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Silfen

344 karma · joined August 20, 2013

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Silfen··on OpenAI models coming to Amazon Bedrock: Interview with OpenAI and AWS CEOs
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/bedrock/latest/userguide/bedrock...
Silfen··on LLVM merges machine function splitter for reduction in TLB misses
I'd recommend "Lambda, the ultimate GOTO" https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/5753
Silfen··on The Zen of Weight Lifting
Vegetarian lifter here. Getting quality protein is a bit more difficult, but if you're ovo-lacto vegetarian then egg whites and whey are great sources. You don't need to overdo it, just make sure you're getting enough. Once you're no longer a complete beginner, you might also want to consider supplementing with creatine, since you aren't getting much in your diet.

For a deeper dive, I'd recommend this excellent article: https://www.strongerbyscience.com/vegetarian-and-vegan-athle...

Silfen··on Seattle Faces Backlash After Easing on Crimes Involving Mental Illness
To add another data point: I've lived in capitol hill for 22 years. I know zero people who have been attacked by homeless people. That's not to say that Seattle's homelessness problem isn't grave, but I suspect that there's a sampling bias in this comment thread.
Silfen··on FDA is considering drugs to help kids quit vaping
LD50 is entirely irrelevant to this discussion. No one goes to the store and orders 1mg/kg of a substance. When considering acute harm, the relevant metric is the ratio between a typical recreational dose and an overdose. For example, there are very few tobacco servings that contain more than 20mg nicotine. A person is very unlikely to come anywhere near the, say, 360mg lethal dose.
Silfen··on NYC Subway Trains Might Start Moving Faster
Yeah, I never meant to suggest that it was wrong (except in the most literal sense!). Comparative subway costs do not make MTA look good!
Silfen··on NYC Subway Trains Might Start Moving Faster
I assume you're speaking figuratively. Here's an extremely literal elaboration for the railfans in the thread. The route length of the NYC subway system is 245 miles. Subway construction costs vary across developed countries, but generally fall between $200-$500 million per mile[0]. So under extremely optimistic assumptions, 40 billion would get us to about 80% of the current subway network.

For those interested in analysis of subway construction costs, I highly recommend Alon Levy's work at Pedestrian Observations: https://pedestrianobservations.com/construction-costs/

[0]https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/01/why-its-so-ex...

Silfen··on Windows Server 2019 Includes OpenSSH
Shameless plug: There's also remote GUI support through Windows Admin Center. You can manage your headless server through the browser on your workstation. It's also a good way to learn CLI-based management (the implementation is almost all powershell scripts, and there is a "show script" feature) https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/manage/windo...
Silfen··on Tracking China's Muslim Gulag
Yeah, and I would be surprised to find a person here who praises that policy. This is textbook, premium grade whataboutism.
Silfen··on Silicon Valley wages have dropped for non-tech jobs
No, Manhattan's vacancy rate is quite low[0][1].

[0] https://www.nakedapartments.com/blog/nyc-vacancy-rate/ [1] https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/rentguidelinesboard/pdf/18HSR.pd...

Silfen··on The Media Industry and the “Make-Google-Pay” Fantasy
This is essentially the argument laid out in stratechery: https://stratechery.com/2018/the-european-union-versus-the-i...

The link tax seems like wishful thinking on the part of the publishers - an attempt to legislate the market dynamics of yesteryear.

Silfen··on Microsoft Is Putting Ads on the Mail App in Windows 10
HN has in-feed ads for Y Combinator businesses. A great example of benevolent, win-win advertising, in my opinion.
Silfen··on Not Lisp again (2009)
I like having both notations at my disposal. For example, F#'s forward pipe operator[0], or pipes from a unix shell.

[0]https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/fsharp/language-refe...

Silfen··on Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World [video]
Increasing the supply of housing should lower prices, yes. In nearly every neighborhood, single family, detached homes are the most expensive form of housing.

There is an effect where improving the consumption benefits of the city may draw new migration from other parts of the country, but it is generally accepted that this effect is much smaller than the effect of increased competition between landlords and developers.

If you think that housing somehow operates differently from a normal market - increasing supply will not change the price - it is incumbent on you to explain why you think this might be true.

Silfen··on Japan's Hometown Tax
Yeah, and I agree. My comment was more of a tangent that struck a nerve :)
Silfen··on Japan's Hometown Tax
At the risk of opening the world's largest pressurized can of worms... sort of. There is an argument to be made that The South cared about state's rights only in the instrumental sense that it allowed them to protect slavery. They were also in favor of stronger federal government when it protected slavery, e.g. fugitive slave laws.
Silfen··on Japan's Hometown Tax
You should extend more generosity to the point GP makes. You can believe in adjusting the system so that representation is more equal without doing away with the protections for small states. For example, you can greatly increase the size of the House. It's the original first amendment! http://www.centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/articles/its-ti...
Silfen··on US to Allow Cars Without Steering Wheels
> why should s/he wait to cross the street if s/he knows that the car that is nearing has an anti-collision/auto-break system?

In the least dystopian-surveillance-state future scenarios, there will be a giant array of cameras and sensors pointed at anyone who crosses this way. How hard would it be to identify this person and ramp up enforcement as necessary? You'll never completely stop it, but I imagine it could be lowered to acceptable levels.

Silfen··on How the octopus got its smarts
In a stunning coincidence, this is from today's Washington Post: 'This is what happens to a shy octopus on ecstasy' https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2018/09/20/this-is-wh...
Silfen··on Beleaguered Didi Is Said to Lose $585M in Just Six Months
It's not just homogeneity. Cab and car services basically didn't exist in many US cities prior to ride sharing. I'm a carless transit fanatic, but 10 years ago I'd probably have to buy a car to live comfortably in my current neighborhood.
Silfen··on The #1 Office Perk? Natural Light
That's a good point and a better metric, but it's not meaningless. Very long summer days are worth something! They're just not helpful with SAD.
Silfen··on The #1 Office Perk? Natural Light
I'm a Seattle native and love it here. Unfortunately it is not a good place to get sunlight. We are very far north (for an American city) and overcast for most of the year. Seattle averages about 5.5 hours of sun per day. San Francisco averages nearly 8.5.
Silfen··on Uber Will Rent Scooters Through Its App in Partnership with Lime
This is something that is well-known in planning circles. In Seattle there have been a huge number of road diet (widening the sidewalk and redesigning the road for slower traffic speeds) + protected bike lanes coming online. Pedestrians benefit from this, too, from the increased safety and the other pleasant effects of traffic calming. Here's a map: http://seattlecitygis.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/inde...

And there are a number of ongoing projects. See: https://www.seattle.gov/transportation/projects-and-programs...

Silfen··on Plastic recycling is a problem consumers can't solve
I don't disagree with you, but the systems-level view is important not insofar as it shows us who to blame, but because it shows us the kinds of solutions that might actually work.

The combination of incentives over the entire system must produce the correct emergent behavior. So, for example, instead of trying to get individuals to voluntarily use less carbon without changing anything else (this will never work), you can educate the public, pressure politicians, and end up with a large-scale carbon tax (although this particular case may be wishful thinking!).

Silfen··on Can a new mayor fix San Francisco’s housing and homelessness problems?
NIMBYs are a huge problem in Seattle. Depending on how you count, roughly 80% of the city is zoned single family[0]. Construction isn't happening fast enough. In 2016 Seattle only gained 0.4 housing units for every job[1].

[0]https://fancybeans.com/2018/01/24/65-57-35-how-much-seattle-... [1]http://blog.employmarket.com/2017/03/13/2016-metro-area-empl...

Silfen··on Apple Avoids Amazon’s Beauty Contest, Searches Secretly for New Campus
I wouldn't use the word "defrauding," but there is a serious principal-agent problem. The localities that attract an Amazon or an Apple are likely to have winner's curse. That is, the highest bid (in terms of tax breaks and other concessions) for the new headquarters is likely to be from a place that incidentally overvalued the new HQ. The politicians usually know this, but don't care. They get a flashy, public "victory" to campaign on, even if the real value to the local economy is questionable.
Silfen··on Solving dynamic programming interview problems
It depends on the particulars of a problem, but structural recursion is often substantially clearer. One reason is that it enables more abstract reasoning about the behavior of an algorithm. You can reason like you would for an induction proof, instead of mentally executing steps in a loop (denotational vs. operational).
Silfen··on Facebook Use Has Been Dropping Since the 2016 Election, According to SimilarWeb
NUMTOTS everywhere! (Is this peak transit?) In all seriousness, it's definitely more fun than vanilla facebook, although I'd have a hard time calling it a shelter from politics or praising its level of overall discourse.
Silfen··on Eight years of Go
My concern is less about writing a bunch of separate functions, but rather the way this hampers the abstractions that are available to you everywhere in the language. You don't have map or fold! And that's only the very tip of the iceberg.
Silfen··on Alan Kay on Lisp
Very fundamental ideas around computability, or total vs partial functions. There are some correctness properties that we can prove without running the underlying program, such that we can always accept or reject a given program. None of this is particular to lisp.
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