annabellish (u/annabellish)

annabellish commented on Goldman Sachs is spending $100M to shave milliseconds off stock trades cnbc.com/2019/08/01/goldm... · Posted by u/gscott

assblaster · 6 years ago

100 years after Communism burst on the scene, we currently look at that development with disgust.

Right now most people have access to abundant food, cellphone in every pocket, access to a wealth of information, access to transportation, incredible medical advances.

I can't imagine that the progress we've made would be scorned. Like other market driven forces, bad players will not be rewarded as information about them increases.

However, if information is not increased because of something like a company buying a newspaper so investigative threats can be used against politicians to avoid information gathering, then we have problems. This is more crony capitalism than just capitalism.

annabellish · 6 years ago

"What we have now is the bad kind of capitalism! There's a different, good kind of capitalism which in theory does all these great things!" is essentially the "communism works great in theory" argument.

100%, both systems are great theories. However, the last few hundred years of actually trying to implement capitalism has "most people have access to abundant food, cellphone in every pocket, access to a wealth of information, access to transportation, incredible medical advances.", if by "most people" you mean "possible a majority of people in the richest countries in the world". Unfortunately, the cost of that is that we've done irreparable damage to our environment, are causing the worst Great Extinction ever, and have caused a climate crisis that may cause us to go extinct.

annabellish commented on Engineers Don't Solve Problems (2018) logicmag.io/failure/engin... · Posted by u/danielnixon

olooney · 6 years ago

> [...] was that known at the time? Could engineers working on a canal project have anticipated socioeconomic trends like this?

Mexico City has grown from 4 million in 1951 (the time of flood mentioned in the first paragraph) to over 20 million today. Few civil engineering projects solve problems 70 years in the future for a city five times as large. As far as I can tell from the article, the engineers did anticipate population growth and designed a system that would last for decades; furthermore, they monitored the system, were aware of stresses and possible failure points, and took several appropriate corrective actions as the decades went on. All of this is just from reading the article.

If at my job I criticized a design by saying, "this design is terrible because if it is wildly successful and gives us 5X growth, then 70 years from now it might require some rework" I would be laughed at. If I followed it up by suggesting that this reflected some sort of fundamental problem with the methods of engineering I would probably not be taken seriously. Engineers are not godlike miracle workers, setting in motion an ineffable plan that somehow make the world holistically better over an indefinite time frame. It's OK to just solve the tractable problems in front of us and to get a good couple of decades out of a system.

annabellish · 6 years ago

>It's OK to just solve the tractable problems in front of us and to get a good couple of decades out of a system.

Is it? Is it really? The point the article is making is that by designing a system which solves the problems in front of them to get a good many decades out of a system, those engineers have actually made other problems worse. I think you're being overly simplistic when you suggest that the problem the article is proposing is that the system requires some rework.

The problem the article is proposing is that fundamental, irreperable damage has been done. We can't un-do that damage. Short term thinking like what you're proposing is, by the vast majority of evidence and evidenced theories, destroying our world and risking the survival of our species. It is not okay to just solve the problems in front of us now if the cost is that all our children die in chaos and poverty--and it looks like the cost is just that.

annabellish commented on In defense of Elon Musk popularmechanics.com/spac... · Posted by u/UzhasKakoi

gfodor · 7 years ago

If you remove Elon Musk from the story, does SpaceX exist? Tesla? Do we still have self-landing, re-usable rockets? Are car companies still rushing to build electric vehicles in 2018?

annabellish · 7 years ago

The individual companies likely not, but it's not like those are the only companies doing these things. Human achievements come from standing on the shoulders of giants, not from individual supermen - we see this through history time and time again, with so many groundbreaking discoveries being independantly made at about the same time simply because previous discoveries had made them possible.

This is not to diminish the minds of those who discovered them, of course, but it is to _temper_ the hero worship. What SpaceX is doing is not enabled by an individual superman, as the comparison with Bruce Wayne or Tony Stark would suggest, but by allocating resources to something made possible by the work of hundreds of thousands of people.

Remove one man from the picture there and that work still exists. Just as other companies are doing the same things _now_, because they are possible _now_, they would be with any individual person removed, regardless of who that person was. The details would be different - without Musk, it would be some other company doing this, without the lead designer, the things themselves would look different, without the lead engineer some components would make different tradeoffs, et cetera - but without Elon Musk, everyone working at SpaceX would still exist, everyone working at Tesla would still exist, and everyone working at other companies doing the exact same things would still exist. We could be a little behind, for sure, the hero worship could well have translated into inspiration for some, or even a lot of, people, but that doesn't make the man himself necessary for any of those things.

I worry that saying things like this comes across as attacking the man, which it absolutely isn't. Without Einstein, we would still have made the same realisations, collectively, eventually. Other people were working on the same things at the same time. Without Edison, we would still have the electric lightbulb, entirely likely invented by, hm, who...

Oh right, Tesla. The company itself is named after one of the most blatant examples of this phenomenon. Musk may even understand - he certainly does, he's clearly not dumb - that he isn't a unique superman. That doesn't make him "bad", but it does mean that we really don't need to waste thousands of words on defending his obviously harmful actions under the theory of "we have to let him do and say bad things or he might stop doing good things too."

annabellish commented on In defense of Elon Musk popularmechanics.com/spac... · Posted by u/UzhasKakoi

annabellish · 7 years ago

>He is under attack. For tweeting the wrong thing, for not making enough cars, for appearing unstable. Some of the criticisms have merit. Much of it is myopic and small-brained, from sideline observers gleefully salivating at the opportunity to take him down a peg. But what have these stock analysts and pontificators done for humanity?

Yeesh, what an opening paragraph. This, and the rest of the articles, seem to focus on the idea that Elon Musk isn't just a slightly more philantropic than average billionaire with a very good PR department, albeit one he's doing his best to undo the work of.

As one of the articles rightly states, Musk provided some funding for these projects, but is at best one person among tens of thousands actually responsible for _any_ of the achievements of "his" companies - scare quotes intentional, for between the loans and government grants it starts to become unclear what, other than the cult of personality which evidently no longer serves the needs of relatively mature and legitimate enterprises, he actually brings to the table here, beyond being an ideas guy who can afford to throw money behind getting external funding to try things.

Whether he deserves the shit he gets talked about him is a matter for debate, but it's very much a reaction against nonsense like one of the articles here comparing him to Bruce Wayne and Tony Stark, two comic-book superheroes defined by superhuman brilliance and superhuman finances, while Musk clearly can have only one of those things.

At the end of the day, though - do we need articles defending a man with a net worth of twenty billion dollars from the average citizen--who's net worth is closer to twenty _thousand_ dollars--'s criticisms? No, we don't. Whatever criticisms might be had, they're clearly not stopping him from doing whatever he likes.

annabellish commented on Women and the slowing global population pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/ar... · Posted by u/anotherevan

belorn · 7 years ago

> you cannot force anybody to either undergo an abortion or not undergo an abortion

No one is arguing for forcing someone to do anything. Forced abortion or non-abortion would be the opposite of having reproductive rights and bodily autonomy as human rights. Every human rights advocate are against this and rightly so.

> but there's no way to implement that "out" without imposing on the rights of somebody else

There is. It is called paper abortion, or simply the concept that naming yourself as a parent to a child should be a voluntary act by an adult. Conception is no more a promise of support than conception is the promise to give birth to a child. We don't say that women have made a promise to give birth to a child just because they had sex, so it seem strange to say men in contrast does make such promise. The only promise of support should come from society at large to give every child the same possibility in life regardless of how much money their parent or parents has.

Human rights. Human liberty. Choice and freedom. Not about forcing someone to do something against their will. The benefit of adults that want to bring a child into the world compared to adults that are forced by culture or law is very striking and as the article points out essential progress in society.

> If you have two woman in a childbearing group, then the one who is pregnant has the option to terminate or continue the pregnancy, while the one who is not pregnant does not have these options

Just a side note, but I don't think there is a legal system that I know which would force the other woman to pay child-support against her will. The child-bearing mother can't write on the paper that the other woman is the child's second parent, and instead the law forces the non-bearing woman to voluntary request to be the second parent. It is indistinguishable from the process that reproductive rights for men would be, and operates as a clear example of how it would work in practice.

annabellish · 7 years ago

It's a... difficult area, for sure. The scenario where some guy and some girl have a one night stand and then nine months later he's on the hook for a whole tonne of money is a Very Bad scenario, because obviously there's no promise of support inherent in that, and I'm not gonna pretend that scenario has never happened, and in cases where it has it's difficult to suggest that more nuance shouldn't have been taken.

I don't think it's reasonable to suggest that "paper abortion" is a workable concept in the general case, though. If a couple is a couple and they break up eight months into the pregnancy, then suddenly you have one person who is about to lose their financial support _and_ their ability to financially provide for themselves, but "Child Support" as a concept isn't there for the parent, but the child.

The main difference between actual abortion in this case and paper abortion is that paper abortion still involves a child, and you can't get away from that. That child needs supporting, and permitting the "provider" member of a traditional "provider/childbearer" childbearing couple to vanish late in the process totally screws over the child, and that's what child support laws are there to avoid. There's definitely cases where this goes wrong, but I don't think I've seen much evidence that those are anything but a tiny minority.

>Just a side note, but I don't think there is a legal system that I know which would force the other woman to pay child-support against her will.

I think that's probably true, unfortunately, and I think that's very silly and needs fixing. A two-woman pair is effectively identical to a man-woman pair (save obviously for usually requiring artificial insemination).

>The only promise of support should come from society at large to give every child the same possibility in life regardless of how much money their parent or parents has.

This, though, I can agree with wholeheartedly. I would be 100% behind abolishing child support as the current concept in order to replace it with a general child support system not dependant on the financial situation of either parent - kind of like UBI but for the child. We don't have that yet, though, so we're just kind of working with what we have, and what we have is a very imperfect system that prioritises the child above the parents, because the child has no choices in anything and is in need of far more protection.

annabellish commented on Women and the slowing global population pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/ar... · Posted by u/anotherevan

belorn · 7 years ago

Talking about bodily autonomy to be the start and end of reproductive rights is a bit unfair to the concept at large. Planned parenthood is not "planned bodily autonomy", except given a different name. Planned parenthood, pro-choice, and similar initiatives talk about the choice to be a parent and the benefit in society where children are born from adults that want to have children. There is no physical reason why a sexually dimorphic society can not provide planned parenthood that gives both adults the same choices, rights and responsibilities regardless of gender or if its woman - man, woman - woman or man - man. In Sweden we even have a new law where the state will sponsoring single women that want to become single mothers through artificial insemination.

After the point of conception what rights do men in general have? Its not their signature on the paper that specify who the parents to the child are. They can't decide if they will become a parent or not. All rights and responsibilities are exclusively decided by the mother, as the law dictate. Bodily autonomy has nothing to do with those laws, and the human right of bodily autonomy doesn't need to end simply because men are given the choice to decide if they want to take the responsibility to be a parent and raise a child.

annabellish · 7 years ago

Making that about women vs men is missing the point entirely, which is part of why i was explicit about alternate childbearing groups. If you have two woman in a childbearing group, then the one who is pregnant has the option to terminate or continue the pregnancy, while the one who is not pregnant does not have these options. It is entirely about bodily autonomy - you cannot force anybody to either undergo an abortion or not undergo an abortion. It is a medical process with side effects, effects on one's mood and mind, deeply personal implications depending on how "human" exactly you feel a fetus is, et cetera.

Drawing that as "men have no rights" is deeply reductive, because it isn't about men vs women, it's about the childbearing person vs the non childbearing person(s), and fundamentally does come down to that the same rights have very different implications depending on a person's position.

You have the old joke, "this law isn't discriminatory, both rich and poor are banned from sleeping on the streets!", and in this case it essentially holds true. What you're seeing isn't discrimination, both the childbearing person and the non-childbearing person(s) have the same right to not be compelled into or out of an abortion, it just isn't a right which helps very much if you aren't pregnant.

It does work out that the average man in a childbearing couple doesn't have an "out", but there's no way to implement that "out" without imposing on the rights of somebody else, whether it be by compelling action, or by suddenly threatening to revoke a promise of support that a new childbearing parent desperately needs for them and their child.

annabellish commented on Women and the slowing global population pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/ar... · Posted by u/anotherevan

belorn · 7 years ago

> But - big picture - what’s important is that reproductive rights are extended to all women and men.

Reproductive rights for men as consistently ended at the point of conception, with the modern feminist movement seemingly being one of the strongest voice against men having any rights beyond that point. Did Professor Peter McDonald just mistype when he includes men in this part off the article?

annabellish · 7 years ago

I don't think this is a fair analysis of either current feminist thought or the current state of affairs. The reproductive rights of men are important and there's no suggestion any should be removed, but that doesn't mean that in a sexually dimorphic society both members of a childbearing couple (or more generally, all members of a childbearing group) have the same _options_.

Men and women both have the right of bodily autonomy. In a "traditional" childbearing couple of one straight, cisgender man and one straight, cisgender woman, this identical right expresses itself in very different ways between them, but that doesn't mean that "reproductive rights for men are ended at the point of conception" unless you really, _really_ try.

annabellish commented on Flight rules for Git github.com/k88hudson/git-... · Posted by u/spenrose

iainmerrick · 7 years ago

It could usefully say that when you do a “git status” when you’re in a detached state, instead of just saying “detached HEAD” and expecting you to figure it out (or google for it).

It could very usefully try harder to avoid getting into that state in the first place.

annabellish · 7 years ago

>It could very usefully try harder to avoid getting into that state in the first place.

Am I missing something here? How do you get into a detached HEAD state without explicitly taking an obviously weird action, like finding and checkout out a commit hash instead of a branch, and why would it make sense for git to not be in a detached HEAD state should you do that?

annabellish commented on The high-risk, high-reward world of selling random stuff on Amazon cnn.com/2018/10/09/tech/a... · Posted by u/lxm

anonymous5133 · 7 years ago

There are non-google app store places to get apps though. APKpure, for example.

annabellish · 7 years ago

Sure, and there's places other than amazon to sell.

That doesn't matter when the Play store, or Amazon, controls the majority of all sales. How much money are people making on APKpure? Is it enough to support a dozen software engineer salaries?

Didn't think so, no. Getting booted off of the Play store does not mean your app is impossible to share, but it decimates the size of your audience - worse, even. Will even one in one hundred be left?

annabellish commented on Capitalism is becoming less competitive economist.com/open-future... · Posted by u/doener

dsfyu404ed · 7 years ago

Two words: Regulatory capture.

I can't turn my hobby/side gig into a small business without navigating a bunch of bureaucracy to obtain 9001 permits, some of which are inevitable "may issue". Assuming I made it through that I'd be subject to all sorts of government oversight to the point where I either have to sink all the resources I would spend growing my business on compliance or just not think about it and hope that by the time anyone notices my business is big enough to afford the cost of compliance. For programmers, lawyers and other occupations that don't deal with physical things the issue isn't as big but for blue collar businesses this is a big deal. You literally cannot hope to comply with everything when you're in the boostrap phase and that dissuades a lot of people from striking out on their own.

The fundamental problem here is that laws and regulations written to deter some mega-corp from systemically being sleazy to make a buck apply equally to small businesses. turns out it's only the mega-corps that have the economics of scale to make compliance possible while still making a profit.

annabellish · 7 years ago

>The fundamental problem here is that laws and regulations written to deter some megacorp from systemically being sleazy to make a buck apply equally to small businesses.

I don't think that's the _fundamental_ problem, because there are problems leading to that. Capitalism strongly incentivizes against respecting externalities, and regulations are the only effective tool we've found to stop us from (more aggressively) killing ourselves for profit.

That regulations have a cost and this strangles smaller businesses is a serious problem, but the regulations are usually solving an even more serious problem. A more fundamental issue is simply that capitalism left unchecked incentivizes behaviours which are crippling, while checking capitalism to prevent this causes powerful inefficiencies to form.

I don't know if there's a good answer here. Having regulations not apply to small businesses doesn't work, because small businesses are not intrinsically more likely to act against their own financial interests in order to respect externalities than large businesses are.