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calafrax

157 karma · joined June 24, 2017

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calafrax··on What it feels like to be in the zone as a programmer
Sure you do. Two mediocre programmers working as a pair might get 100k each. One elite programmer can clear 7 figures easily. The elite programmer will also have much more control over the IP they create and be able to negotiate much more stringent terms for how it is used.

If you think pair programming is a good idea you are just at the bottom of the industry.

calafrax··on What it feels like to be in the zone as a programmer
pair programming is an anti-process. its only purpose is to control employees, limit individual productivity, and drive down wages.
calafrax··on What it feels like to be in the zone as a programmer
this is a typical argument for why lower productivity is actually better.

i don't think that being high productivity prevents you from writing unit tests or doing tdd. you just do tdd with higher productivity.

calafrax··on Why We Terminated Daily Stormer
> I think we have to have a conversation over what part of the infrastructure stack is right to police content

how about no part of it? if the founders of the united states were able to create the world's most powerful nation without giving themselves the right to censor speech then why should any private company need the right to censor speech?

calafrax··on Intel CEO leaves American Manufacturing Council
when wealth and income disparity are at an all time high then for the ruling class paralysis is the best policy.

the only voice that matters is the voice of wall street and the voice of the corporate elite.

as long as politically irrelevant people on the left and right are busy yelling at each other about irrelevant issues that have no effect of wealth and income distribution then everything is going according to plan.

calafrax··on Predict the future with Machine Learning
i am not sure what that article is supposed to prove. it doesn't contain any study results on the accuracy of meteorological predictions.

I don't have the data handy but to the best of my recollection weather forecasting for high/low temperature and precipitation does pretty well for the range of 24-48 hours but declines steadily in accuracy, and is no better than random guess around 2 weeks out.

That said, you are not addressing my other point, which is that "weather prediction" is just saying "things are going to stay the same." You are always starting with a set of conditions and then looking at your records and seeing what happened in similar conditions and predicting that the same thing will happen again.

Predicting that things will stay the same may come out as better than random guess in many cases but it will still be 100% wrong in cases where something novel happens.

calafrax··on Don’t ruin streaming by turning it into cable
don't forget that producing all this content costs 10's of billions per year so someone has to pay for it. both the cost of production and the amount produced keeps increasing so prices need to go up to.
calafrax··on Don’t ruin streaming by turning it into cable
i am not sure that it is directly tied to monopoly. paying for a subscription reduces friction for watching individual shows/channels so it increased total viewership and total consumption. every pay point you add adds more friction so will reduce consumption. that is true whether you have monopolies or not. you could have 5 competitors and they would all maximize profit by selling bundles.
calafrax··on Don’t ruin streaming by turning it into cable
word. unlicensed content delivery platforms still vastly superior in terms of quality and depth of content after over a decade and billions spent by netflix, hulu, etc. if you really want people to pay for a product you should offer better quality than the people who give it away.
calafrax··on Predict the future with Machine Learning
is that a joke? weather predictions are notoriously unreliable even though they are given with extreme granularity.

that aside you are missing a larger point. if you predict the future based on past data all you are saying is "the future will be the same as the past." you aren't predicting anything. you will be wrong every single time something novel occurs, which is pretty frequently in the real world.

calafrax··on Uber shareholder group wants Benchmark off board
the statue of liberty would be a great investment if the government was planning to tear it down and sell it for scrap and you could buy it cheap before the word got out.
calafrax··on Predict the future with Machine Learning
It is an unfortunate misconception that statistical probability can be used to predict the future.

Any time you extend a statistical model temporally it immediately becomes mathematically invalid since probabilistic statistics are only valid for a fixed population at a fixed moment in time.

Unfortunately business and government is rife with people predicting the future based on statistical models that have no more mathematical validity than reading tea leaves.

calafrax··on Tesla raises $1.8B
economics: as market share for electric cars grows demand for gasoline goes down and the price for gasoline (already low) goes down thus exacerbating the already large gap in cost between electric and gas.

electric will always be a victim of its own success unless it can actually become competitive with ice on cost and energy density.

remember that the baseline cost for an ice car is about $1000 (used) and $5000 (new). there is a world outside of california (shock) and it has billions of potential customers.

ice isnt going anywhere.

calafrax··on Tesla raises $1.8B
5.3% is not incredibly low for a corporation borrowing 1.8 billion. it is pretty high which is why investors are jumping on it.

This adds $95 million in interest expense per year which is pretty substantial.

calafrax··on Uber shareholder group wants Benchmark off board
careful with the libel there. that would be allegedly defrauded. the case was settled and it is highly unlikely that the plaintiffs would have succeeded at trial.
calafrax··on Uber shareholder group wants Benchmark off board
tl;dr group of founders at epinions gets conned by the ceo, their partner - and they sue that guy (who has a dubious reputation on many counts) as well as everyone who touched the deal including benchmark. they got a settlement. they probably would have lost at trial. i don't see how that reflects negatively on benchmark.
calafrax··on Filecoin Suspends ICO After Raising $186M in One Hour
The price crashes to 0.10 cents ... https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-30/the-45-mi... ... and that was only 12.5 million. and then coinbase paid people who lost money out of their own capital. lol. ponzi at its finest.
calafrax··on Uber shareholder group wants Benchmark off board
that assumes that the majority of founders would view what benchmark is doing as negative. to me it looks like good business.
calafrax··on Uber shareholder group wants Benchmark off board
nervous about working with competent investors who aren't complete marks? somehow I doubt benchmark will have difficulty finding people to take their money.
calafrax··on Uber shareholder group wants Benchmark off board
"Benchmark's investment of $27M is worth $8.4 billion today"

"We have investors ready to acquire these shares"

So they have 8.4 billion in new funding lined up? Somehow I doubt it.

calafrax··on James Damore has an above decent chance of winning his legal case against Google
exactly. the focus on identity as a wedge issue is a cynical diversion from focusing on wealth as a wedge issue.
calafrax··on James Damore has an above decent chance of winning his legal case against Google
yes, people have a right to discuss politics. discussing politics is the foundation of civil society. the inability of people to do it without freaking out is why we have uncivil society.
calafrax··on James Damore has an above decent chance of winning his legal case against Google
firing people because they have to audacity to question whether or not mandatory micro-aggression awareness training is a productive use of their time may be more of an HR nightmare than you expect.
calafrax··on Small functions considered harmful
yes it is actually. if your function has a logical branch then it is doing more than one thing. if your function has a logical branch within a logical branch then it is doing exponentially more things and this complexity continues to grow exponentially.

therefore, if you have a logical branch you ask yourself: does it make sense to create a function here? the answer may be yes or no. if you create a nested logical branch you ask yourself: does it make sense to create a function here? the answer still may be yes or no but the weight of the evidence for yes has increased exponentially.

calafrax··on Small functions considered harmful
This discussion is predicated on the concept that function size is calculated by the number of lines which is completely wrong.

function size (function complexity actually) is measured primarily by indent levels not length and when there are multiple indent levels with nested branches and loops this is when you are supposed to create functions. length is not really an issue in most cases.

calafrax··on Benchmark Capital Sues Travis Kalanick for Fraud
i have never seen this behavior, so it isn't that common, and even if it were it would still be illegal unless it is something that has been agreed to contractually.
calafrax··on Benchmark Capital Sues Travis Kalanick for Fraud
I don't think this is just one party. Kalanick has rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. The only reason he has been around for so long is because people have been waiting to use him as the fall guy for all of Uber's misconduct. Apparently that day is now here. His voting rights aren't worth the paper they are printed on unless he can raise more money so my guess is he will be signing those away shortly if he wants to walk away with anything.
calafrax··on Benchmark Capital Sues Travis Kalanick for Fraud
well, no problem then. just stealing your employer's property to use to use for extortion. what a nothingburger.
calafrax··on Ask HN: Which companies give programmers offices?
yep. all of those qos and traffic shaping features on routers don't actually do anything. that is why it should be illegal for public isps to use them. makes sense.
calafrax··on 2016 was third consecutive year of record global warmth
those are quotes from the article and the paper it references
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