HN user

dint

111 karma
Posts0
Comments31
View on HN
No posts found.

Further, provide documentation and support for, and sell spare parts to, users who want to fix their consoles (at least, in the case of procedures that a user could reasonably perform)

I'm a home bicycle mechanic, and all manufacturers of bike components do this.

This is a straw man. There are absolutely people who are concerned about both overpopulation, and individual overconsumption.

I am one. I limit my personal carbon footprint. I do not own a car (and hopefully never will). I rarely eat meat. I live in a cheap, inefficient apartment because I'm living on a student income, but I keep the heat low to try to limit my energy consumption.

I probably won't have kids, because it wouldn't be consistent with my concerns about climate change to bring another high-consuming American into the world.

Lots of interesting news this morning from Blue Origin's normally quiet press room. Also of note is a series of videos showing progress at their Cape Canaveral rocket factory & launch facility:

The stage 1 simulator, and integration & test facilities: https://twitter.com/blueorigin/status/1364968313047162880?s=...

"Tank Cleaning and Testing" facility: https://twitter.com/blueorigin/status/1364968720364429317?s=...

Launch Complex 36: https://twitter.com/blueorigin/status/1364969291746074628?s=...

It's exciting to see BO making progress on their campaign to catch SpaceX in the commercial launch space. I'm curious whether the slow, deliberative approach they show here will pay off in reliability, ability to scale, etc once they start putting kgs in orbit.

I rode the whole TransVA 550 this summer. The route is beautiful, breathtakingly rugged. And logistics couldn't have been easier, as the route is very well planned, with great resupply points, camping, water, etc.

It made for a fantastic introduction to real backcountry touring.

Triage is built for this: training and evaluating giant grids of models & hyperparameters using cross-validation. Similar to igel, it abstracts ML to config files and a CLI.

It's designed for use in a public policy context, so it works best with: - binary classification problems (ex: the evaluation module is designed for binary classification metrics) - problems that have a temporal component (the cross validation system makes some assumptions about this)

https://dssg.github.io/triage/

On Old Age 6 years ago

Can you recommend readings about the Buddhist take on this?

New iPhone SE 6 years ago

I am not willing to spend $250 to solve a problem that Apple willfully introduced. I am also not willing to spend $250 on a product with a usable lifetime of 18 months max.

I hear a lot about the inconvenience of wired headphones, but as a daily user of wired headphones, that's not something I experience. And it certainly doesn't outweigh the costs (financial and environmental) of switching to Apple's disposable wireless headphones.

I think this is what inspires me about spacex/musk, too. I'm not convinced there's a rational, utilitarian justification for settling Mars. But is there anything wrong with doing it solely for the purpose of having a grand purpose in the face of infinite uncertainty and doubt?

This is a long-contested debate in the field of international development. The model you propose is called microfinance, and has been attempted for decades. Here's a summary of the issue: https://blog.givewell.org/2013/01/04/cash-transfers-vs-micro...

In short:

- Microfinance programs that grant small, low-interest loans aren't sustainable. Administering those programs (especially in developing countries) carries massive overhead that isn't offset by revenue from interest.

- Furthermore, there isn't strong evidence that low-interest loans actually improve their recipients' well-being on net (considering the harm that indebtedness can cause).

- Evidence (from randomly-controlled trials) shows that direct cash transfers are effective in improving recipients' well-being on a number of metrics, and that recipients do not spend them on "sin goods" like alcohol or tobacco[0].

[0] https://www.princeton.edu/haushofer/publications/Haushofer_S...

By this logic: A large portion of roads are low-demand and have few drivers. Why do my taxes subsidize the upkeep of those roads, and not just the major highways?

Low-demand, niche routes are necessary for a public transit system to work for its users. Sure, 80% of my trips might be on 2 or 3 routes. But without access to the handful of routes I ride the other 20% of the time, the system wouldn’t work for me, and I’d need a car to get around.

For example: when I take the bus later than ~9pm, I’m often one of just a few people riding it. But knowing I have the option to take the bus late at night is critical to the system feeling reliable. This allows me to live without a car.

Hopefully, this effect reduces congestion in my city, as more people are enabled to live low-car or car-free.

Can you talk at all about what they do to develop writing skill?

I'm convinced it's a major reason they've been so successful.

I'd be interested to hear why you think this.

One guess I've got is that a high standard for writing is a filter for bad ideas - if you can't justify your idea in a tight, well-written document, then it's probably not worth trying out.

Does anyone know why Amazon engineers always seem to write so well? Any time I read technical content from Amazon, I am struck by how clear and concise it is.

AirPods Pro 7 years ago

The answer then, is that goods like this may not be worthwhile purchases, comparing the environmental impact they cause to the limited (nonexistent?) benefits that they bring to our society.

In America, most areas (even many cities) lack public bus infrastructure with the reliability or capacity to serve this role. However, in cities that do, busing is often outsourced to public transit - each student in my city gets a bus pass with their student ID.

Similarly: I am certain that using bicycles as my main means of transportation for the past 3 years has made me a more cautious and methodical driver on the rare occasion that I use a car.

One of the article's main points is that when cars drive faster, they are much more likely to kill pedestrians in an accident. So even if modern engineering may allow drivers to stay in control of their cars at higher speeds, cars still become more lethal to non-drivers.