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mbustamanteron Iatrogenics: Why Intervention Often Leads to Worse Outcomes

Related to N. N. Taleb, his colleague and CIO of Black Swan fund Universa Investments Mark Spitznagel [1] discusses iatrogenics in the context of hedge funds in a recent interview [0], at 18:20.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5yVDVIvQL4

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Spitznagel

mbustamanteron The $20 an hour Cessna 172 experiment (2020)

Mike is perhaps one the most impressive plane hackers I've seen. His creativity and transparency (he shows all the process!) are much appreciated. He inspired me to try and make some carbon fiber models for RC planes. By the second half of this year I plan to have built an RC delta wing, and use my programming knowledge to automate its flight path.

EDIT: To add to it, and even more remarkable: Mike has apparently got no formal education in engineering. His twin brother also wrote a book about the blessings and curses of ADHD, which both have.

mbustamanteron Toxic Exposure: The True Story Behind the Monsanto Trials

Absence of evidence != Evidence of absence. This mistake is especially pernicious when facing the choice of repeated trials, and something inherent to this topic since constantly eating food that at some point was subject to this chemical is by definition a repeated trial.

mbustamanteron Brace for ‘tinderbox-timebomb’ market crash worse than 1929

https://archive.is/cJpkT

mbustamanteron Chronophoto

4409. Amazing how can you tell the approximate year by how the women are dressed, an exercise I hadn't done conscientiously before. Thanks!

mbustamanteron Motors for Makers: A Guide to Steppers, Servos, and Other Electrical Machines (2015)

My trick was searching +"index of" on Google or something like that, I could find all sorts of books that way. What were your tricks?

mbustamanteron U.S. tech firms are replacing workers with cheaper talent in Latin America

While agreeing on the cost of living, I have to say that the number of engineers will not be growing too much (I say this as a latin american engineer): Most latin american countries are below the replacement level fertility of 2.1, especially the ones who provide the best quality engineers (Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Uruguay) and the ones who aren't such as Bolivia or Ecuador, are barely above replacement. Already college cohorts are 25% smaller than their historic maximum in Chile, and Chile together with Uruguay are facing a dramatic threat of decline since their total fertility rates are lower than 1.3 for 2022 and falling (for Argentina and Brazil it's no more than 1.65 for the same year, just below the TFR of the United States at 1.66).

As a result of all this, the economic structure of these aging countries is changing and the decreasing cohorts of engineers will be even more compelled to settle in Europe or the US, the taxes to support non-working parts of the population are leaving less margin for starting businesses and families. So american companies won't be outsourcing for much less for same quality, at least from latin america. I think that the US won't need to be too stringent on foreign remote workers: third-world politicians will push workers out in their thirst for taxing income (and the rationale will be: "They have to pay their fair share!").

mbustamanteron Ask HN: Why it is hard for US to move to metric system?

Even more, several aviation reports use both. METARs use feet for cloud altitude and meters for visibility.

mbustamanteron Guerrilla guide to CNC machining, mold making, and resin casting (2015)

Can I ask you a couple of questions? I am in a patricular situation, I'm a mathematician who does FEM and I think my training has been too abstract. My most recent work involves programming custom code in C++ for the study of buckling of thin shells (finite element method, continuum mechanics, differential geometry of shells, and all under the umbrella of functional analysis). Still the region I live in has virtually no relevant positions for FEA, which prompts me to ask:

(1) I've been thinking of getting a certification in ANSYS or Abaqus (it's relatively cheap). Would it help if I get some certs, or would it be enough to have expertise in several open source finite element programs? - think deal.ii, PETSc, MFEM, MOOSE, FreeFEM, FEniCS and the like. I really like to use the latter because apart from being free, they give me more freedom and I can use them with parallel computing on UNIX machines.

(2) Regarding manufacturing and machines/machining, any book or resources that stood out? I'm most familiar with the Machinery's Handbook.

(3) For design, did you use a tablet? I've been looking into buying one and use it for design, preferably with FOSS. Any recs?

Thank you for your comments,

mbustamanteron Rio de Janeiro Botanical Garden (2018)

Exactly 6 six years ago I was there taking a course on Real Analysis by Gustavo Moreira.

mbustamanteron The creator economy: the top 1% and everyone else

Anything that isn't scalable. Taleb writes at length about this difference in The Black Swan, categorizing professions in which there are winner-take-all effects (Extremistan) and low variance, stable, one-sample-is-representative ones (Mediocristan). As you said, surgeon (the example Taleb gives is 'dentist'), prostitute, taylor, and so on. He also notes that some professions can switch categories, e.g. musician, since the existence of recording technology the distribution became a Pareto one.

mbustamanteron How to Legally Own Another Person (2016)

https://archive.is/NeU6q

mbustamanteron Japan’s business owners can’t find successors – one man is giving his away

Latest UN projection was adjusted so that by the end of century they would 100 million less people, again from a downward adjustment three years ago. They will experience a modernization unlike the world has ever seen thanks to globalization, and there is no reason to believe they will have that many people as a consequence of the decline in fertility rates (caused by education, more wealth, etc.).

mbustamanteron Ask HN: What were your biggest accomplishments in 2022?

Learning tensor calculus. It's extremely powerful: it is easier to derive relationships in physics (continuum mechanics, thermodynamics, relativity), mathematics (differential geometry, linear algebra, integral calculus in several variables) and engineering (robotics, elasticity).

mbustamanteron Ask HN: Have You Tried Homesteading?

I grew up in Santiago, Chile, a city with a population of 7M and lived and went to school in the very center of it. Today I have nothing that resembles a social life and school was torture (never bullied, just bored to tears). I was only interested in math, programming, machines, and infrequently reading literary classics. Did this and that, standardized evaluations got me first place into college with a scholarship, even represented my country at international math contests. Good grades but hated every minute of school.

This, coupled with high prices for owning a house and crime in a dense city has prompted me to daydream everyday about going to the country and building my house. Even so far as entertaining the idea of becoming part of a religious group. Maybe someone needs to ground me? But every reason people mention (working hard, social life, school) doesn't change my mind, which worries me since it shows my bias might be too strong. I haven't mentioned the religious thing to my parents who are both atheists, they'll think I'm crazy.

EDIT: Teachers assigned fucking Hunger Games as reading, and people still do triangle similarity and solving second degree equations well into HS. I wish was homeschooled.

mbustamanteron Wells Fargo Penalties Since 2000: $22B

Taleb's got lots of very critical thoughts on banking in general and bailouts in particular [0]. In a reddit thread he said he's got no banker friends (considers it unethical). He champions free markets with skin in the game constraints, plus scale considerations.

[0] https://twitter.com/search?q=from%3A%40nntaleb%20bankers

mbustamanteron Early retirement and ageing population causing labour shortages: Lords report

Interesting is that the children of immigrants adopt the reproductive habits of the native population, so their total fertility rate as a group drops below replacement from one generation to the next (unless very religious, but they see a drop too). See Canada, american hispanics, asian-americans (Korean, Vietnamese), muslims in Scandinavia, etc.

mbustamanteron Fungal toxins are widespread in European wheat

Please do, I've been interested in this field for a long time (if you don't want to share it there is my contact info in my profile).

mbustamanteron A Sign That Tuition Is Too High: Some Colleges Are Slashing It in Half

https://archive.is/MpnGG

EDIT: Mentioned in the article is the reduction of cohort size, which will be a worsening problem in the coming decades. Related articles [0], [1], [2].

[0] https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-04-11/californ...

[1] https://archive.is/k0h4d

[2] https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/23428166/college-enrollmen...

mbustamanteron World's Largest freestanding cylindrical aquarium bursts in Berlin

Can't imagine the fate of all the fish, what a tragedy.

mbustamanteron Don’t make fun of renowned Dan Brown (2016)

https://archive.is/r05hh

mbustamanteron Ask HN: What are your goals for 2023?

If you earn an american salary, by that I mean from an american company and in USD, you'll have no problem living comfortably in an upscale neighborhood i.e. the safest and with lots of amenities. The reason is, not only you are paid in a strong currency (compared to the local ones) but also the quantity is higher.

Now, by violence I mean mostly all things stemming from drug-trafficking (hitmen, kidnappings, racketeering, extortion, carjacking) most commonly found in central america but expanding to southern countries more and more. The safest cities were historically Montevideo in Uruguay and Santiago in Chile, I may be biased but I think Montevideo is still safe and I'm not sure about Santiago, unless you choose to live in the eastern side of the city [0]. EDIT: you may want to factor political instability in your decision. I encourage you to ask other expats about their experience and what they see in the future, they're well-off so they they're lucky to avoid unpleasant experiences the local population has to deal with (plus they can always return to the US). I personally would only live in Chile and Uruguay, so take what I say with a grain of salt.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeastern_zone_of_Santiago

mbustamanteron Ask HN: What are your goals for 2023?

1. Finish my academic duties (masters degree).

2. Get a job, start a small side business, grow my online presence.

3. Get the hell out of Latin America, this continent is far too violent.

mbustamanteron Borges: Recommendations from a life of lectures and essays

Fictions is, in my opinion, the best. Second that comes close is The Aleph. They can be found in a single volume, at least in Spanish.

mbustamanteron When splines were physical objects (2016)

Interesting, do you have a source where I can get deeper into the application of splines to reilroads? Specifically, how to arrive at the jerk minimization problem. All things railroads are too descriptive with little engineering/physics formulas.

mbustamanteron Hand of Irulegi: ancient artefact could help trace origins of Basque language

Hello, I'm a Chilean descendant of Basques. I've a question regarding basque culture and heritage (of which I unfortunately know too little). Have basque authorities contemplated the declining population with low TFR and how it will impact the continuation of customs and most importantly, the language?

mbustamanteron Eighty Years of the Finite Element Method

Great! Hughes, Oden and Babuška are three of my heroes. My work is in FEM, specifically, the theory of Mixed Finite Elements and Eigenalue problems, to which both Babuška made important contributions. Oden I know from elasticity for the most part.

mbustamanteron I Just Can't Kick Lisp

I just started reading SICP yesterday after being convinced by PG's essays [0] and I would suggest just looking at the solutions, since the first chapter relies heavily on number theory concepts, and the authors say they take that choice because it makes introduction to more abstract ideas easier (as a math grad student I'm already on page 110). I personally think that to someone without a background in higher arithmetic it would be a bit boring, so I repeat that it wouldn't hurt to look at some solutions to get a feel to it [1]. The book is MIND-BLOWING and after years of C++ and Python I'm really excited of what I will find in the next chapers.

[0] http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html (referenced in the top link blog post)

[1] http://community.schemewiki.org/?SICP-Solutions

mbustamanteron Argentina to Hike Interest Rates to 75% as Inflation Nears 100%

I live in next to Argentina (Chile), and every time I hear a story on their economy I am reminded of the fact that reality beats fiction. Apart from the chronic currency devaluation, the illegal but ubiquitous blue dollar, the 10+ different USD "exchange" rates (some say more than 30), the total tax rate >100% (according to the World Bank), I wonder how do they endure such conditions for decades. All my argentinian friends work for american companies remotely, if they haven't emigrated already.

mbustamanteron The hyperinflation gallery

The book of Spitznagel, even if it's about investing, is a great introduction. If you're aiming for something more broad, the Incerto series by Taleb has much more than you need but it sets the right context about risks and philosophiccal thought (remember Hayek above all was a philosopher). Then I would jump to his books. This may not be the perfect approach but it worked for me.