ef4

83 ms·

751.
by ef4 14y ago
It doesn't even take 8 story buildings to reach critical mass for high-density urban living. You can get high-density, highly-walkable urban neighborhoods at as little as three stories. In fact it's better for walkability to have a whole ne
752.
by ef4 14y ago
If you want to sell something for $50/year, yes you need to take credit cards. But if you want to sell something for $15,000/year, it's not nearly as important.
753.
by ef4 14y ago
I'm pretty sure 6.370 was inspired by 6.270. It was intended to be a more "pure" programming competition, without all the intrusions of finicky physical reality. Similarly, 6.186 (better known now as MASLab) was also inspired by 6.270, but
754.
by ef4 14y ago
His name is Dr Murray Hamlet.
755.
by ef4 14y ago
Good point.
756.
by ef4 14y ago
In practice, it's an open secret that grand jury proceedings are so biased in favor of the prosecution that they're merely a formality. As if any grand jury could sift through a 360,000 page indictment anyway.
757.
by ef4 14y ago
Is it possible to buy legal defense insurance? Not just insurance against civil liability, but insurance that will pay for legal defense in a criminal case?
758.
by ef4 14y ago
Time-preference (and therefore a non-zero interest rate) is an inherent feature of being a human being, for the simple reason that we all have a limited amount of time to live. Present goods really are worth more than future goods, and inte
759.
by ef4 14y ago
I saw a talk from a US Army-funded researchers on cold weather adaptation. He described how to reliably train oneself to induce the "hunter's response". You just go sit outside in the cold for five or ten minutes at a time while keeping you
760.
by ef4 14y ago
We need to keep repeating this basic fact to people who think this kind of thing serves a purpose: "Reducing the number of people" who can access your precious content without your permission is stupid, because it only takes ONE person. He
761.
by ef4 14y ago
The author is incorrect when he assumes that tanks/aircraft/artillery have any bearing on how easy it is to control a population armed with rifles. If you're outnumbered 10-to-1 by people with AR-15s and AK-47s and IEDs who can fade in and
762.
by ef4 14y ago
> If needed, I'm sure the NRA could get 500 million or so to start a militia. There are only 309 million people in the United States, so that would be quite a feat.
763.
by ef4 14y ago
It's pretty much consensus at this point that the current CA model is highly broken. Among other problems, there are trusted CAs providing interception capabilities to local governments, and there are CAs that have been compromised and used
764.
by ef4 14y ago
The reason almost everybody uses a vendor like Skype that they solve the problem of helping users find each other and establish connections, despite NAT and firewalls. I don't know of any non-commercial, distributed software for solving tha
765.
by ef4 14y ago
Setting up mutt for GMail these days is no harder than setting up vmail. This is a complete config file for mutt that will connect to your gmail account: set folder=imaps://imap.gmail.com:993 set spoolfile=+INBOX set imap_user
766.
by ef4 14y ago
''The ability to have "pockets of imperative mutability"... connected by a "functional tissue," is not only clarifying, but works quite well in practice for building large and complex concurrent systems.'' That's always been a winning comb
767.
by ef4 14y ago
It's not so much that the "dark ages" intervened in some linear progression of scientific discovery. Rather, it seems to require a precise and finicky set of conditions to get a real scientific & industrial revolution going. The hard pa
768.
by ef4 14y ago
If you're always measuring from the same longitude, you don't need to rely on a clock. You can take measurements of the stars and get a very precise local time.
769.
by ef4 14y ago
One in twenty hourly-paid jobs. But hourly-paid jobs represent only 59.1% of all jobs. So it's actually only 3.1% of jobs that pay (Federal) minimum wage.
770.
by ef4 14y ago
> There's an incentive for a dishonest student to cheat because it's significantly easier than actually doing the work. That's only true if cheating gives you the same benefit as actually doing the work. In many fields (especially scien
771.
by ef4 14y ago
Yes, but the credential is supposedly tied to actual abilities that matter. If they use their fraudulent credential to get a job and then perform well, then the material really was pointless and the system really is a big show without subst
772.
by ef4 14y ago
Yes, but that's my point. What is the reward here, and do you still achieve it if you cheat? If the cheater who fails to learn anything is rewarded with a successful career, what does that say about the real value of the material he didn't
773.
by ef4 14y ago
I don't disagree at all. I sure as heck did every problem myself and took pride in it, and I'm sure I'm more capable because of it. But that's not the point of my post. I'm asking why somebody who clearly doesn't care about learning this bi
774.
by ef4 14y ago
> This kind of thing does cause serious issues evaluating students. It's a problem if you're trying to operate an industrial-scale student-assembly-line of a course. Which I'll grant is how most courses do operate today. But it's increa
775.
by ef4 14y ago
This kind of thing is only ever going to get easier, not harder. Overall it's a good thing that sharing knowledge has become so easy. So we need to rethink the way we structure education and credentials. Why is there an incentive to cheat l
776.
by ef4 14y ago
> Ad-Hoc builds, which must be specified for each phone. Again that doesn't scale. It's not strictly one-to-one. You can stick all your test devices into one provisioning profile, and then all your builds will work on all the devices. S
777.
by ef4 14y ago
I don't think so, here's their full current list: https://www.23andme.com/health/all/
778.
by ef4 14y ago
> Now imagine we have a test, that can predict it with certainty. Very soon only those with positive results will want insurance. The insurance against it will become unprofitable and discontinued. That does leave a time when the risk i
779.
by ef4 14y ago
It comes down to competition, information, and control. When you go for maximum diversity in big markets (like a big REIT), you're competing against a big pool of smart money. There are going to be fewer pricing errors to exploit. You don't
780.
by ef4 14y ago
It's not that these ideas are necessarily bad. But they need to convince me that they're not being done purely out of the fear of getting out and talking to potential customers. Make a product you would use yourself is all well and good, bu

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