Hacker News: thedragonline

New comment by thedragonline in "Fundamental physics is dying? [video]"

thedragonline — Sat, 12 Oct 2024 15:44:33 +0000

What are you talking about? I spent years munging climate datasets from various research institutes around the world. The upshot: it doesn't look good for humanity. I seriously don't understand how a neutral third party can walk away from this climate work and think, 'Nothing to see here folks.' The denialism and willful ignorance of the potential catastrophic consequences is something I find terribly disheartening. Mark my words - the temperature records that keep getting broken year after year are going to keep getting broken. Entire towns going up in flames and cities being wrecked by increasingly more powerful hurricanes will be the new normal.

New comment by thedragonline in "Porting my JavaScript game engine to C for no reason"

thedragonline — Sun, 04 Aug 2024 22:04:53 +0000

Yeah it did. I'm just sad that it took down ActionScript with it. IMO this is the language Javascript should have been.

New comment by thedragonline in "Supreme Court overturns 40-year-old "Chevron deference" doctrine"

thedragonline — Sat, 29 Jun 2024 01:04:49 +0000

From the mouth of John Roberts himself: "courts must exercise their independent judgment in deciding whether an agency has acted within its statutory authority." This is not going to end well.

New comment by thedragonline in "Supreme Court overturns 40-year-old "Chevron deference" doctrine"

thedragonline — Fri, 28 Jun 2024 16:23:47 +0000

As an aside, I've always wondered how society will drive the response to climate change into a ditch - it'll be at the hands of lawyers (because, you know, they are policy experts).

New comment by thedragonline in "Estimating Software Projects: So you messed up. Now what? (2021)"

thedragonline — Thu, 14 Mar 2024 14:25:25 +0000

>People who have worked in the second type of environment (deadlines are real and have consequences) become quite good at estimating and managing progress toward deadlines without crunch mode at the end.<

I don't know. In my experience, estimation is one of the most difficult aspects of software engineering. A black swan event or some unknown unknown will blow apart your thoughtful estimate (especially near the end of a development cycle) - no matter how good you are at it. I'd much rather have a crystal ball at hand, and let the chips fall where they may, than engage in a herculean struggle to accurately predict the future.

edit:formatting

New comment by thedragonline in "I quit my job to work full time on my open source project"

thedragonline — Thu, 11 Jan 2024 20:40:11 +0000

There is work to do in this world that offers no remuneration or very difficult paths to said remuneration.

New comment by thedragonline in "I quit my job to work full time on my open source project"

thedragonline — Wed, 10 Jan 2024 22:39:58 +0000

Work must always revolve around a pecuniary interest at all times?

New comment by thedragonline in "3M knew its chemicals were harmful decades ago, but didn't tell the public"

thedragonline — Mon, 18 Dec 2023 00:44:55 +0000

Anecdata: I tell a relative that climate is going to get hotter and more variable and that said relative should be concerned that an unaffordable electricity bill may be in the cards (Houston anyone?). Relative's response: the governing authorities won't let that happen. Me:

New comment by thedragonline in "3M knew its chemicals were harmful decades ago, but didn't tell the public"

thedragonline — Sun, 17 Dec 2023 20:57:44 +0000

I spent half a decade working with climate data from institutions around the world. There are dragons in those datasets and it is really frustrating to watch denialism at large and have to deal with it personally.

New comment by thedragonline in "US science agencies on track to hit 25-year funding low"

thedragonline — Sun, 08 Oct 2023 19:32:12 +0000

I'm actually not as opposed to belt tightening as you might think. I just get aggravated seeing narratives without a whiff of empirical evidence to support them. (I've informally studied economics and probably know enough to be dangerous.) My personal indicators that we may be on shaky fiscal ground are the rise of monopsonies/monopolies in vertical markets that depend on discretionary income (concert tickets anyone?) and the most troubling chart I've ever seen from the BLS (Bureau of Labor Statistics) https://www.bls.gov/bdm/entrepreneurship/entrepreneurship.ht... (scroll to the bottom and look at the last chart).

New comment by thedragonline in "US science agencies on track to hit 25-year funding low"

thedragonline — Sun, 08 Oct 2023 03:33:37 +0000

Let's set the rhetoric aside. What debt to gdp ratio would be reasonable? Do you have any sources to support said ratio?

New comment by thedragonline in "US science agencies on track to hit 25-year funding low"

thedragonline — Sat, 07 Oct 2023 14:52:41 +0000

OK. Let's take the U.S. out of the equation and look at Japan's inflation - https://tradingeconomics.com/japan/inflation-cpi. Hmmm... you'd expect with the 'unsustainable' government spending in Japan that there would be an uptick in inflation. There's nothing of the sort - unless my eyes are lying to me. And this goes back to my second point - nobody really knows what levels of government spending are sustainable, and my guess, given that it's not just Japan with a high debt/GDP ratio, that it's likely a much larger number than some posters here would like to admit.

New comment by thedragonline in "US science agencies on track to hit 25-year funding low"

thedragonline — Fri, 06 Oct 2023 23:49:54 +0000

>It’s so clear this isn’t sustainable. Maybe. Having that much debt is problematic in a household budget. However, governments are a different animal - just look at Japan's debt to gdp ratio (https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/CG_DEBT_GDP@GDD/CHN/...). Posters who claim the US Gov's debt is strangling the nation are obligated to explain why Japan hasn't imploded. The likely real answer: nobody knows what levels of debt are sustainable for a government.

New comment by thedragonline in "Solar cycle is more powerful and surprising than predicted"

thedragonline — Tue, 15 Aug 2023 19:19:31 +0000

FWIW, I don't have kids. And given what I've seen in the data, don't intend to.

New comment by thedragonline in "Solar cycle is more powerful and surprising than predicted"

thedragonline — Tue, 15 Aug 2023 18:08:18 +0000

IMO, it seems these people exist to muddy the waters. I spent half a decade munging temperature and precip data from multiple institutions around the world (MPI, fer instance). These datasets suggest an unpleasant future, particularly by mid-century. But I'm supposed to ignore all of it because a) experts are wrong b) sunspots!

New comment by thedragonline in "The Long History of Nobody Wants to Work Anymore"

thedragonline — Sun, 30 Jul 2023 19:48:59 +0000

Let me contextualize that "some" for you: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=17rEg

Real wages have effectively flat-lined over the past 50+ years.

New comment by thedragonline in "I am dying of squamous cell carcinoma, and potential treatments are out of reach"

thedragonline — Sat, 22 Jul 2023 20:52:52 +0000

I'm not sure removing options from the desperate and dying is a good idea. Those with means will just ignore your concerns and the rest will have _nothing to lose_.

New comment by thedragonline in "I still use Flash"

thedragonline — Wed, 21 Dec 2022 16:29:03 +0000

I miss AS. I used it to build a gis engine that packed 5D into what superficially looked like 2D - item renderers helped make that happen. It is aggravating to no end to watch people pile on Flash for its faults - they either don't understand what was lost or just don't want to understand the loss. Steve Jobs is in this group.

New comment by thedragonline in "Show HN: Using stylometry to find HN users with alternate accounts"

thedragonline — Sat, 26 Nov 2022 22:02:18 +0000

I wonder if gpt3 has a use case here?

New comment by thedragonline in "As last module docks, China completes its space station"

thedragonline — Tue, 01 Nov 2022 18:54:03 +0000

Uh, then don't use it? Problem solved methinks.