philwelch

7 ms·

61.
by philwelch 7mo ago
Working as intended Most people who ask for advice actually want affirmation. If you ever give them advice instead of affirmation, you end up kicking off a rousing game of “Why Don’t You/Yes But”. ( https://ericberne.com&#x2F
62.
by philwelch 7mo ago
A few years ago I got annoyed at Google and switched to Apple Maps. Earlier this year I got annoyed with Apple Maps and tried Google Maps again before switching back. Point of interest data was a minor factor in all of this. It might be eno
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by philwelch 7mo ago
This is a lot simpler if you own a personal domain name. You’re still going to have pain setting that up the first time, but afterwards any future migrations will be much easier.
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by philwelch 7mo ago
I can definitely relate to that, and I'm actually quite fond of git myself. I just never expected that people would stop trying to make a better version control system. That's not entirely fair, a lot of work has been invested in
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by philwelch 7mo ago
Regardless of the merits of CRDT's, I'm just glad someone is finally trying to create a new version control system. Everyone loves to complain about Git but nobody's actually tried to move beyond it in two decades.
66.
by philwelch 7mo ago
Yes, this sort of thing has been a plague against the English language for a few years now, responsible for such ugly constructions as "to unalive". (I understand and respect the linguists who would maintain a descriptivist view o
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by philwelch 7mo ago
Hey at least they finished Perl 6!
68.
by philwelch 7mo ago
"PDF" is a zoomer euphemism for "pedophile".
69.
by philwelch 7mo ago
To be fair, this raises an interesting question of epistemology. Can any man know for sure that his wife has never had sex with Afroman? It's almost always possible, however unlikely. One can and probably should trust that his wife has
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by philwelch 7mo ago
Ballistic missiles are pretty expensive. You'd have to bid a lot of money for it to be worthwhile to shoot them at a country just to make money on Polymarket. If there was a prediction market for whether I'll be hit by a car tomor
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by philwelch 7mo ago
> Are you gonna tell me residents in Tel Aviv will be able to hedge their chances of surviving tomorrow? Yes, of course! If you had some advance warning your home town was likely to be struck with missiles soon, are you seriously saying
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by philwelch 7mo ago
They might have been in the last decade, but now it’s just yet another franchise audiences have stopped caring about.
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by philwelch 7mo ago
They have no one to blame but themselves, judging by the quality of Hollywood movies in recent years.
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by philwelch 7mo ago
You make a good argument for the opposite of your conclusion. If you’re planning a system that’s supposed to last for millennia, that system shouldn’t depend on the fiat of the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service.
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by philwelch 7mo ago
> There is some talk of eliminating the leap second, which would over time have the Earth and sun diverge with regards to noon and such “Over time” really glosses over how much time it would take. In 500 years there might be half as much
76.
by philwelch 7mo ago
The honest usage of “it turns out” is usually to gloss over an unnecessarily tedious argument that the author doesn’t want to waste your time with. And I think this is a fair characterization of even the use that the author criticizes here:
77.
by philwelch 8mo ago
It’s possible to build mechanisms for this. Not perfect or foolproof ones. Maybe your phone stores a digital ID for its owner and sets a cryptographically signed “IsAdult” header. If you pull the signing key from the phone you can spoof tha
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by philwelch 8mo ago
And horses actually do better on dirt than on pavement.
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by philwelch 8mo ago
That doesn’t change the fact that you’re selectively counting only one side of a closed loop process. Methane may be a more efficient greenhouse gas than CO2 but if that effect dominated, we would expect to see the global warming trend star
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by philwelch 8mo ago
Surely you can’t be suggesting that a committee of environmental activists might be biased in favor of Greenpeace? https://www.trialmonitors.org/meet-the-committee
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by philwelch 8mo ago
Where are these emissions coming from? For instance, if this is counting the emissions involved in logistics, none of that inherently or necessarily requires greenhouse emissions—you can electrify trains, tanker trucks, and refrigerators. I
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by philwelch 8mo ago
> occasionally in dense city centers
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by philwelch 8mo ago
Another example I worked out once A Ford F-150 weighs about 2 tons and has two axles, for an axle weight of 1 ton. 1^4=1. A garbage truck weighs maybe 30 tons and has three axles, for an axle weight of 10 tons. 10^4=10,000. So if you drive
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by philwelch 8mo ago
The samurai didn’t survive the Satsuma Rebellion but they were admired and respected even by many of the people who fought against them in the following decades. You don’t even have to be Japanese to think samurai are cool, they just are, e
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by philwelch 8mo ago
“Viking” isn’t a matter of heredity though. If your grandfather was a bricklayer, you’re not a bricklayer as a matter of heredity, you have to actually lay bricks. Likewise, if your grandfather was a viking, you have to actually go raiding
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by philwelch 8mo ago
> Busses are light compared to 18 wheelers and other heavy equipment, they also replace many cars and SUV’s which keep getting heavier. They don’t replace nearly enough cars and SUV’s to make up for the difference in fourth power of axle
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by philwelch 8mo ago
Private car ownership is a better everyday solution for almost anyone who can afford it, which includes the vast majority of Americans. If buses tried to compete with cars, they would lose. The only remaining niche for the bus is as a publi
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by philwelch 8mo ago
Buses are implicitly subsidized by road maintenance spending. Road wear and tear occurs according to the fourth power of axle weight, which effectively means almost all of the wear and tear is incurred by the heaviest vehicles, which includ
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by philwelch 8mo ago
Is that true? The whole point of per capita is to cancel out the linear benefit of 100 million workers being able to outproduce 10 million workers. There are ways for small countries to have a per capita GDP higher than would be feasible fo
90.
by philwelch 8mo ago
By 1066, not quite. That was an invading army led by the King of Norway to press his claim on the throne of England. I’m sure many of the soldiers in that army had been Vikings but at that time they were soldiers of a Christian king, which

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