the_economist

We spend ~5 billion/year giving people free soda. Cutting back on is an extremely easy way to reduce obesity. Maybe it won't solve it. Maybe it won't even make a big difference. But it will certainly help the cause.

Obesity is the problem. And it's so easy to improve: Stop allowing people to use food stamps on unhealthy foods, particularly soda and other sugary drinks.

Twitter is so powerful. When Paul Graham wants to say something, he takes to Twitter to do it. Not Facebook. Not Hacker News. Not reddit.

The same goes for many of the most influential people in the world.

Twitter has incredible utility for powerful people but very limited utility for average people. Maybe the exact opposite of facebook. On Facebook, my friends interact with me. On twitter, I speak into the void.

The White House climate change page did not contain the word nuclear. So it was not a actually page about addressing climate change, but instead an exercise in virtue signaling.

I use my self driving feature on my Uber in San Francisco all the time. It's an extra safety assurance against hitting a pedestrian.

That would be after the Chinese defeats us in WW3 and a treaty prohibits us from fielding our own military for the next 100 years.

Hi dang,

I don't understand what detached means in this context. I am still seeing the comment in the main thread. Is this because of a setting I have?

This is not telling the complete story. In 2016, Apple shrunk around 25% in China, after growing 100% in China in 2015.

Something is very odd with their China business.

Same was true for the iPhone 6S, iPhone 6, iPhone 5S, iPhone 5, etc. Yet this is the first time in 15 years Apple revenues have shrunk year over year.

That means something.

I feel silly contributing to this tale of anecdotes, but ~50% of my Apple cables have gone bad.

The policies on donaldjtrump.com have been the same for a long time, and Trump has not contradicted them for the most part.

Paul Graham wrote about this in an essay called Cities & Ambition: http://paulgraham.com/cities.html

Try switching to green tea + l-theanine. I went from coke -> coffee -> tea without a problem. The main addiction is to the caffeine.

Human biology is hard. We don't have a cure for AIDS, baldness, acne, heart disease, cancer, the common cold, etc.

Homelessness is mainly a byproduct of mental illness and drug addiction. If you want to solve homelessness, you need to target those problems. I would suggest that new technology is needed, particularly in the case of mental illness. We do not have a good medicine to treat schizophrenia, for example.

The city of San Francisco spends $241 million/year on ~7 thousand homeless, an indication that throwing money at this problem doesn't do much.

Major energy sources and percent share of total U.S. electricity generation in 2015

Coal = 33% Natural gas = 33% Nuclear = 20% Hydropower = 6% Other renewables = 7% Biomass = 1.6% Geothermal = 0.4% Solar = 0.6% Wind = 4.7% Petroleum = 1% Other gases = <1%

An electric fleet (powered by coal, natural gas, and nuclear) will reduce demand for oil, so movement in that direction is likely cause falling oil prices. Which could lead to more people buying oil-powered cars again.

In BuildZoom's batch (W13), only ~3 out of 50 companies had raised seed funding before YC.

I assume someone from AWS is on here: Do we need to invalidate all of our assets after changing to http2?

Thanks for the list. Do any others come to mind?

They are all pretty great. My favorite ones are:

Big History: The Big Bang, Life on Earth, and the Rise of Humanity -> so good!!

History of Russia: From Peter the Great to Gorbachev

Rise and Fall of the British Empire

1 billion iPhones * average selling price of $650 = $650 billion dollars in sales.

Pretty impressive!

"The man deserved what he got"

If Milo deserved to be banned, then so does 30-40% of Twitter. He did nothing wrong, and certainly nothing worse than this: https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/756219192878268416

Just guessing, and assuming they were relatively generous with equity since they seem like the type of company that would be.

He likely owns about 0.5 - 1.5% of the company, after several rounds of dilution. So at a $30 billion valuation he is worth somewhere between 150 - 450 million.

There is always a way to sell shares, although I don't know if Airbnb has made a formal offering available to employees.

Mexico City is 7200 feet above sea level. Keeps it quite nice.

I suggest emailing up-and-coming VCs who are more eager for any kind of dealflow.

Look for people/funds who just raised their first fund. They are hustling, likely not drowning in leads like Michael Siebel is, and willing to do just about anything to make their LPs happy including spending countless hours evaluating investment opportunities from complete strangers.

Ocean and air freight real prices are the cheapest they have ever been.

The trucks will likely drive at 45 mph so it would take 65 hours to cross the country. Still a huge improvement.

The capital gains tax rate is not 15%. It is 20%, plus a 3.8% Obamacare tax. So Bill Gates is probably paying 23.8% on investment profits.

Here in California there is a lovely 13.3% tax, bringing the total to 37.1%. Bill Gates is a resident of Washington, though, so he doesn't pay that.

You can't blame Washington for not having a state income tax, though. Their tax laws seem to have worked out very well for them in attracting companies like Microsoft and Amazon.

He died young. Fame kills.