jltsiren

15 ms·

391.
by jltsiren 11mo ago
A mutex is a natural abstraction when there is exactly one of them. You have a bunch of tasks doing their own stuff, with shared mutable state behind the mutex. When you start thinking about using two mutexes, other abstractions often becom
392.
by jltsiren 11mo ago
It's better to think that markets are about competition between centrally planned economies. We call those centrally planned economies companies. A successful company is one that managed to beat the market. History gives us evidence th
393.
by jltsiren 11mo ago
As a legal immigrant, you get used to dealing with government bureaucracy, and the demands are usually higher than for citizens. Places where you get the same treatment as citizens then don't feel so bad in comparison.
394.
by jltsiren 11mo ago
Most serious UBI proposals are almost cost-neutral. In other words, most people would not get any more money than they already get. The main source of funding would be income taxes. The highest or second highest income tax bracket would sta
395.
by jltsiren 11mo ago
Cooking takes time and effort, which many people lack. You need to make an initial investment in utensils and appliances, which poor people can't always afford. And if you don't already know how to cook, learning it on your own ca
396.
by jltsiren 11mo ago
There is no shortage of political debate in most developed countries. I think a bigger reason is that people who go to politics or administration often succumb to a certain kind of (reverse) teleological fallacy. They think that because the
397.
by jltsiren 11mo ago
Alchemy was a subfield of natural philosophy, not a profession. Its European practicioners had typically studied medicine or theology.
398.
by jltsiren 11mo ago
They are different degrees based on different curricula. Anesthesiology is a specialization you can choose after finishing MD in "generic" medicine.
399.
by jltsiren 11mo ago
> No, the fundamental problem with state is exactly that: it exists to propagate and protect itself, but you, the citizen, are not included. You are a resource, and your well-being and happiness is only incidental, not the actual goal. B
400.
by jltsiren 1y ago
By becoming wealthy later than European countries. Shipyards are long-term investments. It makes sense to build them when you have the expertise and labor costs are in your favor. But once you have built them, they are a sunk cost. You can
401.
by jltsiren 1y ago
It's more that South Korea and Japan are the last developed countries, where it's still economically viable to build cargo ships. Several European countries have robust shipbuilding industry, but they focus on higher-value ships s
402.
by jltsiren 1y ago
In parts that do not care much about property rights and citizens are not allowed to challenge government decisions in the courts. If I was trying to build new infrastructure in Finland, I would add four years to the project between the pla
403.
by jltsiren 1y ago
That's a naive argument. Infrastructure construction timelines are typically measured in years and decades. You need to find the political will to do it and sufficient guarantees of long-term demand to justify the investment. And the w
404.
by jltsiren 1y ago
Coordination problems become easier when there is a pressing need to solve them. If pennies are phased out, companies need to figure out how to do business without pennies. If they can't find a legal way to continue business, they will
405.
by jltsiren 1y ago
Peacetime funding. Experts generally expected that there would be effective COVID vaccines by the end of 2020, because vaccine development is not magic. There are several known approaches to creating vaccines, and it was reasonable to expec
406.
by jltsiren 1y ago
There is nothing preventing the UK from taking advantage of the talent pool, supply chain, and consumer market of an equally large economy in their chosen field. Except maybe the UK itself. National borders are as important as you choose to
407.
by jltsiren 1y ago
How could Shenzhen possibly compete with the rest of the world in electronics? Specialization is the answer. The bigger you are, the more fields you can be competitive in. But even regions much smaller than the UK can be world leaders in so
408.
by jltsiren 1y ago
You are using "free market" as a political term. In that sense, it refers to little more than to the absence of unnecessary regulations. Economics is more concerned about whether "free market" is a useful description of
409.
by jltsiren 1y ago
Some European languages have a word for "science". Some have a word for "Wissenschaft". I'm not aware of any language that has separate words for both concepts. Confusion ensues when "science" inevitably g
410.
by jltsiren 1y ago
A bank is not a random private company. In Finland, people are supposed to have a single official address. When you move, the government informs banks and other businesses that have a legitimate reason to know your official address, unless
411.
by jltsiren 1y ago
That was the killer feature that convinced me to switch from Windows + Linux to Mac a long time ago. I often have too many windows open, and the conceptual separation between apps and windows helps me find the right task faster. Especially
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by jltsiren 1y ago
They are already innovating more than they can deliver. While Apple's hardware quality is usually good, their quality standards are much lower on the software side.
413.
by jltsiren 1y ago
You can't measure intelligence directly. Instead, the idea is to measure performance in various tasks and use that as a proxy for intelligence. But human performance depends on other aspects beyond intelligence, including education, op
414.
by jltsiren 1y ago
An interested but uninformed layman. When I was in college ~25 years ago, I took a class on the philosophy of AI. People had come up with a lot of weird ideas about AI, but there was one almost universal conclusion: that the Turing test is
415.
by jltsiren 1y ago
Putin has repeatedly used the Iraq War as a justification for his actions. As a formal excuse ("a major power is allowed to invade other countries according to its own judgment") and likely also as a personal belief. The NATO inte
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by jltsiren 1y ago
There is a complicating factor. Universities are not your average top-down hierarchies. While some aspects of the work do belong to the employer, other aspects are yours (or you PI's), and they may follow you to your next job. While ad
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by jltsiren 1y ago
The basic assumption is that most of the genome is essentially random. If you take a short substring from an arbitrary location, it will likely define the location uniquely. Then there are some regions with varying degrees of repetitiveness
418.
by jltsiren 1y ago
Europe was also an export market in the past. Back in early 2002, 1 EUR was worth less than 0.9 USD. Then it started climbing rapidly and reached a peak of 1.6 USD in mid-2008. The value of money is inherently unpredictable. The exchange ra
419.
by jltsiren 1y ago
I don't see any evidence that EUR is particularly strong against USD. Except maybe if you take a very short-term perspective. There is always some volatility in exchange rates, and export businesses that cannot tolerate 10% swings in e
420.
by jltsiren 1y ago
EUR was unusually strong from 2004 to 2015. Since then, it has almost always been between $1.07 and $1.20, which I would consider the normal range.

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