xyzzyz

16 ms·

241.
by xyzzyz 2y ago
Someone buying a tractor on a loan doesn’t take away someone else’s ability to buy a tractor. We have no shortage of tractors. Practically all new tractors today are bought on a loan, by the way. Imagine what would happen if loans on tracto
242.
by xyzzyz 2y ago
Loans existed for at least as long as writing has, and probably for the entirety of humanity’s history. Code of Hammurabi had laws regulating loans, for example. Why loans result in resources being misallocated? This doesn’t make sense to
243.
by xyzzyz 2y ago
What do you mean? Loans are part of the standard market operations and have been since forever, literally thousands of years.
244.
by xyzzyz 2y ago
The weak derivative does not have much to do with any trend of a function at a point. The value of weak derivative at any given point is not even defined. The weak derivative of a quarterly earnings function is zero, regardless of what the
245.
by xyzzyz 2y ago
You can’t calculate derivative of a discrete function. That’s why we talk about trends. These tend to include more than last 2 data points, because of noise.
246.
by xyzzyz 2y ago
On a smooth function, it is.
247.
by xyzzyz 2y ago
This works just fine in other contexts. Eg. when you move to Alaska, you only start getting your Permanent Fund dividend only when you’re Alaskan resident for a full calendar year. You are only eligible for resident hunting permit after 12
248.
by xyzzyz 2y ago
I clearly remember that booting Windows 95 on my 386SX was under one minute. I remember measuring this.
249.
by xyzzyz 2y ago
Americans in 1800 were enormously wealthier than Englishmen in 1100. Again, I’m not comparing nominal values. I’m comparing purchasing power and typical wages. The purchasing power of $1000 today is more than what an Englishman in 1100 had
250.
by xyzzyz 2y ago
No, this is adjusted by inflation. People simply have no idea how poor our ancestors were. For $1000, you can hire someone to work for a year today , in Burundi, Somalia, or any of the other countries that are as poor today as Englishmen w
251.
by xyzzyz 2y ago
This is insanely expensive by historic standards. $1000 worth of purchasing power back in medieval Europe would pay laborer wages for a year , not a day.
252.
by xyzzyz 2y ago
You are literally repeating false smears about Elon Mask. No emerald mine has ever been owned by anyone in Elon's family, and Elon certainly didn't inherit any of it. I find it very ironic that you are doing this while accusing so
253.
by xyzzyz 2y ago
In what way paper, metal, or glass bottles are better than plastic?
254.
by xyzzyz 2y ago
Yes, and? You cannot just point to an argument, say it’s NIMBY and call it a day. You have to actually argue against it. Slapping a derogatory label on it and dismissing it is not enough.
255.
by xyzzyz 2y ago
This argument assumes that we can destroy Palo Alto, rebuild it anew into something completely different, and preserve the value people ascribe to Palo Alto. This is not how it works. If it worked this way, why do it to Palo Alto? Why not d
256.
by xyzzyz 2y ago
There are plenty of countries with legal debt ceilings, some of them even in the constitution. That said, I'll grant you that I don't know of any that behave so absurdly about it. The trick is to stay clear very far from the limit
257.
by xyzzyz 3y ago
We don’t spend a lot of money because we bus. It’s the other way around: we bus because we have a lot of money to spend. What happens here particularly often is that insiders (in context of schools, these are teachers and their unions, admi
258.
by xyzzyz 3y ago
Under this theory, whenever all branches of government, executive and legislative, are held by a single party, we expect the policy to be coherent and the governance solid. Suffice to say, observing the data from California or New York allo
259.
by xyzzyz 3y ago
For citation, I recommend a book by Garret Jones, “The Culture Transplant: How Migrants Make the Economies They Move To a Lot Like the Ones They Left” https://www.amazon.com/Culture-Transplant-Migrants-Make-Econ...
260.
by xyzzyz 3y ago
A handful of top universities in US are better than top universities in Russia, but I seriously doubt that there's a significant difference between average university in Russia and average one in US when it comes to quality. If you are
261.
by xyzzyz 3y ago
Imagine we start paying government employees Google salaries tomorrow. Could we then start firing incompetent employees and replace them with the competent ones lured by high pay? Everything I know about how politics and public sector union
262.
by xyzzyz 3y ago
This is just obtuse. “Murder is one of the things not allowed in our society.” “Oh, you can kill whoever you want. There will be consequences to your killings, but you can still kill people. You just have to accept the consequences. Toddler
263.
by xyzzyz 3y ago
> Now, public health care (Germany does not have universal healthcare) and social security are not taxes If you don’t count these as taxes (you should, though), US comes out even stronger. At $200k/year, your effective income tax ra
264.
by xyzzyz 3y ago
You can listen to audiobooks while you drive too.
265.
by xyzzyz 3y ago
Source code repo is like a very extremely detailed doc. You might not be able to actually easily run it due to all of the dependencies etc, but with couple of weeks of reading, you should be able to tease back out the high level design.
266.
by xyzzyz 3y ago
What you describe is not really an issue with algorithmic pricing per se, but rather that the particular algorithm at hand is shit.
267.
by xyzzyz 3y ago
Home insulation doesn’t work by making walls close to vacuum. You insulate walls by stuffing more (but not too much) of stuff into them, not by pumping out air or anything silly like that. Vacuum is a great insulator, because it blocks tw
268.
by xyzzyz 3y ago
> The other problem USA has is poor education and lack of well separated waste streams. I’ve personally experienced ridiculous “wishcycling” from my extended family in the US where they just throw whatever they want to feel good about th
269.
by xyzzyz 3y ago
Mining sand for glass is really negligible environmental destruction. Extra energy needed for recycling vs fresh glass has worse environmental impact.
270.
by xyzzyz 3y ago
This is strangely reminiscent of the Soviet Union, where after they got rid of Lavrentiy Beria, they mailed the update to subscribers of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, where they asked to remove the three pages with Beria’s biography and re

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