Recent submissions

Comment · 3 years ago
Underneath that high-level hand-waving there’s still a pretty simple concept. If I buy T—Bonds, I bloody well expect them to be cashed at maturity. Otherwise, who’d buy them? And I am under no obligation to buy goods and services from the US for the dollars received.
Comment · 3 years ago
Oh, but dear sir, you forgot about the AI!
Comment · 3 years ago
Yes, exactly. The gender-driven questions have been replaced by a general (and imho more important) question of how to be a good person. That question, however, is also much more abstract (I can measure my body fat, how do I measure “good”?) and, logically, people will struggle more to find answers. Particularly if they lack good humanitarian education which should, fundamentally, provide a deep insight into all of the accumulated thoughts on the human condition. Given men tend to gravitate towards STEM and the ideologization of humanities, the situation kinda makes sense.
Comment · 3 years ago
Read Nancy Levesons work on system safety and you’ll see things are not necessarily so
Comment · 3 years ago
A very interesting case where the design of the system stems directly from the design of the team designing and building it.
Comment · 3 years ago
What Thiel is describing is a feedback loop: more people of x in a region means more people of x in a region simply because they will feel more comfortable among like people. These sorts of mechanisms certainly exist (Forrester on city planning), but with dynamic systems it’s always more complex than it would seem. Landlords definitely benefit from whatever feedback is making cities grow and are definitely interested in it continuing (thus probably investing in it), but its unlikely they are the ones behind the structure.
Comment · 3 years ago
Let’s see what the classics say about this. Mr Conway says, that an organization creates a system in its image. Thus, if the system needs to be very distributed, so does the organization. So unless there is a singular monolithic thing built by a focused local team, a singular monolithic team makes no sense. And a team that’s not like that benefits little from their physical location, as a large chunk of their work is non-physical communication anyway. Even when the other team sits in the same building, who’s going to spend 10 minutes going to another floor when they can just message?

Office architecture is seen as ideologically driven. People like open offices so we do those. People like working from home (or office), so we do that. But office structure is as much part of the architecture of your enterprise as is database or microservice structure. It should aid progress toward a particular goal of the organization and not be subject to any hype in any direction.

Comment · 3 years ago
Ah, the old shaman argument. The dude living in an essentially black-and-white wasteland up north with months of darkness. He strongly believes in the need to go consult the ancestors, moves in a hypnotic fashion, beats a monotone rythm on the drum for hours staring into a fire. And thus needs a minuscule plant-based push to have a profound experience. And still the old stories always have the element of being very careful and struggling to return from the other side. And then there’s a modern everyday flashing-lights-and-technicolor life kind of dude just looking to have some fun. The context is too different for “they did it thus it’s natural” argument to work.
Comment · 3 years ago
You did not, in fact, stumble upon information. You stumbled on a person making statements. There’s a difference, especially when lives are at stake.
Comment · 3 years ago
People consistently fail to properly assess the system architecture aspects of things. Iphone is not a standalone device but part of a complex system including hardware, software, organizational processes working on the app store etc. The device can be copied and improved upon with ease. The entire architecture of how these thousands of elements supporting the device fit together is much harder to copy. Consider Russia. They are, to an extent, capable of copying US technological devices from cruise missiles to aircraft. But they have, since 02.22, consistently failed to demonstrate their ability to make all the parts work together like the US has been able to. This despite US being their biggest strategic adversary and the considerable material and intellectual resources available.
Comment · 3 years ago
Architecture is not about technology. It’s about how to structure a system to best aid a given organization to achieve its strategic goals.
Comment · 3 years ago
And then there’s guys like mr. Rainger (https://www.raingerfx.com/shop/p/minibar) just casually inserting an actual pod of liquid into the signal chain to replace a resistor and drive an eq (via its transparency). Coke sounds different from single malt and a protein shake is different again…
Comment · 3 years ago
Former head of IT at a tax authority of a small EU nation here. We get 95+ percent of online filing for private income tax (and have for 20 years), of course there is no fee, and you can have your refund on your account in a few hours. The whole process takes around 30 seconds. AMA.
Comment · 3 years ago
FSD is not happening in the sense I mean it but it might in the sense you mean it. I mean “single-lane three-dimensionally-twisty-motorcycles-do-40mph roads covered in literal ice in complete darkness”. Because that’s what a large chunk of driving looks like around here. Even assuming no traffic and perfect understanding of the placement of the vehicle on the road (there’s no technology currently that can do that - no roadside markers, snow everywhere etc.) keeping it moving in the roughly the right direction without crashing would be a miracle of automation. But on a well-maintained California highway - sure, why not.
Comment · 3 years ago
Firstly. The range does not work for me. I need the car for long drives in the cold winter or hot summer. In the latter case, I need to have a bike on the roof and there is unlikely to be charging where I go to. I do not wish to sit and wait for the car to charge after a day full of sports. Secondly, the boot space does not work for me. I need to lug sports stuff and guitars/amps on a regular basis. Unless I go for the truck (and I don’t want to), there’s not enough space. Thirdly, the Tesla is just an awful car from the inside: the seats follow the worst US traditions of softness without comfort, there’s the bloody screen (the lack of physical buttons has been moaned about elsewhere in this thread). Fourth, I do not like the trust model. Somebody being able to fully control my car remotely? Nope. Fifth, I do not like the ecological footprint of the batteries. Sixth, it’s bloody expensive. I can get at least two fully loaded lightly used under-warranty bmw 530i tourings for the price of a model X. Which are better cars for me as a user. I could also go on about dubious engineering choices both physical and software, the antics of mr. Musk etc. But paying double the price for what is a worse car along every dimension?

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