tokioyoyo

Most of people who are alive can relate to a very specific period in their lives, and it’s easy to imagine now what virus can do in terms of social life.

I said it before as well, but it’s because nothing “publicly really bad” happened despite the leaks and stolen information over the past decades. After Equifax breach, everyone got tired, because company survived, and whatever identity theft happens from time to time gets swept under the rug. It didn’t impact most people’s lives, despite leaking half of the US’s SSNs and etc. Then fatigue kicked in, and with subsequent leaks everything just mellowed down, so nobody cares.

I’ve switched to operate with the idea that my information has already been leaked at some point. I should be generally ready to fix the problems if/when identity theft happens, rather than inconveniencing myself and figuring out the third party trust situation.

Shiamani Kaido is the most famous one. Gorgeous views across little islands and bridges. Lake Biwa course is easier, and it’s neat during fall. There are a bunch of japanese cycling route websites if you wanna go through big list of possibilities.

There’s a bunch within Tokyo area as well, but obviously different vibes.

Sorry for an unprompted response, but if you’re enjoying cycling and willing to do detours, I’d suggest to check out cycling routes themselves. There are some amazing designated roads that are insanely nice and fun to ride when the weather is around 15-25c.

They definitely do, I agree. But it's also fun to see how some other companies keep the prices uniform across the country, here in Japan. Real estate prices are insanely different between my neighbourhood and 2 hours outside of the city. Yet the products are the same prices. I understand the general idea, reasons, and logistics, but it's still fun to experience it.

I hate to be a China apologist, but I’m not sure why you included them in that list. Bottom 95% is living in conditions unimaginable to a generation ago. Of course they have humongous problems, but in general, they have lifted everyone up by ignoring views of the rest.

I guess all you said makes sense.

> There is the confounding factor where parties are arguing that there is market manipulation going on

My understanding is, it’s not even an argument anymore. Like the latest Yen intervention from the states was basically a state level manipulation, no? I mean there’s nothing really illegal. And it makes sense, and very much public. But one can assume there are just many more behind-the-scenes activity going on as well.

I agree, 2007 definitely changed a lot of "assumptions". But there were no "every main bankman stating out loud that aight, we're playing a new game now". Maybe 2007 started it, but 2020s, I'd say, is where everyone publicly acknowledged it?

> everyone had seen Japan fail to pump up its economy

Agreed about this, but I feel like everyone is watching Japan right now again. And I fear people will make wrong assumptions, given how its "economy is growing right now".

I'll comment under my own post about "why i think this is happening" - it's the fact that the average age of the population in the world is higher than it has ever been, especially in richer countries. Just like the "housing theory of everything" posts that circulated around some time ago, I think that is the core reason why so many illogical decisions are being thrown around.

I don't have deep knowledge, other than a bunch of "pattern matchings" I've done throughout my readings, but as people get older, on average, their wants/needs change over time. Older people, especially as they get closer to retirement age, have more free time as well. Implicitly, these desires eventually bubble up into economic/political action, that's more or less unprecedented. It would be very cool to research this more in depth, but unfortunately i'm in the wrong field.

My knowledge of new-gen-econ is pretty subpar, but isn't the strategy of US "don't dare to bet against us, we're writing new rules of the game"? It feels like all governments are acknowledging "letting it rip will suck for everyone, so why would we even bother". Normal monetary policy has been thrown out of the window, and every large state bank has stated it very openly throughout the wars that have started in this decade. And this leads to a lot of state-level financial backdoor discussions, deals and "stuff" that I'm not knowledgeable enough to even think about.

Wild times. Maybe it's information overload, since it probably happened in the past as well. But being bombarded with implications of these changes left and right is kinda weird.

Yeah we do. Most since like WWII. Obviously depends on how you define a "war", so it can skew one way or another.

There is no real win for any city that becomes an eye candy for the entire world. Removing rent control without completely revamping your zoning restrictions achieves basically nothing.

People bring in Tokyo as an example, but there’s even a rent control-esque thing here - right to refuse. Technically landlord can increase the rent, but you can challenge and refuse it, to keep paying the original amount. Like rent is going up heavily over here (my neighbourhood is about 10% YoY). You can’t really even build up fast enough to accommodate demand.

We have more wars right now than before.

> a flow on gov.uk can involve a lot of pages

Isn’t that one of the biggest reasons why an average user gives up and closes the tab?

The biggest case you can follow is Canada. Even wine-drinking elderly sometimes switch to cannabis, due to lessened hangovers. Also, removing the friction is a huge boost to basically any industry.

I think there’s a 2022 way of thinking how models are trained/evaluated, and there’s 2026 way of doing things. Models that are not evaluated with public internet access are pretty useless nowadays for daily operations.

> you are paying for it with you data and usage, you just don't realize it

I don't think this (people not realizing it) is true. We've heard this argument since early 2010s, and the general attitude of population is "ok, cool, so what?". Even people like me, who know that I'm paying it with my data, still overwhelmingly prefer using such services.

For every scandal about data leakage, 3rd party access and etc., the social media websites are still top used apps. People don't want their privacy/secrets/photos to be available to people they know, or might know. They don't really care about "giant faceless company"/government, even though they say they do.

I wish this was not true.

When an experiment passes, you don’t really lose that 15%. Most of the time they just get used to the other behaviour. Case in point - we’ve been whining about Google’s deterioration of search queries for ages, yet we’re still using it.

Ideally, yeah maybe, but why bother with extra implementation, support, costs and etc., when people fold and use the new way anyways?

I’m confused though. Customers, overwhelmingly, want the free service with crappy issues. So an intervention would just be anti-consumer? We’d optimize the quality, but people wouldn’t use it.

Your described thinking pattern does not apply to 95%+ users, and might add confusion leading to retention loss (e.g. 2 text boxes? Wtf, two boxes? What do i type in the second one? Whatever i’ll switch to the usual). Every project with at least 100K non-tech users I’ve worked on, has shown that sort of thinking just doesn’t translate.

And regarding “average doesn’t exist” - that’s true. But no company does a/b testing to land on average. I’d assume a good 85%-kinda pass rate for these type of experiments.

What exactly is the issue? Consumers complain about the bad parts of it, yet overwhelmingly use it. Sure, temporary dissatisfaction is there, but they still make it obvious with their choices that they want to use the offered product.

Isn’t because every single data point has shown in the last decade that people whine, but still use the services because of free/cheap/etc.? So you calculate retention, and how much investment in customer support will improve your numbers. In the end, you realize it only matters for customers who are paying the most, and that’s where the AMs come into the play.

Obviously not the same everywhere, but generally it’s true and holds up.

It’s the rate of increase in immigration, which makes it harder for a country to “take it in and give room for assimilation”. Same problem in Canada, and a good chunk of pathways have been rolled back.

It’s not a simple issue, but very obviously citizens of countries where immigration rate has gone through the roof aren’t happy. Also the usual hatred starts when low income immigrants move into the country, as they’re more likely to work in public-facing jobs (markets, hotels, etc).

Would you mind disclosing what type of software you work on?

It’s not really as bad as you make it sound.

> The younger generations aren't able to afford homes because they're all bad with their finances

Home ownership of Gen Z is aligned with millennials’ home ownership at their time. I agree about the K shape economy stuff, but it’s a bit more tricky than “everyone is poor”.

To play devils advocate, pre-UberEats era, we maybe had deliveries from Pizza places and some Chinese shops. Being able to order from basically everywhere and any time is very convenient. Restaurants are generating more sales as well, so it’s mostly the consumer, by choice, spends more on their dinner.

Also normal people. It's just that, $400 isn't that big of a number. I personally consider it big, I have to convince myself very hard before I spend $100 on any ticket, but people who has less income than me will use their credit cards without a second thought.

I've been fortunate enough to work in some environments where you kinda get the gist of "how people function", and it has completely opened up my eyes. A single person who is experiencing housing stress, can buy $19 strawberry, be upset about gas prices, and also spend $400 on a concert.

From time to time we've battled multiple ideas around polling and tech within my friend circles, because there really isn't "reliable" way of knowing "what people want" when it comes to government's decision makings. It's such a hard "reach and incentives" problem, that asking for an opinion, might change the opinion itself as well, depended on the questioning. That being said, it would be cool to see real opinions of people on general matters, rather than heavily sampled versions of it.

Normal people experience all that, and add Ticketmaster tickets on Klarna for a big gig. This is not about groceries, in which case I would agree with you.

I consider top 30-40% income bracket as ordinary people.