tomgp

How many people would need to die each year for it to be considered extremely dangerous? Literal wars have been started over fewer deaths than the US road network racks up in a year. OK I’m being facetious but the extent to which we’ve normalised 40,000+ deaths a year really is remarkable, can you imagine the reaction if smart phones killed that many?

>it would have massive negative effect on trade and would probably cost the US far more than it would save.

I'd love to share that certainty, it's a rational position but the Republican party are fully in thrall to an ideological commitment to capture or destroy the institutions of state and can't be relied upon to behave rationally. If you think the political right won't commit economic vandalism in the name of this idiological crusade just take a look at my home, Britain, where first austerity, then Brexit, then Liz Truss's free market extremism dumpded our economy in the trash and pushed our public services to the brink.

This would be an incredible act of vandalism. The hostility towards science, and specifically efforts to monitor and mitigate climate change, coming from the right of American politics is frankly terrifiying.

Thank you! This is going to make my life MUCH easier

Obligatory XKCD "Evolution of my understanding of color over time" https://xkcd.com/1882/

I'd say this article is around a half of the way down the panel

That’s exactly the argument of this (exhaustive) Harvard law review piece from 2022, that the sole pattern of the supreme courts decision making is that it accrues power to itself at the expense of other branches of government

https://harvardlawreview.org/forum/vol-136/the-imperial-supr...

This looks interesting but I’m pretty sure it’s not the first declarative charting tool. (Eg Vega https://vega.github.io/vega/)

"Navigating to a new screen" is such a basic behaviour of the web the idea that we need to rely on a framework to manage this in some way is absolutely insane. At this point the complexity that React imposes on developers is out of all proportion to the benefits that it provides.

Yes there are cases where React is exactly what's needed but when each new version introduces new "best practices" based on how "bullish" Meta's developers feel about a given approach it removes a crucial advantage that helped these libraries become popular i.e. that it's easy to onboard new people on to a project because thewre's a consistent approach across code bases. Right now there's not a consistent approach across 2 or 3 years of React releases and that's before we come to the torrent of metaframeowrks designed to smooth over inconsitencies and deficiencies (state managment! styling!).

I don't know what the answer to this is but having spent a good portion of the last 7 years or so on and off React projects I would advise anyone to think carefully before investing time and /or money in the ecosystem. On balance the benefits aren't worth it the large majority of cases.

note: i've used library and framework carelessly and interchangably here, React has historically been keen to market itself as a library i.e. something you dip into when needed but in practice it bends the whole dev process around it so I feel framework is more apt

Yeah, that's my experience too. It's a fun diversion but given the output is ostensibly precisely quantised it's irritatingly glitchy

THough I agree there's no need for any of this to be plausible or realistic I di think that at lest for me, a reader brought up in the british isles in the later half ofthe 20th century those assumptions absolutely do hold. There's not muchI found surprising about the political economic settlement that the author describes in the article, it's more or less what I assumed whilst reading the book.

Yeah that mirrors my experience. I have a 2016 iPad pro which I use all the time and which doesn't show any signs of not meeting my needs any time soon. Probably the best value piece of computing hardware i've ever owned on a price per minute basis.

When i was a kid i used to use Lotus 123 to make maps for DnD

I think if I'd had a bad experience on acid i might not then choose my next engagement to be with one of the most profound psychadelic experiences there is half way round the world with a bunch of strangers. Perhaps start with a light dose of mushrooms at home with some friends?

OK, I haven't read the whole thing yet but this bit raised an eyebrow...

>These two market categories (celebrity books and repeat bestsellers from the backlist) make up the entirety of the publishing industry and even fund their vanity project: _publishing all the rest of the books we think about when we think about book publishing (which make no money at all and typically sell less than 1,000 copies)._

Why do we view this as a vanity project and not the purpose of the whole endeavour? The celebrity books are just to raw material that allow them to dot heir real job; to make books those fragments of human connection widely available to the people who might need them, a service to readers and to future generations that isn't just about making money.

The best cake baker I know weighs her eggs and scales all other ingredients accordingly.

I think there's something in this. Watching the video made me realise that my main irritations with my phone are born of the bit where I have to navigate through a minefield of distrations to add an item to my todo list, or check my calendar, or send a text message. All the "what bridge am I looking at stuff" is cute but feels like solving a problem I never really encounter. Anyway, I'm guess I'm going to try and use Siri more, ubnlock my phone less.

The issue is that there should have been accountability, this isn't a few random people at the bottom of the world, this is a world of billion dollar govenrment contractors and academic institutions.

I mean now you mention it that might make more sense, but we're a simple people bound by our traditions.

As a Brit I celebrate it on the 3rd day of the 14th month

Wikipedia is the worst possible system for making an encyclopaedia, except for all the others.

>How are you supposed to do professional stats work after university on a mobile phone?

Generally your employer or institution will supply you with a computer (or access to one in the case of students)? The test described was devised during the lockdown because people didn't have had access to the university's facilities.

What a strange essay! To try to find out what makes a good (sorry "THE BEST") essay without any reference to any of the great essays that have actually been written? It feels a bit like the head of a university's English department setting out to discover "the best computer program" but without talking to or refering to the work of any of the thousands of people who've made it their life to study and practice the craft.

:D I mean personally I prefer Observable becasue my interest is primarily in data presentation. I imagine if you're more on the analysis side of things (tidyverse etc) Jupyter would still be the way to go.

I think the question is are you likely to be more productive with python and its attendant ecosystem or js and the packages it has available (most saliently D3 etc.)

This ignores the fact that European countries are able to complete infrastructure projects with better worker protections and tighter environmental controls for a fraction of the cost. I haven’t read the article in question but follow Alon’s blog where he provides ample examples of this… https://pedestrianobservations.com/

This is an excellent review of a thinly disguised sales brochure

Now we just need some software to automate the watching of youtube shorts and we'll be sorted

Really impressed with her composure and resolve in a highly emotionally charged situation.