8,337 karma · joined January 1, 2023
Culturally, in many countries it helps with household formation (coupling, starting families), which, in an age of low birth rates, can be useful.
Do a search for "the housing theory of everything".
It has been an idea growing in popularity over the last few years, especially in the Anglo-sphere where housing/shelter costs seem to be worse than other places. (One hypothesis I've seen for this is because of Common law, which can give NIMBYs more power to challenge (new) things.)
* https://www.theclimatebrink.com/p/canadas-boreal-wildfires-a...
US tech bros got a front-row seat, sitting in front of Cabinet picks, at the inauguration:
* https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgpqeq82rvo
* https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/20/trump-inaugu...
Who is going to trust US voters with not voting for a man-child?
Remember: Trump got in twice.
As the old saying: everyone needs just 20% of the features, but it's a different 20% for teach individual.
It's also possible to lose touch (e.g., butterfly keyboards).
Until an earthquake occurs, and then all of those mostly-down forces turn into side-to-side forces.
That's an understatement. Fiberglass (GFRP) tops out at roughly US$ 2.50/foot, while SS can get up to $9:
* https://www.wellcoindustries.com/the-cost-of-rebar-and-the-c...
The low-end of plain steel rebar is $0.40.
There were (then-)members of the Republican party who voted for Clinton, Biden, and Harris:
> Conservative author David Frum, a speechwriter for former President George W. Bush, announced Wednesday that he cast an early vote for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
* https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/303984-david-fr...
> But she is a patriot. She will uphold the sovereignty and independence of the United States. She will defend allies. She will execute the laws with reasonable impartiality. She may bend some rules for her own and her supporters’ advantage. She will not outright defy legality altogether. Above all, she can govern herself; the first indispensable qualification for governing others.
> So I will vote for the candidate who rejects my preferences and offends my opinions. (In fact, I already have voted for her.) Previous generations accepted infinitely heavier sacrifices and more dangerous duties to defend democracy. I’ll miss the tax cut I’d get from united Republican government. But there will be other elections, other chances to vote for what I regard as more sensible policies. My party will recover to counter her agenda in Congress, moderate her nominations to the courts, and defeat her bid for re-election in 2020. I look forward to supporting Republican recovery and renewal.
* https://archive.is/https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/arch...
That was in 2016.
Crikey.
At my last job I helped run some HPC where we had 11 PB, and I'm still in HPC and know some folks who got 29 PB of NVMe just before prices went crazy.
Hopefully the Roman backend folks locked in prices.
There is a "release early, release often" line of thinking.
But I also think there is a risk of "fixing it in post(-production)" thinking: that lack of preparation and care can be patched over after-the-fact.
It's the nerds that the non-nerds/normies go to for advice on tech-y things. If you can generally make the nerds happy, and earn a good reputation among them, you'll have a customer base from which to expand from.
Or as Tim O'Reilly recommended back in the day, "Watching the Alpha Geeks":
* https://web.stanford.edu/class/ee380/Abstracts/081119-stanfo...
* https://web.archive.org/web/20130000000000*/http://origin.co...
I also found the 'night drive' ad to be interesting:
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5U9I7QrpSkk
Except that rust is eating it and I'll have to replace it soon-ish.
And here I am driving a 2003 Golf with a tape deck (and CD player).
More recently Russia tried pDST and went away from it:
* https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/01/russia-state-d...
A more southern-lattitude country, Turkey, has stuck with pDST, though some folks don't/didn't like it because of enrichment allegations:
* https://www.turkishminute.com/2024/10/31/permanent-daylight-...
In addition to looking at the "fundamentals" of a company like cash flow and profitability, there is also a 'meta-game' that traders (as opposed to investors) have to look at:
> A Keynesian beauty contest is a metaphorical beauty contest in which judges are rewarded for selecting the most popular choices among all judges, rather than those they may personally find the most attractive. This idea is often applied in financial markets, whereby investors could profit more by buying whichever stocks they think other investors will buy, rather than the stocks that have fundamentally the best value, because when other people buy a stock, they bid up the price, allowing an earlier investor to cash out with a profit, regardless of whether the price increases are supported by its fundamentals and theoretical arguments.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynesian_beauty_contest
"whereby investors could profit more by buying whichever stocks they think other investors will buy, rather than the stocks that have fundamentally the best value"
> However, a year later, we see that the majority of companies are either outperforming or underperforming the market by more than 10%. We also see that more companies are underperforming than beating the index (the red bars stretch below the 50% line).
> That seems to indicate that for some companies, the initial IPO enthusiasm wanes or expected earnings are not met, and investors reprice the IPO to reflect the actual, slower growth of the company.
> Three years after their IPO, we calculate that almost two-thirds of IPOs are underperforming the market, with most (64%) more than 10% behind the market’s returns.
* https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/what-happens-to-ipos-over-th...
> 56% of IPOs bought at the offer price lost money after 3 years. That number rises to 57% after five years. The numbers are higher when bought at the first day closing price: 60% lost money after 3 and 5 years. Worse than a coin flip.
> Only 19% of IPOs doubled or more after three years and 22% after 5 years when bought at the offering price. The numbers were worse when bought at the closing price.
> Of course, the lottery-like returns were possible, but it amounted to about 0.4% of all IPOs after 3 years and 1% after five years.
* https://novelinvestor.com/the-hype-and-hot-air-around-ipos/
Interview with a researcher that has looked at IPOs over the last few decades:
> We’ve previously compared IPOs to lotteries that are prone to inflated valuations and low returns. Today we welcome “Mr. IPO,” Professor Jay Ritter onto the show for a deeper dive into IPO performance, for his insights into SPACs, and to hear his research into why economic growth doesn’t correlate with stock returns. Early in the episode, Jay unpacks how long-term IPO returns perform against first-day trading. While exploring the role that venture capital plays in tech IPOs, Jay talks about why negative earnings don’t affect tech IPOs in the short-term before sharing how skewness factors tend to impact young companies. Reflecting on how IPOs are usually underpriced, Jay discusses how the interests of companies are not aligned with the interests of IPO underwriters. After looking into IPO allocation, Jay compares the 2020 ‘hot IPO market’ with the internet bubble of the late 90s. Later, we ask Jay about what special-purpose acquisition companies (SPACs) are and why they’ve exploded in recent years. His answers highlight their investing benefits, risks, and why SPACs might be a better option for companies than IPOs. We examine how SPACs have historically performed and then jump into our next topic; why economic growth isn’t a good indicator that a country is worth investing in. He touches on why returns don’t correlate with economic growth, the place of capital gains and dividend yields when investing abroad, and how innovations in an industry can lead to higher stock returns. We wrap up our conversation by asking Jay for his take on whether the stock market is efficient before hearing how he defines success in his life. Tune in to hear our incredible and informative talk with Jay Ritter.
* https://rationalreminder.ca/podcast/139
Picking individual winning stocks can be hard:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Random_Walk_Down_Wall_Street
To start:
> Later sunrises and sunsets, as seen with pDST, are associated with multiple long-term health outcomes including increases in stroke, heart attacks, diabetes, obesity, and cancer.[8–10]
> The increase in obesity and other cardiovascular health problems show that even if DST were to encourage exercise in some individuals it is not enough to outweigh the effects of sleep and circadian disruption on food choices, metabolism, hunger hormones, and glucose control and other cardiovascular risk factors.[11,12]
I don't really care how time is reckoned so long as there is some
agreement about it, but I object to being told that I am saving
daylight when my reason tells me that I am doing nothing of the kind.
I even object to the implication that I am wasting something
valuable if I stay in bed after the sun has risen. As an admirer
of moonlight I resent the bossy insistence of those who want to
reduce my time for enjoying it. At the back of the Daylight Saving
scheme I detect the bony, blue-fingered hand of Puritanism, eager
to push people into bed earlier, and get them up earlier, to make
them healthy, wealthy and wise in spite of themselves.
-- Robertson Davies, The diary of Samuel Marchbanks,
Clarke, Irwin (1947), XIX, Sunday
In the US in the 1970s, but more recently in Russia as well:
* https://globalnews.ca/news/1469007/russia-abolishes-daylight...
* https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/01/russia-state-d...
How about the American Medical Association?
* https://www.ama-assn.org/press-center/ama-press-releases/ama...
Or American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery, American Thoracic Society, and American College of Chest Physicians concurring?
* https://www.labmanager.com/new-position-statement-supports-p...
Chronobiologists?
* https://www.chronobiocanada.com/official-statements
* https://www.chronobiology.ch/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/JBR-...
Things have improved though: back in the 2000s when the 'Bush DST' change occurred, all sorts of software had hard-coded assumptions.
This is because US developers, who wrote a good portion of OS and other software, had never experienced a tzdata update first hand. So that when (e.g.) PST8PDT had its rules changed, it turns a lot of stuff needed to be rebooted to pickup things up.
A bunch of code was put in to notice changes dynamically, so in 2026 things should hopefully be smoother if there are new rules.
It means much more than that:
> Later sunrises and sunsets, as seen with pDST, are associated with multiple long-term health outcomes including increases in stroke, heart attacks, diabetes, obesity, and cancer.[8–10]
> The increase in obesity and other cardiovascular health problems show that even if DST were to encourage exercise in some individuals it is not enough to outweigh the effects of sleep and circadian disruption on food choices, metabolism, hunger hormones, and glucose control and other cardiovascular risk factors.[11,12]
* https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10476036/
The peer reviewed literature on the effects of changing time, pDST, and pST is quite extensive:
* https://www.ama-assn.org/press-center/press-releases/ama-cal...
* https://www.labmanager.com/new-position-statement-supports-p...
* http://www.chronobiology.ch/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/JBR-D...
* https://www.chronobiology.com/impact-daylight-saving-time-ci...
* https://esrs.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/To_the_EU_Commiss...
* https://www.chronobiocanada.com/official-statements
* https://srbr.org/advocacy/daylight-saving-time-presskit/
* https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10476036/
* https://old.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/dq2nv3/
> The authors take the position that, based on comparisons of large populations living in DST or ST or on western versus eastern edges of time zones, the advantages of permanent ST outweigh switching to DST annually or permanently. Four peer reviewers provided expert critiques of the initial submission, and the SRBR Executive Board approved the revised manuscript as a Position Paper to help educate the public in their evaluation of current legislative actions to end DST. […] The choice of DST is political and therefore can be changed. If we want to improve human health, we should not fight against our body clock, and therefore, we should abandon DST and return to Standard Time (which is when the sun clock time most closely matches the social clock time) throughout the year. This solution would fix both the acute and the chronic problems of DST. We therefore strongly support removing DST changes or removing permanent DST and having governing organizations choose permanent Standard Time for the health and safety of their citizens.
* https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/07487304198541...
Recent US public opinion:
> As the March 9 [2025] switch to daylight saving time (DST) approaches in the U.S., the majority of Americans (54%) say they are ready to do away with the practice. By contrast, 40% of U.S. adults say they are in favor of daylight saving time, while 6% are uncertain.
[…]
> The plurality of Americans, 48%, say they would prefer to have standard time the whole year, including summer. Half as many, 24%, prefer having daylight saving time in place the whole year, including winter. The smallest percentage, 19%, prefer the status quo of switching between the two each year.
* https://news.gallup.com/poll/657584/half-daylight-saving-tim...