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topologistics

85 karma · joined April 30, 2019

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topologistics··on A toilet paper run is like a bank run. The economic fixes are about the same
If you're pooping two to three times per day, that's like three or four squares of TP per dump, which seems quite reasonable.

(not wasteful) != frugal

topologistics··on Covid-19’s stop-gap solution until vaccines and antivirals are ready
> if everyone on earth just sat still for a couple of weeks, this thing would just vanish.

Actually that in itself would cripple economies, despite being a really good idea (sitting still for a while I mean).

The whole world is operating under an economic paradigm that requires infinite growth forever; the model is decoupled from reality. If we all sat still for a couple weeks, everyone would be better off, but the economy would tank. Better get back to work!

topologistics··on On Scaling Mental Models
> What’s the software equivalent to “Churnalism”?

Basically anything consumer-facing from the past 15 years, especially if it's "mobile"

topologistics··on Windows Subsystem for Linux is making inroads with developers
Have you had bad experiences with Windows subsystem for Linux? In my experience it's useful, effective, and works out of the box with no configuration.
topologistics··on Tech giants have as much money and influence as nations
Taking away somebody's right to make a living with their chosen profession or otherwise participate in commerce is economic violence.

Say you have built up a following of people over many years and you are making thousands of dollars a month from YouTube, and they they decide to shut you down overnight, I bet it's going to feel like violence when it comes time to pay bills and you no longer have any of that income you have become accustomed to.

topologistics··on Show HN: We are hiring engineering interns who don't use social media
> We are exclusively hiring engineers who use CLI email clients and browse the web using Lynx

One major benefit: everyone at the company will be 10x

topologistics··on How to Exit Vim
Sometimes your right brain doesn't have to know what your left hand is doing.
topologistics··on Show HN: Dating Site Without Pictures
Kinda snarky way to show off those deductive skills Mr. Holmes
topologistics··on Quantum Dominance, Hegemony, and Superiority
Advocating for some minority group's interests (white knighting) is oppression, but opposing white knighting is also oppression? Seems like a no-win situation for the so-called "oppressor class"
topologistics··on SpaceX working on fix for Starlink satellites so they don’t disrupt astronomy
>“No one thought of this,” she said. “We didn’t think of it. The astronomy community didn’t think of it.”

That is absolutely ridiculous. The Iridium satellites were decommissioned recently and it was a big deal because, for the longest time, you had to check for "iridium flares" if you were using any type of sensitive equipment. Basically, the entire class of iridium satellites was highly reflective and they tended to create shooting star type phenomena, sometimes really really bright, bright enough to be seen during the daytime!

Maybe she didn't think of it, but to say the astronomy comunity didn't think of it is just blatantly absurd on its face.

On another note, I miss spotting iridium flares and I'm looking forward to a new class of satellites being added into my weekly observations.

topologistics··on Two Years Working at Dropbox
You are right, it comes down to the bargaining power of large corporations. The hourly rate of the tutoring gig was higher, but I would also have been paying a lot more for insurance, so it would even out. I also have to take brain medications which complicates things, because a lot of insurance plans don't provide good mental health care coverage, adding a layer of complexity to my decision making process.

For example, even if plan A and plan B cost the same amount out of my pocket, but Plan B does not cover my medications until after a $5,000 deductable, it really isn't helping me because all of my medications added up over a year come to just under $5,000.

There are so many layers of bureaucracy and complexity and institutional inertia keeping this exploitative system moving, it really needs to just be burnt to the ground so we can start fresh.

topologistics··on Two Years Working at Dropbox
It seems like you're ignoring a lot of facts and making rash generalizations to justify your political position. In particular, this is stood out to me as blatantly wrong:

>You can pay for your own insurance, which includes doctor prescription, checkups, and you won't go bankrupt in an emergency (or paying for the insurance).

I know somebody who got in a car accident out in the hilly area of town, had to be airlifted to a hospital, and have his skull and spine reconstructed. The guy's a doctor who runs a private practice and he was buying his own insurance, the insurer decided what they were going to cover and what they weren't going to cover, and now he is literally 2 million dollars in debt (2 occupants in the car). And that's somebody who makes a hell of a lot of money compared to fast food workers, who are equally likely to get in car accidents!

You are either naive or fooling yourself if you don't see that this system is broken and exploitive.

topologistics··on Two Years Working at Dropbox
I have had to choose between working at a fast food restaurant (crappy job) and working as a math tutor (awesome job), but the tutoring gig was a contract deal and as such they were not required to provide any health benefits. Working as a tutor for a couple months was really great, but in the end I had to go back to working fast food so that I can pay for medications and a surgical procedure. Yay Capitalism!
topologistics··on Two Years Working at Dropbox
Worst part about it is, when you get that yearly headache from dealing with insurance plan renewal, you have to pay full price for the headache medicine because your deductible and out-of-pocket counters reset to zero!

Adding insanity to insult and injury.

topologistics··on A Week in the Life of a McDonald’s Cashier
I have toyed with the idea of making it illegal for companies to replace people with robots and not give those people some other job to do. On the other hand, I have pretty strong feelings about regulation tending to favor large industries even when it is intended to restrict them, because they can afford expensive lawyers who find loopholes and other ways for them to exploit the law.
topologistics··on A Week in the Life of a McDonald’s Cashier
You're going to get downvoted for saying something objectively true.

I, on the other hand, desire social accolades. The emperor's new clothes are beautiful.

topologistics··on A Week in the Life of a McDonald’s Cashier
>For the next four hours, I stand in one spot on a concrete floor working the tray line. It’s like a constant assembly line, putting food on trays for thousands of patients. I do milk, bread, butter, Ensure. Milk, bread, butter, Ensure. A tray goes by every few seconds. Milk, bread, butter, Ensure. If I'm slow, it backs up the line and it takes longer to finish. Standing in one place so long makes my feet and my legs hurt. I know when I get up tomorrow, I will wince when my feet touch the floor.

People should not have to do things like this. It is clearly a robot's job. And if it weren't for the parasitic managerial class constantly collecting all of the unclaimed resources for themselves, we would praise automation for freeing people from such mundane painful existence.

Automation should free up humans time so that they can do things that humans enjoy. The only reason that won't happen is that the people in charge of the system are evil and greedy.

topologistics··on What would happen if we randomly gave $1,000 to poor families? Now we know
I'm not familiar with Kenyan tax returns, do they have some law that is analogous to the Federal Insurance Contributions Act or are you just making stuff up?
topologistics··on Want Better Forecasting? Silence the Noise
> Noise is a very well defined term in information theory. If political forecasting is throwing around the term without applying it correctly they’re gonna have a bad time.

Class is a very well defined concept in software development. Are political science people going to have a bad time because they "throw around" the word class and use it in an economic sense?

There are only so many possible finite words that can be created from vocalizable letter combinations, there is bound to be overlap across disciplines.

topologistics··on Former White House climate adviser calls methane ‘irrelevant’ to climate
>total revenues for the oil and gas drilling sector came to $2 trillion in 2017.

And all that money was immediately given to dirty evil fake scientists, right?

topologistics··on If you care about user privacy, don’t use Facebook JavaScript SDK
I can't be certain how many degrees separated the two are, but I have established a lower bound on the answer

Let d:(x,y)->n be the degrees of separation between x and y. Since d(x,y)=0 implies x=y, and we know that FB and HN are not identical, we have d(FB,HN)>0.

Then, since d takes integral values we know that d(FB,HN)>=1 in any case.

topologistics··on Three of the Hundred Falsehoods CS Students Believe
Real Programmers (TM) use emacs -nw
topologistics··on Victor Mono – A free programming font
I don't know how much customizing my desktop environment is bikeshedding, I just like for things to look nice.

Take some time to appreciate the aesthetic value in the little things, you will get more out of life.

topologistics··on I Survived the “Destroying Angel” (2006)
Psalm 23 is the most famous one, so knowing it doesn't indicate an encyclopedic knowledge of the bible.
topologistics··on Adventures in parametric textile pattern design
As a limes disease survivor I vehemently oppose your idealized depiction of sliced citrus fruit.

It's a very impressive project and I can't wait to see what else you come up with. Good job!

topologistics··on Houston Rockets general manager apologises for Hong Kong protest tweet
Consider me appetized, could you please explain the significance of the holstered weapon and provide more pictures? I'm guessing only cops can have guns in China or something like that. Thanks ^_^
topologistics··on Anti-vax movement effectively reversing decades of progress internationally
Dividing the issue into pro-vax and anti-vax spreads FUD and obscures the real problems: what preservatives are in the vaccines, what growth medium proteins are in the vaccines due to improper filtering and poor manufacturing processes, how many vaccines are administered at what age, and what all of that that has to do vaccines harming kids (which happens all the time)... bring up any of these issues and you'll be attacked as an antivaxxer who's trying to send us back to the stone age.
topologistics··on Dropbox no longer follows symlinks to items outside of your Dropbox account
This seems dangerous and gives me the heebie jeebies, but I can't put my finger on exactly why. It just feels like bad practice to move my important files somewhere else and link to them, but I've never trusted the cloud anyway. It is in the nature of clouds that they change and sometimes go away. I don't want my .bashrc going away.
topologistics··on Flawed Algorithms Are Grading Millions of Students’ Essays
The idea that black folks and females score dramatically lower on anything is a commonly held racist opinion that is foundational for the continuation of institutional oppression. When you assume the worst about people it ends up hindering their personal progress.
topologistics··on Flawed Algorithms Are Grading Millions of Students’ Essays
If I have 3 left shoes colored blue green and red, and you have 2 right shoes colored black and white, how many pairs can we make if our lefts and rights are put together?

Hint: together does not mean plus.

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