sword_smith

It would seem to me that you wouldn't be able to mock all the classes if you followed this strategy.

The biggest spike in the Phanerozoic was at the Permian extinction event 251m years ago and was caused by huge volcanic eruptions in Siberia that burned off coal deposits created in the Carboniferous era. See Figure 7 in this publication. https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/200...

This is really fascinating, thanks for the clarification.

I know that data for CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere go back at least 541m years, i.e. the whole Phanerozoic. Does a similar dataset exist for methane?

How is methane removed from the atmosphere and does a methane sink play a role in biology like CO2 does through photosynthesis?

They (China and foreign dictators) find the openings they can in Western society and echo those narratives that are convenient for them. This is a very good analysis.

What was the exact quote? The article doesn't mention it. I assume it was in support of the HK protestors.

If there is a silver lining in this, it is that it is probably good for open source development. But since I am not a graphics guy, I don't know much about the state of open source image manipulation software.

Rightwing conservative capitalist here. This imperialistic US foreign policy is so destructive and so unfair. Sanctions and trade embargoes are an act of war, yet if Iran or Venezuela responds, the US declares it an attack and feels justified to impose even harder sanctions or perhaps to invade.

Seeing that the instigator's post is the most downvoted I have ever come across on Stack Exchange, I thought of the saying "the Revolution devours its children".

I like that the author has high standards for an editor. He should have. In my opinion VSCode and VS live up to his requirements about out of the box intellisense, inline definition peeking, and extensions that are easy to install (VS Code being better than VS in this regard). They probably don't live up to his model requirement, though, but I think the author could have done a better job of explaining exactly what he wants from this editing mode.

People worried about rising CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere should note that gas is not just out competing nuclear power but also coal which emits twice the amount of CO2 per energy unit produced. All in all it is probably a net positive wrt. decreasing CO2 emissions.

"just" might not be the right word here. Electric cars existed in the 1890s but their range was too short. Which is exactly the same problem they have today. The problem of non-existent cheap energy storage has been around for more than a century.

I was studying nuclear engineering in Finland in 2011, and by reading BP's Statistical Report on World Energy I came to a conclusion which dismissed the reason that I had opted to go into the energy sector: the belief that we are running out of fossil fuels. The specific numbers that convinced me that there was no shortage in fossil fuels was the known oil reserves vs time and consumption vs time. In the 25 years from 1985 to 2010 humanity was discovering oil reserves faster than we were increasing production! This ran counter to the narrative of Peak Oil at the time (noticed how no one talks about that anymore?)

I only saw part of the picture, though. I didn't spot the revolution in natural gas extraction that was occurring and which is the interesting part of this story: nuclear power can't compete with natural gas! The prices of fossil fuels are simply too low.

This makes me happy that I chose a career in programming and crypto currency instead of trying to solve a problem that wasn't there.

I would live to see this. But are there any indications that this is actually happening?

Absolutely. But not all land is created equal, most people want to live near a big jobs market, meaning near a big city. So the price of this land will inevitably go up.that being said, I am sure there is a lot municipalities could do to make housing more affordable.

> So, the mother of all party crashers took a dump in the We IPO punch bowl. The crasher? Math.

I laughed out loud when I read this.

bboygravity: I agree with everything you just said except that deflation is bad for the economy in general. It doesn't have to be. The Guilded Age (Belle Epoque in Europe), 1871-1914 had several percentages of deflation each year and this was a period where a massive number of people went from being poor farmers to middle class city dwellers and the period saw a massive growth in productivity.

Deflation will destabilize the economy if there is massive borrowing, and since most Western government owe about 100 % of GDP, they will prevent deflation for the very reasons you describe. But the middle class should embrace deflation and so should the general economy as it encourages savings which encourages investments which is where the growth in productivity comes from.

A growing economy should all other things equal lead to a higher home ownership rate as the rising productivity means that fewer man hours are required to build a house. However the low interest rate environment the US (and the whole Western world) has experienced since 2001 has led to a declining rate of home ownership.

> Historically speaking, the homeownership rate has risen above the 50-year low it reached during the second quarter of 2016 when it clocked in at 62.9 percent. Still, it's several percentage points away from its pre-recession peak of 69.2 percent. [0]

[0]: https://www.thebalance.com/the-homeownership-rate-what-is-it...

Edit: you can also have a look at the graph on page five here. It shows that the home ownership rate topped around 2003 and has been on a steady decline since then:

https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/files/currenthvspress.pdf

Yes. But the high house prices feed through to higher land prices so the newly built houses will also be more expensive than they otherwise would have been.

I guess many people will not, and that this will lead to a higher rate of renting. That promotes economic inequality as the middle class is then prevented from entering an important way building savings: owning a house outright.

When people borrow money for a house, they only consider the monthly payments for the mortgage and not the absolute amount of money they are borrowing. This means that low interest rates are the main reason behind surging house prices and is why people have to spend decades paying back loans and being vulnerable to a drop in house prices. It creates too much debt in society and generally makes the economy more fragile than it has to be. The low interest rates may seem like a helping hand to house buyers but it is in fact the opposite: a transfer of wealth to house owners from people seeking to enter the market, a transfer of wealth from the younger generations to the boomers. This must end if we want to avoid a repeat of the 2008 crisis. But with the current levels of government debt, it's hard to see a political solution.

I use Entity Framework for C# and I have grown to appreciate it. I get libraries for in-memory databases which makes it easy to write thorough unit tests, the `Include` function uses join to include foreign key objects in an optimal manner, and scaffolding tools make it easy to map from SQL to C# classes. The resulting SQL from the Linq expressions is logged which makes it easy to see what is going on, if you already know SQL. The only problem is that I think the writeback to the database of manipulated or new objects is not clear but that might just be because I haven't read the documentation for that thoroughly.

If Edward Snowden couldn't convince you of the existence of a deep state serving their own interests as opposed to the public's, I doubt anyone can.

I thought this would be about the Cambrian Explosion but that is 541m years ago, and this alleged asteroid blew up 466m years ago according to the article. Both periods, The Cambrian Explosion and the Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event (GOBE) are periods with strong biological radiation as can be seen on the 1st graph here: https://www.fossilhunters.xyz/fossil-classification/images/1...

The Cambrian Explosion is replaced by the 'Cambrian Plateau' (not a canonical name), and the GOBE comes after. The Ordovician animals were the first to evolve jaws (in Gnathostomata/jawed vertebrates). This happened about 462m years ago, so perhaps we can thank a 93 mile asteroid that blew up 466m years ago for our ability to chew?

They found a pretty interesting dataset, it seems, relating various isotopes. It's a pitty the article don't go into details on the chemical signature that convinced the scientists that leftovers of an asteroid rained down on Earth.

"Also, I totally reject this on the basis that education is a public service that allows economic mobility - restricting it to the rich, whether in a public or private setting - is immoral."

So because you have to pay for something, only the rich will afford it? Just like only the rich surf the internet, because AT&T charges a subscription?

I agree. Just because you accept some tax breaks should not, in my opinion, mean that you stop being a private organization. If a university's standard is lowered because the rich, not the best are admitted, that will be reflected in the academic standards of the university and would make it less attractive.

I hope you are right.

I was thinking the same thing. But powerful countries (US, China, Russia, and probably a few other countries) have the capabilities to shoot down satellites. Maybe they will opt for that or at least threaten to do that if Musk allows to much freedom?

> Would it be too cynical to suggest the only reason they're doing this is because they don't operate in mainland China? Do you think they would write a report like this if they found the US government trying to push a pro-democracy narrative into China instead?

Excellent point. Snowden's revelations show that US tech companies have been threatened to comply with the three-letter agencies' demands. The US govenrment already has a lot of leverage over these companies, so they don't need to use these more primitive methods.

I only have one year of formal CS education but that paper is one of my favorites on the topic. Naur is also the founder of CS at the University of Copenhagen, the place where I studied :)