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trappist

177 karma · joined June 4, 2010

[ my public key: https://keybase.io/trappist; my proof: https://keybase.io/trappist/sigs/gDAZ0A2kxjDPget1R2Q-Va5n2s1bRSVSxWtwsQsx7VY ]
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trappist··on AI adoption and Solow's productivity paradox
"Admitted" as the verb in a statement like this is blatant editorialization. Did they just finally "admit" what they had been reluctant to reveal? No doubt with their heads hung in shame?

Maybe this bothers me more than it should.

trappist··on Americans React to UnitedHealthcare CEO's Murder: 'My Empathy Is Out of Network'
The only problem I can actually name with vigilante justice is that it can be error-prone. Otherwise it's only an encroachment upon the state's monopoly on the dispensation of justice, and I'm not seeing a moral objection to that. And the state's approach to justice is also quite error-prone.
trappist··on Low-income homes drop Internet service after Congress kills discount program
I can't even count the number of ISPs I can choose from, because my city, county and state have no "franchise agreements" i.e. licensing programs i.e. monopoly grants for ISPs. Cable, DSL, fiber... I have multiple choices for each. A few years back I lived in a very rural area and the situation was less enviable but qualitatively similar: At least one national rural broadband provider, and at least half a dozen smaller local providers, had microwave antennas on the local (private, as it happens) water tower.

Regulation isn't needed to prevent or break up monopolies in this space, it just needs to stop actively creating and protecting them.

trappist··on Low-income homes drop Internet service after Congress kills discount program
This was a subsidy paid to participating providers in high-cost areas to support the discount. Charter, a participating provider, said it lost customers when the discount ended. That is not the same as saying those customers lost access to the internet.
trappist··on Bitcoin Block 840000
Do you think that the world is a better place if ordinary Russians can't access their own money?
trappist··on Research into why some people have a better sense of direction
I have often been described as oblivious (I prefer "focused") and I have yet to encounter someone with a worse sense of direction/orientation than mine. I could tell endless funny stories about how bad it is.

OP mentions a study involving navigating within a game, and I have the same problem in games. I simply cannot learn my way around a "map", as far back as Doom and still today. I can eventually learn specific routes, and eventually enough of these that I can perform reasonably well, but I don't form a mental model of the map even if I've played it hundreds of times and even if it's relatively small.

But I can follow directions, and I did passably well at military "land navigation" using a map, a compass and a protractor.

I would love to better understand why this is. My best guess currently is that "oblivious" is quite important - I've tried, many times, to start noticing landmarks so that I could use them later to get to a place without GPS or directions, but I always find myself having missed everything, or having "forgotten to notice" anything. My mind wanders, I guess.

trappist··on Someone bought 26.9 BTC on Binance and sent it to Satoshi's dead wallet
If a hacker could withdraw to this wallet, it stands to reason he could withdraw to his own.
trappist··on 23andMe says user data stolen in credential stuffing attack
I hope they encrypt passwords and are unable to do this.
trappist··on Indoor wood burning raises women’s lung cancer risk by 43%
I'm not seeing any attempt here to control for obvious confounders such as the relationship between this exposure and the climate you live in.

I think I'm also not a fan of the (editorialized) verb (implies causality) used in this headline, for a purely observational study.

trappist··on What Affordable Housing Means
So it's defined as policies expected to produce affordable housing, whether or not housing turns out to be affordable under those policies. And it's not affordable without those policies in place, regardless of price.
trappist··on Is technical analysis just stock market astrology?
I think that it is, but I perform a lot better when I pretend that it isn't, probably because it imposes some discipline, however arbitrary.
trappist··on 3M reaches $10.3B settlement over PFAS contamination of water systems
This would defeat the entire purpose of incorporation. Not to say you're wrong, but incorporation exists to prevent this.
trappist··on Sam Altman goes before US Congress to propose licenses for building AI
It seems to me every licensing regime begins with incumbents lobbying for protection from competition, then goes down in history as absolutely necessary consumer protection programs.
trappist··on FDA Finalizes Rule to Deregulate Hearing Aids
This change doesn't prohibit hearing-impaired patients from seeing an audiologist to get set up with a hearing aid. It's just no longer compulsory. I can't imagine understanding that this requirement is an encumbrance, and being "against the philosophy" of unencumbering access to hearing aids.
trappist··on Tesla ordered to pay more than $3M to former worker in racism suit
If something is not OK, can there not be a penalty for it which is also not OK?
trappist··on Robots have been about to take all the jobs for 100 years
I think #1 is more attributable to the rising minimum wage. I read the other day that the one job that automation did successfully eliminate was the elevator operator, but I'm quite certain that - like the gas station attendant in states that don't mandate it - it fell victim to the rising minimum wage. It simply became illegal to pay people what these jobs are worth.
trappist··on Prices at the supermarket keep rising. So do corporate profits
Production happens over time. Businesses pay for their inputs at one price level, do production things, then sell their final outputs at a higher price level, resulting in higher margins than would be possible under stable prices.
trappist··on Emergency bridge loan for SVB customers
FTA:

> This credit line is funded by 3rd-party capital (and not Brex directly), who are working with Brex to minimize the impact of this event to the startup ecosystem.

trappist··on The decline of net neutrality activism
> It's about a couple of small groups getting to choose what content you do or don't see

See I think this is a big part of why this died out. The boogeyman NN was to save us from was corporate censorship, which is now widely regarded - in particular by formerly energetic NN advocates - as a good thing.

trappist··on Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says
Trump was a stopped clock on this. I don't think that's paren't point. The point, to me, is that the entire establishment treated the lab leak hypothesis as misinformation for no better reason than that Trump had endorsed it. That is, on no better evidence. And then aggressively censored it.
trappist··on Analysis finds Australia’s inflation being driven by company profits, not wages
Wikipedia:

> The Australia Institute is a left-wing public policy think tank...

This is the only conclusion this organization could ever be expected to reach.

In any case inflationary environments tend to be good for profits, because production takes place over time. Inputs were purchased at a lower price level than that under which final goods and services are sold.

trappist··on Steroids are rampant among fitness influencers, trainers and bodybuilders
> promoting heavy meat diets

The ones not promoting heavy meat diets are generally recommending (and/or shilling) supplements of nutrients you get for free on a heavy meat diet, such as protein shakes and creatine powder.

trappist··on Ask HN: Why don’t governments target zero inflation?
The only reason to hold money is for future consumption. Every dollar you spend today is a dollar you can't spend tomorrow. The only person harmed when I save my money is myself, and only because inflation is eroding its purchasing power.
trappist··on California greenlights jaywalking. It’s a step in the right direction
Headline might as well end in "and that's a good thing." Why can't they stop editorializing everything?
trappist··on New Webb image captures clearest view of Neptune’s rings in decades
Known for: Not discovering Neptune https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Challis
trappist··on White House Is Mulling a Ban on Bitcoin Mining
Of all the possible reasons, the ROI is why it should be banned?
trappist··on Collapse of emergency healthcare in England may be costing 500 lives every week
NIH budget has increased over 40% since 2015. https://officeofbudget.od.nih.gov/pdfs/FY22/spending-hist/Me...
trappist··on Ask HN: Are You Wearing Sunscreen?
47m. This time of year (in Texas) I lay out 30-60 minutes a day in a tiny speedo to maximize exposure, and walk shirtless in shorts another 30 minutes, no sunscreen. I'm pretty tan by now which affords significant protection as I understand it. My heuristic has been: we made it a really, really long time with more sun exposure than I can get if I try, before sunscreen was even invented. I might do it differently if I were fair-skinned, or lived at higher altitude or something. During the less sunny months I supplement D3.
trappist··on Musk announces funding secured for Twitter buy
> Also those sales were pretty much required for taxes

His reason - or at least his public justification - for that sale was to deliberately generate a tax liability. If you recall people were getting pretty bent about him not having such a thing, as a zillionaire.

trappist··on Locutus: A platform for building decentralized apps, from the creator of Freenet
Not just working on it. We use Storj in production and it's dramatically cheaper than S3.
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