I emigrated from the UK to USA in 1980 and my first code review at Bell Labs I spent about 30 mins explaining my code and then asked if there were any final questions and someone hesitantly asked, "What is this variable 'zed' you keep talking about?"
Central planning targets what is good, but inefficiently. Private enterprise targets what is profitable very efficiently. There's a combination of the two that is a happy medium.
Why not just ban FALSE or MISLEADING advertising like Europe does?
Apparently there is no difficulty in determining what is false there although I can see it might be a problem in the US currently.
The elliptical road design is interesting as there is no need for T-junctions or traffic lights. Two large ellipses running in opposite directions connected by semi-circular off/on ramps so you only need to merge and not stop.
This illustration is a classic in the style of Tufte's Envisioning Information although I don't remember seeing it in his books. But given the current climate of DOGE cuts and Musk's demand for email reports of what each gov employee did last week it occurs that a public online org chart of the entire non-classified Federal Government with weekly entries made by all employees would be a huge win and would justify the level of spending.
Stopped watching after 10 minutes due to it being a detailed discussion of methodology and not about food. Would like to see a video of "Top 20 Chinese Dishes You've Never Heard Of." And here it is - don't watch this on an empty stomach!
Like quantitative easing raises the whole market? Govt would dollar cost average at least and can spread out buys to avoid front running. Larger market cap with investors holding for the long term helps increase the R&D spend and timeframes.
Why would it collapse? Can limit govt holdings to say 25% of each company to maintain profit motive. I think this would attract other investment - front running the govt money - and greatly increase the ability to research new drugs. Can also direct some research money into drugs with significant benefit but little profit. Over time increased investment would allow lower prices. Over time compounding would help fund medicare.
Medicare should spend 1% of its budget each year to buy pharma stocks. Slowly it will become neutral to drug prices since what it pays for expensive drugs will be returned in the stock value.
One small point is that AI tools like cursor can greatly speed up any project and will also be required and are probably even higher priority than any new underlying framework. I can see software moving to where the human oversees the business logic/aesthetics and AI does all the framework-specific code.
Doing a personal project or contributing to an existing open source project can help you to get up to speed on new tools/frameworks. Maybe even reimplement an existing proj you are familiar with in a new framework. As for time make learning new stuff the priority. Job applications are worthless without the chops to pass the interview.
It was pretty rough at first - my background was doing UI in C/Xwindows/Motif, followed by Java/Swing UI which was by far the most glacially slow stack. Javascript was fast taking over the browser but I didn't know it. I remember failing a job interview because I had no idea what a closure was although I was familiar with C stack frame and Java variable scoping. Another time I got a trial job at a one-room startup mainly on the recomendation of my reference, who reported back to me that he advised not working for the startup's CEO. Sure enough I lasted there a week although to be fair I was not yet competent in javascript. I did some private projects to learn it - sudoku websites - and later landed another startup job (mostly because I got the brain-teaser style interview questions right) doing javascript UI where I had free choice of frameworks and chose ExtJS. Six months later I got headhunted by a large company that was using ExtJS for its internal web framework. But JS frameworks were coming thick and fast: ExtJS, Dojo, jQuery, Angular, React and each harder to learn than the last for someone in their late 50s. But I would have to say the relief of earning a full salary again was immense compared to scrimping and saving and juggling credit card balances.
This happened to me during the dot com bust and I was what I call self-unemployed from 2001-2007. I tried various things to make a living. Developed some games/puzzles websites that still make several hundred bucks every month like clockwork. Tried buying and selling stuff especially dot com surplus stuff like docking stations and also books and music CDs. Bought in quantity at local auctions and on eBay and sold individually through a website or on Amazon. Eventually I studied to become a mortgage broker and passed the real estate exam but then the subprime crisis burst and there was very little demand for mortgage loans anymore. Eventually I landed a software job at a startup and rejoined the full time employed.
Maybe create a software co-op where people meet and can give or get help with any projects they are working on. Meet anywhere convenient like local library or office after hours or even someones garage. Nobody gets paid unless by agreement and to make money people need to sell something (maybe just ads). There's a much bigger chance of success than if all the people work independently.
Putting is about half the game numerically and among the pros there are good and bad putters. Tom Watson was an excellent putter for most of his career by hitting firm putts that got past the hole, but he famously missed a 6 footer to win The Open at age 59 by hitting a soft putt that barely made it to the hole. In Jordan Spieth's annus mirabilis 2015 he was by far the best putter from 20-25 feet on tour. On the other hand, if Dustin Johnson could putt as well as he plays the long game he would have won a lot more championships. Innovations tend to get banned. Sam Snead's croquet style putting astride the line was banned and the long putters with the top locked into the body to act as a pendulum also banned. Nothing is worse than amateurs imitating professionals and taking forever lining up a putt from all four sides unless maybe it is on the final green of the club championship.
Under Biden, the FAA was slow walking SpaceX approvals. Now the political wind has reversed, Musk is stretching the limit on what he can get the FAA to do. If the worst that happens is SpaceX gets to crash its rockets faster then no worries. FAA and aviation in general may or may not benefit from any reform due to Musk, but the worst thing is the indication of how Musk is operating in all other areas of government - underhanded techniques to push an agenda to the limit.
While the trip itself is amazing, it could easily be fleshed out with attractions along the way - favourite eateries, boozers, playhouses, gardens etc.
The private health companies need to hire these folks en masse to a jointly owned company and provide a contract disease surveillance service to CDC. But they probably make more money if people get sick. The whole reason for public health spending right there.
As a Brit expat having lived in the USA for 40 years UK has many positives.
The coastline - beaches, boating, food, scenery.
The stately homes - every 5 miles there is a huge house that now has open gardens and serves tea.
The seasons - count em all 4 although true that summer can be very iffy.
Travel - cheap package tours anywhere in Europe.
Sport - soccer, rugby, cricket for those that suffer from insomnia and many great golf courses.
It needs a lot of enhancements to be useful. Firstly it should be a real time video like the simulations in the movie about Capt Sully's water landing in the Hudson. The aircraft lights need to be modeled accurately as well as views both with and without night vision equipment.
Had no trouble with these except for the three or so panels of bright green which were almost impossible to distinguish. I got the confetti in the end but wasn't paying attention to beeps so not sure if I got any of the bright greens right.
All blogs should have an RSS feed - I wasn't able to find one on Simon Willison's blog.
I find the page format hard to read - a mass of text studded with links - it would benefit from more typographic structure - headings and so on.