As you say, pro-rating first charge has the content unlock problem and "anniversary date" of charge defeats aggregation.
TLDR: Aggregate on a single day, but pro-rate the second month, not the first, so there isn't a "runt" payment up-front.
I start a monthly $20/mo pledge on Feb 15th. I'm billed $20 on the Feb 15th, same day. This covers one month, Feb 15th - March 15th. Let's say the first of the month is aggregation day. Come March 1st I'm already paid up through the 15th, so I get billed for the pro-rated $10 for the second half of March. Come April 1st and all aggregation days thereafter I can now be billed on aggregation day for the full monthly charge.
> TLDR: Aggregate on a single day, but pro-rate the second month, not the first, so there isn't a "runt" payment up-front.
That was my immediate thought reading this text. Of course it'll confuse some users, but since it's the fairest way, it should be the way to go. Also, just don't charge for the prorated period if the feed is going to be as big as the contribution (e.g. for a couple days for someone contributing $2 a month)
This is essentially the same feedback I left in the form: pro-rate the 2nd payment, and waive it entirely if it's too small to justify the fee. The payment processing confirmation email that Patreon sends out could put an asterisk next to a pro-rated pledge and explain what's going on down below for people who are paying close attention.
Have you ever threatened to, or alluded to your ability to do so, to obtain commercial negotiating leverage in a context other than defending the company from the threat of a patent suit?
Who cares? Cloudflare are a practicing entity, presumably with legitimate patents. They aren't necessarily at war with software patents as a concept, just the obvious abuse.
As much as I am against software patents in general, that isn't entirely true... I would say that most patents aren't, or shouldn't be legitimate, not that none of them are.
There's a separate, parallel system of checking checks. My credit is in very good shape, but there's a company out there that thinks somebody with my name passed a bad check in a state where I don't reside on a bank account that was no longer open when the transaction was made--indeed, the bank itself no longer existed at the time.
I found this out when I went to try to open a joint account with a business partner and got denied. We ended up opening the account at an institution which I already used, instead.
Suppose you have a dataset big enough that it needs to be spread across a storage cluster. Now you'd like to run some kind of operation that's either completely parallel, or fits the map/reduce model. Maybe you have a petabyte worth of video files and you want to generate thumbnails, or extract metadata, or find all frames of video with text in them.
If compute is separated from storage, then all of that video data has to be streamed over the network from a storage node to a compute node before computation can even begin; the data is "shipped" to compute.
Presumably the function you want to execute is vastly smaller than the data. It would require much less time and bandwidth to run the function on the same node as the data it's accessing; no network overhead. Assuming you have an adequate balance between compute and storage, you get much lower latency access to the data.
Some downsides include
- running arbitrary code on your storage node means trusting your users or having very good sandboxing
- you now have to balance compute and storage on any given node
If it's surprising to you that there are women who want to work on oil rigs, and want that badly enough to go through the trouble of making a case out of it, then you may need to update your beliefs about what it means to be a woman.
I unfortunately think you are undermining your own argument here with this focus.
It's clear that institutional biases and societal biases exist, and that some of these biases may act as steering currents for certain people to go into certain careers. However, there always will be some cases of people who like to "steer against the current" and work in a field that's outside the society-traditional bias in one way or another (gender or otherwise).
A good goal, I think, is to ensure that merit is the chief qualification for employment. Statements such as (paraphrasing) "oil rigs are a man's club" and "pretty women would be a distraction" is way too sweeping -- lazy group collective thinking at its most absolute, playing on stereotypes of both women and men. Humans have a wide range of abilities and behaviors and it doesn't always divide neatly in binary form.
From a personal standpoint, I would call this biased group-think sort of hiring practices as far from optimal. If someone can do the job well, they should do it if they are good at it. I do know someone, for instance, who's a female welder. Apparently, only 5% of welders are women. Well, she's one of them and from all indications she's good at it. Luckily, the place she works at doesn't have a "welding is a MAN's job" sort of attitude.
(Note that this bias can also apply in reverse. Think of the current societal bias with men teaching elementary school, for instance.)
Now, whether or not government enforced action (eg, to what degree, and what tools, governments should use to challenge the bias) is a good thing or not, I think that's more of an open question. The truth is, in some cases, some people hold onto stereotype so heavily, that they will literally threaten people who challenge this "norm" with harassment and violence. Clearly in this sort of case, the government should be involved.
However, for something like standard hiring practices, I'm a little fuzzy as to how much government should dictate anti-discrimination policy, if any. I wouldn't mind seeing more data in this regard; at this point, I don't know how effective various tools have been at eliminating lazy hiring groupthink, or whether they aren't terribly effective at anything but increasing resentment.
>A good goal, I think, is to ensure that merit is the chief qualification for employment
I agree with you
>It's clear that institutional biases and societal biases exist, and that some of these biases may act as steering currents for certain people to go into certain careers.
We agree on that, too
>If someone can do the job well, they should do it if they are good at it. I do know someone, for instance, who's a female welder. Apparently, only 5% of welders are women. Well, she's one of them and from all indications she's good at it. Luckily, the place she works at doesn't have a "welding is a MAN's job" sort of attitude.
That's good. I would never want to work somewhere that had an attitude that "this is a man's job, only men can do it"
>Now, whether or not government enforced action (eg, to what degree, and what tools, governments should use to challenge the bias) is a good thing or not, I think that's more of an open question.
I agree with you there as well. Even though I wouldn't want to work for a company that refused to hire women due to some illogical bigotry, I don't think it's government's role to force results on to who companies can hire.
Look, we agree on almost everything, but I think you and others are missing my point because this is an emotionally sensitive topic for some people, and one that the media has also blown out of proportion. The idea that there are no differences between people is totally fraudulent. When are we going to sue the NBA for discriminating against Asians? What's the point if we don't? There are huge differences even between men and women. Serena and Venus Williams claimed they could beat any man in Tennis, and so they ended up playing a 203'rd ranked player "after he had a case of beer and a smoke," and neither could barely score a single point against him. There are differences between people and that's the way it is.
If any of these people arguing against this actually cared about human rights or civil liberties they'd have said so by now. What they really care about are their feelings. That's what this is about - that, and lawyers cashing in on new diversity laws.
You are insane if you think auto mechanics, miners, truck drivers, plumbers, construction workers, landscapers, or working on fishing vessels, or other physically demanding, laborious jobs, are not preferred more by men than women.
Yeah, and girls prefer pink... How much of this is because of how women are brought up, believing that these are mens jobs, rather than by nature? Women do plenty of physically demanding jobs, just not generally these stereotypical "mens" jobs.
Hell, if you look at poorer countries, you see women doing all kinds of physically demanding stuff like carrying water for miles. Its not that they can't or won't do them when they have to, its that when they have a choice that they don't and I believe that's because from a young age and in media these things are portrayed as very un-womanly.
In poor countries, there are plenty of women doing physically exhausting jobs, but also plenty of women pursuing engineering careers. On the other hand, in many rich countries most jobs have huge gender disparities. It all comes down to the freedom of choice given to people -- if you're rich and you're free to choose what you are going to do, you'll choose whatever you like the most.
I agree with what you say. My point is just that "whatever you like the most" is biased by your upbringing, culture and media. Hence my "girls prefer pink" comment - that's not nature, its nurture - because we're brought up to associate pink with femininity.
Did you know that young monkeys of many species (rhesus, bonobo) have pretty gendered preference when it comes to the toy choice? Female monkeys prefer soft toys like teddy bears, while male prefer mechanical toys, like cars on wheels. Google "monkey gender toy preference", there has been tons of research on it.
This means that even if preference for pink was purely by nurture (which I also consider unlikely), the data on toy preference strongly suggests that preference for certain jobs or activities is not purely nurture, and has at least some nature aspect.
Now, it is difficult to quantify how much exactly is the split between nature and nurture, one of the reasons being the fact that lots of what you would call nurture would never take place if a nature didn't provide people with preferences in the first place. However, blaming everything on "upbringing, culture and media" is certainly incongruent with reality.
Of course it is. Our country has spent 14 trillion on wars in recent years while we can't provide everyone with healthcare, or even clean drinking water. This issue is not about civil liberties or human rights. This is about people's feelings who have political representation. Lawyers who can profit off of it. And an increasingly authoritarian, surveillance, human rights abusing, police state that wants to control the people it rules over. Harrison Bergeron, we will be seeing you soon in our future.
>“War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking into the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent.”
― George Orwell, 1984
If people were really so equal, the NBA should be sued by Asians. There have been 2 (2!) women in history who have been able to dunk a basketball in a NCAA game. I could dunk a basketball in high school. Give me a break, the whole thing is ridiculously fraudulent. I would not want to work somewhere that had some bigoted, awful idea and attitude that a 'woman can not do a man's job,' I would never want to work somewhere like that -- but that's not the role of government to decide. We need people in government who are going to fight for civil liberties and human rights, people who will progress humanity off this planet and into the stars. People who will fight against corruption. Instead we get people who want to take advantage of people's feelings for their own profit or security.
"You are insane if you think auto mechanics, miners, truck drivers, plumbers, construction workers, landscapers, or working on fishing vessels, or other physically demanding, laborious jobs, are not preferred more by men than women."
Then why developers are mostly men?
And why there is more and more female football/soccer players?
It might be harder for females to get muscles, compared to men but it does not mean they do not want to do and can do physically demanding jobs.
The heaviest thing an auto mechanic typically lifts is a tire. Everything else is going to be lifted by a hoist, because no human, male or female, can pull an engine out of a car. Auto mechanic is, in fact, a skilled job involving a mental model of a very complex system, diagnosis, testing, research, and tool usage.
Modern mining is done primarily by machines which are tended to by mechanics. Ever wonder why there are so few mining jobs these days? That would be automation improving the efficiency and taking away manual jobs.
Speaking of which, truck drivers... will be obsolete soon. Even so, driving is not a task that inherently favors upper body strength.
OK, so the physical argument holds no water. What's left? Prejudice and social expectations -- which is to, say a prevalent institutional bias.
You are sounding like you have never worked in a job like this. I have worked for a carpenter and an automechanic. Ever seen someone unable to even get the heat shrink wrap off a pneumatic tool and replace the lines? I saw someone unable to do it and end up gashing their hand as they were trying to cut it off. Ever work under a hot engine bay for 8 hours? Holding your hands above your head the entire time, and developing pain in your neck? Ever used an angle grinder? Should I trust you with one? Ever lifted 300lb pieces of granite, cut them to size and polish them? That's hard work. Do you think you can do it?
Besides, by focusing 100% on this physical aspect you're nearly just attack a straw man argument and ignoring the substance of everything else. Not every person is exactly the same and it doesn't matter. Get over it.
Seen someone screw up because they weren't trained: yup.
Work under a hot engine bay for 8 hours: no, but I've worked outdoors carrying construction material during heat waves, and I've worked indoors in cold data centers.
Holding my hands over my head until pain develops: yup. I don't recommend it to anyone.
Used an angle grinder: no. I have used lots of other power tools. Should you trust me with one? Not until I'm trained on it.
Lifted 300lb pieces of granite: no. We have these things called wheels, you might have heard of them? Using wheels and levers and ropes and pulleys, I have moved much heavier things. I recommend using appropriate tools. Hoists? Cranes? Block-and-tackle?
I'm curious as to how you would address the industries that are heavily female with males being underrepresented. Is there institutional bias in those instances?
This line of reasoning sounds just like the people who said there was no need for women's sports programs because the vast majority of women don't like sports. You are confusing cause and effect.
A company I co-founded, Shift Labs[1], is trying to do exactly that. The CEO, Dr. Beth Kolko, quit her academic post to found the company out of her frustration with low industry uptake of low cost medical devices emerging from academia.
I haven't done work in the Bluetooth space for years now, but a big problem with audio streaming in the Bluetooth 1/2 days was that devices wouldn't reliably adjust their page and inquiry scan intervals (time the radio spends listening for connections and answering device discovery requests, rather than sending data).
The effective remaining bandwidth fell far short of what the default Bluetooth codec, SBC, required. SBC was already pretty low end, more like MPEG Layer-1 audio. Even so, for point to point streaming if the devices cooperated well there was enough bandwidth for fairly good audio quality. It's just that it was a crapshoot what any pair of devices would get you.
The other big issue is that there wasn't, at least at the time, any standardized method for synchronizing the audio sampling rates of the source and sink. This could have been achieved by slaving the audio PLL to the connection master's frequency hopping clock, which the slave has to follow to even maintain a connection, but there wasn't any requirement to do so. Plus it'd be a massive layer violation in the Bluetooth stack. We basically ran a software PLL on the sink side to try to match what the source was giving us, but packet retransmissions due to loss could gum up the timing. You could get a pitch-bending effect as a connection was starting up, or had just suffered a lot of loss.
> I imagine they've sorted most of that out by now.
I think they have. Giving some leeway to my bluetooth Motorola headphones since they are super-aural, to my ears—and I feel I am fairly picky—they are not significantly worse than my circumaural Sennheiser HD 380 pros on my workstation. I suspect the principal reason I feel my circumaural headphones sound a bit better is simply that they are circumaural.
I can only imagine it's gotten better in the past 20 years.