There’s still some of that feeling in little pockets around the Internet. The tildeverse (https://tildeverse.org) might interest you; it’s a loose group of servers that offer free shell accounts for hosting simple web pages, chatting, programming, or playing around on a mostly unrestricted Linux box.
I run http://ctrl-c.club, one of the oldest tildes. We’re (mostly) closed to new signups, but if you’re interested, send me an email to admin@ctrl-c.club and we’ll get you in.
Have you ever made a mistake on the road that luckily did not result in anyone getting killed?
During WW2, a B-19 crash landed in the Soviet Union. The B-29's technology was light-years ahead of Soviet engineering. Stalin demanded that an exact replica of the B-29 be built. And that's what the engineers did. They were so terrified of Stalin that they carefully duplicated the battle damage on the original.
Be careful what you wish for when advocating criminal punishment.
Tu-4 was indeed a very close copy of B-29, but no, they did not "carefully duplicate the battle damage" on the original. The one prominent example of copying unnecessary things that is usually showcased in this instance is a mistakenly drilled rivet hole in one of the wings that was carefully reproduced thereafter despite there not being any evident purpose for it.
That said, even then Tu-4 wasn't a carbon copy. Because US used imperial units for everything, Soviets simply couldn't make it a carbon copy because they could not e.g. source plating and wire of the exact right size. So they replaced it with the nearest metric equivalents that were available, erring on the side of making things thicker, to ensure structural integrity - which also made it a little bit heavier than the original. Even bigger changes were made - for example, Tupolev insisted on using existing Soviet engines (!), weapons, and radios in lieu of copying the American ones. It should be noted that Stalin really did want a carbon copy originally, and Tupolev had to fight his way on each one of those decisions.
The same thought struck me when reading the article. Imagine a world where your API was 'send me some SQL, return results' and you'd have the same problems as described.
Namecheap is ok, but unfortunately they also practice a despicable trend in domain registration, which is to hijack domains with less than five letters and classify them as premium, right on the act of registration. A concrete example: When trying to register aucky.com [for an auction site], a domain resulting from brainstorming and creation, previously non-existent, I was informed that it was a premium domain and therefore subject to other acquisition conditions. I did not accept it and had to content myself with the registration under my country's TLD, which has less punch than a pure .com. My failed domain is up for grabs in the premium market, and the issue will have to be settled in court. This is almost criminal and it has to stop.
I hear this argument regularly, but I’ve never understood why. Hyperinflation is historically a bad thing, but whenever I ask about deflation, I just get hand-waving about the Great Depression. Is there any reading that lays out the dangers of deflation?
Deflation has a natural tendency to spiral; things will be cheaper in the future, so people put off spending, which brings prices down further and so on. You create an incentive to hoard cash rather than consuming or investing, and that is also self-reinforcing, so money stops functioning as money with all the trouble that implies.
This is obviously not how things generally work in the real world. Prices for personal computers have been deflating for years. The computing power in a $1000 laptop today would have probably cost at least $3000 a decade ago. And yet customers keep buying them instead of putting off spending because they want to have stuff today.
People buy computers when they want or need them, yes. But they absolutely do put off buying them because a better model is coming. Whereas people rush to buy e.g. a house as quickly as they can, because the price of houses keeps going up.
Deflation throws on the breaks in the economy, because X is cheaper if you postpone it. With X representing essentially all economic activities like buying a new phone / hiring a programmer / going on vacation / etc
This would be great for the environment, but absolutely terrible for the economy
> Deflation throws on the breaks in the economy, because X is cheaper if you postpone it. With X representing essentially all economic activities
Sometimes I think about this as promoting investment in cash. Deflation over time means cash yields a profit.
But since cash doesn't actually do anything, investing in cash instead of something else is harmful.
One implication of both of our comments is that unanticipated deflation is good. What causes problems is the reaction people take to anticipating that deflation will occur -- they wait it out -- not the fact that things are cheaper.
The necessary refinement would be that unanticipated deflation that comes from an increase in the amount of stuff is good, and unanticipated deflation that comes from a reduction in the amount of money is [?].
Introducing that dimension asks us to fill out the grid:
- anticipated deflation from an increase in the amount of stuff: [?]
- anticipated deflation from a reduction in the amount of money: bad
In these discussions it's easy to forget that it's not only things that get cheaper or more expensive. Services and people's salaries also adjust the same way. With deflation your salary will also go down.
That's the point of what I called "the necessary refinement". If there is more stuff, stuff gets cheaper without a matching decrease in your salary. If there is less money, stuff gets cheaper and there is also a matching decrease in your salary.
But in either case, the problems associated with deflation come from the actions people take to prepare for it, not from the consequences of it having already happened.
To add to this, it's also very hard to get out of as we've seen for decades in Japan. Some countries get stuck in recurring waves of inflation as well, as we set with Argentina, but that's arguably more sure to avoidable policy choices.
Making those with money able to buy more tomorrow than today will make all sales plummet... all real needs go unmet and all efficient loaning of money cease.
Holding your breath will leave more oxygen for whoever survives .... but there won't be as many who need it left alive.
Deflation is deadly unless you worship coins as the only valid measure of economics.
Tell me more about the spectre of the nonsense world where everyone sits around starving to death because they're too wealthy and food is too cheap.
Or don't, I've heard it hundreds of times, and it's still nonsensical, and it's unbelievable that people are being constantly harmed by inflationary monetary policy on such a ridiculous justification.
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