machinerychorus
machinerychorus on Hacker News
Try searching the play store for "Life Perspective Wallpaper"
I think it's exceedingly important to recognize that life is finite, and to reflect upon this regularly. I think its so important that I created an android wallpaper that shows what percentage of your life is already past. This helps me ensure that I'm spending my limited time in the most valuable way possible, and really helps put things in perspective.
App: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.machineryc...
Source code: https://github.com/ethanmdavidson/DeathProgress
This isn't the first time I've shared these links, but I hope it doesn't come across as spammy because 1) I'm not selling anything and 2) articles like this keep getting posted, which implies this is a topic some people are just discovering
Memento Mori is a surprisingly popular topic on HN. This Wikipedia page or some other blog post on the topic gets posted here fairly often. It's kinda interesting because when I bring this up with people I know they usually say it's depressing and strange.
I like this idea so much I made an app that makes my wallpaper show what percentage of my life is already gone by, but only one person (a good friend) that I've shown it to IRL has actually liked it.
App: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.machineryc...
Source code: https://github.com/ethanmdavidson/DeathProgress
Perhaps a bit morbid, but very realistic. Death comes for us all, even if you ignore it. By consciously forcing yourself to confront it you can reduce the chance that you'll wind up with a ton of regrets when you're old.
Posted by
machinerychorus on Monday September 12, 2022 @09:48AM
from the theforest.link dept.
Yeah, mars is getting pretty crowded at this point! I guess the voyager probes might be lonelier, if you count them as robots.
It's mentioned in the article, but doesn't go into detail about why it hasn't caught on
> Continued problems with vinasse-dumping marred the sugar-ethanol industry’s environmental image, even as specialists encouraged repurposing the nitrogen-heavy byproduct as a fertiliser. Today, compliance with anti-dumping legislation is still not effectively enforced.
Posted by
machinerychorus on Friday July 22, 2022 @10:42AM
from the show-hn dept.
gclown is the only thing that keeps me going these days. #!/bin/sh
cat <<"EOC"
GCLOWN
) (
/ \ .-"""""-. / \
( \/ __ __ \/ )
) ; / _\ /_ \ ; (
( | / \ / \ | )
\ (, \0/_\0/ ,) /
\_| / \ |_/ ...
That's all fine and well, I'm not saying you should give away all your money. I'm just saying that there are lots of things to invest in that aren't fossil fuels!
Your money isn't the only thing you leave to your children - you also leave this planet. Do you want to give your children a planet that is more impoverished and conflict-ridden?
https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg2/about/frequently-asked-qu...
I just don't understand how people can believe in climate change and also believe that "ROI for me and my shareholders" is still a good way to make decisions. Buffett certainly isn't going to be an activist investor, because pushing oil companies to change will provide worse ROI than just staying the course. We need to be doing more to combat climate change, including a carbon tax. If that happens, oil companies will be much less profitable, so it seems like Buffett is betting that won't happen, which seems like a very cynical and coldhearted move.
Also, let's not forget that us humans have to live in the environment, so "a terrible cost for the environment" is a terrible cost for humans. Unfortunately, that cost is externalized so it doesn't affect Buffetts precious ROI.
Yep, ESG investing causes distasteful companies to be underpriced, which creates a sort of morality arbitrage. If you're okay with funding climate change, you can make a quick buck or two.
"Yes, the planet got destroyed. But for a beautiful moment in time we created a lot of value for shareholders"
http://tomtoro.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/1-tom-toro-yes...
From dinosaurs it came, to dinosaurs it will return. Buffett buys up oil companies for cheap and gets to pretend he's Rockefeller. It doesn't matter that they're bad investments, or that he's funding the poisoning of the earth, cause his clock is about to strike anyway. Kinda like make-a-wish, but for old scumbags instead of kids with cancer.
I'm not sure I agree with "it doesn't scale". It scales just as well as writing code by hand does!
PlantUML/mermaidjs do hit a sweet spot IMO, of having the chart defined as plaintext but rendering a pretty picture. The only way these could be improved IMO is if the ascii "code" for the diagram was also an actual diagram you could understand without running it through the parser.
Posted by
machinerychorus on Sunday June 26, 2022 @10:52PM
from the twitter.com dept.
"Why would anyone do drugs, when they could just mow a lawn?"
- Hank Hill
You're correct, it's not as simple as "systemic oppression or racism". There are absolutely lots of factors, both historical and ongoing. I think I misunderstood the original comment I replied to, thinking that they were saying that racial disparities were not quantifiable. Rereading it, they are just saying you can't quantify how much is due to one specific cause, which I agree with.
I'm not really sure it's an important point though, since most of the things we can/should do to remedy it IMO (medicare for all, ubi/negative income tax, and in general a more expansive social safety net) don't depend on quantifying the harm done to an individual.
The data for asian americans isn't shown on that graph because the underlying data used for the graph groups people into white, black, hispanic, and other. I apologize for saying "non-white" when I really meant "black and/or hispanic".
Yes, there are some ethnic groups that have higher median incomes, but that doesn't mean there isn't a racial disparity in america. The fact of the matter is that african americans, as a group, have much less wealth than white americans, as a group. If a person believes this is due to some "inherent racial trait", they're a racist, plain and simple. On the other hand, if one accepts that this is not due to any inherent racial trait, then one has to look at American culture and history with an open mind and try to understand how it came to be that way (the fact that asian americans don't see the same disparities as african americans is an important clue here).
I'm glad to see that you are interested in solving problems of inequality and engaging in a good faith discussion with me on this complex social issue.
Yes, it's actually pretty simple. Non-white groups lag in almost all economic categories. The fed publishes a lot of this data[1], you can see for yourself. There are also lots of other things to look at, like rate of incarceration. The effect is real, and there are basically two explanations: Either it's due to systemic oppression, or its due to non-white racial groups being inherently inferior. Unless you're racist, only one of those explanations is valid.
[1]: here's a link to household wealth by race, but they also have many other metrics. pick any one at random, they all show the same story https://www.stlouisfed.org/institute-for-economic-equity/the...
Posted by
machinerychorus on Wednesday June 01, 2022 @08:13AM
from the theatlantic.com dept.
Darn, I was hoping this would be about
https://arc.io. I know it's not very popular on hn because "how dare they use my bandwidth and cpu" but I think it's really cool. A viable business model for websites that doesn't require cramming things full of ads.
Posted by
machinerychorus on Thursday May 26, 2022 @12:24PM
from the theatlantic.com dept.
Posted by
machinerychorus on Wednesday May 25, 2022 @08:26PM
from the tonytrafficlight.com dept.
New forms of government, larger and more complicated corporations, public schooling, labor unions, global shipping routes, universities, remote work, wikipedia, internet forums, open-source software development, stock markets, etc etc.
None of these required a genetic change in the individuals involved, just a "memetic" change in the way the individuals acted, communicated, and thought.
Memetics is much more potent than genetics. We're about to achieve much more than people could 2000 years ago, not because humans have genetically evolved to be that much smarter, but because we have memetically evolved much more sophisticated social structures. Genetics is still important, and augmenting individual intelligence should still be pursued, but memetics is in the driver seat now.