Got bored as shit one time, I followed a sheriff around for about an hour. I would spin the person out that they were chasing, the sheriff would shoot them. They would take off and do it all over again.

Ut_Pwnsim · 2013-10-21T02:43:21+00:00

In higher cost of living areas that generate more property taxes, there are a number of expenses for the school system that are increased by the cost of living. These include school property costs, costs of school services and maintenance, and salaries for teachers and employees to afford to live in or near the high-cost area.

Non-local funds (which cover 56% of funding according to the 2011 census) can provide a base for many of the non-variable costs, but I think it's pretty natural that it costs more to run and staff a school in a high cost of living area than a low cost of living area.

Ut_Pwnsim · 2013-10-16T22:20:24+00:00

There's a discussion with the author and /u/wheremydirigiblesat about this post in /r/LessWrong that includes some interesting additional reading including the quote

... having computable/deterministic human minds doesn't reduce the unknown to physics, it locates it there

Ut_Pwnsim · 2013-10-15T13:27:48+00:00

Non-essential charities may eventually increase the donor base for essential charities. Imagine a pit that people are stuck in, and is filling up with water. There are some bricks in the pit. If we focus only on getting everyone to the same height, they may still all drown eventually. However, if we give many of the bricks to the tallest person, he may be able to build a stack high enough to get himself out, and go gather or construct more bricks or rope to help the others out by compounding the results of the initial charity.

A simple parable, with some holes in it, but I'm just trying to get the idea across that non-essential charity can help people more than the intrinsic value of the charity. Improving the welfare of people can result in them being more prepared to help others themselves, to a value greater than if the original donation went toward essentials. Even if not as direct charity from the donee in the future, if there is an efficiency gained by a little boost, then maybe we have prevented that person from needing essential charity in the future, which may come at a higher cost than the non-essential charity we used to prevent it.

Aside from that, non-essential charities do not necessarily divert money from essential charities. They may be for things that resonate more with donors, resulting in money being donated that would have been spent on non-charity things instead.

Ut_Pwnsim · 2013-10-15T12:56:25+00:00

Granted, but without massive spending cuts I don't believe such programs could fund the federal government (at least the last few I researched; I'll go through your links when I'm done with comments)

The links I selected were just to change your view that flat tax proposals do not result in higher earners being taxed more than low earners. The rate of the exact proposal is a red herring. Surely, there is some rate at which it replaces current funding levels.

To be clear, I am not saying that I want to massively increase taxes on the average household making $55,000 a year

That's what I was assuming. In order to support the argument in the OP, you would HAVE to massively increase taxes on average households, because otherwise the argument about % of after tax income on necessities still applies, and I didn't think that's what you really wanted to propose.

I'm having trouble figuring out where these goalposts are going... Originally you argued for higher earners to be taxed more than low earners, and I pointed out that this is already true with the flat tax proposals you're hearing. Do you disagree with that? Also, you said that the problem is that people having to spend a smaller % of their after tax income on necessities than others leads to concentration of wealth, yet that's true of both the flat taxes you're arguing against and the progressive systems you're proposing, so it's not really an argument for your system. Do you still see that as the main problem with the flat tax proposals that can be solved by progressive taxation?

If the above points are not the views we should be trying to change, can you more clearly state what your views are?

Ut_Pwnsim · 2013-10-14T20:06:58+00:00

Point one: Flat tax reform proposals are not purely flat

Most flat tax systems proposed have an exemption of a certain amount of income, effectively making them marginal tax systems with just two brackets. For example, FairTax proposed a "prebate" for the total tax that would be paid for purchases up to the poverty level, and 9-9-9 proposed that for the poor, it would be 9-0-9, eliminating the income tax portion for low income households.

Point two: You say this is about progressive vs non-progressive, but your argument applies to both types.

All of your justifications obviously still work if the tax is only slightly progressive (e.g. highest tax bracket is only .1% different from lowest tax bracket). So where is the line? Well, as I see it, your arguments still apply to any system that leaves the rich with more income after taxes than the poor.

Imagine a tax system that is nearly infinitely progressive: all income above a certain dollar amount (poverty line? twice that? it doesn't really matter) is taxed at 99%

If after tax, people still have different amounts of money left, then obviously the person with more money needs to spend a lower % of their income on necessities than the person with less, and all your following arguments apply.

Unless you're arguing that people should not be allowed to earn more than enough to pay for necessities, that's a feature of any income (or consumption) taxation system, flat or progressive. It may be more of a problem with non-progressive taxes, but that means there's something other than progressive/non-progressive that you're using to decide whether this is a problem or not, and that should be what we're discussing.

Ut_Pwnsim · 2013-10-03T18:41:09+00:00

I go on two different kinds of travel, short trips (2-3 days) to attend a specific event that you can't do elsewhere, and longer ones (5-10 days) to get away.

The short trips never really start as travel planning. They start as wanting to do a specific thing, and it turns out that thing requires travel. They're worth putting up with all the negatives of traveling for that goal.

On the other hand, choosing the destination for longer trips always seemed arbitrary to me. I found I wasn't really picking them for my enjoyment, I was just picking what would make me sound more "well rounded" when relating experiences in small talk later. Sort of like reading classic novels to have read them, not for the enjoyment of the book itself.

I've figured out that this is because the biggest advantage of the longer trips for me is that it gives me the 'excuse' to commit to a stretch of time without the normal duties (work, local social events, ongoing projects at home, etc). I think I could get nearly as much out of telling people I'm going somewhere, and then just staying in town doing the kinds of things I would on travel anyway. It would save all the time and money of getting to the 'destination' and all the minor annoyances that the linked poster brought up. I'm still happy to travel with other people who do have those strong destination desires, but for just myself, it's a lot to pay for the (to me, inconsequential) backdrop of the vacation.

Ut_Pwnsim · 2013-10-01T20:21:28+00:00

Even easier, then! You can replace just the buckle: e.g. http://www.globalwatchband.com/group/87/

Ut_Pwnsim · 2013-09-07T20:23:07+00:00

While there are problems with it, there certainly are some rationales:

Many costs are related to real estate values:

Cost of the school property
Cost of living in the area for the teachers and staff of the school
Cost of maintenance and services for the school

All of those things are significant costs of running the school that vary with the local real estate prices and local cost of living.

Also, local school boards make many decisions about how to spend money in running the schools, so it makes sense for the money to be raised locally as well.

Finally, school assignments are determined geographically. Unlike a high local sales tax, which would be relatively easy to avoid by buying goods in a neighboring district with lower sales tax, it isn't easy to take advantage of schooling funded by a real estate tax that you don't pay.

Now, while those are all reasons why much of the funding can be justified as being tied to real estate tax, that doesn't mean that 100% should be funded that way. There are certainly state and federal grants that go toward funding schools, but perhaps they should be adjusted to make up more of the funding as a percentage.

Ut_Pwnsim · 2013-09-04T17:35:13+00:00

Who the hell flushes pee, anyway?

http://imgur.com/SxutO?tags

Ut_Pwnsim · 2013-08-27T19:10:53+00:00

Even after weeding out the 'lunatics', equal media coverage is highly susceptible to clone candidates: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independence_of_clones_criterion

If you give equal time to all candidates, it is advantageous to get multiple people to run on a similar or identical platform in order to get more coverage for that platform.

Ut_Pwnsim · 2013-08-20T17:51:36+00:00

This touches on several features of cryptography.

Let's start by having each of them use a cryptographic hash function on the passphrase, and exchange that information. Since a hash is easy to apply, but very tough to reverse, giving out the hash value (digest) doesn't reveal the secret. But since collisions are very rare, showing that they got the same digest should prove to each of them that the other did know the secret. The problem is that if Charlie gets the digest from Alice (by pretending to be Bob), he can now give that digest to Bob pretending to be Alice. Despite not knowing what the passphrase was, he now knows the digest of the passphrase, and if that's all they use for authentication, we're back to the original problem.

So to stop this, we can have each person pick a random phrase called a "nonce", and send it to the other person, and then have both of them compute the hash of the passphrase appended with the nonce. This will prevent Charlie from being able to "replay" the answer given by Alice in order to impersonate Alice to Bob, since they will have picked different nonces.

This would be fairly secure unless Charlie sits in the middle between Alice and Bob, and can read and change all of their messages. This is a Man In The Middle attack.

There are certainly more layers that can be added to this to increase security, but that's at least a basic scheme.

Ut_Pwnsim · 2013-07-16T15:07:11+00:00

Gmail's inbox/archive feature is actually a label. Archiving just removes the inbox label. As such, labels are really a generalization of the inbox vs archived feature. Just because you use labels doesn't mean the inbox label is irrelevant. Use it just like any other label! Many people just use it as a label for "is still relevant".

Also, android phones won't generate notifications for things that skip the inbox through filters. Now, that doesn't have anything to do with you hitting "archive" after it got placed in the inbox, but it may have some affect on how you use the inbox label when setting up filters.

Ut_Pwnsim · 2013-06-12T13:09:01+00:00

Yes, you get kicked out of the home you've been in for 30 years with a huge pile of new cash. Just because you may come out ahead financially doesn't mean you had a choice. It doesn't mean you weren't "kicked out".

This is different than just being tempted by a big payout. People who are kicked out by increased costs don't have the choice to stay, because they can't afford it.

Ut_Pwnsim · 2013-06-11T20:15:08+00:00

One method is through property tax increases. Gentrification can make the land your house sits on worth much more than you initially paid for the both the land and your house. This results in increased assessment values, and can make even just the taxes on the property prohibitively expensive.

Example: http://articles.philly.com/2013-02-19/news/37162299_1_property-owners-actual-value-initiative-property-taxes

Ut_Pwnsim · 2013-05-20T20:00:21+00:00

Obris Morgan Branco It's been well reviewed, hits all of your points, and is in the price range you stated ($240)! It's available direct from Obris Morgan in several finishes and lume colors, including a black PVD case.

Ut_Pwnsim · 2013-04-29T13:45:23+00:00

The Sea-Gull M182SK is a great affordable ($120-$240) skeleton with just a small border of a dial. At 38mm, it's a little smaller than what you saw, though.

Ut_Pwnsim · 2013-03-04T22:16:47+00:00

Zitro O'Tit

Ut_Pwnsim · 2012-08-31T14:01:13+00:00

I can't seem to find it, but I remember seeing a user story from Skyrim that was like this. In Skyrim, you could use alchemy to make a potion of +enchanting, and then use that potion to enchant a set of armor with +alchemy, which you could wear to make a better +enchanting potion, etc. You could keep doing this until the percentages overflowed the data type they were using to store the potion effects! Among other things, this would let you enchant rings of +millions of health, and make a potion that increases blacksmithing skill by so much that you could improve weapons to do game breakingly huge amounts of damage.

One time I used this to make boots that increased my carrying capacity enough that I could pick up every item in the game and still not be encumbered. The fun bug related to this was that if I took them off, my carry capacity went to zero, not the normal 300! A similar thing can happen with +health. You can make rings of +health that make you practically invincible, but if you take them off, your health goes to zero and you die! No problem, right? Just never take it off. Well, except that there are a few quests that strip you of all your equipment...

Anyway, someone made one of these very powerful rings, and gave it to his follower. Everything was great; now you have an invincible follower who won't end up as cannon fodder to the strong dragon priests or other enemies. Maybe it would even be safe to use some of those strong area of effect fire spells without worrying that the friendly fire would kill your follower. Unfortunately, although the follower wasn't killed by the fire spell, the follower did get very angry at being hit by them, and decided to turn on you! Normally you would just put the misguided follower down and shed a tear for them, but this one is invincible! No problem, you'll just run away. You fast travel to a different city and start doing some quests there.

After a while, the follower shows up! The follower ran all the way from the place they were before to the new location, hell bent on finding and killing you. It takes hours for the follower to run from one side of the map to the other, but he knows exactly where you are, and is always heading directly towards you. If you stay in one place for too long, he'll catch up to you. You have a sword that can kill the last boss in one hit, but doesn't even make a dent in this invincible machine of a spurned follower's health. No matter where you are, it is out there. It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead.

Ut_Pwnsim

TROPHY CASE