beat

63 ms·

571.
by beat 7y ago
I think the risks of automation economically are getting handwaved away far too much, lots of #invisiblehand and #learntocode nonsense. Significant swaths of middle-class jobs are going to go away, including a lot of jobs that provide a sol
572.
by beat 7y ago
Nonsense. Land is a scarce resource. Neighborhoods aren't getting any bigger - they can't get any bigger. So the only way for a city to increase its housing supply is to increase its density, and that runs into a buzzsaw of local
573.
by beat 7y ago
Birthrates are falling worldwide, and rapidly. We're already at a point where the birth rate worldwide is just at replacement level - the current growth in population is due to increased lifespans from 1-2 generations ahead of the flat
574.
by beat 7y ago
It's probably unconstitutional to eliminate zoning restrictions from the federal level. And even if it's possible, it would be political suicide, and even if it happened, it would have a lot of unintended consequences.
575.
by beat 7y ago
It goes both ways. I remember a conversation I had with a very nice Uber driver, a Muslim woman. She made a point of picking up female riders with low ratings, because she believed male Uber drivers would downrate them if they thought the w
576.
by beat 7y ago
It will take some, but not all. That's the refutation. The problem isn't the idea that some cost-of-living things will increase in response to UBI. It's a defeatist "What's the point, the landlords will get it all&q
577.
by beat 7y ago
Not every major expense is supply-constrained, though, particularly not the rigid supply constraints of real estate. So asserting that "supply constrained basics" will eat 100% of UBI is unrealistic. And even in cases where much o
578.
by beat 7y ago
That doesn't mean rent will increase to 100% of UBI, which is exactly what you said earlier.
579.
by beat 7y ago
"Rent will increase to cover the entire value of UBI/minimum wage increase/anything else that helps" is a stock argument. That doesn't mean it's a good argument, just a common one. On the other hand, in popul
580.
by beat 7y ago
Eh, nuclear isn't that great. It's taken decades to start even getting close to truly safe, low-waste reactors, and that only due to the considerable public pressure involved after various high-profile accidents. It's prett
581.
by beat 7y ago
The container contains many dependencies. If designed correctly, I can lock down my dependencies out to the port level. It's not that application packaging is itself the problem... it's that I have control over the environment. I
582.
by beat 7y ago
The pro-nuclear advocates are usually their own worst enemies. That smug dudebro points-scoring is a huge problem. Then again, I think most people would be a lot more effective at life if they'd sit down and read How to Win Friends an
583.
by beat 7y ago
That's probably because in no small part, "rigorous refutation" is confused with "vigorous refutation" that is shallow and partisan in nature. Hating on Marx is easy; refuting Marx completely in a rigorous manner is
584.
by beat 7y ago
I think of such virtualization as "rolling back by rolling forward". I can just deploy whatever version I want, when I want. If I don't like what's there, I can deploy a different version that happens to be an earlier ve
585.
by beat 7y ago
I learned the hard way to lock down dependencies. Long ago, in a galaxy far far away, I was doing some Java/SQL Server stuff. We upgraded Java (which was badly needed), and immediately all the SQL stuff stopped working, which led to a
586.
by beat 7y ago
Risk, not uncertainty. The long-term (or even medium-term) pricing situation for renewables is highly volatile right now. It makes investing in new nuclear extremely risky financially. What if you start building a plant now, expecting a cer
587.
by beat 7y ago
But why does the curve level off? Supply and demand. Assuming that renewable energy is superior to fossil fuel from both environmental and cost perspective (it is, or soon will be), then it can reasonably be expected to grow until all fos
588.
by beat 7y ago
The main reason for the current inflection point is that the cost per unit energy for solar/wind has dropped precipitously (and continues to drop), while the cost/energy for most fossil fuels is growing rapidly (natural gas is an
589.
by beat 7y ago
One can engage with Marx's writings without being "Marxist", and certainly without being Leninist. I think of when Matthew B Crawford wrote his excellent Shop Class as Soulcraft . He used Marxist terminology about labor in o
590.
by beat 7y ago
And considering the usual ways giant industries choose to "reduce costs", it's a bit unnerving for the rest of us. Blaming the costs on regulatory compliance bureaucracy is one of those things that pro-nuclear people really n
591.
by beat 7y ago
I don't consider Marx to be responsible for what went wrong in the USSR, and I think that thinking so is a very poor (and politically loaded) reading of history. And I'll note for the record that the same people who blame Marx for
592.
by beat 7y ago
If you read Hegel (or read someone interpreting him, I don't recommend reading Hegel unless you're a masochist), you'll find a key part of his approach was the limitations of observation. And Hegel wasn't even first to t
593.
by beat 7y ago
I don't think of any of those things as "iffy", myself. But if you wanna take a shot at dismissing anything that Nietzsche or Heidegger wrote, without resorting to cultural bias points, be my guest. There's a PhD in it f
594.
by beat 7y ago
Stewart Brand said the three enemies of all buildings are time, money, and water. He renounced is own faith in geodesic domes because they introduce unnecessary seams, especially as they get older and settle - seams that leak water. Look at
595.
by beat 7y ago
As an aside, "Tell me about a project that failed" is one of my favorite interview questions to ask. Failure is endemic in our industry. A candidate that only tells you about success isn't telling you their whole story. And a
596.
by beat 7y ago
I think concrete is elegant, myself. I suspect a lot of the Brutalist architecture that's considered horrid today will be re-evaluated much more positively in a couple of centuries. It was, in its way, a way of looking forward and tr
597.
by beat 7y ago
Eh. I'm talking about things we intend to keep in their current structure. Getting all negative about trash is kinda boring, really. Given a reasonable extension of existing technology, we could eliminate that trash eventually. Imagine
598.
by beat 7y ago
Truly timeless is a very difficult thing (see the work by the Long Now Foundation for more on that). But I don't think that detracts from the point that these cathedrals were designed to last forever , from the perspective of the desi
599.
by beat 7y ago
Only if the modern materials and design are done with the same eye toward longevity that marked the original designs. Part of the beauty of these ancient churches is psychological... they feel permanent and timeless in a changing world. Mod
600.
by beat 7y ago
This is a brilliant idea whose time has come, and I'm looking forward to seeing how it plays out. I'm especially looking forward to seeing how it plays in the corporate arena; I'd love to see businesses that depend on open so

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