conditioned to treat trans people as lesser, as an other, etc.

Not to mention the effect this culture has on young trans kids. They already have a much much higher risk of suicide than the average person. Change has to start somewhere.

I used to work around the Hamptons, and dealt with Dan's Papers a bit. This is definitely a joke.

EDIT: Yeah, I checked in. This is a hoax to draw attention to the government bringing in people to shoot the deer. The paper opposes this effort, as discussed here: http://danspapers.com/2013/06/one-girls-opinion-they-dont-cu...

I'm only getting the problem on https... http://www.bing.com/ works for me.

From his HN bio:

I'm the head of the webspam team at Google.

If you're putting it on a toddler, why not simply have it activate when it detects water?

No helmet can stop concussions. If they could, the NFL would redesign football helmets and save themselves a lot of trouble. G-forces are G-forces, whether you're in a helmet or not.

EDIT: There are a lot of very smart people working on this problem. But it's a hard problem.

From the Associated Press:

In a series of interviews with The Associated Press, representatives of the NFL, its players' union and the four equipment companies that make every helmet worn in the league all agreed there's no football helmet -- in production or on drawing boards -- that can eliminate concussions. And there might never be one.

http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=5797046

Here's a document outlining safety standards for bicycle helmets sold in the United States: http://www.cpsc.gov//PageFiles/86318/10mr98r.pdf

As you can see, it's fairly rigorous. The main criticism is that by setting strict rules it discourages innovation. But that doesn't mean there are no decent standards or crash tests.

I generally consider myself a part of the more libertarian wing of the Democratic Party. But as a thought experiment, lets say that one airline was given clearance by the FAA to exempt its passengers from TSA screenings. Or, alternately, simply assume this airline allowed war clubs such as the one above to be brought onboard, while some sort of pre-9/11 security screening system was in place.

Would you choose to fly on that airline?

Either situation would certainly raise concerns in my mind, regardless of my emotional reactions to TSA screenings and that sort of thing.

Yes. The signers will be Republicans whose districts also went for Obama in 2012. Pete King in NY-2 would be an example.

Boehner has already defied the Hastert rule to pass the Violence Against Women Act and to pass emergency aid for hurricane Sandy victims. He will do it again.

Speaking as someone who writes campaign slogans: no.

On the shutdown: The house can and will pass a clean CR (clean as in it won't defund the ACA) with Democratic votes. This will either happen when Boehner abandons the Hastert rule or through a process such as moderate R's abandoning their party to force a vote through a discharge petition (which has already begun circulating).

On the debt limit: Same as the above, except with more urgency.

EDIT: without writing a dissertation on the current fractures in the Republican Party, the Ted Cruz wing is currently very, very hated within the party, and everyone is looking for a way out.

Sorry, but the idea that a failure to raise the debt ceiling "is most certainly going to happen" is laughable.

It might happen. It's highly unlikely, but not impossible.

If you're so certain, you should be shorting the whole market and laughing your way to the bank.

EDIT: Not to get too partisan, but the justification for not negotiating on the debt ceiling is to put a stop to the use of the debt ceiling as a form of political hostage taking.

To let this sort of thing go on gives Congress a de facto veto power over the executive branch that was never laid out in the constitution. Once you let Congress know that a majority (in a single chamber!) can get whatever they want simply by threatening to tank the whole economy, there's no going back.

That's why it's the rational policy to refuse to negotiate when a single house of a single branch of Congress starts threatening that sort of thing.

Yeah! The g'ubment can't build anything right!

Uses GPS system to get home

This is extremely useful, I'm very impressed.

We know about the laws that allowed this.

If they solved P vs NP... well. Yeah. That would be interesting.

I'm trying to identify the guy to the far left on this picture of Grace Hopper. Does anyone have any idea?

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/37/Grace_Ho...

"Windows need be no more than an archaic touch, and even when present will be polarized to block out the harsh sunlight. The degree of opacity of the glass may even be made to alter automatically in accordance with the intensity of the light falling upon it."

This actually makes me curious. Why don't we have photochromic windows? We use the technology in transition lenses.