tompccs

18 ms·

181.
by tompccs 7y ago
Except that people didn't used to "commute" in the modern sense: many craftsmen worked from home, and large numbers were domestic servants. There is probably some other principle at work, of which modern commuting is a specia
182.
by tompccs 7y ago
The fact that there is a logical chain of engineering considerations that got us to this point I take as granted (yes, the article thinks it could have been done better but, as you point out, there are safety problems). But our world is bec
183.
by tompccs 7y ago
Oh yes, this problem isn't going away anytime soon. But fashions and tastes may gradually change. Remember that package holidays, cruises, leisure resorts and high-rise beachfront hotels all were fashionable at some point, but are now
184.
by tompccs 7y ago
One of the drivers of tourist congestion is the point-to-point nature of air-travel. In the past, travel used to be something for the elite, not only because it was expensive, but because it would take months of travel to actually reach man
185.
by tompccs 7y ago
Well, IQ is their measure. They should be able to defend it properly. And frankly, if there is any doubt that IQ maps to intelligence, then its abuse over the last half-century has done immesurable harm to individuals and given considerable
186.
by tompccs 7y ago
I used to think Taleb was too harsh on academics. Seeing how academics respond to his well-worked critiques, I now think he's not harsh enough.
187.
by tompccs 7y ago
This does not address the substance of Taleb's arguments. Read Taleb's original article: https://medium.com/incerto/iq-is-largely-a-pseudoscientific-... He's showing us that psychologists' statistic
188.
by tompccs 7y ago
Leaving aside the fact that rental markets already have a highly asymmetric power dynamic, landlords in the UK already do have a de-facto mechanism for assessing tenants in the form of landlord references. They can also perform various fina
189.
by tompccs 7y ago
This is interesting, but as someone who has formed a UK limited company (and yes, it is as easy as the article claims), they've missed that the tricky part is getting a bank account. The onus is on the banks to carry out checks under &
190.
by tompccs 8y ago
Chilling, and Kafka-esque. As it happens I'm not convinced that the reason for his being detained had anything to do with him being a Trump critic and Democrat donor, contrary to his claims in the article, but more likely it's som
191.
The Bat Bomb(en.wikipedia.org)
1 points by tompccs 8y ago|0 comments
192.
by tompccs 8y ago
I think this could be a great solution, but consider going after Slack rather than Whatsapp to being with. Unusually I think enterprise customers will make better early adopters than consumers, as they don't care about network effects
193.
by tompccs 8y ago
The answer to the headline is astoundingly obvious yet the article doesn't mention it once. The reason is regulation: you can't use a medical device that you've hacked together unless it has been cleared by the relevant autho
194.
by tompccs 8y ago
I love this sort of thing. One of my favourite things to read about are entrepreneurs (although they were doing this before they was even a name for it) in an industry that seems simple to outsiders (say, freight haulage) and building a bus
195.
by tompccs 8y ago
Not sure if you're joking but they do seem to have a lot of STEM industry based around NASA and defence contracts.
196.
Ask HN: Where should I locate my startup to find the best EE talent?
2 points by tompccs 8y ago|3 comments
197.
by tompccs 8y ago
No - retail space and housing have fixed supply. It's a finite resource, especially in historic city centres. Labour is also finite - would you want to live in a city where the only employment is in the hospitality sector? Secondly - a
198.
by tompccs 8y ago
Gadgets? No thanks. The fundamental problem with tourism isn't crowds (although they are unpleasant), it's inflation - tourists have more money to spend and businesses will naturally align themselves to suck up that money. Compare
199.
by tompccs 8y ago
That's one way of looking at it. Another is that the West's see-no-evil hear-no-evil approach to the Saudis has always been fundamentally unstable, and an event like this was bound to happen at some point. Glad that if finally has
200.
by tompccs 8y ago
I'm still waiting for a "smoking gun" such as this to come out of hiring or admission practices for tech firms and STEM courses. In much of the Western world the majority of people starting their careers in medicine and law a
201.
by tompccs 8y ago
His genetic examples look like European cities compared to the actual floor layouts, which are more like New World ones designed on a grid layout by central planners. Perhaps there's wisdom in allowing cities to grow organically/c
202.
by tompccs 8y ago
Another point the article missed: although batteries have a lifetime of 15-20 years (which they claim makes recycling infeasible), most people currently replace their cars far more frequently than that. Which means that either the cars will
203.
by tompccs 8y ago
London is similar to Tokyo. After the Second World War, Blitzed-out land was bought cheaply by local councils and high-rise, high-density (but generally good quality) housing was built on those sites, hence an uneven spread of high-rise bui
204.
by tompccs 8y ago
Some commenters questioning the benefit of public transit infrastructure in an age of self-driving electric vehicles have perhaps never lived in a city with good public transit. Road traffic in Victorian London was on average faster than it
205.
Reducing food’s environmental impacts through producers and consumers(science.sciencemag.org)
2 points by tompccs 8y ago|0 comments
206.
by tompccs 9y ago
Not seen that before (my field isn't comp sci or ML), but it looks great! Obviously web interface is the way to go for a serious project, but I actually found it fun learning how to implement an interactive command line app. It's
207.
by tompccs 9y ago
I'm a PhD student, and one of the things you quickly become aware of is the fire-hose of new science that is published daily. The discovery/prioritisation problem is being "solved" by publishers recommending other articl
208.
by tompccs 9y ago
That seems more likely. At a glance it looked so bizarre that I could think of no other explanation.
209.
Ubuntu Wiki Homepage Vandalised(wiki.ubuntu.com)
17 points by tompccs 9y ago|15 comments
210.
by tompccs 10y ago
I've just tested this again, and it seems to only happen when I type the query directly from my Chrome url bar (I'm using Google UK if that makes a difference). Same on Incognito. I get the "Copyright" page at https:&#x

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