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bryanwb

600 karma · joined October 4, 2010

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bryanwb··on US Army deploys its first floating solar array
All these ridiculous Rube Goldberg contraptions for solar and wind when we could just build more and different types of nuclear reactors.
bryanwb··on The lab-leak theory: inside the fight to uncover Covid-19’s origins
You didn't read the article. Any medical professional who seriously considered the lab leak was ostracized.
bryanwb··on The lab-leak theory: inside the fight to uncover Covid-19’s origins
_IF_ Covid-19 is the result of a lab leak on research that Fauci funded and promoted AND he colluded w/ a group of scientists to hide this fact, it literally is the greatest conspiracy of our generation.

It isn't a big if. The recently released e-mails support this line of reasoning but don't confirm it. To argue the opposite of this, you should have better than ad hominem attacks.

bryanwb··on The lab-leak theory: inside the fight to uncover Covid-19’s origins
It isn't muckraking. Fauci has a clear conflict of interest. Further he argued in favor of GoF research while acknowledging it could lead to a pandemic. He literally wrote that in an academic paper. https://www.nationalreview.com/news/fauci-argued-benefits-of...
bryanwb··on The lab-leak theory: inside the fight to uncover Covid-19’s origins
Upvoting because you are right. All roads of investigation lead to Fauci. Many seem in denial about this.
bryanwb··on Ask HN: Where do the young nerds hangout?
have very positive experiences w/ discord. I have learned a ton from channels like Economics Design (token economics) and Reactiflux (Reactjs)
bryanwb··on Improving ventilation will help curb SARS-CoV-2
Covid's over bro.

We now have herd immunity in North America. Even a top doc at Johns Hopkins says so https://www.wsj.com/articles/herd-immunity-is-near-despite-f...

Cases are crashing in in Latin America and South Asia. The only place where it may still rise in big numbers are the prison islands in Oceania.

There are better ways to spend our resources than on redoing the world's HVAC, like maybe, y'know, climate change.

bryanwb··on It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency
Smart contract platforms are only four years old. Only in the last 12 months have we seen significant throughput on public chains like Solana and Avalanche.
bryanwb··on It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency
This post and the comments has convinced me that all the weirdoes and revolutionaries have left HN. It is now dominated by statist near-boomers concerned about the youngsters trampling the lawn.

Sure Bitcoin is boring but so is gold. If you weren't interested in gold in the first place you likely aren't interested in Bitcoin either.

The proof-of-stake, smart contract platforms are truly exciting. Stable coins and Uniswap are real innovations w/ more to come.

bryanwb··on An Asian Uber Driver Was Attacked by a Mob. Then YouTube Took Down His Video
Why is this flagged? HN seems to shut down anything that doesn't match the left-wing consensus, from Covid to BLM.
bryanwb··on Coinbase’s listing may break records
Big hedge funds never do risky things and leave us holding the bag</sarcasm>
bryanwb··on France reports three new cases of thrombosis, more deaths after AstraZeneca jabs
The IFR for young people from Covid is less than 0.03%. that is very, very low.
bryanwb··on FOSDEM 2021
Except that we - literally all of us - have to live with this disease. The vaccines are somewhat effective but not entirely at best 70% but perhaps 40% and worse for those most vulnerable. There is only one way forward.
bryanwb··on FOSDEM 2021
My family and friends in LA are all wearing masks and social distancing. Doesn't seem to be making a big diff.
bryanwb··on FOSDEM 2021
I currently live in a SE asian country w/ very few covid deaths and few restrictions. The most likely reason is prior immunity due to exposure to other coronaviruses.
bryanwb··on FOSDEM 2021
LA and Miami have similar # of deaths to covid while LA has way more restrictions. The difference? The difference? The restrictions can't stop the spread of a respiratory disease. They never could. We just copied China on the masks, social distancing, and lockdowns. That's it. Virus gonna virus whatever you do.
bryanwb··on FOSDEM 2021
LA is pretty damn sunny
bryanwb··on FOSDEM 2021
It would make sense if closed cities were doing better than oepn cities but that isn't the case. Miami has fewer deaths than NYC and everything is open in Miami.
bryanwb··on FOSDEM 2021
do you? during winter? when they are usually full anyways? Also, please tell me if hospitals in cities w/ full lockdowns are doing better than those that are open? You can't. The restrictions don't work. Florida isn't doing any worse than CA. Unpopular opinion.
bryanwb··on Lambda School is the biggest mistake I made this year
The solution to student debt it Georgia Tech's OMSCS. It is super cheap ($8k whole MS degree), amazing, very hard, and takes a long time. UTexas and ASU's programs are also excellent and not much more expensive.

I think OMSCS isn't more popular because it is so damn hard. People always want the quick and easy road.

bryanwb··on When You Get into Unschooling, It’s Almost Like a Religion
background: I worked in edtech for about 5 years

Start w/ smart kids w/ relatively affluent parents and any educational strategy succeeds. The kids will do well no matter what. Start w/ less innately intelligent kids w/ uneducated, poor parents and that is where you see what really works. Virtually all studies/articles about unschooling/less schooling approaches and they don't control for this variable.

Show me homeschooling/unschooling/Waldorf/Montessori/Reggio works for poor kids w/ uneducated parents. Until then, I don't give a shit.

I have worked w/ a lot of autodidacts, including a couple better known ones in the software world. They all had professor parents and comfortable upbringings.

bryanwb··on Evidence slowly building for long-term heart problems post-Covid-19
evidence? the "evidence" of myocarditis in Penn State football players has been walked back https://sports.yahoo.com/big-ten-covid-19-positive-athletes-...

The article should be retitled "Evidence Slowly Building that People Keep Finding Insubstantial Reasons to Panic about Covid-19"

bryanwb··on Ask HN: Based on your personal experience, how bad is the Covid-19 pandemic?
I ask b/c it is hard to tell how bad it is just by case counts and deaths. Hard to tell how many of those cases actually lead to illness (most or only a few?). Further hard to tell if people are dying from Covid or with Covid. For that reason I am asking for personal experiences.
bryanwb··on More than half of American retailers didn't pay their rent in April and May
2nd wave isn't a given. There was no 2nd wave to SARS.
bryanwb··on Ask HN: How do I learn C properly?
My current work projects require c++ unfortunately. Some day. Sigh
bryanwb··on Ask HN: How do I learn C properly?
An important question to ask yourself is why do you want to learn C? If you want to be able to read large C codebases makes sense. But if you want to write embedded software or systems software, rust or c++11 (ugh) are arguably a better place to start. I say this as someone who has learned C but moved on to c++ without regrets. Though I have serious rust envy :)
bryanwb··on Ask HN: How Sound Is the “Teach Yourself CS” Learning Resource?
I think Oregon State does but I suspect the quality of online CS programs drops radically quality from OMSCS.
bryanwb··on Ask HN: How Sound Is the “Teach Yourself CS” Learning Resource?
The quality of courses varies wildly. Some courses were created by profs that have since moved on and are run by TAs who don't care. Those also happen to be the easier courses.

Some classes are very poorly run. However, you can avoid those courses. There are reviews of all courses on https://omscentral.com/courses

I took Machine Learning for Trading (basically intro to ML) and enjoyed it tremendously even though the prof has since moved on.

I also took High perf Computer Architecture - basically graduate computer architecture - and enjoyed it immensely even though the professor was not active. We had a great TA, exams were insanely hard but gr8 test of knowledge, and I learned a ton from classmates. One classmate was an actual hardware engineer on PowerPC. I learned so much from him.

Most classes have active Slack channels w/ active discussions at all hours. Those channels alone are worth joining the OMSCS IMO.

bryanwb··on Ask HN: How Sound Is the “Teach Yourself CS” Learning Resource?
I think the books are very sound but that doesn't mean following program will work for you. It really requires you to study well in isolation without anyone else to ask questions of or discuss ideas with. I tried to follow that same program but couldn't stick to it. After failing to stick with it, I enrolled in Georgia Tech's OMSCS. I am halfway through and I can't recommend it enough. That said it is a shit ton of work. The real value that I get from the OMSCS are my discussions with fellow students and professors, something you can't get from self-study.

I am currently taking the compiler course (CS-8803) and there is no way in the world I put this much work into a self-study project. I spend roughly 30 hours per week on it.

bryanwb··on Ask HN: A New Decade. Any Predictions?
The UK has never been part of the European Monetary Union so Brexit doesn't make it any more isolated from EU's financial system than it was before.
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