iguy

13 ms·

91.
by iguy 6y ago
> Egor Gaidar [1] is an excellent source This is published in English as [1] Yegor Gaidar, "Collapse of an Empire: Lessons for Modern Russia". TLDR is maybe this [2] write-up of a talk, 8 pages, very interesting. [1] https:&#
92.
by iguy 6y ago
Would be interesting to know more, but as far as I know Switzerland (or the area) was never especially like this. I mean it was always mountainous, obviously, but the people were not so different from their neighbors. Cheese-makers who worr
93.
by iguy 6y ago
In 1936 the UK was already consolidated down to 4 companies (IIRC). The big abandonment was deliberate government policy in the 60s, and the logic was exactly last-mile truck (or bus) delivery with rail for the trunk. But it turned out that
94.
by iguy 6y ago
If alcoholics drink half the alcohol, by volume, it may still be a lot less than half the revenue, let alone half the profit. But hard to guess... I wonder what proportion of alcohol sold is (say) more than twice the price of the cheapest s
95.
by iguy 6y ago
I'm no farmer, but both surface and buried drip irrigation are widely done. So I guess they solved that?
96.
by iguy 6y ago
The military also spends a lot of time turning jet fuel into electricity, because the former is energy-dense, easy to store, easy to transport. And they need electricity in lots of places without a grid. Where would the reverse be useful? S
97.
by iguy 6y ago
> question is whether it uses less electricity to desalinate and flood irrigate, or pay for the electricity to allow ultra high density, water efficient farms Nobody desalinates & floods fields, surely. (That's what you do if yo
98.
by iguy 6y ago
Or perhaps it could be a fixed duration per field, somehow, so that you know before filing what you will get. It would be easy to discriminate between 20 years for drugs vs. 5 for anything software, but I guess it's tricky to decide wh
99.
by iguy 6y ago
I thought this was true of math almost anywhere. Those who are serious will take hard courses and learn a lot, there is no ceiling. The reward isn't a high GPA, but if something formal is needed, a transcript naming what you took ought
100.
by iguy 6y ago
Here's one idea: Cap the amount that all student loans can collect at something like 15% of taxable income, for max 20 years after signing. After that they are written off. But let the lenders see everything -- school, major, test sc
101.
by iguy 6y ago
This happens a lot. But the new road/rail often shares the line of the old on the easy sections, so you may not get a continuous bike trail out of the old route. (Plus, as you say, old bridges/tunnels/steep slopes may be unsa
102.
by iguy 6y ago
Agree it seems a bit wrong. Worth bearing in mind that cases which go to higher courts are usually ones which lower courts think aren't clear, or different courts disagree.
103.
by iguy 6y ago
Yes, there are things to criticise, but I don't recall it offering a reason to bet on the very western edge of Europe over (say) the Ottomans.
104.
by iguy 6y ago
At a few hundred dollars per kg, I bet you could run a business scattering people's ashes. Maybe even at a few thousand. I wonder if they would turn you down? Edit -- turns out this is a thing, already, I just didn't know. SpaceX
105.
by iguy 6y ago
Also, 10% overall probably means a much higher share in some countries. Doesn't seem like a crazy threshold.
106.
by iguy 6y ago
In many places, the aristocrats lived in the city for the winter (when the cold kept the smells and disease at bay) and in the country for the summer.
107.
by iguy 6y ago
I mostly agree. I guess the counter-argument is to claim that the market for the original quality was going away. This does happen, too: the first-mover can essentially spend monopoly profits on making something which makes engineers happy,
108.
by iguy 6y ago
There is pretty good data on this from pre-industrial England. What you are asserting is what historians widely believed before they actually looked at the data, around the 1960s. They said this by looking at the more recent past of less de
109.
by iguy 6y ago
I think you greatly overestimate population growth rates in the past here. A world where 4 successful sons was the norm has population doubling every decade or so, no society has done that. A world with just 2 has doubling every 25 years, a
110.
by iguy 6y ago
Depends where, but in western Europe for the last thousand years, probably not. I think the best data is for England, and centuries before the industrial revolution, the pattern is very strongly not multi-generational. Young couples expecte
111.
by iguy 6y ago
Who's pretending they are "driven by security"? Clearly Apple wants to make money. The only argument being made is that some customers choose the walled garden because they want a telephone, not a part-time job keeping the
112.
by iguy 6y ago
No. That wasn't the argument at all. It's that people aren't exactly stretching their imaginations to picture their phone ecosystem going to hell. They've all been there before, and have vivid memories of what they don&#
113.
by iguy 6y ago
My guess is that "sufficiently standardized" has to come from browser-makers. If what my browser reveals (at the default settings) is that I'm using Safari 13, and little more, then it could actually be low-information.
114.
by iguy 6y ago
> WhatsApp today is a great messaging app But it was pretty good before they bought it, too. And widely used, IIRC was clearly the biggest in some parts of the world.
115.
by iguy 6y ago
Ah, looking again at floorplans, some appear to be stacking two stair paths in one stairwell. So if you have a fire in one apartment, maybe the smoke only reaches (say) even-floor-number front doors.
116.
by iguy 6y ago
Yes, an actual open auction would be astonishingly bad PR! But quietly, on the side? Maybe I'm a cynic but I struggle to believe the billionaires won't find a way. If not from the main production... they had 43538 phase III partic
117.
by iguy 6y ago
Also, viewed from the other side, the point of taking Switzerland would have been to have easier transport across the alps, Germany-Italy. But with all the bridges & tunnels blown up, this benefit would be lost. In other words, I think
118.
by iguy 6y ago
Presumably they pre-sold based on estimates of their production. I would not be very surprised if it turns out they can make 10% more than they committed, and auction this off. And would expect hospitals treating Saudi princelings & the
119.
by iguy 6y ago
Duplicate of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25331442
120.
by iguy 6y ago
Can't say I know anything about those, unless Hong Kong counts -- it is certainly full of towers with barely space for one staircase.

More ›