aorloff

Unfortunately, I cannot think of a single politician right now who is a thought leader on regulating technology, which is exactly the kind of person we should be looking for. People who understand that we don't need every website to give us an annoying popup saying that they are using tracking cookies but we do need the option to opt out of AI features for basic services.

I was in a jury pool for a case where the DA was attempting to prosecute petty vandalism to pressure a young adult over a minor crime ($500 worth of graffiti) because they wanted cooperation on another larger crime.

It wasn't going anywhere. When I finally got called up to voir dir I explained that I thought the real crime was sequestering 300 people for a day over $500. I suggested we collect $2 from each person in the jury pool (far less than we paid for parking that day) and cover the alleged damages and not only be done for the day, but have achieved some real measure of justice.

Lets just say the judge didn't agree and I got let out of voir dir.

Yes and in fact, this is where the future of healthcare really should start.

If we healthcare customers realized that our data is really the future of medicine, and we had a way to give each individual their own records (like some encrypted block chain or something) that they can hand out access to their healthcare professionals to (instead of the other way round), we could get a lot further in detection diagnosis and treatment

> if we’re able to create a competent humanoid robot

If we have ham, we'll have ham and eggs, if we have eggs.

> And I know at least 1 startup, which only hired a dev after having 20+ B2B customers. They sure do not go around advertising themself as vibe coded.

Let me tell you something, I don't know jack about this new world.

But I do know about the old world. And in that old world, when you had 20 customers that actually needed your product for their business, your team of 5 people who built YOUR product are eagerly trying to talk to each one of them to figure out why your product works for them, how they found you, what they need now and in the future from your product. They reached out, took people to lunch, they went to meetups and hackathons and boring ass sales pitches to make connections.

Tell me about how all THAT stuff happens when your core dev team is agents in the cloud ?

You could say the same about Amazon

That's what I'm saying.

Not only from the big companies. Where is the explosion of disruption ?

Land-value taxation is an idea that only works because we restrict building homes. If we said, look starting tomorrow anyone who wants a permit to build housing can get it in 30 days and if the local control won't permit it we have a state-wide (I live in CA) office that will review your building permit (and zoning), issue you a building permit, and do the inspections, specifically for housing, there wouldn't be a housing shortage in 15 years.

Basically land-value scarcity is not because we lack the homebuilding capacity, its because we severely restrict building in places that have high demand

> Honestly I'm not sure why we started this war.

If you watched the film City of God, there's a voice over contemplating murder as the crew robs banks : the first time, the rule is the exception... the second time, he learned there's an exception to every rule... the third time, the exception is the rule.

The United States has gone to war so many times without (or with a faulty) casus belli that it no longer needed one, that's why "we" started this war.

Cell triangulation is practically consumer grade technology now

For a while just before smartphones, at least 15 years ago now, carriers were experimenting with APIs that allow opted-in dumbphones to be triangulated (via cell tower) and tracked via API.

I recall laughing with a friend as we realized the railing on the second story art car we were on was attached by staple and hot glue, but back when I went we assumed things unsafe

You wouldn't need to look much further than the evolution of the BRC DMV

My friends who went in the late 90s recounted shooting at propane tanks from moving vehicles and having to camp inside of a ring of parked cars to protect your camp (from vehicular traffic)

After 2000 you had to show some decent design (not just a golf cart with dingleberries) and that was about it, they passed our moon car and shark van without much question, and the shark van was a giant sharp thing without lights.

Others will have to fill in the regs now, I understand things have gotten progressively more rigorous.

My understanding is that anything built on the playa, including the art (eg. temple of gravity) has an engineer's stamp just like would in Reno. Or just a bit more dusty.

Try reading Debt : the first 5000 years

Money is about trust, not about the problems of bartering

> Unless you ignore realities.

Tell me about making capital investments while interest rates are rising but revenue growth is slowing, if you want to really talk dirty.

The very best outcomes involve us intentionally and collectively turning our attention away from this technology.

Yes and no. ROI tracking is not hard if you want to run 1 campaign on Google and nothing else.

ROI tracking is a whole subspecialty of adtech if you want to parse out one medium or campaign's spend from all the other spend have running -- imagine you spend $10m / month on media, you have ROI and you have spend across platforms and nobody except you is incentivized to figure out what ad spend should be credited for which response. That's real ROI tracking and it is quite hard

Would the casinos benefit from a careful presentation of the mathematical odds of all the games and how to best position your wagers ?

Or would they benefit by seeming like a fantastic place to wine, dine, splurge on things you can spend money on, and also make a few wagers on fun betting games while you are at it ?

The advertising market is a place that used to be dominated by the big advertisers meeting with the big networks (upfronts), but now is dominated by large platforms that only marginally care about the biggest users because the tail is so long

I think Google's business model in large part is having a super complicated ad console that very few, if anyone, actually knows how to most efficiently operate.

So what happens is that the savvy media teams figure out what works through meticulous trial and error, and constantly monitor Googles weird changes to the levers you are given to operate the "console."

The primary argument against Rent Control is that it leaves tenants worse off.

Look at the places without Rent Control that have adopted a pro-housing development stance - rents are declining !

But, that doesn't keep a large staff of people working for the rent board at the expense of the local housing economy

Because the higher rent you advertise, the longer it takes to find a tenant

In the People's Republic of Berkeley, our City Council patted themselves on the back in March 2025 when they passed similar laws.

Then they got sued by the company that was targeted, and immediately waffled and canceled the ban.

What's insane about all of this is that we also have Rent Control. There is no greater price fixing mechanism than Rent Control. Rent Control ensures that all landlords must seek the highest possible rent, because they are (potentially) tethered to it for life (of the tenant).

So if you create an economic system where sellers never will allow prices to go down, why bother banning price fixing -- its practically baked into the housing code.

If the Dems get the House and Senate, expect a lot of reversals.

I would imagine we might even have some "settlements" with the "DOJ" before the end of Trumps term

Strategy and spin don't make policy ?

Wag the Dog (movie) came out like 3 decades ago

The Democrats are not smartening up.

The weak kneed leadership will be getting replaced by the populist message of Trump but coming from the left, people like Mamdani, the DSA candidates, etc.

The people clearly want leaders who will say : we will use political tools to help the economic situation of the poor and middle class.

Everyone from Jon Ossoff to Angie Nixon has some version of this message and its resonating

anyone who reads Gary Taubes

Just wait until the hearings start

I suppose you can find conspiracies and scams everywhere if you want to not look very hard

I'm not talking about athletes.

I'm talking about the people who own the teams, they invest in chiropractors.

People who are thinking about the ultimate economic benefit of an investment into a human body, not the athletes themselves.

Its such a scam that professional sports teams all hire chiropractors to work on the bodies they invest millions of dollars into each year.

I was going to say the same thing. 2.5m per side+rotation plus another 2.5 plus or minus 20s depending on heat

But I actually got something out of this -- which is that maybe before now, humans had to soak up the complexity of where value was made in software. And you saw this in the highest and best paid engineers in science and platform teams and basically that you had to invest in brains where you thought the value in your product was.

Without humans managing complexity, you have no idea where you should be investing once the product grows out of the concept stage