srean

7 ms·

91.
by srean 2mo ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49463187 Since you are making this personal I am not going to respond to you any further. Sorry.
92.
by srean 2mo ago
You may have lived, in the past presumably. On the otherhand I live here, with large part of my childhood in an earthquake hazard zone, the highest in fact. If you have lived here and know your high school geography you would be well eq
93.
by srean 2mo ago
Not sure what you mean by give concrete examples, when my position is normative. I am not sure where you are getting "all or nothing" in my comments. If you are interested, you can read my other comments on this story to get perha
94.
by srean 2mo ago
Not all valleys are equally dangerous. The question is why people build new on known dangerous places. The new is an important word. They do because the future is not priced in (make insurance mandatory?) and because of acts of corrupti
95.
by srean 2mo ago
For some who are very poor yes I agree. But many are baited in by corrupt policies by a nexus of politicians and contractors/builders -- cheap land, cheap permits.
96.
by srean 2mo ago
That's not quite it. Its about policies that take into account the cost of future events and balance it against the ease of building. The future needs to be priced in, in today's prices. Regulations (for example, you cannot build
97.
by srean 2mo ago
I am not knowledgeable about Nepal so I wouldn't know what role corruption played in this particular case. Nepal is literally between rock and a hard place. But in my country, India, there is plenty of this kind of corruption going on.
98.
by srean 2mo ago
I am not talking to this specific case but about a general phenomenon that I see in my country, where people are being incentivized to build on hazardous areas by way of corruption. Depending on the scale one could incentivized people to mo
99.
by srean 2mo ago
I agree with your broad point. As I said in another comment, perhaps it is time to lean towards sortition. We need a better and faster feedback loop. Low probability but high impact hazards, those are the toughest to deal with at society
100.
by srean 2mo ago
That's a damn good question. My hunch is there are honest and reasonably competent people but who don't desire such positions. Perhaps it is time to try sortition at scale.
101.
by srean 2mo ago
That's quite hyperbolic. Zoning is not an all or nothing. There is a lot of land that does not have such extreme dangers. Of course, some countries have it worse than others. Japan would be one such. Good or bad, the population has bee
102.
by srean 2mo ago
Anecdote: John Sculley lasted ten years.
103.
by srean 2mo ago
> Okay, but isn't it likely that the outcome of those scientific investigations will be that the Himalayan foothills should not be inhabited at all, except maybe a couple of places Yes and that is broadly the safe option. One can bu
104.
by srean 2mo ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vargas_tragedy Similar death toll. Also Orion. https://www.dogmanray.com/true-stories/orion/
105.
by srean 2mo ago
> Realistically, what do you think they could have done to prevent this, given the likely 1/1000 or lower chance it would happen to them specifically? Use science based zoning and not build or populate known hazardous areas.
106.
by srean 2mo ago
> yet leaders keep telling us via TV, social media... that everything is fine. How else will they make easy money from illegal and unsafe constructions. There is always the "it was the will of god" excuse. This will continue ti
107.
by srean 2mo ago
Remember Orion and Rocky https://www.dogmanray.com/true-stories/orion/ https://greatergood.com/blogs/news/heroic-dog-rocky-saves-63... It would have been more apt if his name was Sirius.
108.
by srean 2mo ago
We do the opposite. The political class and the contractor class regularly flout safety norms and build where they shouldn't. They make the money from the safety of being out of range. When the political class are questioned they utter
109.
by srean 2mo ago
If I recall correctly, it was for course project for the class taught by late Rajeev Motwani. Not contradicting your comment, adding more context.
110.
by srean 2mo ago
The blame should not rest at Pagerank's feet. The moment the web became a place to make money SEO would have cropped up to target any other ranking system, had that become the defacto standard. In fact the ranking system was not raw Pa
111.
by srean 2mo ago
That's right. My bad and my apologies. I should have read the context properly.
112.
by srean 2mo ago
HodgeRank is a very different beast. It is nothing like Pagerank. Its input is not a citation/link graph but a list of paired ordered preferences. In HodgeRank the goal is to combine a large list of pairwise preferences how to obtain t
113.
by srean 2mo ago
A minor comment: on a dense graph, one iteration of the power method would be O(N^2). One would typically need many iterations for adequate convergence. If the number of iterations required is linear, then yes it would indeed take O(N^3)
114.
by srean 2mo ago
Consider the magnetar. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetar "A magnetar's 10^10 tesla field, by contrast, has an energy density of 4.0×1025 J/m3, with an E/c2 mass density more than 10,000 times t
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by srean 2mo ago
Tried some local brand today. Am quiet satisfied with the kebabs. It's easier to fool in a kebab. Thanks to you I have updated my outdated prior. Things have certainly improved.
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by srean 2mo ago
Inert gassing prior to the chipper shouldn't have been that expensive. That's the way capitalism works unfortunately.
117.
by srean 2mo ago
I agree. Their 'living quarters' can be pretty bad too. I was describing their situation as compared to milk.
118.
by srean 2mo ago
Thanks, will check. Oh they are in fact available in India. Will definitely try them out.
119.
by srean 2mo ago
Could you point a few out ? I would be eager to try them out if they are available here in India.
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by srean 2mo ago
Oh! Thanks for correcting me. Now I learned that the egg is fertilized (if at all) before the shell is formed. The hen would lay the egg anyway fertilization or no fertilization.

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