pzone

41 ms·

391.
by pzone 10y ago
Mandating these people learn how to program computers will help them how, exactly? Teach personal finance if you want to help people avoid financial mistakes. Complement it with decent financial regulation. (Our current system does a pretty
392.
by pzone 10y ago
Calculus is a poor example. Most people don't get much of a benefit from a course in calculus. They would be much better served by a course in statistics or personal finance, or perhaps a computer science course as described in the ar
393.
by pzone 10y ago
Frankly the author comes off like a total dick to me. Obnoxious and self-aggrandizing. Not someone I'd want to work with, felony or no.
394.
by pzone 10y ago
It is smelly and distracting.
395.
by pzone 10y ago
This scarcely known researcher Sigusmondo Polcastro at the top of the list seemed a bit strange. 105,277 descendents, why so many? I looked him up and clicked through his geneaology. Turns out if follow through a few generations, you find C
396.
by pzone 10y ago
It's not that just about having an inherent distrust of one another. When they do have a dispute, it is necessary to have very good documentation to bring to court. Legally doing a mediocre job with keeping records is barely better tha
397.
by pzone 10y ago
Transfers may become faster too.
398.
by pzone 10y ago
Bitcoin isn't in direct competition with the financial industry in any meaningful way. It's basically just another currency like all the others in the world. The financial industry doesn't suffer from servicing new currencies
399.
by pzone 10y ago
Right. I use my credit cards and simply trust Chase/Citi/etc to provide the services they've promised. I use a website to do Bitcoin transactions and simply trust they are not going to run away with my money. So there's
400.
by pzone 10y ago
Here is a report by Santander with a rough estimate of $15-20 billion in savings per year by switching from conventional records to distributed ledgers. Scroll to the end of the pdf. http://santanderinnoventures.com/fintech2
401.
by pzone 10y ago
A distributed ledger is only "decentralized" among the users of the ledger. We're talking about a consortium of banks making up both the developers and the users of this ledger. There is no mismatch in how "centralized&q
402.
by pzone 10y ago
Err.... no, banks definitely do not "inherently trust each other." Not when the incentive to misrepresent your position is so high. They use very expensive record keeping and clearinghouse arrangements (often involving quite a lot
403.
by pzone 10y ago
Yes, this is extremely misleading. If a few banks want to replace their current transaction settlements with a blockchain protocol tailored to their needs, that's great, I hope it works out for them. Worrying that this blockchain isn&#
404.
by pzone 10y ago
The Solow model is a model of capital accumulation, not endogenous technological change per se. Romer (1986) is a better example.
405.
by pzone 10y ago
Do you honestly believe that? Would you say "psychology is not much better than throwing bones" or "epidemiology is not much better than throwing bones?" Because the demands for statistical rigor in economics are far gre
406.
by pzone 10y ago
Evolution functions at the level of populations, not individuals. The individual's mandate is always simply to lead their best life. Evolution is a phenomenon that happens on top of that but defines it. Letting go of your dreams of lon
407.
by pzone 10y ago
I think it is good that this policy does not impose extreme requirements like "all custom-developed source code must be open sourced." That would unnecessarily increase the costs of procuring software - companies would start to ch
408.
by pzone 10y ago
Sometimes government can solve problems, other times it can't. Even in the case of obesity, the government at least tries to educate people. But addiction is not so similar to obesity, because it's much easier to monitor and contr
409.
by pzone 10y ago
There's not really much more to it than what you see in this article. You log onto one of a few crappy ebay-looking sites, and sellers list items for sale basically using the same list of categories in the graphic. No hit men or anythi
410.
by pzone 10y ago
But the whole point is that an objective function where you measure success only in terms of infant mortality, number of addicts etc. is absurd. Prohibition ruins people's lives, when they are sent to jail, marked as felons and exclude
411.
by pzone 10y ago
I think you're mischaracterizing people here. I think everyone would agree drug addiction is a problem that requries some government intervention. But clearly the policy we have right now is not great. The argument is that legalization
412.
by pzone 10y ago
I use Spacemacs on Windows so I'm pushing Emacs a bit past its limits. ;) Actually I was going to compare Emacs stability to Chrome stability. Though for me Emacs gets terminal segfaults more often, Chrome has more random failures that
413.
by pzone 10y ago
I'm a huge fan of emacs, but even though I use it constantly, I do not consider it exceptionally reliable. A modern experience really does rely on a huge number of powerful and excellent but sometimes glitchy packages. (helm, org, hask
414.
by pzone 10y ago
Absolutely ffmpeg. I guess it's not "stable" in the sense that the fast pace of development sometimes leads to changes in best practices, but damn is it excellent to use.
415.
by pzone 10y ago
The article and data flatly contradict what you're saying. HSR often loses money. In this case, any reasonable belief that it will run without subdies has completely vanished. The data say it will not be used, it will cost too much, an
416.
by pzone 10y ago
If I want to write a cross-platform GUI application supporting a single introspection, threading model and signals/slots mechanism for all members, then I'm asking for a jungle, not a banana. What parts of Qt would one want to spl
417.
by pzone 10y ago
There are very good arguments in favor of the existence of patents and copyrights. Copyrights and and patent reward creators and innovators for their work. Of course giving these legal rights too much force (eg indefinite copyright, overly
418.
by pzone 10y ago
Concise summary of the benefits: the signatory states will reduce tariffs on most trade toward zero over a period of several years. This key point seems to get lost in the debate.
419.
by pzone 10y ago
Of course it's a gigantic pile of economic concessions. But mostly that's in the form of tariffs which aren't struck down as quickly as others. Some countries really really want to keep their little pet tariff, like Japan t
420.
by pzone 10y ago
It's like how the US is slightly less likely to unilaterally legalize marijuana at the federal level, it is signatory to several UN treaties which forbid it from doing so.

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