pacala

7 ms·

1.
by pacala 6y ago
That's because sooner or later every species enters an equilibrium state with the amount of energy available in the ecosystem. In the process it may out-compete quite a bit of other species, and so we speak of 'invasive species&#x
2.
by pacala 6y ago
One reason for 'even'. Silicon Valley contains some of the richest zip codes, richest corporations and highest paying jobs in the country. Yet all this monetary wealth doesn't seem to help with a major humanitarian crisis unf
3.
by pacala 6y ago
Researchers say there are three possible explanations for the anomalous data. One is mundane, 99.98%. Two would revolutionize physics, 0.01% and 0.01%.
4.
by pacala 6y ago
I don't understand. There are dozens, if not hundreds, or even thousands of bits to use to identify any given browser, but providing one extra such bit that politely asks 'Do Not Track' is now a problem because it makes track
5.
by pacala 6y ago
It's not a black/white situation. It's a 'argue in front of a judge' situation. With sign: Unassailable evidence that tresspassers are informed they are not welcome. Without sign. Owner word vs tresspasser word. The
6.
by pacala 6y ago
Great point. There are 'No Soliciting' signs and laws. https://banneradviser.com/no-soliciting-signs > In a nutshell, no, door to door solicitation isn’t illegal. But if you have a no soliciting sign posted on
7.
by pacala 6y ago
If everyone has a lock on their door, then people will just ignore it and break into the house anyways.
8.
by pacala 6y ago
1 extra bit is the last of my concerns, there's plenty of bits to uniquely fingerprint a browser anyways. I'd gladly trade one inconsequential bit, which requires malicious intent to misuse, to keep my privacy safe when dealing wi
9.
by pacala 6y ago
Does Google Chrome set DoNotTrack by default in incognito mode? If not, why not?
10.
by pacala 6y ago
Having used both Python and Typescript recently, I largely prefer the consistency of Typescript. [Hey mom, I like cherries better than strawberries]. Having said that, I'd love to have named function arguments in Typescript. Props work
11.
by pacala 6y ago
One of the greatest boons of static typing is formal documentation of data structures and interfaces. Catching errors early is a bonus :)
12.
by pacala 6y ago
Typescript greatest features are optional types and the extensive type inference. On small projects this can work well, but on larger ones I can see overly rigid style guides requiring typing everything explicitly in triplicate becoming cum
13.
by pacala 6y ago
The title right now: 'ZFS Removes References to Slavery'. Probably 95% of the commenters have not read TFA in sufficient detail to argue minutiae details. They see 'language changed in support of the dominant political curren
14.
by pacala 6y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak
15.
by pacala 6y ago
I'm somewhat confused about the TV media landscape, as there are cable news channels, Fox / CNN / MSNBC, but there are also the big 3 networks, ABC / CBS / NBC, which also air news and are also available on cable.
16.
by pacala 6y ago
Seattle has 600,000 people. In a given year there are 30 murders and 300 rapes. One can collect 175,200,000 amateur camera footage of 'an hour in the life of the average Seattle-ite' until one encounters an hour with a murder, or
17.
by pacala 6y ago
That is almost right. Society has decided that, on average [or median if you prefer], every job is worthless. Income inequality is skyrocketing between automation, globalization and capital gains. The only jobs that are not worthless are
18.
by pacala 6y ago
Wow. Building and operating a massive unaccountable automated system to deboost and/or silence undesirable speech is now OK because 'it was a mistake'. Edit. At what point are the users and/or the public at large owed a
19.
by pacala 6y ago
There can be more than one truth valid at any given point: * The wealth was not taken from those children. At the limit, those children can just fuck off and die in the street of starvation, it's not like they have too many useful skil
20.
by pacala 6y ago
> The low skilled workers are going to get paid very little because we choose to pay them very little. I wish it were that simple. More reasons: * Low skilled workers are paid very little because there don't have any higher paid opt
21.
by pacala 6y ago
Another interesting fragment: > Q: Are the interactions that are happening right now between police and protesters something that you think is predictable? Or is this something new that we haven't seen before? > A: It's not
22.
by pacala 6y ago
These statements are not mutually exclusive.
23.
by pacala 6y ago
This is the reason why professionals don't engage in politics. In the short term it lends cover to the political actors of the day, and in the long term it destroys the credibility foundation of their own profession.
24.
by pacala 6y ago
Sadly, some of us are aware of the mess found in lower impact journals. It doesn't help with the trust issue. At all.
25.
by pacala 6y ago
It is an abdication of responsibility from Lancet / NEJM editors. Everyone not living under a rock is well aware hydroxychloroquine has, unfortunately, become a political hot potato. In this context, a paper purporting results counter
26.
by pacala 6y ago
If they are anywhere nearly as sensitive to 'bayesian priors', aka parameters made up of full cloth, as the covid19 models, then I take a hard pass. Edit: Perhaps that was a bit too much of an 'in jest' reply. I'm f
27.
by pacala 6y ago
We already know quite a bit about the world. Unclear why should we reach out into the fog of unknown for some cutting edge unproven state-of-the-art system, when there are quite a bit of well established and widely agreed upon known ones th
28.
by pacala 6y ago
Corollary: Climate science models should be built by engineers, not by scientists. Task people who 'use what is known and understood to construct systems that can be validated'. Perhaps the whole scientist-as-faux-priest meme shou
29.
by pacala 6y ago
This is pretty mind-boggling, to the point of suspecting an error in the methodology. If it is just a language model, then it has no baked in notion of test time tasks. How on earth does a language model know what is required of it at test-
30.
by pacala 6y ago
"closure is a poor mans object and an object is a poor mans closure" is true in principle. Devil's in the details. If the language forces the declaration of the object equivalent of a closure in a different scope, or even a d

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