Viewing profile — PascalsMugger

Since we invitably have legislatures heavily influence (and sometimes fully captured) by moneyed interests, often the best we can hope for is competition between the different fact…

I think this was a plot to a Michael Crichton novel, except instead of Zina it was a terrorist group's bioweapon.

Is it even possible to compress it down tha much?

So in a vacuum, yes people probably perform on a bell curve. But that bell curve is self-aware and will start sabotaging itself if you incentivize it to.

That kind of bacteria sounds like something that would spread very quickly in unleashed in the wild. I wonder what the outcome would be.

CEOs get the credit when the company does well and they get paid extraordinarily well. Either they don't deserve that credit and shouldn't get paid nearly as well as they do, or th…

I think perhaps a more subtle warning would be to have the container sense an rfid tag in peanut allergic peoples' hands and set off a warning alarm and flashing lights.

I'd call "__proto__" a magic string, but it's kind of an accident of history and a one off that everyone wants to get rid of, but can't.

This pain is one of the most potent things that keeps people from trying to pull off fraud more often.

Can't let that precious link juice spill out to other websites! Don't you remember link juice? Bullshit SEO tactics are killing the web.

Bathroom breaks are not a form of compensation any more than than breathable air is a form of compensation. They are bare necessitates of life. That kind of thinking is what leads …

I'm sure this has been asked and answered before, but why do companies acquire startups just to shut their product down within a year so often? Is this just an acquihire? Or do big…

Why are we adding (2016) to current year submissions now?

Absolutely, but this incident is the perfect example of how new technology will always be used by assholes to do asshole things, along with whatever good uses it was designed for. …

Sounds kind of like when EA made SimCity have a required online component and claimed it was required for doing some game calculations.

Planet Money is one of the only podcasts I can just let run through all the episodes and still enjoy them all.

It's all about the Tubmans baby.

I think what was meant is that on the grand scale of "aliveness" viruses are more alive than prions. Viruses have DNA, they actively seek out host cells to hijack so they can repro…

Just curious, but why do you refer to it as "he", especially in this context where you are touting it as an actual non-human? Not to single you out, I see people referring to all t…

It's amazing to think about kids growing up with a wonder box in their house that tells them the answer to any question when they yell at it. It's like straight out of the fables o…

Well whoever acquired Norway's stake in the oil industry probably lost out since making that investment last year, so that fungible money now is gone.

You'd like them to improve people's lives by continutuing to invest in coal? You think that forgoing a minuscule return (or actually probably increasing return) to dampen an indust…

Original coke. That's the addictive one. New coke didn't work.

I wonder what the price was.