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irixusr

352 karma · joined November 21, 2014

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irixusr··on April 1970: Trying to kill a sniper
The guy who got AKed could have burned his draft card, gone to jail for a few years and loose his SS benefits.

That's not fun either, but he wouldn't have died in a jungle half way across the world a young twenty-something to prop up the cowboy delusions of Kissinger.

irixusr··on April 1970: Trying to kill a sniper
Not more just. But when the situation is more asymetrical the more farcical the powerful side's complaints of the weaker's perfidy. (Tons of examples. The most universally accepted were Germans killing 1-10 civilians in retaliation for dishonorable uninformed partisans)
irixusr··on Optimizing things in the USSR (2016)
Yugo was way richer than Albania, and I doubt Poland was as poor as Romania. So wasn't just a "we don't care they're mere peasants"

Again, ppl were technically allowed to leave the USSR (and East Germany too). But it might take 10 years and you were a social pariah in the meantime.

irixusr··on Optimizing things in the USSR (2016)
the ezception that proves the rule.

You could, theoretically, leave the USSR, if you paid back what society had invested in you. De facto it was very hard to leave

You can quit your job. Except many of us de facto can't (H1B1, non compete clauses, etc)

Leaving Yugoslavia was probably easier than being an Indian engineer on an H1B working for a company with a non compete clause.

Btw, I don't think Hayek or any of the Austrians had very benign attitudes towards multinationals or large corporations: Begging for tax payer largess, ghostwriting regulations creating artificial barriers to entry, abusing immigration law to have a de facto slave. Mises and Rothbard would tut tut. And they were the hard core anti commies!

irixusr··on 3-year-olds consuming alternative milks were 1.5 cm shorter on average
Sorry, I read it like an aggressive "citation needed"
irixusr··on 3-year-olds consuming alternative milks were 1.5 cm shorter on average
on what? The production quotas are my only factual claim.

But here's wiki

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dairy_farming_in_Canada

(The national post had a great series of articles about it. The Canadian newspaper sided with Trump against Canada's diary industry.)

Btw, Milk costs double in Canada than in the states. Tastes better though (well sour cream and yoghurt do. I hate milk). On the other hand cheese is much better in the states cause I can afford the European stuff here (100% import tarriff???) and there is more diversity in aisles.

As to the hormone part of my OP, no claim, at least no strong claim, was made. I just pointed out that, if your production is restricted, it doesn't make sense to pump your cows full of hormones.

irixusr··on 3-year-olds consuming alternative milks were 1.5 cm shorter on average
Interesting. I've never heard of this fragility of hormones, could you expand a bit?
irixusr··on 3-year-olds consuming alternative milks were 1.5 cm shorter on average
Unavoidable? Hardly. You just have a veal industry on the side. Milk has been produced for millennia before hormones of any type were added.

Furthermore Canada has milk production quotas so, depending how they're set, hormones might not be necessary to max production at all.

irixusr··on 3-year-olds consuming alternative milks were 1.5 cm shorter on average
I thought if that, but This is a Canadian study.

Canadian diary industry is very different from the US, so it's not obvious that you'd find hormones in the milk (there are per cow milk production quotas). Certainly not in the quantities found in US milk.

irixusr··on Why printers add secret tracking dots
How can you counterfeit money with an inkjet? You'll get caught in days (wrong paper, streaking, poor quality print) with or without the dots. You'd have to be blind not to notice the difference, but then you'd feel the difference. Heck, you could hear the difference. Smell the difference. Troublesome counterfeiting is more sophisticated than a $100 throw away printer.

The Stasi took fingerprints of every typewritter so people couldn't publish illegal things. This is not hostile only if the state is defined as non hostile.

irixusr··on How a Fake Typhus Epidemic Saved a Polish City From the Nazis
Why forget the dates after the effort shoving them in?

And why not ask what is the value of knowing the dates of important events? The polish school system is hardly unique in this requirement.

I hated memorizing dates as a kid. Horrible at short term memory. But I was good at putting them in long term memory. Now what I hated anchors my understanding of history.

For example, does the modern Polish state obtaining independence have any meaning except in the 20s and 30s? (That is after the fall of the Czar, after WW1, before the Molotov pact). Despite Polish longing, 1917 had to happen. 1917 is an anchor.

Or consider that the discovery of America, 1492, happened less than 40 years after the fall of Constantinople and in the same year as the fall of Granada (ending the Reconquista). 1492 (and 1453) is another anchor

irixusr··on List of Printers Which Do or Do Not Display Tracking Dots
I'm hypothesizing, but you could make the slightest of changes to the print.

For example, if it's text, modify the font ever so slightly so it's invisible to the eye but measurable to someone looking for it.

irixusr··on List of Printers Which Do or Do Not Display Tracking Dots
Not necessarily. In fact the Stasi thought it was a swell idea!
irixusr··on Too many prisons make people worse
Well dodging the train fare is pretty nasty thing to do.

But jail time??? Wow.

irixusr··on Housing a prisoner in California costs more than a year at Harvard
Agreed. But how many ppl are in low security vs. max security?

How easy is it politically to build a min security facility in an area affluent enough to have day jobs for prisoners vs. building a max security prison in the middle of unemployed nowhere?

irixusr··on Housing a prisoner in California costs more than a year at Harvard
Yes.

Well no, because of lack of general availability. But I pay extra for many things to avoid certain corporate behaviour. In a free market, that's my right. We're trying to wean ourselves off of Amazon, in fact, but we're a one-car family, and Prime is an amazing service.

irixusr··on Housing a prisoner in California costs more than a year at Harvard
I'm not entitled to their labour, I can't afford higher price labour (well I can). Also, middle class salaries can barely afford current rates (in this forum we're mostly upper middle class or higher. A lot looks cheap to us. Do the math for the cost to salary for a child care facility. Costs a fortune even for us, yet the employees are getting paid peanuts. )

Which, if there is a real labour shortage, is fine with me. I'll just forgo the project I wanted to build, build less. Whatever.

But there isn't a labour shortage. At least not when you look at particulars segments, locations, past-histories, ect.

I'm not trying to push any ideology here. I'm just saying that the economy, actually, sucks despite what point estimates that grossly overgeneralize are saying. It sucked under Bush. It sucked more under Obama. And it getting suckier under Trump.

Why? I don't know. In the meantime hire a local contractor and pay them double their rate (or give the employees a tip == to the cost of the service < this is what I do to my monthly cleaners)

irixusr··on IBM Claims 5nm Nanosheet Breakthrough
You can use a bank of capacitors and the power itself is not a huge deal (still not trivial, but it's been done for 60+ years).

The problem is also that at 1kW for every 1Mw you still only use 0.1% of the energy you pumped in. And the energy requirements are still large because you are firing this thing repeatedly. Assuming the same amount of energy is required to ablate the atoms as with conventional UV (I'm not in the field, but its probably not a bad assumption), you have to multiply the ratio of the efficiencies of both methods to get at the energy required. Could be several multiples more if not an order of magnitude.

Also where does the remaining 999kW go? Eventually heat, so you have to spend 2Mw more to cool it (assuming 50% AC efficiency, I guess you could pump cold water instead). Add in the energy costs of opening and closing a vacuum lock and this is a fun project to be working on :D

irixusr··on Electric Cars Soon Will Cost Less Than Gas Cars, Research Suggests
well insurance companies have something similar now where they track your driving using GPS.

In principle I like that because you pay for the risk you are, but in practice it sucks because I have no way to force the insurance company to just use the data to charge me insurance and not to track my peccadilloes.

irixusr··on Electric Cars Soon Will Cost Less Than Gas Cars, Research Suggests
Why would libertarians hate tolls? If anything they hate free public roads.

Privatize, charge a bundle to use them and they're happy like pigs in poop!

irixusr··on Ask HN: What to do with an infinite computer
touche.

the question really is a generalization of "what research would I do if I had a few orders of magnitude more computer resources?"

Well how many orders of magnitude are we talking about [1]? What would the HN guys do? Why limit the question to 2 or 3 OofM?

[1] I'm license limited to my workstation despite having access to a cluster. So the orders of magnitude are within reach.

irixusr··on US politicians think companies should be allowed to 'hack back' after WannaCry
Will private citizens be allowed to hack Sony next time they instal spyware on consumer computers (presumably there will be an exemption for government sponsored hacking)?
irixusr··on Alone on the Open Road: Truckers Feel Like ‘Throwaway People’
I meant English is my second language
irixusr··on Alone on the Open Road: Truckers Feel Like ‘Throwaway People’
Go to a graduate engineering program, find the worst speaking foreigner. He has passed the toffle exam and probably outscored the Americans in the English GRE.

Then ask yourself: how?

(In case anyone's offended, I'm a foreigner with ESL)

irixusr··on America’s Cars Are Getting Faster and More Efficient
No, it isn't. It's the difference between driving in the EU and driving in N America.

I can't think of any 500 km route in Europe that wouldn't destroy me. And a little engine screaming for dear life wouldn't help

irixusr··on America’s Cars Are Getting Faster and More Efficient
Well you can't compare the two unless you mention the fuel type.
irixusr··on America’s Cars Are Getting Faster and More Efficient
Good points, but diesel's higher MPG doesn't have to do with the difference in energy density but in cycle efficiency.

The Diesel cycle is, all things equal, inherently less efficient than the Otto cycle. Hoever, since it allows much higher compression ratio it's efficiency ends up being very high (20 vs. 30 traditionally) [see Faires]

irixusr··on America’s Cars Are Getting Faster and More Efficient
Too far apart does mean that A to B is so much further than A to B in Europe. It means that there's nothing in between them, so it would be insane to build a passenger rail line (i.e. high speeds, high priority on the queue, locomotives, ect). A 1000 km length of track in Europe serves 10, 15 cities. In the American west it serves the passengers of 2.
irixusr··on America’s Cars Are Getting Faster and More Efficient
Sorry I forgot to finish the point for 1.

A larger car (more space, inertia and soundproofing) with a bigger engine (lower rpm therefore less noise) with more cylinders (less vibration) is more comfortable and wears you down less. And I loved my wife's no frills stick-shift Versa (4000 rpm at 80 mph really got annoying though)

As to American's driving large distances, based on my personal experience, there's no comparison. American cities are further apart, families are more scattered, families are larger. Don't forget that in many ways America is actually two societies in one. One America lives in places largely undistinguishable from Europe. The other has 90 mile one way commute (a colleague. Mine is only 17).

irixusr··on America’s Cars Are Getting Faster and More Efficient
Having lived (and appreciated) Europe and their cars:

1. You guy drive a lot less than us. I do trips three times as long as what would destroy me in Europe (twice a month I drive 500 km without stopping and back the next day)

2. Are you using the imperial gallon or the american gallon? Very common mistake (the mile used in the article looks like and probably is the 3.8l gal)

Edit, you're using the right gallon.

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