bwanab

Good point!

When Alcoa built their aluminum plant in Tennessee in the early part of the 20th century they had to build a series of hydroelectric dams to power the plant. They were using far more power than nearby Knoxville.

The headline is clickbait. Nothing to see here.

Only two ways that I know of that can make it work: 1) one parent needs to stay at home, or 2) hire a nanny. Both of those come with considerable costs.

Part of the problem here is that not everyone has the same weekend arrangement. To work with that you need flexibility which causes UI complexity.

Probably not actually ICBM:

"Two U.S. officials also told CBS News that Russia had fired a ballistic missile, not an ICBM on Thursday, with one saying it appeared to have been an intermediate range ballistic missile launched from just east of Volgograd, Russia, to target Dnipro. If accurate, that would be a flight path of about 500 miles."

I have to admit that going to the Museum of Bad Art always has had a similar effect on my very poor art eye as going to the Institute of Contemporary Art across town.

The fact that this song (and this incarnation of this group) has any association with "After Bathing At Baxters", "Surrealistic Pillow", "Crown of Creation" or "Blows Against the Empire" is somewhat tragic.

> > Any sufficiently complicated startup or young company contains an ad hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of 10% of Excel.

Let's give Philip Greenspun due credit for this phrase. I'm going to guess there's at least one generation who isn't familiar with it.

I'm not making any statement about any particular election. This statement is just as true for a conservative voter in Massachusetts as it is for a liberal voter in Tennessee.

There's no historical justification for that assertion as far as I'm aware. If you know of one, I'd love to see the reference.

Preventing the tyranny of the majority is what the separation of powers to executive (President), judiciary (Supreme Court), and legislative (Senate and House) was set up for.

Preventing domination of the small states by the large states was why the Senate and House were structured as they are.

Historically the electoral college was a compromise that allowed for the counting of slaves as 3/5 of a person for the purpose of taxation and voting without having them vote. Consider a state like South Carolina which at the time had about 50% of its population as black. How could the 3/5 of the 50% of the people get added to the total otherwise? Any method would be a hack, but this one had the benefit of being able to create a justification that it protected small states from being dominated by large states.

If you're American living in one of the majority of states that aren't "swing" states, I don't think you can escape the feeling when you vote for president that you're going through a kind of charade since the winner is going to be determined by some small number of voters in 6 states.

I play in bands in a large metro area. 90% of our gigs are in smallish towns in the surrounding areas. I live in the center city and there are gigs one can attend, but compared to the population it's a really low number. Just in my immediate area almost 3/4 of the small venues from 20 years ago are gone.

I really hate to make a political connection here, but it's hard not to notice that of those states exactly one didn't vote for the current President-elect.

Hayek wasn't a native English speaker so that could have something to do with the style.

The old housing stock certainly supports the notion that it was very wealthy at one point. NB reminds me of Troy, NY - another small but very wealthy city that fell on hard times when its main industries left. The presence of RPI seems to be helping Troy experience a bit of a renaissance. Hopefully, the new MBTA commuter rail connection will be a shot in the arm for New Bedford.

While I agree with your essential conclusions, I don't think the automobile companies really fit. Many of the early 1900s companies (e.g. Ford, GM, Mercedes, even Chrysler) are still among the largest auto companies in the world.

>> I do wonder if the choice to use the Model 3 sedan was the right one

I don't think you need to wonder. I have one and I love it, but if I were a cop, it wouldn't be my choice. I don't even think the Model Y would cut it. They should be using the Model X.

OTOH, I see cops driving a lot of Dodge Chargers around here (New England). Having rented one at one point, I can tell you that they don't have a whole lot of back seat room either, so I'm not sure about that point that one of the chiefs made.

But, yeah, I think it should be obvious to the most casual of observers that when you're trying to outfit a newish car that wasn't built for it to achieve a special purpose there's going to be growing pains. I couldn't find any solid quotes for police cars, but I seem to remember seeing that the average one was pushing $100,000 so the numbers they mentioned for the Teslas didn't sound that outrageous.

I'm sure you know this, but I think "the author" Marvin Minsky should be mentioned by name since he was one of the foundational theorists in the field of AI in general, but particularly in NNs.

It's possible they mean the sound as opposed to the look.

I remember the first time I tried a pizza with anchovies. I thought this was the stupidest pizza topping I'd ever heard of, but I gave it a try - OMG, what a metanoia!

Agreed. That is the goal. The lessons of history are abundant, but many people don't seem to be able to heed them.

And you would imagine that quality of life would be better if the U.S. found itself on the losing side of a major war? Your premise that there seems to be hopelessness is more of a media driven phenomenon than reality. There is just no evidence that "the future is trending downward" - at least in the U.S. Every measure you look at shows that for Americans life has improved and continues to - especially in comparison with our global contemporaries.

> I think this is a win for national security.

I think that's largely the point. Obviously, it's a balancing act, but when market forces create a situation that is incompatible with national security it really is the governments job to address the situation even if, as in the case with Chinese EVs, it means a bit of pain for consumers.

Most of the kids the author is talking about aren't going to ever code for a living - they're going to code to get their job done. It's a very different mindset.

True, but given the fact that Brazil has in recent years voted the left in, then the right, and now the left again it doesn't strike me that a dictatorship has been established.

I'm not sure it's bias, just sloppy reporting. I've been a Tesla driver for 5.5 years and had similar experience. I think I've had twice as many problems though (2 times in 5.5 years and had to move 10 feet). The only times I've had any range anxiety was in those rare locations (usually well up in mountain wilderness) where I had to rely on non-Tesla chargers.

The value of the Tesla Supercharger network is totally underrated by the mainstream press.

I can't even imagine the number of times I've been reading an article about some event that takes place in a very specific area for which understanding that area is crucial to understanding the story and yet - no map! Nada. Nothing but words and maybe a few pictures of people doing something that while being nice shots convey no information other than that people were involved. It's maddening.

Aren't you still fighting the fact that the frets themselves are tuned as 12TET?

As a newish resident who signed up a couple of months back, I've been amazed at the civilized tone in FPF. I think the article overstates the part about politics, though - it just doesn't seen like that frequent a topic of discussion very unlike the Vermont Reddit group.

It was more like the merger of Boeing - a long time high level engineering company and McDonnell-Douglas - a company that specialized in getting contracts was really a hostile takeover by MD. https://qz.com/1776080/how-the-mcdonnell-douglas-boeing-merg...