mrbabbage

8 ms·

31.
by mrbabbage 6y ago
> ignoring dividends Well, this is a bit of an unfair premise :) the whole point of equity is that it is a claim on a company's future profits, and companies return profits either via directly via dividends or indirectly via buyba
32.
by mrbabbage 6y ago
There is no defense for PG&E for the Camp Fire. This is an organization that is notorious for under-maintaining its assets. Its state of repair is so shoddy that it regularly turns off power for many days at a time ("public safet
33.
by mrbabbage 9y ago
NYC's transit mode share for commute trips is above 50% [1]. Of the additional 1.2 million people, this means that this population growth probably produced at least 1.2 million additional daily rides, since 50% of the 1.2 million ride
34.
Book: In ‘Brotopia,’ Silicon Valley Disrupts Everything but the Boys’ Club(nytimes.com)
2 points by mrbabbage 9y ago|0 comments
35.
After Peak Hype, Self-Driving Cars Enter the Trough of Disillusionment(wired.com)
3 points by mrbabbage 9y ago|0 comments
36.
by mrbabbage 9y ago
> why couldn't they have standardized a protocol for a server to get updated certificates from the CA? That's essentially OCSP :-) In general there's not really a concept of an "updated certificate". A certifica
37.
by mrbabbage 9y ago
> We also need competition in bus service, not government-run, subsidized monopolies. Then we'd see many more transportation options. No local transportation system in America covers its operating costs using fare revenue. Most loc
38.
by mrbabbage 9y ago
Free speech protection in American law is with its limits. Speech itself isn't protected if it is directed to incite or produce imminent lawless action. See Brandenburg v. Ohio.
39.
by mrbabbage 9y ago
The article mentioned how newer Tesla vehicles have a "strikeout" system where the autopilot software disables itself until the next car startup if the driver repeatedly ignores warnings. While this is definitely an improvement, h
40.
by mrbabbage 9y ago
Age The benefit accrues over many years, similar to rent control. As a result, the benefits flow to long-standing landholders, who skew disproportionately older. The result, at least for me in San Francisco: I pay twice as much in rent for
41.
by mrbabbage 9y ago
Your link supports the claim that "trucks cause exponentially more road damage than passenger vehicles"; it does not support your claim that "almost all of the wear is caused by large commercial trucks" or "passenge
42.
by mrbabbage 9y ago
> Medium still isn't winning any security points here. Sure they are. Removing a credential—in this case, passwords—is strictly more secure. It's the same rationale as to why 2FA with just a TOTP app is more secure than TOTP
43.
by mrbabbage 9y ago
At least in San Francisco, there's far more of them. The extra wear and tear on the roads ends up as a road repair bill that taxpayers pick up. If the TNCs were a 1:1 replacement for traditional taxis, this wouldn't be a legitima
44.
by mrbabbage 9y ago
> - Public-Key-Pins: we are very unlikely to deploy this. Whenever we have to change our certificates it makes life extremely dangerous for little benefit. Is it possible to pin to your CA's root instead of to your own certificate?
45.
by mrbabbage 9y ago
I think it's really hard to overstate how deep of a hole we're in up in the Bay Area. With the kind of growth numbers we're predicting, I believe nothing short of a radical shift in planning and housing policy is going to pr
46.
by mrbabbage 9y ago
WOW! That Chicago story is straight up bizarre. Thanks for sharing that. I'm not sure, though, that dumb train control is necessarily the answer. The Chicago system looks pretty dumb (though I know nothing about it), certainly no mo
47.
by mrbabbage 9y ago
The GPS, radio communication, etc., that the article talks about are not the important bits of positive train control IMO. The important bits are "positively" enforcing safety -- reaching a safe state even if a rail vehicle viola
48.
by mrbabbage 9y ago
The crumple zone point in the article misses the mark. The reason why crumple zones don't exist on American railways is due to incompetent and centuries-out-of-date Federal Railroad Administration regulation. FRA insists on railcars
49.
by mrbabbage 9y ago
Yeah, coal is obviously WAY worse than solar vis a vis carbon dioxide. I'm not disputing that. But compared to other renewables, it doesn't do as well as you'd expect: - wind: 11 g / kWh [1] - nuclear: 12 g / kWh
50.
by mrbabbage 9y ago
I don't disagree with you—I've been to an 800 MW geothermal facility in northern California and was taken aback by the giant heaps of sulphur everywhere—but other renewables come with their own downsides. - contemporary photovolta
51.
by mrbabbage 9y ago
Did you read the article? > Broader measures of unemployment tell the same story. The so-called U-6 rate, which captures people who are working part-time but want a full-time job, and those who would like a job but have given up looking
52.
by mrbabbage 9y ago
There's a YC company called Front that does more or less this: https://frontapp.com/
53.
by mrbabbage 9y ago
> Because property tax is an awful, dreadful way to fund public education. I don't think the property tax is the issue. It's doing school funding at a sufficiently granular level that's the real issue—poor cities / d
54.
by mrbabbage 9y ago
Berlin has a similar proof-of-payment system, where there are no physical barriers between the street and train platforms. Most people have multi use tickets; you can buy week, month, or year long tickets. I definitely prefer the proof-of-
55.
by mrbabbage 9y ago
> unrestricted submarine warfare Just like America in the Pacific during WWII, eh http://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/juddoeni.asp
56.
by mrbabbage 9y ago
On the train point, humans have operated fully automatic rail systems for nearly fifty years (the London Underground Victoria Line opened in 1968; BART in San Francisco is similarly automated and open in 1972). The first unattended train t
57.
by mrbabbage 9y ago
This article didn't touch on the interaction between free parking and public transit, and I've seen a few comments here talk about the dearth of good public transit options as justification for free parking. I believe it's w
58.
by mrbabbage 10y ago
Every taxicab I have been in for the last few years has had internal video cameras. Where are you getting the idea that someone has a reasonable expectation of privacy in someone else's vehicle, for hire or not? In general in America
59.
by mrbabbage 10y ago
> Chrome does not perform pin validation when the certificate chain chains up to a private trust anchor. A key result of this policy is that private trust anchors can be used to proxy (or MITM) connections, even to pinned sites. “Data lo
60.
by mrbabbage 10y ago
article: > Beginning in January 2017 (Chrome 56), we’ll mark HTTP pages that collect passwords or credit cards as non-secure, as part of a long-term plan to mark all HTTP sites as non-secure.

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