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throwawaymsfton Donald Trump’s Contract with the American Voter [pdf]

From Trump's perspective, Mexico benefits by having illegal immigrants in the US send money back to Mexico. There is no real reason for Mexico to enforce the border. Trump wants to deter this behavior (not enforcing the border) by assigning a cost (no more wire transfers back).

I'm not making a judgment here, just trying to clarify the worldview.

throwawaymsfton Donald Trump’s Contract with the American Voter [pdf]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_prevalenc...

Singapore has the lowest rates in the world. Sometimes regulations have the intended effect.

throwawaymsfton Donald Trump’s Contract with the American Voter [pdf]

Sure; some rules are easier to circumvent than others. The real question is whether it's onerous enough to act as a deterrent, not whether some people will circumvent it.

In this thread someone said it's like trying to stop the import of illegal drugs. Regulations seem to work for Singapore.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_prevalenc...

throwawaymsfton Donald Trump’s Contract with the American Voter [pdf]

You realize this same logic could seemingly dismiss any regulation (assault weapons, child labor, tax evasion), right?

"People will smuggle illegal guns from abroad. Or buy the parts and assemble them. Or get a machine shop and make them."

A regulation, no matter its aim, does not require 100% compliance to be an effective deterrent. I'm not saying this plan will work, but a generic "people will get around it" argument is not illuminating.

throwawaymsfton DeepMind and Blizzard to release StarCraft II as an AI research environment

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_(game)

Legends trace the origin of the game to the mythical Chinese emperor Yao (2337–2258 BC), who was said to have had his counselor Shun design it for his unruly son, Danzhu, to favorably influence him.[64] Other theories suggest that the game was derived from Chinese tribal warlords and generals, who used pieces of stone to map out attacking positions.[65][66]

throwawaymsfton Material Design

Middlebrow dismissal. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4693920

throwawaymsfton Sound Transit 3, the light rail initative, can bring mobility to Seattle

Are you sure the only way autonomous cars can help is with 100% market penetration? How about

* Better carpooling options

* Automatically taking side streets (based on traffic) to reduce load

* Less swerving/lane changing/rubbernecking which causes backups

* Detecting and responding to traffic waves (a few cars can make a difference)

* Reduced urban parking needs (fewer cars endlessly circling, a huge fraction of traffic)

It goes on.

throwawaymsfton All Tesla Cars Being Produced Now Have Full Self-Driving Hardware

You mean when a puddle of mud simultaneously covers the cameras (front, rear, side facing), radar, and ultrasonics? I guess the vehicle would slow down and pull over (the driver can always take over you know).

Will the new form of vandalism be any different than letting the air out of someone's tires, also rendering it incapacitated?

throwawaymsfton Quantum computers: 10-fold boost in stability achieved

You may be happier subscribing to a feed of shipped products on Dell's website, rather than, say, sciencebulletin.org.

throwawaymsfton React Router v4 FAQ

Yep. I feel javascript library authors forget it's lines of code spent, not lines of code written. How would they feel about a contractor who had to rebuild their house 4 times? "Oh, they're really good about revving their design, this is great!"

throwawaymsfton A TensorFlow Implementation of DeepMind's WaveNet Paper

Assuming it's computation bound, it's a factor of 5400 (~13 doublings in CPU power required to get to real-time, assuming no algorithmic improvements).

throwawaymsfton Evernote is moving all its data, machine learning to Google Cloud

Step 5: Blog post about the wonderful journey users are about to embark on.

throwawaymsfton A Survival Guide to a PhD

Correct. And are the politics of getting your plugin accepted in the Wordpress directory more or less than getting tenure?

See the edit above. You are saying two things must be equal because they are both non-zero. It's a very strange argument.

throwawaymsfton A Survival Guide to a PhD

That sucks, but politics in the workplace can be dialed from mega-corp to startup to consultancy to freelancer to anonymous author of a SaaS. How much politics did patio11 deal with when running Bingo Card Creator?

throwawaymsfton A Survival Guide to a PhD

Yes, but (importantly) degrees vary. The politics of working for an adviser chasing tenure are different from, say, running a SaaS, writing an ebook, or selling a plugin.

throwawaymsfton iPhone 7

That part of the presentation was awful and had me rolling my eyes. "Oh, I wonder what Pokemon it's going to be inside this egg... Pikachu!" <halfhearted claps>

They could have made it funny by having the worst Pokemon appear. Or having it run away. Very poor showmanship.

throwawaymsfton A Survival Guide to a PhD

That's good to hear. I have the hankering to return to school at some point, and I really just want to learn and contribute.

throwawaymsfton A Survival Guide to a PhD

"Properties you find appealing..."

  * Freedom
  * Ownership
  * Personal freedom
  ...

<Later...>

  * Getting into a PhD program: references, references, references
  * Student adviser relationship
  * Pre-vs-post tenure
  * Impressing an adviser
  * (Topic) Plays to your adviser’s interests and strengths

Much of your freedom goes to learning to play politics and manage up to a level employees never have to. Reading this, I'm so thankful I didn't enter academia. I still pursue my academic interests on my own.

Edit: A few people insist on casting a float into a bool. Every job has politics, ranging from 0.01% (anonymous author of 1-man SaaS) to 99% (politician). It's not very informative to note that both are non-zero.

throwawaymsfton Ask HN: How did you keep improving your typing speed after 100 WPM?

Don't worry about justifying your interests to people who don't get it.

throwawaymsfton Ask HN: How did you keep improving your typing speed after 100 WPM?

The average talking speed is above 100 wpm. Why not learn to transcribe your thoughts (internal speech) in real time?

throwawaymsfton Massachusetts to tax ride-hailing apps, give the money to taxis

How does giving everyone a monthly tax rebate (essentially a negative income tax) change who owns the means of production?

throwawaymsfton Massachusetts to tax ride-hailing apps, give the money to taxis

You've never taken an Uber. For your own market education try it sometime.

throwawaymsfton Technical debt as an opportunity to accumulate technical wealth

The max risk is known when selling a put. If I sell a put for 100 shares of Apple at $95, the most I can lose is 9500 (minus the premium I earned).

throwawaymsfton Google Duo, a simple 1-to-1 video calling app

Reputations are often earned.

throwawaymsfton Confirmed: Walmart buys Jet.com for $3B in cash

It's strange how many aren't self-aware enough to realize when they aren't the target market.

throwawaymsfton Master Plan, Part Deux

Some people will always be petty. It says more about them than the object of their critique. You can cure cancer and someone will complain it took you long enough.

throwawaymsfton Google Cuts Its Giant Electricity Bill with DeepMind-Powered AI

Does Google need to sell the stock to realize their gains and hand investors bags of money?

throwawaymsfton Billions of Messages a Day – Yelp's Real-Time Data Pipeline

You'd hope a CRUD app used in "hello world" tutorials (https://www.fullstackreact.com/articles/react-tutorial-cloni...) would be simpler than a 3d physics engine.

throwawaymsfton Why Microsoft is betting its future on AI

Exactly. "Betting its future" is a line MSFT has to trot out every few years to get people to pay attention. They previous bet their future on .net, phones, tablets, Azure, cloud...

throwawaymsfton Ōryōki Web Browser

I understand your point, but there is inefficient vs. efficient use of resources. You could say it's ok to package a toothpick in a shoebox because cargo space is meant to be consumed.

When the ASCII text of a webpage is measured in tens of kilobytes, and the RAM in hundreds of megabytes, something is wrong.