maxander

33 ms·

271.
by maxander 8y ago
That's all prescribed doses, though. So, yes, the use of benzodiazepines is going up, which obviously carries with it the associated rise in side effects and drug-related deaths. It's not reasonably comparable to the narcotics
272.
by maxander 8y ago
What is the thesis here? Benzodiazepines are commonly prescribed and have the potential for abuse; these things are both true; I hadn't heard the rate of prescription was rising, but I'd believe it. There doesn't seem to be
273.
by maxander 8y ago
If things go far enough downhill that the Svalbard vault is lost and its contents just allowed to rot, I’d be surprised if we retained the technological capacity to do things like synthesizing a complex genome from data. (I’m not sure we c
274.
by maxander 8y ago
As a guy who does a lot of scientific data analysis and plotting, I'm surprised that no one brought up the obvious explanation; in the general scrum of final manuscript preparation, the data analysis guy mistakenly made a plot with the
275.
by maxander 8y ago
I’d imagine they ruled out an alien source simply because any astronomical phenomenon could be produced by aliens. Thinking about that for anything slightly unusual is just burdensome cognitive overhead. Similar to how cosmologists aren’
276.
by maxander 8y ago
Architects and mechanical engineers not only know about blueprints and design procedure, they also have a solid understanding of the physics that make their designs work. Programmers, by and large, just know how to code. There exists a for
277.
by maxander 8y ago
Well, over the many-thousand-year geological record, we've seen exactly one global industrialization, and also exactly one climate shift of this nature, and against all odds they're happening at essentially the exact same time. E
278.
by maxander 8y ago
Do you really think there are 100M people on the planet willing and able to pay for the absurd fuel cost this would require, just to shave off a few hours heading to a holiday or business meeting? There’s a reason that present day jets are
279.
by maxander 8y ago
The issue is that, presently, all the engineers, and the industrial base, are on Earth. So, space has to value-add to Earth in order to pay their salaries, if any effort is going to persist long enough to get to the self-sustaining pictur
280.
by maxander 8y ago
It’s a nice result; a world full of 130-IQ humans with a 120-year life expectancy sounds stable and achievable next to most techno-utopian visions. But, I wonder if you asked a 115-year old whether they wanted to die in 5 years what they wo
281.
by maxander 8y ago
That’s why the experimenters added the “assuming a pill that grants eternal youth” detail to the question. But it’s possible that inattentive test subjects didn’t fully internalize that.
282.
by maxander 8y ago
I've seen more sophisticated schemes for teacher evaluation, in which the metric takes into account the ability of the students as they enter that teacher's class. So, for a student who got a B, say, in grades N < 5, there&#x2
283.
by maxander 8y ago
I mean, are you "under constant fear of being fired" wherever you work? No one's advocating being seriously harsh to teachers; the issue is that currently, due to union agreements and so forth, it's nearly impossible
284.
by maxander 8y ago
It’s the stereotype, not the reality. Check out the housing prices near frequently-served bus stops in your local city.
285.
by maxander 8y ago
The market for ride-sharing services is over $17B [1], of which Lyft accounts for about a quarter. This is cited as a “multimillion dollar” effort- it’s likely barely a drop in the bucket. (And nice marketing, to boot.) [1] https:/&
286.
by maxander 8y ago
It’s a valid point, but there are also factors in the other direction- for instance, there are people who would have chosen to buy cars if ride sharing weren’t available, and this would have led to greenhouse gas emission through their manu
287.
by maxander 8y ago
I'd guess that most of HN is in roughly your position- enamored with the idea of a startup but without the savings to start one up, or enthusiastic about Big Name tech companies but without the background or geographic location to get
288.
by maxander 8y ago
It likely isn't what he's looking for, but if he's feeling that badly because of these difficulties (which are a difficult struggle, to be sure, but not catastrophic by any measure) it's not his life that's the prob
289.
by maxander 8y ago
The headline is a wonderful example of syntactic ambiguity. :)
290.
by maxander 8y ago
Ask yourself, though, how often you’ve seen emails like this from other companies in the news. Probably about never? Whatever you think about his reasons, Musk is going way against standard procedure here- and this in the field of company
291.
by maxander 8y ago
I don't have time at the moment to read the article in detail, but it sounds like the experiment tested non-meditators on work tasks immediately following a meditation session. I don't believe that this has much bearing on the o
292.
by maxander 8y ago
As others have noted, the article is based on a study that only looked at a small subject of OSS projects, so it's not very solid. But the results fit with many commenters' perceptions. It's surprising that so little is kno
293.
by maxander 8y ago
Any citations on that? In all the hullabaloo about Theranos I haven't heard that there were serious theoretical difficulties with what they were trying to do. It would make me feel somewhat better about the whole mess to know this was
294.
by maxander 8y ago
No, you are wrong. R is terrible , and especially so for non-professional programmers, and it is an absolute disaster for the applications where it routinely gets used, namely statistics for scientific applications. The reason is its s
295.
by maxander 8y ago
We could be using this technology to see tumors and other pathologies through patients’ skin. Instead we’re using it to give soldiers and spies x-ray vision.
296.
by maxander 8y ago
To be fair, isn’t far behind the state of the art in nutritional research.
297.
by maxander 8y ago
Of course they don’t. They just need complacent accomplices, such as Mr. Brady.
298.
by maxander 8y ago
It doesn’t have to happen to them, they can grow up as happy as they are now. One good reason to seek help for yourself, and recover from your depression, is to give your children an example of how to respond if/when it happens to t
299.
by maxander 8y ago
You expect a future where brain implants will be tiny computers that make you smarter, but perhaps instead you get a future where brain implants are tiny heating coils that make you wake up earlier.
300.
by maxander 8y ago
If Stuxnet being limited to interfering with its intended target is your example of how Western intelligence is over concerned with limits to their operations’ scope, I think you hold our services to a very low standard, both ethically and

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