The article uses the word "organic" in a highly technical manner, meaning chemical compounds that contain carbon, and of course we already know that space is filled with that sort of thing. It does NOT mean "organic" in…
Although to be fair, dust is definitely a problem if you want to see into the center of the galaxy which is why most of the observations of Sagittarius A* are done in the infrared or near-infrared spectrum, which can…
It really is that empty. Science fiction movies mess up our perception, but reality is way more mind-boggling that we realize. Check this out: if you want to build a model galaxy to scale and you start with the Sun as a…
The "lump of labor fallacy" isn't really relevant here because we're not talking about work going away. We're talking about the usefulness of human labor as a means of production going away. No, not entirely, but enough…
The word "job" as used here is a technical term. It doesn't mean "anything that needs doing". It doesn't mean "anything I find enjoyable or worthwhile". It actually means "activities that someone will pay me money to do…
Actually, a lot of California is going to turn into some sort of desert. There are several borderline ecosystems that used to support mature trees but once we lost them to disease or fire no trees of any kind appear to…
No, he's saying that "merit" is an incredibly easily-gamed metric. We can measure results all right, and we can measure ability rather less so, but "merit" implies a casual link between ability and results that is very…
Um - in this case we're saving the internet (well, really radio spectrum that people use to access the internet) from private corporations, not the government. A totally free market sucks because there will never be a…
Dr. Pamela Gay wrote an article about the difficult state of non-tenure jobs in research and academia: http://www.starstryder.com/2015/11/12/dreaming-of-success-in... It's the same problem for software devs, postdocs,…
As far as I know, no one (not even the investors) has claimed to have seen a working prototype deliver significant power to a cell phone.
That's the point. It's likely that at the time, she honestly didn't know the difference (or didn't understand the difference well enough to realize that it would be obvious to other people). She did a Ted Talk where she…
Seems like they need to do the hardware equivalent of a "git bisect" here. Instead of fiddling around with the current version of the device, trying to figure out if the observed effect is actually propulsion or just an…
And I think at some point the customers are going to figure out that the startup merry-go-round is and never was intended for their benefit. Over time it's going to get harder for new startups to attract customers…
I've lived in Seattle for 20 years and the only earthquake I've ever actually felt here was the Nisqually quake in 2001. Contrast that with some parts of Japan where you feel quakes on a monthly basis or more.
There will be significant damage from water all around inland Puget Sound, though I agree not on the scale of the full-blown tsunami on the coast. Everything is going to shift 30 to 100 feet west over the course of a…
Yes, this, a thousand times yes. The transparently-malicious abuse of ads on SourceForge is a tragedy and it's been that way for years and years. It is a honeypot for lazy people (or those without meticulous attention…
That's a very unreasonable point of view. Sure, it's true that in the past 200 years we've had an explosion of technological progress but there's absolutely no reason to assume that it's possible to continue it for an…
Relativity kind of messes with our notions of time. Any event that happens outside of our lightcone (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_cone) cannot have any casual effect on us, even theoretically, until it enters our…
I completely agree with the capitalism problem, but the most likely hands to end up holding the web of trust would be the browser makers, not the banks.
A couple of problems: The average internet user has no idea who's trustworthy and who isn't. If they have to personally grant trust in order to get at some content they're looking for, they'll simply do it. This is the…
As computers/robots get better and more versatile, they inevitably "compete" for jobs and provide downward wage pressure the same as if the skilled human labor pool (but not the human consumer pool) had drastically…
The problem of standardized testing has a direct analogue in software engineering that makes the situation crystal clear to any programmer - remember when our industry thought it was a good idea to measure programmer…
Really? You must be on a rare and exceptional org, then. I left Microsoft because the stack rank system most often worked exactly as described in the article and it was just as corrosive as they described. (I’m making…
Have you tried it? I have. It's quite startling the first time you put a bunch of helium balloons in your car, accelerate away from a stoplight, and have them all crowd up against the windshield. In an accelerating car,…
The article uses the word "organic" in a highly technical manner, meaning chemical compounds that contain carbon, and of course we already know that space is filled with that sort of thing. It does NOT mean "organic" in…
Although to be fair, dust is definitely a problem if you want to see into the center of the galaxy which is why most of the observations of Sagittarius A* are done in the infrared or near-infrared spectrum, which can…
It really is that empty. Science fiction movies mess up our perception, but reality is way more mind-boggling that we realize. Check this out: if you want to build a model galaxy to scale and you start with the Sun as a…
The "lump of labor fallacy" isn't really relevant here because we're not talking about work going away. We're talking about the usefulness of human labor as a means of production going away. No, not entirely, but enough…
The word "job" as used here is a technical term. It doesn't mean "anything that needs doing". It doesn't mean "anything I find enjoyable or worthwhile". It actually means "activities that someone will pay me money to do…
Actually, a lot of California is going to turn into some sort of desert. There are several borderline ecosystems that used to support mature trees but once we lost them to disease or fire no trees of any kind appear to…
No, he's saying that "merit" is an incredibly easily-gamed metric. We can measure results all right, and we can measure ability rather less so, but "merit" implies a casual link between ability and results that is very…
Um - in this case we're saving the internet (well, really radio spectrum that people use to access the internet) from private corporations, not the government. A totally free market sucks because there will never be a…
Dr. Pamela Gay wrote an article about the difficult state of non-tenure jobs in research and academia: http://www.starstryder.com/2015/11/12/dreaming-of-success-in... It's the same problem for software devs, postdocs,…
As far as I know, no one (not even the investors) has claimed to have seen a working prototype deliver significant power to a cell phone.
That's the point. It's likely that at the time, she honestly didn't know the difference (or didn't understand the difference well enough to realize that it would be obvious to other people). She did a Ted Talk where she…
Seems like they need to do the hardware equivalent of a "git bisect" here. Instead of fiddling around with the current version of the device, trying to figure out if the observed effect is actually propulsion or just an…
And I think at some point the customers are going to figure out that the startup merry-go-round is and never was intended for their benefit. Over time it's going to get harder for new startups to attract customers…
I've lived in Seattle for 20 years and the only earthquake I've ever actually felt here was the Nisqually quake in 2001. Contrast that with some parts of Japan where you feel quakes on a monthly basis or more.
There will be significant damage from water all around inland Puget Sound, though I agree not on the scale of the full-blown tsunami on the coast. Everything is going to shift 30 to 100 feet west over the course of a…
Yes, this, a thousand times yes. The transparently-malicious abuse of ads on SourceForge is a tragedy and it's been that way for years and years. It is a honeypot for lazy people (or those without meticulous attention…
That's a very unreasonable point of view. Sure, it's true that in the past 200 years we've had an explosion of technological progress but there's absolutely no reason to assume that it's possible to continue it for an…
Relativity kind of messes with our notions of time. Any event that happens outside of our lightcone (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_cone) cannot have any casual effect on us, even theoretically, until it enters our…
I completely agree with the capitalism problem, but the most likely hands to end up holding the web of trust would be the browser makers, not the banks.
A couple of problems: The average internet user has no idea who's trustworthy and who isn't. If they have to personally grant trust in order to get at some content they're looking for, they'll simply do it. This is the…
As computers/robots get better and more versatile, they inevitably "compete" for jobs and provide downward wage pressure the same as if the skilled human labor pool (but not the human consumer pool) had drastically…
The problem of standardized testing has a direct analogue in software engineering that makes the situation crystal clear to any programmer - remember when our industry thought it was a good idea to measure programmer…
Really? You must be on a rare and exceptional org, then. I left Microsoft because the stack rank system most often worked exactly as described in the article and it was just as corrosive as they described. (I’m making…
Have you tried it? I have. It's quite startling the first time you put a bunch of helium balloons in your car, accelerate away from a stoplight, and have them all crowd up against the windshield. In an accelerating car,…