sf_rob

USA government spending as a percent of GDP is on the lower side of developed nations (high 30s depending on the source). Our peers are Luxembourg and Norway, and we’re well below France and Germany. Granted that we are one of the few developed nations that don’t provide universal healthcare which biases us lower.

While I’d share your concerns about fiscal sustainability, we’re an outlier on tax receipts not spending.

An interesting outsider perspective is this clip of Steven Fry going to an Auburn game: https://youtu.be/FuPeGPwGKe8

Regarding the latter, it’s weird and certainly was exploitative when college athletes weren’t allowed to monetize through sponsorships and frankly still is exploitative.

Nationally there’s FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, who (despite a recent name change) are focused on campus free speech rights.

Yes, I prefer YouTube and use it for background audio when I'm not listening to podcasts. YouTube Music is a product trying to kludge way too much into a single app to be good at any one thing. It's an okay music player, decent podcast tool, and back YouTube secondary/audio only augmentation.

While I'm not all-in on the ecosystem, I'm pretty far. It's still terrible.

I still can't "cast" YouTube audio to my Google Home Mini unless I use the Home Mini in Bluetooth mode (I have more reliable Bluetooth speakers for that) even as a YouTube Premium user.

My Nest devices are stuck in limbo between the Google Home and Nest apps; it's been like this for years.

Integrating new Google devices into Google Home tends to fail without helpful troubleshooting a few times before they succeed.

I refuse to upgrade my Nest Thermostat 1, even though it doesn't support needed features like the temperature sensors. I've also had to turn off all the learning because it decides I'm not home, and doesn't infer that I am home from my Google Wifi hubs.

Whenever I submit Google Home/Chromecast bugs/feature requests I include some snark in my sign-off like "I know you don't care about this product and it will be killed soon, but if I'm wrong please consider the suggestions above."

And every war since Vietnam has been a police action or military operation.

Yes, it’s interesting but mostly a shift of concentration of earnings. Market weighted PE multiples are slightly elevated historically but not insane; forward PE even less so (taken with a grain of salt of course).

The only EV I’ve rented from Turo was the opposite experience. They gave me the car at 75%, they capped charging at 90% in settings, then they charged me for bringing it back at 70% (which was just past their threshold but considering I could only charge it to 90% that should be the baseline).

Can you provide citation for a US federal requirement? I'm skeptical and not finding anything in a search.

Conjecture, but did the prior report have a one time tax hit? That's fairly common.

That's not uncommon and is even beneficial in warmer climates. It will be parasitic in winter (even if externally vented) and symbiotic in summer.

Tangent, but my experience with this was when I needed to upgrade my mobile plan for international service... but I had 2FA via text message enabled for the account.

Claiming that merchant fees result in higher prices is different from claiming that reducing merchant fees would directly, immediately, or measurably lower prices. Isn't a plausible explanation that companies are hesitant to lower prices for any reason?

Let's consider the opposite scenario, if Visa raises their fees do merchants keep prices where they are? I suspect not.

Are you factoring in the federal tax credit with your math? I suspect not when I look at their website where lightly used EUVs are ~$20k. Of course, you may not be eligible for the federal tax credit, but $8500 doesn't strike me as much of a deal.

Only the performance Model 3 is currently eligible for the Federal tax credit[1]. They may be referring to some generous state EV credits.

[1] https://insideevs.com/news/700533/tesla-model-3-rwd-long-ran...

Until Tesla changes their Model 3 sourcing to be eligible for the $7500 tax credit, I don’t understand who would buy one over the Model Y even with the “highland” improvements.

While Musk’s attention was certainly a key asset in Tesla’s early years, I’m not sure that his attention is still a net positive.

I think structuring the law as a penalty is "smart" in that the government does not have to explicitly ask providers to require ID, but I can't imagine them not being at significant financial risk without doing so. This will make the providers look like the "bad guy" to an end-user.

The 2007 Cosco Busan incident appears to be a glancing blow. I can't find any information suggesting an analogous impact at any point.

I'm very ignorant of hardware, but how does this work? I would have thought that M2 and USB protocols were divergent enough that this would require significant hardware/software emulation in the interface, but this looks to be a simple mapping of some I/O.

I find it somewhat entertaining that the press conference, and to a lesser extent the brief, argues that giving 3rd party dev access to Wallet functionality would result in a more security for the user. I don't always trust monoliths (might be the wrong word?) but I trust Apple Wallet integrations more than anything my bank would try to roll out.

I'm fine with the claim of more competition and more privacy (although I'm not particularly worried about Apple here).

The first study[1] I could find that included analysis of vegan vs non-vegan diets' correlation with blood PFAS levels suggest that vegan diets are negatively correlated with some classes of PFAS (and neutral with the other classes analyzed): "The strongest correlations with food groups, derived from a food frequency questionnaire, were observed between levels of PFOA and water consumption (in case of the total study population, n = 72), and between levels of PFOS as well as PFNA and the consumption of ‘meat and meat products’".

I'm not proposing that a single study is proof, but I'm default-skeptical of dietary claims without strong evidence, especially ones that comport with other aspects of worldview or preference.

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S143846392...

I’m fairly unaware of the current state of Linux on Apple M hardware, but I’d want a Linux partition on Apple hardware more than a Mac partition on x86. These days I have two devices though.

My coworker calls this “shoveling the sh*t”. It only gets stinkier if you don’t.

At a glance London has 4x the population density. Atlanta, like most US cities, is sprawling. I would think this would make street cleaning less economical (although not to the degree of quarterly sweepings).

Dense US cities, such as SF and NYC, have more regular sweepings.

This method of data exfiltration is in Kevin Mitnick's book! He needed a daily pin that banks used to validate intra-bank communications. He called a bank, said that he needed to fax over loan forms from another branch for signing later that day (or something like that). He then asked the bank that he called for the daily PIN. They refused because he called them. He pointed out that he was sending sensitive data to them so they needed to provide the pin... and they did.

I contacted Wells Fargo to complain that their use of 3rd party surveys from non WellsFargo.com domains attenuates customers to entering banking information to 3rd parties.

They had one incompetent employee contact me to assure me that the communication was legitimate (not the complaint), then escalated to another employee who understood the complaint and promised to escalate… 6 months later I get an email assuring me that the communication was legitimate and closing the ticket.

Recognizing fallacious reasoning and reapplying it in a different direction may be clever but is certainly more dubious than believing a fallacy out of poor reasoning skills.

I'm willing to bet that this is a inference due to "Login with Google" being an option. Probably worth sacrificing a click in their sign-in funnel to prevent it though.