514700+ entries in 0.314s
ben_vulpes: i'm going
to focus on murder and mayhem for my shartup business plan
ben_vulpes: better be long amazon
than basically anyone else in
the atoms biz in
the us.
mircea_popescu: making corpses is a surer way
to power
than making money.
ben_vulpes: require vast orchestration overhead
to survive. not like pgp and bitcoin.
mircea_popescu: even so. look at it
this way : zimmerman died, his pgp still in use.
ben_vulpes: i'm kind of horrified at
the notion
that aws will outlive
the usg.
ben_vulpes: nevertheless, it obviates aws/fedex/ups' obligation
to invest in
the road.
mircea_popescu: which is why one's own
two legs are such valuable infrastructure, moreso
than any car.
mircea_popescu: and mind
that "more dollars are printed" does not in fact work
to maintain infrastructure.
mircea_popescu: both classes of problems are being controlled atm with artificial restraints, but
technology esentially means arbitrage between actual and artificial restraints.
mircea_popescu: on very long distances
they suffer from low desnity problem (ie, if you want
this sent 5000 miles away, odds are
there's not a road leading
to your destination)
nubbins`: seems like drones are more a replacement for bike couriers
than
trucks
mircea_popescu: on very short distances
they suffer from high density problems (ie, if we live
three blocks from each other in manhattan anything';s better
than
trying
to ship you stuff)
mircea_popescu: (length in
this impoverished model means nothing other
the inverse of density :
the longer
the distance
the lower
the density)
mircea_popescu: ben_vulpes let me put it
this way :
trucks are an excellent midrange solution. if
the distance
they
travel is neither
too long nor
too shoirt,
they do fine
ben_vulpes: mircea_popescu:
the (national) gas
tax hasn't even been bumped
to account for inflation since...93?
ben_vulpes: who knows what strange is in
the former.
ben_vulpes: BingoBoingo: a distributed binary is not
the same a binary cooked up on ones own box.
ben_vulpes: no but
that's not actually a cost
to aws business either in
the glorious communist states where more dollars are simply printed
to maintain infrastrucutre.
mircea_popescu: ie, do you count what it costs
to run
the
trucks starting with what it costs
to build
the roads
they run on ?
ben_vulpes: (only efficient use of a jetpack is
to go up as high as possible and
then glide sidways as far as possible.)
ben_vulpes: quadrotor not even having a glide rate so
to speak, and suffering from
the jetpack problem.
ben_vulpes: anyways. point i'm
trying
to make is
that
the fuel cost for putting boxes in
trucks and moving
them around is vastly lower
than fuel costs for putting boxes on quadrotors and derping
them around
town.
ben_vulpes: so
they've been banging on in public about delivery of small packages by quadrotor.
mircea_popescu: i know
there exists a us corp by
that name. it originalyl did books,
then junk, now hosting.
ben_vulpes: i...apparently cannot argue
this one effectively.
ben_vulpes: counterparty fell back
to "but don't you see
the value in being
the company
that builds out quadcopters
that can actually fly shit places?"
ben_vulpes: <mircea_popescu> but
they don’t understand what
the calculations are really
telling
them, like Searle’s chinese room but with numbers. << i
tried
to have a conversation about amazon's quadcopter delivery system, using an ergodic analysis
ben_vulpes: i knew when my pinky was stretching for enter
that something was wrong
ben_vulpes: also probably i have
to write an opinion piece as
to what
the fuck a reference implementation is for
mircea_popescu: ben_vulpes but you have
to send someone
to hunt
these down and use
them.
ben_vulpes: which given
their water problems should surprise precisely nobody.
ben_vulpes: the good veggies, provided you step outside of
the corporate-blessed brand sanctuary and actually go
to a "farmers market" or
the "first permanent
tent structure within city limits" are -- surprise -- cheaper
than
the lettuces shipped up from cali.
ben_vulpes: <asciilifeform> ^
this is solvable, albeit at astonishing cost << near you maybe. not out here in
the sticks.
ben_vulpes: <asciilifeform> and just about everyone i know has some version of
this << my parabolic
testing facility, f'r instance.
ben_vulpes: <mircea_popescu> besides, something
tells me you'll salivate after
the vibe of any place
that's not washington fucking dc. << no but you see "muh jaeorb"
ben_vulpes: <mircea_popescu>
timisoara. it
thinks itself a major romanian
town, but it's more like... well... portland, basically. << dude
the capital of
the occupied coastal
territories is remarkable only for being isolated from
the retardation of both california and seattle
ben_vulpes: build roads out of shit with high
thermal expansion coefficients in washington dc, shit's going
to crack before your eyes.
ben_vulpes: <asciilifeform> where nothing ever seems
to get constructed << oh give over, it's benign retardation
ben_vulpes: <mircea_popescu> five-six
thousand years later you'll be launching
the
titanic! <<
this is precisely what
the "domes in
the outback" routine is all about
ben_vulpes: <mircea_popescu> assbot: Young Adults Are Losing All Hope of Buying a Starter Home - check it out, being a
twentysomething usian kid is a worse fate
than being a 20something chinese kid. <<
tell me about
mircea_popescu: but correcting my usage of sky makes
them dumb, and
their ignorance is no excuse.
mircea_popescu: so in
this perspective, not knowing what
the sky is makes one ignorant, not dumb.
mircea_popescu: it's also
the deep reason women have been
throughout human society and
the centuries been regarded as intellectually inferior : it just so happens
that for very good biological reasson
they're primed
to accept new circumstances.
mircea_popescu: which is why
things like "x animal sought
to find its home" makes
the animal seem smart, or w/e
the opposite of dumb is.
mircea_popescu: dumb in my head is
the situation of one who
takes his circumstance, whatever it may be, as
the complete story.
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform imo,
the " and why do you use
that weirdo archaic word 'sky' anyway, it's 'ceiling'" is exactly definitorily dumb.
mircea_popescu: people not washing is easier
to
tolerate. much easier.
mircea_popescu: it bothers most
thinking people, on a very fundamental and not necessarily conscious level,
to interact with anyone exhibiting
this particular idiocy.
mircea_popescu: it's a) exactly my experience and b)
the fundamental reason
the cattle is despised, actually.
mircea_popescu: but
they don’t understand what
the calculations are really
telling
them, like Searle’s chinese room but with numbers.
mircea_popescu: ilometers. No one would notice when answers were wildly wrong. [...] Since I began working in
the business world I’ve noticed
that most people never develop
that skill. Stick a number in a sentence and people just mentally run right over it, you might as well have inserted some klingon phrases. Some of
the better actuaries do have some nice numerical intuition, but a surprising number don’t.
They can calculate,
mircea_popescu: The first
time I
taught undergraduates I was surprised
to learn
that most of
the students had no ability
to judge if
their answers seemed plausible. [...] You could ask a question about a guy
throwing a football, and answers would range from 1 meter/second all
the way
to 5000 meters/second. You could ask a question about how far someone can hit a baseball and answers would similarly range from a few meters
to a few k
mircea_popescu: any physical location
takes well over 100 man-hours of research before it can be livable.
mircea_popescu: the us is principally annoying because of
the challenge finding edibles is.
BingoBoingo: Etoh has blessed me with plenty of forward moving "time machine" jumps. Never given me
the backwards jump
to 2003 I'd make so much out of.
BingoBoingo: If working
the liver, why also push
the pancreas closer
to diabeetus.
brendafdez: asciilifeform not sure if
that's
the proper word
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform aka punishment room. small room no windows where bad girls go
to meditate.
BingoBoingo: I'm not a big fan of
ticker booze. Higher Etoh content is great. Just
thicker devolves into schnapps.
mircea_popescu: very supportive home market. "oh, our empire building boys abroad found blue rocks ? FINE! we will make hats with
them!
they're very valuable now!"
mircea_popescu: on
the other hand, england had jamaica, only
thing it was good for was sugar.
mircea_popescu: well, it's a historical accident. on one hand, "this wine is pretty good, could we add shit
to it ? maybe make it
thicker ?"
BingoBoingo: mircea_popescu: Sure. As in delivery and understanding
the principle. Just don't understand
the idea of Port.