This is a good idea, but i think it could go even further.
Somewhat unrelated but if you really want to see how horrendously unfriendly the typical smartphone UX is, hand one to a technology-challenged grandparent (who can probably use a legacy cellphone/flip phone just fine) and ask them to call you.
They are more likely to accidentally take selfies than figure out how to call you, even if they have your phone number memorized.
It would be nice to have an android "main menu" which is just simply the dialpad when you turn on or unlock the phone. Add a button for "smartphone things" like search contact list or open other apps but keep it most elemental function (making phone calls) up front and and easy.
Rolling their own health care company might solve only part of the issue. I think the largest driver of healthcare costs right now is price gouging by providers with their charge masters, needless exams and procedures.
I have been thinking on a "simple rule" that could mitigate gerrymandering:
1. No congressional district can span more than 1 partial city and/or county.
This will force districts to be drawn to cover whole cities/counties and would stop ridiculous districts such as the Texas 34th which covers parts of at least 8 counties from the gulf coast up to San Antonio
> No congressional district can span more than 1 partial city and/or county.
State legislatures control the definition of administrative subdivisions of the state just as much as they do Congressional districts, so that rule does nothing. A state that is really committed to gerrymandering will just move city and county lines when it redistricts.
A smarter but still corrupt state legislature that wants to gerrymander without disrupting functional local government will make “city” and “county” names of ceremonial subdivisions used for limited purposes, so that redrawing their lines doesn't have much practical effect, and adopt a different set of subdivisions with overlapping lines for most functional local government purposes (“urbanizations” and “parishes”, perhaps.)
This sounds like a good idea at first, but I'm sure you would run into issues of large disparity in the importance of each vote. Not that it doesn't happen right now, but this would exacerbate the problem by introducing a force granularity level (beside the state level).
> It also doesn't seem like the internet regulatory state of pre-2015 was a disaster.
This is a common inaccurate argument I have seen pushed by the telcos to justify repeal.
There are many well-documented cases of how the "big 4" ISPs were increasingly blocking, redirecting (Charter's DNS redirection), interfering (injecting javascript and/or ads) and throttling traffic to internet services (Netflix) from their networks before the Title II reclassification of 2015.
All these abuses happened during a small window of a couple years between the previous FCC's Net Neutrality regulations were thrown out by the courts and 2015, when the Title II reclassification happened.
Based on what happened in the south of Chile, I think they might want to wait a couple more decades before claiming escaped salmon didn't gain finhold in the wild:
My uncle was among the pioneers of salmon farming in the south of Chile on the early 70s. A storm destroyed their first farm causing salmon to escape to the ocean. The escaped salmon (chinook) started showing back in noticeable numbers just around 10 years ago.
The article's title seems click-bait. It makes good points identifying some of the already known weaknesses in bitcoin's design, but he is basically complaining that Satoshi didn't predict how his creation would evolve over time which seems unfair.
He's complaining that Satoshi did predict how his creation would evolve, he just guessed wrong in a lot of the particulars. Because of course he was. Predicting the future is hard.
But predicting the past is much easier. We have a privileged position to see that, as implemented, Bitcoin is a pretty shitty currency (and a decent high risk investment vehicle). It's way too volatile, transactions are very high friction, and both of those problems look like they'll continue to get worse as Bitcoin continues to mature. More over, it's looking like none of this will actually avoid state capture now that a state actor (China) has decided they care.
No piece of software in human history has been perfect on day one. The real world always has a few surprises. But Bitcoin doesn't have a viable mechanism for change. No central authority and no privileged user means all but the most glaring bugs are unfixable.
Maybe we don't need a unique id at the federal level after all. Financial institutions are already required to follow KYC (Know Your Customer) laws. For this they need a way to validate the identity of the customers they do business with. I guess they already have enough ways to do this without relying on SSN or a potential national id card.
BTW, after the Equifax hack, financial institutions should be mandated to stop trusting SSN as proof of identity.
> Lenny actually changes it's response depending on what the caller does. Pauses, keywords, etc.
It's actually a sequence of recordings played in the same order every time in a loop from the 5th. Telemarketers usually realize it a few recordings into the second loop.
Now imagine combining machine learning with conversation analysis to create the ultimate Lenny.
They are loops. I just listened to the 50 minute one, and 35 minutes in he's saying the same phrases he's already said near the beginning. "3rd eldest daughter..."
Somewhat unrelated but if you really want to see how horrendously unfriendly the typical smartphone UX is, hand one to a technology-challenged grandparent (who can probably use a legacy cellphone/flip phone just fine) and ask them to call you.
They are more likely to accidentally take selfies than figure out how to call you, even if they have your phone number memorized.
It would be nice to have an android "main menu" which is just simply the dialpad when you turn on or unlock the phone. Add a button for "smartphone things" like search contact list or open other apps but keep it most elemental function (making phone calls) up front and and easy.