samizdatum

7 ms·

1.
by samizdatum 7y ago
Maximin is probably better for avoiding those pesky "torture/enslave half of humanity" scenarios.
2.
by samizdatum 7y ago
Yes, a utility monster is conceivable under both theories. It's amusing how a utility monster represents a serious objection for utilitarian philosophers, but is a total non-concern for people that solve optimization problems for a liv
3.
by samizdatum 7y ago
> See, in this family, we DON’T just want to maximize the overall quantity of individual happiness (like Bentham). No… In this family, we want to maximize the overall quantity AND the quality of individual happiness (like John Stuart Mil
4.
by samizdatum 8y ago
I'm pretty confident that Pynchon, in Gravity's Rainbow, composed the greatest single-sentence ode to toothpaste ever written: "In the pipefitters’ sheds, icicled, rattling when the gales are in the Straits, here’s thousands
5.
by samizdatum 10y ago
In a banal sense, it's correct to say that there's no searcher, no goal to evolution. As far as we know, "natural selection" isn't "real" in the sense that electromagnetism is "real"; natural sel
6.
by samizdatum 10y ago
If I'm understanding you correctly, you're saying that evolution is a tautological collapse of the "why" in "why do we exist". Let me explain: evolution is a massive, groping search in the ultrahigh dimensional
7.
by samizdatum 10y ago
I think I was addressing attitudes towards new technologies, rather than their actual impacts, which you quite rightly focus on. I'm less convinced that the impacts of these new technologies are as pernicious as you claim, though I
8.
by samizdatum 10y ago
Virtual reality is perhaps an unfortunate moniker, because it encourages a dichotomisation of reality into the "virtual" and "real", and conceiving of these as opposing, or at least orthogonal forces. Thought of in this
9.
by samizdatum 10y ago
I think societal condemnation is inconsistent, poorly calibrated, and largely rooted in exogenous/historical factors. The outrage over isolated killings of charismatic megafauna is matched only by the indifference to extraordinarily la
10.
by samizdatum 10y ago
I'm baffled that this sort of discourse is considered acceptable. Not in an "I-feel-appalled" sort of way, but in a very literal, "why doesn't society treat this like racism or sexism" sort of way. If someone w
11.
by samizdatum 10y ago
Location: Melbourne, Australia Remote: Yes Willing to relocate: Yes Technologies (Ranked 1-3 experience [3 is highest]): - Web: React/Redux (2), Angular 1x (3), Gulp (2), protractor (2), HTML (3), CSS (2) - .NET stack: MV
12.
by samizdatum 11y ago
You're implying that if something can be outdone it doesn't have a purpose, which seems to rule out purposes for pretty much everything. I'm sure there's always someone that can write books or maths papers or symphonies
13.
by samizdatum 11y ago
Voting is compulsory in Australia.
14.
by samizdatum 11y ago
I find this is one of the biggest problems with object-oriented programming. The object is a terrible unit of abstraction, because it forces you to carve up your domain into rigid chunks which might map to your domain today, and fail to map
15.
by samizdatum 11y ago
Fair enough, but I think that's a separate issue. If we go down this path, we'd be diluting the term "UX" to homeopathic levels. I wouldn't criticize an iOS-only app for bad UX because it ignores half the market.
16.
by samizdatum 11y ago
Fair enough. Do you think informal discussions benefit from a focus on thematic engagement, rather than logical minutiae?
17.
by samizdatum 11y ago
Virtual reality is perhaps an unfortunate moniker, because it encourages a dichotomisation of reality into "virtual" and "real", and conceiving of these as opposing, or at least orthogonal forces. Thought of in this way,
18.
by samizdatum 11y ago
Why not? That's a very strong statement. I could think of a countless number of bets that trivially match your criteria (i.e. even odds Facebook will not stop selling ads this year), that you'd be crazy not to take.
19.
by samizdatum 11y ago
Yeah, this article reads like someone was forced by their employer to write a blog post. If it was for self-promotion you'd think they'd put a bit more effort into it. Would be better if retitled to "10 things that just so ha
20.
by samizdatum 11y ago
In theory, the only irreducible UX distinction surrounding logically separate pages in a traditional website vs a SPA is that the SPA doesn't do the full postback, which is arguably a better UX. Sure, in practice many SPAs might be sub
21.
by samizdatum 11y ago
Fair enough, you meant to refer to a subset of web development, rather than the entire field. It's a significantly weaker claim, though. I could pick out subsets of any field of work, and declare them non-transferable, and the details
22.
by samizdatum 11y ago
Saying an application has a "horrendous UX" because you refuse to run its code seems strange to me. You could disable CSS and images and call the result ugly, but I don't think that entitles you to call the website ugly?
23.
by samizdatum 11y ago
Really? Functional reactive programming, immutable data, unidirectional data flow, application state as a fold over a stream of actions... it seems like web development is seeing a really high uptake of valuable, transferable abstractions a
24.
by samizdatum 11y ago
SPAs don't need to have horrendous UX?
25.
by samizdatum 11y ago
Yeah, the YouTube is better quality, though. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ti_3SqavXjk&t=55m50s This link will start playing as Carmack tells the "broken Netflix engineer" story, while recounting how he fini
26.
by samizdatum 11y ago
You're making a far stronger claim than denying that some people are not 10x more productive than others. You're claiming that anyone can be just as productive as anyone else. That seems to either be such a strong claim that it&#x
27.
by samizdatum 11y ago
Facebook has a pretty good record of non-interference with acquisitions, especially in the user-facing sense that you're describing. It will be even more true for Oculus, because Oculus was not a competitor to Facebook like Instagram,
28.
by samizdatum 11y ago
Carmack is just insanely productive. He had a working prototype of the GearVR Netflix app three days after he started working with Netflix to develop it, and pretty much finished the app a week later. Have a read about how he developed th
29.
by samizdatum 11y ago
Razor is really quite different from React. Razor seems to have been born out of a frustration someone had with writing return "<div>" + model.name + "</div>"; Razor is basically a DSL for C# stri
30.
by samizdatum 11y ago
Maybe kungtotte is talking about accommodation or vergence, though I don't see how these are relevant to f.lux or colour temperature.

More ›