feoren

37 ms·

391.
by feoren 2y ago
Why is it diamonds, and not iridium, pearl, or opal? Why does a diamond's value depreciate to nothing the instant it's sold, unlike gold? Why did the price of diamonds shoot up so drastically in the early 1900s? Why are the indist
392.
by feoren 2y ago
> The answer to all these questions is the same. Only if that answer is "the world is incredibly complicated and each individual situation is laden with its own history, nuance, and complications." Because otherwise: no, the an
393.
by feoren 2y ago
But the suffering is what makes it special! Sarcasm, obviously. I never understood why people prefer diamonds produced by the manual labor (and often suffering) of other humans over diamonds produced by the ingenuity and knowledge of other
394.
by feoren 2y ago
> you can create an extraordinarily tiny Turing machine (or a Python script that’s about 10 lines of code) whose halting behavior requires these bizarre axioms that most non-mathematicians have never heard of to prove Two comments: (1) H
395.
by feoren 2y ago
The classic blunder. Another one of their problems was that they had to use all those bits. If only they had access to a 2! Software is always simplifying reality by using abstractions. What else could it possibly do? Completely simulate
396.
by feoren 2y ago
> you can copy software rather easily, but you cannot copy a bridge You can copy a bridge just as easily as you can copy software: just print another copy of the blueprints. Just change the header from the name of one project to another,
397.
by feoren 2y ago
Despite the downvotes, I agree with you: I only care about getting the thing done. I don't want the OS to matter. I don't want it to be part of my identity. I don't want to think about the OS at all . Whereas most people usi
398.
by feoren 2y ago
> I am aware that Valve has done some shady stuff in the past Oh man, what did they do in the past? I have Valve on my very short list of "good companies". Go ahead and rip off that band-aid: what are you referring to?
399.
by feoren 2y ago
> the Randian paradox ... It is ... quite selfless to tell people to be selfish Unlike most paradoxes, this "Randian paradox" has an easy resolution: it's utter bullshit parroted by asshole psychopaths who have been wishin
400.
by feoren 2y ago
I wonder what it would look like to go back in history and compile a bunch statements of the form "The fact is X and anyone who disputes this is wrong." What gems might we find? "The fact is that the Sun obviously revolves ar
401.
by feoren 2y ago
> Except in TS this truly has no benefit besides superficial perception of improved type safety. You know the saying that everyone who drives slower than you is a moron, and everyone who drives faster than you is a lunatic? You seem to b
402.
by feoren 2y ago
> It’s not just that we choose our own distractions; it’s that the pleasure we get from being distracted is the pleasure of taking action and being free. There’s a glee that comes from making choices, a contentment that settles after we’
403.
by feoren 2y ago
Absolutely spot on! I haven't thought about Nate Silver in years, and after seeing people hate on him I went and read the article, and now I also get the ick from him. Here are some of those "I'm a complete asshole" trib
404.
by feoren 2y ago
The observable universe has a radius of about 14 Gigaparsecs. If H0 is 67.4 km/s/Mpc, then a naive calculation puts the edge of the observable universe expanding at 943,600 km/s, or about 3 times the speed of light. Of course
405.
by feoren 2y ago
ehh ... everything we measure relies on our understanding of the universe in some way. It's perfectly reasonable that our distance measurements could rely on a shakier foundation of assumptions than our understanding of the CMB. I do
406.
by feoren 2y ago
This Georgetown report is a good place to start, they aggregate findings from a lot of different studies: https://cew.georgetown.edu/cew-reports/schooled2lose/
407.
by feoren 2y ago
A lot less than most people seem to think. By far the best predictor of someone's wealth is their parents' wealth. By very far. The vast majority of wealth is generational. But even if you believe in upward mobility, the point is
408.
by feoren 2y ago
Whoever thinks this is good advice has an extremely easy life. Most people have literally no slack time at all. You're supposed to execute your great plans in the 1 hour per day you have after work, commute, taking care of family, and
409.
by feoren 2y ago
You started by saying: > Enumerated types in some way list all the values the type can have And then said: > X = enum | predicate is enumerated, since it has two options that it explicitly lists But you can't list its values by
410.
by feoren 2y ago
> I'm talking about whether a type explicit enumerates its members (like A = B | C or A = [] | [A]) or whether it is a contract which does not know how many members it has And I'm asserting that this is an implementation detail
411.
by feoren 2y ago
I don't think a distinction between "predicate types" and "enumerated types" is particularly useful. As you pointed out, you can enumerate all even integers. All enumerated types can be represented as predicate ty
412.
by feoren 2y ago
> our power is much more limited than that of the single cell that created all of life Is it? That single cell had 3.5 billion years of almost-exponential growth to do its thing. We've been on this planet for something like 100,000
413.
by feoren 2y ago
Don't forget the "featured artist" problem: the app is paid or otherwise incentivized to show you specific artists. Enshittification ensues.
414.
by feoren 2y ago
> leaving the bulk of crime to happen without repercussions Another way to put this is a strong "err on the side of letting the guilty walk free over putting the innocent in jail", which is a very intentional foundational princ
415.
by feoren 2y ago
Bingo! It's the Principal Agent Problem. People focus too much on why companies do X and companies do Y, it's bad in the long term. The long term doesn't exist. No decision maker at these public companies gives a rat's a
416.
by feoren 2y ago
I know HN doesn't like quibbles about site design, but I'm literally having difficulty reading the article due to the font size being forced to be at least 1.3vw. Zooming out doesn't decrease the font size! Downvote if this i
417.
by feoren 2y ago
So the advice is: * Find meaning outside work, with the five hours per week you have between working full time, commuting (hopefully not as much anymore), and taking care of your kids and yourself. Hours during which you're completely
418.
by feoren 2y ago
How about this: given any arbitrarily large window size W, we can find an infinite number of timestamps (it may even be enough to say we can find two) in which the tape within the range of Head-W and Head+W is identical. So if you say 10, I
419.
by feoren 2y ago
Which is harder to detect: replacing reference 17 with the one you're trying to pump, or adding reference 35 when the bibliography in the original paper clearly stops at 34?
420.
by feoren 2y ago
You're right: my argument is flawed. I had thought TFA relied on that argument, but the machine that writes 1 and moves right forever is a counterexample. Yet something about that still seems extremely "loopy". Is there some

More ›