grammaton

Indeed. The only one that has a mild prayer is nuclear, and even that has a number of serious problems.

"I think one of the issues with the thesis that oil prices will lead to a drop in globalization is that it's actually quite fuel-efficient to ship goods."

Manufacturing them, on the other hand....

Your definition of Peak Oil is not the accepted definition. Peak Oil literally refers to the production curve of a single - or set of - oil fields, and the point at which their production is maximized, and then declines sharply thereafter. Supply and demand are secondary considerations until demand destruction is so far gone that no one wants oil anymore. Until then, the questions are, have we arrived at the peak yet, and if so, how fast do we end up falling down the decline curve?

From BP Oil:

"World proved natural gas reserves at end-2011 were sufficient to meet 63.6 years of production"

That's at current rates. If we were to switch to an exclusively natural gas infrastructure, this number would of course drop sharply. Natural gas is an appealing alternative, but there just isn't enough of it. And before anyone whips out the old "they'll just find more" canard - not really. The primary reserves of natural gas we're tapping now have been known about for a long, long time, and there are few new discoveries in the pipeline. A similar situation exists with Petroleum.

I find this very interesting - having paired quite a bit with the Boulder office, none of them would have ever considered this setup. They where all Rubymine or GTFO...

Great screencast, and thanks for including it - but man, that guy really should get a quieter keyboard.

"Who knows how many of these companies could grow into something bigger without the pressure of generating a return for early investors in just a few short years."

It seems to me like this is part of a more general trend - namely that a lot of startups might do well to figure out how they can make a profit first, instead of going the venture/acquire/cash out route. It's not incubators that are hurting startups - it's that a lot of startups should probably figure out how to be profitable first.

To a large subset of white conservative Republicans, yes, it is.

Thank you for an extremely illuminating and well thought out post. This information right here should absolutely be a much bigger part of the wider societal discussion on race than it is.

"Between 1930 and 1967"

You're going to have to do better than citing stats that are 44 years old. All this proves is that 44 years ago, there was a problem, which is not exactly a point of contention among most sentient beings at this point.

"you've made a huge generalization and I'd say that it's your bias speaking (not racism)."

Seriously? These are not obscure statistics I'm talking about here. Here, check this one out:

"As of 2005, statistics show that offending rates for blacks were more than 7 times higher than the rates for whites."

Taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States#Char...

Or how about:

"These specific facts about the Bell shooting are just a few of the hundreds of thousands of data points that reveal a hard truth: any given violent crime in New York is 13 times more likely to have a black than a white perpetrator. While most black residents are law-abiding and desperately deserve police protection, the incidence of criminal activity among young black males is off the charts."

Taken from http://www.city-journal.org/html/eon2007-04-02hm.html

And that was with five minutes of Googling. I'm not making some wild, off the wall assertion here. This is a well known and exhaustively documented fact.

"I'd say that the situation of blacks in america is directly tied racism, slavery and the like so yes, it is due to racism too."

I figured you would. Slavery ended 150 years ago, so if you want to assert that some 7 generations later it's still having effects, I welcome you to provide data to that effect. This, right here, is the problem in a nutshell - the minute these facts are mentioned, the hue and cry of racism and slavery goes up, and all further thought on the matter stops. The causes of this situation are complex, and reducing them to one dimensional truisms does no one any favors.

I was under the impression that it was actually poor men who were executed disproportionately for rape. And while we're tossing stats around, how about the general amount of crime committed by said Black men? It is higher per capita, is it not? Is that due to racism too?

The lack of understanding on the part of reporters goes far beyond treating business as a monolithic entity. Just look at what passes for "science" reporting these days. Sadly, journalism is becoming it's own specialized profession, with the implied lack of study of fields outside one's own - which, ironically, undermines the very substance of what journalism is supposed to be all about.

"If A calls B a socialist or communist, however, then the burden of proof is on A to prove the charge, and the standard for guilt is so high that this is usually impossible. In this case it is A's reputation that is usually besmirched."

Do we live in the same America? Usually you can call just about any well known figure a socialist, and a huge cadre of conservative, fox news loving mouth breathers will assume it is so without a moment's thought.

I'm terribly sorry, but you're making a huge leap here. The fact that "massive numbers" of blacks are incarcerated does not automatically imply pervasive racism. The one does not necessarily imply the other.

Why does everyone say this? I found it fairly easy to learn the basics and intermediates of. Then again, I'm an Emacs guy, so maybe that plays in to it.

No, it's like saying the invention of the paintbrush is more important - and frankly, it is.

It's not cool that the guy lost some data, but as he points out - all software has bugs. This is just one more reason to make your commits as atomic as possible - which it sounds like he wasn't doing at all.

More to the point, shouldn't it be a git pull --rebase?

I think this rant is striking such a chord because it exploits a well known, if not widely acknowledged predisposition among developers - the breathtaking quickness with which we assume that the other guy is an idiot. Not that we don't understand the problem or that this solution addresses things we aren't aware of, but that the other guy is stupid and shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a compiler. I can see Dahl doesn't like complexity, but has it ever occurred to him that software is complex because it solves complex problems?

"Mainstream economists are masters of the ad hoc explanation for whatever happened yesterday." - John Michael Greer

Maybe they do that because of the number of mistakes and basic misunderstandings of the science involved? If you don't like the name calling just look at the actions of the man, as outlined in the article. He is not a credible commentator.

I can see why people might not like this, but personally I would tend to think this is actually a good thing. Just imagine if climate deniers or intelligent design proponents had open access to every scientific paper they might want - imagine the howling din of useless distraction that would result. More generally, and less politically charged, I think it cuts down on the amount of aimless speculating and ill informed inquiry that an actual expert has to deal with.

That said, it's very true that this is worlds different from maliciously withholding data.

And it's unfounded statements like this that contribute to ignorance and useless "debate." They do not keep their models "secret," it's just difficult for them to release homebrew software not written by software engineers to the general public and get much use from the exercise without a lot of handholding. Difficult != secret.

Yes. This is basically one person's personal bitching. How is this informative? Unless you're interested in the nitty-gritty details of corporate politics at Microsoft....

"As a pioneer of virtual reality, Jaron Lanier, recently pointed out, we no longer need to make stuff in order to make money. We can instead exchange information-based products."

This right here is my favorite piece of unintentional irony out of the whole article.

Ah, the comments section of just about any article on the internet, always a goldmine of inadvertent comedy. My personal favorite from this one, right at the top:

"What's wrong with wanting to be hot rather than smart? Not everyone can be intelligent, and both beauty and intelligence are natural, requiring no work."

Priceless!

This is getting to be a bit much....he was an impressive CEO. Important and foundational to the world.

“The problem is I’m older now, I’m 40 years old, and this stuff doesn’t change the world. It really doesn’t. I’m sorry, it’s true. Having children really changes your view on these things. We’re born, we live for a brief instant, and we die. It’s been happening for a long time. Technology is not changing it much — if at all."

--Steve Jobs

Thank you. But you won't get far here. The groupthink on HN is far too strong.

Pull this sort of thing when you're an average executive or middle management, and you're an abrasive, demanding idiot. Pull it when you have a few billion in the bank, and you're a "visionary."