ncmncm

36 ms·

331.
by ncmncm 4y ago
The stock market is a zero-sum game. Every single penny taken out was a penny put in. Money going in is people's pensions, largely. As a society, we like to reward people who do things that are useful: feed, house, clothe, warm, transp
332.
by ncmncm 4y ago
Medieval cubits also varied. You do have to calibrate to the King's Chamber cubit, which seems defensible. But the numbers do check out: 2phi²/(5pi/3) = 1.000015 is pretty trippy, no matter how you slice it. Likewise 5sqrt(6)
333.
by ncmncm 4y ago
Not for long, unless...
334.
by ncmncm 4y ago
The body politic. People program computers to exchange messages furiously, to no external effect besides power consumed. Then they go buy yachts. It's all perfectly legal, of course.
335.
by ncmncm 4y ago
Agree. And maybe it will encourage Europe to build out renewables and heat pumps faster. Apparently it has not had that effect in Romania, yet. But they are by report still happy with their Canadian CANDU reactors.
336.
by ncmncm 4y ago
12 x 2.54 cm. Exactly. More interesting, maybe, is the length of the Dynastic Egyptian cubit: pi/6 meters, 52.36cm. So, measure the Great Pyramid's King's Chamber: 10x10x20 cubits, exactly. Or, as exactly as the Egyptians cou
337.
by ncmncm 4y ago
It did not permit me to read paragraph four.
338.
by ncmncm 4y ago
Population studies seem to support it. Not just camembert, of course.
339.
by ncmncm 4y ago
Maybe boosting $200B to $500B would provide a win, but ok, maybe not. Invasion is an activity, not an identity. Those so engaged could stop anytime. Many will.
340.
by ncmncm 4y ago
If we spent on those what we spend instead on adtech etc., it really would be guaranteed. Even with fighting invaders. Albeit probably not invaders using nukes.
341.
by ncmncm 4y ago
Puzzling over the "inalienable right". Maybe meant "exclusive right"? Bet a letter to the editor appeared later in the week, asking.
342.
by ncmncm 4y ago
There is some reason to think the Little Ice Age was an effect of Europeans invading the Americas. In particular, of bringing Eurasian diseases. Story is, plagues made civilization collapse on two continents, and trees grew back where they
343.
by ncmncm 4y ago
It is not so hard to delete snap.
344.
by ncmncm 4y ago
I don't encounter mention of "the hot path" anywhere near often enough. Defend Your Hot Path!
345.
by ncmncm 4y ago
The hell of it is, there is plenty of Java that really is faster than plenty of C++. You can make C++ go as slow as you like.
346.
by ncmncm 4y ago
Yes, but all in service of what amounts to automated stealing (cough) supplying liquidity. Better than adtech, anyway. Or nukes. Lots of things, really. (I would have said weapons, last year.) The only really defensible tech activity these
347.
by ncmncm 4y ago
There's no excuse for 2 seconds. Machines are a thousand times as fast as in the 90s, and a text editor didn't take any 2000 seconds, or even 2 seconds, back then. Now they load up the monstrous libraries they need to negotiate a
348.
by ncmncm 4y ago
Why should anybody at Azure care more than anybody at Google? Both are comfortable. People at companies like this are only provoked to action by what affects company revenue, whether increasing it or preventing loss. And hardly anything can
349.
by ncmncm 4y ago
The comment on Jupiter and Ganymede seems viscerally aware of Ganymede's role at court, having nothing to do with cups.
350.
by ncmncm 4y ago
"If you think of the vastness of space, and how enormous our galaxy is, and how big our planet is, and how small we are, I am not really eating all that much cheese."
351.
by ncmncm 4y ago
This is mostly from well-run population studies. The effect sizes are very large and robust, e.g. 40% for Tdap. Herpes treatment, from a small RCT in Asia. Hypothesis is that amyloids are a response to inflammation, and things that reduce i
352.
by ncmncm 4y ago
NASA, SLS aside, is doing arguably non-broken procurement. SLS of course costs more than everything else combined. Very numerous cash-strapped municipal transit projects manage to avoid wasting money. It is well understood how not to waste
353.
by ncmncm 4y ago
They spend on fuel, expended upper-stage rocket, and maybe fairings? Do they retrieve fairings? I know they had a boat to chase and catch them, and gave that up. They could make them float, with a beacon, and drive out and get them, and was
354.
by ncmncm 4y ago
By how many times has the money expended on missions to fix Hubble already exceeded the cost of building and launching a new and incrementally better Hubble? Development cost for additional Hubbles would be close to nil, so cost would be on
355.
by ncmncm 4y ago
It seemed to me by the description that being first, and picking 0 was sure win. But apparently ties mean nobody wins, or somebody not tied wins, or something . Doesn't say. Zero points for helpful exposition.
356.
by ncmncm 4y ago
Mostly for noise, and safety. Those blades slicing past worry people. It is hard to believe these will be very much quieter than a chopper.
357.
by ncmncm 4y ago
Helicopters are locked out of many markets by noise and worries about safety of bystanders. The promise of eVTOLs is access to those.
358.
by ncmncm 4y ago
Presumably their wages is meant. Labor, not just by drivers but also mechanics and other staff, is a substantial part of transit costs. Cutting fuel cost makes wages a bigger fraction. Reduced maintenance load of an electric fleet could be
359.
by ncmncm 4y ago
The opportunities for siphoning money to certain factions may be seen as the real purpose of the project, with any actual train more or less incidental. The same may be seen in recent nuclear power projects, urban tunnels, NASA's SLS r
360.
by ncmncm 4y ago
Presumably they can fit fuel cells and liquid hydrogen tanks where the batteries are now. I don't understand why the batteries don't come out on a tray so you can slot in a fresh set.

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