kolchinski

Joined 8 years ago

Karma
588
Submissions
93
Member since
Feb 28
http://alex.kolchinski.com Email is (username) at stanford.edu
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Recent submissions

Comment · 1 month ago
I read Guns, Germs and Steel recently and loved it. After finishing it, I was wondering how well the theses had held up in the time since it was published and did some research, and seems like most (though not all) of the major points have held up pretty well or even been strengthened by recent evidence. However, the book seems to have attracted a surprising amount of hate, which this reminds me of! It feels to me like an instinctive hateful backlash to a remarkable achievement, like "crabs in a bucket syndrome" or the Einstein quote -

“Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. The mediocre mind is incapable of understanding the man who refuses to bow blindly to conventional prejudices and chooses instead to express his opinions courageously and honestly.”

Comment · 1 year ago
It's very possible to get campsites but you do need to pounce right when they open up, especially in busier times of year - https://www.nps.gov/yose/planyourvisit/camping.htm

I and many of my friends regularly wake up to do the 7am clickthrough on recreation.gov and often (though not always) are successful for the dates we're trying to get.

Comment · 1 year ago
Hah hopefully not, if this takes off we'll be filtering for illegal/immoral use! Outbound AI calling is actually illegal although widely done :(
Comment · 1 year ago
Excited to be able to use this, the demo was really impressive!
Comment · 1 year ago
Oh yeah agreed that the change in prices doesn't prove it's a scam, my thought was more along the lines of - when crypto insiders who have been talking up crypto as valuable/important because it's independent of the government quickly change their tune and cheer on government intervention when it goes into their pockets, it makes it pretty clear what the dynamic actually is.
Comment · 2 years ago
Thanks yep got it working, really great stuff!!
Comment · 2 years ago
Hey Ben, this looks great, but I'm getting a "Rate Limit Exceeded" error, anything to be done about that?

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