Viewing profile — kafkaesq

Oh, not every ordinance (or planning department directive) is "natural" or reasonable, of course. But zoning generically is a pretty well established and generally understood pract…

It's a completely artificial construct that drives up the cost of living and robs the poor with rent seeking. It's called "zoning", and it's a perfectly natural construct. And if y…

Oh they quite definitely suck - even when "doing the best they can". The spin I'm trying to put on this is -- they exist solely for one reason: to fill a vacuum. The vacuum created…

I don't think there's a talent shortage problem, I think there's a recruiter problem. Though they certainly aren't helping much (and in many ways are quite simply harmful), recruit…

Over the past 7 years, Bitcoin has outperformed every security and portfolio that Jack Bogle has recommended. Same deal (give or take a few name and parameter changes) as with the …

How is bitcoin different than other commodities or property in this regard? The key distinction is that, mercurial though their price fluctuations may be - traditional commodities …

I've used a variant of this when interviewing CS PhD candidates. If in fact it's for an actual PhD qualifying exam (or something similar), then this question might be OK. The probl…

Oh the donation by itself is perfectly fine. It's just a bit disappointing that media outlets (like TC in this case) consistently allow themselves to get pulled into spinning a lot…

Ploy or not, I'm not happy with TC blindly passing along the "$1M donation" meme, clearly meant to suggest a pure cash donation... when, when you read a few lines down, you find ou…

EDIT: " even when one is ..."

Like the draining of the Aral sea... but on a planet-wide scale. http://www.ciesin.org/docs/006-238/006-238.html

This sort of mythology is NOT helping. Unfortunately it's partially valid. Job ads in particular are (presumably for a want of some other way to whittle down the pile of incoming r…

EDIT: "this particular question might be" => "... might be applicable."

You don't. You simply allow whatever perfectly natural reaction your spinal cord chooses to trigger - to bubble up through your system. Which you should in no way be ashamed of. Yo…

Life is too short to work with tyrants. It's also -- for the very majority of people -- way too damn short to simply cut one's self off from salary and (don't forget, please), heal…

Of course the only (dignified) way out is to leave on one's volition. But when one is highly skilled, one does not simply "just quit and get another job".

From skimming the documentation it sounds like, rather than being just another library of utility functions, there's a formal language of sorts under the hood that the programming …

So - any data available on how well some of these people made out?

Isn't SQL Turing complete? Even if it is -- "turing complete" != "expressive". They're rather different beasties, in fact.

Working with smart people who were kind enough to point out the deficiencies in my early and crude approaches This point cannot be underemphasized. There's no end of stuff you can …

In the US I can buy the same Coca Cola that Buffet and Gates can. But access to health care, or (in many neighborhoods) even reasonably nutritious food and safe drinking water - th…