m3mnoch

Math? Science? Reason? All Liberally Biased!

Thu, 04 Aug 2011 23:35:00 -0700

the thing that drives me the most crazy about all this bickering is that we know what works — it’s not hard. it’s been numerically, mathematically and historically shown over and over again. MATH DOESN’T HAVE TO INVENT STUPID RED HERRING CONSPIRACIES TO POINT OUT SO-CALLED “TRUTH”.

no. not at all.

1 + 1 = 2.

period.

it’s math, people! the science of economics is math, folks. when economists say “you’re doing it wrong” and non-qualified talking heads say “no, you’re just a liberal!”, math must just have a liberal bias then. in fact, education has a liberal bias. we don’t need any stinking education! dismantle the department of education!

…btw, that’s probably why so many students at our top universities are foreigners.

anyway.

that being said, i just wanted to throw out some funny (if they weren’t so sad) links that are unfortunately grounded in reality and thus, obviously liberally biased.

here we go with some super-sweet links:

congress is out of touch with what the marketplace wants. go figure. key quote? ”Our recovery has slowed” — thanks new congress!
watch the long, but quite good video of al franken completely and totally destroying the myth of republican economic theory. or, if you don’t have time, you can just read the highlights here.
and finally, a heaping dose of math, statistics and taxes. yes, you lower-and-middle-income, red state dwellers — accounting for inflation, you are poorer since 1980! trickle down economics ftl!

so, no. no, mr. random right-wing person — i do NOT agree with you because you are WRONG and ruining this country. STOP IT!

m3mnoch.

"This script, of course, is not entirely new: A half-century ago, when Science and Reason established..."

Mon, 18 Jul 2011 10:27:48 -0700

“

This script, of course, is not entirely new: A half-century ago, when Science and Reason established the linkage between cigarettes and lung diseases, the tobacco industry hired actors, dressed them up as doctors, and paid them to look into television cameras and tell people that the linkage revealed in the Surgeon General’s Report was not real at all. The show went on for decades, with more Americans killed each year by cigarettes than all of the U.S. soldiers killed in all of World War II.

This time, the scientific consensus is even stronger. It has been endorsed by every National Academy of science of every major country on the planet, every major professional scientific society related to the study of global warming and 98 percent of climate scientists throughout the world. In the latest and most authoritative study by 3,000 of the very best scientific experts in the world, the evidence was judged “unequivocal.”

”

- Al Gore: Climate of Denial | Rolling Stone Politics

Italy Trip Photos

Thu, 14 Jul 2011 09:09:40 -0700

for all those folks who are interested, here’s a whole bunch of photos from our trip to italy with our friends karen and shawn.

o.m.g. — FUN!

Getting there and Rome
Florence
Verona (my second favorite place we went)
Venice
Sardinia (lookit the water!)
Sorrento (the most awesome place in all of Italy)

it was two weeks of awesome, but i’m glad to be back in the land of hamburgers and caesar salads! (funny enough, there wasn’t a caesar salad to be had in italy…)

m3mnoch.

Today's Economic Thought

Wed, 25 May 2011 10:04:00 -0700

you’ll pardon me if some economist or technologist has already thunk or disproved this. i’m famous for reinventing the wheel…

here’s the thought that just occurred to me:

technology greatly increases the commoditization of goods and services.
thanks to gossen’s laws, we know that as commodity consumption rises, marginal utility eventually falls to zero and reaches maximum total utility.
if total utility is zero (or even close to zero) amongst all things, there is no differentiation between similar goods and services.
with no differentiation and the ability to consume goods and services ulitmately limited by time (the one, true finite resource), demand is also finite.
supply-side economics is broken because it relies on temporary increases in total utility when total utility is already maximized.

whew… that’s about all the economic brain cells i have right now. tho, feel free to point out weird missing strawman holes.

m3mnoch.

Answering Questions About Solar Panels for Your Home

Tue, 10 May 2011 21:15:00 -0700

there’s been a lot of interest in how we’ve gone about acquiring our solar panels we installed last fall. i figured rather than write the same email over and over and such, i’d write up a quick post that might be helpful to other folks too.

going in, we had (and met) three goals:

No added expense - we didn’t want to be saddled with any extra payments and we assuredly didn’t want to trade liquid cash for a non-liquid asset. there was no way we wanted to wait forever for our investment to recoup. to avoid that, we calculated how many solar panels we’d need to leave our total monthly energy payment unchanged. so, the total of our loan payment added to the new power bill ($10 to $30 a month, depending) is less than or equal to our old power bill.
adding equity to our home - talk about instant equity! ”here person buying our house, i hope you like your $15 a month electric bill!” over the course of 30 years, that’s $54,000 in savings if energy prices stay the same.
saving money long term - speaking of energy prices staying the same. did you know that power rates in 1990 out here were 9.9 cents per kilowatt hour? now, they’re 15.38 cents. yeah… that’s a 50% increase. and next year, they’re going up to 15.57 and the year after that, the power company is saying they’re going to be 15.61. for those keeping track at home, that’s about a 2% increase per year. not for us!

you’ll notice i didn’t say “being green”, tho, that’s a nice side effect, it certainly wasn’t the driving reason. it’s funny how many people think we did it because we’re crazy californian hippies. makes me laugh. no, it has nothing to do with that at all. i mean, have you looked at your power bill lately?

joc did tons and tons of research prior to the install and we ended up choosing marie phillip at herca solar here in san diego (http://www.hercasolar.com) — they were awesome and are highly recommended by us to anyone interested. just tell them joc and i sent you.

so, to recap: our monthly power budget at worst (until the loan is paid off) is a little less than before the panels, we added a ton of equity to the house and we’ve insulated ourselves from future power rate increases. win, win and win.

hell, all we need now is an electric car and we’ll be the hippies with the $15 power bill to your $200 one and our $0.00 a month fuel bill to your $200 one.

tho, i suppose at least you won’t be called a hippy.

m3mnoch.

"Notice it’s only PSN that gave away all your personal data, not Xbox Live when the 360 was..."

Thu, 28 Apr 2011 08:48:40 -0700

“Notice it’s only PSN that gave away all your personal data, not Xbox Live when the 360 was hacked, not iTunes when the iPhone was jailbroken, and not Gmail when Android was rooted. Because other companies aren’t crazy.”

- Geohot: Blame Sony Execs, Not Engineers | Edge Magazine

"Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common..."

Fri, 10 Dec 2010 09:37:58 -0800

“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan “press on” has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race”

- Calvin Coolidge

"By working faithfully eight hours a day you may eventually get to be boss and work twelve hours a..."

Fri, 08 Oct 2010 15:24:25 -0700

“By working faithfully eight hours a day you may eventually get to be boss and work twelve hours a day.”

- Robert Frost

I HATE GIT!!!

Wed, 06 Oct 2010 00:44:00 -0700

git sucks.

yes. it sucks like nothing on the planet has ever sucked ever. period. end of story.

let’s see… what are the things you want to be able to do in a version control system?

add files. check!

commit changes. check!

revert to a previous version. uh oh… you can’t do that!!!

it just screws up your checkout. but, thank god i can stream in partial branches and merge all fancy across checkouts and all kinds of “neat” shit 99% of the people don’t use.

seriously.

all i want to do is revert my code back 2 versions ago. i manage to get it that far… good. now, just commit it back.

uh oh!

$ git commit

# On branch master

# Your branch is behind ‘origin/master’ by 2 commits.

#

nothing to commit (working directory clean)

what the FUCK do you mean nothing to commit. you just told me it’s FUCKING DIFFERENT two minutes ago when i rest it to a previous version!

it keeps trying to fast-forward or something — like i might want to do that?

NO!

if i wanted to be at the head version, i wouldn’t have reset it to two versions ago! if i wanted to fast-forward any of the damn files, i’d say “fast-fucking-forward!”

no. i’m saying “motherfucking commit what i tell you to goddamn commit!”

so, i’m like “fine! i’ll just re-pull the files.” i delete the files on the file system and do this:

$ git pull

Enter passphrase for key ‘/c/Users/Chris/.ssh/id_rsa’:

Already up-to-date.

i’m sorry, but, WTF?!?!?

i just fucking deleted half the files in the checkout! THEY ARE NOT THERE! HOW CAN THEY BE UP TO DATE?

bottom line?

after an hour of futzing around trying to figure out how stupid git thinks, i’m having to completely delete and re-checkout the entire repo — all 300 mb of it. great…

twice now, i’ve done that.

tonight.

which is why i have this time to write this. because i’m waiting for fucking git to fucking download a bunch of shit when i only wanted to update — excuse me — “pull” about 30kb of files.

you know how you do this in svn?

svn revert -r1234

svn commit

done.

end of story.

oh, by the way… git sucks.

m3mnoch.

"Information is subject to the same simple economic rules of scarcity as anything else."

Tue, 21 Sep 2010 10:02:24 -0700

“Information is subject to the same simple economic rules of scarcity as anything else.”

- Dave Morin

hahahhahahhahahah…

uh. no.

something that is scarce means, if i have it, you don’t. unfortunately for you, dave, it’s entirely possible that everyone can have the same information.

not. scarce.

m3mnoch.

"There are those who work all day. Those who dream all day. And those who spend an hour dreaming..."

Mon, 13 Sep 2010 09:28:29 -0700

“There are those who work all day. Those who dream all day. And those who spend an hour dreaming before setting to work to fulfill those dreams. Go into the third category because there’s virtually no competition.”

- Steven J Ross

"Because the “free” in that concept means “free from government..."

Wed, 18 Aug 2010 11:28:41 -0700

“Because the “free” in that concept means “free from government interference,” not “free from consequences.””

- Good News, Dr. Laura: Your First Amendment Rights Are Still Yours : Monkey See : NPR

on the first amendment and “freedom of expression.”

Net Neutrality and Incentive

Sat, 14 Aug 2010 09:11:55 -0700

TL;DR version:

Everyone having a wifi device in their pocket will bring back calls for municipal wifi.
People will start demanding the speed and reliability of wifi over the shoddy-in-comparison wireless services.
With the majority of data and voice services going over wifi, current wireless providers will be replaced by device leasing companies, replacing the need for device subsidies and concern over device obsoletion.
Wireless service providers will be reduced to last-ditch, emergency, pay-as-you-go because you’re in the middle of the desert with no other options services.

—-

Sort of to follow up on my previous post about net neutrality, I thought I’d scrawl out a few more words.

Everyone is racing around like chicken little squawking about the end of the open Internet. Especially when it comes to wireless broadband. In that previous post, I hit on a few points about why “special” new wireless services will fail. Now, I want to tell you this:

We’re sooooooo not even gonna have wireless services in the future.

Well, not in the same capacity anyway. The last remaining hurdle is really just the device subsidies we see today. Lemme explain.

There’s lots of innovation happening in wireline Internet services and hardware. You only need to throw a rock from where you’re sitting right now to hit a dozen wireless networks. Eventually, it’ll be everywhere. I think there’s gonna be a huge resurgence in muni wifi because these days, unlike 5 years ago, EVERYONE has a wifi device in their pocket.

And those devices are getting speeeeedy! We’re approaching the point where you can easily see the difference between Internet speed and device processor speed as it relates to doing connected tasks — surfing, video, maps, voice commands, etc.

What this means is consumers are going to start saying “dammit!” (yup, they’ll all really say that) “this crap wireless is slow and unreliable!”. They’ll get used to the hotness that is wifi access at their houses and office. They’ll start demanding that hotness everywhere they go — hence my bullishness towards muni wifi.

Anyway… My point is that the wireless providers can’t get their networks unsucked fast enough to compete with REAL Internet. People will want this real Internet. Wireless providers will soon become irrelevant.

I predict they’ll be replaced by device leasing companies.

m3mnoch.

P.S. Btw, this is my first iPad blog post. Which explains the normal capitalization, of course.

"You want a social life, with friends. A passionate love life and as well To work hard every day...."

Sat, 14 Aug 2010 07:15:22 -0700

“You want a social life, with friends.
A passionate love life and as well
To work hard every day. What’s true
Is of these three you may have two.”

- Kenneth Koch

Why the Google-Verizon Proposal is Genius for Google

Tue, 10 Aug 2010 09:02:02 -0700

hrm. maybe it’s just me, but i’m not really seeing a lot of anything interesting the in google-verizon announcement that concerns me. apparently, unlike about just about every other tech pundit out there. the big concern seems to be net neutrality not applying to “new” internet services.

really. here’s the way i see it:

google’s part of the deal was the “old internet” part.
verizon’s part of the deal was the “new internet” part.
they’re basically acting as proxy for other interested parties.

why it’s brilliant for google and the rest of us? verizon got SWINDLED! there’ve been many, many attempts of a “second internet” that’s faster/better/cooler than the old, crusty one. why are none of those popular? or even still around?

nobody used them because the “old internet” already has the network effect going.

and no amount of “new shiny” is going to draw anyone out, ‘cause that’s where all the people and relationships already exist. and since that’s where the people already are, that’s where the eyeballs are. since that’s where all the eyeballs are, that’s where all the ads are. since that’s where all the ads are, that’s where all the content will be. since that’s where all the content is, that’s where all the people will be. rinse, repeat.

just like wap, the “wireless web”, vcast , fios tv (*snicker*) and all other “walled gardens” — the “new internet” will be expensive to maintain, expensive to use and be plagued by a dearth of users.

it’s a sneaky wedge-win for google and leaves verizon holding a soon-to-be expensive bag of vacant “new internet” streets.

m3mnoch.

"When I said we’d play them, I didn’t realize they had everyone coming back…seriously."

Wed, 04 Aug 2010 14:16:30 -0700

““When I said we’d play them, I didn’t realize they had everyone coming back…seriously.””

- Virginia Tech’s Frank Beamer on agreeing to play Boise State

"I’d say it’s hard to do a really good job on anything you don’t think about in the..."

Wed, 21 Jul 2010 13:38:38 -0700

“I’d say it’s hard to do a really good job on anything you don’t think about in the shower.”

- The Top Idea in Your Mind

woot! i’m not the only shower-thinker!

m3mnoch.

ha! k — you are totally right. gabe is 100%...

Fri, 25 Jun 2010 21:10:39 -0700

ha! k — you are totally right. gabe is 100% me.

via Penny Arcade! - The Brute Force Method

m3mnoch.

"As Wired noted earlier this week, 750,000 jobs is fully 8 percent of the current number of..."

Thu, 24 Jun 2010 10:26:05 -0700

“As Wired noted earlier this week, 750,000 jobs is fully 8 percent of the current number of unemployed in the United States. And $250 billion is more than the combined 2005 gross domestic revenues of the movie, music, software, and video game industries.”

- 750,000 lost jobs? The dodgy digits behind the war on piracy

Fascinating Analysis of iPhone App Economics

Tue, 22 Jun 2010 10:06:30 -0700

Fascinating Analysis of iPhone App Economics:

There are a few who make several millions, who distort the average number, so it is not true that half of iPhone App Developers earn more, and half less, than $3,050 per year. It is definitely true, that the median will be significantly less than this.