ArbitraryValue
@ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works
- Comment on Delicious bulk relief 1 day ago:
Why forbidden? They’re the same chemical, and chalk like this, meant for young children, shouldn’t have any toxic additives.
- Comment on Would "god cum" be correct? 4 days ago:
Yeah, and there’s no meaningful difference between terms “substance” and “matter” except that “matter” is probably the one that the test taker is expected to memorize without really understanding.
- Comment on 84% of H-1B Visas Go to India and China: Is It a Scam in Disguise? 5 days ago:
The people who get H1Bs aren’t representative of the world, but the native-born tech worker population isn’t representative of the USA either. There are cultural factors involved, not just the judgement of the people who issue H1Bs.
Other than the gigantic tech companies, the other beneficiaries of the H-1B visa program are India and China. Seventy-two percent of H-1B visa recipients were from India; 12% from China.
That’s 84% of the total number.
DEI stands for diversity, equity, and inclusion. It’s intended to boost the number of “minorities” in an organization or institution. And at least 84% of the time, that’s exactly what the H-1B program produces!
The idea that DEI programs are for the benefit of Indian and Chinese people is, frankly, nonsense. Hasn’t the author heard of Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard? It’s kind of a big deal.
- Comment on Why can't someone create a public alternative to health insurance in the USA? 3 weeks ago:
Insurance company profits are already capped by law. I don’t think your ideal insurance company would be much better for the customer than the already-available options are.
The companies must spend at least 80 cents of every dollar they collect in premiums from small businesses and individuals on health care, and 85 cents per dollar for large employers. The remaining 15 to 20 percent is all they are allowed under the Affordable Care Act to spend on administrative costs like overhead and marketing and to keep as profit. Any additional revenues are to be returned to consumers in the form of rebates.
Note that the remaining 15 to 20 percent has to cover all the costs of actually running the company. It isn’t just profit.
Insurance companies do have to compete with each other on price. Employers who provide insurance want the cheapest insurance that their employees will tolerate. Healthy people want the cheapest insurance that they expect to protect them from sudden, catastrophic expenses. If your business plan is to spend more money than the existing insurance companies do, and your target market is people unhappy with their current insurance companies (these people are probably have expensive problems) then you’re not going to do too well…
- Comment on USA | California bill would give public university admission priority to slaves' descendants 4 weeks ago:
It’s rather unlikely to pass and probably unconstitutional if it did. This is all for show.
- Comment on Clippy's coming for you 1 month ago:
Man, this hits close to home. Just yesterday I decided to get in touch with an old friend from college and I found out that she had died in a car accident years ago, not long after I lost touch with her. Don’t put things off, folks.
- Comment on Bears Cave 1 month ago:
- Comment on Having $270 billion dollars and spending the bulk of your time trying to make more money is like weighing 900 pounds and thinking "ooh, I bet I can get to 1000". 2 months ago:
If you’re a billionaire, that usually implies that you really enjoy being a successful businessman and I don’t see why business success for its own sake would be inherently less satisfying than other sorts of accomplishment.
- Comment on The grand prize 2 months ago:
I’m seeing $30,000 per ton there (as of 2018) so wouldn’t the cubic meter cost about $640,000?
- Comment on what's stops one from scavenging the best parts of old phones and putting them into a new one? 2 months ago:
Don’t forget about device drivers. I can’t even install a newer version of Android on my Android phone because the community never managed to get the antenna to work after upgrading the OS.
- Comment on Brazilian Wandering Spider 2 months ago:
So, uh, is the spider hotter in person? Because the picture isn’t doing it for me.
- Comment on It's a learning exercise 2 months ago:
From the moment I understood the weakness of my flesh, it disgusted me. I craved the strength and certainty of steel.
- Comment on Reddit says it is not covered by new Online Safety Code as it has moved its jurisdiction to the Netherlands 2 months ago:
I oppose letting anyone define hate speech as a matter of principle, because even if I agree with the definition completely now, I may not continue to agree with the definition in the future. Look at what has been happening in the USA since the October 7 attack: a lot of people I had considered my political allies turned out to have beliefs I consider to be hateful, and meanwhile these people consider my own beliefs hateful. The solution is not to empower a single central authority to decide which sort of hate is allowed. It is (as it has always been) to maintain the principle of free speech.
- Comment on Reddit says it is not covered by new Online Safety Code as it has moved its jurisdiction to the Netherlands 2 months ago:
I’m a little surprised to hear people so willing to let the government of Ireland determine who they are allowed to hate and for what reasons.
- Comment on The ability to be spontaneous in life is directly proportion to the size of your bank account 2 months ago:
Most financially secure people still work full time. I suppose that in theory, they’re able to quit their jobs without suffering immediate, catastrophic consequences but if they actually did that sort of thing, they wouldn’t be financially secure for long.
(In my experience, many financially secure people actually work much more than full time. I think they would be better off if they didn’t because at some point time becomes more valuable than money, but they have the sort of personality that compels them to. This is often related to starting out without financial security.)
The very rich can do crazy stuff without consequences but they’re such a small part of the population that I don’t think comparing oneself to them is useful.
- Comment on How come people who are against abortion are in favor of the death penalty? Kind of seems like a contradicition/ 2 months ago:
There’s no logical contradiction between believing that some people should be killed and believing that other people shouldn’t be killed. You might as well ask why a soldier would shoot at his enemies but not his allies.
- Comment on Why do residential skyscrapers always seem to include balconies that never get used? 2 months ago:
Heh, I walk around naked with the blinds open because where I live, people would need binoculars to see me and if they choose to, their resulting suffering is their own fault. One advantage of being unattractive…
- Comment on Why do residential skyscrapers always seem to include balconies that never get used? 2 months ago:
I think people value private outdoor space differently than public outdoor space. I don’t actually have a balcony but I think I would usually prefer a private space to a public one, even if the public one was much nicer.
- Comment on Why do residential skyscrapers always seem to include balconies that never get used? 2 months ago:
That’s funny. I see all the skyscrapers around here with balconies and I get jealous, but I never thought about the fact that I almost never seen people on those balconies until I read your question.
- Comment on Why do residential skyscrapers always seem to include balconies that never get used? 2 months ago:
I wanted a balcony but the real estate agent politely implied that I couldn’t afford one in the area where I was looking for housing. With that said, I can see myself using it for just an hour or two a week while the weather is nice. I like the idea of sitting out on the balcony but in practice it’s noisy out there and boring to do on my own.
- Comment on ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) 2 months ago:
Caffeine is poisonous to us too. It’s generally not possible for a healthy person to drink enough coffee to die, but they sell pure caffeine (for research) and even seemingly small amounts of that will kill a person.
- Comment on Badgers 2 months ago:
- Comment on Everybody who ever voted for trump is a cunt. 2 months ago:
Wait, so this is the sort of Conservative place that’s voting for Harris? I’m not judging (I wouldn’t call Trump a conservative) but I am surprised.
- Comment on U.S. Media’s Doublespeak: Israelis Live in “Densely Populated Areas,” Palestinians Are “Human Shields” 2 months ago:
CNN did not, of course, vehemently denounce Israel’s use of civilians as “human shields” when it noted Mossad’s civilian-dense location. Because for CNN, like almost every Western media outlet, Israelis, unlike Palestinians, get to be human.
Mossad’s headquarters is a legitimate military target. It is located in a densely populated area in the same sense that, for example, the Pentagon is located in a densely populated area. It’s still a distinct target, not a tunnel under a hospital.
- Comment on It’s Time to Stop Taking Sam Altman at His Word 2 months ago:
The computer wouldn’t be telling humans what to do. It would be the one doing things. Imagine a group of chimpanzees that somehow create a human. The human isn’t going to just passively give the chimpanzees directions.
That’s not a perfect analogy because chimpanzees don’t comprehend language, but if a human with a brain just 3.5 times the size of a chimpanzee’s can do so much more than a chimpanzee, a computer with calculational capability orders of magnitude greater than a human’s could be a god compared to us. (The critical thing is to make it a loving god.)
- Comment on It’s Time to Stop Taking Sam Altman at His Word 2 months ago:
I don’t think you’re imagining the same thing they are when you hear the word “AI”. They’re not imagining a computer that prints out a new idea that is about as good as the ideas that humans have come up with. Even that would be amazing (it would mean that a computer could do science and engineering about as well as a human) but they’re imagining a computer that’s better than any human. Better at everything. It would be the end of the world as we know it, and perhaps the start of something much better.
- Comment on College students used Meta’s smart glasses to dox people in real time 2 months ago:
That and the following makes me suspect that this is a faked publicity stunt rather than a real prototype.
“The purpose of building this tool is not for misuse, and we are not releasing it,” Nguyen and Ardafiyo write in a document explaining the project. Instead, the students say their goal is to raise awareness that all this isn’t some dystopian future — it’s all possible now with existing technology.
- Comment on College students used Meta’s smart glasses to dox people in real time 2 months ago:
PimEyes doesn’t search Facebook. You can try it for yourself. It will find faces for you for free, but you have to pay to find out where it found them.
- Comment on College students used Meta’s smart glasses to dox people in real time 2 months ago:
I have not come across facial recognition software that contains Facebook pictures in its database. I don’t mean to be creepy, but I’m curious about what software you’re referring to.
- Comment on College students used Meta’s smart glasses to dox people in real time 2 months ago:
Public databases have photos of people’s faces? Or do they mean public if you pay for access? I didn’t think those had photos either but I’ve never paid for access so I don’t know.