capisce

> Nobody in EU ever tried to build a domestic GPU that was even remotely comparable to Nvidia, ATI or 3Dfx for them to have failed.

Bitboys tried, but pivoted to embedded graphics and were bought by ATI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glaze3D

Falanx Microsystems tried (not EU but close enough), also pivoted to mobile/embedded graphics and made the #1 shipping family of GPUs in the world: https://developer.arm.com/community/arm-community-blogs/b/mo...

Or among those who want to support any build system

> But I think just focusing on enjoyment in life is a poor human experience. Life has much more to offer that is equally interesting. Enjoyment isn't the only game in town.

I assume this person is employed, so they're probably already doing quite a lot more than just hedonistic enjoyment.

Does his behavior perfectly match the people who made your life hell, or are you projecting?

> This isn't the conclusion I was most hoping to reach before moving here; there's a world in which a robust safety net, paid for by such taxes, actually incentivizes entrepreneurship by cushioning the fall - but I just don't see the evidence for us living in that world, at least not here.

This seems to be the case in Sweden. Very high taxes, but a robust safety net, and a very high startup activity per capita: https://www.business-sweden.com/about-us/media/press-release...

So I'm not sure it's the taxation structures that are mainly to blame.

That's called the yearly summer vacation in Europe. Why only every three to five years?

I guess you don't eat any sugar either?

Also, strange to suggest banning caffeine when discussing a study finding that it reduces risk of death.

The locals in those places _are_ voting with their wallets.

AMD, not ATI.

"In praise of the land value tax": http://theweek.com/articles/553242/praise-land-value-tax

The Wikipedia entry on the subject: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax

Some more highlights:

> In terms of total returns, residential real estate and equities have shown very similar and high real total gains, on average about 7% per year.

> The data summary in Table 3 and Figure 2 show that residential real estate, not equity, has been the best long-run investment over the course of modern history.

> Although returns on housing and equities are similar, the volatility of housing returns is substantially lower, as Table 3 shows. Returns on the two asset classes are in the same ballpark— around 7%—but the standard deviation of housing returns is substantially smaller than that of equities (10% for housing versus 22% for equities).

> Predictably, with thinner tails, the compounded return (using the geometric average) is vastly better for housing than for equities—6.6% for housing versus 4.6% for equities. This finding appears to contradict one of the basic assumptions of modern valuation models: higher risks should come with higher rewards.

Seems the way the real estate market works has caused a big drain both on economic growth (as investments have gone into real estate rather than more productive products), and on economic equality.

So a Georgist land value tax does seem like a pretty good idea.

A regressive tax like this must disincentivize freelancing and thus prevent a lot of economic activity. What are the benefits?

> While a noble goal, I don't believe this is a goal shared by the majority of the population.

Then why do most countries have welfare for the poor?

> I think if you ran a poll between "improve the life quality of those born with less potential" and "improve the progress of humanity", the results would favor the later.

What's the point of improving the progress of humanity if not to actually make life better for the majority of humans?

In a few decades the majority of the population might find _themselves_ poor due to not being born with enough potential to compete with automation and robots. Should we keep engineering the economy such as to only improve life quality for the most fortunate?

> Wealth distribution would not fix this.

But a certain amount of wealth distribution could improve the life quality of those born with less potential.

> He wrote the program specifically for the hardware he was using and independent of an operating system because he wanted to use the functions of his new PC with an 80386 processor.

Even if judging by surface appearance something is a clone, there might still be a lot of creativity involved "under the hood" i.e. in the implementation. In the case of Linux it was originally optimized for 80386 and is a monolithic kernel while Minix is a microkernel design. Fine-tuning it to run fast on 80386 must surely have involved a lot of creativity?

Just a speculation, maybe the temporary slightly elevated blood pressure from coffee is actually beneficial due to hormesis, just like stressing the body with strength or interval training is healthy in the long run as the body adapts and grows stronger.

How does this interact with intermittent fasting or low-carb diets?

And Qt is officially pronounced "cute".

Sometimes trade protectionism is good for an economy. In fact it's the strategy all the somewhat successful Asian nations (South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, China) used to get ahead, whereas the countries who followed the neoliberalist model of the west too closely (Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, etc) lagged behind. Suggest reading 'How Asia Works' by Joe Studwell.

Isn't it the case that the offline resources are considered "caches" and thus might be cleaned up if there's not much storage left?

How can they afford to pay you that much to let you do work that a monkey could have done?

Exactly, it's one of the coordination problems inherent in a free market economy. It can be ameliorated or patched through regulation, unionizing, or solved indirectly through industry shifts causing increased labor bargaining power in a given sector. Although the trend doesn't seem to be heading in the direction of increased demand for labor.

> The world now knows better about these harmful environmental practices, and has access to better tech to avoid this

Except the better tech tends to be more expensive and less labor intensive. A country with a huge cheap labor force would handicap itself by not using the most cost effective means to grow their economy, negative externalities notwithstanding.

Or use tariffs and other economic sanctions against tax havens to prevent a a global race to the bottom. Lowering taxes is not the only option.

Another way to keep US businesses competitive is to use tariffs and other economic sanctions against tax havens like Panama, preventing a global race to the bottom.

What do you mean by lightweight? I also think incremental reading seems useful.

Maybe it's less of a problem in Europe as American work culture is more demanding and stressful: http://lifehacker.com/5751875/five-traits-low-stress-happy-w...

And everyone screws up from time to time, organizations should understand that too much fear of breaking things is not a good thing: http://engineering.teacherspayteachers.com/2015/10/11/the-fe...

Instead of focusing on blame they should focus on processes to avoid the screw-up from happening again.

If his skills were that good they should be able to afford to sponsor him with a new suit.