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eiji

529 karma · joined September 12, 2010

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eiji··on G20 nations triple coal power subsidies despite climate crisis
Whenever I talk to (privileged) people here in the US about this, I try to bring one point across. As a whole, people are in too much pain and stress to have any appreciation for a climate crisis. Whatever you may think, as a whole, people have to deal (personally and emotionally) with (sometimes perceived) much bigger crisis than that of the climate.

As long as people live pay-check to pay-check on the brink of no health-insurance, the brink of missing mortgage- or rent-payments and ending on the streets, the brink of high medical bills, the brink of 15k a year preschool expenses, the brink of retirement ... There is always a crisis stressing people out because there is nothing but yourself to fall back on in the event of a disaster.

And since nobody is politically (dare I say globally) willing to provide relief for such kind of warranted fears and concerns for ones individual future, people have to room to spend more on the perma frost, Florida homes or an underwater New York.

eiji··on Tesla truck to cost less than $50k
So it'll cost $100k minus $10k tax incentive minus $10k gas savings over it's lifetime of 100 years and minus $30k of productive time behind the wheel because it drives itself.
eiji··on Confessions of a location data exec
The Google Opinion Rewards app seems to ask questions related to this all the time. Anybody know more about that?

5 out of 10 "surveys" go like this: Which of the following places did you visit recently? Yes? How did you pay? (Credit card, debit card, cash, made no payment, …).

eiji··on Apple to contribute to U.S. teen's education for spotting FaceTime bug
Only in the land of philanthropy is such a headline a thing, or even a PR move. So instead of giving the guardian of said teenager 200k to do with as they/he/she pleases in the interest of the child, you set up a education funding scheme? But when the government does it, it's what?
eiji··on Python 3 at Facebook
> He wanted to tell the "story about how I and couple of engineers used our free time, with no authority whatsoever, and made Python 3 the dominant version at Facebook."

Isn't it great when engineers upgrade your codebase in their free time.

eiji··on Study: Today’s dads are engaging more with their kids
Study: Today’s moms are engaging less with their kids
eiji··on Executives Play Down the Possibility of Raises
>> A tight labor market causes the raises

Different economic theories can provide different explanations and the statement above is over-simplifying the situation (It should say 'can cause' raises). I'm not an economist. The labor theory of value (LTV) and other systems of thought would have a different take on this. Wages are not going up because various industries are bumping against hard systemic boundaries. I believe those are hard to see and not much appreciated or studied because they are not merely driven by supply and demand economics. Truckers are not being paid more because if they were, the rate-of-profit in that industry would not be sustainable anymore. But raising prices for logistics is not really an option for that industry, because as soon as you do that, other factors start to depress demand. What you end up with are maxed out industries where you either keep pay at todays levels, or go home and close shop.

It's complicated, but just 'A tight labor market causes the raises' does not even start to capture the situation. And it's not just greedy bankers that keep wages depressed. A tight labor market is not going to help increase wages. Not gonna happen because it's not seeing the whole picture.

eiji··on Google Maps Gets a New Look
Would be nice to see the referenced picture adjusted for various levels of color blindness.
eiji··on U.S. considering closing its embassy in Cuba after mysterious sonic attack
Gee, is there really anybody who believes all this nonsense?

Typical imperialist games. An economy opens up, and all kind of US interests flow in, trying to create markets and chip away at what might prevent said interests to realize profits.

Now some folks went too far and dialed some nobs to far to the right and friendly fire got people hurt. But those folks can't be held accountable for all kinds of reasons shady and otherwise.

Everybody knows it. Nobody in Cuba gives a damn, I hope.

eiji··on Lessons I Wish I Had Learned Before Teaching Differential Equations (1997) [pdf]
The search terms there would be "Model Calibration" and/or "System Identification" Software. I think those are again very domain specific. But there are a few. PS: While AI and machine learning are catching on in many different fields, the software packages in those domains make heavy use of fairly complicated fitting and approximations methods already. Lots or correlation and effect estimation, which builds many of the underlying guts of machine learning.
eiji··on Cybersecurity Incident Involving Consumer Information
Did they had to release the incident now by law, or did they choose the week so that the Irma weekend can blow over this?
eiji··on Lessons I Wish I Had Learned Before Teaching Differential Equations (1997) [pdf]
Ansys, Abaqus CAE, Dyna, Optistruct, FEKO, AcuSolve, NASTRAN, ... The list goes on and on. Each bigger DE or partial DE has a huge ecosystem of numerical software around it to approximate solutions for real world applications.

High and low electro magnetics (Maxwell), Navir-Stokes, ...

eiji··on 400 Burger per Hour Robot Will Put Teenagers Out of Work
The least likely​ person I see making my burger is a teenager. Next time when you wait for your fast food, don't waste two minutes on your phone, but instead look up and around you. Appreciate and respect the people that handle your food.
eiji··on Wal-Mart will pay employees to deliver packages on their way home
a) How many employee commute routes will map to affluent delivery buyers? b) More none-descriptive cars and persons in residential neighborhoods knocking on doors, waiting to be shot through the closed door. (I'm not even kidding.)
eiji··on T-Mobile wants to give your phone number superpowers
Pre-Paid plans not included.
eiji··on Don't tell people to turn off Windows Update
Taskbar > Context menu > Cortana > ( Hidden / Show icon / Show search box )
eiji··on As Economy Grows, North Korea's Grip on Society Weakens
In what way does the German democracy derive from the UK? You are oversimplifying. I get what you are trying to say, but it's not just tradition and institutions. There is a lot more to it.
eiji··on Guide to the CoreCLR Source Code
What's with the Smalltalk portion? Anyone knows why that is?
eiji··on China’s New Tool for Social Control: A Credit Rating for Everything
This could show or open up some possible alternatives to the current monetary system. You have to see money as providing the same function today in our society. Not your credit score and whatnot. Those are derived from it.

Money is what forces humans today into a quantifiable scoring system. On one side is doom but it is worth thinking about that the other side could provide. "Today you have been credited 400 points for helping 100 elderly over the street, driving 50 disabled people to the doctor and returning 20 lbs of unused food". Then you don't have a monetary system pricing your actions, but you have central control over what gets priced in what way. Sounds familiar, I know. But just because none of us can imagine anything but money to fulfill this allocation function, does not mean that other thinkers are hard at work. Surely this is far away from western individualism, but not every country has bought into that. China is surely investigating it's options long term to opt out of various constraints imposed upon by global power systems, one of which is the global banking and monetary system.

eiji··on The likely end of DownThemAll
I'm sorry if I offended you. All I'm saying is you could be in a position of conflict of interest. Unfortunately, your user base would never mobilize on your behalf, because they don't understand the technical details behind the comprehensive Firefox extension system that would be deprecated.

That's a problem. The user don't understand what they are about to loose, but the big name developers with millions of users have a vested interest in the status quo. I don't have a solution for that. There are a lot of Add-On developers out there for which this is a business. Firefox extensions can generate an income.

At least you make no secret about it. The euro coins are right next to the article. I mean that in a good way.

eiji··on The likely end of DownThemAll
I'm maintaining two Add-Ons with around 20k active users. I agree with his predictions, but I also find it hard to give to much attention to voices like the one expressed here.

It's hard for me to tell how much of this is genuine concern, or just how many donations or how much income he will loose because of this. I never see numbers from these Add-Ons. The one in question here has 1,300,000 daily active users.

Sure, if I make $1500 per month on an Add-On, I would be very upset if things change. Then I'd rather see the XUL/XPCOM stuff around for another 15 years.

eiji··on Russian provocations on the rise: Is it a new Cold War?
NATO provocations on the rise: Is it a new Cold War?
eiji··on Colorado communities secure the right to build their own broadband
Here is a video explaining some developments in the area of community rights by the Executive Director of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmJS6sjBbHg

eiji··on Hundreds of Companies Seen Cutting Tax Bills by Sending Money Through Luxembourg
I don't know why I'm trying, but here we go:

Personal virtues are characteristics valued as promoting collective and individual greatness. The opposite of virtue is vice.[1]

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtue

eiji··on Ask HN: Any good audio podcasts?
I highly recommend "History of Philosophy without any gaps": http://www.historyofphilosophy.net/all-episodes
eiji··on Ask HN: What's the best programming book you've read recently?
C++ Concurrency in Action, Practical Multithreading, by Anthony Williams

http://www.manning.com/williams/

eiji··on Elon Musk Wants SpaceX to Replace Russia as NASA's Space Station Transport
The russian space program and their entanglement with NASA is something I would really like to keep going forward. I think I understand the other factors, but this helps to keep US politics in check, even if just by a tiny bit.
eiji··on Tesla Adds Titanium Underbody Shield and Aluminum Deflector Plates to Model S
I'm sorry but my first reaction is "What a waste". Titanium is ridiculously expensive for various reasons. The best these engineers could come up with is to put a sheet of metal under the car? You got to be kidding me. I see why they have to use Titanium for it, anything else doesn't work, but it shows how far away this car is from reality and from true mass production.
eiji··on Microsoft defends its right to read your email
These tech companies have to grow up. They are consumer companies now. Just because you can do something does not mean you do it. The CEO should have made the call that some tech secrets are not worth the press and upset users. I understand that it's not that simple, but having this guy shut up was not worth it. And I want companies to value their customers more than some piece of code.
eiji··on We did a Show HN and it landed on the front page of Hacker News
Since you asked:

The name is not working for me at all. I read it as an abbreviation of Pitchlet. The l and I are too close together for me. Only when I saw the link with a lower case i the lights went on. But that is not the only reason. And I can see why I might be the only person thinking of applets here.

A pitch is a "Sales presentation". There is only one thing worse than a presentation, and that is a "Sales presentation". As soon as I see "Pitch", my entire being prepares itself for a person bothering me. I think of car sales people and evereyone else who approaches me when I enter a store. Unfortunately there is only negativity associated with all that. So for me "Pitch" is a negativ word. Hey, that could just be me. It has a lot to do with cultural background. Maybe I would call it KeyPoints.

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