sjaknanxnnx (u/sjaknanxnnx)

sjaknanxnnx commented on Oracle directors give blessing to shareholder lawsuit against Larry Ellison techcrunch.com/2019/08/22... · Posted by u/wstrange

jjeaff · 7 years ago

Self dealing is no good. But is there evidence that they are paying above market rates for those properties?

sjaknanxnnx · 7 years ago

I think saying that the rent is market rate doesn’t really eliminate the transfer of value away from WeWork shareholders. First, you can’t exactly calculate market rate, and rates are normally determined by a negotiation between multiple parties. When you own a rental property, you take on a risk of vacancy while seeking tenants who pay your idea of market rate. You will face the choice of taking a lower rent vs. staying vacant and holding out for more. If Adam Neumann is getting reliably paid a healthy market rate by WeWork, and WeWork is taking the hit from the vacancies, he’s getting one over on WeWork’s shareholders. Lease obligations are going to be paid out before equity. Perhaps that’s the whole point of the arrangement.

sjaknanxnnx commented on Yield Curves Invert in U.S., U.K bloomberg.com/news/articl... · Posted by u/samsonradu

perspective1 · 7 years ago

QE is unprecedented. If you look at the absolute yields, we're talking about rates below inflation (1.8%). It's an inversion but the magnitude is so low it's hard to compare it to past inversions. Equity valuations are pretty much in line with earnings with the S&P 500 index as a whole trading around 20x earnings. Considering how low the risk free rate is (US treasuries), that's not a booming valuation and is probably undervalued if interest rates stay this low considering most of these companies return at least 10% on tangible equity. Unemployment is low right now, but so are wages and so is inflation so it's not like we're booming there either.

sjaknanxnnx · 7 years ago

Are you counting the run up to the current prices in your 10% return calculation? That seems kind of circular.

sjaknanxnnx commented on Big Money Starts to Dump Stocks That Pose Climate Risks bloomberg.com/news/articl... · Posted by u/asaegyn

throwaway5752 · 7 years ago

It's not causing climate change, though. That's saying nothing of their ethics, or how the impact their activities are having particularly with the accelerating climate emergency, but it's a matter of critical focus that we stop CO2 emissions, not divest companies that are unethical (admirable, but entirely separate).

For what it's worth, that is precisely how this effort will be gaslit. Divide and conquer.

sjaknanxnnx · 7 years ago

Gaslighting is where an abuser says and does unexpected things that make the abused doubt their perceptions and sanity. I learned about it in film class in college. Suddenly people are using the term to describe all sorts of actions that don’t seem to fit that mold (but that involve some sort of ill intent). What gives?

sjaknanxnnx commented on Twitter confesses to more adtech leaks techcrunch.com/2019/08/07... · Posted by u/cloud_thrasher

ianlevesque · 7 years ago

Not being able to read the president's public statements directly is ok now? I don't, because they're abhorrent, but what about the next one? This is the era we are in now.

sjaknanxnnx · 7 years ago

The post you responded to said the president can’t block people, so yes you’re able to read his posts. The only thing stopping you ought to be your desire to maintain sanity.

sjaknanxnnx commented on Man and man's best friend have both been experiencing declines in sperm quality cbc.ca/radio/quirks/augus... · Posted by u/pseudolus

devoply · 7 years ago

There is no great replacement for infinite growth Capitalism. Whatever alternatives you choose you will have to give up lots of things that you take for granted. Humans beings at the current time are like drug addicts addicted to heroin and though its killing them and their environment, they are too pleased with the benefits to consider the costs.

Let me elaborate on this. Infinite growth Capitalism combined with technological development leads to a civilization whose citizens are constantly concerned with more, a nicer way to say this is growth. This in essence means greater and greater levels of consumption. Their entire existence, their brains, are wired for this hit from growth and progress. Buying a new phone, a new car, new clothes, promotions, salary increases, bigger houses, longer vacations, more sexual partners, etc. They are looking to constantly grow. Without that hit, they would very quickly become dejected and depressed.

But this all comes at a great cost. For one thing, people living for that hit don't live in the present, they are always oriented in the future giving up their entire present for a promise of a greater future which never comes, all they get is a hit along the way to that future and anticipation of next hit motivates them. And it's possible to have a psychology that is not set up to constantly seek this sort of hit. Therefore, for a person living with infinite growth capitalism, the transition is probably highly undesirable.

sjaknanxnnx · 7 years ago

I agree with your take on human psychology, but I don’t think you’re right about it requiring infinite growth. If I get a new phone every year, that’s not actually growth. That contributes the same amount of GDP each year. People can get change without growth.

sjaknanxnnx commented on FedEx Ends Ground-Delivery Deal with Amazon bloomberg.com/news/articl... · Posted by u/dsgerard

londons_explore · 7 years ago

You can easily use a different SKU if you want to avoid this.

Most people like to use the same SKU to get more exposure on amazon.com though.

sjaknanxnnx · 7 years ago

Can the counterfeiter just copy your new SKU?

sjaknanxnnx commented on Apple will add 5G to 2020 iPhones to compete with Android, analyst says cnbc.com/2019/07/29/apple... · Posted by u/octosphere

CamperBob2 · 7 years ago

There won't be any need to disable the radio for unused bands. Powering down unused hardware is literally the first thing the engineers do to save battery life.

Edit: can't reply due to rate-limiting, but in principle, all they have to do to search for service is power up the receiver briefly, running at a very low duty cycle. This has no noticeable impact on battery life or any other aspect of the phone's operation.

sjaknanxnnx · 7 years ago

From practical experience, it’s very common for people to find their phone (iPhone or other) burning through tons of battery when they go out in the sticks, and this is reliably fixed by turning off cellular data. So either it’s not as easy as you say, or they haven’t bothered solving the problem.

sjaknanxnnx commented on Wisconsin Officials Urge People to Stop Vaping After Sudden Rise in Lung Disease gizmodo.com/wisconsin-hea... · Posted by u/lnguyen

hdfbdtbcdg · 7 years ago

For each specific post you can't tell.

sjaknanxnnx · 7 years ago

I have some friends who have said it to me in person too. I wonder which of them are the shills?

sjaknanxnnx commented on California Police Are Sharing Facial Recognition Databases to ID Suspects onezero.medium.com/califo... · Posted by u/jmsflknr

justchilly · 7 years ago

I'd argue the %s are not intuitive either way. In fact, if P(A) does happen, and there really is an unlucky doppelganger, that person is very likely to be charged. That could have been avoided with technology produced gave 5 other suspects that don't live on that block. Should it therefor be allowed for criminal defense if not prosecution?

The issue with the P(A) and P(B) argument is that police already use databases heavily, and most people don't have any problem with it. But why when it comes to facial recognition, is it too dangerous to use technology to drive efficiency.

If they're looking for somebody named Jane Doe, anybody with that name shows up on a list and police investigate. Of course if there are Jane Does in a 2 mile radius, they start with those. So why not just say if the system delivers a match within x accuracy and the person is within y residents (plus a variety of other variables), and x/y is below a threshold, then the match can be presented to police for further investigation.

Searching databases for matches is fine for names, or fingerprints, shoe prints, tire track, fiber analysis - but not faces? I personally wonder if it's really any different, or if its just better tailored for the media outrage machine because "China does it", or because "facial recognition targets minorities".

sjaknanxnnx · 7 years ago

I think police searching databases for low-quality evidence like tire track, shoe prints, and fiber analysis is a very dodgy practice, for these exact reasons. The key is the specificity of the match, and I don’t think facial recognition is good enough. Fingerprints and DNA can be, but there are still known cases of people being falsely charged based on databases searches with a partial match.

This tech can be good if applied to a narrow range of people like you suggest (eg. only searching people who live in neighboring blocks) but nobody is actually doing that. We should pass laws requiring a rigorous analysis of these probabilities for such databases to be used, including a conversation about what rate of false positives we are willing to tolerate. Guardrails should be put in place to enforce those limits. If this is too hard, we don’t have a strong enough handle on this technology to be using it.

Here’s the scenario that scares me the most:

Police identify a suspect using facial recognition. Then puts that person in a lineup for a witness. Of course the witness is going to say “that’s the one!” because the suspect actually looks like the perpetrator. The witness will be sure, the cops will be sure, and a jury will convict. And this scenario is completely determined by the use of the facial recognition database. This will happen unless we pass laws to prevent it.

sjaknanxnnx commented on California Police Are Sharing Facial Recognition Databases to ID Suspects onezero.medium.com/califo... · Posted by u/jmsflknr

justchilly · 7 years ago

Question for people that are anti facial recognition. What methods of identifying people are you ok with? Are you ok with the police/news asking other people to help identify someone? To me that sounds like facial recognition with extra steps?

The arguments against facial recognition like that there can be false positives, or that can affect some groups more than others, doesn't that also apply when people are identifying people? If so isn't the real solution to require more evidence than just a facial match, not to ban an effective way of narrowing a suspect pool. That way police can spend less time manually identifying people and more time getting other evidence.

sjaknanxnnx · 7 years ago

I’m concerned because probability is not intuitive.

Suppose a store is robbed, and there’s a video.

The police identity some suspects - the guy who just got out of jail for robbing the same store, and another person the store owner had a dispute with. Neither of them look like the robber in the video. Then the police take a still from the video and knock on some doors around the block. Somebody recognizes the person in the video, and the police investigate that person. This scenario seems pretty fair to me.

Now suppose the police run it through the facial recognition system. It identifies one person as a 99% match, and the police go investigate this person. This scenario does not seem so fair to me.

Here’s how I see the math:

P(A) = P(robber has a doppelgänger living on the same block) = .01

P(B) = P(robber had a doppelgänger somewhere in the database) = .9

P(X) = P(police screw up investigation, and will convict the suspect whether or not they are guilty) = .2

P(AX) = .002

P(BX) = .18

The exact numbers are made up, but as long as P(A) << P(B), you can see you this tech will result in a huge increase in false convictions. Even if P(X) is low, the number of false convictions increases by P(B)/P(A).