astine

78 ms·

331.
by astine 8y ago
Indeed, Madagascar is larger than many nations. It's not surprising that a single nation should dominate trade in a particular good. About 60% of the world's cork comes from the Spain and Portugal which together have about the sam
332.
by astine 8y ago
It depends on the kind of business you're in. I work for a sales driven MSP and we have a ton of actually vendors in the normal sense of the word. We probably have more vendors than we have employees but I haven't counted. We spen
333.
by astine 8y ago
In that case you're a loss-leader.
334.
by astine 8y ago
You are not a 'product' you are a vendor and companies have to maintain good relationships with their vendors or they will lose them.
335.
by astine 8y ago
Who exactly is handing these out? I could be a trojan horse, but I'd be interested who's trojan it actually is.
336.
by astine 8y ago
That's more a South Korean thing and this particular summit is between the US and the North. Even in the South that myth is on the wane so I doubt it has much relevance here.
337.
by astine 8y ago
Table corruption may not be 'acceptable,' but that doesn't matter. Even if your software is perfect and has no bugs, it cannot account for issues at the system and hardware level. Backups and redundant systems exist for a rea
338.
by astine 8y ago
The depressed are hard to convince because they are depressed. The friends and family of the depressed are hard to convince because they are ignorant.
339.
by astine 8y ago
As a person who lives in the US, this isn't something that I would generally think of if I were considering whether to tell someone that I was planning suicide. Reading your account however, maybe it's something I should be worrie
340.
by astine 8y ago
Flamethrowers 'launch' a flame a long distance, typically by igniting some liquid and spraying it over a distance. A torch generally creates a much more localized flame. It's a much more controlled device.
341.
by astine 8y ago
Unit 731 were granted immunity because the Americans wanted access to the research which was apparently rigorous and useful. There were Nazi scientists who got similar treatment (Operation Paperclip). A better comparison would be with the J
342.
by astine 8y ago
It's impossible to know for certain, but perhaps having invested so much in nuclear weapons and finding that it only made the US more belligerent, they realized that they had to shift their strategy? Or maybe they've been waitin
343.
by astine 8y ago
There is apparently a big divide between people who subvocalize when they read and those who don't. Those who don't tend to read much faster than those who do which is why speedreading techniques tend to focus on eliminated subvoc
344.
by astine 8y ago
If someone links you to article, you can generally get through the paywall, so here is Williamson's own take on his situation: https://www.wsj.com/articles/when-the-twitter-mob-came-for-m... The short summary is t
345.
by astine 9y ago
The best way to avid killing people in warfare is to avoid going to war, I think. Though, to some degree conflict is always going to be inevitable so we've got to prepare for it. I don't really see a situation in which autonomous
346.
by astine 9y ago
"Would forcing users to verify their identities and post with their full names have any effect on the toxicity?" Probably not. Often time people are just as terrible in person and social media just gives them more reach. "
347.
by astine 9y ago
I live on the east coast. If I gave someone a Twitter account as a business contact, I'd probably get some pretty dismissive looks.
348.
by astine 9y ago
Sorry. I posted yesterday just before bed. Here's the quote in full: "Abstract. The myth persists that in 1492 the Americas were a sparsely populated wilderness, -a world of barely perceptible human disturbance.- There is substant
349.
by astine 9y ago
Hmm. Your first comment is a complaint that the reason people talk about disease with regard to the conquest of the New World is to let themselves off the hook for genecide and that disease killing of the natives was largely a myth. I don&#
350.
by astine 9y ago
That seems like too much of a simplification. Neither India nor China were especially vulnerable to European diseases yet they still came to be dominated.
351.
by astine 9y ago
This is a strong assertion. I'd like to see a more complete argument for it. In a lot of cases what Europeans did would have been impossible without an initial spread of disease. For example, when Pizarro invaded Peru, he was preceded
352.
by astine 9y ago
"That pins down an interesting characteristic of the situation. If we manage to self-treat ourselves into passable normality, few people believe we ever had a serious problem in the first place!" Yes, and this is true of any menta
353.
by astine 9y ago
From your own link: "The initial usage of the term "capitalism" in its modern sense has been attributed to Louis Blanc in 1850 ("What I call 'capitalism' that is to say the appropriation of capital by som
354.
by astine 9y ago
The word 'capitalism' was invented by communists, so the moment that someone uses the word in a disparaging sense it makes conjure up the 'capitalism vs state socialism' debate. Even if that weren't the case, the GP
355.
by astine 9y ago
If self driving cars are equally good at driving as humans then there is no trade off. It's the same level of safety with more convenience. That doesn't mean we shouldn't strive for greater safety, but I think the original po
356.
by astine 9y ago
I could obviously live without a Facebook account. My social life is just better with it than without it. Your circumstances might be different. The point is that everybody's circumstances are different so just because you don't d
357.
by astine 9y ago
> I'm 26 and never used Facebook. I'm 31 and I've never used tobacco. If people who used tobacco just made better choices they could be like me. They really need to ask themselves if tobacco really makes them happier. &#x
358.
by astine 9y ago
> It's useful for facilitating connections with other facebook users. And anyone willing to join Facebook to keep up with the event invitations. You don't have to post anything at all on Facebook to do this. I definitely know
359.
by astine 9y ago
I think that no matter where you are as a programmer, you're part of the plumbing crowd whether you like it or not. If you hack together websites using a web framework like Rails or whatever, then that web framework is likely your plum
360.
by astine 9y ago
"Economics is not physics." This point is super important. While you can influence demand through macroeconomic twiddling, an economy is unlike many systems in that not only does it react to stimuli, it learns to anticipate that s

More ›