kszx's comments

(1.) The plasticity of the brain changes, which means that it takes more time to learn new things and change your mind. Many other abilities remain at a high level.

(2.) You may look up a chart that plots dementia against age. Prevalence of dementia increases at an accelerating rate as you get older.

My company hires freelancers for China-related research. Contributors from Mainland China would be ideal. But my reliance on services like Google Drive means that I typically end up with people from HK, Taiwan, Singapore and Malaysia. It's simply much more convenient.

Found it: "They Live" by John Carpenter.

The idea is a bit different though. "Nada discovers the sunglasses are special. After putting on a pair, he sees the world in black and white and discovers it is not what it seems. Media and advertising hide constant subliminal totalitarian commands to obey and conform." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/They_Live)

Here you can see how the "sunglasses" work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JI8AMRbqY6w

[Added additional information]

Does anybody remember the name of the cult movie where all advertisement is blocked from the real world? It's pretty much the same idea. I remember seeing that movie many years ago.

Full German email:

"Liebe Flixbus Kunden,

unser Paymentmodul der Onlineplattformen wurde durch einen schwerwiegenden IT-Fehler unsererseits manipuliert und zur Transaktion von Unbekannten benutzt.

Scheinbar sind dabei auch eure Daten entwendet und versendet worden. Es handelt sich aber dabei um unrelevante IDs. Wir informieren euch jetzt, da das Ausmass doch grösser ist, als wir dachten und um hier Transparenz zu schaffen.

Es handelt sich hierbei nicht wie bisher verkündet um ein Problem des Paymentanbieters sondern um ein Problem in der Programmierung.

Wir haben das Problem aber jetzt behoben. Seit heute steht auch das neue Stornoformular zur Verfügung.

Wir werden allen Kunden die in irgendeiner Form von diesem bedauerlichen Fall betroffen sind in Form von Wertgutscheinen in Höhe von 100€ entgegenkommen. Diese gehen euch zu oder meldet euch dazu auf Facebook kurz. Wir entschuldigen uns nochmals für den bedauerlichen Vorfall und sagen euch eure Daten sind bei unserem amerikanischen Spezialanbieter Cloudflare nun sicher.

Mit freundlichem Gruss

Flixbus Geschäftsführung

Andre, Jochen, Daniel

Auch diesen FlixFall stehen wir durch."

For these kinds of services, the introduction of a payment can change supply and demand in very unexpected ways.

Example: There once was an experiment with blood donations, where a payment for the blood donation actually decreased the number of people who were willing to donate. Apparently, receiving a payment for an activity that seems charitable makes some people feel bad.

A similar effect might happen if Blind My Eyes introduced payments. (While this particular effect would reduce supply, this does not necessarily imply that the introduction of a payment would lead to a negative change in supply. It's just one factor.)

The current title has an implied if, not an iff.

Learning to use facial expressions can be quite useful. It's similar to learning negotiation techniques and sales strategies. In this context, spending 15 minutes a day working on the ability to one's facial expression skills (Samsung app: even improve the daily performance in a "performance dashboard") is not necessarily a bad idea.

However, it should be remembered that this is primarily about imitation. It is not about "self-expression". People do not move their position on the autistic spectrum by using this app. They just improve their ability to use facial expressions in the way that is expected by the surrounding society.

> Any stock trader that uses linear graphs will lose his shirt.

Can you show me a stock trading platform that uses log values by default?

Yes, log graphs are very useful when you're looking at developments of stock values and many other financial variables - predominantly over longer terms when the changes are high enough that the difference matters.

Strangely reminds me of Bayesian statistics and updating of prior probability distributions.

The translated article says that the "police, Police Security Service and the National Security Agency" have the authority to use these types of devices. It seems very reasonable to me that they may do so around government areas.

Did I miss something?

There's a Wikipedia article on this:

'The jocular saying is that, in England, "everything which is not forbidden is allowed", while, in Germany, the opposite applies, so "everything which is not allowed is forbidden". ... The saying about the Germans is at least partially true. ...'

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everything_which_is_not_forbi...

The explanation "not legal because we haven't allowed it" will sound odd to people from common law countries like US and UK (where, conversely, it's closer to "It's legal because no law states that it's not"). But it's practice in civil law countries like Spain, Germany etc.

I know I've simplified the difference a lot, probably oversimplified it, but I often think of this broad distinction when I see cases like this one.

My impression is that applications for Pinyin text input have advanced to a level where they can be used really quickly, often faster than English. They also allow for fuzzy input and dialect-related mistakes.

It's more troubling for older people who haven't studied or have forgotten about Pinyin and need to resort to shape-based methods.

Hong Kongers obviously don't use Pinyin, and I think most are quite a bit slower than Mainlanders in typing characters. Some write in components, others draw the full characters, which is slowed down by the fact that HK uses traditional characters.

(As for Taiwan, I think shape-based input methods are also most common, and I would be surprised if Taiwanese were faster than Mainlanders in typing characters. But I'm not that familiar with input methods in Taiwan.)

The problem with this example is the difference between traded and non-traded goods. Loafs of bread are rarely traded across borders.

Under certain conditions, price discrimination that results in a higher price for US consumers can increase their net utility.

Example: HIV medication is sold at much lower prices in Africa. If prices in Africa were increased to the levels currently seen in the US, revenues on the African market would be reduced to approx. zero. If prices in the US were decreased to the levels currently seen in Africa, most R&D efforts would have to be stopped.

(This is just a response to the comment. It does not necessarily relate to the article.)

Similar to my model, which is itself quite intuitive to someone who likes economic modelling: I like to think of emotion as a function of the change in the expected discounted sum of lifetime utility.

First, utility is a measure satisfaction at any point of time, which can be a function of many variables, including relationships, food, wealth etc.

Discounted utility means that changes in soon satisfaction levels have a higher impact than changes in satisfaction that are still a long time away.

And the fact that I use the expected value of the function allows for biases abd inconsistencies, which are obviously very frequently observed.

[EDIT: typo]

As somebody who lives in Hong Kong, I had to read it twice to understand what you mean.

I realize your point is probably mostly made in reference to certain North American cities.

By the way, you will get a free Oculus device if you allow it to handle internet-to-brain communication: "Indirect" advertising (through text, video etc.) is a thing of the past. Long live "direct" advertising -- projected right into the brain.

Step 1: Include the brain wave scanner in future Oculus VR devices.

Step 2: Use virtual reality as the interface for brain-to-computer, brain-to-internet, and brain-to-brain communication.

Step 3: Considering the acquisition of Oculus by Facebook, make these types of communication available on Facebook.