Pitarou

13 ms·

121.
by Pitarou 11y ago
I always considered the lottery a tax on irrationality.
122.
by Pitarou 11y ago
For what it's worth, the pseudonym Kemuri is Japanese for smoke. There was a recent incident in the UK where too much chlorine was added to the water supply, leaving it unsafe even for washing. I wonder if it's connected? http:&#
123.
by Pitarou 11y ago
I'm sure there are many engineers who are extremely proud of their work on Concorde, but overall it could hardly be called a successful programme. It was just about profitable at the margins, but only after the enormous development cos
124.
by Pitarou 11y ago
In many cases, it really is that hard.
125.
by Pitarou 11y ago
I was shocked! If you don't have a VPN, you can view it with Tor Browser (so long as you don't get assigned a Tor exit node in the UK).
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by Pitarou 11y ago
A small clarification: NICE is not the name of the guidelines. NICE is the name of the body that issues those guidelines. NICE issues guidelines for pretty much every kind of treatment throughout the NHS. https://www.nice.org.uk&
127.
by Pitarou 11y ago
I've given up caffeine for Lent[1]. It's been hard. Beforehand, I knew I had a bad coffee habit. In a typical day I'd drink, maybe 6 or 7 mugs of strong coffee. I'd tried to cut down many times, but never succeeded; ther
128.
by Pitarou 11y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust
129.
by Pitarou 11y ago
Lots of stuff that isn't related to the tech industry gets upvoted. I read it and thought it was a good read, so I upvoted it. That's all. No knee-jerking involved.
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by Pitarou 11y ago
Wave if you're old enough to remember the Cuban Missile Crisis!
131.
by Pitarou 11y ago
That's why people keep droning on about balanced portfolios (with cash being a part of that balance).
132.
by Pitarou 11y ago
I totally agree with you about Britain's obsession with academic qualifications at the expense of practical apprenticeships.
133.
by Pitarou 11y ago
It is evidence. No need to put it in scare quotes. We can debate the correct interpretation and applicability, but it's certainly evidence of a sort. It's impossible to run the kinds of controlled large scale socio-economic expe
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by Pitarou 11y ago
Hardly swept under the carpet. It's an ongoing diplomatic headache. Just a couple of weeks ago, a public enquiry (which Litvinenko's widow had pushed for) publicly announced that Litvinenko was most probably murdered by the FSB wi
135.
by Pitarou 11y ago
The account of what's going on with the POS machines doesn't make economic sense. If it was true, it would be easy for one bank to capture most of the market simply by charging more reasonable POS fees. I think it's much more
136.
by Pitarou 11y ago
Okay. You've convinced me. Thanks for taking the time to explain your thoughts on this. :-)
137.
by Pitarou 11y ago
I respectfully disagree. Safety is of the highest priority, so if there's a serious risk to human life, there's nothing hyperbolic about drawing attention to it. If you can't do that, there's something very wrong with yo
138.
by Pitarou 11y ago
This letter is an excellent illustration of why good writing matters, and why bad writing can be disastrous. The most important sentence in the letter ("The result would be a catastrophe of the highest order - loss of human life."
139.
by Pitarou 11y ago
D grade. Too many mixed metaphors, not enough copy-editing, and he never even defines what he means by "squirrel". The author uses a lot of words to make a very simple point: many unicorn valuations are bullshit, and we should pit
140.
by Pitarou 11y ago
If I understand correctly, all it takes is a few text messages from your client for you to incur huge bills on their behalf. I presume you're aware that text messages are easy to fake. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki&#x2
141.
by Pitarou 11y ago
I take your point about disproof -- my logic was faulty -- and I can't think of an example where the law compels someone to lie. Google hasn't found me any, either. I also checked canarywatch.org and noticed that Adobe have a warr
142.
by Pitarou 11y ago
No, it was me who said that. If I understand you correctly, your main points are: 1. The law can never compel you to make a false statement. 2. Lots of firms are doing it, and they probably know what they're doing. For point 1, if you
143.
by Pitarou 11y ago
The warrant canary idea was bullshit from the start. If not reissuing a warrant canary will let a company's customers know that they are under surveillance, the proposed law will require that company to publish the warrant canary. It
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by Pitarou 11y ago
My 1 year old daughter loves it. I think you have a meme!
145.
by Pitarou 11y ago
Daniel Everett is an anthropologist who has made some extraordinary claims about an Amazonian tribe called the Pirahã.
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by Pitarou 11y ago
That's CB1 you're thinking of, which I believe was the second to open. It's the oldest surviving in the UK.
147.
by Pitarou 11y ago
TLDR The Fermi Paradox (a.k.a. "Why hasn't some alien civilisation already visited us?") contains a hidden assumption that a space-faring civilisation will expand rapidly to fill the galaxy. But such expansionist civilisation
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by Pitarou 12y ago
He means "underconstrained". In other words, there is more than one function that satisfies the relation f(2x) = f(x) * f(x), so we need to find some more constraints to exactly pin down the Maclaurin expansion of exp(x).
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by Pitarou 12y ago
I saw a popup telling me to download and install some kind of crapware.
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by Pitarou 12y ago
I don't know what the solution to the troll problem is, but I don't think anti-epilepsy filters are a part of it, any more than I think bulletproof vests are a solution to gun violence.

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