Discombulator

6 ms·

1.
by Discombulator 6y ago
From my understanding, Taleb criticizes the native use of synthetic quantitative models with strong assumptions like VaR because they give a wrong picture of the real risks. But I don’t think that his point is that risk management is worthl
2.
by Discombulator 6y ago
On the other hand, employers are also barred from colluding to keep wages artificially low, which arguably would be considered a “negotiation strategy” if one follows your interpretation. I agree though that employers have naturally more ne
3.
by Discombulator 6y ago
All disciplines studying complex systems like societies down to something like the human body, simply do not have the luxury of absolute truths like in mathematics or even the ability to run experiments like in physics (often for ethical re
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by Discombulator 6y ago
Good advice, thanks for sharing. I’d just keep in mind that there are no guarantees that kids will share our passions, even with the best approach. Humans are complex systems - it is very hard (and you would need need a lot of data) to make
5.
by Discombulator 6y ago
I’m not doubting the facts you mention and the amount of the hypothetical subsidy might be on average in the low two digit dollar range. The overall point is however that the App Store restriction was known at the time of purchase, so deman
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by Discombulator 6y ago
My last course in competition law was a while ago, but I remember this: while there are many differences in detail between the US and the EU approach, the broad strokes are the same. Also in the EU, having a monopoly is not illegal (as long
7.
by Discombulator 6y ago
But when you bought it, you knew of those restrictions, right? A fully unrestricted phone might have cost more (because it is not cross subsidized by App Store profit), so it is unfair to demand full functionality at the subsidized price.
8.
by Discombulator 6y ago
Whatever the true cost is, the argument is spurious: Apple is not forced to provide this service at cost (or with a “reasonable” markup), they can charge in any case what they want. Telegram should rather make a convincing argument why Appl
9.
by Discombulator 6y ago
Replying to myself to correct my comment: the pension benefits funding appears to be in general - and differently from what I stated - not much different to the private sector. The change introduced by the 2006 PAEA impacts however the fund
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by Discombulator 6y ago
I am at this point not convinced that you are actually trying to understand, but if you read the text you linked, it says: > If a plan is fully funded, the minimum required contribution is the cost of benefits earned during the year. The
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by Discombulator 6y ago
> If you're talking about the requirement to pre-fund their pension fund, my understanding is that UPS and FedEx (and all private corporations) were already required to do so. It seems that most observers agree that this is not the
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by Discombulator 6y ago
That is a comforting thought, but the “tough / law and order / war on drugs” response has already been tried extensively under president Calderón, and the result was an explosion in violence and killings, without overall reducing
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by Discombulator 6y ago
What you are considering a disadvantage is seen as a strength by others (myself included): you pay only for what you use. No cross-subsidization to services you don’t need!
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by Discombulator 6y ago
While the topic is interesting, I don’t think the analysis presented in the article series (at least in the first two articles) is particularly compelling. For one, it relies much on hypotheses about internal though processes, which makes i
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by Discombulator 6y ago
Very similar story here; I barely write any Perl nowadays but am still very fond of it. I especially like the sigils - they serve in a way as a primitive type system and actually convey useful information when reading code. I suspect people
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by Discombulator 6y ago
Great! Now everyone who already has an NFC U2F/WebAuthn key (e.g. YubiKey with NFC) can use it for the “advanced protection” program (which increases security on your Google account by enforcing 2FA, among other things). Before this yo
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by Discombulator 6y ago
Security is about trade offs. Talking about absolutes makes barely sense in this context, because any perfectly secure system is also perfectly useless. Despite the chosen solution on SO - and from how the question is stated, it is clear th
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by Discombulator 6y ago
Without going into detail on the actual debate, I just want to make a meta point here: If you are writing an article and the following > [All] technical challenges [...] will not be magically solved by using microservices Is the key stat
19.
by Discombulator 6y ago
IANAL, but the difference is that in this case, QI came into being as a (very narrow) reading of federal law (§1983), which congress can amend easily. The Loving case was decided on an interpretation of the constitution, which as you say, i
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by Discombulator 6y ago
Nowhere, because sensible people understand that (given anonymity of participants) active moderation is necessary so low effort slogans don’t drown out interesting conversation. And the latter is why I think many of us are here.
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by Discombulator 6y ago
I do not have answers or facts to offer, but I suspect they are similar in nature to those for the question of “why haven’t we solved security critical bugs? Why haven’t we just heavily invested in software verification? Etc.”
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by Discombulator 6y ago
>Everything is political! Everything. If you see something like science, religion, art, anything as apolitical, that probably means its just reinforcing prevailing politics. Let's assume that everything is political. We could certai
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by Discombulator 6y ago
Paraphrasing the "Fundamental theorem of software engineering", Every problem can be solved with enough levels of indirection. Every level of indirection adds complexity, so the question should be: is the additional level worth
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by Discombulator 6y ago
The article focuses on an issue that is very widespread on technical forums, and one that I find irritating. (It is a bit better here thanks to the good moderation, but you can still find examples among the comments for almost every article
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by Discombulator 7y ago
Not familiar with the author, but good on him for admitting he was wrong. I find that most people are not able to admit their faults (without endless hedging), and those who can deserve some respect.
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by Discombulator 7y ago
What I always find interesting is how Milgram’s experiments are put into context (“explained away” might be more apt) by various authors. Anecdotally, no one seems to be open to accept the conclusions of the experiments, just like in the ar
27.
by Discombulator 7y ago
Bill Gates is in my view deserving of every praise for his civic engagement, as well as a few others (e.g., those who have agreed to the pledge to give away much of their wealth). But I don’t think this is common. Just from the public state
28.
by Discombulator 7y ago
The easiest answer is that HN is frequented by many people whose main (and often only) job activity is software development, so they/we think that our plight is special. I wonder if there is some hidden irony, because it appears to me
29.
by Discombulator 7y ago
I think it depends on the details. If your code is simply cleaner, well documented etc, then fully agreed. If you introduce new dependencies, or the latest free monad transforming framework when there was none, then I’d be wary as well.
30.
by Discombulator 7y ago
PowerBI is an interesting case. As long as you do “run of the mill” business analytics (Star or snowflake tables, “simple” aggregations) it is like you say. But once you need something different, you’re in for some serious rethinking and co

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