HN user
So control theory is ok for unmanned aerial drones but autonomous driving is just too far? Control theory can't handle noisy domains?
Guarantees of safety (more accurately stability) is the entire point of lyaponov analysis, and it's used on noisy systems all of the time (https://www.mathematik.hu-berlin.de/~imkeller/research/paper...). Can you point to a specific noisy system that control theory is ill suited for?
Deaths due to starvation [1]: 0
Deaths due to homelessness (2010)[2]: 700
Deaths due to lack of medical care (2009)[3]: 45,000
What's different is the magnitude. Although the United State's patchwork of services for the homeless is ostensibly supposed to give everyone access to food and shelter, people do fall through the cracks. But it is not an endemic problem like lack of health care.
[1] Debatable, and I can't find a solid source. The only malnutrition related deaths I can find are in elderly populations and abused children.
[2] http://www.nationalhomeless.org/publications/winter_weather/...
[3] http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2009/09/new-study-find... this is a higher end estimate from 2009, the lowest estimate I could find was 18,000 from a study done in 2002
Why would corporations not just move consumption offshore too? What happens when Ireland has 0% sales tax on software?
This is silly, there are plenty of counterexamples. See Santiago, Chile and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia for examples of large multi-ethnic cities with efficient, safe, and clean public transportation systems.
This is specious reasoning at best unless you've done an exhaustive study of all public transportation.
Isn't CGAL a dependency for PostGIS? When would you choose to use CGAL directly rather than something built on top of it (e.g. PostGIS or pgrouting)?
My use case is mostly for routing and I'm currently using a heavily modified version of OSRM. If there's potential for even more speedup I'd appreciate any resources ou can point me towards.
Except it's not an emotionally driven discussion, it's an issue that has been studied for decades. Saying "it's an issue of class not race" is not a hot take on the issue, it's a distraction that had been quantitatively disproven over and over again.
Believe it or not people have done quantitative studies on the interaction of race and class. You can go read pretty much any study on intergenerational income mobility and find what you want to know: At every single income level blacks are less likely than whites to transition from their parents income bracket to a higher one [0]
And by the way it's not just police shootings that are the issue. Minorities are overrepresented at literally every stage of the criminal justice system. They're more likely to be searched following a traffic stop [1]. More likely to be charged with a more serious crime [2]. More likely to receive worse bail terms [3]. And more likely to receive longer sentences [4].
Please try to not let your emotions overwhelm the mountain of evidence pointing to the fact minorities really do have a different experience than white people.
[0] https://www.chicagofed.org/~/media/publications/economic-per...
[1] https://www.unc.edu/~fbaum/TrafficStops/DrivingWhileBlack-Ba...
[2] http://www.fjc.gov/public/pdf.nsf/lookup/NSPI201213.pdf/$fil...
[3] https://www.pretrial.org/download/research/Testing%20for%20R...
[4] http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/summerprog/2009/nijworkshop/Steff...
Except we do know, we have a pretty darn good idea. We know how many people self-report mental illness. We know how many people actually seek treatment for mental illness. We know the self-reported rate of mental illness amongst other populations and can compare the two.
It's literally like any other disease. We don't know how many people actually get the flu every year. We only know how many people self-report getting the flu, and how many people seek treatment. Self-reported surveys are used all the time in epidemiology and we manage to form effective public policy based on that.
So sure, there's definite bias when it comes to self-reporting, but your suggestion is to ignore what data we do have and form public policy based on what? How you feel? First principles?
Yes this is true of any mental health issue in any population, we can only rely on self-reporting. If you have any sources that show "almost all" homeless people in SF are mentally ill, I'd be interested to read them.
From what I've read, at the national level the incidence of serious mental illness in the homeless population are around 20 - 25%. So the numbers for San Francisco seem reasonable.
Actually, only 35% of San Francisco's homeless population has some sort of Psychiatric condition. According to a survey of SF's homeless the biggest barriers to finding work (as of 2015) were:
28% said no permanent address
20% said alcohol or drug use
17% said disability
14% said age
13% said need for clothing/shower facilities
...
9% said mental health concerns
Source: https://sfgov.org/lhcb/sites/default/files/2015%20San%20Fran...
True, but as far as I know California has never funded homeless programs at the state level. The only thing listed in the 2015 budget is:
"Housing Support Program — The Budget contains $35 million General Fund for CalWORKs Housing Support Program services, an increase of $15 million, which provides additional support to CalWORKs families for whom homelessness is a barrier to self‐sufficiency."
Which leaves medicaid spending, which according to my previous source only 20% of the homeless population in SF receive. Assuming medicaid pays the same amount poer person as in NYC that would bring the per capita homeless expenditure to about $35000.
Funding source isn't really relevant. NYC has a guaranteed right to shelter [1], they'd be providing the same services regardless of state funding.
[1] https://www.marketplace.org/2015/09/30/wealth-poverty/behind...
The average homeless person in the US cost tax payers around $40,000 [1]. In 2015 SF had a homeless population of 7539 [2]. Meaning they're spending on average of about $32000 per homeless person, $8000 less than the national average.
From 2013 to 2015 San Francisco experienced a 2% increase in the total number of homeless, while the nation as a whole saw a 5.2% decrease.
Sounds like it's a problem you can't underspend your way out of.
[1] http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2012/mar/... [2] https://sfgov.org/lhcb/sites/default/files/2015%20San%20Fran...
Nope, it's still true. From: http://sfgov.org/lhcb/sites/sfgov.org.lhcb/files/2015%20San%...
The number of chronically homeless individuals and families in San Francisco continues to decline. In 2015, 25% of survey respondents were chronically homeless, compared to 31% in 2013. Based on Point-in-Time Count data, it was estimated there were 1,745 chronically homeless individuals and 18 chronically homeless families living in San Francisco on January 29, 2015.
Actually most homeless people can be helped. The chronically homeless only make up about 15% of the homeless population.
The vast majority of homeless people are homeless for months not years, and the many programs to aid them in finding housing and preventing homelessness in the first place have a significant measurable effect on the average number of homeless shelter entries and length of stay.
The government isn't a single entity with a single goal. There already exist federal agencies with the goal of increasing security (see http://csrc.nist.gov/groups/ST/toolkit/), while others like the FBI have vested interest in increasing their powers of investigation. The executive branch has already made their stance clear, weakening encryption should not be the goal of any federal agency:
"We recommend that, regarding encryption, the US Government should:
(1) fully support and not undermine efforts to create encryption standards;
(2) not in any way subvert, undermine, weaken, or make vulnerable generally available commercial software; and
(3) increase the use of encryption, and urge US companies to do so, in order to better protect data in transit, at rest, in the cloud, and in other storage."
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/12/nsa-sh...
Biological sex isn't binary either, there are far more configurations than just XX and XY.
If you're still benefiting from those criminal actions, then yeah you probably should feel guilty.
Redlining had a very direct and profound (http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/05/the-raci...) effect that's still seen to this day.
Low income households spend an exceptionally high percentage of their income on housing (http://www.lao.ca.gov/reports/2015/finance/housing-costs/hou...). Meaning they are particularly sensitive to price increases. So yes, it would really suck for your home value to increase a couple percent and have to move. But hey, if there's profit involved who can complain!
Furthermore, most low income households who own property aren't engaging in speculation, they are simply trying to keep the property they inherited.
No, actually gentrification can occur in developing countries as well. Finding ways to rationalize the negative effects of gentrification is the first world problem.
Gentrification effects an upward pressure on property values. Property values determine property tax. You're right, that's not technically rent, but it is one of the predominant mechanisms by which people are priced out of neighborhoods.
Interesting, I'm familiar with information theory but not in the context of financial markets. I'm a little confused though because I assume you're referring to the channel coding theorem (mixing a signal with random noise), but that seems like begging the question to me. Don't you have to make the assumption that the market is a predictable signal with noise for it to be applicable?
I'm sure people employed to predict the stock market believe they are able to predict the stock market, but as far as I'm aware it's an open question in academia.
Also, I should point out, although I do believe markets are random, the intent my original post was more to point out the parent's argument by authority.
Maybe I'm missing something, but how are randomness and the emh related?
AFAIK random walk theory assumes the market is unpredictable and is consistent with the emh while other theories like the adaptive market hypothesis assume the opposite and are still consistent with emh.
And yet Mandelbrot thought the market was random.
Now I'm not sure who to believe, one of the most important mathematicians in the last 50 years, or a dude who left the academic community to start a hedge fund.
I'm struggling to a think of a subpoena that wouldn't involve being compelled to work. Subpoenaing unencrypted customer data still requires work on the company's part. When does a subpoena become a burdensome amount of work?
Furthermore the government already forces companies to preform work. For example, paying taxes, providing insurance for employees, complying with industry regulations.
Actually, for a brief period under Andrew Jackson's presidency we did pay off all our debt.
Ha, maybe you'd like to include the very next line from the wiki article:
"UN observers noted that they observed bodies near doorways, and bullet marks on the doors of demolished houses, and later concluded that residents may have been forced to stay in their homes due to heavy fire.[10]"
I get that Israel has their own narrative of events when it comes to Qibya, but if you would read the article, you'd see that it wasn't an isolated instance but the end result of several months of punitive raids by the IDF and civilians with the specific goal of targeting civillians. And yes those orders came from the top of the government: "Defense Minister Pinhas Lavon gave the order, in coordination with Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion." The international consensus on what happened in Qibya is pretty clear.
"Over the year leading up to the raid, Israeli forces and civilians had conducted many punitive expeditions, causing destruction of infrastructure and crops and many civilian casualties against Palestinian villages, with Latrun, Falameh, Rantis, Qalqiliya, Khirbet al-Deir, Khirbet Rasm Nofal, Khirbet Beit Emin, Qatanna, Wadi Fukin, Idhna, and Surif being the most notable examples"
MEK and Israel can deny involvement all they want, and you're correct there's no way to prove what actually happened, but the US intelligence services seem pretty damn convinced: http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/02/isr... And by they way, one of the scientists was gunned down while driving home with his wife and kid after picking them up from school. That doesn't seem like trying to minimize civilian casualties to me.
MEK is funded by Israel with the sole goal of destroying Iran. Maybe if there was no threat to the existence of Iran they wouldn't have needed to pursue a nuclear program.
You're right the NPT not violating it since they didn't sign it, doesn't mean that there's not a double standard in the way we treat Israel's nuclear program. It's pretty inarguable the Israel has specifically targeted innocent civilians and funded terrorist groups, both of which you gave as reasons as why Israel should be allowed to have a nuclear program without that same sort of scrutiny it's neighbours undergo.
"Ariel Sharon, who led the attack, later wrote in his diary that he had received orders to inflict heavy damage on the Arab Legion forces in Qibya: 'The orders were utterly clear: Qibya was to be an example for everyone'. Original documents of the time showed that Sharon personally ordered his troops to achieve "maximal killing and damage to property", and post-operational reports speak of breaking into houses and clearing them with grenades and shooting."
I'm not sure I would call an attack by IDF troops, ordered by the government, and executed by a man who would become the future prime minister not indicative of the government's mindset. Sure that was a long time ago, but you did claim "it has never carried out terror attacks specially targeted at civilians".
A civilian is someone who is not a member of any armed forces. The Iranian scientists assassinated were not part of the armed forces, they were civilian scientists working on a military project. Much like the thousands of American civilian scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project. Furthermore, several family members of the Iranian scientists were wounded in the attacks, so whichever way you slice it they were attacks on innocent civilians. And by the way, MEK was considered a terrorist group by the US State Department at the time of the assassinations, it wasn't just Iran saying it.
So what if all of that is true? Maybe that means there is in fact a double standard, in that Israel is allowed to violate the NPT while engaging in the same behaviour as its neighbours.
Actually Israel has a long history of state sponsored terrorism, see Irgun and their incorporation into the IDF at the dawn of Israeli statehood.
In fact they haven't just supported terrorism, they've used direct military action to intentionally kill civilians: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qibya_massacre
And they even currently support terrorist organizations that specifically target civilians: http://rockcenter.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/02/08/10354553-isra...
Where are you finding your information for the 10% number? I'd be curious to see. From what I've read formal financial institutions typically charge ~10% which is why poorer people tend to use hawala in the first place.
"El Qorchi et al. (2003) state that the cost of a hawala transaction averages around 2 to 5 percent of the total amount of the funds involved, although Maimbo (2005) report that these fees averaged 1 to 2 percent in Afghanistan. Passas (1999) offers several examples where hawaladars offer free services to their compatriots, in the corridor Australia-Africa."
https://ideas.repec.org/p/una/unccee/wp0812.html
You make an interesting point about bitcoin being a potential hedge against inflation. Given the current volatility I don't see that being much use at the moment, but it certainly has potential if the volatility ever drops to a reasonable level.
Except the unbanked have been transmitting money across the world outside of banks for a few centuries now: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawala I'm not so sure Bitcoin is a ground breaking change for the unbanked in developing countries, especially when the hawala market is substantially bigger and already widely used.