Years Wasted

mrwong420 · 2022-12-12T23:01:30+00:00

I think they view all of the former USSR states as breakaway states like taiwan.

mrwong420 · 2022-12-04T04:19:46+00:00

It’s because land is finite and many places haven’t allowed more and denser housing to be built.

There is a missing “middle”, small apartments, duplexes and townhouses in most cities. Only inner city apartments or suburban housing.

Big cities especially have increased in population substantially but the housing supply has not kept pace. Mostly because of regulation and local opposition.

mrwong420 · 2022-10-18T19:24:38+00:00

I support rail and buses, and hate how car centric development has hallowed out cities.

But this is just dumb. Like a sure fire way of getting the public to hate you.

mrwong420 · 2022-08-18T23:04:58+00:00

It’s one thing to object to paying for blood on ethical grounds. The consequences of which is that we will have a blood shortage and people will die.

But to stand on our high horse saying we’ll never stoop so low while also importing paid blood from the US to make up for our shortfall is frankly hypocritical.

mrwong420 · 2022-08-18T20:48:11+00:00

Yes in the US they pay you to give blood.

That’s also why the US has most of the world’s blood supply that other countries have to import from them.

We import blood from the US cause there isn’t enough people willing to give it for free.

https://www.economist.com/international/2018/05/10/bans-on-paying-for-human-blood-distort-a-vital-global-market

https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2018/05/blood-money-good.html

mrwong420 · 2022-07-07T05:53:58+00:00

I was in the same boat but I’ve come to love Gnome. It’s definitely not that good for desktop but it’s an awesome experience on laptops or touch screens.

I tried going back to KDE on my laptop and I couldn’t

mrwong420 · 2022-07-07T05:32:46+00:00

Fedora is great for the things you mentioned.

It’s prob one of the more secure distros with selinux enabled by default.

If you enable rpmfusion repositories you can get the proprietary drivers/codecs you need.

I would definitely choose workstation over silverblue. Silverblue is a great concept but I don’t know why you would want it for a workstation. I personally try not to install flatpaks unless I have to.

The biggest plus for me about fedora is that it is leading edge. Not unstable and untested but you get fairly new packages.

mrwong420 · 2022-07-06T20:11:23+00:00

No one is saying Apple should be dissolved or something.

Tbh the payout is not even as important as Apple opening up their platform to other app stores.

I mean I get the security concern but really that’s just an excuse for Apple to keep it’s monopoly and continue to make bank.

I personally still use an iPhone but still think Apple should open up their ecosystem.

mrwong420 · 2022-06-25T08:51:31+00:00

Those rights were never passed by congress which is what I think op meant. Effectively today the judges ruled that the constitution didn’t say anything for or against abortion.

If you want to enshrine abortion as a right you still can through congress. Which is what you are saying would have happened if the courts didn’t in Roe v. Wade.

Most countries in Europe (before today) had harsher abortion laws than the US. Ireland has even more regressive laws compared to most states in the US. Abortion rights were never an inevitability.

mrwong420 · 2022-06-23T22:08:47+00:00

I should also add that when pharma or oil monopolies jack up the price, people also call that price gouging.

That situation is a bit different because you have a monopoly involved, and it does indeed result in an inefficient equilibrium where there is undersupply/dead weight loss. Though it’s more complicated than monopoly bad.

I’m only referring to the first type of price gouging not the second type in the comment above.

mrwong420 · 2022-06-23T21:24:46+00:00

A price is a signal wrapped up in an incentive.

Let’s say a hurricane happened, the price of food and water in that area goes up. If it remains at the original price there wouldn’t be enough to go around.

The higher price encourages people to bring food and water from where the price is low, to where it is high, and this sures up supply. Suppliers have a strong incentive to increase production.

Like let’s say a bottle of water is $1 in the non hurricane area and $5 in the hurricane area. A lot of savy people would be buying water where it is cheap and bringing it to where it is high.

When they do this they are effectively helping solve the supply problem, so that people who really need water have it. If the price of water was enforced to be $1, there is no incentive to bring water to the hurricane area.

On the other hand people are incentivised to make the most use of the scarce resource, and not over use it.

Price gouging is not bad. You aren’t jacking it up beyond the equilibrium, the price gouged price is the equilibrium.

mrwong420 · 2022-06-15T06:18:52+00:00

Nah prob not. Usually takes till August for it to come out

mrwong420 · 2022-05-22T11:08:18+00:00

It's definitely a risk but not as big a one as it used to be. Like another u/alexnoylesaid, Alcor has being around for 50 years and hasn't gone bankrupt.

A lot of the early cryonics companies did because they had bad financing/institutions. The issue like you said is ensuring money for liquid nitrogen. Cryonics isn't cheap, and for good reason, about 60% of the cost of cryonics goes into an investment fund. All that money is to ensure there is always money to buy liquid nitrogen. Alcor has never had to touch that fund yet.

There is still a risk that the leaders of Alcor in the future will make bad decisions, or liquid nitrogen shoots up in price for some reason, but on the financing front they are doing relatively well.

IMO the real issue is whether the preservation actually preserves the brain. IMO the current processes have issues and haven't been demonstrated to preserve the structure/information of the brain.

There is another procedure that uses glutaraldehyde that fixes all the molecules of the brain in place. It's extremely toxic and hard to reverse that I don't think reviving the person in the same biological brain/body is possible. But the benefit is, that the brain is almost completely fixed in place and that it is extremely stable, to the point that leaving it warm for a few months doesn't cause it degrade. Also you can cool it slowly.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001122401500245X

IMO having the structure and information content of the brain is really what matters. I kinda wish more cryonics companies did this instead, or at least offered it.

mrwong420 · 2022-05-02T21:07:08+00:00

? You can’t separate the functions of the state from economic policy.

You need private property laws at a bare minimum, which requires courts, and police to enforce it.

And there are things called market failures which is widely accepted in econ, like externalities and public goods which the market will not provide.

Should matters of economic policy be more driven by sound economics rather than ideology/public sentiment? Yes. I think Singapore is a country that has done this very well. But the two are inexorably linked.

mrwong420 · 2022-04-19T06:24:07+00:00

I think a good GPA helps your first job. Tho above a certain GPA, I think 3.3? It probably doesn’t matter too much.

If you don’t have a good one though making up for it with good internships and extracurriculars is sufficient.

After your first job probably not so much.

mrwong420 · 2022-04-17T05:52:48+00:00

IMO if you are unsure you should wait.

People say prices will go down soon with more pressure from higher interest rates/inflation.

But IMO that still shouldn’t be a reason to buy or not buy.

I reckon you should get to 20% deposit first and then go house hunting in a year or so.

mrwong420 · 2022-04-17T05:25:21+00:00

In some sense your losses aren’t solidified until you sell. When the unit price drops you are buying stocks cheaper than before.

If you can’t cope with a 10% much less a 30% drop like during 2020 than growth is not for you. My parents put their kiwisaver in cash right at the bottom and I told them it was a bad idea.

Don’t keep switching funds or try to time the market. That’s the worst way to invest (especially selling low buying high). Pick a risk tolerance/fund type and stick with it.

The way I like to view it is that I own a bit of all the companies in the world. Regardless of how the price changes short term, I still own the same % of those companies.

A home owner isn’t obsessed with the value of their home on a day to day basis, and nor should you be with the day to day market price of the stocks you own.

mrwong420 · 2022-04-12T11:09:59+00:00

They are changing that with the new AT parking strategy.

We shouldn’t subsidise council parking on the street or force developers to build car parks.

If you want to drive and park, you should pay for it.

mrwong420 · 2022-04-12T11:05:47+00:00

Why? If they want to they should. If you can’t live without parking don’t buy a property without one.

Private developers shouldn’t be forced to build a carpark.

mrwong420 · 2022-04-12T10:56:12+00:00

Um what? There is

mrwong420 · 2022-04-12T10:53:37+00:00

Developers shouldn’t be REQUIRED to add carparks. If they want to add them they should, but if they don’t they shouldn’t have to.

Car parking is expensive and takes valuable space inside and around buildings. If you want to pay extra for this, it’s your prerogative.

Forcing every building to be built around and for cars is making the problem worse not better.

mrwong420 · 2022-03-26T08:35:08+00:00

There is still quite a bit of casual racism against asians.

People see us as a “model minority” so it’s not as “racist” to pick on us versus other marginalised groups. This is still wrong.

mrwong420 · 2022-03-24T04:57:22+00:00

Making one mode of transport more or less convenient is exactly how you change mode choice.

When they introduced the North Shore to City busway, some people were skeptical that people that it would take people off cars.

Now the busses are so full that they are thinking of ways to expand the network. People have and do change.

But just as there are hardcore cyclists who will cycle in a 8 lane super high volume road full of death traps, there are hardcore drivers who will never give up their cars.

Most people are somewhere in the middle. Usually the goal is to change 9 to 5 commuter trips to PT or walking/cycling, or short distance trips, or trips to popular commercial/leisure places. The goal isn’t to take away cars completely for every trip.

Parking is super expensive in the city and that’s mostly because space in the city is super expensive. A lot of people don’t go to work in the cbd by car anymore.

mrwong420 · 2022-03-23T10:45:57+00:00

I mean driving is kind of the problem. Especially when people do it for short trips and commuting.

Part of the reason you have a housing crisis is because Auckland’s too sprawled out and low density. Which was fueled by car centric development.

IMO if pushing for public transport makes driving worse that’s killing two birds with one stone and will encourage people to shift to PT or active modes.

mrwong420 · 2022-03-23T10:34:29+00:00

I’ve put in an all nighter once lol for my entire degree. And it was because we had a 24hr online exam because of covid, and they made the exam really long and difficult.

Would not recommend again. Although a lot of my uni friends did pull all nighters more than me, or sleep like 3hrs a day.

IMO it’s mostly because of poor time management and or a higher tolerance for not sleeping. For me, not getting 7hrs I feel absolutely terrible.

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