ndileas

I wasn't around for the second millennium versions. At some point, doesn't there exist a kind of activation energy threshold where enough money/promise etc is gained from the prototype that this pattern works for good ideas and not for bad ones?

Yes ... However. Most car manufacturers manage to deal with this without it becoming too common, with standard engineering controls ( proper fasteners, torque specifications, QC etc).

You do realize averages don't imply anything about local conditions?

Oh, I see. I must have misread, my bad. That makes a lot of sense.

Don't your rule and corollary disagree?

This is one of those things that's incredibly context dependent. There are lots of fat cat small companies out there who do easy tasks with thick margins. There are also jobs that are deceptively hard which it makes sense to hire out.

I usually try to err on the side of diy, but everyone has a different threshold on these things. Sometimes the economics work out when you don't count your time.

I'm all for safety and health at a reasonable cost, but yeah, seems like it doesn't matter how good things are. We gotta have something to worry about.

This reminds a little of the paperclip simulator, but this seems about 85% less likely to cause me to skip an entire day of work while clicking furiously. It's really good though!

People willing and able to do this probably have a few things going on at a time. Plus they're not necessarily at the high end of living expenses. A couple grand haul for a couple hours work is pretty good.

Would be nice if you would stop expecting the whole web to have stopped developing at your preferred point in time.

Physical shorelines instantiations of a true fractal are always limited. I'd go so far as to say that there is no such real object in the world.

Exactly. The coastline paradox is a mathematical curiousity, not a practical objection to measuring things. Coastlines are not infinite length in practice. You define a system of measurement then a length in that system

You could say the exact same set of objections to shoreline paradox.

This is an interesting point of view, and I think it intuitively makes sense. But it breaks down when considering people who block the flow of traffic by running red lights and clogging the intersection - that's just straightforwardly worse for everyone except the blocker.

Maybe honkery?

I think this is something that's very difficult to learn. It's a set of attitudes more than anything, and it's very countercultural (and not in a cool way).

Mr money mustache isn't my favorite for various reasons, but he's pretty good at evangelizing the diy/fire sprit. Just take it with a grain of salt.

To be fair... Lots of people just never close their tabs. So there's very real resource limitations. I've seen my partner's phone with a few hundred tabs open.

Good tools are very important. Especially for things like woodworking, metalworking, sewing. A good machine has decades or centuries of trial and error and has systmatically eliminated pain points and possible mistakes.

Mostly annoying network configs and token expirations etc. Not saying it can't be set up well, but in my experience some security guru gets a hardon for making my life miserable.

There's a lot of timeless, good analysis. But there's also somewhat dated concerns (like the energy crisis stuff) where it's clear that he's responding to the issue du jour.

Good news! You can't perceive the electrons in sunlight, only the photons.

When purchasing durable goods or bulk supplies, the difference is minimal. It might require saving before purchase, or gradually moving to the bulk model to preserve cash flow. But it's totally doable with a credit card on the household scale.

You don't need klarna for this. Credit cards already fill this need, and with careful use are free. Most people (in my circles) already do this type of thing

Sure, this would probably work with nice handmade paper. But you won't necessarily get a clean fold with thicker or uneven paper, and depending on fiber length and distribution you might get waviness or other issues

One of the underappreciated causes and effects of the industrial revolution is the precision that's around us all the time. To make that piece of paper required thousands of precision surfaces, rollers, etc.

This really isn't that different than many software tasks, just a different set of basic tools and jargon. When non computer people read a Haskell article that's how it sounds to them.

Do you have evidence for this? Seems plausible, although I would have thought mis allocation also happens across specialties

Are you implying that was, somehow, good? Because it was bad. Most major religions / ethical paradigms agree on this.

People, individually, should take risks if that's what they want, and it's not going to hurt others. I'm totally fine with skydiving, base jumping, rock climbing, whatever. I'm not fine with pumping chemicals into the local water table because that's the way Grandpa do.

Yeah, this is more journalism than science.

I think the core observation makes intuitive sense. But that's not the same thing as it being true.

These issues are too subtle, complicated, and distributed for current social science tools. I kind of think the whole idea of science being able to improve societal well-being beyond the basics is misguided at this point.

There's very little free oxygen in the water below certain depths, actually!