waps

134 ms·

901.
by waps 13y ago
Maybe someone can explain this one to me ... about WMD in Iraq. 1) Iraq kills > 500 civilians using chemical weapons (google Ali Chemicali, Halabja, ...) (documented, amongst others, by the UN) 2) it is known that for at least a decade a
902.
by waps 13y ago
I think the US government is partly such a big target for criticism (constructive and otherwise) exactly because Americans are such navel gazers. Conspiracy theories, and flat-out badmouthing the government happens in every country I'v
903.
by waps 13y ago
This is because HIV is a brilliantly designed virus (of course it evolved, it's not designed. I don't know a better way to say this though). It's a third-generation retrovirus, meaning it defeats internal cell safeguards in a
904.
by waps 13y ago
TLDR: rightists predicted austerity would improve the economy. The right got elected, pushed austerity, and the economy improved, but it wasn't really the austerity at all because of x,y,z. (I'm NOT trying to take sides here, just
905.
by waps 13y ago
I also find it very disingenious of the pro-exceptions post to claim that these mazes of ifs are easy to navigate. In his example that is sort-of true. When you're using actual real data to make the comparison it's easy to introdu
906.
by waps 13y ago
I'm not saying working conditions were better in agricultural societies, but employment (meaning percentage of people working) was better. Ironically vacation days was also much, much better than we have today. In an agricultural socie
907.
by waps 13y ago
However, it is equally true that industry never provided as much jobs, and not at the same conditions, that agriculture did. And the service industry never provided 50% as much jobs as the industry ever did, and completely excludes a decent
908.
by waps 13y ago
Might be true. If you have stable load moving off of EC2 can save you at least 50% over reserved instances, and >90% on bandwidth costs. If you no longer need amazon's scaling advantage, it's a very easy call to make. Of course
909.
by waps 13y ago
Answer yourself 2 questions : 1) why does trading lag on MtGox ... who benefits ? 2) does this happen every time the value drops ? And you'll be back to day trading something else very quickly.
910.
by waps 13y ago
True, on the other hand 37.5 hours is a week's worth of toilet breaks plus maybe one lunch out of 5 ?
911.
by waps 13y ago
I think it's already plainly visible : since the only way to get more and better performance and features will be large compute farms, the entry-fee for IT related stuff will raise because you need to invest in a horizontally scaled en
912.
by waps 13y ago
Are you a dev ? What's your profile ?
913.
by waps 13y ago
Yeah, so income on oDesk for hard workers is brutally disappointing. euro 20k/8 = 2.5k /month 1200/8 = 150 hours /month ~= 40 hours/week That's actually not that bad for being a programmer in, say, Eastern Euro
914.
by waps 13y ago
Both of those can be really easy or really hard, depending. What exactly would you like to learn ? Both things are related to control loops, so how about you make a slightly more complex robot that can detect it's position somehow, and
915.
by waps 13y ago
This is a brilliant example of why you'd want exceptions. Look at what you're doing for error handling, manually every time. Exceptions do the exact same thing, except: 1) automatically 2) type-safe 3) allow you to give extra deta
916.
by waps 13y ago
But you can't change that. That will actively destroy lives : "Of all the nonpension payments, she said, 54 percent went to active workers, 14 percent went to retirees and 32 percent went to the city, which used its share
917.
by waps 13y ago
That's absolutely true, it's called fraud. Agreeing to terms you know you can't live up to. I wonder if one could do that, sue the old politicians for the difference, given that they did not honestly account for the pensions.
918.
by waps 13y ago
That's actually what's making bitcoin successful. Never underestimate what large amounts of morons can do. There's a name for what happens if someone finds a way to use large amounts of people to act in their interest but aga
919.
by waps 13y ago
Some suggestions. To learn: 1) http://societyofrobots.com/ especially the forum 2) https://www.coursera.org/course/conrob 3) download the old coursera course on computer vision from some torrent site 4
920.
by waps 13y ago
Maybe this is realpolitik, but how about assuming everybody is only driven by base politics. Or how about anybody who isn't rich enough to have at least savings sufficient for 6 months without any income (which is probably 98% of the p
921.
by waps 13y ago
I realize you're being metaphorical, but "houses burning down" ? Really ? We'll have to relocate a few cities, or abandon them. Sure, not pleasant, but nobody will be burning.
922.
by waps 13y ago
Please note that the relationship between typhoons and climate change is unproven. There is some vague idea that higher average temperature provides more energy to storms, but it's at best an idea. Please note that people aren't i
923.
by waps 13y ago
Exactly. So if the greens' claims about solar power are true, then the -major part of- the pollution will soon stop. If they're false, it's a lost cause. People are not going to lower their living standard, especially not in
924.
by waps 13y ago
There absolutely is. You can't effectively spend bitcoin, except on the exchanges. You can't use bitcoin to buy anything. The only thing you can do is use USD to buy bitcoin and transfer the bitcoin, and have it transferred back i
925.
by waps 13y ago
It does not have value. Nobody is denominating services or goods in BTC. They denominate them in USD and BTC is simply a convenient way to spend USD, maybe even make some profit for the short time you're holding it. That's the val
926.
by waps 13y ago
So is Europe currently. Link is 404'ing now.
927.
Banks seek breathing room with controversial credit relief trades(articles.washingtonpost.com)
20 points by waps 13y ago|3 comments
928.
by waps 13y ago
Apple is behaving just like any really large firm protecting a stream of profits. In my second year of law one day the professor brought several bottles of rum to the class. Why ? Well he had won a case against the incumbent telco. This was
929.
Dutch intelligence agency AIVD hacks internet forums(nrc.nl)
96 points by waps 13y ago|38 comments
930.
by waps 13y ago
Cool, I didn't know about zerocoin. There goes my afternoon.

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