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I've wondered the same thing about databases. Just like an OS, a database has to manage data on disk and figure out when to cache it. The files & folders metaphor is arguably a relic of pre-computer times--instead of searching through folders, it is easier to search and sort based on particular attributes, something that databases are well-suited to. I think it'd be interesting to start with a database and try to build an OS around it, see how far you could go.

I don't agree.

For example, healthcare in the US is screwed up partially because during WW2, the US government made corporations adhere to a salary cap to prevent war millionaires. Companies responded by trying to attract workers using free health insurance instead. So now we have a tradition of providing health insurance along with employment, and things are awkward for freelancers and entrepreneurs.

Housing is screwed up partially because of government policies to encourage homeownership. The problem is that as homeowners become a constituency, they're incentivized to maintain the prices of their homes (one of their most valuable assets), so they vote for policies that prevent the construction of new homes (reducing supply of housing helps their homes maintain their value).

The US itself was founded partially because of policy problems in Great Britain. And despite the flaws listed above, as a nation it's been incredibly successful.

I don't think policy development is fundamentally different from technological development. It just has a slower cycle of trial/error/theory creation. You might as well look at an early car, observe its unreliability, and say "The fundamental failure of the horseless carriage is that its unreliability is an intrinsic problem of thermodynamics"

I'm curious why you think the JVM is a net loss if you don't need it, if you want to elaborate on that.

You mean "domains worth over $8/yr".

That's a big difference.

For context, I've been thinking about learning Clojure.

I'm pretty new to the Lisp world--I went through most of SICP in Scheme years ago, but that's about it.

In 2012 Clojure was HN's second favorite programming language: https://i.imgur.com/toGKy21.jpg

What's the best argument for me learning a Lisp besides Clojure?

Serious question, I'm not particularly attached to Clojure, and I want to know what I will miss out on by going with it instead of some other Lisp.

Tell it to Copernicus.

Check out the book Structure of Scientific Revolutions maybe.

>...

>The model is significantly worse than a coin-flip. Obviously, this is not good; and given that the majority of conversations on the site are trivial

1. This isn't correct use of the term "true negative". A true negative is when your model predicts a negative, and the label is actually negative. "the model failed to predict when a meaningful conversation was about to occur" would correspond to a false negative (the model predicts negative, the the label is actually positive)

2. "The model is significantly worse than a coin-flip" - Talking about coin flips hardly makes sense if the majority of conversations on the site are trivial.

A better way to think about this question would be from a Bayesian perspective. Define a random variable L for linkage. L=True if there exists a user B such users A and C both had non-trivial conversations with B. L=False otherwise. Then define a random variable T for whether the conversation is trivial or not. Then you can compute P(T=False|L=True) and P(T=False|L=False) from your data.

It could be that what this article is trying to say is that P(T=False|L=False) > P(T=False|L=True), i.e. the presence of a linkage decreases the probability of a nontrivial conversation.

This could occur if, for example, most users of Chatroulette are using it as a dating site, and since heterosexual people outnumber gay people, most nontrivial conversations occur between men and women. So if there's a linkage between A and C, that predicts that A and C are of the same gender, and they won't be interested in talking to each other.

Anyway, I didn't read any further than that, but I would suggest just ranking users based on their propensity for nontrivial conversations and connecting users with other users who like to have nontrivial conversations (or perhaps even better, compute the mean/median conversation length for each user to get a sense of their preferred conversation length, then connect users to other users who have a similar preferred conversation length).

I suspect there's room to use machine learning to improve Chatroulette a lot, even to the point where it could be the next Facebook. People already pay thousands of dollars to attend Harvard etc. for the networking. You just have to use machine learning tools correctly and find a way to capture some of that value.

Average total comp for a novice AI engineer is about $300K. That's over $1000 per weekday.

If they made it so the expected value of entering was comparable to the amount someone could make in their day job / as a contractor, I'll bet they could attract more & better submissions.

My suspicion is that FB and Twitter are actually tuning their algorithms to dampen anger nowadays--I'm almost certain Youtube is (with terrific results).

I see reddit as a window into what algorithm-free social media looks like. It's not pretty. And reddit is one of the biggest sites, bigger than twitter IIRC. It's not a good influence on society.

I actually wish journalists would freak out a little less about Facebook/Youtube's problems and turn a bit more firepower on reddit.

Plus, even if Bitcoin's price is mainly a product of manipulation -- speculators trying to make the price rise or fall relative to where it is right now -- there's no reason we can't think of that as also being a random process which produces some statistical distribution.

Benford's law works for detecting fraud because the process that humans use to choose random numbers -- just write down a bunch of random digits -- results in a statistical distribution that is unusual relative to what would be produced by a natural process. But it seems quite unlikely to me that Bitcoin price manipulation takes the form of a whale saying "OK, I just wrote down a bunch of random digits, this is our BTC price target for Wednesday".

I always thought something like Pabio for used mattresses would be great, so people could easily try lots of mattresses and find one which really helps them sleep.

To do that you'd need a nontoxic process for ensuring the mattress is free of bedbugs (e.g. put it in an airtight bag, then fill the bag with an oxygen-free mix of nitrogen+CO2 for long enough that any bugs will suffocate)

It seems like having multiple vendors is only valuable if their products are to some degree differentiated, no?

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_fallacy

Do you have a citation for this?

First, just because the state loses its monopoly doesn't mean some other entity gains a monopoly. In Mexico, cartels aren't just fighting the state, they are also fighting each other. If the state collapsed, they will continue fighting each other, and the people of Mexico will effectively live in a semi-permanent warzone.

Second, not all violent entities are created equal. Cartel members are motivated by greed and lust for power. Many are willing to employ tactics such as torture and terrorism to advance those goals: https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Mexican-drug-cartels-new...

I'm not claiming every cop is a saint, far from it. There is certainly room for improvement in the US at least. However, bad cops are newsworthy because we expect better from our cops than our gangsters. On a statistical basis, a much larger fraction of the police force is motivated by a desire to protect and serve the public. And our police forces are subject to at least nominal democratic accountability.

If due process requirements don't meaningfully differentiate cops from gangsters in your eyes, we might as well do away with them anyways.