Tycho

25 ms·

301.
by Tycho 5y ago
You can sense the petty jealousy seething between the lines of this piece. At best, much of his life was only of passing notoriety—or so one would have thought—and yet the legend lives on, as tenacious as ever. How to account for it? Two
302.
by Tycho 5y ago
Why is plastic vilified. Surely compared to fuel, it is an excellent, justified use for hydrocarbons. And as for disposal, isn’t it a simple matter of not doing ridiculous stuff like dumping it into rivers or oceans.
303.
by Tycho 5y ago
Didn’t even consider reading it given it was theguardian but now that you mention it that’s an additional excellent reason not to click.
304.
by Tycho 5y ago
Why would colder lands become arable at a slower pace than warmer lands becoming infertile?
305.
by Tycho 5y ago
There’s no lack of specifics here. Drug addiction. Sextapes. Misplaced firearms. Cushy jobs with massive conflicts of interest and no qualifications. Shady deals with foreign adversaries. 10% for the big guy. But since the media suppressed
306.
by Tycho 5y ago
It's a bit like how everyone refers to the "Panama Papers" or the "Pandora Papers" - the laptop contained a trove of information on damning activities, any one of which would have been newsworthy in its own right an
307.
by Tycho 5y ago
Haven’t looked into the details of this supposed crisis, but I’m guessing that the outrage is from the free press over the unjustified suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story in order to influence a democratic election. Am I right?
308.
by Tycho 5y ago
Maybe it’s to do with luck. As in, smart people will encounter problems and work on them and solve them, and the smartest ones will solve them faster and solve more problems, but the search space of problems is vast and only in retrospect d
309.
by Tycho 5y ago
Is there any such thing as 'bug bounties' that companies put out to get fixes for open source software?
310.
by Tycho 5y ago
I don’t care whatsoever what so-called experts think. This is how I evaluate risk: 1. Are we dealing with complex mechanisms that are not fully understood? (in this case, human biology and immune response) 2. Are we operating in an environm
311.
by Tycho 5y ago
Really depends on the information at that point of time. We can already see clearly that the vaccines don’t prevent infection or contagion, so the urgency to get vaccinated is gone. I remain in a very low risk group. Data on possible vaccin
312.
by Tycho 5y ago
No actually it’s because I use my common sense to know that a vaccine that didn’t even begin testing before spring 2020 does not have a long enough track record to assure safety. I don’t care what you heard on your news.
313.
by Tycho 5y ago
I’m happy to get the vaccine in ~March 2022 if they are shown to be safe and effective having been deployed for more than one year. At the moment I see rather mixed signals about safety and efficacy.
314.
by Tycho 5y ago
Are you sure about that? That the majority of Americans are in a position where a few dollars makes a huge difference to their day? I’d be surprised.
315.
by Tycho 5y ago
This hedge fund is the second biggest newspaper owner in the country but the founders supposedly rarely show their faces in any newsroom, make no public statements, and one of them hasn’t even been photographed since the 80s. There’s also a
316.
Alden Global Capital, the secretive hedge fund gutting newsrooms(theatlantic.com)
155 points by Tycho 5y ago|81 comments
317.
by Tycho 5y ago
If you work alone in a private office, you can’t engage in casual banter, which is half the fun of work. Yeah you get good piece and quiet but you can always just throw on some headphones with white noise to drown out the surrounding chatte
318.
by Tycho 5y ago
Can someone elaborate on on this?
319.
by Tycho 5y ago
It is my opinion that the “time value of money” is essentially an expression of optionality. All else being equal, it’s better to have money today than tomorrow (or ten years from now), because then you’ll have the options that come from sp
320.
by Tycho 5y ago
How much of that involves just de-criminalising harmful acts so that the broader public bear the cost? For instance, SF declining to prosecute theft under the value of $900.
321.
by Tycho 5y ago
Yeah but how much money (and harm) is society saved by having criminals off the street?
322.
by Tycho 5y ago
But aren’t Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google themselves heavily reliant on things like Unix/Linux? I can imagine a world where all their services exist only as clunky Microsoft offerings that have no rivals except maybe on niche com
323.
by Tycho 5y ago
I don’t think we run out of work. People might need to adapt and do something else. But for software engineers especially, the open source stuff just gives you more tools to leverage for your employers/clients.
324.
by Tycho 5y ago
If all the big companies use open source software, that creates a nice level playing field for the whole economy. Anyone with capital can start a rival enterprise. Competition breeds innovation and drives down prices. The general public ben
325.
by Tycho 5y ago
Is working full-time on open source software (if you’re good) for free or for a meagre stipend the most effective altruism there is? When you consider multiplier effects.
326.
by Tycho 5y ago
Hmm I could be wrong but I suspect that people spend record amounts of time watching TV (or equivalent) and record numbers of people own devices like smartphones that facilitate all of the above activities. Doesn't seem like time and m
327.
by Tycho 5y ago
Different book - Kate Chopin
328.
by Tycho 5y ago
Sounds good. Blocked by my work firewall though. A few years ago I found an article that was something like '100 short books everyone should read before they're 40'. It was a mix of fiction and non-fiction. I've never be
329.
by Tycho 5y ago
> Get sick? While you wait for your appointment, research your condition using any of the free, high quality medical knowledge bases on the web, and/or connect with a community of other internet users with similar afflictions to g
330.
by Tycho 5y ago
Wasn't the dam to primarily to prevent flooding, rather than enable power generation? Anyway I don't think it makes sense to compare hydro where the risk dynamics are simple, to nuclear where they are complex and require great lon

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