I thought pH = -log[H+]? where [H+] is the molarity of the hydrogen ion? That doesn't involve water in the definition... what is the definition you're referring to?
Edit regarding your reply asserting water is necessary (I can't reply now due to throttling):
What about all the acid/base reactions that don't involve water? You can't ascribe any pH to either of them in that case?
[H+] is shorthand for [H3O+]. H3O+ (hydronium ion) requires water plus a hydrogen ion from the acid. There aren't actually free H+ ions floating around. They are all attached to water molecules.
That's the definition of p[H]. The definition of the "real" pH is the -log of H+ activity. H+ activity is the concentration of H+ * a coefficient. In practice, the coefficient is considered to be 1, however there are cases (such as extreme concentrations) when that approximation isn't valid.
Well not in terms of pH, but there are several acids that can exist as a pure liquid, undiluted by water. Pure vinegar, undiluted by water, is called glacial acetic acid. It is something that can be bought from a chemical company. Because there is no water, there isn't really a pH. That doesn't mean it isn't incredibly hazardous, though.
>Because there is no water, there isn't really a pH.
Could you elaborate? Wikipedia doesn't seem to suggest water is necessary (it talks about moles per unit volume) but I may be misunderstanding something.
The definition of pH is pretty much a measure of the proton concentration of things dissolved in water. You can look at similar measures in non aqueous solution but then it doesn't fit the definition properly.
I'd say you have moles per unit volume of H3O+ ions. These form as the combination of H+ ions (readily present in copious amounts of acid) and crucially, H2O molecules.
Yeah you're right, it certainly does. I would be curious if it goes mainstream enough to replace IPv4 in the foreseeable future though, which was its intention.
It's been quite mainstream in certain contexts and geographies for a number of years now. As an example - most handsets on modern LTE (and newer) networks have been strong-majority v6 for quite a while. The fact that this hasn't been obvious is an argument in favor of v6's success.
The expectation is that networks will switch to IPv6 only internally, and eventually the IPv4-only remainder of the Internet decays until it's no longer an "IPv4 Internet" but just a handful of separate IPv4 networks that are connected to the (now IPv6 only) Internet by protocol converters.
Some US corporations did this already, rather than fuss with being "dual stack" and potentially introducing new IPv4-only services or systems, they switched wholesale to IPv6 and add converters at the edges. By choosing to do this they get most of the benefits of a future IPv6-only Internet today. For example, numbering internally is a breeze, they can auto-number almost everything because the address space is so vast there is no need to "plan" any of it.
Lots of other US corporations are still IPv4-only, indeed that's why the Google graph earlier has a distinct weekday vs weekends / holidays step change in it. At home a very large proportion of people in industrialised countries have IPv6, major ISPs supply it, common household routers understand how to use it, every modern OS groks it. But at work IPv6 is often disabled by policy, in favour of cumbersome IPv4 because that works and changing things at work is forbidden.
All that's needed is for Google to make it factor in search ranking and you can bet that we'll all be finally reading up on ipv6 and how to make it work well on our servers, and testing the hell out of it :-)
It's "too needed to fail" - and there's nothing to supplant it.
And it's finally starting to catch on, 10 years late: Google's primary web domains, Facebook, AWS, Comcast and Time Warner cable internet in the US, most LTE cell service in the US.
It's now embedded in huge chunks of internet so I wouldn't call it a failure. The transition could and should have been handled better, and the specification has its flaws (too machine-oriented) which unfortunately will never be fixed, but it's here to stay.
Western Australia is separated from farms in the rest of the country by ~1000 km of desert, meaning there are various pests in the rest of the country that they don't want to see introduced, and thus enforce strict quarantine measures: https://www.agric.wa.gov.au/importing-animals/quarantine-wa-...
FWIW, California also has agricultural quarantine measures, they're just much more half-assed.
Hawaii does not play around with its own agricultural (et al) quarantines. Every time you fly into the state, you must declare items on a special state checklist, for exactly the same reasons.
Australia is an island so it has a fairly unique biodiversity. For international flights bringing in fruits is a concern since it can introduce pests that don't otherwise exist in Australia.
Australia is also a very large island, and the biodiversity of the east coast is very different to that of the west coast, so the same concerns apply. If you drive along the highways between states you'll see signs telling you to dispose of your fruit.
We take protecting our agriculture very seriously. You don't want an outbreak of something in one state to spread to another.
It kinda makes sense. We're so isolated geographically, when something happens in other parts of the world, we have a very good chance of protecting ourselves.
I believe Australia actually has the oldest vineyards in the world. Something took out the vineyards everywhere else in the world.
Diseases in one part of the country could spread to another. Australia and NZ have strict biosecurity because their isolation means they missed out on a lot of diseases that affect produce and animals in other parts of the world.
Because there are crop diseases endemic in one part of the country that aren't present in another. Try searching for "Nevada California fruit" if that's closer to home.
Is there any research on the tradeoff between this kind of thread safety and the penalties incurred on the memory management side (specifically the fact that now you have far more heap allocations with immutable data and they have to synchronize too)?
I don't know of any formal research, but in Clojure, where HAMTs are a fundamental part of the language, the philosophy is more oriented towards paying for things (such as thread safety) with memory and CPU first, benchmarking to find bottlenecks second, and if there are any bottlenecks, optimizing accordingly. It was written with this in mind, which is why it requires world-class VMs like the JVM, CLR, and V8/JSC/SpiderMonkey/etc. that can deal with the GC and (in many cases) make runtime optimizations.
Also, I'm fairly certain synchronizing isn't an issue because there's nothing to synchronize on since the data structures are immutable. Am I understanding you correctly?
> Also, I'm fairly certain synchronizing isn't an issue because there's nothing to synchronize on since the data structures are immutable. Am I understanding you correctly?
No -- I'm referring to synchronization on the heap itself (think new()/delete()). Multiple threads allocating memory need to synchronize in order to avoid trampling on each other. You can't just get rid of synchronization entirely.
Er, the comment was, "Most filesystem images aren't intended to be ported directly between machines in general."
The entire complaint itself is the fact that this file system isn't able to do what people expect from most file system images (read: pretty much every one, except this one). Citing the fact that this particular one fails that pattern isn't a justification, it's circular logic.
Can someone explain how old Bitcoin works post-fork? Can you sell the same old Bitcoin twice now? Is this already priced in somehow and still going up?
Bitcoin works the same as it always did. However, anyone who had N Bitcoin on a particular time on August 1 also has N "Bitcoin Cash" using the same private keys, and can go spend that separately on the forked blockchain, without in any way affecting their existing Bitcoin. Both have their own price and market, and they don't interconvert beyond that one-time thing except by selling/buying/trading between them.
It's more like if someone created a new currency and gave each owner of an existing currency (say, the dollar) an equivalent nominal amount of the new notes.
Bitcoin Cash is a separate project and currency from Bitcoin. You can't pay someone who is expecting Bitcoin by sending Bitcoin Cash to them or vice-versa.
Bitcoin's code is open source and the balances of all addresses are public, so anyone could create a fork (a new separate currency based on it, optionally starting with the same balances).
Right, but presumably a reasonably large merchant would find that they need to accept both though, right? And now you would have more purchasing power with them which feels a bit weird, since the old Bitcoin and the new Bitcoin would not have the same purchasing power...
Right now, the exchanges have only just allowed Bitcoin Cash deposits. I'm not aware of any merchant that accepts Bitcoin Cash. I believe that because of the massive price difference (purchasing power) between Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash, merchants would have to accept them just like merchants accept different currencies in Hong Kong (RMB, HKD, USD).
Sure. But my point is that there's no need for merchants to support BCH. Or to keep supporting BTC. As long as it's easy to exchange one for the other. As it is with ShapeShift.
if merchants accept bitcoin cash, logic dictates that they must increase their price to match the new supply of money created by this fork, so that the total amount of purchasing power that any particular individual has pre-fork and post-fork remains the same.
I'm unaware of any merchant accepting alt coin that isn't immediately converting to fiat. The btc price you see is always pegged to the price at the exchange.
>but presumably a reasonably large merchant would find that they need to accept both though, right?
Bitcoin Cash isn't the first new or even nearly the most popular altcoin. Ethereum has actually overtaken Bitcoin in some indicators at times, though not in number of accepting merchants. Nothing has gotten close to Bitcoin in terms of how many places accept it.
There are some vaguely similar things if you think of Bitcoin as something more like store or credit card points or frequent flyer miles.
Sometimes those points give you the rights to some other associated company points without spending the original points.
Also worth noting is that sometimes these points are effectively unspendable because of availability of rewards etc. Just like how Bitcoin Cash is "worth" $700 (or whatever), but you can't actually exchange it for anything at that price.
Imagine tracking your bank balance in git, and then you branch off.
Now you have two balances - two diverging branches with shared history. You can't spend either twice, that is, create two commits with the same parent that don't diverge again.
Right, but you can get yourself a BCH wallet, and import the keys from your existing BTC wallet. Then convert BCH to BTC, if you like. Using shapeshift.io perhaps, which requires no account.
I'm having trouble wrapping my head around this. Once you use your private key to complete a transaction on the BCH blockchain, won't that reveal the private key publicly and allow others to spend the corresponding unspent bitcoin on the BTC blockchain? Sorry if I'm overlooking something obvious, but it was my understanding that once someone used their private key it should never be used again...
Not at all. You never reveal private keys when transacting. You will reveal addresses, however. The only BTC addresses that have BCH value are those that existed at the fork. So before using them in the BCH blockchain, it would be prudent to first spend them in the BTC blockchain. Doing this is a double spend in some sense, but they happen in different blockchains, so they don't affect each other.
Yes you can - bitcoin held prior to the fork is valid on both chains. And yes it is still going up. An alternative scaling solution (to the big blocks proposed by the 'new' fork) Segwit will be going ahead - aiding the scalability of 'old' Bitcoin fork, which may explain some/all of the price rise. Along with the uncertainty reduction post fork.
'New' and 'old' here are somewhat arbitrary/controversial ways of thinking of the fork. Proponents of Bitcoin cash might argue having no limit was closer to Satoshi's original intention - the block limit was originally added in as a temporary measure.
Lots of politics going on around that.
> It was kinda sleazy to see the congress question him about his price increases when they knew damn well it was perfectly legal and they haven't done anything to stop it.
Do you have any suggestions on how what exactly they should've done? Passed a law that says "you cannot increase the price of a drug beyond 5x" or something?
I would suspect the vast majority of the cost of drugs is R&D, including the FDA approval process. They can factor that in on initial cost when they release the drug. The 10% is only for increases.
Hopefully instead of someone buying a drug that has already been released won't buy it because they can jack up the price 5000%. They would have to factor in the 10% rule when purchasing. Unfortunately this might lead to expensive release costs, but that already happens.
It might not be perfect, but 6000% increases because more yachts is a hell of a lot worse.
> Obtaining a license just to increase a drug's price from $13.50 to $750 for no apparent reason other than greed isn't enough for you?
This case isn't about that. Are you suggesting we should convict and punish people on trial for one crime because we don't like their past activities and behaviors? Even if those other behaviors were illegal, they should be considered during a separate trial that's actually pertaining to them.
That wasn't your question, was it? You asked why he's human garbage, I explained why. I wasn't defending or attacking this case, I was explaining why some think he is human garbage.
> Nowhere was I (or you) saying anything about this case.
Your specific words in your original response were "He's human garbage, let him rot." That response was to me saying I think the details of the case lead me to believe that I think he should a light sentence.
You very specifically noted through that euphemism that you think he shouldn't get a light sentence in this case because he's human garbage.
Edit: Sorry. That was someone else. I was specifically asking in context, but that wasn't you originally. Mea Culpa. Leaving it here with this note so people that saw it previously can see me retraction.
The ways that question are answered in this thread prove your assertion is false. This case IS about that, because without that, he'd just be one more pennyless felon.
Who said he shouldn't be punished? I simply stated that since he made restitution prior to charges being brought, perhaps that should factor into sentencing. I don't know who you're arguing against, or what you're really arguing, but it doesn't seem to have anything to do with what I've been talking about.
Al Capone wouldn't have had to evade taxes if he wasn't obtaining his income through illegal means.
I also see a distinction between Capone and Shkreli in that Capone's other actions which may have influenced his trial were myriad illegal activities that they couldn't get evidence for. Shkreli is just believed to be an asshole.
Is the illegality of the other activities really relevant if they can't be prosecuted?
The justice system is meant to punish specific crimes, which it did done in both cases, but that doesn't prohibit you as a human to see it as karmic justice, for someone being a garbage human, wether legally or illegally.
> Is the illegality of the other activities really relevant if they can't be prosecuted?
Normally, no (which I said explicitly in another comment here). In this case, the activities are linked. There's no need to evade taxes if your income isn't illegal.
Even so, I don't subscribe to the argument that it's entirely a good thing that we prosecuted Capone for tax evasion. We were unable to prove the actual criminal activities, so we instead looked at the fruits of those activities and used that.
Another way to look at it is that the justice system completely failed initially. We couldn't build a case for the major crimes, but we could for the lesser crimes. He was still guilty of both (this is of course assuming his guilt).
In Shkreli's case, we failed to prosecute originally because it's not a crime. The current case isn't related in the same way, and linking them and punishing in the latter because of people's perception of the former is akin to levying a harsher sentence on someone because of their interracial marriage in a region and time when that was legal but frowned upon. Social pressure unrelated to the issue at hand should not be relevant in court. Even if it's related to the issue at hand in the case, it should be restricted to sentencing (where it likely can't be removed anyway).
And what's wrong with that? Be upset that the FDA only approved one company to make the drug.
And it's not like anyone was hurt. Overall, insurers ended up paying a bit more (drugs are only 10-15% of US health care costs, and very few people need Daraprim). Big deal. If more people did this, then the system would get this issue addressed, maybe.
On top of that, he said he was investing the profits into researching better drugs, though of course that's not a requirement.
It came out in congressional testimony that they were completely misrepresenting how they were re-investing profits. Employees were pilfering profits with 100% raises, massive bonuses and lavish parties. Very little if anything was going back into R&D.
If you want to make a profit and drink champagne on yachts that's totally fine, just don't go around telling everyone that you're pouring those profits back into research.
True, and if it comes out that Turing knowingly blocked people from getting it despite knowing their eligibility, then he deserves derision. But so far he's just pointed out the huge issues and laughed, driving up awareness.
At some point if your system is so terribly busted and no one is fixing it, eh, maybe you lose the right to hate people abusing it. Or maybe his wit and charisma is making me blind to the issue here.
I found a rule loophole that allowed me to wear an Iron Man suit while playing in the NFL, so I made a career making millions of dollars a year. Aint I brave and admirable for pointing out the issue?
I'm getting increasingly annoyed at the culture of praising exploiters of the system instead of promoting constructive players (who are less profitable, ie less sexy). I understand that the contrarian view to "The Man" is the easiest one to take, even if I think the identified "Man" is the diametrical opposite.
Can I presume you offer your skills to anyone who asks at a wage that reflects a minimum cost of living (ie no iPhone or other luxuries the bare minimum cost of living). If not what is your reasoning beyond apparent greed?
Take a look at wealth globally, if GDP was evenly distributed every year everyone would get roughly ten thousand dollars. That's pretax, thus the total average spend per human being be in direct cash payments or via governmental programs should not exceed that number in a fair system. In western nations the poor see double that number on average in cash compensation, and more than triple that number when you include government services.
My point is fairness and accusations of greed cut both ways, if fairness was truly the concern of the poster he would also cut his standard of living in order to benefit those much worse off than him. As he more than likely does not his argument is not "let's increase fairness" but rather "people in my class and I deserve more" and that's the same argument the people raising the drug prices are making.
It seems like you are completely missing the point. This has little to do with economic inequality. The issue is not that this guy had a random product and raised its price. If this had been a car or an iPhone, we could not have cared less if he had been "greedy" and selling it for $1M/piece. The issue is that this is medicine we're talking about. People don't view healthcare and medicine like they view ordinary services and products. Many people (perhaps not you) have a much higher threshold for what kind of practice is moral/ethical/acceptable in medicine. That's why even in the middle of a battlefield people think it is inhumane to prevent doctors from treating injured soldiers, the war be damned. There is more to humanity than money.
Retrophin was a company and not a drug, right? The comment is saying things like "Retrophin isn't a widely used drug" which is really confusing me and makes me think either I or the writer (or both) don't have any idea what he's talking about. I'm trying to make sense of it compared to what I'm reading from other sources and am completely failing because of this.
The drug was called Daraprim. I think the linked comment misspoke when calling it Retrophin, but I have heard many of the same things that they are saying. Namely that anyone that cannot get the drug through insurance can get it for free. I don't think that Martin Shkreli is a good guy by any means, but portraying him as "human garbage" is not entirely fair.
I believe he reinvests 80% back into R&D. That's a pretty large sum. It's a lot more than the big companies. If a better drug for toxoplasmosis is developed that doesn't kill people, it would have been a great achievement.
Edit regarding your reply asserting water is necessary (I can't reply now due to throttling):
What about all the acid/base reactions that don't involve water? You can't ascribe any pH to either of them in that case?