zipwitch

20 ms·

151.
by zipwitch 8y ago
There are a lot of things out there that orbit stars, and it increasingly looks like just one, or even a handful, of formal definitions are going to be inadequate, even for our own solar system. We need a detailed and extensive classificati
152.
by zipwitch 8y ago
It's not that the software is built explicitly to overcharge people. But it is written and launched into production in a buggy state. And the bugs that cost the company money get fixed. The ones that cost the customers are... not p
153.
by zipwitch 8y ago
>I'm pretty certain any such mission would have leaked by now. At least the fact of it, if not the details. How do you know it hasn't? For example, it would seem to be within the capbilities of the rumored Blackstar: https:&#x
154.
by zipwitch 8y ago
My big problem with nuclear (fission) is that while on paper it looks like a great solution, in practice our civilizational apparatus does not appear to be up to the task of long-term responsible implementation. Fission power looks like a l
155.
by zipwitch 8y ago
That's an inevitable result of devoting the efforts of so many of our brightest to attracting eyeballs.
156.
by zipwitch 8y ago
Is "cyberpunk dystopia" truly insufficient?
157.
by zipwitch 8y ago
Think of all the lives that went into building the beginnings of the industrial age: miners, construction workers, pedestrians electrocuted or run down by automobiles. Even today this continues in slightly different ways - as one example,
158.
by zipwitch 8y ago
Yes, ultimaltely the same people whose decisions led to you being able to have an internet to connect to and whine on are the same ones who took a few dollars from your paycheck and are using them to explore Mars .
159.
by zipwitch 8y ago
You are right that "dictatorship" or "conspiracy" are the wrong ways to look at this sort of corrupting influence. The actuality is far more pernicious - it doesn't take Bond-villain plotting, just people making dec
160.
by zipwitch 8y ago
Our species' collective intelligence isn't that simple. It appears to me that we are processing substrate for a species-sized game of Core Wars. In turn, because the size of the playing field (aka total human population) has becom
161.
by zipwitch 8y ago
Would the criticism go away if they called it a credit score?
162.
by zipwitch 8y ago
The job of Amazon, or any corporation, is not to just "increase their bottom line" nor is the job of governments to "increase their tax bases". Both classes of entity are allowed to exist by communities of human bein
163.
by zipwitch 8y ago
The pure white screen has a certain aesthetic appeal, but the total lack of content puts it considerably below the original. (I assume this must be an intended effect, given the complete absence of error messages.)
164.
by zipwitch 8y ago
For much of the US the situation is something like this: You have ISP #1, who have relatively modern infrastructure and bandwidth. You may or may not have ISP #2, who have antiquated infrastructure they don't maintain that delivers ban
165.
by zipwitch 8y ago
The Okavango is Africa's 4th longest river. It flows into the Kalahari desert, becomes a swamp and dries out. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okavango_River
166.
by zipwitch 8y ago
Sometimes it's not about wanting to make money, about wanting to sell, or even about wanting to be useful. It's about having an idea and wanting to make it work . And if fame or fortune come your way as a result, great. But the r
167.
by zipwitch 8y ago
The cost of getting everyone you wish to communicate with using the new system is non-trivial.
168.
by zipwitch 8y ago
It's not true. The original source of the claim appears to be a misrepresentation on Fox News years ago of Congress' student loan repayment plan for staffers. https://www.factcheck.org/2011/01/congress-n
169.
by zipwitch 8y ago
A few bucks either way on price (including shipping costs) don't matter much to me either way. What I do value is my time . And that is what missed delivery dates and time on the phone both cost me. "Spend time dealing with custo
170.
by zipwitch 8y ago
A few years back, there was a story about how a different Matrix fan work, The ASCII Matrix, was the oldest torrent: https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/kb7wex/how-ascii-... (And this all makes me fe
171.
by zipwitch 8y ago
Fines also need to be proportional to income, or you're (potentially) doing far more harm than intended or neccessary to the poorest violators, and failing to deter the wealthier ones.
172.
by zipwitch 8y ago
The answer is obvious: time-travelers on a 'paleo hunting experience' trip. "We'll just target 100,000 years before the earliest known human presence."
173.
by zipwitch 8y ago
From the same time period come the manually operated and far less complex Napier's Bones. Still pretty neat, and more likely what the 'average' person needing a calculating device would have used. https://en.m.wiki
174.
by zipwitch 8y ago
This sort of discussion always puts me in mind of what J.R.R. Tolkien said (via Gandalf), "Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement.
175.
by zipwitch 8y ago
> This sort of adversarial judicial system is akin to Democracy, in that it's the worst system of its type, except for every other system we've tried. Except that's not really true. Democracies are split between highly ad
176.
by zipwitch 8y ago
From the list: All the important years are four digits long This left out the Long Now Foundation's advocacy for five-digit years to deal premptively with the Y10K bug. And, less tongue-in-cheek, to promote a view of time that is not
177.
by zipwitch 8y ago
In America this attitude (of seeing successful drug lords as talented entrepreneurs) has a long history, going back to early English colonization efforts. The English "settlers" in what is now Virginia were aspirational freebooter
178.
by zipwitch 8y ago
Well, Russians are completely unfamiliar with bad weather. The climate in Russia is always balmy, so their not used to dealing with chilly weather.
179.
by zipwitch 8y ago
That is certainly how they are often used in the America and the West today, but always seems a gross exaggeration. For example, regulations against child labor.
180.
by zipwitch 8y ago
I'd guess it's more that he doesn't want to test life support in PROD. I feel that way myself, but I fear we aren't going to end up with any better choices.

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