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ctchocula

719 karma · joined November 20, 2011

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ctchocula··on Why no Roman industrial revolution?
> But why did China discard movable type, while it was transformative to Western culture?

A simpler explanation: That Chinese characters number in the 10,000s, while the characters in the Western alphabet number 26. This means that the latter is much easier than to former to turn into a profitable business, because the early movable types themselves are costly in time and capital to make, and easy to break or so I'd imagine. With 10,000 replicas of 26 characters you can print 24/7. However, with 26 replicas of 10,000 characters, your business will be halted every type the movable type of characters you need are inevitably broken and wait for an artisan to make new ones.

ctchocula··on Audible feedback on just how much your browsing feeds into Google
Recently installed pi-hole, which uses a Raspberry Pi to block ads and the visualization they have is pretty good.
ctchocula··on Spaced repetition can allow for infinite recall
I found this post fascinating. It makes me wonder is there an equivalent superpower that's more software engineering focused rather than coding focused like leetcode questions? I know everyone here likes to dump on Gang of Four, but perhaps design patterns and their usecases?
ctchocula··on New third-generation Formula E car is fastest ever electric racer
Not fans exactly, but the Bernoulli principle, which is sufficient to keep the car sucked to the track if the floor is designed in a specific way [0][1]

[0] https://motorsport-magazine.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/wp-co...

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_effect_(cars)

ctchocula··on New third-generation Formula E car is fastest ever electric racer
They actually brought back ground effect this year with the newest regulation change. The argument was that if cars relied on ground effect for downforce and less on front and rear wings, cars could have an easier time following the car ahead because the turbulent air becomes less of a factor (due to ground effect not being as susceptible as the front wing to turbulent air) and being able to follow more closely makes for better racing. As a fan, I certainly can't complain. The commentators certainly never miss a chance to remind us how good the new regulations are.
ctchocula··on Ask HN: Games which will help increase my appetite for risk?
If it is a basic trait as you point out, I would suggest OP should look into a financial advisor. I don't recommend advisors to everyone, because it is more expensive than DIY portfolios, but having a financial advisor sounds like a good abstraction layer for OP. OP can just tell the advisor financial goals they'd like to reach and the advisor will come up with a portfolio with the appropriate amount of risk to reach those goals.

Given the timing of the post is in a period of economic uncertainty, it could be relevant to point out financial advisors are also good at persuading investors not to make big investment mistakes such as selling when the stock market is down.

ctchocula··on SpaceX said to fire employees involved in letter rebuking Elon Musk
I was down this rabbit hole the other day. For more reading:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law

ctchocula··on It costs $110k to fully gear up in Diablo Immortal
One explanation could be a difference between China and the West. Historically the West relies on primogeniture where the eldest son inherits a vast majority of the fortune and other sons need to move out and build a career for themselves. Classical China OTOH would split their fortune (which for 90% of folks was land since most were farmers) between their sons. Primogeniture encourages maintaining wealth across generations through the eldest son while the latter could mean the fortune gets spread out and eventually lost within 3 generations. For example, see research by Thomas Piketty about how ppl who were rich in 16th century Italy are still absurdly rich today.
ctchocula··on The counterintuitive rise of Python in scientific computing (2020)
I suspect the reason people claim that is they are training ML models, which may take O(hours ~ days) to run anyways. In this usecase, C++ calling C++ is faster than Python calling C++ slightly in O(seconds) is outweighed by the fact that Python is more convenient for the ML practitioner trying different models.
ctchocula··on Tax Advantaged Accounts
Thank you for the write-up! One correction I would make is that per [1] VTSAX does have a $3,000 investment minimum. Before, VTSMX used to have the $3,000 minimum and VTSAX $10,000. However, it looks like recently they've gotten rid of the VTSMX share class entirely and dropped the investment minimum of the VTSAX share class to $3,000.

[1] https://investor.vanguard.com/mutual-funds/profile/VTSAX

ctchocula··on How to skate a 10k
The last bit is very reminiscent of Schopenhauer: "Man can do what he wills, but he cannot will what he wills."

Thank you for translating :)

ctchocula··on Consciousness is supported by near-critical slow cortical electrodynamics
A link on HN yesterday that talks about critical points and phase transitions:

* A mathematician explains what Foundation gets right about predicting the future (spoiler: critical points!): https://www.sciof.fi/a-mathematician-explains-psychohistory/

And if you're still interested, there's a more in-depth explanation with mathematical formulas and all. Even if I understood only 10-20% of what Ken Wilson was talking about, he gives a lucid motivation for why critical points are important and why they can be found in practice using renormalization groups, and not computer simulations:

* Ken Wilson's Nobel Prize lecture: https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2018/06/wilson-lecture-2....

ctchocula··on Somehow, Futurama Is Coming Back Again
Out of curiosity by "Futurama Series Finale" do you mean Season 4 or Season 7?
ctchocula··on Google Kills YouTube Originals
I'm guessing the theory goes something like:

When I pay for Netflix, I expect high production value. There's no way I would pay for crowdsourced videos made by amateurs when I could watch it for free on Youtube.

ctchocula··on Mortgages are a manufactured product
Vanguard's trademark total bond ETF BND, which is a part of the classic 3-fund portfolio [1], a cornerstone of passive investing, has 2.2% commercial and 20% government-backed mortgage backed securities [2]. So a lot of everyday folks across America, especially those retired looking for a stable cashflow for retirement, are helping fund your mortgage. It's a bit of win-win situation (albeit a loss for them during high inflation as you point out): you need money now, and they need a mostly guaranteed return on their money in 10-20 years time that pays out better than Treasuries, and gives them diversification compared to bonds (either Treasury or commercial).

[1] https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Three-fund_portfolio

[2] https://investor.vanguard.com/mutual-funds/profile/portfolio...

ctchocula··on The Price of Nails Since 1695: A Window into Economic Change
It'd be cool to get a number for a one-man operation in the 21st century. You'd be measuring all the productivity gains from CNC technology, which would be neat! I wonder how it compares to the 4800x number.
ctchocula··on The Price of Nails Since 1695: A Window into Economic Change
The emphasis on nails is interesting, because of the similarity to pins from the famous anecdote about the incredible power of division of labour from "The Wealth of Nations" and how it can give someone a 4800x productivity boost making pins by each person working on a single part in the pin-making process vs. making each pin themselves:

> To take an example, therefore, from a very trifling manufacture; but one in which the division of labour has been very often taken notice of, the trade of the pin-maker; a workman not educated to this business (which the division of labour has rendered a distinct trade), nor acquainted with the use of the machinery employed in it (to the invention of which the same division of labour has probably given occasion), could scarce, perhaps, with his utmost industry, make one pin in a day, and certainly could not make twenty. But in the way in which this business is now carried on, not only the whole work is a peculiar trade, but it is divided into a number of branches, of which the greater part are likewise peculiar trades. One man draws out the wire, another straights it, a third cuts it, a fourth points it, a fifth grinds it at the top for receiving the head; to make the head requires two or three distinct operations; to put it on, is a peculiar business, to whiten the pins is another; it is even a trade by itself to put them into the paper; and the important business of making a pin is, in this manner, divided into about eighteen distinct operations, which, in some manufactories, are all performed by distinct hands, though in others the same man will sometimes perform two or three of them. I have seen a small manufactory of this kind where ten men only were employed, and where some of them consequently performed two or three distinct operations. But though they were very poor, and therefore but indifferently accommodated with the necessary machinery, they could, when they exerted themselves, make among them about twelve pounds of pins in a day. There are in a pound upwards of four thousand pins of a middling size. Those ten persons, therefore, could make among them upwards of forty-eight thousand pins in a day. Each person, therefore, making a tenth part of forty-eight thousand pins, might be considered as making four thousand eight hundred pins in a day. But if they had all wrought separately and independently, and without any of them having been educated to this peculiar business, they certainly could not each of them have made twenty, perhaps not one pin in a day; that is certainly, not the two hundred and fortieth, perhaps not the four thousand eight hundredth part of what they are at present capable of performing, in consequence of a proper division and combination of their different operations.

ctchocula··on Elizabeth Holmes found guilty
Many countries have extradition treaties with the US. It's likely that due to how much more high-profile Theranos case has been, that the US would have expended more resources tracking her down compared to the yoga guru. Plus she would have had to spend the rest of her life on the run and find a country (e.g. Russia? Cuba? Venezuela?) to grant her asylum. No normal person would want to try either of the above, much less someone born with a silver spoon in their mouth.
ctchocula··on Elizabeth Holmes found guilty
Matt Levine has a good article [1] about Theranos that goes into the irony of why she got caught on defrauding investors and not the pafients. His hypothesis is that in court of law, it's easier to make the case for damages when it's easily quantifiable (e.g. $10B in damages) rather than 1000 possibly wrong blood tests.

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-01-04/slayin...

ctchocula··on The Drenching Richness of Andrei Tarkovsky
Not GP, but I think by "fast food production/consumption chain that has conditioned audiences" they are taking a potshot at the swathe of superhero movies being very formulaic rather than any West vs. Soviet Russia argument and how only Soviet Russia makes meaningful films.

For example, every superhero gets 30s of screentime and a few sarcastic quips. The story is black and white, because you know who the good guys and bad guys are. The dominance of franchise movies has vastly restricted the opportunities for other kinds of films to be seen in cinemas. In his essay [1], Martin Scorcese makes a much better case for it than I can, but the gist of it is that while before there were high-brow and low-brow films, now Hollywood is taking the cynical approach that the low-brow films make the most money in a low risk way rather than art for art's sake.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/04/opinion/martin-scorsese-m...

ctchocula··on What the Russians thought of James Bond in the 1960s
"Out of this World" (1964) by Alfred Bester. Here's a stackoverflow post: https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/251779/phone-calls...
ctchocula··on What the Russians thought of James Bond in the 1960s
A wild guess but "The Man in the High Castle"? I could be wrong, because the phone call doesn't happen in the novel by Philip K. Dick that the Netflix show is based on and I haven't watched the show. However, the premise is alternate history of Japanese winning WWII.
ctchocula··on “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs
Gold has a usecase for jewelry, manufacturing electronics, dentistry and glassmaking. Yet not even the sum of these applications can justify its market cap of $11.73T, so the difference must come from speculation. I suspect the same is true for Bitcoin.
ctchocula··on The Importance of Price Signals
Not GP, but two blogs I like are https://noahpinion.substack.com and https://braddelong.substack.com

Both authors are quite witty, so their blogs are eminently readable. They're also trained in economics (have PhDs in economics) and are econ professors, so I put a lot more stock in the stuff they write (useful heuristic, but some may disagree) than in lynalden's posts.

Economics is harder to separate from politics compared to other sciences, so it's especially useful to read multiple points of view and understand what the biases of authors lie/what the ongoing debates are. One thing I dislike about lynalden is her tendency to present as the one "true" economics Milton Friedman's monetarist theory of inflation, and doing so without explicitly calling out the hidden assumptions being made along the way or considering other theories of economics (e.g. Keynesian). OTOH, Noah and Brad can be categorized as Keynesian economists, so they present a more left-leaning view of the field of economics where the quantity theory of money is not accepted whole cloth.

ctchocula··on No Other Love: Letters from Richard Feynman to His Late Wife, Arline
Small nitpick. "Late" in this context refers to the fact that she died shortly after Richard sent the letter (definition 2a in [1]) as opposed to a wife he married "late" in his life.

[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/late

ctchocula··on Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2021 – Show and tell
Looks like 2021 and earlier, there's a cap of $20,000 before you need to report to IRS using Form 1099-K. Assuming the author is from the US, they may have stayed below this limit and not needed to report. However, beginning in January 2022 the limit is dropping down to $600 before needing to be reported using Form 1099-K.
ctchocula··on Unmaking a Murderer
Do you have a name of the nvidia director? Tried googling but web looks like it's been scrubbed clean.
ctchocula··on Ask HN: How to optimize your career for happiness?
Even if your current employer doesn't match your contributions, deferring your taxes from now to the future (when you might not need to pay as much due to lower tax bracket) is considered good practice from a tax perspective. Of course there are edge cases when that may not hold (e.g. you have a pension) and have more income in retirement compared to now, but it's a good rule of thumb.
ctchocula··on Amazon still isn't doing enough to stop bait-and-switch reviews
You should try one of these P-38 can openers they use in the army [1]. A bit challenging to get the hang of, but they'll last the rest of your life and inexpensive to boot.

[1] https://burnsarmysurplus.com/product/p38/

ctchocula··on Crises of Elite Competition in the East and West
I agree with your analysis that inequality is a big problem facing the world. However, I also don't see wokeness as an unalloyed good.

I'm a pretty liberal guy, but I'm seeing a rash of articles talking about some real harm wokeness has been causing lately when taken to an extreme. For example:

- California pushing new math framework that recommends no Algebra before Grade 9 in the name of racial justice. This is bordering on Harrison Bergeron territory.

- UC schools eliminating SAT as admission criteria, which is used to disproportionally hurts Asian applicants.

- Elite colleges like Harvard making their admissions less meritocratic and trying to limit Asian and Jewish admissions in favour of White, Black and Hispanic admissions. This is reminiscent of adding extra-curriculars to discriminate against Jewish students in first half of 20th century.

- Cancel culture taking things too far.

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