Viewing profile — adamc

I think you have to distinguish what the author can imagine and what the audience could likely accept. Part of writing stories is engaging the readers, who have biases of their own…

No. The past year has substantially nudged things in the other direction.

Ignores the totally exceptional nature of some of the US changes/instabilities of this administration. I say "not true" because that is my read of where things are going, regardles…

Not really relevant to why there is de-dollarization. And I am not a Trump fan.

Suffers from no government having a stake in it. If it causes them problems, it can easily become illegal.

Probably a mix of things, including commodities like gold.

Not true. Some, like myself, love the idea of the shining city on the hill, although we often find the behavior of the actual city less than shining. I would like for the US to con…

In many ways, this is the real problem.

I read it as side-stepping Hacker News' tendency to kill comments that get into politics.

The shutdown goes far beyond TV news-style topics. But whether by design or by fiat, Hacker News is no longer a place for intelligent discussion.

This is where MAGA leads. I'm gradually tuning out Hacker News, because it persistently tries to ignore the politics that are destroying the United States and freedom of enquiry. T…

I think you are criticizing an idea for not being a study. I think it's a reasonable and interesting idea, but at most it is something to consider, not some infallible axiom. More …

Sure, in all cases, acquiring knowledge of what the (potential) customers want is difficult. The point of the article is that vendors of layer N tend to think they know what it tak…

This. Actually, I would buy a cheap guitar (but not from Amazon), say $400-500, for a purpose like having one to place when visiting relatives at Christmas. But I wouldn't buy a ni…

I would think the sensitivity to this would depend a lot on family size. Shopping for just myself... it doesn't matter much. Shopping for a family of 4 would be very different.

In my experience, it varies. Amazon is competitive (usually) on high-volume stuff, but can be wildly overpriced in other cases.

I buy from Amazon: 1) When I really need it within a couple of days and can't quickly find it locally 2) When it isn't carried locally (the local retail stock is a lot thinner than…

I dislike Home Depot's politics so much that I make a point of never going there. In general, I prefer buying local, because it makes my community healthier -- more jobs, directly …

Many of us enjoy shopping, at least enough that what we would pay for it isn't much of a deal.

I don't think that works either. I'm not a meal planner, but I will usually just make do with food I've already bought. Nothing appeals? I might eat cheese toast or yogurt.

Not a European, but this rings true for me in the US. I'll go out and get something, in part, because it is less lonely and feels more attached to life, to the world. Endless deliv…

Thanks to both of you. That seems valuable.

There appears to be a lot of noise in the Tiobe already. What does it mean if Visual Basic is shooting up and C is near the top? They are surely in no way measuring the same progra…

The difference, at least in languages like Java or Python, is that there is a pretty strong "standard" library that ships with the language, and which one can assume will be kept u…

Yes, that party has gone over to the dark side. That doesn't mean the majority of their voters necessarily agree with that.