john_b

8 ms·

1.
by john_b 3y ago
I've been to Vienna and I have a lot of positive things to say about the city, but trying to adapt their model 1:1 to the US is not realistic for many reasons. You're right that public housing doesn't fundamentally require in
2.
by john_b 3y ago
Public housing has income restrictions associated with it. This article talks about how even people with stable, well-paying jobs struggle to find housing. Public housing isn't the solution for these people. What we should copy from Vi
3.
by john_b 6y ago
It really is a currency, however. It's not a matter of perception but rather of how Bitcoin functions. The biggest difference between a commodity and currency is that a commodity is essential for some process or product. A currency is
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by john_b 6y ago
If your bear case is a 10-year recovery to 40 from 20 that's a CAGR of 7.18%, about the same as the long-term average CAGR of the S&P. The difference is that the S&P doesn't have bankrupty risk, whereas airlines do [1]. So
5.
by john_b 11y ago
> "They however do control access to the account. This means there's a point where they get all sorts of data on me, and while I personally don't mind, I must admit I felt a bit safer when I thought it was a smaller, purp
6.
by john_b 11y ago
What failure mode would you want, if not off? Having a failed sensor+controller control temperature in any way isn't what I'd want. One could have a backup thermostat as a fallback, but I doubt their average customer wants anythin
7.
by john_b 11y ago
If you are in SF, this is partially due to how the tech industry distorts the sex ratio there: http://pics.city-data.com/agegraph/2455.png (This is for residents of SF only, so it won't account for any differences
8.
by john_b 11y ago
One of the best and simplest changes I ever made was to have my phone on airplane mode by default. Originally, the change was just to maximize the life of a dying battery, but even after I replaced the battery I discovered that I was happie
9.
by john_b 11y ago
> "At the very least, I like the notion that a person should be able to have some level of control over what companies are allowed to access about them" Yes, but how do the EU regulations in question promote this goal? Backgr
10.
by john_b 11y ago
"Closed loop" simply implies feedback from the outputs to the next inputs. It doesn't mean the system is "closed".
11.
by john_b 11y ago
It's really interesting to me how most people can easily spot propaganda in other cultures and rightfully mock it, but not only fail to notice even the most blatant propaganda in their own but even defend it. I suspect many Americans w
12.
by john_b 11y ago
There was a post on HN last week where the author provided a reasonable answer (or at least I think so) to this question. The gist is that people who are willing to pay a subscription to disable ads are exactly the people that advertisers w
13.
by john_b 11y ago
Chrome wasn't released 10 years ago.
14.
by john_b 11y ago
True, though now that it's public they may start accounting for the potential cost of lawsuits within the next year.
15.
by john_b 11y ago
Why stop with the implementors? Why not also blame the janitors that clean the office they work in? Why not blame the project managers to oversee the project? Or the politicians who approved funding for the technology? Or the voters who vot
16.
by john_b 11y ago
Except that shooting someone is generally illegal, whereas having an affair is not. Allocate your sympathy as you wish, but don't pretend that a person deserves to be the victim of a crime because you or anyone else find their behavior
17.
by john_b 11y ago
> "Secondly, surveillance is an essential tool in fighting crime." This is a very dubious assertion. I'm not aware of any evidence that mass surveillance deters or prevents crime at all, much less is "an essential t
18.
by john_b 11y ago
> "Instead of writing Xi, they should really write X[i]; because Xi is ambiguous. I find that dealing with all the ambiguity in syntax can be rather frustrating." This is a feature of math, not a bug. The potential for ambigu
19.
by john_b 11y ago
Nobody wants to see abusive speech being used. The question is whether or not the law should "protect" people from it. I'm not talking about making credible threats, because the crime of assault already covers that. If a soci
20.
by john_b 11y ago
I think it's relatively easy to distinguish "speech" from "speech plus other action," such as protesting. Even someone who supported free speech and a person's right to protest wouldn't likely support them
21.
by john_b 11y ago
> "market expectations are primarily built on faith in the future, which is an entirely irrational basis for economic decision-making" Faith in some version of future events is the only rational basis for economic decision
22.
by john_b 11y ago
> "Realistically, any form of power generation could be used in space. It's really only a question of whether it's financially and practically feasible." Are you referring only to nuclear power sources? Because a li
23.
by john_b 11y ago
Yet presumably you recognize them for the natural, if tragic, events that they are? One's support for or opposition to a force of nature is rather irrelevant.
24.
by john_b 11y ago
"Degrees of freedom" is an oversimplified way of putting it. What the parent seems to be getting at is that the rocket, when landing, has 10 state variables while only having 5 control inputs, two of which have a very limited effe
25.
by john_b 11y ago
> "I'm not sure I can muster any indignation that hunters can't hunt as much" Once a rural area with an overabundance of deer becomes re-zoned as a "residential area" the hunters often can't hunt at a
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by john_b 11y ago
This may be interesting reading for you if you find this question compelling. https://www.dartmouth.edu/~matc/MathDrama/reading/Wigner.htm...
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by john_b 11y ago
There is no shortage of lawyers who would love to be judge in his place. Making a principled stand against an unjust system is great, but making an effective stand is much better. I would rather have a judge who recognizes that mandatory
28.
by john_b 11y ago
> "They'll deflect, ignore, and basically try anything to escape the reality - they broke the rules of society and now society wants to punish them." I think most people, criminals or otherwise, understand this quite wel
29.
by john_b 11y ago
IANAL, so hopefully someone more knowledgeable will chime in, but if you can show in court that a witness has comitted a crime you can show that they are not trustworthy and essentially impeach their testimony. There was so much evidence ag
30.
by john_b 11y ago
It's important to distinguish between the types of investments Buffet makes and those the average investor makes. Buffet buys large shares that either give him a say in how the company runs its business, or sometimes just buys the busi

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