backprojection

I generally agree with you - shopping at TJs is a fairly low-BS experience. But I feel that putting less fresh stuff in front is just common sense - its just a a FIFO buffer.

Silly question: shouldn't be piss-simple to write with whatever syntax you like and parse it to markdown, with tools like Python?

>Users are vastly better protected from the kind of network surveillance they mention with Apple products, thanks to their curated, controlled approach to third party software distribution.

I'm a strong proponent of free software, but I do see your point, that there's safety for non-technical people in a walled garden, as long as you trust the gardener.

I'm wondering if the concept of free-software and a walled garden are really that incompatible. Let's say the garden has a gate, that a user has to go through a clear process in order to allow to install non-recommended software.

This would give a similar level of protection for non-technical people, but will still be free-software, and allow technical users to install whatever they want.

One effect would be that, if the gardeners decide not to recommend some popular software, then many users would be inclined to disable the safety features, thus reducing overall safety, so there will be a penalty if the gardeners are too strict.

Tin foil is not audit-able since it's hardware.

Sorry, I'm not following, why is that BS? It sounds like you're saying it's BS since other stores are not Trader Joe's.

Sorry, I don't know anything about finance/business. What you say makes some sense to me, that going public lets initial investors cash out, if they so wish. But I'm still confused, why not sell public shares from the get-go. Is it that it's easier to make your case (for investment) to a VC than it is to Joe public?

Could you trust any that remain operating, after the Lavabit fiasco?

Yes, if we had this kind of data for several campaigns, then you could compute a (normalized) <% of goal> vs. <time>, and from that estimate the final <% of goal> for this campaign.

The problem with your original calculation, is you're assuming the rate is constant, which it may be, roughly, for day 3 through day 27, however in these campaigns there's always an uptick right before the deadline. Really, it's that uptick that you want to estimate, based on previous campaigns.

I don't think kickstarter or indigogo release this kind of data though, unfortunately.

Because the earth isn't designed to take care of us. If we had stayed a small pre-industrial society, we would still eventually die of something - there are myriad ways species go extinct.

The only way to ensure long-term survival is to develop science and technology quickly enough to solve problems (both natural and artificial) as they come up.

This includes solving problems created by past generations, who necessarily did not have access to the knowledge needed to avoid creating those problems in the first place.

It's certainly not guaranteed that we will do so fast enough.

> The system only works if it's round trip.

I'm confused, why is this? From the tweet:

"Return the pack on your journey back or keep it & we'll bill you the difference"

I don't think our 4th amendment applies to foreigners, does it? I do agree with your sentiment though.

But Musk hasn't really released any real details about it. How can you comparte this to something you don't know anything about? Or has he released more details?

Are the USPTO managers paid according to the fees they collect? Are they not on a fixed salary?

Interesting.

It looks like (from info on wikipedia pages) the Xeon Phi 3100, gets about 3.3 GFLOPS/WATT, whereas the Epiphany E64G401 manages about 50 GFLOPS/WATT.

So something like 10 of these might compare to 1 xeon phi, and still be cheaper in terms of hardware, and much cheaper in terms of power consumption.

How does this compare the the new Intel MIC (Xeon Phi) co-processor boards? I think they claim 1TFLOP. Can we think of this as a low-powered alternative?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_MIC

> The eventual plan is to refactor to a simpler system and get rid of the duct tape.

Yeah, we're on the same page.

I think the critical thing with the software/systems-analogy is that it's far easier for us to understand these technologies, and more over, the technologies generally lend them selves to reproducible experiments. You can collect 'lessons learned' and do experiments, and based on that knowledge, refactor. It's much harder in politics for the reasons you mentioned.

The whole reason we have 'free' markets is that we lack the knowledge that would be required to efficiently run a command-economy, so we let the market decide, and apply duck-tape where appropriate. Same goes with democracy: we lack the knowledge to build a benevolent dictator which maximizes its people's happiness.

So I guess democracy + duck-tape is the best we can do, for now.

I see your idea, that going after money-influence in politics might always end up consisting of simply adding more rules, and thus complicating and expanding government further.

I would take the idea more seriously if its something that can be rigorously demonstrated; i.e. there is no way to amend the US government without adding so many rules as to frustrate the situation even further.

That being said, any government that consists of human beings is going to have an emergent agenda of some sort or the other. It seems to me that job number one of any government would be to police it self so that that agenda is generally in the people's favor, first. I would have thought that that's really what democracy means, maybe I'm wrong.

Surely even a more libertarian government would have policies in place to fight its corruption?

> A minimal government is one not worth buying. A big and intrusive government is one totally worth buying.

I get what you're saying. If a government barely has any powers, they yes, it's not worth corrupting, but I really don't think we're headed in that direction any time soon. Surely even a medium sized-government would still be worth corrupting?

Moreover, why can't we have both? A government with smaller influence, but still freer of money-influence than today's.

It seems to me that the current political reality is that Lesig's proposals would be much easier to achieve than bringing our government's influence to a level more agreeable to a libertarian.

I would speculate that democracies like our own broadly tend coverage to the middle of extreme views. If that's the case, then we won't achieve a libertarain-sized government, unless you convince a good majority of voters. Hence, it seems clear that we should focus more on the quality of government, right now.

This one is much better and on the mark. Fitzgerald's quote needs a corollary, which appeals to intelectual honesty. If reason definitively tells you x, but you want to believe y, then you might be tempted to abuse Fitzgerald's quote.

Works on my Gnex too. I still find the zoom buttons are best though, they're more 'robust' to use.

I completely agree with your sentiment. My impression is they're releasing more models, redesigned like this, in the near future; we can only hope they'll have a high-res option.

I really don't mind paying $200 extra for a great screen.

> 2560x1440 tablet

If that's the nexus 10 you're referring to, it's actually 2560×1600 :)

>People want to blame others for their problems. Whether it's junk food

Sure, personal responsibility and all. That doesn't imply that a drug-pusher/dealer isn't an asshole.

So what's the motivation for using these batteries in the 787 anyway? Can they just switch to whatever they've used before?

>For example, he doesn't discussed the causes of accelerating returns, doesn't support the causes with data, only the effects.

I agree with this. It seems to be a huge hole in the entire discussion. It's not enough to cite historical data, and assert that exponential growth will continue indefinitely. I could speculate a bit about some explanations. But I'm curious if there are any good discussions out there, does anyone have some recommendations?

I don't think the analogy works, because you're already an AT&T customer. AT&T building out capacity, doesn't necessarily lead to more sales; the price/GB drops, they don't necessarily make more money, whereas building more printing plants does lead to more sales. Unless of coarse their offering gets better than Verizon's, and people start switching.

On the other hand, why not just wait a week 'till all the fervor is over. If you're cool-headed enough to realize this is all to build buzz, then surely you can wait a week.

I think this makes sense from a high-level point of view. It seems like it would be bad for the economy, if more wealth flows from consumers to bank profits.

This is maybe simplistic, but I'm thinking progress is better served if more people can buy iGadgets, than if bank execs can spend more on luxury goods.

There are huge, positive, side effects when people buy more technology, because technology gets cheaper, which then advances economic growth.

Note how NPR is one of the most right-biased in this result. It's pretty evident from years of listening that the NPR staff generally are progressives, and would left. So I think this result exemplifies how genuinely 'fair and balanced' NPR really is.

I live in Texas, and I voted for Johnson. If I lived in Ohio I would have voted for Obama. It's hard to find numbers at the moment, but it looks like Johnsons's pulling 5%.

Isn't what you're describing more an effect of a two-party system? Unrelated policies tend to get pushed together just because they fit best under one party vs. the other one.