tlb

65 ms·

931.
by tlb 6y ago
Every use of power is incentivized to use the cheapest energy source. So the only way to solve CO2 climate effects is to make renewables be the cheapest. Solar is getting cheaper following a learning curve, where every billion dollars spent
932.
by tlb 6y ago
Any website can benefit from analytics, not just advertising-supported ones. You still want to know what pages and links are getting clicked on. Here's a way to find startups that make something: https://www.ycombinator.com&
933.
by tlb 6y ago
It's measuring total harm across society given current usage rates. Alcohol use being 100x more common than methamphetamine use dominates the relative harm comparison.
934.
by tlb 6y ago
They were trying to stop pirates using a workaround to avoid copying. Instead of distributing cracked versions of the software, pirates would just distribute cracks -- tiny programs which would edit the binaries of software to remove the co
935.
by tlb 6y ago
There was some good discussion and links at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26645253
936.
by tlb 6y ago
You're using the word 'diff' for 2 different things: - an efficient way to store 2 very similar files - the minimal set of changes made by a programmer to a file. Subversion uses the same diff algorithm for these 2 functions,
937.
by tlb 6y ago
Rebase doesn't work that way, though [0]. It first extracts the 3 versions (2 leafs and their common ancestor) and then does a diff & patch. This allows git to store the deltas between versions in the most efficient way on disk, wh
938.
by tlb 6y ago
Has this been studied? My personal experience is the opposite, but it's an interesting phenomenon I'd like to understand better.
939.
by tlb 6y ago
Julia is like this. a+b is just syntactic sugar for (:call :+ a b). There’s a function + for various type pairs. The fact that the compiler can optimize it to 1 instruction is an implementation detail.
940.
by tlb 6y ago
We've had several generations of more efficient hardware, and it just causes the hash rate to increase while energy usage stays at the energy-cost equilibrium described above. I can't imagine an algorithmic or hardware improvement
941.
by tlb 6y ago
Different industries have different standards. Hard disks are several % under advertised capacity. Audio amplifiers ratings are completely disconnected from reality. Packaged meat at places like Wal-Mart contain between 6 and 12% injected s
942.
by tlb 6y ago
It impacts the company's bottom line by an amount precisely equal to their pay, payroll tax, and benefits. Because that's how bottom lines work. They're the summation of all the previous lines, +ve and -ve. Personally, I kept
943.
by tlb 6y ago
How do people in countries where bribes are pervasive think about Anglosphere countries where they aren't? Do they think we're oblivious to the potential? Not interested in money? So rich it doesn't matter? Or do they feel so
944.
by tlb 6y ago
Entirely predictable (in retrospect). The (in mice) of economic predictions.
945.
by tlb 6y ago
> because the facilities were completely shut down, clean rooms were flooded with particles and every piece of equipment was contaminated Ouch. That suggests that they didn't have backup power for the positive pressure ventilation s
946.
by tlb 6y ago
It's hard to imagine an algorithm with complexity beyond P that don't require intermediate storage as large as n. I suspect there are none, because you need at least n bits of state in order for a program to run for 2^n cycles bef
947.
by tlb 6y ago
> Soon people will realize that reality is often nuanced Why do you think this is going to happen soon after 2021 and not any other time since homo sapiens developed language? Obviously many things are different now, so your statement is
948.
by tlb 6y ago
Computability isn't really relevant here. I was talking about, for problems that are computable within NP, how big a problem can be solved by physically realizable machines. Turing machines are polynomially worse than von Neumann machi
949.
by tlb 6y ago
In almost everyone's experience, almost everything doesn't scale. Figuring out how to make something scale is a rare event. I say this having heard, while debating the potential of various startups, probably 10000 arguments for or
950.
by tlb 6y ago
So does any physical computer. Modern computers push that limit into the billions or trillions, while optical interferometry machines are currently stuck in the hundreds or thousands. But you can't guarantee that won't change.
951.
by tlb 6y ago
Email apply@ycombinator.com with more details for help.
952.
by tlb 6y ago
You can make a multi-emitter transistor out of multiple transistors by tying their bases and collectors together.
953.
by tlb 6y ago
In the modern world, deadliness decreases transmissibility (Re, not R0), because people make organized efforts to contain deadly diseases. Covid's death rate was low enough that a good fraction of people thought we should just take it
954.
by tlb 6y ago
Genes can change behavior when you get into space. But you have to bet that, with millions of species getting to that point, not a single one will get any further. I don't know how anyone can have that level of certainty about such spe
955.
by tlb 6y ago
In a galaxy with millions of civilizations, it only takes one grabby species to result in colonization. So you don't have to be convinced that any given species will expand, just accept that some might. Expansion is selected for in bio
956.
by tlb 6y ago
It's curious how the C++ standard is written with a bunch of rules, rather than an algorithm. The algorithmic version in the article is much clearer to programmers. You'd think the C++ standards committee would write the standard
957.
by tlb 6y ago
Lisp was indeed a hassle on FreeBSD. Viaweb used CLisp, which did clever things with the VM system and garbage collection that weren't quite portable (and CLisp's C code was all written in German for extra debugging fahrvergnügen.
958.
by tlb 6y ago
Everyone proposing robot kitchens should watch the AMFare video.
959.
by tlb 6y ago
RTM, PG and I used BSDI (a commercial distribution of 4.4BSD) at Viaweb (starting 1995) and migrated to FreeBSD when that became stable. RTM and I had hacked on BSD networking code in grad school, and it was far ahead of Linux at the time f
960.
by tlb 6y ago
Bitcoin is wildly profitable for governments whose citizens hold it. They can tax it as capital gains (when transferred or eventually as part of an estate) which means in the long term they'll get something like 25% of the market cap e

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