bishoprook2's comments

Maybe because it's fun to cheer on a TV war from a barstool (USA! USA!). The early parts of a war, especially when fighting an incompetent enemy, make for great entertainment.

Western countries aren't ruthless enough to really win wars in the Third World. They should think less like Rome and more like Byzantium. But those opening scenes look amazing.

I can't answer your question though, so I'll leave it at that. Maybe it's the wrong question. Probably best to ask simply for 'people' who supported regime change as opposed to a straightforward trackdown and punishment of guilty parties.

For instance, at this point I'd probably place George Bush at the progressive end of the political spectrum, or at least as an ally. A lot of people have changed their seating position in the last five years.

As usual, James Howard Kunstler has an opinion regarding Afghanistan, a person could argue that the shadow of the CCCP looms over the US. History doesn't repeat, it rhymes:

https://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/strange-days-ahead/

> Someone on the conservative side of the spectrum, please enlighten me what the reasonable argument for justifying the past military action there is at this point...

I'd say that it's possible (quite possible) to be conservative and to be against foreign adventures. It's probably better to view a country as being occupied by multiple cohorts of political thought, one of which is a ruling class that likes to play Risk.

That ruling class has shifted party allegiance and probably will do so in the future.

In any case, from my uninformed armchair, it seems pretty obvious that it's easier to run foreign policy by attempting to influence the existing dictator (whether it's in Iraq or Libya or Syria) rather than install a new one with the attendant cost in blood and treasure.

"This article makes me think of the woodworker's dilemma."

I'll definitely say that this applies in the car hobby.

It's a helluva lot more fun to arrange a garage than to pull out a transmission.

In terms of software, and this is perhaps just my age (and industry) showing, but it would be interesting to set up a shop that used only simple/traditional make files, gdb/gcc, simple text editors, extremely simple source control, waterfall design.

It wouldn't work at Google but you sure can get wrapped up in building the garage at smaller companies.

I just read about that after your post. Even with the typical lawyer hyperbole it's pretty bad.

It seems to me that Tesla door handles (in a world where they've been designing door latches for some time) are just plain ridiculous and likely unreliable but are a side effect of the market the company has been selling into. Gadgets go a long way with Tesla owners.

Obviously, things like a latch should not only work under all conditions including no-power, but they should probably be the same under all conditions. 'Emergency' latches aren't going to be used during an emergency as muscle memory is too important.

I expect that to design self-driving you need to push the limits (with some accidents) a bit with a bunch of telemetry. Going from not-much to full-self-driving requires a lot of design increments.

My tactic (which I'm violating right now in order to post this, mea culpa) was to move the few things that strike me as valuable to a newsreader and quickly grind through them with coffee in the morning.

I don't give a damn about smartphones, so there's no temptation there, and simply organizing around a handful of computer-oriented reddit groups (as opposed to the crazies at /politics), science news sites, the local newspaper, and oddly enough, RT (mostly international news) pretty much does the trick.

Add in the forays to email/banking plus archive.org, libgen, Sci-Hub for books/papers and Amazon for stuff and the internet is pretty much handled except for the occasional technical question.

For some reason, the discipline of RSS is good for calming down any need for outrage porn.

As an aside, my latest experiment in social media consists of sending vintage postcards.

I'd add..

3) The urban public likes purty forests to go vacation in.

To be fair, if you execute a murderer they're not going to do it anymore.

...or simply the need to have version 6.0 after version 5.0, somethings gotta change.

Sometimes I think it would be an interesting mental exercise to convert most (all?) web pages and PC apps to something like a bog simple Windows 3.1 application. You could melt an online banking site to a handful of drop down menus and dialog boxes.

You have to wonder what the effect of ever-more-obtuse interfaces combined with visual gingerbread has on people with vision problems.

OTOH, there's apps that have been around for years where you have to wonder what they were thinking to begin with. Calibre. After Effects. Gimp.

About as useful as Amazon search, Kindle giant list o' books interface, Amazon Prime Video on Android TV gizmos etc.

question.

Do peer reviewed papers make the reviewers public?

That would be an interesting angle if not. Allow anyone to publish, but they compete for high-status reviewers. Also, the reviewers have some skin in the game so far as correctness.

Also, it's an actively managed index. Companies are added and subtracted.

>You see a doctor because something hurts, they look at the something -- often in isolation -- and if they can't figure it out, you're pretty much on your own.

A quick Old Man(tm) rant.

Concerning healthcare, you have to be your own project manager. They're a lot better at curing things they can see (ie. surgery), GPs have crude tools for analysis and mostly serve as gatekeepers to specialists and pharmacists. Also, GPs work mostly from flow charts and you are just one of 1000 patients they see that year. Communications between hospital departments, independent contractors like specialists or ER personnel, GPs, etc. are poor. Continuously audit procedures and drug regimes. Sci-Hub is your friend but don't overestimate the value of studies.

>Do you sincerely think these 70 year old politicians understand the technology and implications?

Politicians of any age aren't domain experts and don't appear to be any smarter than they have to be to get and hold office. Judging from reading the writings from politicians of yore, I do have to say that the better minds in Congress can't compare to their 19th C. equivalents. It could simply be that a classical education served as a sort of filter.

As far as implications, humans are notably bad at that generally, whether it's tax law or something that involves those computer things. The laws of unintended consequences continue on, but that never stopped the writing (by Congressional staff) of more and more rules for us all.

That's pretty cool, I'd never heard of it.

I wonder what super secret representation of primes results in unknown patterns?

There is a depressingly large body of technology attached to movie film and we'll be living with it for some time (especially aspect ratios).

Probably just best to stick to Cinerama and be done with it.

>Even if it meant objectifying people into a market segment just to make money, under the branding of empathy and identity?

Not to be rude, but what do you think a 'market segment' is? What is there besides market segments? For that matter, what is there besides money? at least in terms of the entertainment biz.

Implementation issues aside, I'd say they'd get a lot further with a less creepy appearance.

'Robot police killer insect dog' is not a great look. Maybe it just needs a nice little crocheted jacket.

Luckily I managed to pop out of the other end of the machine with my limbs intact.

Crikey. This gives me a great idea.

BoomerFlix.

What better market to target if you want to make a few coins?

Who's in?