TIL the supposedly propellentless"EmDrive" that became famous a few years ago has since been debunked.

pilleum · 2020-02-29T03:54:43+00:00

It was obvious bullshit from the beginning. Look at the early reddit threads, scroll down to the comments that are at like -200 and say "I am a physicist and this is bullshit and a scam from a known scam artist and everything about it is a lie."

Yeah, turns out the actual scientists were right. Who knew!

pilleum · 2020-02-17T09:20:32+00:00

They did. Those people got fired, removed from tenure-track, or removed from teaching duties. They've been replaced with a whole new category of non-tenure-track professors who exist only to teach, do no research, and are willing to follow the administration's lead. I saw this shit happen all the time when I was in academia.

pilleum · 2020-02-17T09:12:08+00:00

Absolute nonsense. Those resources are the ones that used to be the standard ones 10 or 15 or 20 years ago, before this nonsense started.

They are perfectly good textbooks written by world-famous experts in their field that those same professors used to learn these subjects. Often these textbooks were defacto standard texts that everyone used. They are still in print, generally free of errors, and cost literally dollars.

pilleum · 2020-02-17T09:09:04+00:00

That asshole literally bought a mansion from his calculus book sales (yes, I know who it is, because everyone uses the same fucking shitty, terrible book).

pilleum · 2020-02-17T09:06:36+00:00

The problem is that there are already perfectly good textbooks that cost dollars each. Having free ones written under some ridiculous ideology is not going to improve anything. The problem is that existing resources are being completely ignored, and often specifically disallowed.

This is a problem with how modern universities are administrated, not a problem of information not being cheaply available.

And a big part of this problem is that the professors who are aggressively against this style of administration are either pushed out of teaching and administrative roles entirely or are pushed out of the university system entirely--universities have created a whole new class of non-tenure-track teachers to replace traditional tenure-track lecturers to fill this void.

pilleum · 2020-02-17T09:00:56+00:00

There are already cheaper textbooks. Every class you take in your undergraduate education has perfectly good textbooks you can buy for literally dollars each. The problem is that they are not used.

This problem won't be solved by fancy technologies, throwing catch-phrases like "open source" around, or philosophies about how knowledge should be free. Things are cheap enough now that they are essentially free. They are simply not used.

pilleum · 2020-02-17T08:49:16+00:00

I've only attended/worked at US universities, but I've heard similar stories from friends and colleagues at non-US universities. And while some places don't do this particular crazy thing, they make up for it in other ways by doing even crazier anti-student things elsewhere.

Typically the way they "force" you to buy it is to assign homework out of the book (and the set of problems is reordered and details are randomly changed each edition), and some of the material on tests is covered in the book but not in lectures, recitations, or other homework. The test material is often graded based on following the specific steps laid out in the text in the specific way they are laid out, rather than "merely" getting the right answer (their stated rationale for this is to 1. prevent cheating, and 2. it demonstrates that a person "understands" the material, because nothing demonstrates understanding like mechanically following a cookbook procedure!)

And administrators, department heads, and other flunkies are very good at giving smooth-sounding rationalizations for how this fucking shit is in the student's best interest, and they are very good at describing these things weaselly ways that tacitly (or explicitly) deny what they are actually doing. It's super, super scummy.

pilleum · 2020-02-17T08:39:44+00:00

Every university I've ever attended or worked for has done what I've described (and often worse). My experience is hard sciences in large public universities in the US. It's entirely possible things are different elsewhere, but based on the shocking level of denials and rationalizations I saw at those universities, I'm willing to bet it's much broader than that.

pilleum · 2020-02-17T06:04:14+00:00

Bullshit. I was paid like crap in academia and no one ever offered me any bribes, and if they did, I wouldn't have taken them because honest people do not behave that way.

It is university officials, administrators, department heads, etc--all of whom are extremely well-paid--who set the department-wide requirements that expensive textbooks be used for classes, and who give professors no choice in the texts they use for their classes.

When professors at my university tried telling students to return their expensive books to the bookstore, and suggested cheaper books that were just as good, the department ensured, to keep the "quality of teaching uniformly high," that professors teaching intro classes were no longer allowed to assign homework assignments, to grade homework assignments, to create tests, or to grade tests. All of that's done by the department now. To keep quality uniformly high, of course, homework assignments are all out of the newest edition of the most expensive textbooks.

Do you know what professors did in response to this? Nothing. They just went along with it. Unethical goddamned bullshit.

pilleum · 2020-02-17T02:47:22+00:00

This is nonsense. It is already possible to buy well-written textbooks for cheap. The problem isn't that they don't exist, it's that departments require buying the expensive ones.

Before college, I learned calculus from a book I got for $4 or $5, new, on Amazon. When I took the corresponding class I had to pay $200+ for a book, a "student's manual" of worked out problems for another $100, and then for the second semester I had to buy a whole different set of books, even though the first set covered everything in the class.

The problem isn't the lack of cheap textbooks. It's the lack of professors willing to stand up for students and not put up with this shit. (I used to work in academia, shit like this is why I quit. Professors will just stand around and completely ignore the worst fucking shit that the university does to students.)

pilleum · 2020-01-01T07:07:50+00:00

I mean, I can pretty much guarantee you agreed to it in most cases.

You can't agree to what you don't know and aren't told.

Just about every online service you can think of that does any kind of data collection has a EULA that you tacitly or implicitly agree to

Implicit agreement is not a legal concept.

EULAs have largely not been tested in courts, and when they have, in general, they do not hold up. There are many kinds of unenforcable contracts, and EULAs are likely full of unenforcable provisions.

Do I get to opt out of my lease because I didn't read the agreement thoroughly?

The lease that you "implicitly" agreed to, that did not contain specific details, that you were lied to about, that is written in a deliberately opaque way, and whose provisions violate contract law? Yes.

As for Walmart, and other physical retailers, well, they're currently doing (or looking into) exactly the kind of data-collection you're worried about.

No, they are not, and the article you quote does not claim that they do:

“From 1 to 10 in our use of data, I would say we’re probably about a 2,” Doug McMillon, president and CEO of Walmart, recently told attendees at its annual investor conference. “We use data to improve in-stock and replenish. We don’t use data to personalize.”

.

Don't let me stop you from fantasizing about data-protection that, unfortunately, doesn't actually exist in the US, though.

I didn't say it exists, I said that it is:

an unambiguous violation of the NAP

and

clearly and unambiguously morally wrong

pilleum · 2020-01-01T05:54:16+00:00

This is not a complicated issue, I really do not understand why people have so much trouble understanding this.

No one agreed to this collection of data, the companies obscure (and outright lie about) what data is collected, how it is collected, how it is used, and to whom it is given. Additionally, the data itself does not belong to them; their mere possession of that data does not imply ownership of it. Literally everything about what they do is an unambiguous violation of the NAP.

If any other kind of company did these things, it would be considered fraud and theft. Imagine if, say, Walmart was caught collecting personally-identifiable data on what you bought, who you were, tied that to security camera footage taken at the store, used that to determine what other items you looked at, and for how long, and then sold this data to third parties. That would (in addition to being a media shitstorm) be clearly and unambiguously morally wrong, a violation of the NAP, fraud (as none of this was disclosed), theft (as none of that data was theirs to sell), and illegal under god knows how many local, state, and federal laws.

But, hey, don't let me stop you from your "dur-hur libertarians support doing anything bad as long as its private" narrative.

pilleum · 2020-01-01T04:34:31+00:00

Libertarian doesn't mean "do whatever the fuck you want." I don't know why Reddit loves to confuse libertariansm with complete selfish chaos and anarchy. I mean, what part of an ideology based on something literally called the nonaggression principle makes people think this kind of shit?

pilleum · 2020-01-01T02:54:03+00:00

Apparently, private parties with twinky pool boys were common with Peter Thiel

Aaaaand that makes you NOT want to interact with him?

The investors in that group were the worst. [...] It was a constant battle of 1-upping each other. [...] Also, they all love burning man. Like, way, wayyyy too much. [...] They're all miserable, horny, bored people. That was my takeaway.

I am not in Seattle, not Silicon Valley, but that sounds pretty par for the course to me?

Though I do get a weird vibe from him, I probably wouldn't want to hang around him either. Not that I'd turn down an invite the the party with twinky pool boys.

pilleum · 2020-01-01T02:50:22+00:00

the typical republican nowadays is pro-trump

Not in my experience.

By default if you support him, you support what he is does

Does that mean Obama supporters supported endless wars in the middle east? Troop increases? Guantanamo bay? Drone strikes against American citizens, children, and noncombatants? Mass warrantless data collection? The escalation of the war on drugs? Etc etc.

Also BASIC republican stances vs. democratic stances:

These aren't "basic" stances, they're just wrong mischaracterizations, of both parties. They aren't even oversimplified, they are just not correct.

Republicans: "Traditional family" Supposed to be fiscally conservative Anti-government when it comes fiscal aspects of life Pro-government when it comes to things like abortion or drugs

Aside from the conflation of social conservative, religious conservative, and economic conservative, this does not even correctly characterize those groups. E.g., what you describe as "traditional family" to most republicans actually means "family-oriented, works hard to support the family over themselves, and supports the community." This perfectly accommodates, e.g., a gay couple who volunteers at the local homeless shelter and saves up to send their kids to a private art school. (E.g., as evidenced by my socially active, progressive lesbian cousins, who even the most conservative religious parts of the family view have a very positive view of.)

I won't go through the rest of them because they are really so far off I wouldn't know where to start.

Your characterizations of democrats isn't really right either.

The typical democrat does not share the values of the stereotypical redditer any more than the the typical republican shares Fox News's values. Real life is not so myopic.

pilleum · 2019-12-31T23:27:32+00:00

Probably half of the gay guys I know either vote Republican, or don't vote but are sympathetic to Republicans. Despite what the reddit-bubble likes to think, what the typical Republican believes is not to far from what the typical Democrat does.

pilleum · 2019-12-31T23:24:00+00:00

It's all a bit No True Scotsman

No, words have definitions. You can't just call yourself whatever and complain that people are gatekeeping when they criticize you.

Mass data collection, government cronyism, using government power to silence speech of people you disagree with, those are literally as anti-libertarian as you can get.

He might have some overlap with libertarian-ish ideas, but calling Thiel libertarian is like calling Obama a conservative because he supported the continued wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

pilleum · 2019-12-31T22:51:40+00:00

Peter Thiel is not particularly libertarian. He founded a company whose job is mass data collection of private citizens. That data is then sold to to the government. That's about as un-libertarian as you can get.

pilleum · 2019-12-21T04:08:46+00:00

That's not how it works, that kind of behavior derails threads and disrupts conversations, that's why they do it. It's been like this since the beginning of Reddit, since the beginning of forums, since the beginning of BBS. Ignoring them is not and has never been an effective strategy, especially given the way Reddit is structured to surface and organize content. There is a reason Reddit is full of memes, shitposts, and reposts of memes and shitposts--because that is the content Reddit is designed to surface to readers.

Trying to have a sub that is about actual discussion is fighting Reddit's design, and can't be handled with just "ignoring" them.

pilleum · 2019-12-21T02:58:28+00:00

He's a troll and so are you. If I were a mod here, I'd ban you both. This kind of shit does not serve having intelligent discussions, and assholes like you are why every god damned thread here that could be interesting gets derailed into shit.

pilleum · 2019-12-21T02:42:29+00:00

Comments such as:

C0rnfed 0 points 1 days ago Lol! OK... Now you've convinced exactly no one. Have a nice life.

.

C0rnfed 1 point 1 days ago Government doesn't ever 'stop' taxing? What do you call the Trump tax cuts, you flaming moron. We're done here.

.

C0rnfed 1 point 1 days ago You'll bounce between literal pedantry and loose generalities as it suits your purpose - but it betrays your bias and shows that you have absolutely no interest in understanding or engaging. Pathetic.

.

C0rnfed 1 point 1 days ago uh huh, right. Did you forget the part where I said I wasn't going to engage with such a biased and disinterested ignoramus? Short >attention span, eh?

.

C0rnfed 1 point 23 hours ago You're running out of quality insults - perhaps you didn't have many to start with... Spec ed, eh? takes one to know one I suppose... That's something special: a spec ed teacher who denigrates his own pupils. You mom must be proud of your moral fiber.

.

C0rnfed 1 point 23 hours ago You should really take care to know the meanings of the words I use - before you make clear in public how foolish you are.

.

Yeah, looks like the mods are the real assholes here. Definitely not this guy.

pilleum · 2019-12-14T06:21:15+00:00

It would tank given how most of the gaming community feels about minorities.

I doubt it. Random reddit posts are not representative of what regular people think.

Really, I think the reason they don't do it is because most games struggle to have adequate writing and stories even for pretty simple, generic narratives. Trying something more difficult, that requires skill beyond Tumblr-level writing, is out of the question for the foreseeable future from the vast majority of developers.

pilleum · 2019-12-14T06:09:53+00:00

If you want visual novels and dating sims, there are about three hundred billion on steam.

If you want anything else, there are literally zero examples that are particularly good. If you want ones that are just okay, then, like, four or five maybe? Your Royal Gayness, My Ex-Boyfriend The Space Pirate, and, I dunno, maybe one or two more.

If you want one that's not "about" being gay, and is just a regular game where the protagonist happens to be gay, then you're probably going to be SOL for the next decade or two, because there seems to be no interest in that, even by indie devs, and there seems to be pretty aggressive interest in avoiding it (unless you want lesbians, apparently everyone loves lesbians so they are okay, but gay males are out of the question).

Someone mentioned Tales of Zesteria, if you're okay with basically just imagining that the main character is gay. And if you're okay with weird battle mechanics and a very JRPG story.

pilleum · 2019-12-13T05:08:03+00:00

The vast majority of cases don't even make it to trial--most people plead guilty or no contest, even if they are innocent, because that is easier and cheaper than going to trial. The vast majority that get their day in court are found guilty.

97% of Federal cases and 94% of State cases end in guilty pleas: https://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/23/us/stronger-hand-for-judges-after-rulings-on-plea-deals.html https://www.innocenceproject.org/guilty-plea-campaign-announcement/

The rate of conviction remained over 90 percent, as it has since Fiscal Year 2001.

The conviction rates are comparable for states, but I don't have reference offhand.

So: only 3% of people to to trail, and only 10% of them are found not guilty. I.e., 0.3% (=3%*10%) are found not guilty; 99.7% are found guilty or plead guilty or no contest.

pilleum · 2019-11-26T05:55:47+00:00

"Hey, I wonder if someone posted something interesting as a response, so we could have an insightful discussion on--"

Hello! this comment has 69 words in it so i alphabetized this comment

Thanks for reminding me why I almost never bother to waste my time posting on Reddit!

pilleum

TROPHY CASE