johbjo

15 ms·

121.
by johbjo 6y ago
The problem (pointed to in many comments) seems to be confusion about roles. Economics is a form of science. Maybe not a hard science, but there are honest ambitions to understand the world. Much of it is historical, since it is based on na
122.
by johbjo 6y ago
It goes without saying that if you know (or guess) the model or function you are trying to implement, then you don't need machine learning. Toy problems like this are still interesting because they demonstrate techniques that are appli
123.
by johbjo 6y ago
Installing rack servers and setting up services to run a site used to be a sort of rite-of-passage 15-20 years ago, but that time period of the web was different. Still, I would consider basic familiarity with the infrastructure necessary a
124.
by johbjo 6y ago
No, the FT article is referring to excess deaths during the outbreaks, which of course is higher than the average for those months. Mortality for the year in total is on average.
125.
by johbjo 6y ago
The graph in the link is badly chosen to demonstrate this, but there is no excess mortality during january-september relative to previous years. It is clear from monthly data that from march to may there was excess mortality. From june to s
126.
by johbjo 6y ago
Asset inflation is not the same as wage inflation. Consider the relative size of new mortgages to wages. Since asset prices are typically leveraged on wages (through mortgages), assets will inflate faster than wages (unless the interest rat
127.
by johbjo 6y ago
You're assuming inflation in wages, but not in prices. And there are relative differences in price inflation. Nowadays, assets typically inflate first, then wages and consumer prices. Prices can move faster than wages, so wages would i
128.
by johbjo 6y ago
The crazy idea behind Google was that they had no feasible plan for monetization. There was an early and obvious insight that fast and simple search would win, but ads at the time were gif banners and flash animation. They tried adwords, an
129.
by johbjo 6y ago
No. The reason there are few FANGS is that they are platform businesses, and the value of their services is proportional (or more?) to the size of their user bases. This means winner-takes-all. There were others, but they did not grow users
130.
by johbjo 6y ago
Governments have the right to print money.
131.
by johbjo 6y ago
The reason it hurts the middle class is that the size of their mortgages are the first to be affected by inflation, whereas their wages are among the last. Mortgage holders are stakeholders in inflation, hoping for appreciating property pri
132.
by johbjo 6y ago
A zero-inflation policy would correspond to matching the money supply growth to productivity growth. This would, ideally, result in approximately stable prices. Relative prices would still vary. A more efficient candy-bar machine would lowe
133.
by johbjo 6y ago
One typical scenario; (rich people) take loans to buy assets. The loan itself causes inflation, and asset prices will rise. Then wages and cash savings have less relative value. Wages won't be affected until the firms can increase pric
134.
by johbjo 6y ago
How do you define inflation, and what benefits do you see with inflation free money? Inflation itself is a policy, intended to generate incentives. In addition, the central bank mechanisms for inflation are themselves "biased" in
135.
by johbjo 6y ago
There were rural regions in Sweden with no deaths and where the economy was essentially uninterrupted. The urban regions, however, were already in the "exponential wall" when covid became a news story. The difference with Norway,
136.
by johbjo 6y ago
"Dry tinder" hypothesis: the massive (but hidden) early spread exposed vulnerable people, whereas now they are protecting themselves and possibly receiving smaller inoculations. The magnitude of the early spread in cities like NY
137.
by johbjo 6y ago
Know a guy who introduced SharedLaTeX at a security consulting firm. Apparently they all liked it.
138.
by johbjo 6y ago
The LyX editor for math is ridiculously competent. Even using plain LaTeX, LyX can be used just for the maths because it is so quick. I can't imagine the math for which LyX would be insufficient. It doesn't render like tex in the
139.
by johbjo 6y ago
Kind of. Pronouncing a_b as "a wrt b" should work though. With f_uk, it could mean a model with parameters trained for UK - "theta uk". In my view, it's nice to have subscript-like things in the constructors. Ex: uk
140.
by johbjo 6y ago
If weaknesses can be known in advance, then they can "just" be incorporated into the training environment. Unless you can feed the sensors "false" data, there aren't necessarily that many possible exploits.
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by johbjo 6y ago
a_b in maths is pronounced "a of b" in English, and is often intended to be equivalent to a(b). Superscripts in maths is closer to concatenated class names, as it separates it from being a function of something.