70 karma · joined October 3, 2014
So self-defense / death alone are not enough to flag a comment. Political movements like ELF (Earth Liberation Front) used arguments similar to mine on why, for example, coal plants are legitimate targets in self defense.
Yes, the decrease from 12+ -> 8 hour workdays helped health and thus productivity and growth as the author persuasively states. But in the final few chapters which look forward rather than back in time, it was my interpretation that the author sees trends in declining hours & labor force participation as headwinds to TFP growth.
It is naturally more inefficient to have more shifts and thus more people commuting, etc. The diminishing health returns from 8 - > 6 hour work days not being enough to make up for this loss in efficiency.
This presumably means ranked matchmaking is to be expected for Western players as well. Whether that included iccup or not, I don't know.
Have you seen the inside of a smartphone? Its not just about thinness. There is very little space for anything besides the battery.
Also, removable batteries and the audio jack get in the way of dust/water proofing.
You may think shrinkage is pointless, but that's clearly not what the market or the top designers think. Why do you want a giant, useless, 100+ year old analog port on your 2017 device? I don't. Its ugly.
As for traditional usecases, I have a 3x monitor setup ( 2K@144Hz/4K@60Hz/2K@144Hz) and my 1080 GTX can't max out everything smoothly while I stream/record high-end games.
I would love it if all this was just vanity, but its my job. This stuff is an expense I'd happily avoid if possible. I don't own any nonsensical RGB lighted cases or non-essential peripherals.
In the past, this was because of disease caused by pre-sanitation density. Today, it is due to below-replacement fertility rates caused by impossible to afford living costs.
So if you consider extinction a form of human suffering, 'traditional walkable cities' fit the bill.
Here's a fun chart from Google Finance: 10-Year Wal-Mart vs Amazon stock performance:
https://www.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&chdv=1&...
Now, not all these criminals are violent or into drugs. Many were illegals sending money home. I get WHY they would use it, but it makes no sense for the US Government to even allow these services to exist.
There's no reason to favor home ownership -- look at home ownership rates in Germany vs S. Europe. Then look at the health of their economies and living conditions.
This will only mean something when we hit prime working age for millennials. Let's see the numbers then.
2% down since the peak. Who cares. Look at that chart. Its not even noticeable.
Why do people on Hacker News seem so drawn to Nuclear? Its insanely expensive, it takes forever for a plant to come online, and worst of all for an industry that likes to remain 'boring' -- it draws too much public attention.
Why fight all that? WHY?
If you think its wasteful to change your phone annually, you better never go to the movies, buy coffee outside, etc. The hours-per-dollar return on a phone is better than anything else you can spend money on save for a PC, mattress, and a few other objects.
>They knew that the laws of physics had set a 5-nanometer threshold on the size of transistor gates among conventional semiconductors, about one-quarter the size of high-end 20-nanometer-gate transistors now on the market.
I can't fault them for not giving their all every day... I know for a fact I would instantly put in the minimal amount of work required after achieving tenure / seniority / whatever at a large organization.
There's no reason to believe this to be an immutable law going forward for much longer. With more and more going into the browser & cloud, how much is really left on the client side to be backwards compatable with these days?
The first thing I do when I reformat is install chrome, login, and sync my Google Account. I have all my important documents on Google Drive, a full office suite in Google Docs, all my bookmarks, account logins, etc.
This holds true for nearly every human endeavor.
The best part is, I didn't even have the credit for the subsidy so I had to give them a 2 year deposit on the full price of the phones. But since THEY (technically) changed the contract by raising my monthly fee from 5 cents to 8 cents or something, I GOT THE DEPOSIT BACK!
I sold the phones on eBay and made a lot of money (for a high school kid).
I think the charge was called 'federal universal service charge' and there was a whole guide on how to use it to your advantage. You had to sound really confident and have your contract open to the relevant clauses so you could confidently read it to them over and over.
Ultima Online was my first and still favorite MMORPG back in the late 1990s/early 2000s but when I tried EverQuest for the first, the 3D world and depth of races/characters/NPCs blew me away.
Then I tried Dark Age of Camelot. The 1-world-but-3-continents/factions concept amazed me. There was always 'the others' and a sense of citizenship with the group of players I could actually interact with. Everyone in UO/EQ was a potential rival/friend. In DAOC I knew where my loyalty lied and the enemy was always clear.
Then I played Ragnarok Online -- my first Korean MMORPG. Again, blown away for totally different reasons. The music, the colors, the sprites, and GIRLS!! Lots of girls played Ragnarok. I didn't meet any girls on UO/EQ/DAOC -- 95% boys, 5% house wives.
Next up was Star Wars Galaxies. No more 'levels', back to skills ala Ultima Online but in a totally different and more complicated way! 3D persistent housing! Crafting! Dancing at the local cantina as a totally legit profession! Multiple PLANETS!! OMG!
Then came World of Warcraft -- nothing I hadn't seen before this time. But it was presented in the most streamlined manner and was the first MAINSTREAM MMORPG. Everyone my age was playing. I felt like the grizzled veteran of the genre/ I knew the mechanics. I taught my friends how to tank. How to heal. How to lead a raid, etc. Again, amazing for totally different reasons.
Sad to say, I haven't felt anything new since WoW. But I honestly don't think its because the genre is played out. Its just we haven't been shown anything different. That might change this year with plenty of promising games in the pipeline -- Shards Online, Albion Online, Camelot Unchained, etc.
If you still think the genre has hope, check out my ~1yr old website, http://mmos.com I hope to see you on my next adventure.