nkoren

83 ms·

421.
by nkoren 9y ago
> 20-hour days are not actually worked, not even by slave labor. Then you've never been there. Yes, they are. Have done it many times.
422.
by nkoren 9y ago
It's because an observer collapses the wavefunction. Everybody thinks that Schrödinger was being metaphorical -- but no, he was actually talking about cats .
423.
by nkoren 9y ago
Made a "who's hiring" post a few years ago, looking for a presumably short-term contract worker. Met the co-founder of my next company. Win!
424.
by nkoren 9y ago
I get that. Unless you explain the situation to me in detail, I definitely won't have a useful solution for you. And even after you explain the situation to me in detail, I probably won't have a useful solution for you. This
425.
by nkoren 9y ago
I keep thinking about your situation. This is something that I really care about. In the long term I hope to shape society to deal better with these scenarios; in the short term, I'm living in a flatshare working on my startup for less
426.
by nkoren 9y ago
The rationale for Google's behaviour has always been that it will help them achieve user lock-in. But disregarding both the technical and ethical merits of this strategy... is it actually working for them? Six years ago I spent very si
427.
by nkoren 9y ago
I have read and will remember this. I've seen this sort of thing happen to too many people. Were it not for half a dozen dumb lucky breaks, I could be in this situation myself. It could happen to anyone. A robust benefits system doesn&
428.
by nkoren 9y ago
Yeah, but I'm privileged. When somebody is definitely being an ass-hat online, I have the luxury of breezily going about my merry and generally not giving a flip. Life is too short for flame wars. So lacking significant exposure to a
429.
by nkoren 9y ago
Huh, interesting. Personally I read that as being a kind of wry, collegial, back-handed complement. Wasn't at all taken aback; it put a smile on my face. But perhaps I'm seeing British Humour where there is none. And you're r
430.
by nkoren 9y ago
Actually, it's even more crappy UI, just not in the visual domain. Including the phrase "this is not a drill" in something that actually is a drill could be considered a design flaw in the auditory user interface.
431.
by nkoren 9y ago
Dunno about the rest of the metrics, but the relative rankings in "infrastructure outcomes" seem deeply off-kilter, based on my own experience (I work in infrastructure planning and have spent time in most of those countries). W
432.
by nkoren 9y ago
Yup. Interestingly, actual speakers work either way too. Reverse the polarity on them and you can use them as a crappy microphone.
433.
by nkoren 9y ago
The sound is re -constructed from the shaking of the leaves. It's quite analogous to the way the sound is initially constructed from the vibration of a speaker membrane. The difference being that the medium of vibration which is u
434.
by nkoren 9y ago
In all probability, that ship sailed ten years ago. "So doing bad stuff" is no longer a viable strategy by itself. Sure we should do that, but at this point, without adaptation and mitigation strategies, we're fucked.
435.
by nkoren 9y ago
Winter ? That's not a novel of hers... do you mean the short story Winter's King ? Anyhow, the Left Hand of Darkness and the Dispossessed are great books. I actually didn't get into the Wizard of Earthsea for some reason, b
436.
by nkoren 9y ago
Well that's cool. :-) Often, people who like trains too much fail to envision them in a holistic context which includes things that aren't trains. Vice versa for people who like cars too much, of course. Or bicycles, etc. Someth
437.
by nkoren 9y ago
Likewise! :-)
438.
by nkoren 9y ago
Yes, absolutely, you've got the right idea! I agree with you so much that I can't even find anything to quibble with, which is... unusual. Is this a subject that you're professionally engaged with?
439.
by nkoren 9y ago
Actually, here's a more digestible illustration of the capacity gains from automation: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vQ6ga2atFS69...
440.
by nkoren 9y ago
Reaction time is a relatively small factor in safety distance. Kinetic energy is a significantly larger factor. Currently, humans violate this as a matter of course, which is why we're so bloody unsafe. Automated vehicles will be far m
441.
by nkoren 9y ago
Okay, so we definitely agree that automation-driven traffic-less utopia is a red herring! Certainly if personal vehicles are replaced 1:1 by automated personal vehicles, congestion will, on average, get worse. Even if they're replaced
442.
by nkoren 9y ago
> Or to Europe, for that matter. Er, yeah. I reside in the UK, and have lived and worked extensively in Europe. As a public transport planner. So I kinda know what I'm talking about here. I use public transport for all of those task
443.
by nkoren 9y ago
No, not like that. Trains work well for arterial routes that need to carry large volumes of people along predictable corridors at predictable times of day -- eg., for commuting. And yes America certainly needs to get better at investing in
444.
by nkoren 9y ago
Try "The Birthday of the World". Bite-sized short stories that are utterly indelible. Will make you hungry for her longer works.
445.
by nkoren 9y ago
My favourite living author is now my favourite dead author. It has been such a privilege to read her works. Ursula Le Guin conjured new worlds and and lay them out before my mind's eye -- but that's not what made her special. Many
446.
by nkoren 9y ago
Every time I see a ranking like this, I think: wow, what a crap ranking. Innovation has relatively little to do with nation-states. It has quite a lot to do with city-regions, however: those, much more than nation-states, are what produce
447.
by nkoren 9y ago
18 years ago Jane Jacobs published The Nature of Economies , which explicitly applies principles of biomimicry to economic philosophy. It's absolutely brilliant and has been the cornerstone of my economic thinking ever since. Also, it
448.
by nkoren 9y ago
Vegetarian of 36 years here: I won't have any qualms about eating it.
449.
by nkoren 9y ago
You're rolling your eyes, but you're not that far from wrong. Earth's geological processes have buried most of the heavier elements in the core, where it's beyond reach. The concentration of platinum-group metals is far,
450.
by nkoren 9y ago
Are you from San Francisco? I've noticed that "Progressive" has taken on an extremely weird meaning there, which is contrary or at least orthogonal to how it's used everywhere else in the world. Nowhere else that I know

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