zopa

19 ms·

151.
by zopa 4y ago
You can argue that it's oversimplified, but it's definitely not inaccurate. I'm not even sure it's oversimplified, though. Your list is a good set of things to worry about if you're going to fight a nuclear war. But
152.
by zopa 4y ago
No issue with your main point, but "pursuing nuclear weapons" is such a strange and revealing phrase. North Korea has nuclear weapons. They've had nuclear weapons for at least 16 years (probably over 20). The last best chance
153.
by zopa 5y ago
That's a nice emergent feature that happens when you have plenty of competition, low transaction costs, perfect information and so on. Sometimes the real world is close enough to that one that you can pretend prices and costs are the s
154.
by zopa 5y ago
And that's fine, but now you don't have the right behavior in the limit to defeat longtermism, because with the right assumptions population growth can easily swamp the effects of a delay. Unless I'm missing something you rea
155.
by zopa 5y ago
When we think about the time value of money, we're thinking about the value of money to an individual. It isn't fundamentally about market returns, at bottom; it's about the near-universal human preference for something now o
156.
by zopa 5y ago
So what? You're looking at it one job at a time, and for any one given job it might indeed suck. But collectively, the times when you're unfairly tossed out are balanced by the times when other people are, and you benefit from bei
157.
by zopa 5y ago
I get that this is hyperbole, but it's really, really dangerous. A good number of people care very much. Whether there are enough people in the right places for the U.S. to get involved is an open question. But it doesn't actually
158.
by zopa 5y ago
Nit, probably, but perjury is lying to a court: while testifying, say, or in a deposition. You can't promise that something is true "under penalty of perjury" in a private contract.
159.
by zopa 5y ago
7^2 is 49, 4^2 is 16, all the other factors cancel. Yes, of course the right way to say it is "reduces the energy by 67%," but it's not that hard to see what was meant.
160.
by zopa 5y ago
> Imagine thinking profit-seeking is just a Western thing. Lol. Seems pretty clear to me that the comment you're replying to is talking about short-term profit maximization, and not "profit seeking" in general. The argumen
161.
by zopa 5y ago
I always find pitches like this a little obnoxious: > You list files hundreds of times a day. Why spend your time squinting at black and white text? Uh, `ls` has colors, if you know how or some benevolent distro-maintainer did. Now there
162.
by zopa 5y ago
There's a lot to be said for a grain of truth and a magnifying glass. Mostly I don't want the whole beach all at once. Yes, of course, not all writer's block and it's not the whole picture and it won't work for ever
163.
by zopa 5y ago
I'm open to considering alternatives. But if the proposal is some form of central planning, I think the burden is on the proponents to actually have a plan. Pointing out problems isn't the same as having a solution.
164.
by zopa 5y ago
Plus a certain lack of self-awareness: > Language has evolved over centuries through ages of scarcity, superstition, and social insufficiency, and often contains ambiguity and uncertainty when important issues are at stake. (From https:
165.
by zopa 5y ago
It does however mean Apple has significant market power. Almost by definition: in a very counterfactual perfectly competitive smartphone market, everyone sells at cost and there aren't any profits. Reducing it to monopoly vs. not-a-mon
166.
by zopa 5y ago
And that's fine. If you need stuff now, spend; if you don't, invest, at whatever risk level you're comfortable with. Just hanging onto purchasing power while doing neither is bad for the economy if too many people try it.
167.
by zopa 5y ago
NixOS -- what I use -- gets mentioned here pretty frequently, so I don't just want to do an ad. But: walled garden? there's no wall. Multiple versions? Trivially. Copying applications between machines? `nix-copy-closure` is a joy
168.
by zopa 5y ago
Quantum gravity gets the headlines, but only a pretty tiny minority of physicists actually work on stuff like that. Most people are researching problems much closer to hand. Basically the utopia you're looking for is already here.
169.
by zopa 5y ago
> People have historically complained a lot about firings not being based on an objective formula. Now the complaint is an objective formula is being used. Cute line, but obviously people have always wanted criteria to be objective and
170.
by zopa 5y ago
Those patents aren’t for superconductors. They claim “a material with a conductivity in excess of 10^6 S/cm.” That’s not too far off from copper at around 6*10^5 S/cm. Pretty good for a polymer if it works I imagine, but not super
171.
by zopa 5y ago
In the US, members of Congress spend a truly unfathomable amount of time fundraising---as much as six hours a day. There's also just the fact that the issues before Congress are numerous and complicated, and staffing hasn't kept u
172.
by zopa 5y ago
That's really not the question. Any language that we've all heard of is pretty much by definition a wild success, comparatively. Most languages stay very small. There are very large first-mover advantages and network effects to pr
173.
by zopa 5y ago
Realistically, if a UMN student submits a patch from their personal, non-.edu email address, will anyone notice or care?
174.
by zopa 5y ago
Pretty confident we'd still explore, just with some (appropriate) care. Too many fascinating scientific questions to answer once we discover extraterrestrial life. And if Russia and China did, the US definitely would too --- what would
175.
by zopa 7y ago
That seems very unlikely to be the most cost-effective use of capital. Exon Mobile has a market capitalization of $309 billion. So figure $200 billion for a hostile takeover --- that's approaching the yearly cost of a Green New Deal pl
176.
by zopa 7y ago
From scratch, maybe. But nothing stops Haskell and Clojure from binding to the same C-libraries every other language binds to. And I think you're overstating the difficulty of even a top-to-bottom new system. Re-implementing deep learn
177.
by zopa 7y ago
Cabal hell is a solved problem these days. Solved three different competing ways --- nix, cabal new-build, Stack --- where ideally there'd just be one, but not the issue it was five years ago. That doesn't mean dependency manageme
178.
by zopa 7y ago
> This Working Paper should not be reported as representing the views of the IMF. The views expressed in this Working Paper are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the IMF or IMF policy. From the first page o
179.
by zopa 7y ago
How is `foo` "clearly terminating"? With `p = const False`' it's undefined for any even x >= 3.
180.
by zopa 7y ago
He did though, just not on his final ascent.

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