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psychedelic

41 karma · joined July 12, 2017

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psychedelic··on Stealing the Enemy's Urban Advantage: The Battle of Sadr City
I was an infantryman in a outpost on the east side of Sadr city. There was only a few platoons at this place at a time. I was on guard that morning and all of the sudden there was a mass migration of all males leaving the area. It was so surreal. Most of them were just clearing out because they knew shit was about to go down and they didn't want to be around for it when it did. But seeing thousands of people just walk from their neighborhoods was crazy.
psychedelic··on Stealing the Enemy's Urban Advantage: The Battle of Sadr City
Nice to see I'm not the only 11B on hackernews. I was there as well from Nov 07 - Feb 09. Spent most of my days at Hope/SUJ. Had the "pleasure" of months of fighting and helping with the T-walls on route Aeros. Good times.
psychedelic··on A majority of US teens are taking steps to limit smartphone and social media use
Exactly. I've gone through 12 audio books this year while I drive to and from work. I can't say I retain as much as I would if I had read them, but I also wouldn't have read any of them due to time constraints.
psychedelic··on More Americans report near-constant cannabis use
As someone who has never smoked, I feel like this is the argument I always had with my friends who all have/do. Ultimately, their argument for smoking basically boiled down to the lack of scientific evidence that there are lasting consequences and that it was nowhere near as bad as alcohol. My argument was that there was a lack in scientific evidence, and that comparing the utility to alcohol was stupid.
psychedelic··on Work less, get more: New Zealand firm's four-day week an 'unmitigated success'
Can confirm. I have this schedule at my job now. It is amazing. I get all my grocery shopping and various errands done Wednesday morning when everyone else is at work, and have more time on the weekends. I highly recommend people trying it out if they get the chance.
psychedelic··on GDPR Version of USA Today Is 500KB Instead of 5.2MB
I just checked it out using a VPN. I felt like I was transported back in time to the later 90's. Quickly went through the page source. Much more HTML action going on that the old version.
psychedelic··on Eight hours a night isn’t enough, according to a leading sleep scientist
You have asked the correct question. "Exercise" is a wide spectrum of intensity levels and energy expenditure depending on who is exercising and for what reason. If you are training like an athlete then 8 hours of sleep usually isn't enough.
psychedelic··on Finland's cities are havens for library lovers
I've never visited Seinäjoki nor Fairfax, so no, not really. But I can elaborate on why I said what I said...

Overall Finnish cities tend to be built up instead of out. I've lived in Jyväskylä, Tampere, and Kuopio, and each of these had reliable bus systems and minimal traffic compared to any U.S. city I've lived in. Finnish cities also tend to include a decently robust bike/walk path within cities while here in the U.S. we mostly limit ourselves to sidewalks.

The U.S. is huge, and the states are diverse, so I'm sure my experience is anecdotal, but my observation have lived in Colorado, Louisiana, Maryland, and the aforementioned cities is that Finnish municipal planning is approached much differently than any other U.S. city I have ever lived in or visited.

That it just my experience. This site will let you play around with some stats, though I have no idea how accurate they are: https://web.archive.org/web/20140309232920/http://data.world...

Note that most Finnish vehicles use diesel fuel. There is a different category for that if you choose to explore the site. But you can see that overall automobile usage is much higher in the U.S., and we have built an infrastructure that supports it (built out).

psychedelic··on Finland's cities are havens for library lovers
This article fails to mention another reason; cities in Finland are built in such a way that going to the library is feasible. I've lived in both Finland and the U.S., and commuting in Finland is much easier. Commuting in U.S. cities takes a lot more energy, and the thought of it is often painful, so people just don't go in the first place. At least where I live...
psychedelic··on How to Grow Stronger Without Lifting Weights (2014)
This. I coached powerlifters for a time and you even see this when athletes have taken long breaks from hard workouts. Motor movement, like everything else, is a learned and perishable skill.
psychedelic··on The crypto alternative
I think we still have a long way to come in regards to handling private keys. In my efforts to get my family/friends informed on cryptocurrency it amazes me how difficult these things are.

I think that is why Coinbase has been so successful. If my mom wants to hold some bitcoin, I'm sending her to coinbase. She can't be trusted with her own private keys.

I'm interested to read more on the multi-sig escrow services you mentioned though. Do you have any recommended reading material on the matter? Thanks.

psychedelic··on Taskwarrior, where have you been all my life?
Am I the only one still using a #2 pencil and a piece of paper for my 'to do' lists???
psychedelic··on Why “blockchain” is BS in 4 slides
You've never visited Africa, have you?
psychedelic··on Why “blockchain” is BS in 4 slides
Yes. People often misunderstand that verifying transactions with blockchain is intrinsically difficult which is not the case. The hard part is making a ledger that can't be rewritten.

And mining is actually less akin to solving math problems and more akin to, well, actually mining. That is, digging around enough until you find some gold.

psychedelic··on An Update on Last Week’s Accident
It reads like it was written by a company who has a lot of scientists working there is all. They are simply explaining what happened according the system log files before the incident and then reminding the public that it is still safer.
psychedelic··on Ask HN: How to self-learn math?
Came here to recommend this one as well. I bought it several years ago as an adult trying to revisit math. I'm always surprised at how few people know of this gem.
psychedelic··on How big oil will die
Exactly. As someone who grew up in northern Utah it is hard to imagine owning an electric car right now. But most people don't live in northern Utah. Now that I live in DC, I would love an electric car since most of my gas money is spent hanging out in traffic anyways. Big cities, where most of the population lives, is where EVs will really make their debut.
psychedelic··on How to Become a Good Theoretical Physicist
I think he was just trying to be more clear on what we define as "learned" in the context of math. Many people "learn" math and do well on tests because they have memorized ways to manipulate equations to resolve the problem without actually understanding abstractly what is going on, and are thus often less creative with their maths. Ironically, I've found that those students who appear to excel in maths are usually the ones who are less curious about the why and how of math. Maths is usually taught in a way that it discourages the people who seem to struggle with it when they are often just trying to understand the depth of it more. I was one of these students in high school, and thought I just wasn't gifted. Fortunately I had the discipline to learn it and eventually had a really good teacher.