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Agathos

1,633 karma · joined February 28, 2007

[ my public key: https://keybase.io/gregoryck; my proof: https://keybase.io/gregoryck/sigs/mfwn4XJ4DbmHD-jaZYv-eosmkMO-lZvt82W_oENReCQ ]
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Agathos··on Covid Subcommittee Releases Dr. Fauci's Transcript, Highlights Key Takeaways
"Dr. Fauci admitted that vaccine mandates during the COVID-19 pandemic could increase vaccine hesitancy in the future."

Or, paraphrased: Look what you made me do.

Agathos··on Thousands of small businesses are struggling because of R&D amortization
> Restaurants, bars, plumbing companies, landscaping companies, accounting firms, etc.?

Do any of those businesses owe taxes before they've collected their first cent of revenue? That is the situation a software startup is now looking at.

Agathos··on Autoworkers Score Big Wins in New Contracts with Carmakers
Toyota has a lot to recommend it, but discounted prices are not one of those things.
Agathos··on Warp drive's best hope dies, as antimatter falls down
"Warp Drive" dates back to 1947 (John Barret, "Stellar Snowball") according to sfdictionary.com (a resource I love for this kind of question).

Other phrases like "Space Warp" go back even further (Nat Schachner, "The Son of Redmask", 1935).

Agathos··on The missing middle in game development
30 years ago, I wasn't playing 100-hour games because they were shorter. Final Fantasy IV (or II as we called it back then) was 30-40 hours, and we thought that was huge.
Agathos··on ASML EUV lithography machine could keep Moore’s Law on track
Two must watch videos about the whole process:

https://youtu.be/5Ge2RcvDlgw

https://youtu.be/pfU20SAR21A

(Typed on a device made by this process, which I still don’t quite believe.)

Agathos··on AMD promises its new laptop chips will crush the Apple M2 and it’s got receipts
It's the Alpha team all the way down (or actually their successors, by now).

DEC -> AMD (Dirk Meyer, Jim Keller)

DEC -> PA Semi -> Apple (Daniel Dobberpuhl)

Agathos··on Some personal news
I think a lot of people looked at his last prediction that Tuesday morning, observed that 70 > 30, and assumed that meant it was a lock. And then spent the last six years blaming Silver for their own innumeracy.
Agathos··on How and when the chip shortage will end
The irony is there may already be a glut of 28nm capacity. But that embedded chip you're waiting for isn't fabbed at 28nm, so everybody loses.
Agathos··on ‘Scanners are complicated’: why Gen Z faces workplace ‘tech shame’
The first time I had to fax something I put it in face down, like in a copier. And sent a blank page.
Agathos··on What caused all the supply chain bottlenecks?
The billionaires' tax he mentioned is dead anyway, so that part of the discussion is moot. It was floated a couple of days ago as a possible addition to the reconciliation bill, but it's not in the framework announced this morning.
Agathos··on Facebook Renames to Meta
Whatever happened to Transmeta, anyway?
Agathos··on Ireland joins OECD International Tax agreement
> When and how will the taxes help you and me?

In the US? On our 65th birthdays. Military spending is big, but Medicare is bigger.

Agathos··on Google destroyed our startup by terminating our Play Developer Account
"For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law." - Óscar Benavides
Agathos··on Ask HN: How do I easily catalog a couple thousand physical books?
Oh wow they still have CueCats to sell?
Agathos··on Will the rich world’s worker deficit last?
Throw out property taxes and implement land taxes. Stop assessing a tax penalty on building up.
Agathos··on Why airlines no longer use rear-engine planes
The failure of the center engine on a trijet can be scary.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_232

"The uncontained manner in which the engine failed resulted in high-speed metal fragments being hurled from the engine; these fragments penetrated the hydraulic lines of all three independent hydraulic systems on board the aircraft..."

Agathos··on U.S. Senate to probe whether legislation needed to combat cyber attacks
Not that "easily." Moving that much cash around requires a lot of manual effort and some skill at money laundering.

By removing that need, cryptocurrency makes ransomware scalable. And as Paul Graham and other Silicon Valley types have said a thousand times, scalability is the difference between a modest mom-and-pop operation and a rapidly growing enterprise.

Agathos··on U.S. Senate to probe whether legislation needed to combat cyber attacks
You could always hire a bunch of shadowrunners to destroy your competitor's computer system, but I don't know what that has to do with ransomware.

But hey, I guess you could use cryptocurrency to pay the runners.

Agathos··on Have you ever hurt yourself from your own code?
“We anticipate this being the last round of layoffs so we won’t need a layoff db guy any more.”
Agathos··on The Oncoming Ransomware Storm
Yay, anarchy.

The half-life of anarchy is measured in hours. Then the gangs show up. Gangs are basically governments, except even less responsive to your needs and more openly committed to enriching their own leadership.

Agathos··on Happy Hacking: Music Implementation in NieR:Automata (2017)
I played Nier: Automata right after I finished Horizon Zero Dawn back in 2017. They were an interesting study in contrasts. I agree HZD is the better game, and Automata's flaws really wore on me sometimes, but I still liked it on balance. It plays around and gets weird in ways that a bigger-budget release like HZD can't risk. It probably helps that I actually did like the shooter mini-game that this article is about, musical transition and all.
Agathos··on Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic
A norovirus will laugh at your hand sanitizer, as will most other non-enveloped viruses.
Agathos··on EU agency to confirm AstraZeneca blood clot link
You realize Covid causes blood clots too, right? Of course you’re taking chances; you take a chance no matter what you do.
Agathos··on What’s Entering Public Domain in 2021: The Great Gatsby, Music by Duke Ellington
It’s tough to read Shakespeare without some annotations, and those are generally copyrighted. Which is one reason I have never been able to find a good free ebook collection.
Agathos··on Ask HN: What Lived Up to the Hype?
Becoming? Chess was an e-sport before we knew what an e-sport was, with observers dissecting tournament games on rec.games.chess.
Agathos··on Ask HN: What Lived Up to the Hype?
I thought Half-Life 2 was a good 15 hour game that could have been a great 10-hour game. It just dragged on a little too long, like a lot of games do.

Then along came Episode 1 and Episode 2, cut down and polished to perfection like a pair of gemstones.

Agathos··on Silicon Valley exodus: Bay Area tech companies leaving for Texas
...which was dreamed up and promoted by such right-wing people, back when they had influence in California.
Agathos··on Ask HN: I'm quitting my job, will create a game – any advice?
Yes, that chapter reads like the postmortem of a failed project, except it all somehow works out in the end. It’s a fascinating story but I’m not sure what lesson to take from it.
Agathos··on Study identifies reasons for soaring nuclear plant cost overruns in the U.S.
Let me guess. They need to be more Agile.
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