throwaway_isms | 2 years ago | on: Why doctors in America earn so much
throwaway_isms's comments
throwaway_isms | 2 years ago | on: Why doctors in America earn so much
Just prove you lost a job or weren't hired due to age, and you'll have a lawsuit that results in a large enough settlement you will once again be paid more than your spouse and won't even need to work.
throwaway_isms | 3 years ago | on: A Love Letter to Geocities Sites
Please expand upon this, give me your idea of victory and value.
The plan was to turn the IP over to community governance, so people like you who seem to care could have a voice in governing how the property is used. On one hand it seems like you might want a voice in how the IP is used, yet you also seem to think that giving community governance over the GeoCities IP is "another shit crypto project." It is far easier just to privately own and operate the property as a centralized entity & remove the decentralized governance component.
Has there been another crypto project that resurrected abandoned IP and turned it over to community governance? I'd love to review those other projects and see where they went wrong.
throwaway_isms | 4 years ago | on: Show HN: Mmm.page – Drag and drop personal website creator
throwaway_isms | 4 years ago | on: Is this what enterprise means?
throwaway_isms | 4 years ago | on: Doctors investigate mystery brain disease in Canada
throwaway_isms | 4 years ago | on: White House eyes subsidies for nuclear plants to help meet climate targets
Chasing that rabbit down the hole, what happens if the US does wean off fossil fuel entirely, but countries like Russia and China continue (and say it is projected to increase 400X like China in the last 30 years). Then its an existential threat, does that mean use of force, or limit ourselves to diplomatic means that will ultimately fail and just accept the resulting existential outcome? Does the analysis change when it is a less diplomatically controversial Country such as India?
Alternatively what if those Countries beat the US to weaning off fossil fuel and determine overnight any continued US use of fossil fuel is an existential threat and act of war?
It sounds like hyperbole but I remember when the US began regulating incandescent light bulbs and it was floated by certain media outlets as an attack on freedom and liberties. We have literally seen murders of people telling others to wear a mask during the pandemic, and I watched a news segment claiming a normal year sees 150-300 FAA incidents on planes and we have seen 1,300 already this year mostly related to passengers refusing to wear masks and many times escalating to attacks on the airline workers for attempting to enforce the CDC mask guidelines. We live in violent and chaotic times, where millions and millions of people allow themselves to be worked up into mobs by a media that does it willfully and deliberately. I don't see it as an easy transition domestically much less globally, and those in power don't care about the science but seem to froth at the mouth for this kind of discontent.
throwaway_isms | 4 years ago | on: Pandora says laboratory-made diamonds are forever
You might be surprised of the acceptance of an outsider showing a willingness to roll up their sleeves and experience something real not just sip drinks on a beach resort, even if it is for a day or two. Similarly if you met a child laborer or former child soldier outside those conditions, odds are you would have no idea of their personal experience.
I have met many child refugees that have more Worldly experience than most adults, yet if I did not represent them in asylum proceedings and meet them while they were detained, they would have simply appeared as children in my eyes. I have been part of law clinics that represented torture victims from some of the regimes you have in mind. The child soldiers, much less the child laborers, are not mercing people for their cell phones.
If you are a reader, I might suggest two books: 1) The Evolution of Deadly Conflict in Liberia; and 2) Storming the Court.
throwaway_isms | 4 years ago | on: Pandora says laboratory-made diamonds are forever
throwaway_isms | 4 years ago | on: Pandora says laboratory-made diamonds are forever
If I said it once, I have said it a million times, if your SO insists on a diamond from the ground as opposed to a lab, say fine, but I am getting my shots flying to Africa and will mine it myself. It won't matter if you bring back a opaque brown rock, with 0 marketing your SO would wear it with pride and most others would be jealous when they hear the story behind it.
It goes hand in hand with your obtaining a stone from family and the sentiment of it. My Mom has 5 boys and my Dad gave her a ring with 5 diamonds, and she has made 1 available to each of us for an engagement ring, which she would replace with the birthstone of each son. As you say its not scalable, and no one ever marketed the idea, but the sentiment is extremely powerful.
throwaway_isms | 4 years ago | on: An NFT That Saves Lives
There was one comment "why would I use this?" Rightly or wrongly it seems that is still the question everyone has for NFTs.
At the same time in 2017 I had simultaneously built out redditco.in, igco.in, and facebookco.in. If you follow NFTs you might be familiar with the Tweet NFTs and Jack's first tweet getting a multimillion dollar bid, right as that was occurring I got a cease and desist/trademark infringement letter from FB. In a responsive letter I encouraged FB to allow me to auction Zuckerberg's first FB post as an NFT along side Jack's Tweet and with that I would gladly transfer them the domain names. It sounds dumb at best, tinfoil conspiracy at worst, but that is exactly when the bids on Jack's Tweet and all the media surrounding it stopped, and I never got a reply to my response to the TM infringement letter.
From there the NFT rabbit hole only got deeper as I began receiving quid pro quos, or pay to play requests for invitations to join an "exclusive" NFT marketplace, even getting a retweet from one of the anonymous NFT collectors on Twitter that has spent millions on NFTs as proof the quid pro quo requests were legit. The Twitter account I was using literally had 1 follower, but was being retweeted by an anonymous NFT collector spending millions (I think even bought one of Grimes' NFTs for about $750K).
I will say this for pg's essay, this NFT, and bid...at least pg and company did not create an anonymous or fake persona or personality and pg openly placed the initial bid. However, unless this results in so much backlash no one wants to touch it, my guess is consistent with the entire NFT space, the ultimate bid for this NFT will end up being some anonymous NFT collector with a record of spending millions "collecting" NFTs.
throwaway_isms | 4 years ago | on: An NFT That Saves Lives
I would have actually said the opposite, if there is one inherently decentralized type of entity that is officially recognized by central authorities it is a non-profit.
Yes, non-profits exist because of centralized authorities, if they have exempt status for purposes of taxes that determination comes from a centralized tax authority, but a non-profit itself has no owners and is generally governed by the members. The members generally elect a board of directors but that is just representative of the collective decentralized members and should serve at their collective discretion through vote, the board as the official representatives appoints the Officers that manage the day to day business of the entity. There are arguments to be made, and not all non-profits are structured identically, but inherent in all of them is no ownership, so should a non-profit be dissolved and have assets, those assets are not distributed to any ownership class but must be distributed to other non-profits. Based on the lack of profits and ownership, non-profits are more decentralized in nature than many organizations claiming to be DAOs most of which are organized around the concept of an ownership class and profits.
throwaway_isms | 4 years ago | on: An NFT That Saves Lives
At this point people are voluntarily using an expensive and wasteful mainnet on Ethereum, and it is better to promote the the existing solutions rather than spread FUD that they do not exist.
throwaway_isms | 4 years ago | on: An NFT That Saves Lives
I am not arguing blockchain in various implementations do not harm the environment, only that there are many external costs and collateral damage by the current systems which is often ignored. What is a "normal donation drive" after all? Is it a bunch of celebrities and musicians jumping on private airplanes? Is it a $10,000 per plate filet mignon dinner indirectly supporting bigAG and bigAG animal farming? What external costs have you contributed to just to make a post, are there plastics in your device, was coal burned somewhere or fossil fuel burned to supply parts to your device or charge your device?
Certainly this NFT is not saving lives, the entity behind it was saving lives before the NFT, and certainly they would have continued to save lives without the NFT, but if the NFT generates $2.5M and they can save 1 life with every ~$1,200, then there is a number. Maybe someone who really believes in the argument that saving 1,000 lives is good but not at the expense of the environment which will result in killing us all can step up and pay this entity double ($5M) not to do it, sure its a number reserved for the 1% but its also a number that means nothing to the 1%.
throwaway_isms | 4 years ago | on: Opera adds native support for blockchain domain names
Your issue is with the Court, all the way up to bribery, which would exist with or without blockchain. Your concern is not without merit I suppose, but in my opinion is an extreme edge case against blockchain to suggest the legacy system is a better solution, when the very edge case you describe exists in the legacy system. Thus, it over looks the benefits the blockchain solution would have.
Again "blockchain" is a bit of a misnomer in the sense it suggests blockchain is a single tech solution, when there are many existing implementations from multi-party signatures to smart contracts - yes controlled by a 3rd party - when say an NFT ownership record could be burned and/or reminted.
I am also not entirely sure about this point:
>The issue with them is they don’t take investors.
Almost every legacy system I am aware of that is utilized by the Courts are money making machines that have investors and/or are publicly traded companies. I am sure you could find one or a database that doesn't have investors, but the money is certainly there for software solutions used by the Courts.
throwaway_isms | 4 years ago | on: California appeals court finds Amazon responsible for 3rd party sellers products
throwaway_isms | 4 years ago | on: California appeals court finds Amazon responsible for 3rd party sellers products
I once worked on a case where the client was hit by a bus operated by the County (so a local government in a particular state), the suit was not entirely barred but there was a cap on damages which would not otherwise exist if say it were a bus being operated by a private company (which would of course generally have a commercial insurance policy as well). It has been almost 10 years but at the time I think the cap was $200,000. Interestingly there is/was a mechanism to request the state (I think the state legislature) waive the damages cap on a case by case basis, but unless your firm was politically connected and donated to political campaigns good luck with that.
throwaway_isms | 4 years ago | on: Longest pedestrian suspension bridge opens in Portugal
Some people have a fear of the heights of these bridges, I have an irrational fear of vibrational collapse.
throwaway_isms | 4 years ago | on: California appeals court finds Amazon responsible for 3rd party sellers products
It is indisputable Amazon is in the supply chain of these products, and of course of a case by case basis their role(s) for each product is different, including, but not limited to: at minimum promoting the products on their online marketplace, facilitating the purchase of the products (potentially conducting the transaction itself via Amazon gift cards), storing/warehousing product, shipping/delivering product, in some instances they are the wholesaler of product, etc...
They should be thankful for the time they had escaping obvious legal liability and the opportunity to get a decade+ head start on any new marketplace that wants to compete and will have to contend with these legal risks. Amazon will fight it to tooth and nail to the end, and then start with appeals, they could spend billions a year and lose but it would be worthwhile because the simple number of dangerous products on their marketplace some of them resulting in death.
throwaway_isms | 4 years ago | on: California appeals court finds Amazon responsible for 3rd party sellers products
If you have reason to believe you were terminated or not hired because of age, meet with a lawyer. If a lawsuit it filed, discovery is a powerful tool in litigation to help gather evidence that is generally required to prove the claim. Often this will be data about the other employees they have let go or in the case you weren't hired the age of the person ultimately hired and those that were interviewed but not hired.
There are about 10,000-15,000 a year, like all areas of law probably about 90% settle pre-trial.