wenc

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121.
by wenc 1y ago
I think that's a bet that is contingent upon not getting laid off for more than a year during a period when there is 20-30% drawdown. If that happens, then any growth differential between equities and SPAXX's 4% is going to be wip
122.
by wenc 1y ago
Did you also check 7 day yields (interest) in those years? SPAXX is currently 4%. But was 5% in previous years (it holds US treasuries and has a very low expense ratio and holds its NAV) https://fundresearch.fidelity.com/mut
123.
by wenc 1y ago
SP500 can go down a lot and stay down for a long time. We went through this in 2022 when most stocks were down 20% for a year. SP500 is not a low risk short term investment. How would you feel if your rainy day fund lost 20% of its value?
124.
by wenc 1y ago
Most financial advisors tell you to keep a rainy day fund with a 3-6 month runway. Given what's been happening in the tech industry and the economy at large, I now keep a 1-year emergency fund in a money-market fund at 4% (Fidelity SPA
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by wenc 1y ago
Chicago also reversed the flow of the Chicago River. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_River#Reversing_the_fl... They also rebuilt much of the city because it was wiped out during the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, an
126.
by wenc 1y ago
> I don’t have a good mental model for what a passkey is or how it works. And again, like most users if I don’t really understand what’s going on I’m just not gonna bother with it. Sites kept asking me if I would like to setup a passkey,
127.
by wenc 1y ago
Wow, that's impressive! It even has a "sarcastic" voice which drips with sarcasm.
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by wenc 1y ago
Turbo Vision was truly immersive. I used it in Turbo C and also in Paradox 4.5. So good.
129.
by wenc 1y ago
Writing things twice is actually a technique for improving quality. https://grantslatton.com/software-pathfinding
130.
by wenc 1y ago
Writing isn’t a linear process. You need to keep enough of a context window viewable and to scroll/jump to different parts quickly. Devices without fast refresh or a large enough screen are unsuitable for many of today’s writers except
131.
by wenc 1y ago
There are a bunch of distraction-free writing devices, from the BYOK to the Freewrite. They range for $100 - $500. List here: https://kadavy.net/distraction-free-writing-devices/ To me, YAGNI. Let me suggest two cheape
132.
by wenc 1y ago
Typst looks good, but I'm actually going back to LaTeX but paired with Claude Code in VS Code. I took a hiatus from LaTeX (got my PhD more than a decade ago). I used to know TikZ commands by heart, and I used to write sophisticated pre
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by wenc 1y ago
It's because LaTeX gives us a sense of legitimacy. (it's also why people go overboard with math notation in LaTeX documents, even when prose is more appropriate). It produces documents that look like those produced by professors,
134.
by wenc 1y ago
Right now, I only have subscriptions to the NYTimes (US) and FT (international). But mostly I find out interesting stuff from https://marginalrevolution.com/ (which usually have links to FT, Bloomberg, WP, WSJ, etc.) I was
135.
by wenc 1y ago
I didn’t. I did 3 STEM degrees and then made some money and went back to school to study liberal arts part time. I think studying liberal arts after having life experience is so much more rewarding — not to mention affordable (assuming you’
136.
by wenc 1y ago
I wonder how this would perform on the M4 Makridakis competitions (time series competitions) https://github.com/Mcompetitions/M4-methods https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Makridakis_Competitions Makri
137.
by wenc 1y ago
As a former ML engineer, Excel is a surprisingly practical tool even for ML folks. It’s a very tactile tool to touch and feel your data and do quick what ifs without doing a lot of coding. Want a graph? Plot it instead of fudging with matpl
138.
by wenc 1y ago
> When people throw around the word shortage what they mean is "availability at a price I'm willing to pay." Same with labor shortages. Yeah that's actually an incomplete and oversimplified statement. Some people thin
139.
by wenc 1y ago
I've never worked in Germany, but I worked for the U.S. branch of a German multinational company, reported to a German manager and visited Germany a couple of times. Living in Germany felt like it wasn't for me. There is very litt
140.
by wenc 1y ago
I don’t think that in itself is dumb. It’s an application question that tests knowledge on sampling and doing it within the constraints of a database language and performance envelope of a large data store. The spirit of the question isn’t
141.
by wenc 1y ago
The SQL question (mentioned in the thread) was: "It was very benign and was probably the most practical question I asked him! Let's say you want to randomly sample 1,000 users out of a table with a user_id column, e.g. so you
142.
by wenc 1y ago
I can relate. This sort of trade off exists today in almost all commercial code. Sharp enough to do the job, but not sharper. A solo programmer can afford to be an artisan, but commercial code is rarely artisanal. It's full of trade-of
143.
by wenc 1y ago
I type somewhat fast, so I labored for years under the impression that I already knew touch typing. But the reality is I didn't -- like I don't keep my fingers on the home row, and I make tons of mistakes that I mindlessly correct
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by wenc 1y ago
> I would wonder why you are so complacent as to think next year's models won't be able to solve domain-specific problems? If your domain is complex enough as well as have a critical people-facing component you generally still
145.
by wenc 1y ago
How about the one some of us believe: “Isn’t it cool that I don’t have to write boiler plate and can prototype quickly? My job isn’t replaced because coding is not my job — it’s solving domain specific problems?” I’m in my late 40s, have wr
146.
by wenc 1y ago
I've observed the same. University science PR pieces are usually unreliable -- they are optimized toward generating buzz than scientific accuracy. They usually link to the actual science papers, but the prose is usually a stretch. Even
147.
by wenc 1y ago
It's research-in-progress, but I think the promise is slightly different from dehumidifier bags (also in other parts of the world, Thirsty Hippos [1]) which are single use. You're correct in that: (1) it doesn't break the law
148.
by wenc 1y ago
I'm casually ideating on a new orthography for Japanese that does not require Kanji. Because it's hard to remember how to handwrite complex kanji (many people have character amnesia in real life due to smartphone usage), I casuall
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by wenc 1y ago
Frequentist methods are unintuitive and seemingly arbitrary to a beginner (hypothesis testing, 95% confidence, p=0.05). Bayesian methods are more intuitive, and fit how most be reason when they reason probabilistically. Unfortunately Bayesi
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by wenc 1y ago
You can already do that. I run VS Code on multiple monitors. Any tab called be pulled into its own window and moved to a different screen. Even the terminal panel can be popped out into a tab or panel or window. (The UI is not obvious but

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