spiralx

79 ms·

751.
by spiralx 8y ago
That's read by the guy they're interviewing in the podcast :)
752.
by spiralx 8y ago
Just wanted to say that I agree 100% with this, yet rarely hear it articulated elsewhere. The pernicious effects of pitting otherwise law-abiding people against the justice system and by proxy, the entire state, is something that I think ha
753.
by spiralx 8y ago
Banks "create" money by making loans, but those loans aren't made from other deposits. A bank with a 10% requirement that has $100,000 in reserves can loan $1,000,000 to somebody even though they don't have that much dep
754.
by spiralx 8y ago
There's the JSON5 format that supports comments, there are libraries available for parsing and encoding it.
755.
by spiralx 8y ago
The Atlantic has this article that explores that cultural divide in depth: http://www.theatlantic.com/article/559130/
756.
by spiralx 8y ago
I use Notepad2 as a direct replacement for Notepad - it's a single binary that's a few hundred Kb in size, supports syntax highlighting (with customisation) for most major languages, regex search and replace, rectangular select, c
757.
by spiralx 8y ago
> If a bank has insufficient deposits, it can't lend any more money. That's not actually true, banks effectively create money when making a loan, and the only constraints on this are the interest rate set by the central bank, w
758.
by spiralx 8y ago
> I know I'm reducing my lifespan by using them, ... You are? That's something I've not heard about before. Methamphetamine is neurotoxic, but not dextroamphetamine, which is what Adderall is.
759.
by spiralx 8y ago
Proper code blocks, record types, typed variables, auto-indenting editor, blazingly fast interpreter, built-in commands for OS and hardware features, functions and subroutines, an actual compiler if you wanted it... It was far beyond what a
760.
by spiralx 8y ago
I assume most of the comparisons are for black cabs, which are indeed more expensive but have unrivalled knowledge of getting around central London, as well as being allowed to pick up fares by being hailed on the street. There are fewer di
761.
by spiralx 8y ago
I have to say that having GFA Basic on the Atari ST as my first real development language made a huge difference, given that it had code blocks, functions, local variables, typed variables, arrays and record types and built-in commands for
762.
by spiralx 8y ago
It's more that human's judge their status relative to their peers, not by any absolute scale - so despite having more absolute wealth after moving to the city, their status relative to everyone else is far lower than it was back i
763.
by spiralx 8y ago
I seem to recall that someone worked out that even for somebody who never aged, the cumulative risk of suffering a fatal accident of some kind meant that life expectancy would actually only be about 400 years or so. Unlikely events become m
764.
by spiralx 8y ago
> In the last two years, I've found that about 1 in 4 of my purchases from China will never arrive. I tend to use AliExpress for buying things directly from China. It's not always the easiest site to use if you want to make com
765.
by spiralx 8y ago
No, because tags specify a type for the value, not the key, so you could use ports: https: port: !!str 443 to parse the same as { "ports": { "https": { "port": "443&q
766.
by spiralx 8y ago
I would definitely use RelaxNG for specifying schemas instead of XSD - it's simpler both to read and write in every case I've tried, and the resulting schema is smaller as well, often by a lot. <element name="addressBo
767.
by spiralx 8y ago
Well you could use CSON, which uses CoffeeScript notation that allows for constructs such as: required: [ 'firstName' 'lastName' ] which is the same as: { "required": [ "firstName",
768.
by spiralx 8y ago
You might find this animation interesting, it shows how few genuinely old buildings remain in London: https://youtu.be/NB5Oz9b84jM
769.
by spiralx 8y ago
Judging from places where decriminalisation has been introduced, there is very little overall change after a small bump immediately afterwards. As you say, most people who want to and aren't prevented from doing so by e.g. work require
770.
by spiralx 8y ago
> I thought this was because Britain didn't have a constitution as such so the don't have actual referendums? The UK does have a constitution, it's simply not codified into a single document. Parliamentary sovereignty mean
771.
by spiralx 8y ago
> If you never rode in a cab before those companies existed you have no idea how terrible it was. That's very location specific, living in London Uber is no cheaper than minicabs on most journeys, you already could find out the pric
772.
by spiralx 8y ago
> You can have multiple platforms and send trains to each not just separate load/unload platforms. Sure, but we're talking about subway networks underneath major metropolises, and adding extra tunnels and platforms is basically
773.
by spiralx 8y ago
I included both directions in my calculation, hence the denominator being (2 * 21km). And for the Underground there are no passing trains or multiple trains unloading at a station, platforms are generally only a few metres longer than the t
774.
by spiralx 8y ago
> Most of the London Underground is above ground. Technically true, it's 45% that's underground, which includes 32km of cut-and-cover lines and 150km of tunnels out of the 402km total.
775.
by spiralx 8y ago
You need wide tunnels to reduce aerodynamic drag on the trains.
776.
by spiralx 8y ago
Air resistance is greater in smaller tunnels though, and aerodynamic drag is the most significant factor on speed when considering underground high-speed trains. This is one of the reasons for building tunnels significantly larger than the
777.
by spiralx 8y ago
There are 40 trains on the Victoria line at peak, each about 125m in length, which gives a total length of 5km. The length of the line is about 21km, so that's 5 / (2 * 21) = 12% occupancy.
778.
by spiralx 8y ago
The Victoria Line in London runs at 36 trains per hour at peak, one every 100 seconds. Station dwell times are already a limiting factor at this point, and having separate load/unload platforms would provide only a small decrease in dw
779.
by spiralx 8y ago
Martin's books are a retelling of a story about the War of the Roses, with a couple of fantasy elements slapped on top. The amount of world-building is pretty minimal for a large-scale fantasy series. The reason Martin doesn't pro
780.
by spiralx 8y ago
> Credit card fraud and chargebacks online are brutal, and can sink many innocent and legitimate online small businesses. Unless you're talking adult businesses, gambling or one of the other industries with known issues with card fr

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