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RandomCitizen12

112 karma · joined May 17, 2024

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RandomCitizen12··on Earth has caught a 'second moon'
How can it be called a 'capture' when it's already known when and how it will leave. That's like calling a resort vacation stay a kidnapping.
RandomCitizen12··on The Liberating Experience of Common Lisp
> How long before Copilot is able to write all the code any Go developer now writes by hand?

A long time ago I read someone saying "Lisp is the only language where I spend more time thinking than typing". Recently, when I was telling ChatGPT what logic I wanted written on what data structures, I realized the same was true about having an LLM write any other language.

RandomCitizen12··on TSMC's Arizona Trials Put Plant Productivity on Par with Taiwan
I hereby declare the South China Sea is now named the RandomCitizen12 Sea. I now have the moral imperative to control it. Pay your tolls or be judged.
RandomCitizen12··on DuckDB 1.1.0 Released
The namesake: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eaton%27s_pintail
RandomCitizen12··on Common food dye found to make skin and muscle temporarily transparent
Don't forget to go to Canada and get some Cheezies
RandomCitizen12··on The Iron Law of Bureaucracy (2010)
Why would it have to?
RandomCitizen12··on Make sports betting taboo again
Take what's in the article, reduce it by 5%, and that's probably what it would be. Sports bet rakes aren't huge (unlike horse racing).
RandomCitizen12··on The surprising cause of fasting's regenerative powers
Given that fasting is enshrined as a order in many belief systems, it seems like humans needs external motivation to ignore their body's complaints and fast for positive effects.
RandomCitizen12··on Beastie Boys dismantled their gold record plaque
In 2005 the drummer for Semisonic wrote the book So You Wanna Be a Rock & Roll Star. In it the band received a record plaque and asked the record company rep if it was their music. The response was no, it was probably some left over Sinatra LP that had been painted.
RandomCitizen12··on Show HN: Double – Design and invest in your own stock index
Do you plan to offer subscription-based access to other users' indices?
RandomCitizen12··on How one ED mobilized his department during a mass casualty incident (2017)
I don't think giving nurses unrestricted access to narcotics is giving them 'freedom to do their job' because a valid part of a nurse's job is controlling access to narcotics. It's not a medical need, but it's an operational and societal need. Same with whatever a CT tech would do away from the controls. I think this is more accurately a descoping of the job to improve throughput.
RandomCitizen12··on How one ED mobilized his department during a mass casualty incident (2017)
Wiktionary says crump means "(intransitive, US, medical slang) (of one's health) to decline rapidly (but not as rapidly as crash)."
RandomCitizen12··on Show HN: Double – Design and invest in your own stock index
Typically an ETF takes a management fee of 0.1-0.5% of assets per year. I expect this build-your-own-ETF to do the same, with fees on the higher side.
RandomCitizen12··on Pushing baby booms to boost economic growth amounts to a Ponzi scheme
There are policies from 600 years ago that are in effect and beneficial. Like the Magna Carta [0], which was 800 years ago, and its derivatives.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magna_Carta

RandomCitizen12··on Pushing baby booms to boost economic growth amounts to a Ponzi scheme
Well, one of the things that's changing is the creation of pro-natalism movements....

But there is reason to expect the trajectory to change. Currently the expectation is that, even if most people died out, there are very fecund (and very religious) groups that would repopulate the world. So the pro-natalism movement isn't needed to save humanity, just to save the 'normal' people.

RandomCitizen12··on Pushing baby booms to boost economic growth amounts to a Ponzi scheme
> The pronatalist movement is ... premised on the belief that ever-larger populations are needed to spur economic growth

No, the pronatalist movement is premised on the belief that humans should not go extinct. If the entire world had the Korean birthrate (and it does seem to be moving that way), extinction would happen in 25 generations.

RandomCitizen12··on After private equity takes over hospitals, they are less adept of providing care
Maybe Dell in 2013.

But the point of PE buying a company is so that the company can help PE's mission, not PE helping the company's.

RandomCitizen12··on Every company should be owned by its employees
> How would a business like this get started? Usually the owner is the one who invests a lot of their own time and/or money into the business to get it off the ground in the first place. Would we be asking workers to pony up in those early years when failure is likely?

In Canada, there are 'Labour Sponsored Venture Capital Corporations' with union overseers to do this and special tax deductions for investing money through these.

They are, of course, a giant failure that neither provides easier access to capital for entrepreneurs nor generates any notable return for investors.

RandomCitizen12··on Ask HN: Is it possible to make FAANG salaries without working there?
It looks like they will IPO at some point, so that valuation issue should go away.
RandomCitizen12··on Aboriginal ritual passed down over 12,000 years, cave find shows
That's an interesting way to do a checksum
RandomCitizen12··on When RAND made magic in Santa Monica
Yes, that is too simple. That may not be accurate, and if accurate stifles investigation into the root cause.
RandomCitizen12··on Wells Fargo Bet on a Flashy Rent Credit Card. It Is Costing the Bank Dearly
I think you're making mountains out of molehills.

If you believe all that then it sounds like you should invest 100% of your assets in systemically important bank stocks. If they have literally zero risk due to unending bailouts then your risk-adjusted returns will be amazing.

RandomCitizen12··on Correlation between fecal microplastics and inflammatory bowel disease (2021)
Do you think that everyone who ever released a "bullets cure cancer in a petri dish" study didn't think of that?

Whether or not they did, it's still a necessary part of the discussion.

RandomCitizen12··on First randomized trial of Ozempic for alcoholism shows big drops in drinking
I can't wait to see it trialed on League of Legends players.
RandomCitizen12··on Wells Fargo Bet on a Flashy Rent Credit Card. It Is Costing the Bank Dearly
This is a losing bet. The article says it's losing 10 mm/month. Do you think that taxpayers will be covering that loss? Because they won't, because WFC is making more than 10mm/m and is in no danger of going bankrupt.
RandomCitizen12··on Ted Chiang has won the PEN/Faulkner Foundation's short story prize
I dearly hope it becomes a movie.

It reminded me of Naval Ravikant idea, except Ravikant was talking about money and Chiang wasn't:

"In 1,000 parallel universes, you want to be wealthy in 999 of them. You don’t want to be wealthy in the 50 of them where you got lucky. We want to factor luck out of it." (https://nav.al/rich)

RandomCitizen12··on Ted Chiang has won the PEN/Faulkner Foundation's short story prize
+1. Possibly my favorite story ever.
RandomCitizen12··on Wells Fargo Fires Over a Dozen for 'Simulation of Keyboard Activity'
Nobody cares. You getting offended on behalf of other people who themselves may not be offended adds nothing to the conversation.
RandomCitizen12··on Wells Fargo Fires over a Dozen for 'Simulation of Keyboard Activity'
I'm going to guess they scanned all company computers for a process named 'caffeine.exe' and people were dumb enough to use it.

There's something to be said for providing real physical input to a real physical HID.

RandomCitizen12··on Ask HN: Is it just me, or does the job market for IT seem bad today?
We're unlikely to see another 0% interest era, so that's effectively a fundamental change. The changes to Section 174 are fundamental, but likely to be repealed.

I think things will get better, the effects of the above will lessen with a rate cut and probably a repeal, but the golden era is past.

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