narag

57 ms·

721.
by narag 4y ago
That's bad, but having three milennia artifacts everywhere you dig is somehow worse: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%C3%A1diz
722.
by narag 4y ago
In those cases the assumption is you were made aware of the relevance of that day before, closer to what happened so you could recollect and fix the memories for later questioning. Otherwise that kind of question is ridiculous.
723.
by narag 4y ago
Only the tough materials (stone, bones, metal, pottery) remain. I always wonder how many civilizations disappeared without a trace because they built their cities with wood. Maybe a lot of devices were invented and reinvented many times and
724.
by narag 4y ago
In Spain it used to be serpientes de verano (summer snakes) but not sure if Loch Ness is still popular.
725.
by narag 4y ago
Internet advertising did not increase overall consumption... Genuine questions: how do we know that? how do we measure that? My own anecdotical evidence is that I consume different things. Anyway, would more effective advertising increa
726.
by narag 4y ago
Nobody would consider the present as negative. Maybe he meant that previous work had to be coded as negative, after the zero was set. Or maybe it's a joke. We used to say that some guy has his ID number in roman numerals... or used spe
727.
by narag 4y ago
I don't want one company to be the arbiter of all communications everywhere. Phone numbers work fine. For me too and if there is an application that allows to block numbers, spam is not a problem. Now I use the Google builtin caller
728.
by narag 4y ago
Ambergris synthesis uses two opposite substances: ambroxide and ambrinol. The former is clean, fresh. The later, similar to indole, smells pretty awful in isolation, but gives depth to the composition when both are mixed. Indole is the char
729.
by narag 4y ago
That's, more or less, one of the first questions I asked in this site. Paul Graham answered with photos of the football team and the chess club. It seems there is a physical difference bigger than what I've observed in Spain and m
730.
by narag 4y ago
One more motive, archivable under "plot twist" meme: what seems like relevant information is actually a lie, amplified by the echo chamber. Maybe you can spot some buzzword that has been discussed in HN for years and later diluted
731.
by narag 4y ago
There's a couple of points in the article that I don't see discussed here. One is the comparison with games. So the article is about other categories of software. Has someone thought of other kind of "gamification"? I so
732.
by narag 4y ago
OK, let's say breeding humans is less efficient than making wars, to keep the slave supply. But if in a scarcity market you impose an outright ban, would it improve the situation? For the Economy, I ask, not sure if slaves were better
733.
by narag 4y ago
The eastern half of the empire was just as Christian and didn’t collapse for another thousand years The division of the empire itself was a consequence of the commerce collapsing. The fall of Rome is another one.
734.
by narag 4y ago
If you blame Christianity, what about all of Constantine's other major changes? It's the Economy, Steve. In particular, if you discourage commerce, you're playing with fire in an empire with such an extension. I'm no
735.
by narag 4y ago
That's very reasonable. But there was a slow collapse of the economy that is an intermediate cause in the chain of events that is central to the fall. You can speculate what caused that collapse, that in turn caused the fall and there
736.
by narag 4y ago
I remember most predictions (by "real" experts, at least the ones I paid attention to) were right except one: it will take two years to create a useful vaccine. It was more like six months. Actually I don't remember who they
737.
by narag 4y ago
I believe it was Bruce Schneier who coined the term "movie-plot threat" for a kind of security threat that gets more attention, not because it's plausible and around the corner, but because it excites our imagination the most
738.
by narag 4y ago
I don't buy the explanation of societies collapsing because they're too complex, Some software systems do. But not because some esoteric systemic property of complex systems, but just because working projects get deprived of maint
739.
by narag 4y ago
Can a CPU experience qualia? The mind has a physical structure that supports it. We are still unable to understand a meaningful portion of that structure or replicate it. Creating a concept to speculate about a system that we have no obje
740.
by narag 4y ago
That's what I think too. It's not that a body is needed for building an AGI, but it's probably much easier to develop one on top of whatever basic software that can control a "body" that interacts with the environ
741.
by narag 4y ago
we see that "depletion of mineral resources" is #53. So why #53 as opposed to #191, or #67, or #3? Most causes in the list are just idiotic, so it doesn't matter. There are a few that are more convincing than "sexualit
742.
by narag 4y ago
Technically a non renewable resource... How's that? Can we consume it? What would be the reaction? Moon altering its orbit?
743.
by narag 4y ago
...an inability to install custom/self-made extensions... What? Can't I make an extension and install it in my own browser? Or do you mean that it's not possible with default settings?
744.
by narag 4y ago
Biblical names forbidden? I don't think so. Actually not even foreign names. IIRC only names that were insulting or prone to be laughed at were forbidden.
745.
by narag 4y ago
That's common but sometimes the cause is not what you would think. In Spain there are many people with foreign or uncommon names... that are also biblical names. Abraham, Sarah, Aaron, Jonathan or Josuah ( Josué ) were unheard half a c
746.
by narag 4y ago
My hope that 'things will get better' is lost. I do think that things are getting better, only it doesn't happen where we're looking at, but elsewhere. And I believe we can all agree, regardless of political affiliati
747.
by narag 4y ago
"Drugs" is simple enough. Actually training naked virgins to go bananas without some chemical help seems a little more complicated. Something the article doesn't seem to consider is the possibilty that there was some kind of
748.
by narag 4y ago
There's no guarantee it's a solvable problem. And there's the more insidious variant of this: to solve it we need new physics. I say it's more insidious because, if we used all the money in current approaches, we would
749.
by narag 4y ago
I've always used "Firefox", since it was called Netscape 2.4. I use Chrome to watch streaming and a few sites that don't work with Firefox. That said, I might start using Chromium because I want to make some improvements
750.
by narag 4y ago
Do you realize you can still learn to play? Maybe not to reach a professional level, but enough to enjoy yourself. I didn't "push" my son. I did teach him myself what I knew, for years. He can play with both hands and sing al

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