somewhereoutth

AI is a [bad] tool. Do not anthropomorphize it, anymore than you would a [particularly ineffective and dangerous] hammer.

In the UK we never really got medium rise apartment blocks right. Instead we have terraces, which don't give the same housing density. The neighborhood I now live in in Portugal is mostly 7-10 storey apartment buildings, which is enough density for plenty of shops, cafes, restaurants, schools, playgrounds, public transit etc. It houses an astonishing amount of people in reasonably generous conditions (e.g. balconies are the norm), quite the modern miracle in my UK eyes.

See also FadeCandy by Micah:

https://scanlime.org/2013/11/fadecandy-easier-tastier-and-mo...

> Firmware that uses unique dithering and color correction algorithms to raise the bar for quality while getting out of the way of your creativity.

> AI coding saves me a lot of time, but the code is such low quality

Given that low quality code is perhaps the biggest time-sink relating to our work, I'm struggling to reconcile these statements?

It will be the third major winter - there was one around 1974-1980 as well as 1987-2000.

I don't believe the previous 'summers' entailed quite the scale of [mal]investment that has occurred this time, so the impending winter will be correspondingly savage.

Furthermore, (and not really applicable in this case), you can bring an adjective to the front out of order for emphasis - so yellow big car would mean there were plenty of big cars, but the yellow one in particular. In spoken English there would be heavy vocal emphasis on yellow, and in written yellow would likely be italicized, just to make double sure.

Ah got caught by surrogate pairs recently:- javascript sees them as 2 chars when e.g. slicing strings, so it is possible to end up with invalid strings if you chop between a pair.

> And when this all falls apart — and I believe it will — there will be a very public reckoning for the tech industry.

and will trigger the collapse of the wider asset price bubble, with consequent economic turmoil - an unfortunately necessary reset, in my opinion.

I suppose the good news is that likely the current US administration will wear this one, though not completely being their fault (much like Covid), and a political reset will also ensue.

"unmoored" is the word. Not or no longer attached to reality.

Probably I'd want better seats!

Unfortunately this medium has neither the atmosphere of a live event, nor the skilled camera feed cuts of a televised event (a lot of effort goes on behind the scenes to make a televised game exciting to watch).

I have a mental 'gun clock' when browsing random movie channels on my cable package - the time until a gun appears. Quite often it is zero.

"boeing" - the sound made by bits of aircraft hitting the ground.

If anyone wants a seedable, and therefore deterministic PRNG, use the seedrandom package https://www.npmjs.com/package/seedrandom

  // Global PRNG: set Math.random.
  seedrandom('hello.', { global: true });
  console.log(Math.random());          // Always 0.9282578795792454

I found this useful when using worker threads to 'render' a construction by slices that included some randomness (that should be the same for each thread)

Modern banking systems allow the banks themselves to 'print' dollars - by originating loans. The Fed (and central banks elsewhere) steer this money creation process through various mechanisms. However it is NOT the case that 'every dollar must be paid back to the Fed'.

The reason for this expanding money supply is to facilitate an expanding economy.

The quickest way to build new housing is to turn short term lets (e.g. AirBnB) back into long term lets.

A slower way is to extend and improve public transit (so effectively growing the desirable 'inner city' area).

Affordability would benefit from rolling back some of the financial engineering that makes people believe they can pay more than they can actually afford.

The price will move (down) until the sell is fulfilled - if there are not $50MM worth of buyers at that price point then the price will drop until buyers are found.

The 'market cap' of Bitcoin is irrelevant here, only the price sensitivity of buyers. Given there is no underlying income stream from bitcoin, there is no real floor. If nobody wants to buy it, a 50MM sell will go to zero pretty quick.

You may be wrong in the specifics of the mechanism of calorie reduction (reducing appetite vs reducing calorific absorption), but not in the general philosophy.

The obesity crisis (specifically in the US, but elsewhere too) has been caused by bad food essentially - food that is not only nutrient deficient, but also engineered to be as cheap as possible and addictive as possible to get you to buy more of it.

As ever, the US is attempting to fix the symptoms, as opposed to the underlying cause, following the general idea of 'if everyone does what they like, things will turn out ok (somehow)'.

Probably negative health implications of these drugs will surface as people become habituated, and we can continue to shake our heads and wonder how it all went so wrong over there.

40 hour working week was something that organised labor fought for and won during the latter of the 19th and first half of the 20th century.

We can do the same for 30 hour working weeks in this century.

however, like roads, it is entirely possible that building more in desirable neighborhoods simply leads to more wealthy people having more options for which (otherwise empty) residence they choose to spend the weekend at.

Another (better?) target should be homes used for short term let - i.e AirBnB etc.

Homes have such extreme valuations because of the underlying cash flow (or 'rent' in its most abstract sense). Without tourists willing to pay many multiples of what they'd pay at home for accommodation, that cash flow wouldn't be there.

Perhaps you could enumerate the facts relating to the lab leak theory? All I have is:

1) A virus research lab was located in an area where novel viruses have tended to emerge.

There are several issues with the lab leak theory:

1) Creates a target for (racial?) hatred and blame - i.e the Chinese.

2) Absolves us from blame, 'a few bad people' (like in the movies), instead of general human encroachment on the natural environment.

3) Feeds the anti-science narrative.

Covid-19 hasn't become - it is still much the same and not the same as the common cold. But as you point out we have become more tolerant of it (or at least are now able to convince ourselves that we are more tolerant to it).

Except that current strains can't be traced back to the 1918 strain - they are separate strains, not descendants. We don't really know why the 1918 strain disappeared.

Thoroughly depressing that, faced with anthropogenic climate change, humanity proceeds to find ever more inventive ways of wasting precious energy.

There is a strong case for banning/taxing out of existence things like LLMs and proof of work blockchain validation.

My comment has opened up a lot of 'confidently incorrect' and misinformed replies.

Thankyou to hgomersail for providing the definitive answer, from the BoE no less!

https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/files/quarterly-...

Except none of that is true.

https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/files/quarterly-...

Except that they don't have to source that currency from somewhere - it really is literally magicked up out of thin air! When you come to spend it, that amount is transferred to another bank, that they can then offset against their own magic money.

The only relationship with deposits (which are actually liabilities) and assets is that enforced by regulators.

This is how money creation works in the modern economy - so the money supply can grow as economic activity increases, all guided by central banks / governments with levers such as interest rates, open market activities (QE), and regulations.

Again - banks really do create money from nothing, all day, every day.

I'm all for 'right-sized' housing, of good quality, and without nonsense like parking minimums - but you did mention SROs (fine for students, but otherwise far from a good way to live).

The easiest way to fix housing right now is to ban STRs. The supply available to long term renters / home buyers would increase dramatically, quite literally over night.

And how would you stop all these new houses being turned into AirBnBs? As soon as the extra supply dips the tourist price, a whole swath more tourists can afford to come and stay. Locals will remain in their cars/tents/parents' basements.