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In the best interest of the shareholders might reasonably interpreted as, say, not destroying the biosphere. Fiduciary duty is certainly not "maximise profits whatever the consequences".

IMO the proposed solution of StrictYAML + schema is the right one here and what we use extensively for human readable configs. StrictYAML (linked to in the post) is essentially a string-type-only restriction of YAML, so you impose your type coercion on the parsed data structure.


If you have a schema, why not using directly something like protobufs?


The comment you replied to talks about human readable configs



https://protobuf.dev/reference/protobuf/textformat-spec/#:~:...

and, setting that aside, the very next paragraph says that this is a legit representation of -2.0 which means something has gone gravely wrong

  value: -
    # change this to 3.14 one day
    2.0


To be clear, the US is not unique in its ability to do this. Many other countries would benefit from understanding it! In the UK we have a government wanting to build a growth strategy around finance. It's like a parody that nobody gets (yet).


I'm interestingly in agreement with you. A learned understanding of our monetary system [1] makes it clear that taxes are primarily about freeing resources that the state can use to provision itself, not raising money. In such a system it is much easier to point out unintended consequences as well as understand what makes a tax effective or not, assuming one chooses to understand it.

The question then is only how much government you want, which is a political question.

[1] relevant to the UK, but equivalent systems exist in any monetarily sovereign country: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4890683


Is the vaccine still useful post infection?


yes. many different strains and even if your body clears infection with one doesn’t protect against other strains


Anecdotal evidence of curative effects even for long term symptomatic infection exists.


Is the fancy new escapement better than a crystal oscillator?


No, but it’s also not supposed to be. It’s probably impossible for any mechanical movement to be as accurate as a quartz crystal.


No, but: https://chrono24.app/rolex/rolex-datejust-oysterquartz-ref-1...

Super accurate thermally compensated quartz.


For accuracy? It's probably a little worse than quartz. The escapement will have a longer overall lifespan, and may need servicing every couple decades, as opposed to a new battery every couple years.


>The escapement will have a longer overall lifespan, and may need servicing every couple decades, as opposed to a new battery every couple years.

My Citizen Ecodrive needed the first capacitor change after 17 years of daily wear. Literally zero service to the watch before that.

Also I really really don't buy that this mechanical movement won't need service every couple years like pretty much any mechanical watch out there. Where do you take the decades part from?


For their newest models, Rolex recommends service once per decade. FWIW, my five year old GMT is running noticeably worse than new in 2020.


Probably the ruby that the spinning parts sit between and only need to be relubricated occasionally. I'm just going of what I've seen on service videos.


I may just know a much lazier segment of mechanical watch owners.


I am surprised we cannot use the self-winding or normal wind-up mechanics for power generation to charge a battery to supplement solar, but I expect the experiments have already been done and it was either not cost effective or just did not give out enough power to be useful.


It's been done and it works quite well from what I've read! I am not sure that Seiko still makes them, but you can still find some new ones for sale. Always wanted to get one of these since they're quite unique.

https://www.seikowatches.com/us-en/customerservice/knowledge...

https://www.jomashop.com/seiko-kinetic-watch-ska791.html

Unfortunately, Seiko's "Kinetic" movements don't seem to have ever been a big hit, so I don't know if it's something people actually wanted.

Ultimately I think the "problem" is that regular solar watches work so damn well, and that most quartz buyers have no interest in "unique" movements. I mean, I do, but I'm the minority. And I still never bought one...


I have had a Kinetic since 1999; a millennium birthday present to myself.

It's a bit of an oddity.

The lithium-ion power cell needs to be replaced every 5-10 years, and it's relatively expensive part.

It has more mechanical complexity than a quartz plus the same maintenance.

But it works really well. It's a hybrid.

I love it despite this, it's unusual looking and the quirkiness makes it fun to talk about.


Is it easily user-replaceable? How expensive is it?

I really appreciate your reply.


Do you mean like a quartz timer?

Almost certainly not, but that's not really the point for mechanical watches.

Quartz oscillating frequency is like 32k Hz. Good luck getting anything mechanical to operate at those frequencies.


There was the Bulova Accutron,[1] which used a 360 Hz tuning fork. This was the most accurate watch in the 1960s. Here's high frame rate video of the mechanism.[2] It's an electrically powered tuning fork ratcheting a toothed wheel forward. This is backwards from an escapement clock or watch.

Worked fine, used by astronauts, made obsolete by quartz watches.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulova

[2] https://youtu.be/CPS7aNCAwAA?t=194


The gyroscope in your phone is (microelectro)mechanical. Considering that the Rolex in question are using MEMS-based techniques, they might as well go all the way and make an entire movement out of MEMS designs.


I’d say so, yes.


More than that, any value it has is based on the fact you have to pay taxes in it, by threat of violence.


To be fair, that threat of violence is also the only thing enforcing your claims of property ownership. In its absence you'd have to rely on your community's consent.

I guess that alternative scenario sounds more dystopian the more wealth you have - but with enough wealth you can also imagine having a private security force providing that threat of violence to keep the community in check.


According to this sodium ion battery product, it still charge quite happily at -20 degrees C:

https://midsummerwholesale.co.uk/buy/eleven-energy/4-5-kwh-s...


A fair chunk of the energy spend goes to multinationals and ultimately sovereign wealth funds. The housing goes to rentiers: banks for the most part, but also landlords and other investment entities that are living nicely off the income without having to do very much - parasites in other words.


The purpose of tax is to free resources from the private sector so it can be purchased at non-inflationary prices (as well as driving the currency). The actual financial operations of the UK make it clear that taxes at the national government level are not used for paying for anything, as you rightly point out: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4890683


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