practicalpants's comments

practicalpants | 4 years ago | on: LaMDA: Google's New Conversation Technology

Solving conversational intelligence is the same as solving general intelligence (AGI), so unless google has solved the latter I would expect any chatbot system to still be pretty annoying for any nuanced or real world conversation.

practicalpants | 4 years ago | on: Absolute wealth, relative wealth, taxes, and staying rich

> their biggest worry is a new class of people getting richer than them fast

You can read a lot of Western political history since the industrial revolution, when the new class of mega rich Rockefeller types shocked the established orders, as filled with attempts/policies to prevent new Rockefeller like classes of entrepreneurs from happening. Perhaps counter intuitively, real free market capitalism is a great threat to the established political order since it produces the levels of wealth in new people that can actually change said political order.

practicalpants | 4 years ago | on: For those who can afford it, quitting has become the ultimate form of self-care

At risk of sounding belittling to those spend their life giving their labor to someone else, I think we can't go on indefinitely because we aspire to get something better out of our lives, and somewhere perhaps deep in our minds or hearts we know we need better.

After all this whole concept of spending a career at someone else's company only started in the late 20th C when the industrial rev created the modern corporation.

practicalpants | 4 years ago | on: The Animal Is Tired

Do you have money? Quit your job, go travel, go entrepreneurial pursuing something that moves you.

Living in some San Francisco apartment, building a career at tech companies making 6 figures a year is, once you have some money, a pretty crappy wheel-spinning way to live life, by some opinions.

practicalpants | 4 years ago | on: Ask HN: How do you generally build a product?

I'd recommend starting out with a landing page first before you build the app. Like a really nice, well-designed one, that captures your vision and core points. Just copy some startup landing page you like and tweak it. Create from scratch or use webpage builder.

Gives you advantages: something you can share with others, a developed/implemented vision, something you can actually launch at any time without the underlying product for testing reasons, and something that will psychologically motivate you.

I used to build out backends first because it was easier for me, but many projects just didn't get launched. The landing page first is actually harder in my opinion, but psychologically having something presentable makes the project feel real.

practicalpants | 4 years ago | on: Ask HN: Why doesn't Coinbase support the world's third largest crypto?

The same arguments could made against Btc and Eth just a couple years ago. I did lose an embarrassing amount betting on them circa 2018. Even today, Btc could suffer a 51% hash power takeover that would for all intents ruin Btc. Betting on Doge is not any more risky than the average crypto project.

Given the mainstream's reaction to crpyto, Doge, being cast as a refreshing, non pretentious alternative to Btc, might as well eclipse it in the coming future, I really wouldn't mind if it did, why not.

practicalpants | 4 years ago | on: Dogecoin Is Surging Again, for Some Actual Reasons

This is false information. There is definitely an active development team and the yearly new coin caps are pretty controlled with a decreasing inflation rate that will reach zero eventually.

It's absolutely built to be a real crypto at this point.

practicalpants | 4 years ago | on: Dogecoin Is Surging Again, for Some Actual Reasons

Had a cold water realization a few days ago that Doge, which has all the functions of Btc, in being non elitist, populist, and easily marketable because it's entertaining might very well be on its way to replacing Btc in market cap. Wall Street doesn't care about the underlying currency just returns; main street is going to like Doge more than Btc because it's not elitist. What's stopping it from dethroning Btc?

practicalpants | 4 years ago | on: Ask HN: Why doesn't Coinbase support the world's third largest crypto?

That is what folks have been saying for at least 3 months since I've been following.

I think you underestimate how the mainstream views cryptos as elitist silicon valley stuff, while dogecoin positions itself as "the peoples" currency. I think there's some bigger forces too that want to embarrass bitcoin and said elitist elements.

I'd actually be willing to bet 10k USD with you that by end of August Doge will still be over $1.00.

practicalpants | 4 years ago | on: Is Dogecoin Capped?

Yes, Dogecoin's inflation rate decreases with time and eventually hits zero. The crypto community thinks Dogecoin embarrasses them and it's become cringey watching them react so severely to it. It's a fun thing no more risky or silly than NFTs.

practicalpants | 4 years ago | on: Artist faked being a billionaire to photograph New York City’s best views

Wealthy people minus a few eccentrics are most certainly not parking their money in NFTs. The crazy $69MM Beeple headline was actually a purchase by an NFT related company from what I understand.

Not withstanding unoccupied real estate investments are a problem in every major city. It's usually wealthy foreign investors living far away in particular...e.g. Russia -> London, China -> Singapore/Vancouver, etc. really seems like non-occupied real estate purchases by foreign capital ought to be restricted a bit legally

practicalpants | 4 years ago | on: Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)

I don't think Feynman was that different in this masculine or promiscuous respect from many of that era's greats... Schrödinger, von Neumann, Einstein, to name a few.

Feynman at least writes extensively about his deceased wife.

I imagine you would not enjoy reading history too much as the 21st C Western first world attitudes on these topics are pretty unique compared to any other time.

practicalpants | 4 years ago | on: Charm delivers Stripe's carbon removal purchase ahead of schedule

Not sure it’s about cynicism as much as about understanding what's going on.

The amount of CO2 sequestered is about 80 cars/year worth, and I’m not sure if that accounts for the thermal decomposition reactions, transport, or other steps involved with bio oil production. (Worth noting the “bio oil” is not a usable product, as Charmful says on their website it’s a waste product they’re burying in the ground.)

Say they had 1MM Stripes, operating at 10^6 scale, e.g. 80,000,000 cars worth, it would still actually make no difference, reducing yearly global CO2 output on the rough magnitude of .000001%.

Not sure what else to say.

practicalpants | 4 years ago | on: Why the United States has the best research universities

I do not know what textbooks you read or economic history lectures you took to reach your conclusion. This is the second half of the 19th C, the US was absolutely dominating the industrial revolution in the era that produced the Carnegies Rockefellers JP Morgans and dozens of others of similar stature. Entire new industries and processes like interchangeable parts, telegraph, petroleum products, railraods, rise of malls/retail, electricity, meat packing, industrial farming, investment banking etc. was all either originating from or reaching heights in the US, which also had the highest patents per capita rate, and an international reputation for a general population that was technically competent for the industrial rev.

(Not to mention the gov was essentially giving away 160 acre plots to anyone who wanted to settle elsewhere, which created intense pressure to mechanize due to menial labor shortages, not to mention a broader based prosperity.)

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