blisterpeanuts

Were houses that much bigger in the 1970s, though? Families definitely were bigger, so there were more people per square meter. I think overall, it's a sociological change, not a financial one. People are just less into hosting parties; too much hassle of cleaning up & preparing food, too many online distractions, etc.

This is a charming idea and I am inspired to try it. We just need more face time (vs. Facetime) in our lives.

I would think that in 1600 years, it would be more like Edward Gibbon CC or such.

Inviting friends over for dinner is the ONLY way I can get my wife and daughter to clear their stuff from the common areas.

A party with 10 guests is even better.

All three of us are hoarders, to an extent, but I alone am able to go into a cleaning frenzy approximately once or twice a year and get rid of mega-junk. Unfortunately, they don't seem able to do so.

So, I consider dinners still to be a useful tradition, though perhaps the motivations have shifted a bit.

I think the '90s was a missed opportunity. The U.S. was (mostly) at peace, had a lot of tax revenue flowing in, and should have built a safer replacement for the Space Shuttle.

Instead, we continued to rely on a flawed, expensive, and dangerous system to build and supply the ISS. Then, we tragically lost another Shuttle and crew in early 2000s.

Typically, tunneling involves abandoning the tunneling machine underground because it's too difficult and expensive to retrieve. The Boring Company's innovation was to find a way to retrieve the machine inexpensively, thus significantly reducing the cost of tunneling.

They also operate the machines remotely, so that humans are not risking their lives underground.

Tunnels are a good thing. They cut across a city without paving over more greenery. They will reduce surface traffic.

Me too. It's certainly newsworthy. I guess not much interest in space travel around here.

About half of SpaceX revenue is Starlink subscriptions. Starlink is the one profitable division; the rest of the company operates at a loss, including xAI.

It can wade through about 2.5 feet of water.

What's unreliable about the Model Y, other than some fit-and-finish issues? Does it have battery failures or mechanical/electronic problems?

Most MY and M3 owners I have talked to rave about their cars and have very high customer loyalty.

You speak for all Canadians? Because I know a lot of Canadians (and I'm from there, myself) who are quite disenchanted with the Liberal Party.

Pre-Trump, I had a paid online subscription to Guardian for a time, because it was so well written and informative.

After 2016, however, they seemed to adopt a firm anti-MAGA stance which I found to be biased and off-putting. Their highly critical stance against Israel after the Hamas attacks of October 2023 was the last straw.

Then, they withdrew from the X platform and now they might as well not exist, as far as I'm concerned. I think that was a mistake, given their significant following on X, but I guess they felt they don't need it.

Why not? What do you have against the 139,999 employees of Tesla who are not named Musk?

It’s nothing to do with my liking or disliking them. Maybe try formulating an argument that doesn’t have the word “you” in it.

And they have too much power, and sometimes abuse it.

Or do you imagine that these agencies are completely perfect and free of corruption?

Electric cars do have an effect on urban air pollution, though. Chinese cities have really cleaned up the air and become more breathable recently, for example. You used to have black soot coming out your nose; it was awful.

If such bizarre actions were to actually take place, Tesla’s brand will be the least of our problems.

It’s like saying that if Musk unleashes a billion Optimus robots to take control of the world, people will be mad and stop buying Teslas.

Like many unicorns. During the Dot Com era, when Oracle chief Larry Ellison was briefly thought to be lost at sea on his sailing yacht, Oracle’s stock tanked, then recovered after he was found safe.

Many such bureaus have been established over the years that have extralegal powers existing basically outside the Constitution. I’m thinking of the NLRB, CFPB, FBI, IRS, and several others.

We as a society have a consensus that we need such agencies to manage the hugely complex country that we have become, but that doesn’t necessarily mean these bureaucratic organizations are themselves properly managed.

Years ago, I read about a man who the IRS was trying to levy extensive fines on. After five years of court battles, he committed suicide.

Perhaps this was an extreme case, but there is nonetheless an important question that arises out of this tragedy: does the government exist to serve the people, or do the people exist to serve the government?

I believe our colonial era checks and balances no longer protect us from a bureaucracy that is automatically funded by the Treasury, that the President has limited control over, and that only an act of Congress can change.

In an era when no one political party has enough control to enact legislation (i.e. a filibuster proof majority), the bureaucracy is effectively out of control and the only real way it can be reformed is by uncovering waste and corruption.

The permanent bureaucracy exists outside of checks and balances.

Tesla is not just cars. Their large scale solar power storage business is growing, they manufacture batteries, they have the largest charging infrastructure for end users, massive super computing to crunch fsd data, a lithium refinery in Texas starting up this year, and their humanoid robotics division.

Perhaps their stock was overpriced, perhaps not. Long term, there’s tremendous upside and right now it’s arguably a buying opportunity. Musk’s involvement with DoGE will end in a matter of months or maybe a year, and the people keying cars and engaging in political theatrics outside Tesla dealerships will soon move on to the next cause.

Also, Elon != Tesla car owners.

I can find no evidence that Musk was involved in the Bud Light boycott. Do you have a link?

A smooth and picture perfect launch, docking, and return to Earth. Congratulations to SpaceX, NASA, the astronauts and all personnel involved.

I’m surprised there isn’t more interest in this topic. Is there another hn thread that is more active? I wonder if people have become jaded by the seemingly routine business of space travel. Yet, it remains a very difficult and dangerous endeavor.

The Chinese are ahead in the mass manufacturing and commoditization of electric vehicle batteries, but there are still some interesting innovations coming out of the U.S. and Europe, as well as Japan and South Korea.

As for Tesla’s recent hiccup, they have a strong product portfolio and are likely to recover before long. It’s happened before.

I’m also a data point for excellent Toyota service from the dealership where we bought our Prius. From the concierge who holds your hand throughout the visit, to the free lunch voucher in their pleasant little cafeteria (sadly, closed after covid), to the couple of years of free oil changes, I actually looked forward to bringing the car in. And they cleaned it as well, a quick interior vacuum at least.

Standard supply side theory. Reduce tax overhead, reduce size of government, increase availability of capital for private investment, give people back the money to either spend, start businesses, or invest in markets. Money is more productive in private hands; government acts as a money sink that locks up wealth in unproductive cul-de-sacs. Government is inefficient; free markets are efficient.

Read Milton Friedman, not anti-Trump hit pieces that predict disaster.

Less than 1%. 45,000/400 = 0.89%. It was reported that they were not critical workers. Perhaps some will be rehired. A review of hiring procedures is underway.

It's recently been revealed that not only does the FAA require a "biography" of its ATC applicants, but have even been coaching black candidates how to use the keywords that will allow their applications to float to the top.

If the agency and the politicians overseeing it cared about safety, shouldn't they try to hire the best and the brightest, not the under-represented minorities that they have been struggling to hire in recent years? Meanwhile, White applicants who were fully qualified have been bypassed.

I personally don't care, and I suspect most thinking people don't care, what the ethnicity or gender are of the people in the towers. But we all care very deeply that they should be the very best of the best.

Lack of MagSafe is disappointing. How much would it have cost to include? It's an intriguing feature that distinguishes iPhones from Android competitors. I wonder if the intention was to avoid cannibalizing its more expensive siblings.

> "Maybe those jobs were important."

It's been reported that 400 new hires on probationary status were let go. None of them were involved in safety related operations. The FAA has around 45,000 total employees, so it's a rather tiny percentage, in any case.