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buildingmateri

107 karma · joined May 20, 2021

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buildingmateri··on John McAfee found dead in Spanish jail after court approves extradition to US
He tweeted in preceding months and years that if found dead it wouldn't be suicide. He got "whacked" tattooed on his arm to prepare for this situation.

I don't think we can just uncritically accept that it's 100% a suicide

buildingmateri··on Ask HN: I don't feel like working at all, what to do?
Good chance you have 200k+ saved. Stop working for a while. Travel, live somewhere new. Start learning about things outside of software... Pursue projects for anything that moves you regardless of whether you think you'd be good at it or not. Do that for a few years and see where life goes.

Life is too precious not to live it, not to explore what could be, esp when current path becomes unbearable.

buildingmateri··on Science expressed in terms of what happens is getting in the way of progress
Btw some proof/discussion how physicists don't know why there is a speed limit (and seemingly more proof you haven't spent much time thinking about physics yourself?): https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/230703/do-we-kno...
buildingmateri··on Why Buy America Is Bad Law
Frankly if anyone actually cared about climate change we would be desperately seeking to shorten supply chains and buy/produce locally. Bringing in everything from Asia when it could be done locally is absolutely terrible for ghg levels and pollution.

Still waiting but not holding my breath for ESG to include "short supply chain".

buildingmateri··on Science expressed in terms of what happens is getting in the way of progress
Yet you don't know... you're just saying "I bet someone else knows" without being aware that many experts in physics would admit "we don't know" to these questions... what my undergrad ivy league physics professor was wiling to admit... Not sure why you responded if you yourself don't know the subject matter, wanting to play gatekeeper because you thought I was talking too casually I guess?
buildingmateri··on Ask HN: How to get back in employment market after working on side projects?
Understand the sentiment, I took a cyclical approach over a decade or so, a couple years self-employed, a couple years on a coding team, repeat. Although the last employment period gave an equity windfall, (and not to mention crypto investments) so only doing entrepreneurial stuff moving forward.
buildingmateri··on Science expressed in terms of what happens is getting in the way of progress
Sounds like you're attempting to refer to qft? Passes the buck down and is still fundamentally descriptive not explanatory.

People don't like fields when there's a bunch of gatekeepers who can't resist posing as experts and shun people who ask simple questions which they can't provide answers for. That's part of Eric Weinstein's critique of today's particle physics community which I share.

buildingmateri··on Science expressed in terms of what happens is getting in the way of progress
Showing your own ignorance here.

Where do electrons come from? Or any of the other fundamental particles. Please, enlighten the world of science.

"Fundamental constant" means "we don't know why it has that value, we just noticed it does"

You're proving my point, people don't like science because folks like you make it seem filled with all knowing experts when really the most fundamental questions are not answered

buildingmateri··on Science expressed in terms of what happens is getting in the way of progress
Was hoping the point would be that science today at the most fundamental level is descriptive, not explanatory, and being humble and honest about our failure to be explanatory would make people more interested and less intimated.

For example, there are four fundamental forces and a table of fundamental particles. Why? Don't know, we just noticed them.

All of chemistry seems to be determined by properties and interactions of electrons, which also determines biology. Where do these electrons come from? Don't know, just there.

The gravitational constant pops up in bunch of equations. So does the speed of light. Why do they have their specific values? Why is there even a speed limit in the universe (which expanding space violates)? Don't know, we just noticed it.

buildingmateri··on Social media are turbocharging the export of America’s political culture
Would take it further and say not just the media but also some powerful forces in DC going after him undemocratically, seemingly his whole presidency... the russia investigation revelations, nunes etc, and ukraine call impeachment stuff, really made it clear there was a concerted effort to remove a DC outsider. Not a fan of trump but am a fan of democratic institutions.
buildingmateri··on Social media are turbocharging the export of America’s political culture
Living in an expat destination country currently as an American, I regularly get crap from friends, Australian, British, South African, about the perceived madness of American political culture that's now popping up in their work lives and home countries. Slightly reminiscent of living abroad during Bush-Iraq years as an American where you become a target of blame.
buildingmateri··on Fewer young men are in the labor force, more are living at home
My comment was strongly upvoted (50+) so I believe the HN community understands this dynamic.

I mean if you go outside Western bubbles e.g. all of Asia Latam etc. 99% of women seek to marry a breadwinner over having their own career, closer to how it was 50 years ago here in the US, a dynamic that's hard to miss.

The 50% I mentioned is from a competitive ivy league school where you get a major career leg up. If 50% of female friends who went to an ivy have tapped out from career making, yes, it's easy to imagine how it's still the widespread norm even in US

buildingmateri··on Fewer young men are in the labor force, more are living at home
Especially a problem because for almost all men a career and supporting family (maybe the hardest thing to figure out in life) is non optional, whereas half the female friends I have from college have abandoned careers to saddle up to a breadwinner ... I mean I kind of want that option but men don't really have it. Does anyone ever really discuss this social reality that makes it different for men v women in real world?
buildingmateri··on It’s time to break up the Ivy League cartel
Yeah elite undergrads are striving to be entrepreneurs, CEOs, or wall street/consulting types, not code monkeys. Going to encounter a lot of resistance with standard coding jobs where need to roll up your sleeves for obvious motivation/identity reasons.
buildingmateri··on CPB director: The Netherlands must ban Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies
Yes this is the current mainstream media propaganda against cryptos, thanks for that.
buildingmateri··on Machine learning is booming in medicine, but also facing a credibility crisis
Pretty doubtful. The top innovating nations are such because they attract the top talent from around the world, and almost no talent at all moves to China. There's a lot of breakthroughs in AI left and whoever gets the most talent is going to have the advantage.
buildingmateri··on Why are American workers becoming harder to find?
I'm aware but next to no one actually buys stocks for the dividends.

Housing market is same zero sum as OP described determined by investments in real estate instead of other assets

Any other examples?

buildingmateri··on Why are American workers becoming harder to find?
Any other examples? Almost no average Joe retail investor owns stocks for the dividends.
buildingmateri··on Why are American workers becoming harder to find?
Don't understand, your argument applies to any asset class.
buildingmateri··on Why are American workers becoming harder to find?
I've heard random uber drivers on the other side of the world talk about Dogecoin so you might want to include crypto in your list of why less people need to work now.
buildingmateri··on Making $100k as an Employee versus Being Self-Employed
Solution is kind of straightforward: Work said 100k job for 5 or 7 years, perhaps with safe investments e.g. the S&P, get 200k+ to your name. Use that to then support years of establishing your own business, own terms, own freedom.
buildingmateri··on An Introduction to Knowledge Graphs
And how does "perspectivism" somehow scale?

Any NLP application directly encoding knowledge (objects, perspectives, whatever) is going to have major scaling constraints, since it's impossible right now to encode human-level understanding automatically.

buildingmateri··on Ask HN: Former employees that went through an acquisition with equity payout
> Understand that the public announcement is often different than the actual close.

Any sense on which normally comes first?