nshepperd

11 ms·

61.
by nshepperd 7y ago
Surely water security is also a basic human right, and that is directly impacted by destructive consumption subsidies. > If we have a 100% free market-based solution then in many locations the poor and underprivileged have a considerably
62.
by nshepperd 7y ago
Artificial suppression of water prices is equivalent to a direct cash transfer proportional to water usage . The more water you waste, the more money you get. The exact same thing (making the poor able to afford water) could be accomplishe
63.
by nshepperd 7y ago
Those complaints aren't actually opposed but perfectly complement each other. Wayland requires* everything to be monolithically built into the display server (which is also the window manager), which means if I want to use a new WM (sa
64.
by nshepperd 7y ago
> > Windows managers? > Sway/wlroots. So you either have to use one of the prescribed Wayland window managers, or completely rewrite your favourite window manager (remembering to include all of the bonus responsibilities it ha
65.
by nshepperd 7y ago
Sounds like warning pollution to me. Not just ineffectual but actually harmful. http://www.econlib.org/archives/2013/04/proposition_65_1.htm...
66.
by nshepperd 8y ago
> This article feels like a strawman to me. Infrastructure improvements are not the cause of SF rents. You just need to walk down any block, or sit on BART (if it's working!) and step in a pile of excrement to prove that. Huh? No, i
67.
by nshepperd 8y ago
It doesn't seem that complicated to me... Someone described the NYT's journalists as "real" journalists and return0 took issue with that, saying that they're (just) "paid" journalists. The suggestion is th
68.
by nshepperd 8y ago
They're not constrasting paid journalists with unpaid journalists, they're pointing out that NYT's journalists being paid doesn't necessarily make them "real".
69.
by nshepperd 8y ago
If they refuse, you could probably take them to small claims court for fraud, depending on the total value and how much you care. Though you'll have to do your own research on how to prove fraud in court or hire a lawyer...
70.
by nshepperd 8y ago
It's absolutely defrauding the customer, in addition to whatever laws there might be specifically about wages. They're asking you for money with a description of what the money is for that is between misleading and an outright lie
71.
by nshepperd 8y ago
> Does a silver mirror in space actually end up at the same equilibrium temperature as a lump of coal? Yes. It takes longer to reach the equilibrium, but it does reach the same equilibrium temperature. > [1] Here's the outline of
72.
by nshepperd 8y ago
> [The surface temperature of the moon is] an absolute limit on the amount of incoming irradiance you can create to your object. It's the radiance (brightness) of the moon (as perceived at the moon) that is an absolute limit on the
73.
by nshepperd 8y ago
That's incorrect. It has nothing to do with the wavelength of the light. > Still the reflected light has original wavelength of the light of the Sun. Collect enough of it and that triggers fire. You can't collect enough of it i
74.
by nshepperd 8y ago
> I'm bothered by the modifer "much". If you are indeed talking about a physical principle, shouldn't this be an absolute limit rather than a suggestion? It's an absolute limit on the amount of incoming irradianc
75.
by nshepperd 8y ago
Real physicist here. The linked article is correct.
76.
by nshepperd 8y ago
The conclusion is correct. It doesn't rely on the moon being a black body radiator, but on etendue, which shows that the most you can do with a system of lenses and mirrors is to create an environment (on earth) as bright as the enviro
77.
by nshepperd 8y ago
The thermodynamic argument applies to black bodies, and says that you can't make an object hotter than the surface of the emitter. That's pretty uncontroversial. The more general argument based on etendue, which applies to the moo
78.
by nshepperd 8y ago
> It is not the point of philosophy to end philosophy, to ‘solve’ the deep questions so that people can stop thinking about them. And yet, many people who ask questions like "what is good?" or "how can we know things?&quot
79.
by nshepperd 8y ago
This sounds like a confused retelling of the actually true fact that you can't sleep sixteen hours on the first night, then go without sleep entirely on the second night without any ill effects (on the theory that you have 8 hours of
80.
by nshepperd 8y ago
I notice that the N in "N days return" is different for each currency shown. The cherry picking here isn't even subtle!
81.
by nshepperd 8y ago
> If he believes that we should still spend as many resources in healthcare and researching individual diseases, then why is he portraying these as futile and misguided tasks, that have "become their own purpose"? Where are you
82.
by nshepperd 8y ago
Population growth is driven by birth rate, not death rate. Even slaughtering everyone at the age of 100 only delays the overpopulation problem (by less than two decades) if indeed there is an overpopulation problem.
83.
by nshepperd 8y ago
This argument is whataboutism at its worst. He's not suggesting that we ignore healthcare and individual diseases. He's suggesting that we stop ignoring aging (and death in general) and take it seriously. The problem of medical
84.
by nshepperd 8y ago
The fact that you are more likely to die of every other disease after the age of 30 is a direct consequence of aging. It is more important than any other disease. Also, that quote does not say that every other disease should be ignored,
85.
by nshepperd 9y ago
What a colossal asshole. Transhumanists are people who are desperately wishing for longevity-related medical advances to come down in price and be universally available, and are often spending significant amounts of their own money to that
86.
by nshepperd 9y ago
> Still, in many cases there’s little incentive for farmers to save water. Agriculture uses 62 percent of China’s water, but crops have a relatively low marginal value. So the government bans the sale of agricultural water to industry, w
87.
by nshepperd 9y ago
Who says there can only be one left-liberal progressive side? Let alone only one that claims to be left-liberal progressive?
88.
by nshepperd 9y ago
> assuming that the function that calls you will obey the language semantics That's not what I said. What the compiler is doing in this NeverCalled example is observing: - that the code in the current compilation unit is not "
89.
by nshepperd 9y ago
Hardcoding 42 as the parameter to printf here is far more defensible for several reasons. Here's one: the value actually is 42, and assuming that it continues to be 42 doesn't require the compiler to hallucinate any additional
90.
by nshepperd 9y ago
> It also knows that it can't be NULL at the call site Ah, this is obviously some strange use of the word "can't" that I wasn't previously aware of. Or possibly of "be" or "at". The pointer cl

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