> The Illusion of Security > Flock advertises a drop in crime, but the true cost is a culture of mistrust and preemptive suspicion. As the EFF warns, communities are being sold a false promise of safety - at the expense…
> It is true that only Yudkowsky gets to say what the rational conclusion of his ideas are. Nobody else gets to speculate. Only the pope of rationalism, because he's the rational one here. See? It's right there in the…
> The Rational Conclusion of Doomerism Is Violence No it isn't. The most prominent "doomer" has a strong grasp and deep, wholehearted appreciation for the the principles of liberalism and the rule of law:…
We pin all of our npm dependencies and upgrade them via dependabot. Dependabot links to the GitHub or GitLab release for each dependency bump, and I typically skim / scan every single commit to each dependency. But…
Cool post! I don't have a ton of experience using Stripe, but shouldn't you at least be handling some sort of payment_failed webhook? It looks like you call _createSubscription and set the initial value for…
A gold standard is terrible monetary policy, even worse than the status quo. Good monetary policy would be the fed doing NGDP level targeting a la Scott Sumner:…
Well, to some degree, people probably do want to live in big, new houses. There's also probably some "real" underlying demand for an education, outside of people needing it (or believing that they need it) to get a good…
Well, it does actually solve the problem in the sense that it actually causes houses to be built and students to go to college. Probably this indicates the real problem is more about bad monetary policy and bad tax…
Yes, this is probably effective propaganda, and moreover, propaganda for a just cause. Nonetheless it is not evidence for climate change, and moreover it is not even necessarily an example of the effects of climate…
Individual animals in the wild die cruel, slow, painful deaths all the time, regardless of whether their species as a whole is thriving or not. So while this video might evoke a strong emotional response, it is just an…
Isn't it much more likely that Tether is keeping some or most of its reserves in bitcoin, rather than USD, as they claim? Most people get Tethers from trading on bitcoin exchanges, not from buying it with USD. If Tether…
No, not really. It makes it useful for criminals, and a small number of people who might have good reasons to buy things, but that doesn't mean it should have a market cap of billions. I'm not saying there are no good…
Because it seems like an obvious bubble, with little / no real value? Bitcoin was / is a pretty cool technological innovation. But the main use-case seems to be buying illegal things or laundering money, and vast…
Related to this, does anyone know of a way to bet against bitcoin (or cryptocurrencies in general), without buying cryptocurrencies themselves? There are lots of more-or-less sketchy cryptocurrency exchanges which allow…
Nice. In general, I think cryptocurrency and blockchains are pretty over-hyped, but they are a good example of a non-trivial but still simple application to show off a programming language. For example, compare this to…
I've never heard of Capture the Flag. Can someone a bit more familiar describe what the format is exactly, or what type of questions / challenges there are? Any examples from last year's competition?
Neat. Just browsing through the source, is there a reason that: calculateBlockHash (Block i p t b _) = concatMap hashString [show i, p, show t, b] is not calculateBlockHash (Block i p t b _) = hashString $ concat [show…
Here's a response about why complexity theory may not constrain AI that much: https://www.gwern.net/Complexity%20vs%20AI It is something "AI alarmists" think about.
The same entity should not be responsible for both education and certification/credentialing. It creates a serious conflict-of-interest, and a better system would be to separate the entities that grant degrees from…
Doesn't that possibility just make it easier to put the sheriff on the bottom though? I think the harder to judge possibility is if RH and crew were locked up rightfully for committing some sort of crime.
Eh, it seems to me the sheriff horribly abused his position of power. Either LJ and RH were imprisoned rightfully, in which case perhaps they shouldn't be just be released, or else the sheriff wrongly imprisoned them.…
Interesting, but I'd be surprised if anyone who reads HN chose anything other than some permutation of {{Maid Marion, Little John}, {Robin Hood, The Sheriff}}, which cuts down the answer space by a factor of 6. My own…
Are you able to think in lojban, then? The idea behind lojban appeals to me, but (according the the times article currently on the front page of HN), there's an active community of Esperanto speakers in NYC. I'm not…
Learning a conlang seems like fun. But should I start with Lojban or Esperanto? My impression is that Lojban is meant to be as logically unambiguous (in terms of grammar) as possible, while Esperanto seeks to be more of…
And what attracts top-notch faculty? Other top-notch faculty and an excellent reputation. You end up with roughly the same positive feedback loop.
> The Illusion of Security > Flock advertises a drop in crime, but the true cost is a culture of mistrust and preemptive suspicion. As the EFF warns, communities are being sold a false promise of safety - at the expense…
> It is true that only Yudkowsky gets to say what the rational conclusion of his ideas are. Nobody else gets to speculate. Only the pope of rationalism, because he's the rational one here. See? It's right there in the…
> The Rational Conclusion of Doomerism Is Violence No it isn't. The most prominent "doomer" has a strong grasp and deep, wholehearted appreciation for the the principles of liberalism and the rule of law:…
We pin all of our npm dependencies and upgrade them via dependabot. Dependabot links to the GitHub or GitLab release for each dependency bump, and I typically skim / scan every single commit to each dependency. But…
Cool post! I don't have a ton of experience using Stripe, but shouldn't you at least be handling some sort of payment_failed webhook? It looks like you call _createSubscription and set the initial value for…
A gold standard is terrible monetary policy, even worse than the status quo. Good monetary policy would be the fed doing NGDP level targeting a la Scott Sumner:…
Well, to some degree, people probably do want to live in big, new houses. There's also probably some "real" underlying demand for an education, outside of people needing it (or believing that they need it) to get a good…
Well, it does actually solve the problem in the sense that it actually causes houses to be built and students to go to college. Probably this indicates the real problem is more about bad monetary policy and bad tax…
Yes, this is probably effective propaganda, and moreover, propaganda for a just cause. Nonetheless it is not evidence for climate change, and moreover it is not even necessarily an example of the effects of climate…
Individual animals in the wild die cruel, slow, painful deaths all the time, regardless of whether their species as a whole is thriving or not. So while this video might evoke a strong emotional response, it is just an…
Isn't it much more likely that Tether is keeping some or most of its reserves in bitcoin, rather than USD, as they claim? Most people get Tethers from trading on bitcoin exchanges, not from buying it with USD. If Tether…
No, not really. It makes it useful for criminals, and a small number of people who might have good reasons to buy things, but that doesn't mean it should have a market cap of billions. I'm not saying there are no good…
Because it seems like an obvious bubble, with little / no real value? Bitcoin was / is a pretty cool technological innovation. But the main use-case seems to be buying illegal things or laundering money, and vast…
Related to this, does anyone know of a way to bet against bitcoin (or cryptocurrencies in general), without buying cryptocurrencies themselves? There are lots of more-or-less sketchy cryptocurrency exchanges which allow…
Nice. In general, I think cryptocurrency and blockchains are pretty over-hyped, but they are a good example of a non-trivial but still simple application to show off a programming language. For example, compare this to…
I've never heard of Capture the Flag. Can someone a bit more familiar describe what the format is exactly, or what type of questions / challenges there are? Any examples from last year's competition?
Neat. Just browsing through the source, is there a reason that: calculateBlockHash (Block i p t b _) = concatMap hashString [show i, p, show t, b] is not calculateBlockHash (Block i p t b _) = hashString $ concat [show…
Here's a response about why complexity theory may not constrain AI that much: https://www.gwern.net/Complexity%20vs%20AI It is something "AI alarmists" think about.
The same entity should not be responsible for both education and certification/credentialing. It creates a serious conflict-of-interest, and a better system would be to separate the entities that grant degrees from…
Doesn't that possibility just make it easier to put the sheriff on the bottom though? I think the harder to judge possibility is if RH and crew were locked up rightfully for committing some sort of crime.
Eh, it seems to me the sheriff horribly abused his position of power. Either LJ and RH were imprisoned rightfully, in which case perhaps they shouldn't be just be released, or else the sheriff wrongly imprisoned them.…
Interesting, but I'd be surprised if anyone who reads HN chose anything other than some permutation of {{Maid Marion, Little John}, {Robin Hood, The Sheriff}}, which cuts down the answer space by a factor of 6. My own…
Are you able to think in lojban, then? The idea behind lojban appeals to me, but (according the the times article currently on the front page of HN), there's an active community of Esperanto speakers in NYC. I'm not…
Learning a conlang seems like fun. But should I start with Lojban or Esperanto? My impression is that Lojban is meant to be as logically unambiguous (in terms of grammar) as possible, while Esperanto seeks to be more of…
And what attracts top-notch faculty? Other top-notch faculty and an excellent reputation. You end up with roughly the same positive feedback loop.