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safeignoranceon Driverless Cars Threaten to Crash Insurers’ Earnings

> We're already to the point where if your commute is less than 8 miles or so, using Uber daily is cheaper than the cost of ownership on a $30k vehicle. Just imagine what self-driving cars will do to that equation.

Which brings up the question: why the hell would anyone buy a $30k vehicle for 16 miles of commuting?! You can get a perfectly reliable car that's even reasonably safe and comfortable for regional road trips @ well under $10k, without even looking for sales or deals.

Until true driverless (no driver in vehicle, no insurance policy needed) happens, ownership will always be cheaper than daily taxi rides.

safeignoranceon Q&A: Bill Gates on investments in energy technologies

Going for C=0 is an impressively ambitious goal.

There is one thing I really like about this proposal. Gates believes our future depends upon scientific advances and resulting technological innovation, supported by modest and easy-to-justify infrastructure improvements. This breaks away from demand-side policy-centered approaches, yes. But more importantly -- to me, at least -- it breaks away from an over-reliance on old science.

To me, this emphasis on science AND technology -- rather than exclusively technology -- is perhaps an even more significant idea than primarily-supply-side thinking.

I think Gates' C=0 goal is probably the locus of this shift in thinking from "force mass deployment of existing technologies using the levers of policy" to "science the shit out of this, then innovate like madmen, and only then enlist public policy when it's truly the only missing piece (see: power grid example from article)".

safeignoranceon Q&A: Bill Gates on investments in energy technologies

That doesn't necessarily mean they aren't going to solicit ideas -- either from public calls or (especially) from recognized experts.

Most grant-giving organizations don't accept unsolicited requests for money, but then regularly put out completely public solicitations for proposals on specific topics.

From the article, it sounds like 1) they already have a lot of pretty specific ideas about where to invest; and 2) they're waiting until they coalesce matching funding from other foundations to start making solicitations/rewarding grants/investing in companies.

safeignoranceon How Toby Spribille Overturned 150 Years of Biology about Lichens

An American without a high school diploma or GED convinced a seriously good German university to admit him. That's pretty impressive.

If I were in his situation, there's no way I would have had the gull to try that route. Probably would've just stayed in the forest service. Maybe gone for a GED then community college then a local land grant. By which time I'd be too burnt out on it all (and too old) to even think about a doctorate.

There's no doubting that the German people helped this guy achieve what he achieved. There's also no doubting that he was truly exceptionally resourceful (and maybe a bit lucky, too).

safeignoranceon How Toby Spribille Overturned 150 Years of Biology about Lichens

Exactly. It's not just that he was home-schooled. It's that he was apparently home-schooled by people who were apparently particularly incompetent at home-schooling.

safeignoranceon How Toby Spribille Overturned 150 Years of Biology about Lichens

Of course, the guy's life story is still an inspirational tale of creating opportunities for yourself where none seem to exist. And his discovery -- although probably not rocking the foundation of the (sub)field -- is still impressive and pretty interesting. And the article is written well enough.

So you should still read the article. Just pretend the link-baity title doesn't exist and don't go in with pre-conceptions :-)

safeignoranceon How Toby Spribille Overturned 150 Years of Biology about Lichens

It's also misleading -- although he did grow up in a trailer park, he also attended an world-renown university of both undergraduate and doctoral studies prior to making the discovery. And he wasn't working alone in the middle of nowhere -- he as working with a team of other scientists.

It's a fantastic life story, but the title is definitely distracting click bait.

safeignoranceon Why I’m Suing the US Government

Taking on Pearson and other companies that use similarly predatory tactics to extract value from society's most disadvantaged is exactly the sort of "disruption" that the world needs more of.

That said, I doubt one could go at it alone with no support or with only a grant -- building up mind share, fighting off BS patent threats, and doing enough sales to break even on these non-development costs aren't the sort of things that a government/ngo grant will typically support. And even if you could find the money, you'll still need access to a network of experts.

Someone should setup a fund that force-multiplies government/NGO grants for societally beneifical OSS with funding and access to expertise for these other things (legal/marketing/etc.). The aim could just be breaking even on non-grant-funded costs by selling support/branding/etc. to institutional players like hospitals and large chains.

safeignoranceon When a crow dies, the other crows investigate the cause of death (2015)

It's not terribly uncommon for colleges to require some form of physical education like in high school. The motivations are varied -- from legal mandate (for state schools) all the way to subsidizing the athletic staff with tuition dollars for BS courses.

And even where there aren't strict requirements, students sometimes end up with a few extra "free" course credits (e.g. to stay full time for a final semester). Uni staff/faculty are often willing to teach a course like this because it's fun and they get a couple grand for teaching young people about their hobby for an hour every week.

FWIW I took a rock climbing course like this (last semester, had a few extra credits my scholarship paid for in any case, and didn't have time for a real course due to travel). There was just enough "scholarly study" to make the course barely legit (read 2 books and discussed safety techniques in a science-y way), but 99.9% of the time was spent climbing.

safeignoranceon Serverless Architectures

In almost all cases, there's a significant difference in the sort of risk that comes from B/FaaS dependencies and the sort of risk that comes from PL lock-in. The former leads to technology lock-in and vendor lock-in, while the latter almost never[1] leads to vendor lock-in.

Technology lock-in without vendor lock-in isn't that huge of a liability. A popular PL under an appropriate license isn't going to disappear tomorrow, and its creator doesn't have the power to hold your business at gunpoint. Conversely, B/FaaS providers upon which you truly depend definitely can extract (or by disappearing simply destroy) much more value than you originally anticipate.

[1] If you use Wolfram Language or Matlab then your choice of PL causes vendor lock-in, but most PLs aren't like this.

safeignoranceon Cyberpower crushes coup

Israel is a relatively rich middle-eastern democracy. Jordan should probably count too (it has its problems, yes, but so do most of the tiger states). Qatar too, to a much lesser extent and esp. if you prioritize wealth/stability over democracy per se. And Saudi Arabia is at least stable and wealthy, if not ticking off the other boxes.

But it's also worth pointing out that outside of the west and regions where the local population was so thoroughly decimated as to make the population effectively European (e.g., US and Canada), free market secular democracies are pretty rare.

safeignoranceon The Politically Incorrect Guide to Ending Poverty (2010)

Failing to coalesce and maintain political support from the host government is just about the most predictable failure mode imaginable.... no true scotsman, indeed.

safeignoranceon The Politically Incorrect Guide to Ending Poverty (2010)

I'd guess very few of libertarianism's opponents believe in socialist utopias, and what the article suggests is about as far from an incremental step and one can possibly get...

safeignoranceon The Power of Ten – Rules for Developing Safety Critical Code

You're correct to point out that the coding style isn't to blame for the software fault. And IMO The last paragraph of the article hints at the most probable fundamental cause.

But I just don't buy that this was not a software fault. It clearly was a case of a faulty software specification.

> The problem seems to have been at a different level than coding.

This makes me queasy. Software engineers working on these sorts of systems -- -- or at least a few senior ones -- should understand enough of the domain to say "this spec is not adequate" or "bad things might happen under conditions xyz; what's the correct behavior in these cases?". And of course all software should notice and then degrade gracefully when assumptions are observably violated.

To absolve the software engineer of any responsibility for understanding the context surrounding his software is to wrongly assume there's not much to software engineering beyond programming to someone else's spec.