nonce42

8 ms·

31.
by nonce42 10y ago
Some random thoughts on the US movie situation: For teens, it sort of makes sense in a way to restrict portrayals of sex more than violence. The average teen isn't going to decide to murder someone after watching a movie, but very poss
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by nonce42 10y ago
"... on sites like RentBoy, which was busted and shut down in 2015 by Homeland Security for facilitating prostitution." - am I the only one who finds this a bizarre role for Homeland Security? P.S. This sure feels like a PR piece:
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by nonce42 11y ago
I've had a 4-day work week (working 80%) for a while and it's great. If your circumstances allow you to do this (and I recognize that most people can't), I strongly recommend it. I've been able to do a lot more on side p
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by nonce42 11y ago
I've been doing a 4-day work week (working 80%) and it's great. If you're in a circumstance that allows you to do this (and I recognize that most people aren't), I strongly recommend it. It gives me much more time to spe
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by nonce42 12y ago
Yes, a shorter work week definitely helps. I'm currently working 80% of full time, which gives me so much more time to work on interesting (but inherently unprofitable) side projects. I highly recommend working 80%, but I recognize tha
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by nonce42 12y ago
$8M. This is based on personal experience - that's the number where it started to feel different.
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by nonce42 12y ago
Whatever happens, we have got The Maxim gun, and they have not. -- Hilaire Belloc A basic assumption with drones is they are great because the US has them, but that's not always going to be the case. What worries me is what
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by nonce42 12y ago
The article omits a huge factor: In American culture, you are not allowed to say you are smarter than someone else, and nerds typically violate this rule. Thought experiment: turn to your officemate and explain why you are smarter than they
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by nonce42 13y ago
Going the opposite direction, I'm working 80% (32 hour weeks) by choice and it's awesome. I have so much more time for other interests and family and it's much less stressful. Of course I only get paid 80%, but that works for
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by nonce42 13y ago
Yes, a lot of people don't understand that. To make it concrete: Do you skip screening of the young pregnant Irish woman? I hope not. That was Anne-Marie Murphy, whose boyfriend put Semtex and a timer in her bag. [1] Do you skip screen
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by nonce42 13y ago
Is there some movie that's source of the cliche of needing to defuse a bomb by cutting the wire with the right color? This is so common a cliche that it must have come from somewhere. And while I'm asking random questions, where d
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by nonce42 13y ago
Her claim that "“don’t ask for permission” is a dangerously rapey lesson to teach young men" is rather bizarre, given that the expression is attributed to Grace Hopper (specifically "It's easier to ask forgiveness than i
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by nonce42 13y ago
I didn't expect so much controversy here, I just wanted to get a feel for the order of magnitude. I went with 2000 pounds for the car weight, which is the weight of a 1976 Honda Accord - 1976 because of a search error on my part. 4000
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by nonce42 13y ago
To put these numbers in context, 8000 joules is about 2 kilocalories (or about half an M&M candy). It's about $0.0003 of wall electricity. It's about the energy in an AA battery. It's the energy from exploding 2 grams of
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by nonce42 13y ago
It's worth reading the criminal complaint and indictment ( https://www.eff.org/cases/us-v-auernheimer ) to get some background. In particular: the discussions of using the email addresses for a phishing scheme, usin
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by nonce42 13y ago
"...marvel at the poor decisions of the poor" - I've always wondered if rich marvel at the bad decisions of the middle class in the same way. And what they see as the big mistakes keeping them from being rich. E.g. the proble
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by nonce42 13y ago
Looking at the Bay Area in this map, I noticed a very dense African-American region near Dublin CA that looked out of place. I investigated what it was and was shocked to discover it was the Santa Rita Jail. The map really made it clear how
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by nonce42 13y ago
I find it strange that the US has laws that many people break and the law is only enforced sporadically. Some examples in California are speeding, missing front license plate, age of consent laws, use tax on out-of-state/internet purchases,
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by nonce42 13y ago
The people who claim that $X million in Silicon Valley is still just middle class are annoying, but it's true. I have $8 million and it honestly changes very little. I'm living a middle class life, working a middle class programming job, my
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by nonce42 14y ago
About $10-100 a month through Amazon Associates on a moderately popular blog (usually the lower amount). And $12,000 a month from a small Bay Area office building.
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by nonce42 14y ago
The important thing to remember is that AGI (which the article discusses) and how much money you "make" are not very correlated once you make above, say, 200K a year. A key reason is unrealized capital gains - I guarantee you that if a bill
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by nonce42 14y ago
This discussion seems to be mostly theoretical, so as someone who actually has $7 million, I'll provide my experience. In summary, not life-changing - my life is pretty much like the average engineer. I'm not spending like a rock star - you
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by nonce42 16y ago
The Wikipedia page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_v_Dudley_and_Stephens is very interesting; it describes an actual case where one of the people in a lifeboat was killed and eaten by the others, who would have otherwise all died. They cl
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by nonce42 16y ago
My impression (from very brief study of Mandarin) is that Mandarin has a lot more homonyms than most languages, e.g. lǐ has a ton of meanings: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/l%C7%90 It also seems to me that a lot of Mandarin phonemes are
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by nonce42 16y ago
Thanks kscaldef and detst for your replies. I do think a lot about moving out of Silicon Valley especially since the state of California is in such a financial mess. Theoretically, I could quit my job now, but it wouldn't make much financ
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by nonce42 16y ago
One thing I genuinely want to know is how much money it takes to be "rich" in Silicon Valley. In my experience, $5M yields a slightly better but still basically middle-class life. I suspect a lot of people are underestimating how much the