j_baker

38 ms·

301.
by j_baker 13y ago
Fair enough, but I suspect "thousands of years" of evolution may come very quickly if phages were to be used half as widely as antibiotics are. Besides that, not all of the cells bacteriophages could harmfully target are human cel
302.
by j_baker 13y ago
It's much easier to demand proof than it is to present it, isn't it? This is particularly true when we're talking about a subject that's notoriously tricky to measure (programmer productivity) and subjective (what the he
303.
by j_baker 13y ago
but phage evolve along with the pathogen. How do you prevent the phage from evolving to target the human cells?
304.
by j_baker 13y ago
This shouldn't be surprising, psychologists have known this for a couple of decades. See mood contagion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_contagion Anger, being a highly negative, high energy-level emotion
305.
NSA spies on international payments(m.spiegel.de)
3 points by j_baker 13y ago|0 comments
306.
by j_baker 13y ago
It seems as though the problem is more acute in private colleges. Public colleges just don't seem to be growing in price as much as private colleges. It seems like one solution to the issue of rising college costs is for us as a soci
307.
by j_baker 13y ago
Style guides are arbitrary prescriptions. Why not 2 spaces around a slash? Why not put a space before and after a period? Why not put spaces around parenthesis instead of just before?
308.
by j_baker 13y ago
If the USA were kicked off the internet, US businesses would be far from the only ones that would experience enormous economic damages.
309.
by j_baker 13y ago
I don't plan on getting used to it, nor should you. Protecting liberty is an ongoing battle that every generation has to fight.
310.
by j_baker 13y ago
The DOJ has gotten exceedingly good at blatantly trumping up charges against innocent people on the flimsiest of excuses. The saddest part of it all is that in many cases even if the defendant is found not guilty, their career may be over.
311.
by j_baker 13y ago
You seem to be assuming there's something NIST could have done about it. Based on what I've read, that doesn't seem to be the case. It seems like the NSA squeezed everyone else out so that they were the only ones calling the
312.
by j_baker 13y ago
I suspect that NIST is just another government organization trying to do their jobs, and I don't think it's fair that their name got dragged through the mud. The truth is that the NSA practically co-opted NIST's decision-mak
313.
by j_baker 13y ago
I don't have a reference handy, but it's been shown that people are fundamentally ambivalent about creativity. Everybody agrees that creativity is a good thing, but when it comes down to judging a creative idea, most people will
314.
by j_baker 13y ago
I see what you're getting at, but I'd like to point out that "not a big amount of system administration work" isn't worth money. Have you actually figured out how much it costs you to write many python scripts?
315.
by j_baker 13y ago
What on earth makes you think Congress is less political than a special prosecutor would be? Congress is the very definition of politics.
316.
by j_baker 13y ago
I think the main benefit would be for people already running on EC2/AWS. I would imagine (but don't know) that you'd get better latency and throughput between an EC2 instance an elasticache instance than between an EC2 instan
317.
by j_baker 13y ago
Two things: 1. What kind of EC2 instance are we talking about for MongoDB? If you're not using an SSD, comparing Dynamo and Mongo wouldn't be an apples-to-apples comparison. 2. I buy that the strictly technical costs of these s
318.
by j_baker 13y ago
I'm a bit surprised that people find CC dry. I read it almost cover to cover within a couple of weeks of having it, and I'm the most easily bored person I know.
319.
by j_baker 13y ago
See? Now you're going back to "engineer is a dumb machine who translates other peoples' thoughts into code" land. Reality is more like this: "The sales side figures out what customers claim they can't live wi
320.
by j_baker 13y ago
It's rarely that blatant. Most people use more covert methods to keep engineers out of the lifecycle. It can be frustrating because most of these statements can be valid when uttered under different circumstances. - "Only "
321.
by j_baker 13y ago
If there's one thing that grinds my gears, it's people who treat engineers as if they were some kind of underclass who have absolutely zero ability to understand customer needs. It's sometimes like engineers solely exist t
322.
Why Big, Intense Wildfires Are the New Normal(news.nationalgeographic.com)
2 points by j_baker 13y ago|0 comments
323.
by j_baker 13y ago
Please. I hate nothing more than a male-dominated work environment. The point I'm trying to make is that there is more to choosing an executive than diversity. Diversity is necessary, but not sufficient. The reason I brought Sarah Pal
324.
by j_baker 13y ago
I'm kind of reminded of John McCain choosing Sarah Palin as his VP candidate. Sure it was a great, forward-thinking thing for him to choose a woman, particularly when running against a black man. But that doesn't mean it was a goo
325.
by j_baker 13y ago
I'm inclined to say that hacker spaces should have showers. That way there's no excuse. Plus, it makes it easier to work out there as well.
326.
by j_baker 13y ago
It sounds like what you're trying to say is that this is a problem that's bigger than Noisebridge. I think that homelessness is a huge problem in San Francisco, and I think it's a shame that it's such a problem that No
327.
by j_baker 13y ago
For some reason, you seem to be reducing my argument to "Use the shiniest technology possible!". Please don't strawman me. If MySQL works for your use-case, and it's the option you're the most familiar with, use
328.
by j_baker 13y ago
I would argue the exact opposite. The average startup is likely using MySQL as a glorified key-value store already anyway, and they're likely using it in lieu of a more appropriate datastore because people tell them they don't ne
329.
by j_baker 13y ago
I don't buy it. Clearly it's simplistic to try to cast this as being "Alexander == the devil". But that doesn't make Alexander a good person. I've yet to see any evidence of Alexander being an earnest individ
330.
by j_baker 13y ago
It could also be that if she knew what Alexander knew, she'd only become more disgusted than she already is.

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