int3

Joined 16 years ago

Karma
502
Submissions
162
Member since
May 16
www.jezng.com

http://hnofficehours.com/profile/int3/

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Recent submissions

Comment · 5 days ago
I mean that's what you would expect from a new and rapidly-evolving tool. Being able to identify the kinds of work where people typically use it sub-optimally is a useful thing though!
Comment · 25 days ago
so not that hard with good tooling, and kind of fun?
Comment · 1 month ago
duh? why would you want someone with no experience making decisions?
Comment · 7 months ago
the difference is that one of them is actually justified!
Comment · 1 year ago
well, maybe we can spend some of the money we save not subsidizing the third world on better border security
Comment · 1 year ago
oh so that's what my elementary school classmate had
Comment · 2 years ago
The car is following a process chosen by Mercedes' engineers (to go forward when the user presses the accelerator.) The newsfeed is likewise following a mechanistic process driven by user input (they wouldn't be showing misinformation if users weren't uploading and sharing them.)
Comment · 2 years ago
Does the algorithm "decide" to show something, or is it operating mechanically, driven by the inputs of the user?
Comment · 2 years ago
people can do things for more than one reason
Comment · 2 years ago
Shouldn't all sites have some kind of bandwidth / cost limiting in place? Not to say that AI crawlers shouldn't be more careful, but there are always malicious actors on the internet, seems foolish not to have some kind of defense in place
Comment · 2 years ago
Nope. Assume you have insurance with a one-time fee of $X. It insures against a single kind of event that happens with 60% probability, and pays out $1.6X. So the majority of people are likely to have the event happen to them. The EV of the cost to the insurer is then $1.6X * 0.6 = $0.96X, so the books are expected to balance.

Obviously I'm ignoring variance in this calculation, but you can easily adjust the numbers to give a margin of safety.

Comment · 2 years ago
> People can develop allergies during their lifetime, it's not just something that you're born with.

Sure, but the likelihood of that is low enough that insuring against that isn't worth it for most people

> But my message was about the general principle of insurance being the very thing your comment was against. The situation where the vast majority of people pay some cost of which only a few need to utilise.

No, the principle of insurance is that people pay to hedge against some event that has a reasonable likelihood of happening to them at some point. Whether it's a majority or a minority paying for it is not central to the concept of insurance.

Comment · 2 years ago
People generally don't develop allergies randomly in life. There's no insurance value here.
Comment · 2 years ago
I think one difference is that there isn't a great alternative option in the case of commercial buildings -- if you have a job in a given building that doesn't accommodate your disability, you can't just go find a different building. But insofar as food is concerned, you could pay more for more carefully-manufactured food, or just cook for yourself
Comment · 2 years ago
unironically. would love to have those berkeley lectures back online

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