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tdba

768 karma · joined November 12, 2015

Reach out: getprojectfalcon _at_ proton _dot_ me
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tdba··on The April Fools joke that might have got me fired
HOw did you get my password ??? Delete. it immediately. This is your Final warning.

Warm regards,

tdba··on Introducing S2
Is it possible to bring my own cloud account to provide the underlying S3 storage?
tdba··on Jeff Bezos killed Washington Post endorsement of Kamala Harris
They were under the thumb of the regime. They produced whatever the government told them to produce. They had a predetermined profit margin that the government dictated to them. German capitalists certainly fared relatively well, but their influence and prestige was greatly reduced compared to the past. Nonetheless they took that deal because the alternative was literally communism.
tdba··on Show HN: Tenno – Markdown and JavaScript = a hybrid of Word and Excel
Very cool! I'm working on something similar but a little more wysiwyg and collaborative (think gdocs meets gsheets rather than word meets excel). Let me know if you want to chat - email in profile
tdba··on Ask HN: What are you working on (September 2024)?
A new kind of document editor which blends features of word processor and jupyter notebook. Email me (see bio) if you want to try it out.
tdba··on Why Most Published Research Findings Are False (2005)
One study tried to replicate 100 psychology studies and only 36% attained significance.

https://osf.io/ezcuj/wiki/home/

tdba··on The purge of German science in 1933
> There are no well-established genetic predictors of IQ

Common misconception, sadly untrue. There are known genetic predictors of intelligence, they're just not simple genes that the layman can wrap his head around.

https://www.nature.com/articles/nrg.2017.104

tdba··on Ask HN: Most efficient way to fine-tune an LLM in 2024?
What's your measure of performance?

Theres no one size fits all answer yet, but if you just want to test it out there are many commercial offerings on which you should be able to get some results for under $10k.

tdba··on Understanding Google's File System (2020)
Link to any resources you consider valuable for learning about Colossus?
tdba··on Open source liability is coming
Interestingly, something similar to your case 1 has actually happened and the text was banned with the justification that it contained fraudulent information: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irwin_Schiff#Case_regarding_...
tdba··on Granting pardon for the offense of simple possession of or use of marijuana
Unethical pardons on the last day in office is a Presidential tradition: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Rich
tdba··on America's Peace Wave: Violent-crime rates have suddenly–mercifully–plummeted
Related reading with a different conclusion: https://www.themarshallproject.org/2023/11/03/violent-crime-...
tdba··on How Many Hobbits? A Demographic Analysis of Middle Earth
Fair, I was just stating the commonly accepted origin. Personally, I think the origin of orcs remaining shadowy and mysterious with numerous contradictory accounts is the best canon. After all, Morgoth works secretly to sow confusion and dissent.
tdba··on How Many Hobbits? A Demographic Analysis of Middle Earth
Orcs are elves who were corrupted and mutilated by Morgoth, so hypothetically elves and orcs might have more shared biology. Hobbits are probably an offshoot or variant of men. Elves, dwarves and men all had separate "awakenings" so they don't have any shared ancestry at all. However, earlier races of men (and especially Numenoreans) were more similar to elves, being larger, wiser and having longer lifespans.
tdba··on How Many Hobbits? A Demographic Analysis of Middle Earth
The reason Eldar children are rare is that elves progress through childhood and youth at the same rate as humans, then have an indefinite adulthood. So for an elf that lives say 2k years, they spend 1% of their life as a child.
tdba··on Fairphone 5: Keeping it 10/10?
Literally right into the waves, it got sucked out immediately.
tdba··on Fairphone 5: Keeping it 10/10?
I dropped my iphone 14 in the ocean. It was in there 2 days until it washed up onshore. A fisherman picked it up and it was still on and it had service. It was in lost mode so he was able to call my emergency contact and I got it back. Aside from minor scratches on the screen it has no damage and works perfectly. That experience taught me that Apple takes reliability extremely seriously, even if they dont care about repairability. I dont know if they could have made a phone this bulletproof while also making it repairable. I do believe it is a good thing for people to be able to repair stuff they own, but there is a tradeoff.
tdba··on Launch HN: Stralis (YC W23) – Hydrogen electric aircraft for medium-haul travel
Congrats on the launch! Awesome to see a Brissy based YC startup!
tdba··on Albert Einstein in 1939 composed a message for the people of AD 6939
Humanity will win until we don't
tdba··on Large-scale violence in Late Neolithic Western Europe based on skeletal evidence

  > the trick the world learned from the Nazis
The world learned this trick from an American https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays
tdba··on How to draw software architecture diagrams (2022)
The general competency level of diagramming in most engineering teams is low enough that I think it's better to talk about what to diagram rather than how to visually lay it out. Everyone has heard of sequence diagrams (and for good reason!) but do you use data flow diagrams?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data-flow_diagram

tdba··on Unintended Consequences: Strategic Naïvety, China and the End of the US Empire
What are your thoughts on the politics of California?
tdba··on Zero ASIC is out of stealth
Congrats Zero ASIC team!
tdba··on A successful example of "adversarial collaboration"
I partly agree - I think you've outlined well why democracy should not be an end in itself. It's a means to an end and it's not always the best means. The main advantage of democracy is that it facilitates peaceful transfer of power between competing groups of elites. But you could imagine scenarios where the cost of a violent transfer of power is less than the cost of some other very bad outcome democracy is hurtling towards (e.g. an even larger outburst of violence at a later date, an environmental catastrophe).
tdba··on When CEOs Are Paid for Bad Performance (2005)
My bad, looks like the direct costs of an employee are more typically 1.4x the salary. That's basically taxes, benefits and perks and benefits. There also indirect costs like equipment, working space and administration so I believe the true cost of having an employee actually doing work is higher but probably more like 1.6x salary and not 2x.
tdba··on When CEOs Are Paid for Bad Performance (2005)
This is a good point, the smaller the layoff the more you can argue that the CEO (or others) should just take a pay cut instead.
tdba··on When CEOs Are Paid for Bad Performance (2005)
True, I think cutting pay for all executives would make a meaningful difference in a layoff. But don't forget that some fraction of execs might also be getting the axe in said layoff. GP was talking about CEOs specifically.
tdba··on When CEOs Are Paid for Bad Performance (2005)
It's an attractive idea for sure, but it's probably not that much in the scheme of things.

Say a full time employee earns $150k - total cost to employer is usually 2x so $300k. $40m / $300k = ~133 jobs. So if the company is laying off 10k employees it's close to 1% jobs saved - almost a rounding error. And that's if you cut the CEO's pay to $0.

A CEO would have to be earning something like 1000x more than their average employee for it to start making a really noticeable difference in actual layoff decisions.

tdba··on Moody’s warns federal shutdown would be ‘negative’ for US debt rating
Water is wet
tdba··on Rhythm 0
Legally speaking what would have happened if an audience member had actually shot and killed her? As I understand it you can't actually give someone permission to kill you, at least in the USA.
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