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yeah basically, but with no driver. That was my point about over-engineering: the army didn't want an expensive re-invention of off road vehicles, just existing technology tailored to their needs.

BD has a long term vision for robotics and I'm not suggesting that they should stop working towards that. Just making the point that it's possible to create robust solutions using simpler robotics even in complex environments.

Actually turns out Boston Dynamics had a good idea and over-engineered it. LM built a cheaper, wheeled, semi-autonomous troop support vehicle that ended up selling pretty well.

https://defense-update.com/20070529_smss.html

There are times that I get into the flow while coding and end up solving a few future problems in addition to right now problems. I know that the code is over-engineered, but if it passes all of the tests and there's nothing obviously wrong with it I would probably check it in anyway. Over engineering never comes up in our code reviews but I think it would be a productive conversation if it did - even if the decision was still to accept the code as-is.

The programmers I work with can be defensive of their architecture, but they also love to talk about architecture generally. I think there's a "yes and" [0] way to bring this up that engages the whole team.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yes,_and...

That sounds perfectly reasonable to me, but John Hennessy literally wrote the book on computer architecture. Towards the end of the deck he has a slide that we shouldn't expect large gains from improved architecture (on general purpose chips) in the future. I'm inclined to believe him, although I would be interested in hearing a deeper proof/disproof of the architecture you proposed.

So I actually have a free wework pass from my online masters degree program. I live about 3 blocks from a large wework that was built in the last couple of years. My company let's me work from home whenever I want. I have a 45 minute commute so I usually WFH on fridays or anytime I have an appointment.

I went a few times when it was novel, but after that I really only use it less than 1 in 5 of my work from home days. And on some of those WFH days, I'll walk to the coffee shop accross from the wework to get an espresso and then go back and work at my house.

Point being, I don't find wework to be a compelling remote work offering when it's free. So it seems unlikely to me that there's very much room to grow in that market.

This seems like the winner. Although I would tweak it to looped list

I wouldn't exactly say that rail is fantastically expensive. Acquiring dedicated right-of-way for any form of transportation (rail, bus, car) through a developed area is fantastically expensive. But metal rails and overhead wires cost about the same as 12 feet of asphalt. And in terms of capacity, one track of rail moves +10k people per hour, while a lane of highway with personal cars moves about 2k to 3k [1]. Bus Rapid Transit is a nice middle ground because it has a little less capacity than trains but can be installed in existing right-of-way - like a road with 2 lanes in each direction or a lane of parking. So to me, better bus networks are about optimizing existing infrastructure. However cities still need to engage in new infrastructure projects as they grow, and it's often hard to beat the cost per capacity of rail in a new project: A line in each direction get's you the capacity of a multi-lane highway in a fraction of the real estate.

And in terms routing railways - it's really not that big of a deal. If you create a fast and economical route between two places, market forces tend to move people along that route eventually. Now you might have decades of an unprofitable line before you build up enough density to really take advantage of all that capacity, but it will happen... assuming it maintains support from politicians.

Rail is not a short-term solution, but it's a great investment in the long-term health of many cities.

[1] http://ccag.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/cmp_2005_Appen...

Form Based Zoning Codes are a good step. The goal there is to focus on physical form instead of land use. So as an overly broad example - keep the height and setback restrictions but remove the rules about subdividing a residence or converting a residence to retail or office. This allows market forces to have a stronger influence on the real estate market.

Laws requiring embalming/caskets are pretty uncommon. There aren't any laws at the US Federal level, and only a handful of states have any restrictions. Finding a funeral director to provide a natural burial can be more difficult, although most large cities have at least one option.

Ok you're arguing that there is no such thing as a liquid store of value that that offers a better return than a negative yield government bond?

So let's say I'm a bank with a stack of 1B in high denomination central bank notes. I calculate the rate of return as zero minus the annual cost of securing those and the annual risk that they are stolen or destroyed. Inflation isn't a factor because the bond is in the same currency. Based on your explanation that rate of return will be lower than the -0.11% that I would get from a german 30 year bond today. And there's simply nothing I can exchange those central bank notes for that would do any better than the bond.

Like OP I've never understood negative yield debt and I'm trying really hard to.

That makes sense but I have a follow up question. What forces this? For example, what's to stop a single entity from reaping the rewards of using cash while everyone else buys bonds to keep the economy moving. Is it a government regulation? an agreement between large institutions? or are the gains to each individual entity large enough that the negative yield is worth it?

I think we're in agreement... I use nutrition to mean "the calorie intake side of the equation".

I hear a lot of people use the word the same as I do. It's not that I'm arguing "100 calories of kale will effect your weight differently from 100 calories of powdered sugar" or any other fad-diet nonsense. But I would certainly argue that one of those options will lead to eating fewer calories over the course of a day.

Not sure why this is down voted, excerpt from the abstract shows that they view nutrition as the main reason for the gap.

> There is an urgent need for an integrated approach to rural nutrition that enhances financial and physical access to healthy foods, to avoid replacing the rural undernutrition disadvantage in poor countries with a more general malnutrition disadvantage that entails excessive consumption of low-quality calories.

It's pretty widely accepted that nutrition trumps exercise in weight loss. I will say that my observations align with OP, urban lifestyles tend to be less sedentary then suburban/rural. But my observations could also be skewed by age differences, which presumably this study controlled for (didn't read the whole thing).

Common term in defense, basically just an organizational efficiency. Since the devops people kept breaking security, we made them sit next to the security people.

> ...today announced that Lockheed Martin worked with Red Hat to modernize the application development process used to bring new capabilities to the U.S. Air Force’s fleet of F-22 Raptor fighter jets.

They later talk about agile vs waterfall as well as devops. It doesn't read like this is going on a plane, probably just dev and test environments.

Self-cleaning house seemed like it would be here already. If you had described the technologies available in 2019 to myself in 2002 (when the roomba came out) - I would have expected there to also be a boston-dynamics-esque floor, window and countertop cleaning bot that was reasonably affordable. I didn't expect that walking around a house and picking things up would be this hard to automate.

5m^2 is too big for a car, and the panels are heavy and expensive. Toyota used to have a prius with a solar panel roof - it produced enough energy to run the fans (not the AC) while the car was parked on a hot day. Not even in the ballpark of the energy needed to move the car (and it was an expensive option).

I think the headline for this article is unfortunate. The article didn't focus on answering the headline in the way most readers will expect, but those who have read more of Chuck Marohn's writing probably won't expect it to. It's really about "Why Does Infrastructure Cost So Much?" being a common concern but missing the point. He points out that bad development patterns and misguided regulations lead to roads that aren't economically productive enough to pay for their own maintenance, and that reducing the actual construction costs isn't going to change that paradigm. This probably shouldn't be the first article anyone reads on strong towns, as it jumps to conclusions that are justified in earlier writings.

This is how most successful rail corridors in the northeast US were built. A line was built to connect two cities, then suburbs spread along the existing right of way.

In the majority of US cities, bus networks are optimized for coverage instead of frequency. A bus route might only run a few times a day at commute times - but city planners can check the public transportation box for all the neighborhoods along the route. With that methodology, it becomes impossible to reach a destination that requires a transfer or get to a job at an off time. Therefore anyone with the means to avoid the bus will.

Of course some cities have BRT routes, dedicated lanes, and high service frequency. If you have access to a bus network like that, indeed it can operate as well or better than a rail system (and often at a lower cost). But that is the exception in the US, not the norm. Whereas most commuter and urban rail in the US operates with high frequency and dedicated right-of-way. Hence the presumption that buses "don't count".

Right - Part complexity is a big reason and so is volume. We're building carriers at a rate of 1 ship every 3 to 4 years. There's just no value proposition for automation on a lot of these parts.

Good point. There's a precedent for separating industries when it's in the public interest [0]. I think the argument needs to be that housing both industries under a single roof creates a conflict of interest that's too strong to be managed through normal regulatory actions like fines.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_investment_and_r...

I was providing a counterpoint to show that it's preferable having the whole office take off together when that's possible for your business. I don't disagree that staggering the off days could be necessary, but it isn't ideal.

Also work in defense, this is becoming pretty common. Although typically everyone takes the same friday off - that saves operating costs (no janitors or cafeteria on the off day). There's also the benefit that people tend to plan their vacations around the off-fridays, and work the full day on on-fridays. So you don't get stuck at the office trying to solve a problem with nobody to answer your questions at 3 on a summer friday.

and real estate is up there too. right-of-way for fiber and renting rooftops for base stations is a major telcom cost driver.

Thank you for sharing. This is similar to what we were looking for, something that gamifies the assignments to get students more engaged. Part of the problem is that there are so many free coding resources out there that it's tricky to find a mature one that people have gone through and found rewarding.

I'm a teaching assistant for an intro to programming class, and I do feel that solving an endless train of toy problems is problematic for students. From my experience, the best way to learn is to understand a real problem, determine it's requirements, then design a solution. However the professor and I struggle to find real problems that are approachable for novices with varied backgrounds.

I saw an open source class called nand to tetris where students had a semester to create a machine that could play tetris, starting with only nand gates. I thought that seemed like a much more fun progression for computer hardware than the undergrad courses I took. I would love to discover something similar for programming but so far I haven't found it.

I always thought that the liberal arts majors subsidized the more expensive STEM majors, but your comment made me question that. So I took a look at my Alma Mater's financial statements and it turns out that the subsidy is less that I thought, but still significant. Facilities are a pretty small part of the university budget, dorms turn enough profit to cover utilities and maintenance. Most of the upfront cost of academic buildings is paid for by donors (may not be the case everywhere). 60% of the University expenses are salaries and about 20% of the staff are faculty. However the majority of the employees work in revenue-generating parts of the university. Room and board mostly covers the salaries for low-wage positions like food service, security, building maintenance. Athletic revenue mostly covers the cost of coaches and athletic staff. So the remaining number of non-revenue generating administrators (bursar, registrar, etc.) is about equal to the number of faculty. Since STEM faculty are generally paid more that liberal arts, I would estimate the cost premium of operating a STEM class over a liberal arts class to 10% at this particular school (NE USA, Private, D1).

To me it sounded like a journalist's awkward wording of a description from an engineer. Some frequencies of light will bend to the curvature of the earth due to the atmosphere[1]. Lasers apparently "hit the Earth's curves" rather than bending with them.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_duct