FredPret

55 ms·

781.
by FredPret 2y ago
Boredom can be great. Imagine being an ancient Babylonian or Greek with nothing to do but wait for your grapes to grow. No wonder they came up with lots of great stuff.
782.
by FredPret 2y ago
Looking at your country from the outside, both your initial overoptimism and your subsequent disillusionment seem inaccurate. There's a ton of propaganda both ways; all of it is based on blowing some small fact completely out of propor
783.
by FredPret 2y ago
I'm guessing the answer to this question is no, but... for an irrational number like pi, can we guarantee that a certain digit sequence will occur somewhere in its infinite reaches? That would be a wildly impractical but very fun way t
784.
by FredPret 2y ago
Just as an aside, I think the bad guy should always be rich / powerful, because how boring would a story be if the bad guy is easy to defeat? Imagine a Bond villain with no advantage over the protagonist. There would be nothing for the
785.
by FredPret 2y ago
People usually vote for lower prices, which translates to lower trade barriers and cheap imports. But the EV tariff thing is another instance of people voting for their interests, even if the result is the opposite: US conservatives are a)
786.
by FredPret 2y ago
From your description it sounds as if we're stuck in a local optimum. It's tough to break out of that, but there's a lot of technological change coming our way and that tends to disrupt the status quo.
787.
by FredPret 2y ago
It doesn’t have to work for every country, but there’s a definite trend of ephemeralization. Every time machinery gets a little more automated, computers get a little faster, or the world gets a little more connected… the value of clear t
788.
by FredPret 2y ago
Both the politicians and the CEOs are only successful in direct proportion to how well the public responds to their decisions - buying their stuff, voting for their party. The public wanted cheap imported products, and so now that's wh
789.
by FredPret 2y ago
That cannot be true: 1) A class of people (here it is “the CEOs”) consistently behaving a certain way over time can only be explained by one of two things: a conspiracy (unstable; almost impossible to pull off), or their behavior is shaped
790.
by FredPret 2y ago
IRL interactions are more complex and nuanced in a way that tends to push people to the center. There have been instances where people meeting IRL pushed one another further to one side (Marxists, Nazis) but in every other case IRL interact
791.
by FredPret 2y ago
But this was always unavoidable, because it turns out non-HN users like glossy magazines. So the internet will always either be niche and text-only or glossy and popular
792.
by FredPret 2y ago
It's grim at INTC but don't forget the CHIPS act and whatever else will follow that. The US government spends 0.5T per month - more than the market cap of all but the top 15 American companies [0] [1] Not saying it's a good o
793.
by FredPret 2y ago
This is a plot point in the Bobiverse books. The delta-v required for a heavy asteroid may make it more practical to send a fleet of nukes though.
794.
by FredPret 2y ago
I googled global waste per year. Looks like it's on the order of 2 billion tons per year. Leaving room for 100% growth, and assuming a density of 1 (less dense = more space required = worse), we'll need 4 billion cubic meters of l
795.
by FredPret 2y ago
> These arrangements are 100% custom, highly dependent on relationships This is what the very best jobs are like
796.
by FredPret 2y ago
Interesting idea - although wouldn't it have been the government that could, and still can, bring down the corporate death penalty if annoyed? I think even back then the kings were losing power to the governments that ruled in their na
797.
by FredPret 2y ago
But temples are almost uniquely good for construction companies. - the more ornate, the better - unlike palaces, every town needs at least one, and if you're polytheistic, so much the better - extremely price-insensitive clients who ar
798.
by FredPret 2y ago
More vacays != less time worked
799.
by FredPret 2y ago
Creepy beyond belief. They will never stop pushing for this in public - what are they doing when we aren’t looking? State power has grown steadily for centuries now, even in the US where there are strict legal limits on it.
800.
by FredPret 2y ago
He was likely test-driving early versions of Apple products
801.
by FredPret 2y ago
You're able to rectify the "injustice" for at least one dishwasher by writing a check... if you truly believe this
802.
by FredPret 2y ago
Them enforcing their laws is a good thing. But the laws they've chosen to have are definitely not good for business, and in my (mostly irrelevant) opinion not good for a free and open society either.
803.
by FredPret 2y ago
I agree there's an issue with wages vs productivity. However: - The decoupling is not equal for all the countries examined. For the US, wages as a fraction of GDP has been roughly steady, declining from 49% in 1942 to 43% today [0] - W
804.
by FredPret 2y ago
Dishwashers can easily move to other low-wage jobs if they exist
805.
by FredPret 2y ago
I'm quite disappointed that you're willing to lift your ideas wholesale from a French communist [0] unless of course by "Capital" you mean "Das Kapital" in which case it's the original, German one [1]. Per
806.
by FredPret 2y ago
If you have soap residue: - Try running the dishwasher a second time with no soap, or on a rinse cycle - If you use soap pods, try putting it not in the soap tray, but directly in with the dishes. [0] [0] This video (starting at 11:40) expl
807.
by FredPret 2y ago
Where do you get this idea? What generates more value - a good thought that can steer a product or a company in a better direction, or a pile of clean dishes? Value is disconnected to the difficulty involved in producing it. In fact, this i
808.
by FredPret 2y ago
While I agree with your sentiment, that logic doesn't hold. If the wage for a job is too low to afford life, then we can say either the job is underpaid or the job is fairly compensated but simply not worth doing. If dishwashers quit
809.
by FredPret 2y ago
They're only dead because they got to be born first. It's not like modern agriculture reached out and killed them on purpose. Richer mothers are better able to plan their families and tend to restrict it to a number of kids they c
810.
by FredPret 2y ago
Boeing shareholders haven't earned a proper return in half a decade, but the idiots kept voting in the same blockhead of a CEO. Serves 'em right. Shareholders are almost always best served by a product-first CEO who maximizes the

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