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ocb

267 karma · joined August 11, 2014

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ocb··on Formula One’s sharpest car designer is also its master of loopholes
> Sadly, I personally can't see how this remains to be the case any longer... RBR with Newey or Dall'Igna with Ducati have been in championship dry-spells for a really long time (last year's win for RBR was the first championship where Mercedes didn't dominate all season like they have since the introduction of the V6) and have only managed to come 2nd best for some time.

I don't buy this. The basis for TFA and the reason Newey is back in the spotlight is because of this current season. RBR is the only team that has nailed the regulations change. The porpoising issue alone makes this clear.

ocb··on Investigating the effects of bike lanes in Minneapolis
It's a case of the relatively spread out development pattern and associated wide rights of way being advantageous. Minneapolis can tack on fairly substantial bike infrastructure without totally screwing over cars, which would be just as politically difficult in Minneapolis as any other American city.

The Grand Rounds help a lot too. It's a great basis to have inherited from the past.

ocb··on Los Angeles Accuses Weather Channel App of Covertly Mining User Data
> Do people really spend that much more time outside than I do? Am I some sort of sky-avoiding freak?

Haha, have you noticed how half of the cars suddenly have ski racks as of the past month or so?

ocb··on What happened when Boston Public Schools tried for equity with an algorithm
Your point is valid but the person you replied to was specifically asking about Boston. I admittedly don’t know a lot about the public transit infrastructure in Boston but I have a hard time believing it’s less extensive than e.g. Seattle, where public high school students use the standard bus system, with the school district paying for special limited routes where the normal bus routes lack coverage.
ocb··on Capturing Starman from 1M miles away
Isn't the whole point of a space telescope so that you don't need adaptive optics? Or are you making a joke?
ocb··on The Eastern Corner of Siberia Is the Coldest Inhabited Place on Earth
I think it's ridiculous that the author poses the question of why anyone would want to live there and then immediately waves it off with "it's a whole other story". So, thanks for sharing at least one detail about why anyone lives there.

There's also a very verbose description of the geographical context of this place... and no map.

It's like the author ran out of time and just submitted the article without changing anything.

ocb··on China wants an orderly exit from Bitcoin mining
Could you clarify why those things are mutually exclusive? And to be clear: I don't know how to feel about Bitcoin and the attention it has received lately.
ocb··on Big tech is built on predatory pricing
I'm certain there's some compelling argument to made about Amazon abusing its market position but this isn't it.

You say "Prime has been proven to be losing money the more a customer buys" like that isn't an obvious consequence of having flat pricing for shipping. The idea that Prime and Amazon's shipping as a whole are a loss leader isn't a new insight.

ocb··on Dollar General Hits a Gold Mine in Rural America
I'm not going to engage with you beyond this but that doesn't even make sense given that the US makes up ~4-5% of the world population.
ocb··on Dollar General Hits a Gold Mine in Rural America
Ignoring your completely made up percentiles and the fact that you're a right-wing troll, poor people in the US get to call themselves poor because they face real problems where the not-poor don't. Access to healthy food, healthcare, housing, quality education, etc. are all diminished for low-income people.
ocb··on After the check is gone: The underground economy of rural America
What kind of psychopath-filled nightmare land do you live in?
ocb··on The Media Has Neglected Puerto Rico
This is extremely misleading. The pro-status quo party boycotted the referendum. I'm relatively ignorant of the political situation in PR but it's obvious that this isn't a situation with near-universal consensus.
ocb··on The Suburb of the Future, Almost Here
If you live in the US that can't be true. The Interstate Highway System, state highways, etc. are government funded infrastructure that isn't funded locally. The mortgage market is also distorted/subsidized nationwide by the federal government. I'm not sure about sewers.
ocb··on Crown shyness
This is getting very off topic, but I think that's a terrible basis for disregarding the ethical argument against eating meat. Why is it "species-ist" to think that mammals and other animals with highly developed nervous systems might have a conscious experience similar to our own (and not plants)?
ocb··on How far you can get if you leave the largest U.S. cities at rush hour
It seems like it's assuming that you're starting on the freeway already... totally ignoring the 30+ minutes it takes to get onto I-5
ocb··on The Decline of Investment in San Francisco Startups
Yes, it did? Boulder seems like a nice enough place to live. I was pointing out how preposterous it is to claim that the Bay Area is a "cultureless void" because of tech bros and left-wing politics and then claim that somewhere that's the absolute epitome of those things is better.
ocb··on The Decline of Investment in San Francisco Startups
Portland, LA, and Boulder all have the problems you listed...

Also the idea that Boulder has some kind of culture that the Bay Area doesn't is laughable. Disregarding that only 100,000 people live there, I've never seen a place more homogenously populated by "rich boring white people" in my entire life. It's like an entire city of the stuff that pops up when neighborhoods gentrify.

ocb··on In Urban China, Cash Is Rapidly Becoming Obsolete
Germany's aversion to credit cards is somewhat cultural, isn't it? Datenschutz, Datensicherheit, etc.
ocb··on As the U.S. fantasizes, the world builds high speed rail
6-7 hours can't possibly be correct, that's how long it takes driving.
ocb··on As the U.S. fantasizes, the world builds high speed rail
Not really true, pretty much every intra-regional trip would be well served by high speed rail. Seattle-Portland, Charlotte-Atlanta, Minneapolis-Chicago, etc.

All of these trips are currently frequently taken by car because flying is a nuisance and takes a lot longer than just the flight duration itself.

ocb··on Silicon Valley Women, in Cultural Shift, Frankly Describe Sexual Harassment
> Due to the risk, I naturally didn't try to get a date with anyone when I was in leadership positions... despite much, much temptation since they were impressive inside & out.

When you write things like that, phrased like that, it's not surprising in the slightest that multiple women have thought you were harassing them.

My guess is that you come off as a creep. I'm sure you don't mean to but I don't believe psychopathic schemers are common enough that anyone could ever be accused numerous times without some real cause for it.

ocb··on Americans don’t need more degrees, they need training
I don't know, overoptimistic real estate developers? My point is just that asserting that rents in SF are increasing because they are trying to reach some kind of equilibrium with Flint, MI obviously involves glossing over tons of factors that affect rents more in the short term. You might as well argue that rents in SF are rising because they are trying to reach equilibrium with the rents in rural villages in Mali
ocb··on Americans don’t need more degrees, they need training
This seems like kind of an absurd oversimplification. Maybe what you're saying is true over geologic timescales but if SF suddenly had a large amount of vacant housing, rents wouldn't continue to increase regardless of what's happening economically in Flint.
ocb··on What Is Mathematics and What Should It Be? [pdf]
P = NP is interesting precisely because of what you're saying: it feels trivially obvious that they aren't equal but no one can actually prove it... which sort of implies that it's not trivially obvious.
ocb··on Coffee from California
No, obviously not just like Washington DC. I'm not even expressing my opinion in the matter I'm just explaining why Puerto Rico isn't always included when people say "the US"! Why did I get downvoted?
ocb··on Coffee from California
Because it's distinct culturally and politically from the 50 states and (along with the US's other territories) therefore not always necessarily included when one is discussing the United States. Nor do its inhabitants necessarily identify as Americans.

I'm not sure why you're being so pedantic, anyways. I was just hinting at a reason for why the author of this article didn't mention Puerto Rico when they said that Hawaii was the only place in the US where serious coffee cultivation occurs.

ocb··on Coffee from California
Obviously it is legally a territory of the US and Puerto Ricans are American citizens but it's not one of the 50 states.
ocb··on Coffee from California
Side note: coffee is also produced in Puerto Rico. Whether or not that should be counted as part of the US is debatable but it's interesting that there was no mention.

Edit: NPR article from 2015[1] discussing coffee production in Puerto Rico.

[1] http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/05/13/404228117/pue...

ocb··on Don't use Hadoop when your data isn't that big (2013)
Not true in the vast majority of usages. Maybe in scientific writing, but this is a blog post.
ocb··on Changing San Francisco is foreseen as a haven for wealthy and childless (1981)
Do you have a source for your claim about the there being a point in density where infrastructure costs stop scaling linearly? Intuitively, economies of scale imply the opposite of what you're saying--that infrastructure becomes less expensive per capita as density increases.
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