Disqus - Latest Comments for w3woody

Re: ENOUGH ALREADY, BRING ME A REAL MENU: Against Restaurant QR Codes….

William Woody — Sun, 24 Jul 2022 22:16:07 -0000

Sorry, but depending on the type of restaurant, I prefer the QR code menu. If it's a coffee shop and I'm there for coffee and a pastry--absolutely, let me scan the code, place the order, and someone bring the coffee and food. Same with airport restaurants and with places where I may go get a small knosh.

Re: SHOULDA BEEN MORE THAN ALMOST: “There was almost a mutiny”: Uvalde cop says force is furious that t…

William Woody — Sat, 28 May 2022 20:22:42 -0000

Is it too soon to thank the 19 children and 2 teachers who gave their lives so the police officers of Uvalde could remain safe?

Re: I AGREE: …

William Woody — Mon, 28 Mar 2022 12:34:13 -0000

Understand one reason why tech companies are increasingly willing to hire people without a college degree if they can pass through the interview process and pass a test is because universities (thanks to "group projects" and grade inflation) are willing to graduate computer science graduates who cannot write software. (I remember interviewing a USC graduate once who didn't understand O(n) notation and didn't know the difference between a linked list and an array list--items that are considered incredibly basic in my profession.)

So from a value proposition a degree has become increasingly worthless, and has forced tech companies to perform a more comprehensive interview and testing process just to weed out the good graduates from the bad.

Once we got there, it was easy to just skip the "has a degree" part.

Re: How to Think Straight about Bitcoin’s Social Costs and Benefits

William Woody — Tue, 15 Mar 2022 11:30:49 -0000

One of the things people tend to miss about cryptocurrency in general (and Bitcoin in particular) is that they secure transactions using computational complexity.

That is, in order to reduce the risk of bad actors inserting false transactions into the blockchain, Bitcoin relies on a distributed blockchain architecture--thousands of "bitcoin miners" working on the same set of transactions at the same time--and make the cost of inserting a block into the blockchain so computationally expensive it takes time for one 'lucky' miner to insert the block.

This implies that it is impossible to reduce the energy footprint of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, as computational complexity is proportional to energy usage. The more energy efficient we make computers, the more incentive there is to ratchet up the complexity in order to prevent bad actors from swamping the block chain with bad transactions.

So the fact that Bitcoin (and others) use a lot of energy is a "feature"--in that it is implicit in the design of the system.

Re: I AGREE, BUT IF VARIOUS LATIN GOP GROUPS STOP TRYING TO RECRUIT ME TO RUN, I’LL BE VERY GRATEFUL: …

William Woody — Wed, 02 Mar 2022 11:38:06 -0000

Don't underestimate the power of intelligent entertainers from being able to change the world.

After all, Ukraine's President was formerly a comedian.

Re: HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Premier STEM college faces accusations of a dumb-downed education t…

William Woody — Fri, 25 Feb 2022 13:09:16 -0000

Remember: the striving for intellectual excellence is simply White Supremacy...

Re: I GUESS PEOPLE HAVE FIGURED OUT WHICH SIDE YOU’RE ON: “A group representing Canadian journalists sa…

William Woody — Mon, 21 Feb 2022 11:36:26 -0000

Wake me when they're being hit with cement "milkshakes."

Re: PROF. JACOBSON: When Fascism Comes To America, It Will Look Like Justin Trudeau’s Canada. “Trude…

William Woody — Sun, 20 Feb 2022 13:39:26 -0000

We have forgotten that food does not come from grocery stores, that gasoline doesn't come from gas stations, that electricity doesn't just magically flow out of an electrical socket.

And we have forgotten that Democratic norms which are accepting of multiple opinions and which provide elections to create an orderly transition of power exist to solve the problem of leaders being beheaded by a populous too long ignored.

And I feel like we're going to wind up re-learning where our food comes from, where power comes from, and why you don't politicize the machinery of state.

I hope we don't have to learn these things the really hard way, through experience.

Re: GEORGE ORWELL, CALL YOUR OFFICE: Why the word ‘freedom’ is such a useful rallying cry for protesters…

William Woody — Mon, 14 Feb 2022 14:01:54 -0000

Don't you hate it when the help gets uppity?

Re: THERE WAS NEVER MUCH DOUBT: Failed Democrat Congressional Candidate Says Gina Carano Should Be in P…

William Woody — Fri, 04 Feb 2022 12:43:56 -0000

To be fair, as someone who happens to live in NC-4 where this guy is a perpetual failed Democratic gadfly, he's a radical asshat who has no chance of ever gaining power screaming into the void with delusions of grandeur. You really need to check out his entire Twitter feed; it's so bad it makes me wonder if he's actually a Republican playing a Democrat in order to convince the middle that Democrats are bat-shit crazy.

Re: JOEL KOTKIN: The Left’s Agenda is More Feudal than Marxist….

William Woody — Wed, 24 Nov 2021 11:46:30 -0000

Marxism and socialism ARE fundamentally feudal.

Remember: the origins of socialism come from the French Revolution, when the French were trying to figure out what system of government should be used to replace the aristocrats they had just beheaded. And the solution was "citizen councils"--basically having the State run those feudal lands.

So Socialism is essentially Feudalism, but replacing all that awkwardness of aristocratic inheritance with government bureaucrats.

Re: BUT FOOTBALL GETS THE BAD PRESS: Bike riding causes 4 in 5 sports-linked spinal injuries in U.S….

William Woody — Thu, 26 Aug 2021 20:36:26 -0000

Given how many bike riders ride their bikes around here, I'm surprised the number isn't higher.

Re: OUT: YOU NEED A VACCINE BECAUSE NATURAL IMMUNITY WON’T LAST. IN: COVID-19 vaccine protection may …

William Woody — Wed, 25 Aug 2021 13:34:36 -0000

Dear UPI: that's not what the CDC study shows. Not even close.

What it shows is that the vaccine is less effective against the delta variant.

I mean, it's like the UPI is pushing a message and an agenda--completely unaware that the story doesn't support the message or the agenda, and completely unaware that the agenda and message they're pushing contradicts the overarching message that vaccines work.

And at some point, when the bad news is bad enough--like the implicit message here that vaccines aren't a long-term solution and COVID is just getting worse--the correct answer is to stop all mandates. That is, if your message is "there is nothing that can be done", then the correct response is "stop doing the things", since clearly all the things are ineffectual bullshit anyway.

Re: I’M NOT AGAINST ELECTRIC PLANES BUT I WANT TRANSCONTINENTAL RANGE: Pipistrel Alpha Electro Operator…

William Woody — Wed, 30 Jun 2021 21:01:27 -0000

It's also a 50 kW (68hp) engine, which is small for an airplane. This is also a 'light-sport' aircraft, meaning it's a tiny, lightweight and relatively slow airplane, with a cruise speed of 80 knots. So it can fly for about an hour, go about a hundred miles, and runs an extra $50k than the gas version of the airplane.

It's a fantastic technical accomplishment, but from a practical perspective it's an expensive toy. And until someone figures out how to make a much more energy-dense battery, that's all this is going to be.

Re: ROGER SIMON: How ‘Woke’ May Be Leading Us to Civil War. The other day I wrote that “Woke” was t…

William Woody — Mon, 10 May 2021 11:24:09 -0000

I'm sorry, but "wokism" is not new.

It's basically the Jacobin movement from the late 1700's/early 1800's in France all over again.

Recall that the Jacobin movement eventually burned itself out after even going so far as to redefine the calendar (the French Revolutionary Calendar) as members started literally executing each other for not being politically correct enough. And while today's woke aren't trotting out a guillotine to behead each other, they do periodically try to purge each other using 'cancel culture'.

Re: WELL, IF THIS GOES THROUGH… This is f**king bad… the big luau might be starting soon….

William Woody — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 12:21:10 -0000

The problem with "reasonableness" is that the NAZIs thought it was reasonable to gas 6 million Jews.

Meaning one person's "reasonableness" is another person's outrageous affront on human dignity.

Re: The Other Problem With A National Minimum Wage -- The National Part

William Woody — Thu, 11 Feb 2021 11:08:29 -0000

We honestly forget that one of the purposes of the minimum wage when it was introduced in the 1930's was to *disincentivize* "low efficiency workers" (i.e., southern blacks, living in states with a lower cost of living than the North) from the workforce, on the theory that these "low efficiency workers" were somehow stalling the economy and holding us back. (It also had the property of serving to protect workers in the North from cheaper Southern labor.)

So what you point out--that this will devastate rural areas and poorer workers--was actually a *feature*, not a bug, when minimum wage legislation was originally rolled out.

Re: THE LONG MARCH THROUGH THE INSTITUTIONS IS COMPLETE–THE LEFT CONTROLS TEEN VOGUE: Teen Vogue publis…

William Woody — Mon, 28 Dec 2020 10:44:28 -0000

Because when I hear about the magazine "Teen Vogue" I immediately think "complex labor policy discussions."

Re: Coronavirus Data Already Disappears from CEC Website

William Woody — Tue, 21 Jul 2020 19:03:41 -0000

Here's the data they said was 'disappeared.' https://protect-public.hhs....

Re: COMING SOON, A Real Estate Tax Revenue Death Spiral? Who would have thought that Minneapolis …

William Woody — Sun, 14 Jun 2020 10:16:32 -0000

It appears to be a search on Zillow. You can filter for listings that came on the market in the past 7 days. The problem is as of this morning there are 163 listings out of 1111 total listings for sale that came on the market in the last 7 days--meaning about 14.7% of the houses **FOR SALE** came on the market 7 days ago--not 14.7% of *total stock* of houses. (Though how many of these are relistings: houses that were for sale, taken off the market, then put back on the market a few days or weeks later is uncertain.)

At present the pattern in Minneapolis does not seem unusual. (Here in Raleigh 194 out of 1264 houses--15.3%--came on the market within the past 7 days.)

My expectation: if we were to see "white flight" from Minneapolis, it wouldn't happen overnight. It would happen slowly over the course of a year or two. And it would not be obvious; it would be one of those demographic shifts that require a little statistical savvy to pick up.

In other words it would not look like a rebellion of the middle class. It would look like Robert Heinlein's "bad luck."

Re: AND YET YOU FELL FOR OBAMA, CHRISSIE? OBAMA WHOSE ELECTION TIME (OR WAS IT NEWSWEEK? ALL THESE PSEUD…

William Woody — Sun, 09 Feb 2020 12:07:07 -0000

Remember, however, Chris Matthews did get a bit of a tingle over Trump's SOTU speech. So, you know, we live in weird times...

Re: GEE, IF ONLY WE HAD SOME KIND OF EARTH TO ORBIT CAPABILITY SO WE COULD HARVEST THESE THINGS: Aster…

William Woody — Sat, 04 Jan 2020 10:34:27 -0000

By the time I read this headline, 2019 YB4 had already passed, and at its closest it came to within 1.2 million kilometers--about 3 times the distance between the Earth and Moon. (Closest approach was 2 hours after this post was apparently made.)

Re: SOMEBODY REALLY NEEDS TO FUND MY WELCOME WAGON IDEA: As people flock to North Carolina, here’s wher…

William Woody — Sat, 05 Oct 2019 20:20:26 -0000

Remember: if you do not select a college football team, one will be assigned to you.

Re: 21ST CENTURY PROBLEMS: Algorithmic Governance and Political Legitimacy. In ever more areas of li…

William Woody — Sun, 07 Jul 2019 11:50:26 -0000

One thing people tend to overlook is the pretense that algorithms protect against invasions of privacy: if a human being never sees the data and never makes the decision, was someone's privacy actually invaded?

I would argue, by the way, that as algorithms grow in complexity the answer to that question will increasingly be "yes," for the simple reason that in many ways, privacy is not about the ability not to be seen, but about the ability not to be discovered.

And by pretending algorithms protect privacy yet allow people to be discovered for their flaws (many of which are irrelevant or even--in theory--protected, such as one's religious affiliation with wiccans, say, which in the past has been used by neighbors as an excuse to call Child Protective Services), we're pretending we live in an era of privacy--yet all it takes is one well structured Internet search to out one's more socially unacceptable (but perfectly legal) flaws.

Re: PHALLOPHOBIA: U. Wisconsin-Madison penis-shaped sculpture to come down….

William Woody — Sun, 23 Jun 2019 13:23:42 -0000

If your penis looks like that, please see a doctor. You may have a serious medical condition.