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anonuser123456

2,809 karma · joined March 5, 2017

This account is abandoned.

I’ve decided social media is inherently toxic to human discourse and corrodes our ability to interact meaningfully with our fellow citizens. No one is immune to the pernicious effects it has on our minds.

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anonuser123456··on Empty S.F. office tower formerly valued at $62M sold for $6.5M
The hoi polloi want their debt paid by the public. Private capital eats the loss here. kind of different.
anonuser123456··on Tesla postpones $25k electric car
Market segmentation is a thing. Chasing price sensitive consumers doesn’t necessarily make you very profitable.
anonuser123456··on Many FBI agents are struggling to make ends meet. Housing costs are to blame
Well, as long as builders aren’t colluding to fix supply, it doesn’t matter.

Corporations can buy up all they want… but idle units are unprofitable. Between property taxes, borrowing costs and maintenance (which accrues whether units are empty or not), units need revenue or they are a drag on profits. Cartels fall apart very rapidly under these conditions.

Right now demand outstrips supply by a wide margin. This makes it profitable to buy and rent it out. Build enough housing to put some slack in the market and that equation will rapidly reverse.

TL;DR corporate ownership is a symptom, not a cause of housing supply issues.

anonuser123456··on Apple cuts 600 jobs after dropping self-driving car plans
Employment is a game of matching; the employer wants to match a skill set to a particular job.

It’s entirely likely people on these products don’t easily match internally.

The job market for people capable of working on Apple high end R&D is also likely much better at matching then Apples internal HR, simply because the market has so many more openings.

anonuser123456··on California fast-food workers will get $20 minimum wage, starting Monday
Probably not.

It will likely result in a cut in hours for marginal workers, boosted hours for higher productivity workers and more outsourcing/automation.

Labor intensive restaurant operations will have a competitive disadvantage to capital intensive models, and so we’ll see more capital intensive ones thrive.

anonuser123456··on Two nights of broken sleep can make people feel years older, finds study
Sleep deficit drives metabolic changes that may result in obesity (e.g over feeding behavior).
anonuser123456··on Lifelong Disadvantage: How Socioeconomics Affect Brain Function
Title does not reflect findings.
anonuser123456··on Why the 2% inflation target? (2023)
I hate to break it to you, but the rich are taxed on nominal gains, not real.

Holding assets during inflationary periods means paying a higher percentage of your real gains as taxes.

anonuser123456··on Intel to Receive $8.5B in Grants to Build Chip Plants
I work at a hardware company. Our parking lot looks like a Tesla, Rivian and Mazarati dealership.
anonuser123456··on Intel to Receive $8.5B in Grants to Build Chip Plants
Seems to have worked for Russia.
anonuser123456··on Intel to Receive $8.5B in Grants to Build Chip Plants
>They closed because it was cheaper to build in other countries, or to outsource from contractors who build in other countries (where organized labor doesn't exist). The U.S. lost thousands of high-paying (and tax-paying) labor positions and atrophied the skills that went with them. Intel profited from it.

How about asking the workers in other countries who benefitted from this transaction if they were happy with the arrangement? Or do only Americans matter? Maybe you think foreigners are fit only to till dirt fields as subsistence farmers?

anonuser123456··on EPA bans asbestos, a deadly carcinogen still in use decades after partial ban
My opinion is largely in agreement with many in the policy community.

You are mistaking the opinions of a government regulatory body with that of expertise.

The literature on risk is very clear. Occupational level exposure is the critical hazard. Transient exposure is meaningless.

And of course you are missing my central argument. People are at more risk today because existing policy makes asbestos a taboo. Everyone is afraid of it and no one wants to talk about it on a construction site because it screws everything up. And so lots of construction workers, mostly immigrant labor etc pay the price so that some soccer mom can feel certain her kids didn’t get exposed to 0.1fcc hours of asbestos.

anonuser123456··on PFAS in blood are ubiquitous and associated with risk of cardiovascular diseases
I do not have a link, but have read it in multiple journals.

The MAO is entirely plausible. Many fast food wrappers are lined with PFAS because of its temperature stability and hydrophobic properties. At high temperatures these coatings also leech the coating.

anonuser123456··on PFAS in blood are ubiquitous and associated with risk of cardiovascular diseases
>Our data shows a statistically significant correlation between PFAS in the blood and harmful blood lipids linked to cardiovascular risk.

Fast food consumption is also associated with both. Was this controlled for? How about BMI?

anonuser123456··on EPA bans asbestos, a deadly carcinogen still in use decades after partial ban
Everything is harmful, from sunlight to food to driving. At issue is cost benefit.
anonuser123456··on EPA bans asbestos, a deadly carcinogen still in use decades after partial ban
Yeah, I will roll those dice. I am steeped in the literature of asbestos demolition, exposure, health hazards etc.

The current policy around ACM and its handling makes you _LESS_ safe because everyone looks the other way. It could be easily, cheaply disposed of by relaxing a number of protocols on how it’s handled during demolition.

But because everyone has to follow the crazy moonsuit protocols, which improves the safety of the general public by absolutely zero, contractors just go find unknowing immigrant labor to blitz in and tear shit up.

anonuser123456··on EPA bans asbestos, a deadly carcinogen still in use decades after partial ban
Average construction zone concentrations of ACM during demolition hover around 1fcc. It can be higher for some specific cases (zonolite or high concentration asbestos insulation) but for general things like contaminated drywall, duct wrapping etc it is generally low. This is during actual demolition of ACM mind you, not just disturbing a little drywall here and there.

When disturbance is completed, concentrations fall of with the air exchange rate and clear usually with 24-48 hours back to background levels.

Diluting that by the volume of the entire building not under construction would generally put that at or below the 0.1fcc OSHA limit without PP. The OSHA limits assume 1 extra cancer death/300 workers for someone with maximum exposure limits for 8 hours per day, 250 days / year for 30 years.

That is to say… A contractor spending a day kicking up asbestos results in 1/7500th ish of the dose required to cause an excess of 1/300 deaths.

And this assumes that acute low exposures hold the same linear dose response rate as high dosage chronic exposure. That is a controversial assumption in the literature.

My information is based on reading over 50 asbestos related journal articles, EPA and OSHA policy documents etc.

From all the informarion available, it’s just not that big a deal for the average building occupant.

anonuser123456··on EPA bans asbestos, a deadly carcinogen still in use decades after partial ban
Said no epidemiologist ever.
anonuser123456··on EPA bans asbestos, a deadly carcinogen still in use decades after partial ban
What ever harm it might be causing, is below the detection threshold, and thus meaningful risk tolerance of everyday life.

Living near a freeway for instance is substantially more dangerous to your health than occasional incidental exposure to asbestos.

You are breathing asbestos right now. In every breath.

anonuser123456··on EPA bans asbestos, a deadly carcinogen still in use decades after partial ban
Pretty harmless to the building occupants. The contractor is at risk it they are doing it everyday for a decade.
anonuser123456··on EPA bans asbestos, a deadly carcinogen still in use decades after partial ban
The reason no one wants to pay the fee is because the exposure standards are so unreasonably low, that remediation costs huge $$$. And since we’ve made everyone terrified of the stuff, only specialized dumps handle it.

Reasonable precautions that prevent 95% of exposure could be had at a fraction of the cost if people were more reasonable about the stuff.

anonuser123456··on EPA bans asbestos, a deadly carcinogen still in use decades after partial ban
Because the dose makes the poison.

Low levels of asbestos exposure is statistically unlikely to harm you, and the concentrations from brake dust are relatively low. As long as a brake shop ventilates its work spaces it’s a negligible risk to workers.

anonuser123456··on Ex-Google engineer charged with stealing trade secrets
No. Trade secrets are intellectual property that have legal protection.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1832

What a trade secret lacks in protection is the monopoly granted by a patent.

anonuser123456··on Ex-Google engineer charged with stealing trade secrets
That’s not a very credible source.
anonuser123456··on Ski town can't fill a job for $167k cuz potential can't afford to live there
Eminent domain is not theft. Landholders are compensated with fair market value.
anonuser123456··on Ski town can't fill a job for $167k cuz potential can't afford to live there
It looks like there is a golf course greater than the size of the entire city near by.

Eminent domain it and build more housing.

anonuser123456··on New Federal Rule Caps Credit Card Late Fees at $8
Credit card balances are up in nominal terms even when credit growth hasn’t happened. Throw in income growth and it shouldn’t surprise people that credit card debt is up.
anonuser123456··on New Federal Rule Caps Credit Card Late Fees at $8
It makes sense as exactly that. You show the bank that you can manage a float. When you’ve demonstrated you have the executive function to do so, your score goes up.
anonuser123456··on Covert Racism in LLMs
I think OPs point is, there are other perfectly coherent grammars that also may produce the same result. Were those grammars tested?

And a good follow on would be, if not, why was only one and how/why was it selected?

anonuser123456··on PG&E claims no connection between rate increases and $2.2B jump in earnings
Profit in free markets drives competitors to come in and eat those profits.

The problem we have right now is that BigCos use government to erect barriers to entry.

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