... or for that matter any of your medical history. MDs do spot-diagnosis in 5 minutes or less based exclusively on what they've memorized or else they do no diagnosis at all.

My wife has a major genetic defect (MTHFR C677T), which causes severe nutritional problems. We haven't yet met an MD who has a clue about nutrition. Moreover, we had to diagnose this problem ourselves through genetic testing, with no doctors involved. We've shown the results to doctors, and they don't entirely disbelieve us, but they also have no clue what to do about it and still are dubious of the symptoms. (Who has symptoms of Beriberi these days? Someone whose general ability to absorb nutrients is severely compromised.)

What makes anyone think that this will change if your doctor has access to your DNA, even with detailed analysis? They won't take the time to actually read any of it. In fact a lot of what we know about genetic defects pertains to problems in generating certain kinds of enzymes, a lot of which participate in nutrient absorption. (So obviously RESEARCHERS know something about nutrition.) These nutritional problems require supplementation that MDs don't know about. Do you think the typical MD knows that Folic Acid is poison to those with C677T? Nope. They don't know the differences between folic acid, folinic acid, and methylfolate and still push folic acid on all pregnant women (they should be pushing methylfolate). They also don't know the differences between the various forms of B12 and always prescribe cyanocobalamin even for people who need the methyl and hydroxy forms.

Another way in which MDs are useless is caused by their training. Bascally, they're trained to be skeptical and dismissive. Many nutritional and autoimmune disorders manifest with a constellation of symptoms, along with severe brainfog. Someone with one of these problems will generally want to write down the symptoms when talking to a doctor, because they can't think clearly. The thing is, in med school, doctors are specifically trained to look out for patients with constellations of symptoms and written lists, and they are told to recognize this as a condition that is entirely within the mind of the patient. Of course, a lot of doctors, even if not trained to dsmiss things as "all in their head" are terrible at diagnosis anyway. They'll have no clue where to start and won't have the patience to do extensive testing. It's too INCONVENIENT and time-consuming. They won't make enough money off patients like this, so they get patients like this out the door as fast as possible.

I've had some good experiences with surgeons. But for any other kind of medical treatment, MDs have been mostly useless to me and my family. In general, if we go to one NOW, we've already disgnosed the problem (correctly) and possibly need advice on exactly which medicine is required, although when it comes to antibiotics, it's easy enough to find out which ones to use. (Medical diagnosis based on stuff you look up on the internet is really hard and requires a very well-trained bullshit filter, and you also have to know how to use the more authoritative sources properly. However, it's not impossible for people with training in things like law, information science, and biology. It just requires really good critical thinking skills. BTW, most MDs don't have that.)

MDs are technicians. Most of them are like those B-average CS grads from low-ranked schools who can barely manage to write Java applications. If you know how to deal with a low-level technician, guide them properly, and stroke their ego in the right way, you can deal with an MD.

Was it, though? China circa 1960s/70s was a totalitarian dictatorship where Tiananmen square was an impossibility simply because any dissent would be crushed long before it would get to mass protest stage, and the yearly number of victims was far greater, too. Compared to China after Tiananmen, the latter is far more liberal. It's even more liberal today.

I did not suggest doing such a thing. The best thing you can do is just trade (and yes, this doesn't preclude e.g. tariffs to even out the price of labor differences, environmental concerns etc).

It's a Chinese company located in China, and most of its business and customers are in China. So why is it doing its IPO on the US stock market?

Shouldn't NYSE/Nazdaq disallow this? SEC and FTC have no jurisdiction in China or anywhere else outside the USA. If a chinese company listed on NYSE did fraudulent accounting or whatever, SEC can't do jack shit about it.

The whole thing seems like a clever scheme by Chinese companies and Goldman Sachs to sucker money out of U.S. investors.

Well first off, it should ring major alarm bells to any investor that Alibaba isn't doing it in their native country. I mean, either the Chinese government has rules against it, or the founders are basically trying to skirt Chinese law for whatever reason. That's a major red flag without even looking at the details of the arrangement.

Sorry, I don't buy any arguments about whether or not the Chinese government allows IPOs like that - Alibaba is the largest e-commerce site in the world doing practically Chinese-only business, and you can't figure out Chinese investment law? I don't think so.

Yes, I'm willing to call it "shady" from the get go. Either that or it's a house of cards in China that's about to collapse. I'm sorry, but if you're so business savvy to basically be the #1 marketplace in the world, out-doing Amazon, eBay and other sites combined, and you're doing the IPO in the US, there's something majority shady going on, perhaps even criminal (hiding from the Chinese government? Forget to hire the standard Communist party official?).

And oh, the SEC does have some power still - they can effectively suspend trading or even force delisting. Yes, it means current shareholders get screwed, but it prevents future shareholders from being screwed more. Hell, they can still levy fines to be paid by company owners (i.e., shareholders). It's the shareholders that are taking on a lot of risk because they can't bring the executives to bear.

As a side note, who the fuck thought that "AdMob" would be a good name for an advertising site? "We're going to MOB you with ADS!"

Fuck Off, AdMob.

Well, they were advertising for mobile devices - basically the iPhone and later Android devices.

(And Apple and Google were competing to acquire AdMob, but Google eventually paid more and likely paid Apple to create iAds to get around anti-trust).

Oh yeah, don't forget that Google's ad CDN is 1e100.net.

Russia is independent of the USA part of the Internet to a degree you can hardly imagine. They have their own Facebook (vk), their own Google (yandex), two DNS root-server anycast instances, and even for credit cards they'll not be very sorry as Russians prefer debit cards from their own banks over Master/VISA credit cards.

Sure it'd be noticeable and some stuff would stop working, but it is certainly feasable.

If they ask, I'll consider it and I may decide this way or that.

If they lock me out without ads, I'll never visit their site again. I don't want ads, they don't want me as a visitor, we seem to have a concord.

As Chinese economy grows, so does its middle class. As its middle class grows, it demands more democratic reforms and more government responsibility - ultimately, a way to better China, for both its people and its neighbors.

So if you want a better China, you should do the exact opposite of what you're doing.

> Some critics do say that Alibaba's share price will plummet from its current value of $93.60 in the same way that Facebook's and Twitter's plummeted

The vast majority of IPOs are lower in price 6 months after the issue date. Usually what happens is that company owners have some restrictions on when they can start selling stock - and those are typically 6 months or so. So on the day of initial sale supply is very constrained. Later a lot more shares flood onto the market.

For example Facebook went from $38 to $19.

Purchasing IPOs on day of issuance is a sucker move.

If you read the news headlines less and statistical data more, you'd know that the chances of that happening are far, far lower than your kid being hit by a school bus, or drowning in your pool. You might as well worry about him dying in the next 9/11.

Elizabeth II is the Queen of Canada. That she also happens to be a Queen of some other realms is completely immaterial to her position as the monarch of Canada - her royal prerogatives in Canada are defined by the Canadian political system, not the British one, and her duties and responsibilities are also before the Canadian nation.

Thanks for taking the time to explain that!

I don't like having to re-buy goods due to planned obsolesce. Take TVs, for example. I have a Sears TV in storage from the '80s. The manual has circuit schematics, where to get replacements for the channel buttons, how to replace switches, what pots are used where. It was made so someone with basic soldering skills could at least maintain it. A new LED TV just gets chucked and you buy a new one, even though the problem could be a membrane contact that costs a penny.

First off, your Sears TV is suffering from "Survivor Bias" - it lasted that long for you Who knows how many thousands are sitting in landfills because they're broken? So no, you can't say "things were made better in the past because my XXX works today". Geez, I could say they made computers back then better because I have a 486 that still works today (with original hard drive).

And let's not forget cost - that 486 PC cost nearly $6000 new with a 14" monitor. You can get a new PC these days for $300. Sure I can repair that 486, but that's because it cost a lot when I got it. These days that $300 PC isn't as repairable because if it costs more than $50 to fix and it's older than 2 years, it may be time to just buy a new one. (The old one's residual value would be $20 when it was working, practically speaking).

And your LED TV? Given you can get 40" TVs for practically $200, and to replace that penny contact will involve probably an hour of time with the guy charging $75/hr, well, people would just buy new. Because what if it fails again a couple of months down the road? You going to spend another $75 repairing it (total cost $150). And again?

For a lot of stuff, it just isn't worth it - diagnosing the problem and fixing it costs way too much money. Unless you do it yourself for fun (i.e., your time is free) in which case it's a great way to get good equipment for practically free.

In other words, for a good chunk of things, repair is a hobby. it's cheaper when your time is worthless.

The economy is getting shittier in general. In the past, we could afford to replace things when something small broke. I had a collegue who bought a new car every 2-3 years, once when the relay controlling the heated seat failed. These days, it is commonplace to see people nursing their old Saturns and Honda Civics to keep them on the roads. That is why headlight polishing kits are so common. In the past, vehicles got replaced before the glass or Lexan dulled (or used sealed beam headlights.)

For cars, replacing it 2-3 years usually corresponds with a lease arrangement. And cars are quite repairable - that failed relay can usually be repaired for a few hundred bucks in labor. Or a few hours if you do it yourself.

And there have always been people who nurse their aging cars - to the point where we even call them "beaters". If you're willing to put up with a lot, the modern computer-controlled car can fail in many ways and still keep going while the old mechanicals with carbs and distributors would just be dead. You should get a OBD scanner on those to see the fault code, and you'll find practically everything has failed (if the check engine light is off, it means it's burned out having been on for the past 10 years).

The other reason is economy - those 2-3 year lease/fleet returns are cheap, so you can get a fairly decent car when someone else has eaten the depreciation.

Then there's the group of real fanatics who spend $10,000 to fix their car worth $2000 tops (and less as scrap).

One reason why companies have chosen to go with products that cannot be repaired is simple -- it gets rid of the used market. In the past, if someone had a broken lawn mower, someone else could give it a carb rebuild and get it perfectly functional. A lot of goods, once broken, can't be recycled, much less salvaged for anything whatsoever, which means no real secondhand market.

This is going to backfire. Will a company make more money in the long run if they sell parts to fix their gizmos, or more gizmos in a good economy, and almost none when the economy goes bad and stays bad? For long term thinking, having repairable items brings in a long tail due to the parts sales.

For lawnmowers, you still can rebuild the carbs, and many places will sell you the parts. And the used market is just there as well, but most people don't participate because it's not worth the time and effort. I mean, if you have an old-ish PC that's 2-3 years old, you're not going to get more than $20 for it when the latest and greatest can be had for $300.

Such is the nature of technology - they don't need to get rid of spare parts because next year's new shiny is going to have different parts anyhow. (And have you checked Craigslist? Plenty of people are selling their iPhone 5 and iPhone 5S to get the iPhone 6/6+.)

With goods that are basically obsolete in a few years, having a long tail is pointless. I have a Palm handheld - I can still get parts from it, but the retailers are smaller shops that are online because they can be. The parts in it are now salvage because it is completely worthless to anyone else to stock them. And for everyone one of me, there are millions of people who moved on.

If you want to fix stuff, go right ahead. Be known as the fix-it guy in your neighbourhood and you'll find your pile of "non-economical repair" stuff will grow and you can get quite a bunch of decent 2-3 year old pieces of equipment.

Exactly. You're the kind of people they want to keep out. People who think that $5k is a waste. For their target audience, $5k is either not worth even thinking about, or a fair price to pay for making sure you spend your time only with people who fall into either of these categories.

Those TV and music starlets will stay on FB because they want and need to stay in touch with their fans.

The wealthy have always segregated themselves. That $10k membership fee in the golf club is not because keeping the grass short is so expensive, either. It is to make sure everyone you meet there is in your class.

Frankly speaking, I'm mostly surprised that this doesn't already exist.

Well, except for the part where Linus isn't just writing code for the kernel - he's actually using Linux on his desktop to write said code. That's why he had such hard opinions on, say, Gnome 3.