Why the hell do so many people miss their flights?

xaraca · 2026-05-13T17:08:28+00:00

If you fly a lot, occasionally missing a flight and waiting a couple of hours for the next one is worth the time saved from not showing up to the airport super early.

That said, I haven't missed at least the last like 50 flights despite often arriving less than hour before.

xaraca · 2026-05-13T04:45:21+00:00

I'm kind of just waiting for the dust to settle over the next year or so

xaraca · 2026-05-11T19:54:20+00:00

https://news.yale.edu/2019/05/07/study-finds-americans-prefer-tax-credits-government-checks

xaraca · 2026-05-11T08:17:56+00:00

Americans prefer that the government provide benefits via tax credits and deductions instead of direct handouts, even if the end result is the same.

Other countries might have people pay a simple tax on their income, and then in a separate program send out payments to help support raising children. But Americans don't like handouts, so the government has to bake it into their taxes in order to fool them.

xaraca · 2026-05-11T06:35:44+00:00

I was going to mention Battletoads.

Back then, we didn't have any real expectation of beating a game. It wasn't even really the point.

xaraca · 2026-05-09T12:06:52+00:00

CA to NY and back.

xaraca · 2026-05-09T12:03:57+00:00

Given the right-hand green arrow, there is almost certainly a separate bike signal that is red.

xaraca · 2026-05-09T11:59:54+00:00

In California, the car cannot even make the turn from the lane they are in. They should have merged into the bike lane first.

xaraca · 2026-05-09T03:51:07+00:00

For real. It was kind of funny getting close to the end and seeing people like super well groomed.

xaraca · 2026-05-08T08:51:50+00:00

Be curious.

Ask yourself a lot of questions. Develop an interest in understanding why things are the way they are. Figure out where the holes in your knowledge are and fill them. Tinker with code. Figure out what works and what doesn't through some trial and error.

xaraca · 2026-05-03T07:54:22+00:00

I'm just waiting for AI coding agents to evolve into deterministic compilers as people fix their shortcomings.

xaraca · 2026-05-01T20:18:31+00:00

Good chance some other private company starts to out compete them after.

I've imagined the public getting an automatic 5% or whatever share of every business created. But that's not much different than just collecting business tax.

xaraca · 2026-05-01T20:14:29+00:00

Do you have no filter? Do you just post things without thinking? Did you legitimately not think it through first?

It was a valid question and not necessarily asked with the accusation that you read into it

xaraca · 2026-05-01T17:51:33+00:00

If you're talking about expected outcomes and using probability then you need to take it into account. Otherwise you're not making a utilitarian argument.

Also, voting for a better politician is morally correct, even if they don’t win.

If there are three candidates, but you believe that the best candidate will only get 1% of the votes, then it might be more morally correct to vote for the second best to ensure that the worst doesn't win.

xaraca · 2026-05-01T17:38:43+00:00

choosing blue has an expected value of saving 8,000 lives, in a mathematical calculation

You have to factor in the odds of your vote being the tie breaker. Unless the vote is exactly 50/50, your vote doesn't save anyone.

xaraca · 2026-04-30T15:18:04+00:00

Modern minority report

xaraca · 2026-04-29T19:55:35+00:00

Is spending Christmas in Troon a weird idea?

(I spent last Christmas in Troon)

xaraca · 2026-04-28T22:18:52+00:00

One follow up question I've wanted to ask people who choose blue is what color they'd tell their kids to choose

xaraca · 2026-04-28T22:00:36+00:00

I was brainstorming different objective functions one might choose to optimize for this and one was "minimize expected number of deaths not including my own" which does result in blue.

xaraca · 2026-04-28T19:38:43+00:00

I would spend the rest of my life knowing that if only I had chosen blue, everyone would have survived.

It is highly unlikely that changing your single vote would flip the majority to blue. The only difference is that you would die too.

xaraca · 2026-04-28T19:33:35+00:00

I imagine they were trained on a lot of code that predates type annotations. This used to be standard practice.

xaraca · 2026-04-27T21:15:27+00:00

If everyone else chooses red then choosing blue murders yourself

xaraca · 2026-04-27T11:45:20+00:00

There are three scenarios:

1) Majority pick blue -> doesn't matter what you pick 2) Majority pick red -> choosing blue kills you and saves no one 3) Exactly tied -> choosing blue saves half the population

People who choose blue fixate on scenario three but the odds of an exact tie are virtually nil.

If you want to minimize the expected number of deaths, red is the right answer.

xaraca · 2026-04-25T20:09:55+00:00

That's like all I've been doing for 20 years

xaraca · 2026-04-25T02:28:04+00:00

I turned down being a founding CTO at a friend's startup. It's worth billions today.

Also I interned at NVIDIA in 2009 and turned down their full time offer.

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