gmarx

I noticed his violent crime graph stopped around 2013. Convenient. Yes violent crime is down by the standards of the previous 50 years but I'm pretty sure it has been inching back up over the previous two, at least in cities. Nothing to panic about yet but also nothing to be dismissive about.

Also, though I too long for the old days of journalistic standards, let us a remember one of the side effects what creating the assumption that there is one correct mainstream view of reality and that anything that deviates too much from it is extremism (or today "fake news").

There is almost no such thing as a bias free reporting of facts and events in the news. Many of the things which were in the past dismissed as the views of cranks are now accepted as normal. Surely some of the views expressed in the darker corners of the internet today will someday be considered mainstream and many of the views expressed by the mainstream real news will some day be considered nuts.

meta-point. You could have edited out your first sentence

I'll add another concern which is already occurring (the thing I'm concerned about, not the concern, although I guess the concern is already occurring)

AI is being used as a workaround to existing anti-discrimination laws. The core of anti-discrimination law is that it doesn't matter if you think on the average my group of people is a worse credit risk or more likely to rob your taxi or more likely to trash your rental property; you need to judge me by the risk of the general population.

AI allows you to create a black box which will inevitably find proxies for race and spit out a higher risk for some races than others. Race won't directly appear in the model but what does will be strongly correlated with race.

Good job! I don't know your history but speaking from a lifetime of yo yo ing with much more success in recent years, the calorie restriction very likely will need to be permanent. I have found again and again that there is no such thing as maintenance eating for me. If I am not actively trying to lose weight I am gaining weight

I take it you aren't old enough to have started sweating about retirement ;)

haha, yeah. It's petty but I'm well into adulthood, have what I would have considered an excellent income (had you asked me as a teen) and rent what I would have considered (had you shown me as a teen) kind of dump because my job is here. So yeah I have a bit less sympathy for the people who complain about their income while ignoring the fact that they have a large financial asset which is only ridiculously valuable because of the same things that make it too expensive to live around here.

Doctors "admit" this all the time. Stories in the popular media are where we get claims that doctors have the answers. As for the idea that doctors only give out psych drugs to keep patients dependent, nonsense. There is just a strong presumption for any treatment, any hope, over no treatment. On my psych rotations I never heard any attending claim anything about antipsychotics other than they helped a little, were very "dirty" and had bad side effects which made a lot of patients stop taking them...but, they're all we've got

It is terrible that he can't live in Menlo Park on 75K. On the other hand the reason he lives in a garage is because he and is family are living with his parents, most likely to save money and avoid the horrendous commute most of his coworkers probably face.

On yet a third hand I can't feel all that bad for this guy since he someday stands to inherit a house worth millions of dollars

yup, that's the downside of the hobby. I spent years chasing improvements which only satisfied me for a week. Took me years to stop and enjoy "good enough". Recently played something on my system for a musician friend and he was unimpressed...then I was crestfallen

optimum room design is great to get the best out of your gear but a $5000 stereo set up in your current living room will be significantly better than the earvuds

I agree. Until about 2005 listening to a CD on my audiophile rig was often painful. Most discs just had an irritating noise that made me want to stop listening. I couldn't tell you what it was but the word people used "fatiguing" was correct. I don't know if I finally lost hearing in the frequency range that contained the fatigue or if they fixed it but for the past 5-10 I find digital music to be pretty enjoyable. Also, many of the super old records that collectors claim were the ultimate (like Mercury Living Presence or RCA Living Stereo) aren't really that great. Records from the late 70s and early 80s were probably the peak. There is a lot of placebo effect in what people like

I love that you call it a "hi-fi" which is what it would have been called the generation before mine. We always called it a "stereo". I've always been amazed by how rare it is for a person to be interested in a system that makes the music sound better. The difference between an iPhone with the default earbuds and a $5000 stereo rig with speakers is astounding but only a tiny fraction of the listening public cares

yes and I also recall 10 years ago that many reissues that came out on vinyl and cd simultaneously the vinyl version sounded bad

I also haven't found that to be the case...maybe, I guess. I don't really know which artists are heavily marketed and most of what turns up for me is pretty old. Only exception that comes to mind was "blood in the cut" which I liked so

And then you develop the habit of using uber so a new local service would have to offer something that Uber doesn't. That could be lower prices or more drivers coming more quickly. I suppose a new service could offer a better deal to the drivers to get more of them using it but it seems to me once this market matures the demand for rides side will dominate. No ride requesters on the app means fewer drivers will use the new app.

On the other hand it is not nearly as difficult to create a new local ride share service as create a new Facebook

are we though? Our alliance with Saudi Arabia was a calculation of that nature back around WWII. Recently though did the revolution in Iran cause a problem for our oil supplies? Is there a scenario in which a middle east war or lack of such war affects our access to oil?

Countries cannot profit by war perhaps but that won;t prevent wars. I don't think most wars are entered as the result of a cold economic calculation. They are caused by ancient programs written into our DNA before humans even evolved. So for the time being war is disincentivized by economics but I am confident we will eventually find reasons for a big war anyway

Strange possible coincidence yesterday evening my iPhone screen kept going on by itself and it would display (with a play button) some weird URL that started with https://airtv and then had fastly somewhere in it.

Connected? I know, vague. It's just I've never heard of fastly until yesterday when this happened and today I see some kind of outage notice on hackernews :)

Being honest, I don't know if I use tabs or spaces. My IDE mostly does it when I hit return and I reformat it every so often.

Are you guys all programming in vi or notepad or something?

That would have been a bold choice. I remember the guy who played Trapper John on MASH was talking on one of those stock pick shows back in the tech bubble days. He was mocking the idea that the CEO of GM should expect compensation to put him on par with the CEO of a company like Oracle or Microsoft. His point lacked the carrot but he essentially said anyone could be CEO of GM. The company runs itself.

You don't know that a carrot couldn't have accomplished the same thing

The feelings of imminent nuclear doom were the best. really made the pop culture special

yes...and important problems that we have barely begun to solve

according to the article the medallion allows you to roam the street and look for someone to hail you. Uber and Lyft were ruled by the court to be more like arranged rides (limo service). It likely makes sense if you consider the original purpose of the medallion. I think (need to check again) that it was not to create monopolies but to reduce the danger that ramped up in the early days with unlimited numbers of cabs roaming the streets, zooming and cutting each other off to get a fare. If you call for a ride that public safety concern is gone

and if the startup had ultimately been successful this would be part of the founding myth and many people would think it was a positive

My first step would have been to search Amazon for a web enabled door buzzer.

Cool project though

Two different issues- research labs/graduate training quality vs undergrad lectures and such.

I doubt MIT teachers of basic science are the best in the world. Rather MIT attracts some of the smartest most motivated students in the world. More money won't do much for this.

Research lab funding? I think at it's current steady state more money sent to MIT for research would likely find a useful currently unfunded study or group.

terrible article and I suspect it was written by a robot. You see this more an more with articles in mainstream press. The article consists of a catchy title with 8 paragraphs that restate the title different ways and never provide the detail a human reader would want

He owns two houses which he has merged into a compound like situation. I rent next door in a tiny house that was likely created as grad student housing. Most places rich people live also have more modest homes intermixed

He Stanford. I MIT