tiedieconderoga

It's a fine idea if good candidates for conversion can be found, but shouldn't they fix up their dilapidated public transit system before inviting more density into their urban core?

Just today, one of their rail cars caught fire at an elevated station, and their broken fire suppression system did nothing but flood the ground floor when the firefighters tried to use it.

Wu's push for more housing density along the city's functioning arteries feels more realistic. Maybe they're realizing that plan could also suck a lot of property taxes out of the urban center.

Simple: capex and economies of scale.

Suppose that I have an idea for a widget which market research indicates could sell for $20/, but probably not $50/.

I can hit the $50/ target with small contract runs, which would cost about as much as a down payment on a house.

Or I can make it in volume for less than $10/, but I need a large minimum order, space, equipment, logistics. Now we're looking at 7-8 figures.

If you aren't independently wealthy, neither option is really feasible, and the former option will almost certainly end in tears if you try to stretch and bootstrap with your own money.

In the words of John Oliver's character on Community, "It's just that the average person has a much harder time saying 'booyah' to moral relativism."

Is it? A vehicle lasts for decades.

$10/mo * 20 years = $2400. That's almost an extra 5% you get over the purchase price, nicely hidden away at the time of sale.

You also self-select for the sort of customer who will put up with being treated like that. There's one born every minute.

Not surprising that jobs which mostly involve seeing and helping other people score highly.

Nor is it surprising that people who sit in front of screens dealing with petty workplace politics score poorly.

What's up with the sad CNC machinists and happy heavy equipment operators, though? Is it the sunlight?

Abrahamic religions in general - Jesus was also not a fan.

>Jesus went into the temple courtyard and threw out everyone who was buying and selling there. He overturned the moneychangers’ tables and the chairs of those who sold pigeons. He told them, “Scripture says, ‘My house will be called a house of prayer,’ but you’re turning it into a gathering place for thieves!”

- Matthew 21:12-13

>If you lend money to my people—to any poor person among you—never act like a moneylender. Charge no interest.

- Exodus 22:25

KJV used the word "usurer", but it's the same idea.

"Digital electronics" communicate using discrete values, 1s and 0s.

"Analog electronics" communicate using voltage/current/temperature/etc levels.

One of the simplest examples is a voltage divider: if you put two resistors across a DC voltage source, like this:

    V+-[R1]-¢-[R2]-GND

The voltage at the ¢ point will be:

    V+ * (R2 / (R1 + R2))

There are infinite possible values for that voltage, depending on the voltage source and the two resistors. It cannot necessarily be expressed exactly in a digital circuit, and it will fluctuate over time as the environment changes in temperature, humidity, EM noise, and so on.

I usually recommend The Art of Electronics as a well-written, beginner-friendly textbook which covers the basic concepts.

Tough to say, information about the systems is restricted and hard to come by.

I'm pretty sure they have hooks into audio systems for wireless emergency alerts, but could be wrong.

They may have access to backdoors in the baseband firmwares.

The baseband is an opaque binary blob that operates outside of the phone's main OS, and its contents are usually considered a trade secret by the manufacturer since it handles low-level hardware interactions with the main radios/etc.

Personally, I would be surprised if those systems weren't compromised by agreement. It's already common to see criminals and dissidents get busted because they think that turning a phone off stops it from reporting location data.

Landscaping materials? You can get things like sand and mulch for like $30/ton.

You just have to provide your own transportation.

You'd think they would at least throw in an exponential backoff. Here, I'll help.

    to = 2;
    while (!request(timeout=to)) {
        to *= 2;
    }

I'm available for a 6-week contract. $1M plus a ride in a Dragon capsule, cash up front.

A good real estate agent can provide a lot of value, especially if you're a first-time buyer.

* They've seen a lot of houses, and know what to look out for even before you commit to calling in inspectors.

* They've seen a lot of closings, and can handle all of the title/law crud. "Quick closing" can be a big plus to some sellers.

* They've seen a lot of negotiations, and can help you get a feel for how the other party is thinking.

There certainly are people who unlock the door, stare at their phone all day, and collect their commission. Those aren't very good agents, even if they can get the job done when the market is extremely short on supply.

It feels like a common paradox.

Why should lawyers discipline lawyers? Why should cops discipline cops? Why should lobbyists advise legislators? Why should banks help to shape financial regulations? Why should corporate aircraft engineers participate in the aircraft certification process?

Because they are subject matter experts. Who else is better placed and better suited to do it, and who else would charge less for the service?

It would be neat to have a fundamental "money" primitive alongside int, float, string, etc.

It might not be simple to implement, though. Off the top of my head,

* Can you confidently say that $100>¥10 in an offline environment?

* You'd need to support different bases for splitting units to deal with eldritch values such as farthings.

* Where is the line drawn? Is a Bitcoin a valid currency? A gold Krugerrand? A bundle of stock shares? A bushel of apples?

All of that said, I would love to see a world where I could write code like:

    money balance = money.lumber.grade.kilograms(8);

Just wait until you can't see a restaurant's menu, in-flight announcements, traffic advisories, etc.

The pandemic opened the door to making a piece of technology a mandatory requirement to participate in society. It used to be possible to live without a smartphone, now you really need to be able to read and produce QR codes¹.

Why couldn't the same thing happen with AR, considering how expensive it is for governments and companies to put displays and audio announcements everywhere?

¹: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/nov/04/my-lif...

Not usually, no.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mens_rea

You can definitely be convicted of one, though!

Write it into the law that self-dealing to evade taxes is fraud, if that even needs to be spelled out. Also, vacant properties would count as vacant whenever they are not productively occupied, even if there is an active lease. Have a city inspector perform periodic spot checks, like how health/fire/etc codes are enforced. Fines for violations scale with the property's assessed value, rather than being defined as flat dollar amounts.

Seems pretty simple.

Those things are bigger than an old F-250, and they only have a 4.5' bed.

They're also not really pickup trucks, underneath they have the same SUV unibody as the Bronco (yikes) and the Escape.

Of course it's wrong. We are able to do easy work with flexible hours for high pay, while more important professions can barely scrape by.

That injustice stems from a system that we cannot meaningfully change, though. Our cages are larger and more comfortable, but people making 6-7 figures are not policymakers or influential voices.

Having realized that, are you ready to walk away from Omelas today?

Maybe a property tax adjustment based on how much time the property has spent vacant over the past N years?

Something like, every year the property owner pays:

    property value * (average vacancy % over N years)

If your property is occupied, you pay nothing extra. If your property sits idle for one year out of five, you pay 20% the property's value to the city every year until your rolling average improves. Maybe throw in some incentives like a partial rebate when the owner signs a new tenant after a stretch of vacancy.

Good point.

I, and I suspect many others, would still pay $40K for a specialty base model which would only cost $30K if it sold in mass-market quantities.

Large companies in oligopolic positions won't try to produce those sorts of products, because it's risky and they have no reason to innovate or seek untapped markets.

It feels like it would be possible if we could incentivize competition and disincentive consolidation, though. Not just in the auto market, either.

Cars aren't like governments, though: the Toyota Corolla doesn't hold a monopoly on anything.

Why don't we have more specialized vehicles catering to small, passionate niches?

A modern Jeep or Land Rover looks just like a modern BMW or Audi SUV. The former brands were made by offering minimal rugged off-roaders, the latter by offering luxury vehicles. Now they've been blended into the same bland category.

What about beach buggies, or even the Yaris/Matrix/Fit class of light get-arounds? Gone.

What about the old nimble 6'-bed Ford Rangers, Chevy S-10s, Toyota Pickups? Gone, replaced with monstrous lifted 4'-bed wannabe minivans.

I understand why we can't have a meaningful choice between different types of government in the same area. But why must it be that way with consumer products?

To quote the CBS reporter who recorded an earlier journey with them, as he read the waiver form¹:

>...An experimental submersible vessel, that has not been approved or certified by any regulatory body, and could result in physical injury, disability, emotional trauma, or death. Where do I sign?

Probably not enough of a disclaimer, especially if they had people read and sign it once they were already miles out at sea. The passengers were technically advised of the risks, though.

¹: https://youtube.com/watch?v=29co_Hksk6o&t=2m38s

From whom?

Your average voter neither knows nor cares about the DMCA. We've all got things to do, people to see, and computing is just one industry/hobby.

Influential companies prefer predictable systems. They are thrilled that they can wash their hands of liability for their users' unvetted uploads. Having the removal process boiled down to a simple form they can dedicate an inbox to is icing on the cake.

Rightsholders are happy, because they can commit perjury with impunity in pursuit of defending their IP.

Legislators don't care, because their constituents are happy and their voters don't care.

Where would the blowback come from?

>You would think large corporations would do the same against internal troublemakers, competitors, etc.

They certainly do! Here's a recent example, although it ended in prison time for the executives:

https://text.npr.org/2022/09/30/1126078948/live-spiders-and-...

Could it also be a reflection of Google's lawyers advising that using LLMs trained on masses of unvetted source-available code is probably tantamount to copyright laundering?

You might enjoy the classic philosophy novel, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen_and_the_Art_of_Motorcycle_...

Unpopular opinion: some people are much easier to deal with face-to-face.

I don't know what it is, but there's a sort of personality type which seems common among technical roles. Text communication is curt, feathers get ruffled easily in zoom/email, just really hard to work with.

Then you sit down with them for 15-30 minutes and talk, it's like night and day. They see you as a person, things resolve quickly, you both go about your day.

Even though I do most of my work remotely, I try to schedule interactions with these people on days when we will both be in the same room. They're not bad people, but it makes things so much easier, so much less drama.

Borrowing to buy it isn't necessarily more expensive.

You could pay $50k for an average new car, or $10K + $40K over 5 years at 5% (~$5k extra in interest)

If you put that $40k into the stock market, average annual returns for the S&P500 are ~10% going back to 1928, so you would have made ~$24k over 5 years on average. That would put you ~$19k ahead after you pay off the loan with interest.

You could certainly buy at the wrong time and lose out by taking a loan. There are plenty of +/-30-40% years in those "average" stock market metrics. But historically it's been a pretty good bet if you're a gambling sort.

>what good does it really do to prevent him from being able to function on the outside?

From whose perspective?

Part of the problem is that some powerful groups are incentived to keep people coming back to prison. Private prisons reap profits, politicians get an easy way to drive fear in their constituents, telcos can charge an arm and a leg for phone calls, commissaries clean up by charging exorbitant prices for toothpaste and ramen, etc.

Until we start connecting positive outcomes for those groups to positive outcomes for the prisoners, it'll always be an uphill battle.

As Upton Sinclair used to say, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."