biomene's comments

biomene | 1 year ago | on: Tesla's sales plummet across Europe

From the article:

> Tesla’s drop came as the German EV market in January grew more than 50 per cent year on year, pushing its market share down from 14 to 4 per cent.

So to answer your question, it seems like people don't mind buying new electric vehicles. They just have a problem with Tesla in particular.

biomene | 1 year ago | on: Sweden Seizes Ship Suspected of Baltic Sea 'Sabotage'

The reason for these accidents to happen more frequently is explained in the WaPo article linked by the parent: Russia is smuggling oil out via the Baltic to fund the war, and it's hard to find experienced crews for these smuggling operations:

> A Nordic official briefed on the investigation said conditions on the tanker were abysmal. “We’ve always gone out with the assumption that shadow fleet vessels are in bad shape,” the official said. “But this was even worse than we thought.”

The last thing Russia wants is to draw attention to the boats it's using to keep its economy afloat. These seamen really didn't know what they were doing.

biomene | 4 years ago | on: Code Smell of the Day: Type Keys

This article also inadvertently shows what I think is a big drawback of the inversion of control pattern.

Imagine you are trying to debug an issue with user creation.

In the last example, you would have to look up everywhere `createUser` is being called, and follow the code path through several different scattered files until you find your issue.

In the original code, you can simply look up `createUser` and you have the complete code flow in front of you.

biomene | 5 years ago | on: David Graeber has died

Thank you for bringing up the point that Capitalists aren't evil, or that Capitalism should be rejected for moral reasons, I think many people miss that.

But I'm not sure we can talk about a central point in Capital. Capital is a description of a system based on private commodity production, for exchange. It has many points, and one of them is the one you mention about the inevitable replacement of the capitalist mode of production with communism, and it comes at the end of Vol 1. Funnily enough, I believe it's the only point he asserts without arguments, and it's, as we know, thoroughly wrong.

If I had to highlight one important point from Capital, I think Marx's explanation for why the mass poverty of workers is an inescapable necessity for the capitalist mode of production would get my vote (chapters 4, 5, 6 of volume 1). It's an argument he was the first to develop, and that many people still refuse to acknowledge.

You are very right to point out that Capital does indeed predict many phenomena that we see today. In general, Capital holds up as a description of how the capitalist mode of production works.

biomene | 7 years ago | on: Thunderbird in 2019

I’ve switched to MailMate after years of thunderbird and am very happy with it. It ticks all the boxes you mention.

biomene | 7 years ago | on: Robinhood launches 3% checking account

The financial crisis was not a result of bad mathematics. Investments are made because they promise to return dividends. But there is always a chance that they might return lower than expected dividends, or none at all. This can be because the market didn't grow as expected, wages rose above expectations, a tsunami wiped out your factory or an array of other factors completely beyond your control. The best mathematicians in the world cannot predict how many coca cola bottles will be sold in a year.

biomene | 7 years ago | on: Unpublished and Untenured, a Philosopher Inspired a Cult Following

Assuming the article is correctly summarising his argument, this is the same critique that Hegel put forward of the distinction of Force and Expression:

> It is often said that the nature of Force itself is unknown and only its manifestation apprehended. But, in the first place, it may be replied, every article in the import of Force is the same as what is specified in the Expression: and the explanation of a phenomenon by a Force is a mere tautology. What is supposed to remain unknown, therefore, is really nothing but the empty form of reflection-into-self, by which alone the Force is distinguished from the Expression — and that form too is something familiar. It is a form that does not make the slightest addition to the content and to the law, which have to be discovered from the phenomenon alone. Another assurance always given is that to speak of forces implies no theory as to their nature: and that being so, it is impossible to see why the form of Force has been introduced into the sciences at all. In the second place the nature of Force is undoubtedly unknown: we are still without any necessity binding and connecting its content together in itself, as we are without necessity in the content, in so far as it is expressly limited and hence has its character by means of another thing outside it.

- G.W.F. Hegel, Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences, § 136

biomene | 8 years ago | on: Backblaze has ordered 100 petabytes of hard drives

Do you reckon the increase in restores has anything to do with APFS? I also lost my computer and Time Machine this week after upgrading to High Sierra, had to restore from backblaze.

Btw, unlike parent comment, I had a great experience with the restore and couldn't be happier with the decision to go with backblaze.

biomene | 9 years ago | on: Org mode 9.0 released

I've tried to use org mode several times. Its functionality is truly great, but having to use emacs to use it is too much of a hurdle for me. I struggle to remember all the emacs key combinations, so in the end I just give up and revert to text files.

It would be great if someone ported org mode out of emacs. I've tried the Sublime Text org mode package[0] but it's still too bare to be useful. Does anyone know of an alternative way to use it?

[0]: https://github.com/danielmagnussons/orgmode

biomene | 10 years ago | on: Amazon Hires Homeless Workers, and Everyone Ends Up Disappointed

> so forgive me if I'm not willing to throw them under the bus for at least trying to help

It's not Amazon I want to throw under the bus. They did what any rational player would do in their situation. What I want to throw under the bus is the situation itself, aka, how we organise our world.

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