njepa

High speed rail isn't that good for what you want. It will churn through too much infrastructure for too little value for point-to-point. What it is good at is creating regions. Done correctly it can open up a lot of land and opportunities. (I don't know the specifics of this project however).

> I'm not sure what we could do about it though, we can encourage better eating choices but there is a limit on how much that works.

I think the key is to realize that their is no sort of natural limit anymore and to actually enforce one that is sustainable.

I just don't think the authors observation is very good. He is essentially saying that "a rising tide lifts all boats". But in reality it is the boats that are important more so than the tide.

The invention of the sampler created a huge amount of value. But mainly by a handful of companies and music scenes. If you wasn't for Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, London, Bristol or wherever else the change would have been marginal. Just like climbing wouldn't necessarily improve without places like Yosemite.

You can even go further and say that it isn't just specific groups that make progress, but that they define progress itself. There isn't much as such saying that free soloing in Yosemite is what progress is. Or even that climbing is worth progressing.

There also can't be many who believe that technology haven't made e.g. trains significantly better in past decades. Yet, China now have much more advanced trains than the US which is arguably better at technology. That is presumably because China is building boats rather than praising the tide.

Which is generally fine. Because that is going to happen one day anyway. You want people to be paid well because then the transition becomes gradual. The most unproductive businesses and positions disappear first. People getting paid just over living expenses is the worst case scenario, because then everyone gets replaced over night as automation becomes cheap enough.

You should detract from the author's point, because it only works if you are largely ignorant of how things like this actually happens. It is essentially always not generics, but specifics. Specific people doing specific things in specific places with specific technology and culture. Without knowing much of the "extreme climbing community" I would bet that it is a rather specific group of people and largely non-existent outside of that.

The author is largely trying to sell exceptionalism. That everything will be fine with generic improvements. Yet, of course that isn't true. Both state of technology and the economy is probably better than ever yet deliver less and less value. Chances are people like Alex Honnold did it despite of the policies of this economist.

> And now, the technology of the internet. Each new idea in rock climbing is accessible quickly all over the world. Without that large group of interested people, this communal knowledge would not have advanced so far. [The Article]

> After a year, he dropped out of Berkeley and spent time living at home and driving around California to go climbing. "I'd wound up with my mom's old minivan, and that was my base," he said. "I'd use it to drive to Joshua Tree to climb or I'd drive to LA to see my girlfriend. My orbit was tiny and really cheap. I destroyed that van fairly quickly; it died on me one day, and for the next year I lived just on my bicycle and in a tent." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Honnold

It isn't the same thing by any means, and doesn't really offer much over cards other than a slight improvement in convenience. Mobile payments in China are essentially peer-to-peer and universal. The closest equivalent is probably something like MobilePay or Swish, but that isn't as good or as widespread.

I definitely think it is needed. I just don't think Rust has solved the paradox that the more you need something specialized the less you can afford the overhead.

Finding hundreds of web developers with some spare time who don't mind learning Rust, can port some of their tooling and use it in some part of their stack isn't going to be much of a problem. The same isn't true if you, say, need an embedded programmer who has worked with zigbee and needs to be in your lab for testing and verification.

Pretty much all major programming languages are where they are as a result of being some kind of "lowest common denominator" for their application. Something like Bash is pretty horrible as a programming language, but extremely accessible for sysadmins. Only now is it changing slightly were things like Python and Go is becoming more popular, but mostly because they are easier than the alternatives.

In my experience C++ programmers aren't necessarily great programmers as such. Because low levels things usually requires domain knowledge and experience more so than programming brilliance.

I think mainly because mastering new concepts increases the barrier to entry, overhead and scope. Which in turn affects creativity. There are many brilliant programming languages, used by brilliant programmers, yet, most really useful software tends to be produced by whatever. It would be awesome if Rust could overcome that, but I don't really see how currently.

I would say largely the same, but mostly put the emphasis on housing. Capital isn't regional anymore, meaning housing largely goes for whatever people dare to sign for. This makes it a lot harder to live a more modest life. Disproportionately hurting smaller cities since being cheap is part of what they have/had going for them. Basically if housing was significantly cheaper for a decent quality of life, rather than mostly just somewhat cheaper, job security would be less of a concern.

Not really. You don't evacuate airplanes unnecessarily since people get scared, trampled or hurt. So once there is an evacuation you can't treat it like anything else than an actual emergency. At which point no one is expected to have their documents. If it turns out to not be a life treating situation someone will get you your stuff soon enough and otherwise you shouldn't have it anyway.

People don't understand rapidly evolving situations because it is hard to do. They will do whatever they normally do. They will process what is happening in their own frame of reference. Which isn't "smoke inhalation in 30 seconds", but "let's hurry a little bit". I don't necessarily think you should blame people though.

There is of course plenty of random luxury developments in those places, but high end malls tend to be pretty good. At least in the elaborate-sloppy ratio, as different developments will be competing for the high end brands. But looking more at Hudson Yards it looks more like a random mall, in which case it probably doesn't matter much.

The standard for luxury malls in the Middle East and Asia can be pretty high, so if it is some sort of international play it matters for sure.

My impression is that it is often a series of random companies. A "factory" doing some part, or assembly, might not be larger than a class room. These days you can pretty much just search for something like "tablet factory shenzhen" and see how it is [0]. Of course then there will be larger ones like Strange Parts visits [1], and sketchier ones [2]. And then on top of that will be all kinds of companies doing design, distribution, sales and whatnot.

[0] e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfyAjkPIYyc [1] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCO8DQrSp5yEP937qNqTooOw [2] e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZh7VfxBmcw

For some reason many of them don't have much presence outside of China. (It is obviously not very hard to find Chinese branded products in China). Maybe the overhead or the cultural gap is just too big at the moment. I will however be interesting if they start selling internationally at scale.

Eh, the outsourcing, moving and selling have been very deliberate in many countries. It isn't limited to manufacturing. You can go to smaller European country and see the fall of social democracy, how taxes have been lowered and housing is more expensive. I guess you can say globalization affected culture that then lead to the changes, but it is still culture no less. Most countries aren't even trying to keep their industries (with a few exceptions).

I would argue Chinese brands have probably already overtaken non-Chinese ones at this point. Many of them just aren't really available outside of China. But if you started with a blank slate today and could buy either only Chinese or western products I think the Chinese ones would be the better deal for consumer products. And not necessarily only on price. As you said Xiaomi has a very appealing ecosystem that is hard to match.

Usually doesn't mean anything more than self-promotion, which ironically mostly seems to be used to not become a better place to actually move to.

Gigabit is a bit overkill, it doesn't do much that 100 Mbit can't. However the real game changer is low latency 10 Gbit+. That is when the paradigm changes, and you no longer need storage. That is when you can do high resolution, high refresh rate, even stereoscopic video. Where game consoles can play every game. 100 Mbit technology doesn't really scale to that and the difference isn't going to be big enough to warrant a technology change for a long time. So you want gigabit now so you can have something better in the future. Otherwise whatever you have now will be good enough, and so will less than that as well. So you will miss out on the next thing.

The article is a bit weird because as far as I know Stockholm hasn't become much more walkable, or bikeable, in the last 15 years. (They have spent billions on car infrastructure however). Copenhagen is much superior in this regard.

There seems to be a growing trend of talking up Stockholm (maybe because of the insane housing market), while not much have happened really. Most of the "ideal" development of Stockholm seems to be from pre-'90s, including all but one subway station.

In the last 30 years the main developments have been malls and "soulless" residential areas in the spirit of "Hammarby Sjöstad". [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hammarby_Sj%C3%B6stad].

Not that the meta of your assumption is particularly interesting (as a discussion), but there is plenty of mainstream articles questioning whether Uber can make money long term.

https://www.economist.com/business/2019/04/27/can-uber-ever-... https://www.forbes.com/sites/lensherman/2017/12/14/why-cant-... https://www.wsj.com/articles/uber-wants-to-be-the-uber-of-ev...

Southeast Europe is polluted as well, however mainly from coal. I think will see more and more of these articles about the West as the trajectory of our societies are changing. We even have emerging gambling problems in Sweden these days, which no one here cares much about.

Sweden had a very good run during the USSR time period. Especially post war until the ~90s. Somewhat ironically partly because we wanted to be more [0], and less [1], like the US.

[0] “In the end, all such authoritarian measures were dismissed by the Commission, which instead went with Sundbärg's goal of bringing the best sides of America to Sweden (unsurprisingly, as Sundbärg himself wrote the conclusions). First on his list of urgent reforms were universal male suffrage, better housing, general economic development, and a broader popular education which could counteract ‘class and caste differences.’” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_Emigration_Commissio...

[1] “Always a dedicated traveler, Mr. Palme after graduation hitch-hiked around the United States for four months, visiting 34 states on a $300 shoestring budget that took him into pockets of poverty in a land of plenty. It was a shocking experience for the young aristocrat. He recalled having seen 'how poor some people were in the world's richest land.' The advanture marked a turning point in his life, and the comment was virtually a theme for what was to become the socialist ideology of his political life.” https://www.nytimes.com/1986/03/01/obituaries/olof-palme-ari...

As far as I can tell that is exactly because they abandoned rent stabilization making that market incompatible as it now only applies to certain units and triggers rent increases when you move.

No one should expect the rent controlled part of the Stockholm housing market to work as it is essentially defunct.

1. Subsidies for building rent controlled units were removed. 2. Publicly owned apartments were sold at below market value. Meaning those who already owned apartments got a discount in the market. 3. The profits weren't used to build new apartments, but to lower taxes. 4. Co-ops were favored by keeping deductions for mortgages, creating new ones for renovations. 5. Property taxes were removed for co-ops. 6. Credit remained largely unregulated and was then regulated to a hundred years. 7. Interest rates are being kept low by the central bank. 8. Taxes were lowered in general.

Of course this new market will never be able to produce affordable housing, so the rent controlled market doesn't "work". The whole thing is set to implode though. Already if you bought an apartment ~"two years ago" you have now lost your down payment.

It is essentially never how it works. Why would you actively regulate something so people can't move? It is when you abandon rent control that the systems become incompatible and people can't move.

I don't disagree that the situation is bad. But you can just go on "blocket" and rent an apartment in a similar manner. Software developers are paid at least €3k after taxes, unless you are just out of school. For €1k to €2k you can rent an apartment. That isn't great, but it isn't extremely bad either. Unless you compare it to previous times in Sweden.

In Sweden things are getting deregulated, income taxes are lowered and the social safety net is made less generous. The housing market is now mainly competitive. But for some reason people think they aren't the ones that are going to be affected, (partly because they aren't). If you don't have wealth or are willing to pay up your are a bit fucked, like myself. It is of course hard overstate how bad it is overall, especially for a smaller city. But the market itself isn't uniquely bad. It is mostly like everywhere else.

It largely worked until it was dismantled. It is only 17 years because the market largely doesn’t exists. There are maybe a couple of hundred rent controlled apartments being distributed each year in central Stockholm. Which isn’t unique, many countries don’t have a rent controlled market at all.

What is pretty unique is the 100 year mortgages with no default.

While I can appreciate the sentiment, the reason we can do things like this is because of all the research and development that went into things like integrated circuits, manufacturing and CAD. This is more the classic hacker thing, were you use something larger and serious for you own purposes. Not making something primarily for serving ads, or whatnot.

This technology can very well, and was to a large extent made to, be used for something else. I don't think researchers or EEs are stepping over homeless people more than anyone else. When it comes to doing good things with electronics I would be more worried about patents, or just finding the time.

I don't think it has much to do with money. These companies either have or are already burning trough a lot of it. It is about careerists avoiding accountability. That is why you hire contractors, have open offices and host in the cloud. As long as no one can blame you for anything, which they will to further their own career, you will make it to the next level.