Reedx

Yeah, I think we'll eventually get to the point where junk food prices in the externalities and it'll go back to being a relatively rare treat (i.e. sustainable). Currently sugar is artificially cheap. The cost is just being kicked down the road, coming back in the form of health problems and hospital bills.

That sugary drinks are similarly priced or even cheaper than a bottle of water is completely backwards. Soda, juice, etc should be the expensive option (which they are in the long-term!) and water the default, smart choice both in terms of health and immediate cost at the counter.

In the case of billionaires like Musk, Bezos, Gates... It's unrealistic to think that the government would make better use of that capital. It'll absolutely be wasted in comparison.

Taking ever more capital from the most effective/productive allocators and giving it to one of the least effective doesn't strike me as a good strategy.

A case like the Walton heirs is another story. I suspect we'd be better off taxing most of that wealth.

A possibility: Parent comment generated by GPT-3

> Epic is literally buying the companies behind long established games, removing game support for alternative OSes, and eventually only allowing access from "the epic store".

What are the examples where that happened?

They rarely buy game companies. With Psyonix they are making Rocket League free to play and won't be able to download it on Steam, but will still be on a bunch of platforms.

Well, hosting videos is an expensive operation. You have 2 options to pay for the resources you're consuming: Trade your time (ads) or trade your money (subscribe). The latter is worth it if you're using YouTube a lot.

Except it's an auction...

It seems people are just determined to keep throwing money into the Fyre.

Isn't this just a form of theater? Word swapping doesn't change anything about the actual reality.

We might see what happens over the coming years. I think there's probably going to be a mass exodus from Twitter and social media generally, unless the platforms change at a very fundamental level.

But currently they're so profoundly unhealthy for both individuals and society at large that they'll end up with the same kind of fate as cigarettes.

That reminds me of the Pixar incident where Toy Story 2 was accidentally deleted while in production and had no working backups.

Luckily one employee was working from home (rare at the time!) and had a copy of the entire movie on her desktop computer. Which they very carefully moved back to the office and were able to restore from that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MAedEXri7c

Comparing YouTube logged in vs logged out... it's no contest really. Logged in is far more useful, even when not including Premium (no ads) and other features.

Logged out I'm seeing mostly useless viral videos that I have no interest in. By default it appears to me that YouTube recommends pure sugar. Whereas logged in you can steer it away from that.

> Somebody, somewhere, really ought to sort it all out

That could be the slogan for 2020

Now we need isdownforeveryoneorjustmedown.com

I'm amazed that accounts at the scale of Elon and Bill Gates weren't locked down within moments. They've been reposting these for at least 30 minutes.

What is going on that Twitter didn't get them locked ASAP?

Also all of Apple's tweets deleted, and now posting the bitcoin thing as well: https://twitter.com/Apple/status/1283506278707408900

> The saddest part of this story is that there is no new renewable plant being built overnight to replace Fessenheim. It will be replaced almost entirely by fossil fuels.

> It’s worth noting that, as Fessenheim closes, Germany is commissioning a new coal-fired power plant, in Datteln

Exactly. Why are so many people ignoring what happens in step 2?

When nuclear is shut down, it gets replaced with something worse. Often coal!

"German electricity was nearly 10 times dirtier than France's in 2016... Germany's overall emissions increased in 2016 as a result of the country closing one of its nuclear plants and replacing it with coal and natural gas" [1]

"It is one unintended consequence of the Fukushima nuclear disaster almost a decade ago, which forced Japan to all but close its nuclear power program. Japan now plans to build as many as 22 new coal-burning power plants — one of the dirtiest sources of electricity"[2]

Nuclear energy is also far safer than most other sources, about the same as renewables.

"Nuclear and renewable sources are similarly safe: in the range of 0.005 to 0.07 deaths per TWh. Both nuclear and renewable energy sources have death rates hundreds of times lower than coal and oil, and are tens to hundreds of times safer than gas."[3]

1. https://environmentalprogress.org/big-news/2017/2/11/german-...

2. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/03/climate/japan-coal-fukush...

3. https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy

And besides that, YouTube, TikTok, Twitch... already provide endless engaging content for free. It's not like you can exhaust any of those services.

People can’t keep up with everything as it is. There is a massive content bubble. I don't think Quibi or even most of Hollywood will survive.

Exactly what happened in SF. Uber Eats stopped delivering to Treasure Island as a result:

"The Order limits our ability to cover operation costs, so we have had to revise the areas Uber Eats can deliver to in the city. Unfortunately, this means we cannot continue to serve customers in Treasure Island. The Mayor’s Emergency Order limits the commissions we charge restaurants for access to our platform and delivery services."

> Instead of looking at it that way, consider a different frame. Both companies target the same customer: affluent millennials who like to workout and stare at themselves in a mirror.

> Kidding aside...

Are they kidding though? I'd s/millennials/people, but otherwise I think there's some truth there. Since that kind of exercise instruction and motivation can be delivered via a TV or laptop.

Also thankful the "I don't get it" aspect has survived. :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjfkynJ4hbI

Video of the clock in action: https://youtu.be/mH4zc3qVYpg?t=35

Do you have examples? The only one I'm aware of is this talk in 2019: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaHLd8de6nM

That was good, but too late. It seemed like he mostly got "Ok, boomer" responses from his target.

It is being exploited though. It's literally part of the strategy:

"The longer they talk about identity politics, I got 'em. I want them to talk about racism every day. If the Left is focused on race and identity, and we go with economic nationalism, we can crush the Democrats." -Steve Bannon

Politics have become religion.

An engineer at LinkedIn says, "We've traced this to a code path that only does an equality check between the clipboard contents and the currently typed content in a text box. We don't store or transmit the clipboard contents."[1]

Why? What is the reason for doing that check?

1. https://twitter.com/eberger45/status/1278843576638570496

There are no chairs on that side. Also note all those pieces of bread and fruit very near the edge.

Carmack posted (yesterday) an interesting thought on models like GPT-3:

"Big AI models like GPT-3 train on massive internet text dumps, but the data is assumed to be independent and identically distributed. Incorporating time information for a decade of data might allow them to start writing tomorrow's reddit or twitter trends."

https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1278840413919551488

Seriously, even if she failed to pay 10,000 traffic tickets, how does it do any good to put her behind bars at all? They really couldn't think of a better way to deal with non-violent offense??

Wow, finally indeed. That's been a pain for the longest time. What was the holdup anyway?

If Facebook and Twitter wanted to make good on the mantra of "making the world a better place", they could do it today simply by disabling things that are reinforcing echo chambers, rewarding anger and generating outrage.

e.g., Disable algorithmic feeds, remove sharing/RTing and stuff like Trending.

Engagement metrics would plummet, yes, but they would literally make the world a better place.

Yeah, also as a teenager in the 90s I distinctly remember thinking that the internet was going to make everyone smarter. The world's information at our fingertips! It'll unlock a new golden age for the entire globe!

Oh, how naive...

> This doesn't seem sustainable without outside sources of revenue.

The reality for most creators, really. There's way more supply than demand and you have to contend with power laws.

The top ~1% of books, movies, games, music, youtube videos, twitch streams, HN threads, etc, always dominate. Capturing ~80% of attention/money. The distribution falls off rapidly with a long tail, which is unsustainable for most.