bdbenton

6 ms·

1.
by bdbenton 1y ago
It's a controversial observation, but it is very true. I work with AI models and have to read recently published research to work with the latest developments in the field. Do a quick keyword search on papers related to the subject. So
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by bdbenton 4y ago
Who could benefit? Popular "debate" in the news cycle, scientific authority based on crude subjective judgment, interests of capital. This sort of viral bad science is something you would expect from reddit but not from hackernews
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by bdbenton 4y ago
The final stage of gentrification is the buying up of homes as pure investment properties by corporate and financial entities. This is why housing is unafforable in LA, greedy landlords, especially the corporate variety. It's why the s
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by bdbenton 4y ago
It's not just Stanford, Harvard and Yale did the same. Schools like NYU and MIT stood out for not doing this sort of thing, and it goes back for hundreds of years to Europe. I have worked in finance for years, people don't know th
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by bdbenton 4y ago
Bookmarked, pun intended. I am a writer and I love books, but I just don't want to work with Amazon or give them money for reasons that go beyond the scope of this post. This is exactly the kind of tool I need to fill my shelves with g
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by bdbenton 4y ago
If you look at the 2-10 year spread US treasury bond rates, there is a massive yield curve inversion. Historically, this inversion has been a very consistent metric for predicting incoming recessions. https://fred.stlouisfed.org&
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by bdbenton 4y ago
Mesopotamian history is fascinating and deserves a lot more attention. It is the oldest root of human civilization itself and gives us insight into the most fundamental aspects of what civilization is today. War is not the only means of con
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by bdbenton 4y ago
Corporations aren't democracies, they are government-regulated entities designed to turn a profit. Historically, working people have fought and even died en masse against corporate power in order secure the basic rights that we take fo
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by bdbenton 4y ago
Wow, that completely changes my perception of history. There are two competing theories on the initial population of the Americas. The first was a land bridge theory which suggests hunter-gatherers tracked mammoths across the once-frozen Be
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by bdbenton 4y ago
Here in the Southeastern United States, we have the world's largest biodiversity of freshwater fish and a vast amount of wetlands and unpolluted fresh water systems. The region has been growing economically and companies like 3M have p
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by bdbenton 4y ago
I agree, but with programmers in particular it's seen as a badge of honor and sometimes even as an expectation from employers to just "eat, sleep, and code" all the time. We have things like "the crunch" or hackatho
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by bdbenton 4y ago
It's often in retrospect as well. It can take time for the impact of certain innovations to unfold, and it often begins with a small group of people. The breadth of human innovation is now so wide that a scientist/engineer from th
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by bdbenton 4y ago
Pure mathematics doesn't always have an immediately known use, but it has historically been at the core of science. In the words of Carl Friedrich Gauss: "Mathematics is the queen of the sciences." While there are often cash
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by bdbenton 4y ago
Only slightly related, but "pawpaw" is often used in the Southern United States as a nickname for grandpa. Reading this article was pretty surreal and funny with this in mind. Everyone rushing to buy and eat their pawpaws for thei
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by bdbenton 4y ago
I firmly believe that people should take at least one day of the week to not work at all. My code is very buggy and sloppy when I'm completely exhausted, even my grammar and ability to organize ideas falls apart. For many people it&#x2
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by bdbenton 4y ago
I think the most practical use in consumer cases would be a portable replacement for desktop and mobile displays. Using everyday apps for desktop and mobile that are already established, as well as interesting AR apps for entertainment and
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by bdbenton 4y ago
Long reply from a young programmer that recognizes this trend and what it implies: Alan Perlis says you can measure the perspective of a programmer based on their thoughts on the continued vitality of Fortran. Many universities are now goin
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by bdbenton 4y ago
A lot of popular web apps seem to decay in this way. The founding developers create an excellent site, it becomes a huge cash cow, then the organization becomes bloated and more focused on extracting more out of existing value than creating
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by bdbenton 4y ago
Most of the world's oceans remain unexplored. Underwater cave systems in particular have a lot of uncharted territory. It's dangerous work, but explorers are still finding new caves and naming them. Underwater robotics makes this
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by bdbenton 4y ago
Very strong feelings lol, coincidentally that's how many Westerners think of every country outside the USA and Europe. Doesn't change the fact that Android has the largest market share worldwide in both hardware and software. Expe
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by bdbenton 4y ago
The Great Train Robbery (1903) ends with one of the bandits pointing a pistol at the camera and shooting. Apparently, this also disturbed audiences so deeply that they got up and ran out of the movie theater. This is more of an urban legend
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by bdbenton 4y ago
Seriously, trying to "capture" devs with closed ecosystems just stifles creativity and limits potential with corporate gatekeepers and walled-off technologies. The open source mindset, like with Android, is a big reason why it dom