jartelt

What? Your hurricane example is not the same at all. No one is saying that predictions of a recession in the media are the cause of the recession.

The OP is just asking if there is a way to predict the likelihood of a recession by using media reports. The answer could very well be no, but it is nothing like saying that google searches for hurricanes cause storms.

The correct analogy is that it would be like searching for media reports of incoming hurricanes in order to tell if there was a hurricane coming. I imagine that method would work well for telling if a hurricane is coming (though it would be more straight forward to just look at the weather report)!

I have a feeling this method wouldn't work well for predicting a recession though.

Exactly - If you eat an apple, you get a modest amount of sugar with some fiber to go with it. The fiber helps slow down the absorption of the sugar and lessens the insulin response.

If you drink a big glass of apple juice, you get the sugar load of eating multiple apples and get none of the fiber. It's basically like drinking soda.

The price of the PV modules only makes up like 1/3 the cost of a utility scale solar installation and like 1/5 the cost of residential installations. A 10-15% increase in module cost will not slow solar adoption that much. The solar train will keep chugging along.

We'll eventually get to a point where we generate 5% of the world's power with solar and people will still underestimate its impact and will still claim its too expensive to scale...

One of best ways to increase parking revenue would be to set up a system to automate parking fees (similar to automated tolling).

I would gladly pay the $1 fee to park for 30 minutes in my downtown. However, I often skip paying because of the hassle of walking to the pay station, waiting several minutes to complete the transaction, and then putting the receipt back in my car.

If they just detected by license and sent me a bill, they could have my money!

I made the switch as well and now only get an AirBnB when traveling with a large group of friends to remote destinations.

For my own travel, I got so sick of the problems with key access. It's just too hard to coordinate with most hosts when you are in a foreign country and don't have cell service or wi-fi.

It's also super annoying when any number of other issues show up: spotty wi-fi, no cable TV, no soap or shampoo, poor quality mattress, etc.

And then hosts often expect you to wash your dishes and put laundry in the washer. Why do I need to do this when I am paying >$100 for a "cleaning fee"???

Are there going to be any issues with peak demand charges from utilities making fast charging cost prohibitive? I have to imagine that pulling that much power from the grid will either be very expensive or will require some grid upgrades to prevent issues.

Leakage into ground water would certainly be and issue if proper planning was not in place. I would have to think there are ways to prevent this leakage though. We have burying lots of coal ash for many years now and must have some best practices in place. Coal ash is more toxic than salt.

The amount of salt used in storage applications would likely not even make a dent in the amount of salt produced by large scale desalination.

He started in May 2018, so it's not clear he will reach the 1 year cliff.

I think it's most likely that it would just get buried or piled up somewhere. Salt is not really a high value product, so I wouldn't be surprised if desal plants had to pay people to take the salt from them.

Anything close to a 100-1000x reduction in energy consumption is unlikely in the next 10-20 years. That said filters have steadily gotten better over the years (better throughput, more durable, etc.)

Also, the main thing to focus on is cost of water produced. If you design a new filter that is much more energy efficient but costs 100x more than the standard plastic filter, it may not provide much advantage.

I wonder how much of this is due to number of capable buyers dwindling when prices reach a certain point. There is a good number of people willing to buy a junky 2 bedroom house on the peninsula for $1M. Make that house $1.5M and raise rates a little bit and maybe people just start to say no thank you.

If you want to buy that $1.5M project, you need like $200K for the down payment and fees. Plus, you need the capital to remodel.

Perhaps salaries simply haven't kept up with the rise in home prices?

Voice commands are useful if you are having conversation with friends and a question comes up that group wants an answer to. I find it more social to ask a phone with a voice command than to open the phone, type a query into google, and search for an answer.

Of course Siri defaults to an incorrect google search on nearly every question, so this often doesn't work in practice...

That type of delivery is an option for more expensive goods. You can also sometimes pay more to require a signature for delivery.

Overall the rate of package theft is low though, so people prefer the convenience and low cost of normal package delivery.

The US is big and diverse. Most areas have little to no package theft. However, if your home has a very exposed front porch and you live in an affluent area very near a not so affluent area, theft can be more of an issue.

I'm pretty sure that would be a terrible living...

Boulder has a lot of policies in place that actually prevent growth (height limits, limits on suburban growth, etc.). They seem to literally not want Boulder to grow.

Think of it like a venture capital deal. If you wanted to invest in Uber in their seed round, you couldn't get in the deal unless you had a fund set up or you were an accredited investor and had a connection to the founders.

This type of deal can get you huge returns but is also very risky.

The vast majority of people should just be maxing out their 401k and investing in index funds.

They shouldn't be using Robinhood to buy individual stocks, buy cryptocurrency, or do options trading.

There are zoning issues that prevent the market from buildings an adequate amount of housing to keep up with demand. You can't just go turn a single family home in Palo Alto into a small apartment complex.

There is not an equivalent quota or limit on the number of employees who can work as waiters.

Except they get better tax treatment than a hedge fund since they are a "non-profit".

Sometimes people do get put into situations where buying earlier than optimal seems like the only option. However, people often use a variety of excuses to buy a house simply because they want to buy a house (even if they don't have the necessary funds for risk management).

-We are having a baby, so we need to move out of our 2 bedroom apartment and get a 3 bedroom house -Our rent is increasing so we need to buy a house (even though the mortgage is often more than rent) -We need a garage for our cars, so let's buy a house -We have money in our savings that isn't earning anything for us, so let's buy a house and put it to work. -We don't like sharing walls with neighbors, so we need a house. -Our parents say we are throwing money away at rent and should buy a house so we can build wealth.

Each excuse has some validity to it, but none of them really mean you need to buy a house RIGHT NOW.

It is beginning to happen in the US. Battery adoption on the grid has been slow because the utility companies like solving problems by building new generation plants (natural gas plants mostly) or by building new transmission lines. They have historically always done this and they make a guaranteed rate of return on this type of infrastructure. This has led to lots of un-needed generation capacity and expensive transmission projects passed on to rate payers.

Regulators in many states are now finally forcing utilities to examine the use of alternative solutions to fix grid issues. They are finding that battery installations can do a better job than new generation or transmission in many cases and the batteries can be cheaper over the long run. It's just a matter of getting the utilities to try something new and get out of their typical playbook.

Lower price than Uber, potential for growth if they move outside the US, belief that ride share markets are not a zero-sum game and that two companies can more or less split the market...

Your holidays can become progressively longer and more extravagant. The cost of this can add up quickly. Maybe you previously just went to Florida for a week for vacation. Now you decide to take the family to Italy for 3 weeks in the summer and to New Zealand in the winter....

There can also be an urge to buy that vacation home in Tahoe or Jackson that you always dreamed of. Maybe you used to rent a house in Tahoe for a weekend every winter before windfall. Now you buy a place and have a mortgage for a cabin that you use a handful of times a year.

Before you know it, you can have a lot more expenses creep up.

Yes! Sleep deprivation played a role in the two Navy crashes in the last few years.

Bird's latest round was led by Sequoia and Lime's latest round was led by GV, so I am not sure why the Softbank is relevant.

Perhaps Softbank funds the next rounds, but GV and Sequoia are still going to be looking for a much bigger exit than 1x.

A 1x return on a large investment like these would not be good for a venture fund. They probably need to return 3x on the whole fund to get their carry/bonus, so a 3x return for a given investment is the bare minimum for success. They almost certainly would not have made these investments unless they believed they could make a return of >3x.

Note that if you are in the demographic of well educated and high income Americans, your life expectancy is still quite high and you should assume you will live to your 90s when planning for retirement!

The decrease in life expectancy observed is being largely driven by people on the middle to lower portion of the income spectrum. It's very unfortunate that it is happening and so many people are struggling. Hopefully our country can come up with solutions to help out people who are struggling with addiction and poor health.

But, it's important to remember that if you are not in that demographic, you are still likely to live a very long life and need to plan for that.

Sure, but that is a separate argument. I agree that working at Google/Amazon/Apple probably gives most people the best income over time. The point is that if you work at startups dilution is not your enemy.

Early Uber employees got diluted like crazy, but they will probably do well when they cash out (or already did in secondary offers).

Yes, preferred shares are worth more than shares of common stock. They are valued more highly because of the liquidation preference and other rights. In a great exit, the preferred shares are typically converted to common stock and everyone wins. In a not so great exit, the preferred share rights kick in and the folks with common stock may not get paid.