api

1090 ms·

14791.
The American Middle Class Hasn't Gotten a Raise in 15 Years(fivethirtyeight.com)
85 points by api 12y ago|54 comments
14792.
by api 12y ago
I've seen this work too, but it depends. As with all things in this domain... it depends. There are no absolute laws in this space. If most of your (monetary, capturable) value is in enterprise, you need sales. Otherwise maybe you don&
14793.
by api 12y ago
I'm gonna have to check that one out. I'm a big fan of Thiel even when I don't agree with him (e.g. on politics to some extent) -- he's one of those people who makes you think even when you think he's wrong. Getting
14794.
by api 12y ago
Maybe something has changed then. The only movements I see today are right wing movements that use religion to get the poor to vote against their economic interests and left wing movements that are all about maintaining high food and real e
14795.
by api 12y ago
I don't see it that way. I see it as a simple recognition of a reality and a call to engage in primary research and reasoning from first principles. It is herds and movements that are disempowering. It's still possible to organize
14796.
by api 12y ago
That was a bit of a skeptical thought for me too. In the 20th century the military industrial complex was the only meal ticket in town for a lot of things. In many ways our new VC-finance-disruptive-industrial complex, while evil in some of
14797.
by api 12y ago
TL;DR: he who pays the piper calls the tune. I am not convinced that the world of "organic" and "natural" is any better. A lot of that stuff is about using fear mongering to create a manufactured and scientifically basel
14798.
by api 12y ago
Yes, but of a different sort than you find on the right. Another thing since 1970 is that there have been no liberals on the mainstream political landscape, just various species of "left" reactionaries and "right" reacti
14799.
by api 12y ago
AI that is just flat out alien (possibly involving what tv tropes calls "blue and orange morality") would be an interesting third option.
14800.
by api 12y ago
Intelligence is seen as sinister, all the way back to the serpent in the garden and similar myths. I love stories that upend this myth, especially if they manage to do it without just mindlessly inverting it. Simple inversion usually gives
14801.
by api 12y ago
> away from individual grants and towards group work. I see this in the startup world in the form of a strong bias against sole-founder companies and toward large teams with huge numbers of advisors and even "party rounds" with
14802.
On Combinatorics and Zero to One(adamierymenko.com)
2 points by api 12y ago|0 comments
14803.
by api 12y ago
Windows 3.1 to Windows 8 is incremental. This, however, was not: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJDv-zdhzMY It's hard to pin down, but I'd define a fundamental advance as one that either (a) multiplies the number
14804.
by api 12y ago
That's improvement, yes, but it's incremental. I'm talking about the internal combustion engine -- the core design. This reminds me a lot of the micro/macro-evolution debate in biology. There are people who think macroev
14805.
by api 12y ago
Another recent thread on this same topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8337460 Have to say I can't agree with him more on this specific point. Other than IT and a few other things, technology has stalled since
14806.
by api 12y ago
A related argument had been made a lot lately about how "free" can lead to scummy business models like surveillance and manipulative black hat media tactics. You can do free sustainably if your costs are low and if you have someth
14807.
by api 12y ago
I don't think there is an overall tech bubble like 1999, but there may indeed be smaller scale bubbles in overheated or overhyped sectors. There are two areas of worry from what I see. One is free apps and services with high burn and n
14808.
by api 12y ago
I don't think this is particularly nutty, but I don't see it as a root cause. LTG pointed out some real problems. If we were in the 50s-60s can-do mindset we'd have reacted with "well let's roll up our sleeves and f
14809.
by api 12y ago
GMOs are a more complex subject, but as for nuclear power I tend to think that the lack of progress has caused its failure to be adopted rather than the other way around. Look at the nuke plants we're building. They are still overgrown
14810.
by api 12y ago
> It has always annoyed me that there's a loud contingent of people that object to human space travel on the basis it's not the most efficient way to conduct science... Sometimes I actually blame Skepticism. I'm not talkin
14811.
by api 12y ago
Everything you cite is in or closely related to the IT sector, which is the exception. Every other sector has gone cold or even backwards since ~1970.
14812.
by api 12y ago
"I sort-of date the end of rapid technological progress to the late-60s or early-70s. At that point something more or less broke in this country and in the western world more generally which has put us into a zone where there’s much sl
14813.
by api 12y ago
Check my understanding? So convertible debt isn't really debt-- it's an equity investment with deferred closing and terms. Right? I can see then how this can lead to bad outcomes for the entrepreneur (behaves like a full ratchet i
14814.
by api 12y ago
When I'm skeptical of evo psych, I am not arguing that gender or sex hormones have no effect on the brain. That would be silly... there's abundant evidence that they do. What I'm being skeptical about is that we can take that
14815.
by api 12y ago
> If an explanation fit all current observations and predicted future experiments why is it not correct? http://www.tylervigen.com
14816.
by api 12y ago
Totally crazy tangent but: I don't understand misogynistic guys who say awful things about how dumb / shallow / whatever women are and then in the next breath talk about their sexual interest in them. I mean... if I thought a
14817.
by api 12y ago
> Unfortunately, as science becomes the hegemonic source of authority in our world, pseudo-science becomes the preferred language for demagoguery and bullshit. Very well put.
14818.
by api 12y ago
Most evo-psych is pretty weak stuff, basically a lot of dubious and untestable just-so rationalizations for various prejudices and apparent human tendencies. A good chunk of it is full-on woo-woo nonsense. Sometimes I get the (rather cyni
14819.
by api 12y ago
I wasn't disagreeing, just pointing out the incentives and the underlying structural reasons that things are done this way.
14820.
by api 12y ago
The only secure computer is one that is off.

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