Interesting Links for 13-12-2014

[andrewducker]

• Beyond the Flynn Effect (A fascinating, deep, look into where it comes from, and what it means)
  (tags: intelligence iq psychology environment education genetics )
• Beware people who quote a single study (and what we can learn about minimum wages)
  (tags: research minimumwage )
• Mind-Bending Placemat Mimics Einstein's Space-Time Fabric Theory
  (tags:

Comments

[bart_calendar]

This May is going to be an interesting test of if piracy can be reduced or not.

In America when the new season of game of thrones comes out people will be able to buy it per episode from HBO. Meanwhile people in the rest of the world won't.

That should give us good test data - because we'll be able to look at America as a control group to see if pirating of Game Of Thrones there becomes proportionally less than the pirating of it in other countries where the on demand paid viewing isn't offered. And we already have data of how much it was pirated over the past three years to compare it to.

[bart_calendar]

(A particularly good control since HBO allows torrenting of game of thrones, so it's a case where torrenting isn't illegal.)

[andrewducker]

Since when does HBO allow torrenting???

[bart_calendar]

Last year they said that in the case of GOT they allow torrenting because they did the math and realized that torrenting was leading to enough increased GOT box set and merch sales that it made up for any loses.

[gonzo21]

Good god, so not only does a british citizen need to be earning a lot of money to have their married partner stay here with them, if they lose their job, their partner is ejected from the country.

This immigration control business has gone insane. They're disproportionately clobbering outside EU people to try desperately to reduce the numbers any way they can because there's nothing they can do about EU migration.

I hope somebody is taking the UK government to the ECHR over this.

[andrewducker]

Yeah, it's a ridiculous situation. I'd love to know how many people are actively affected by this, and how much money the government thinks it's saving by causing this misery.

[gonzo21]

Yeah, because honestly I think just one family unable to live together is too many. There has to be an exception made for marriage, if somebody is married, their spouse should just be allowed residency, end of story.

[ckd]

It's even more ludicrous than that.

First off, citizens of other EU countries can bring their non-EU spouses into the UK under their treaty rights without the income threshold that applies only to UK citizens.

Second, UK citizens can exercise their treaty rights to bring in non-EU spouses on the same terms-while living in the EU but outside the UK.

Third, if they do the latter for three months and then move to the UK, they are considered to be still exercising those rights and are exempted from the income threshold.

[elfy]

I find the torture debate interesting and will watch it and maybe comment later when I have time to think about it. I am not sure if here in germany people have a different attitude towards torture or if it's just the people I surround myself with/the social circles I move in.

Facebook dislike

[drdoug]

This would be a massive mistake. You do get pockets of good behaviour on sites with downvoting but you also get a massive problem with abuse. On things like chans and Reddit that might be seen as a feature, but not on a site for the general public.

(At one point in the distant past I was on top of the literature on reputation systems, and "you probably don't want downvoting" was the second clearest lesson from it. First was "getting it right is really complex and really hard on multiple axes".)

Re: Facebook dislike

[andrewducker]

I wasn't reading this as "you'd have the option to both like and dislike posts", but as "When the emotional context of the post is wrong for 'liking' it, you'd have the option to change the word 'like' to somethine else, like 'dislike', or 'sympathise'."

[kalimac]

They say that they'd have to ensure that "dislike" didn't become a form of downvoting, but heck, the minute they use the term "dislike", that's what both drdoug and I assumed it meant.

It's a nonstarter if they put it that way. That, or a complete disaster.

They're right, though, that they need a broader term than "like" for when that's not the appropriate sentiment. "Sympathy"? "Hugs"? No, they'd need a whole spectrum, and then it'd become like a shelf of pre-printed Hallmark greeting cards.

[andrewducker]

I think they'd have to only have one option on any given post. If you had both "like" and "dislike" then people would use it for voting.

If "My mum died" had only a "dislike" button and "I got a new job" had only a "like" button then it couldn't really get used for voting.

[apostle_of_eris]

“When four sit down to conspire, three are police spies and one is a fool” - apocryphal Nineteenth Century Russian proverb
The guy in the meeting who says he can get the explosives is the police plant. - 60s wisdom

Good thing that dumb pig wasn't quite dumb enough to try to use his gun in the video position. They jam, and the rest of the force responding to his panic could have done serious damage.