SavantIdiot

5 anni fadiscuss

This video is really well done. I worked on optimizing the Xing video player for Pentium MMX ages ago (almost 30 years?!), and had to figure this out by reading the same one book on the topic over and over again. I never quite got the details, but this video would have saved me weeks of study. Pre-internet days sucked for learning complex topics.

SavantIdiot

5 anni fadiscuss

Thanks, now I understand it even better!

SavantIdiot

5 anni fadiscuss

This glosses over the best part: the quantized DCT is where the magic happens. Basically the 8x8 block is converted in to one of a handful (64) different possible choices, they look kinda like electron orbitals, modulated by coefficients. I didn't understand JPEG until I saw this matrix of choices and then a light went on and I understand why the DCT was necessary. Basically the entire image is reduced down to a finite collection of pre-computed shapes.

https://image.slidesharecdn.com/jpeg-dct-131006054709-phpapp...

SavantIdiot

5 anni fadiscuss

Odd defenses of FB/Zuck in this thread. Criticism of Zuckerberg isn't sour-grapes, its pointing out that a ubiquitous product that made a handful of people fabulously wealthy has been proven to be both destructive to society and helpful for finding friends, and the balance isn't clear which is better.

SavantIdiot

5 anni fadiscuss

Naw, Cali just wants clean air and water, and manufacturing doesn't want to pay to not screw the planet. That's why companies pillage Asia: their environment is for sale to the lowest bidder. Capitalism without regulation, baby!

You're making the same conservative argument about wages: if you pay a living wage companies will flee. No, if a company can't pay a living wage, it shouldn't exist. Likewise, if a company can't manufacture products without destroying the environment, it shouldn't manufacture those products.

I'm just a conservative. A nature conservative.

SavantIdiot

5 anni fadiscuss

The exodus has been soundly proven to be a myth. [1] But assuming it isn't, there aren't many better places to go. Texas is a joke. Traffic is worse than LA in the major cities and it is run by Christian zealots. Yeah maybe you pay fewer taxes but the other quality-of-life tradeoffs aren't worth it.

[1] https://www.sfgate.com/local/article/California-exodus-is-ju...

SavantIdiot

5 anni fadiscuss

I had a laugh back in ~2000 when VP Cheney said humans weren't having an impact on the environment. I grew up on long island and we used to pull bivalves (steamers, mussels, perriwinkels (not a bivalve)) in the 60's and 70's. Then in the 90's everything was banned due to pollution. O.G. immigrants still harvested despite the bans, but it was sad to see the consequence of pollution.

SavantIdiot

5 anni fadiscuss

> Suppose your reaction to discomfort is to retreat or isolate yourself from it.

Why wouldn't that be my reaction? Seems a pretty normal reaction to most discomfort. I lean into discomfort only when necessary and avoid it otherwise at all costs, that strategy has gotten me pretty far in my half+ century.

But even if we assume the proposition that people somehow become more withdrawn as they withdraw... what's the downside?

Perhaps your downtown really is a mess and they choose to avoid it. I'm guessing you're not a mind reader, and yet you've created a narrative that your friends have withdrawn due to their inability to handle discomfort and are now... what exactly, bad for the earth? (Recall, that was literally the proposition you responded to.)

Sounds rather arbitrary as well as subjectively punitive to me.

EDIT: This reminds me of me when I was in my 20's. I used to look down on people who went on vacation and stayed in hotels, or god forbid, resorts. I saw them as soft-headed sheeple who needed to be spoon-fed "fun in a can". Not me. I backpacked. I went to developing nations. In my mind, if you went to a foreign country, you didn't really "visit it" unless you lived among the natives and got your fingers dirty. I got giardia in Belize, was held up at gunpoint in Serbia, escorted by soldiers in Israel, woke up in a roach infested bed in a hostel in Thailand. ... But today? I want to snap my fingers and have someone bring me a cocktail while I sit poolside and sun my fat belly. I no longer enjoy wallowing in 3rd world filth as a means to establish me credentials. I want comfort because I work too goddamn hard for my vacations to involve police reports. So perhaps this is result of cowering away from discomfort, or perhaps it is just a change of priorities.

SavantIdiot

5 anni fadiscuss

What is "the coddling of the mind"?

SavantIdiot

5 anni fadiscuss

> What nastiness are we subjecting ourselves to today?

I'm gonna go with overfishing. Anyone who has been shopping since the 1990's has seen fish diversity decline and prices skyrocket beyond inflation (not to mention a sharp increase in farmed and faux-colored fish like salmon). Illegal fishing is impossible to combat.

See China's illegal fleets:

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27412691 [2] https://twitter.com/epineyro_ok/status/1378112721628114947

SavantIdiot

5 anni fadiscuss

It depends on which country, there were multiple attempts, there is no "one" communism, but generally "NO".

The USSR after the revolution was literally called the Soviet Union. A "soviet" is a council elected by workers. Basically workers would own the means of production through soviets, and they would join together as a larger governing body. Unfortunately, the autocrats and populists took control and killed everyone; or as in Russia, illness also helped kill the vast majority of able-bodied people which really screwed their production. But I'm WAY oversimplifying.

SavantIdiot

5 anni fadiscuss

The last time I took CPR certification the instructor said it shouldn't be taught anymore because it is essentially useless in day-to-day life. The speed at which the brain dies without immediate hospital attention is just too rapid for CPR to be effective outside of a hospital.

EDIT: I'm not lying, I was literally told this by the person performing the certifications. She said only 1 in 20 people survive without severe brain damage. Which is better than death to some people I guess.

SavantIdiot

5 anni fadiscuss

> It is strange ProPublica not understand this basic concept.

One could ask how you demonstrably cannot understand the conflation of two unrelated concepts?

Concept A: taking a risk to create a startup that you hope becomes a profitable company by executing to its core competency

Concept B: investing in your own company through a tax vagary with an investment device that has nothing to do with startup (or a particular startup)

Seems clear as day to me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPX-wuplDvc

SavantIdiot

5 anni fadiscuss

Again: I have a problem with someone investing in their startup using a government tax-protected shelter, and then making a killing off of it: that is double dipping, and scum-baggy.

Simple law: you cannot invest in your own company in your own Roth IRA because it is blatantly unfair to other investors who don't have similar insider trading abilities.

Done.

SavantIdiot

5 anni fadiscuss

This reminds me of Trump supporters who said, "Because he beat the IRS and paid zero taxes means he's smarter than the system."

Your argument is along the same lines: Theil followed the law, ergo nothing "sinister" happened.

Which is the same as: "It isn't sinister because there is no law."

Yet, where did laws come from? Oh right, from people who have ethics. Because our ethics do not come from laws; our morals do, but not our ethics. Morality is an invented extension of ethics, which is codified into law when people think something shitty is happening (well, that's how it SHOULD happen... but that's the School-House-Rock version)

IMHO, and many others (sadly, to your "dismay") Theil is being a greedy pig exploiting vagaries of the law for his MASSIVE gain, and there needs to be laws to prevent this kind of behavior because it is only available to the super wealthy, and it makes the elite class even more untouchable (plus a thousand other second-order effects).

SavantIdiot

5 anni fadiscuss

The FAQ made me chuckle, and then wonder what exactly a post-modern editor would look like? I guess if we deconstruct text editing, there would probably be one window filled with nothing but all the (non-uniquified) letters and characters you used, another with format rules, and another with a verbal description of your program...? Maybe? I'm no Derrida, so I'll defer to the philosophy majors.

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