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Comment Re:Was it a Russian drone? (Score 1) 129

Depends on what the person was doing at the time. If the person who didn't pull the trigger was holding up a liquor store and the police shot the wrong person, there's at least arguably mens rea, which is how we get things like the felony murder rule.

Not quite- that's how you get the proximate cause felony murder rule, of which only a couple of jurisdictions in the US, and none outside of the US in the Western world recognize due to its obvious injustice.

No, it's how you get mens rea for the felony murder rule. You didn't carry the gun with the intent to kill, only to intimidate, but you still had a guilty mind, and if you then used the gun to kill someone in the heat of the moment, there's your mens rea.

And remember that actual cause does not mean literally pulling the trigger. At least in the U.S., the courts apply a "but for" test. If the event would not have happened without the previous event, then the previous event is considered the actual, not proximate cause. The police would not have shot the other person but for the perpetrator pointing a gun at someone (and possibly shooting at the police).

IMO, that's not meaningfully different than involuntary manslaughter convictions for allowing unsafe working conditions at a construction site or leaving your loaded gun out where a child can take it, both of which have happened.

Comment Re:Typical company approach to accounting (Score 1) 47

Using the numbers above, if Meta had the same pre-tax profit of $60B now but was using the 3 year depreciation schedule they used in 2020 vs the current 5.5 year, then instead of depreciation being $13B it'd be $23.8B, meanding they'd lose nearly almost $11B in recorded profits, just from a calculation. So in essence this boosts their stock price by making them look more profitable than they are.

True, but only momentarily. At the end of the first depreciation cycle, assuming purchasing of hardware is not accelerating, you're depreciating 5x as much hardware over 5x the time, and your momentary bubble in the stock price is gone.

And even if hardware purchasing is growing right now, eventually, that will flatten out, and the above will be true.

The only real question should be whether the depreciation rate is reasonable. If you're still getting substantial use out of the hardware after five years, then depreciating it over 3 years is questionable.

Also, the more slowly you depreciate it, the less you save on taxes each year. Faster depreciation is beneficial if you think the tax rate will go down and you will lose the benefit of that depreciation. Slower depreciation is beneficial if you think the tax rate will go up and you will benefit more from depreciating it later. So this may also mean that these companies are expecting corporate income taxes to go up. Make of that what you will.

Comment Re:3D printing wasn't the problem (Score 1) 98

I'll find out in mid January, lol - it's en route on the Ever Acme, with a transfer at Rotterdam. ;) But given our high local prices, it's the same cost to me of like 60kg of local filament, so so long as the odds of it being good are better than 1 in 8, I come out ahead, and I like those odds ;)

That said, I have no reason to think that it won't be. Yasin isn't a well known brand, but a lot of other brands (for example Hatchbox) often use white-label Yasin as their own. And everything I've seen about their op looks quite professional.

Comment Re:Limit to Seven People (Score 1) 61

I recall reading that if you have a meeting with more than seven people, you are probably having an ineffective meeting. I am regularly forced to attend meetings with 20-30 people. It's always the same 3-4 people who speak, everyone else remains silent.

In my experience, with only rare exceptions, the limit should be three. More than three, and you are likely involving people working on multiple projects who don't really need to know what the people on other projects are doing beyond what an email every few months would provide.

Those rare exceptions are situations where you have a meeting of managers in an org or similar with each other, where everybody is working towards the same goals, and they're planning towards those goals.

Or the way I usually describe it is that the usefulness of a meeting with n participants is one over the square of n minus 2 for all values of n greater than 2.

Comment Re:Was it a Russian drone? (Score 1) 129

Negligent homicide and involuntary manslaughter suffer the same problem- no mens rea for the person accused of the crime.

Depends on what the person was doing at the time. If the person who didn't pull the trigger was holding up a liquor store and the police shot the wrong person, there's at least arguably mens rea, which is how we get things like the felony murder rule. Extending that to involuntary manslaughter when the person didn't actually pull the trigger but directly created a situation where the police did seems like not that much of a stretch to me.

Comment Re:Old News? (Score 2, Informative) 129

Just put it in context: Today Russia struck the Pechenihy Reservoir dam in Kharkiv.
Russia launched the war because they thought it would be a quick and easy win, a step towards reestablishing a Russian empire and sphere of influence, because Putin thinks in 19th century terms. Russia is continuing the war, not because it's good for Russia. I'd argue that winning and then having to rebuild and pacify Ukraine would be a catastrophe. Russia is continuing the war because *losing* the war would be catastrophic for the *regime*. It's not that they want to win a smoldering ruin, it's that winning a smoldering ruin is more favorable to them and losing an intact country.

Comment Re:Was it a Russian drone? (Score 1) 129

I.e., if during a robbery, some random person in the store shoots someone else trying to shoot you- you are not in legal jeopardy for murder.

To my knowledge, you are pedantically correct, but that doesn't mean you aren't in legal jeopardy for the death; you just won't face murder charges. You could still very easily be hit with civil wrongful death claims, and maybe negligent homicide or involuntary manslaughter charges for creating the situation that led to that death.

Comment Re:History repeating itself: Google Glass (Score 2) 150

That's the thing, someone who believes their day-to-day life is so fascinating that they need to be able to record video at any given moment, probably has a severe case of main character syndrome.

So yeah, "asshole glasses" definitely fits.

Maybe, but only if you assume that the intent is to share that video with others or whatever.

On the flip side, I can think of a lot of useful reasons to do so, mostly involving use of large amounts of AI to go back and process the data. Imagine losing something and being able to ask, "Where is this," and getting an answer about where you left it. Imagine being able to say, "Was [insert person] part of the conversation where I said [insert subject]" and getting an answer. The potential impact of always-on recording for assisting with memory recall is enormous, assuming adequate storage and processing power.

Also, it completely solves the "You look familiar" problem, both in the "Did I meet this person?" sense and in the "What is his/her name?" sense.

Comment Re: Good for her! (Score 2) 150

I think it's the same in the US. You can't publish someone's photo (unless they are just part of the background) without getting a signed release.

Nope. Not true. You can't use it commercially, but the definition of commercial use excludes a lot of things that you might think are commercial, e.g. any form of artwork, book covers, Facebook posting, etc.

This doesn't give you the right to record someone who has asked you not to record them, though, especially if there is audio and it is a two-party consent state. And if you are deliberately confronting someone in public who asks you not to record them, it could also run afoul of harassment laws.

Comment Re:Here's an idea (Score 1) 54

IMO probably the best thing to happen with this industry is for copyright laws to be clipped back to 28 years. The artists will lose their shit, but honestly, the Berne convention just feels like it's designed for the sole purpose of allowing them (and the studios) to just keep rent seeking indefinitely.

I have an even more radical proposal. Roll back copyright duration to 28 years, but only for works for hire.

  • Works of corporate authorship (movies, etc.): 14 +14 (renewal required).
  • Works of individual authorship: 50 years or the life of the author, whichever is longer.

This strikes a balance that acknowledges individuals' lower ability to earn money off of a work, and ensures that individuals are able to continue benefitting from their works for the rest of their lives, while still ensuring that musical works written when my long-deceased grandparents were children are no longer locked away where no one can perform them without expensive licensing and ensuring that people who never contributed anything towards the works' creation (e.g. the grandchildren of a composer, author, or artist) don't get to live off of other people's work for the rest of their lives.

Comment Re: They are popular in JP because they work (Score 1) 201

People here are acting like bigger vehicles in the U.S. are due to some conspiracy around efficiency standards. They're not.

The shift toward massive trucks and SUVs in the U.S. is not a conspiracy as you stated, but it's not purely consumer preference either. It's a direct, documented, and mathematically verifiable consequence of how the U.S. government rewrote fuel efficiency regulations in 2011.

Prior to 2011, CAFE standards were simple: a car company’s entire fleet of "light trucks" had to average a certain MPG number (e.g., 24 mpg). It didn't matter how big or small the individual trucks were. The Obama administration reformed these rules to close loopholes... but they inadvertently created a new one. They switched to a "footprint-based" standard.

It was broken long before that. Minivans have always been treated as light trucks despite not being trucks in any meaningful sense of the word, and industry interference has prevented light truck standards from keeping up with technological improvements.

As long as we have such a culture of regulatory capture, I don't think these sorts of standards are ever going to do what they are intended to do.

Comment Re:They are popular in JP because they work (Score 1) 201

Are there states that don't allow that? I know Tennessee and California both do, though the latter is somewhat more problematic because of emissions control laws.

I think the 35 MPH road limitation is mostly about wanting to prevent people from impeding traffic. Here in FL you're able to ride a bike/e-bike/e-scooter on any road that isn't a toll or limited access highway, regardless of posted speed limit, at your own peril.

The "at your own peril" thing is a lot easier to justify when you have high situational awareness because of absolutely no expectation of safety in a low-speed collision (bicycle) than when you do have that expectation (vehicle with a roll cage).

Also, bicycles can't rapidly accelerate, are very small, and generally can't get very fast at all, so they are quick to pass compared with something the size and speed of a low-speed car. This reduces the risk of them causing accidents significantly (both with the bicycle and with oncoming vehicles).

In general, the assumption is that if it looks like a car, it should act like one. When that assumption is violated, bad things happen.

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