fergie

70 ms·

781.
by fergie 9y ago
Yes- A very compelling introduction or first chapter.
782.
by fergie 9y ago
"Work is badly distributed. People have too much, or too little, or both in the same month. And away from our unpredictable, all-consuming workplaces, vital human activities are increasingly neglected. Workers lack the time or energy t
783.
by fergie 9y ago
Yes, I have noticed this recently too, although I have no hard and fast examples. Google _seems_ to be returning more popular/mainstream sites at the expense of less popular sites that may be more relevant. Also- Google has stopped pen
784.
by fergie 9y ago
Sincere apologies. I saw "Our mission is to make home buying and selling easier" and jumped to conclusions.
785.
by fergie 9y ago
Its worth noting that the story seems to have been written by an estate agency, and there would therefore be an interest in encouraging property transactions.
786.
by fergie 9y ago
You could make the case (not made in the article) that social policy is increasingly being shaped to favour _ownership_ over _contribution_. Interest rates are kept low, residential investment property is taxed favourably, agricultural land
787.
by fergie 9y ago
The article seems to make the case that when lots of people want to move to the same area, prices and density go up. I am unsure why this insight is worthy of the front page of Hacker News. Maybe I am missing something?
788.
by fergie 9y ago
I think (and I say this with love) that any sane person who starts using emacs will find it infuriating- its part of the appeal.
789.
by fergie 9y ago
In my experience its about 30%(ish) to the worker gross, which means that the worker gets about 20% after tax. It can be slightly higher or lower depending on the situation.
790.
by fergie 9y ago
I recently got roped into one of Palantir's recruitment events (because I am a pathetic sucker for free beer), and they were making a really big deal of how they billed by _outcome_ rather than _time_. At the time I just thought that t
791.
by fergie 9y ago
You should read the book.
792.
by fergie 9y ago
If you haven't read them already, I really recommend the following two books: "Into Thin Air" by John Krakauer was the first book to critically explore the "Death Zone" and the state of mountaineering on Everest gen
793.
by fergie 9y ago
As a Scottish person, I read the link title and got defensive.
794.
by fergie 9y ago
Yes, taxi laws need to be revised, but there are sound reasons for licensing taxis operating in a city: - Limiting the amount of traffic on the roads - Ensuring that vehicles are nice enough (that there isn't a "race to the bottom
795.
by fergie 9y ago
The battery-swap idea has in fact been fairly well established for a while, but nobody has actually made it work. I believe that Tesla considered going down this route for a while. Here is a HN classic about "Better Place", a comp
796.
by fergie 9y ago
> "But the automakers’ existing expertise — building internal combustion engines — will no longer give them a competitive edge." Interesting- this would mean that the real innovation in cars comes _after_ electric drivetrains
797.
by fergie 9y ago
> "With enough money from his filmmaking and investments, Mr. Brown did not work after making “The Endless Summer 2.” He pursued hobbies like target shooting, collecting old cars and racing rally cars."
798.
by fergie 9y ago
Yes, a degree make a massive difference, particularly if you aspire to work in an established technology environment. Decide what you want to do, and then work out what you need to do to get there. If you dont want to do a degree- what then
799.
by fergie 9y ago
If nothing else, the current bitcoin adventure is raising a general awareness of the nature of currency- that is, something that primary exists to be means of exchange, and not something that primarily exists to store value. It seems obviou
800.
by fergie 9y ago
Its 2017. "Don't go to college" has always been really bad advice, and has never been more so than right now. If you go to college and do well in CS, you will have tech companies asking you to join them. You will also be equi
801.
by fergie 9y ago
And that feeds into the wider question of whether bitcoin is a medium of exchange or a commodity. At this point in time it is clearly the latter. You wouldn't swap a lump of copper for a game on Steam, so it makes no sense to swap a lu
802.
by fergie 9y ago
I'm so glad that the HN community still promotes quality long-form journalism. Long may it continue.
803.
by fergie 9y ago
There are probably a lot of people like me on HN who _need_ a unix box to do their work, and the various Macs are still far and away the best general purpose unix boxes available (best chassis, best peripheral compatibility, best (o|O)ffice
804.
by fergie 9y ago
Oh I see- that makes sense.
805.
by fergie 9y ago
Can anybody ELI5? The documentation is pretty fluffy. Does WebAssembly actually open up any new API hooks? I get that its a clever way of transpiling existing programs to JavasScript, but surely we could do that already? Whats new avenues o
806.
by fergie 9y ago
Its fair to question just how far AI driving can possibly go at the moment. Most of the AI we have today is being used for classification and recommendation in fairly low-stakes environments (advertising, (search, social)). It _is_ a big ju
807.
by fergie 9y ago
Me neither, other than that I am very glad that the Spectator continues to survive
808.
by fergie 9y ago
Its a badly written article, and it has almost certainly been "brigaded" to the front page.
809.
by fergie 9y ago
Not sure if it is so far fetched to do some lightweight voice analysis (client side) and store significant terms in the same way that you would store search history.
810.
by fergie 9y ago
I had a similar experience in June when I was on a car journey and we got a crack in the windscreen. My phone was out (was using it to navigate) but it wasn't touched at all. It was a Sunday, and I didn't bother researching how to

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