donaldc | 13 years ago | on: Grad Student Who Took Down Reinhart and Rogoff Explains Why They're Wrong
donaldc's comments
donaldc | 13 years ago | on: The Terrifying Reality of Long-Term Unemployment
Women who choose to have children, and anyone, male or female, who chooses to take more than six months off for just about any reason.
donaldc | 13 years ago
It's already been tried for some foods:
donaldc | 13 years ago | on: China Mandates Fibre For All New Homes
From the article:
The standards will take effect from April 1, 2013, and will also require residences to offer equal connections to services from various telecom companies allowing customers to choose which service they want.
Amazingly, this means that China is now ahead of the U.S. regarding net neutrality.
Now, if they'd just do something about the Great Firewall..
donaldc | 13 years ago | on: California School District Owes $1 Billion On $100 Million Loan
In 2010, officials at the West Contra Costa School District, just east of San Francisco, were in a bind. The district needed $2.5 million to help secure a federally subsidized $25 million loan to build a badly needed elementary school.
Charles Ramsey, president of the school board, says he needed that $2.5 million upfront, but the district didn't have it.
If the school was really so badly needed, why didn't they raise taxes to get the $2.5 million? If they couldn't get the district to pass a tax increase in order to qualify for a subsidized loan 10 time its size, then I'm skeptical on how necessary that new school actually was.
If they couldn't afford $2.5 million up front, what made them think they'd be able to afford $34 million later?
donaldc | 13 years ago | on: 24-bit color sucks
While we're at it, let's also add 3D to displays.
donaldc | 13 years ago | on: YC W13 Will Be Smaller
As the batch size grew, it was hard for every partner to know exactly what each startup was doing. Especially since things often change fast at startups.
You could be running up against Dunbar's number (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbars_number) for the more social (as opposed to purely technical) aspects of what is going on at each startup. 66 startups with an average of a little more than 2 people per startup is hitting the upper limit (150) of what the human brain can handle socially. 84 startups with the same average exceeds it.
In my own experience, once a company or social grouping exceeds 50 to 150 people (the more tightly bound the social group, the lower the count), things change noticeably, so I'll be watching with interest what YC does to get around this.
donaldc | 13 years ago | on: Why you should take your 20's seriously
Money spent (rather than invested) in one's 20s offers greater opportunity for enjoyment than when in your 60s, when your choices are more limited
Would you care to elaborate on this? I don't (yet) have first-hand experience with being in my 60's, but I did watch my parents spend money to their great enjoyment after they retired in their 60's.
donaldc | 13 years ago | on: Your Employee Is an Online Celebrity. Now What Do You Do?
You say that as if companies won't find a way to take over:
Some of them will try, from time to time, but they will largely fail. Though to be on the safe side, don't share your social networking account passwords with anyone at the company you work for..
donaldc | 13 years ago | on: The Hardware Renaissance
There's a natural tendency in English to use as nouns words that were originally verbs. Examples: I'm going for a walk. I'm having a talk with someone.
Dictionary definition or not, a google search for the phrase "a schlep" returns >60,000 results.
donaldc | 13 years ago | on: Yes I Still Want To Be Doing This at 56
Is this your personal experience?
donaldc | 13 years ago | on: Rethinking Sleep
I personally have found that f.lux is insufficient. It does significantly tone down the amount of blue that my laptop screen puts out, but even when set to the most red-shifted setting possible, my laptop screen still puts out enough blue light to keep me from getting sleepy.
donaldc | 13 years ago | on: What Amazon's Decision Means for Digital Media
The point the article makes, that you can't get things for free, seems more appropriate to the online website examples it uses than to the Kindle Fire about which the article is ostensibly written. Unless I'm mistaken, Amazon isn't giving away the Kindle Fire for free even in the version that includes ads.
donaldc | 13 years ago | on: Study finds organic food no more nutritive than non-organic
This is a meta-study, which looks at a couple hundred studies done on this. From the article:
Many of the studies didn't specify their standards for what constituted "organic" food..
I'd say this is a pretty serious limitation to both the studies in question, and, as a result, to this meta-study.
donaldc | 14 years ago | on: Why haven't we cured cancer yet?
Given the article talks about decades-long lead times before a cancer metastasizes, I hope that more attention begins to be focused on much earlier-stage detection and treatment. I think a lot of the problem is, by the time a cancer has metastasized and one begins showing symptoms, it's already very late in the game to try and fix things.
From the article:
Moreover, as was discussed in at least a couple of talks at the AACR meeting, an evolution-based analysis of tumors using the latest NGS techniques indicates that for most solid tumors the time from founder mutation to clinically apparent metastasis is between 20 and 30 years. For example, for pancreatic cancer it’s a median of around 21 years, and for colon cancer it’s around 30 years.
donaldc | 14 years ago | on: Facebook counterclaim accuses Yahoo of infringing 10 patents
He agreed but pointed out that there's no reason to be upset with the lawyers. It's congress who's allowing them to get away with it.
There's more than enough blame to go around. The law profession should take more responsibility for what it's involved in.
donaldc | 14 years ago | on: Tacocopter - Flying Robots Deliver Tacos To You
I hope that thing is reasonably quiet.
donaldc | 14 years ago | on: Facebook Buys 750 IBM Patents To Defend Against Yahoo
None of this patent fight between facebook and yahoo will "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts". It's a giant waste of time and resources. Software patents should be invalidated.
(Quote from the Copyright and Patent Clause of the U.S. Constitution.)
donaldc | 14 years ago | on: Paul Graham, the Commons, and How Google Stopped Being Google
It's not up in the air. Everyone else just wants the right answer. Even I sometimes just want the right answer, and I love mental models..
donaldc | 14 years ago | on: Israel to destroy Palestinians' solar panels
The difference is that you'd have a reasonable chance of being able to get authorization.
That was clearly not the case with the flawed paper this OP is concerning itself with. So, not a valid excuse in this case.
At any rate, the team should learn to write papers as they build up the data set. That way they always have a little more data than anyone else working with it. Because without release of the data on which a given paper is based, there's no way to know if the paper is actually valid.