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Comment DST not permanent in California yet (Score 1) 294

California, which voted to make daylight saving time permanent in 2018

That is not accurate. We voted to allow the state legislature to make it permanent if they choose to and if they're federally allowed to. So far they have not chosen to, and it's not clear if they are federally allowed to or not.

Comment Re:Wrong Comparison (Score 1) 177

The median earner sees as much tax as they gain so they see no difference

Mean, not median, which makes a big difference. The mean (add all the incomes together and divide by number of people) is at around the 75th percentile, so about 75% of people see a net gain. If it were median (definitionally the 50th percentile), it would be a lot less people.

TL;DR: More than a supermajority of people would see a net gain under a universal basic income funded by a flat tax per capita.

Comment Re:The only winning move is not to play... (Score 1) 137

And yet they perform exactly as well as the overall market and so by definition as well as the average investor, with much lower costs, for greater overall profits...

(Hint: it's because your account of how they work lacks all nuance. They increase their holdings of a security in proportion to its market capitalization, which already isn't exactly the same thing as its share price, but that aside, it means they're buying exactly while the security is performing bullishly -- not at the top of the curve, but on the way up it -- and selling when it's performing bearishly -- not at the bottom of the curve, but on the way down it. Which is the best you could hope to do, unless you could magically predict exactly where the top and bottom were, i.e. unless you gamble and get lucky, which is exactly why on average investors perform no better or worse than the index -- the only variance is luck, which cuts both ways.)

Comment User-generated curation (Score 1) 455

I am against killing Section 230, but one other response to it that I can see besides the two you list is something that I think would be a better idea anyway: user-generated curation of content. The platform can be completely neutral as to what content they host, and so get ISP-level protections, but also offer users a variety of different views into that data set of "all posts", filtering them differently... and most importantly, let the users generate those filters, and vote on them. The sites can then by default show the most popular view of the data. So all the spam, porn, trolls, etc, is technically still there, but if most users prefer using filters that hide all of that, then the default view will be one that hides all of that.

Comment Re:Section 230 Is The Subject (Score 1) 511

Thank you for pointing out this fact that should be obvious to Slashdotters. That's what "moderation" looked like back in the days of UseNet. You had your own killfile, it filtered out the posts you didn't want to see. Just make it a little more user-friendly and let people publish and subscribe to (and maybe mutually develop) a modern equivalent of killfiles and there you go. Want to see only things that Trump approves of? Subscribe to the Official Trump Filter. Nobody else will be affected, only you.

Comment Re:Section 230 Is The Subject (Score 0) 511

Immerman is not suggesting a "fair play" law, they're suggesting that if you "referee" (curate) content at all you don't get protections, but if you don't then you do get protections. They're not saying how to referee it. And since the companies would want protections, they would forego the curation and let the users handle anything like that, so that they're not responsible for it, and not liable for the outcome of it.

Comment Re:OTOH, dark energy? (Score 1) 198

I was going to post pretty much exactly this.

Between dark energy and ordinary gravity, two comoving objects in an otherwise empty universe will inertially drift toward each other if they're below a certain distance apart, and away from each other if they're above that distance apart. (And sit stationary at exactly that distance, with the attractive or repulsive forces ramping up continually as they get further from that exact distance apart).

That sounds like it could very well be accounted for by a single force (or, more accurately, a single relationship between the distribution of mass and the curvature of spacetime) that's gets increasingly less attractive with distance and then goes to zero and then negative (repulsive) beyond a certain distance.

I don't know how that would explain away dark matter, though.

But thinking about it, I'm reminded of how Mach's principle holds that there really is no difference between a rotating bucket of water in a stationary universe and a universe rotating around a stationary bucket of water: the sloshing of the water to the outer edge of the bucket can equally well be explained by the frame-dragging of the rest of the universe spinning around the stationary bucket and water, as it can be by the inertia of the water spinning in the bucket.

Frame dragging is a gravitational effect, so if gravity does go zero or even negative at immense distances, then perhaps the frame-dragging of the rest of the universe spinning around a galaxy is less, which in the usual frame of reference, according to which that galaxy is spinning within the universe, would mean that the galaxy "feels" less of its spin, which would explain why its stars aren't flying out of it, without invoking any dark matter to hold it together.

I'm not sure how any of this explains the Bullet Cluster observation, though.

Comment Re:Not a democracy (Score 1) 691

a republic. Or, if you prefer, a "representative democracy".

"Republic" and "representative democracy" are not synonyms.

The UK, for example, is a representative democracy, but not a republic.

North Korea, on the other hand, is a republic, but not a democracy.

The US is both.

Saudi Arabia is neither.

A republic is basically any non-monarchy, where the powers of the state are exercised on behalf of and in the name of the people. Basically, where the people are the "owners" of the state.

A democracy, on the other hand, is a state whose powers are exercised by the people (or their representatives). Basically, where the people are the "management" of the state.

Comment Re:Poll Response (Score 1) 376

We have exit polls, but they're not going to help as much in this election because of all the mail-in voting.

Here in California, pollsters can apparently get the emails (and probably phone numbers, but I never answer the phone) of registered voters from the registrar, and follow up with people by those means once their votes have been counted. I know, because I got polled, and got shown the results of their polling thus far when I did.

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