derektank

6 ms·

91.
by derektank 2mo ago
We would all die in a week if we went without water, yet water is cheaper per gallon than gasoline or printer ink or perfume. It’s a question of scarcity and supply curves. Water, even clean water, is not particularly scarce if you leverage
92.
by derektank 2mo ago
You really would think that at least in theory a company like Cloudflare would make it very easy for internal teams to automatically request new subdomains
93.
by derektank 2mo ago
Didn’t Warren Buffett just approve a $10B investment in Google?
94.
by derektank 2mo ago
He said the following in 2019, at a StrictlyVC event, “The honest answer is we have no idea, we have never made any revenue, we have no current plans to make revenue, we have no idea how we may one day generate revenue. We have made a soft
95.
by derektank 2mo ago
There is an artistry in assembling other art into a single cohesive piece. The film director doesn’t design the sets or give the performances or do the makeup, but they place an authorial stamp on the production by selecting what will and w
96.
by derektank 2mo ago
Faster scans means more scans. More scans means getting scans earlier and tracking abnormalities on scans over time. This can lead to earlier intervention, which means you get treatment for the cancer when it’s stage 2 instead of stage 3 or
97.
by derektank 2mo ago
Reminds me of the sentiment expressed by James Burke at the end of the Connections series. “Maybe a good start would be to recognize within yourself the ability to understand anything, because that ability is there as long as it's expl
98.
by derektank 2mo ago
One can support both billionaires and unions. Sweden has more billionaires per capita than the USA while roughly 2/3rds of their workforce is unionized
99.
by derektank 2mo ago
I mean, I would say both, “I support governments,” and, “I support companies.” They are unique social institutions that provide value to their members. The former provides a monopoly on violence which (in my view) is superior to an anarchic
100.
by derektank 2mo ago
“Union recognition” means the employer acknowledges that the union is the bargaining representative for a subset of employees within the organization. This comes with additional legal duties on the part of the employer, such as exclusively
101.
by derektank 2mo ago
I definitely read a lot more about developmental economics and vaccines than I otherwise would have
102.
by derektank 2mo ago
>No one starts liking nerdy stuff because Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos does, because no one really wants to be them Hmmm, as someone that entered high school around the time Bill Gates left Microsoft and began working at the foundation full
103.
by derektank 2mo ago
This doesn’t seem like an inevitability. Low fare airlines began experimenting with selling ad space in their planes but that never resulted in the major airlines following suit. And that’s in one of the most cutthroat, lowest margin indust
104.
by derektank 2mo ago
Hmmm maybe. There are obviously benefits to adapting languages to better describe the environment the speaker finds themselves in. But the utility of being able to communicate with others (especially if they are the overwhelming majority) i
105.
by derektank 2mo ago
Unfortunately, even if we had a single language, I doubt we’d be free of misunderstandings. Jargon, double entendres, shibboleths and other barriers to understanding all still exist even when everyone is nominally speaking the same language
106.
by derektank 2mo ago
>he never actually believed in the singularity as a possible future. I think my favorite moment in the book is when one of the characters (at the time, a digitized consciousness traveling at near light speed in a space ship the size of a
107.
by derektank 2mo ago
Manfred and Amber’s lives don’t seem particularly dystopian. Human society, up until the Field Circus encounters the router and later returns home, seems pretty great. Chaotic and challenging, yes, sad for Microsoft shareholders, sure, but
108.
by derektank 2mo ago
Are you able to share? Both your process and the specific timeline for Accelerando. I would love to build one for A Fire Upon the Deep
109.
by derektank 2mo ago
We’re still spending less as a percent of GDP on the AI datacenter buildout than was spent on building the railroads in the 1880s (Morgan Stanley estimates 2.5% of GDP will be spent on AI this year, as compared to 6% for railroads) Nobody e
110.
by derektank 2mo ago
The “LGBT community” broadly does not engage in risky sex practices. Lesbians don’t have regular, no strings attached sex and are at lower risk of contracting HIV than straight women. The common denominator is horny men, specifically horny
111.
by derektank 2mo ago
“Is someone irresponsible enough to drive a car (the second leading cause of accidental death) also likely to be responsible enough to comply with seatbelt laws?” The word likely doesn’t make this argument any less dumb
112.
by derektank 2mo ago
I suppose it depends by what you mean by “high birth rates” but Israel has a high cost of living, Tel Aviv is comparable to most American superstar cities when you account for resident’s lower incomes, but the country has a birth rate well
113.
by derektank 2mo ago
>They won't use technology to find our lost/stolen phones Our local sheriff’s department used Apple’s FindMy to search for my parent’s iPad that had been stolen from their car during a smash and grab. In this case, he found it
114.
by derektank 2mo ago
Setting aside the unnecessary digs at American TV, you’re kind of missing the point. While the informational content of many books is bad, reading any book is almost inherently an exercise in literacy. A flimsy, conspiracy-laden pop history
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by derektank 2mo ago
What, in your view, is stopping a local police department from deploying an open weights model for cybersecurity like Hugging Face did? Yes, I’ll certainly grant that the engineers at Hughing Face are probably more technically competent tha
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by derektank 3mo ago
>People aren't born not wanting to have kids, since all their ancestors did. What evidence do you have that all their ancestors wanted to have kids? I can think of a lot of reasons why people may have had kids without necessarily wa
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by derektank 3mo ago
I have definitely run into the belief that humans aren’t evolving anymore (though not among scientists). I think people with an incomplete understanding of evolution look around, see most human beings survive to adulthood, and assume that t
118.
by derektank 3mo ago
As far as it goes, I think that alone is a fairly reasonable ask (though a heavier touch than I personally would feel comfortable legislating without serious consideration). But I’m not sure it really solves the problem if all you need to d
119.
by derektank 3mo ago
What do you mean by “make good” and “prove hiring” operationally? Say for example, a company posts 10 job openings, fills 9 of them, but for the tenth, they don’t receive good candidates initially, the hiring manager has to go back to their
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by derektank 3mo ago
Just curious, but did any specific anti-corruption campaigns from history in other nations inspire the design here at all?

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