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patrickcollison.com

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Re: Fast

#161

Post by chongli »

khuey wrote: post #156
chongli wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There has to be a middle ground. The US did some amazing things without autocracy, such as the public works projects under the New Deal [1] [2] [3], the Marshall Plan [4] for helping to rebuild Europe, the Federal-Aid Highway Act [5] to build 41,000 miles of Interstate highways. I don't know why things are so difficult now. There's got to be some detailed studies into this problem. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C…

The Federal Highway Act was pretty bad! They plowed interstates through poor (and usually black) neighborhoods to get to the city centers and at least contributed to the urban dysfunction that's been a feature of American cities since.

Then perhaps that’s a point in favour of the current regime which makes large projects difficult to build. If now we have more consultation with stakeholders then it may be less likely for that sort of thing to happen again.

Re: Fast

#162

Post by whoisthemachine »

We like to focus on how long it takes governments to build things these days (especially US government(s)), but these discussions remind me of the Washington Monument, which was under construction for 36+ years depending on how you count it! And this was in the 1850's, when this type of construction was certainly feasible. As may sound familiar today, construction moved haltingly due to lack of funding.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Monument

Re: Fast

#163

Post by kamikaz1k »

carabiner wrote: post #73

Major one missing: China built 5,000 miles of high speed rail in 6 years. In California, it's been 15 years and we have 0 miles complete. Also built numerous hospitals during pandemic in a couple weeks. Demolished and replaced a bridge in 43 hours: https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/infrastructure/a... . General pattern of completing infrastructure projects at a blistering pace - and they work. Also landed a…

Yes but don't think it's for free then either

https://youtu.be/ITvXlax4ZXk

Re: Fast

#164

Post by imchillyb »

ireadmevs wrote: post #94
dmix wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you going have consequences in the project management office of a gov contractor that probably has no real competition, besides maybe multiple years later when it's politically convenient? Fire the lower level union workers slacking off? The fact every single major infrastructure project is a decade late and 3x over budget is just normal and tolerated by the people running the show across the US/Canada. The…

> It's only natural human behaviour to not put effort in if there's no consequences or risk in doing so. That’s nonsense. That’s like saying that it’s only natural human behavior to abuse and be abused. If I put myself in the shoes of an underpaid sewage worker, that has a family to maintain, that sees the owner and investors of said private companies getting obscenely rich just by closings contracts under their AC……

> ...That’s like saying that it’s only natural human behavior to abuse and be abused...

I think that's exactly what experiments have shown the world. There are many follow-up experiments that prove exactly that.

The Stanford Prison Experiment has become one of psychology's most dramatic illustrations of how good people can be transformed into perpetrators of evil, and healthy people can begin to experience pathological reactions - traceable to situational forces.

Those traceable situational forces can be minor and subtle things, and yet.

Re: Fast

#165

Post by ftxbro »

highwaylights wrote: post #131
briangle wrote: post #116

This reminds me of when I interviewed at Stripe, a few years back. It was a surreal experience. We were in a small conference room. I sat at the table on one side, Patrick and Edwin sat on the other side. They asked me questions, I answered them. It was a good discussion. Then there was a brief pause in the conversation. Suddenly, Patrick let off the most absurdly loud fart. I chuckled in surprise. Patrick and Edwin…

I’m going to guess dude just needed to let go and didn’t like that you laughed about it. Maybe they just openly rip in the office and are used to it. Maybe you didn’t get hired for totally unrelated reasons. We’ll never know..

Culture fit. They expected the candidate to rip ass as well showing he was a team player.

Re: Fast

#166

Post by davidhaymond »

GuB-42 wrote: post #99

The website checks out. Less than 20kB (10kB with compression), loads instantly.

I was specifically looking for this comment. Sites like these are a breath of fresh air in the world of bloated SPAs.

Re: Fast

#167

Post by zimpenfish »

imchillyb wrote: post #164
ireadmevs wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's only natural human behaviour to not put effort in if there's no consequences or risk in doing so. That’s nonsense. That’s like saying that it’s only natural human behavior to abuse and be abused. If I put myself in the shoes of an underpaid sewage worker, that has a family to maintain, that sees the owner and investors of said private companies getting obscenely rich just by closings contracts under their AC……

> ...That’s like saying that it’s only natural human behavior to abuse and be abused... I think that's exactly what experiments have shown the world. There are many follow-up experiments that prove exactly that. The Stanford Prison Experiment has become one of psychology's most dramatic illustrations of how good people can be transformed into perpetrators of evil, and healthy people can begin to experience pathologic…

> The Stanford Prison Experiment

Thoroughly debunked[1][2][3], no?

[1] https://themindlab.co.uk/academy/epic-fails-what-can-we-lear...

[2] https://www.vox.com/2018/6/13/17449118/stanford-prison-exper...

[3] https://gwern.net/doc/psychology/2019-letexier.pdf

Re: Fast

#168

Post by chrisco255 »

cornfutes wrote: post #41
chrisco255 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only we were using Java Applets or Flash ActionScript or Silverlight, all our problems would be solved.

Actually, Runescape one of the most successful MMOs ever was a Java applet. Java is much more effective at complex object-oriented modeling and an MMO is a canonical example of where OOP not only shines but is necessary. Before ES6, there were half a dozen styles of approximating classes in JavaScript, the main one being with closure-returning-functions. Even utilizing these clever tricks to make JavaScript a decent…

If Java was perfect, Jagex the creator of Runescape, wouldn't have felt compelled to create its own custom scripting language, RuneScript, in 2004, which it very much did: https://web.archive.org/web/20080615044119/http://archive.th...

https://runescape.wiki/w/RuneScript

Far more apps were written in Flash than in Java Applets. Java Applets were problematic for their large file size and memory requirements. You would also need to regularly download updates for the runtime and manually run through an installer on the base operating system in order to get applets to work. They were also a security nightmare, and critical vulnerabilities continued right up until Applets were finally canned for good in 2013: https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/alerts/2013/01/10/oracle-ja...

Flash had plenty of its own vulnerabilities, but it was at least efficient for what it did with the network resources of the time.

I know the history of the web, and I know JS wasn't practical for a lot of complex apps before Chrome's v8 engine came out in 2008. That being said, it was still plenty powerful enough for apps like Gmail and Facebook.

I'm not even criticizing these technologies for existing or having been important plugins of the web at one time, I very much understand why they were used and why JS wasn't. HTML had no native video encoding, but also, the browser war held back the web standards a great deal as companies competed on the peripheral features of the web like video encoding and Silverlight vs Flash. Video codec encoding was such a mess for such a long time due to the issues with MP4 and all the patent nightmare mess that unfortunately took way longer than it should have. At least Adobe could bypass a lot of that without having to deal with the Microsoft vs Mozilla vs Apple vs Google business. And Adobe could cover the license fees for any tech it needed with its editor prices.

I get it. My point, however, is that those other technologies introduced different tradeoffs in compile time size, runtime performance, proprietary tech stack (Java is still owned by Oracle, not an open standard, to this day), mobile compatibility, etc. And none of them would have satisfied all the requirements for the web then or now. Meanwhile, since the web was able to evolve, and open standards got better and browser compatibility got better, JS is now a pretty good choice.

Re: Fast

#169

Post by Aeolun »

kuchenbecker wrote: post #133
ireadmevs wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since we are in fun thought experiment mode, here’s another one I just had: what if we somehow could prevent companies from getting too big? Would we manage to keep a line where they all stay more or less in “pretty decent” territory?

By what metric, and how would it be different than antitrust enforcement? E.g. a product that is clearly better can legally capture 100% market share. Only leveraging that market power is illegal. I genuinely think a rule along the lines of "anything with 30%+ market share is scrutinized as having monopolistic network effect advantage" would have net positive outcomes on competition.

> how would it be different than antitrust enforcement?

I think the benefit of such an imaginary rule is that in your imagination it’d actually be enforced.

Re: Fast

#170

Post by chrisco255 »

terribleperson wrote: post #149
cornfutes wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, Runescape one of the most successful MMOs ever was a Java applet. Java is much more effective at complex object-oriented modeling and an MMO is a canonical example of where OOP not only shines but is necessary. Before ES6, there were half a dozen styles of approximating classes in JavaScript, the main one being with closure-returning-functions. Even utilizing these clever tricks to make JavaScript a decent…

Runescape was crazy for the time (pre-WoW). A full-featured MMO you could play on a wide variety of computers without downloading or installing anything. All you needed was Java.

All you needed was to download a new monthly version of 50MB of JRE and install it on your virus-prone Windows XP machine and open up about 7 new holes in your system with each patch.
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