jacobjjacob

Should we become a totalitarian state in order to compete with another? That feels like McCarthyism/Cold War/ “authoritarianism is fine as long as it isn’t communism” vibes.

If a balanced budget led to a flat or negative GDP, reduced the USA’s power and influence globally, and/or lowered standards of living, then would it still be desirable? What exactly is the argument against a deficit besides that it might be giving some groups leverage over the USA, which is dubious?

To be honest I wrote them off when they missed the first eXodus with their waitlist. I thought it was a Google+ moment. Luckily there were multiple exoduses which gave them second chances.

He’s an elected president, not an elected dictator. It’s totally reasonable in our democracy to say that you don’t get to do anything everything you want just because you got 51% of the vote.

We have a constitution and separation of powers which many seem to have forgotten about this week

Maybe it will be an opportunity to “build back better”, like in 2021. However, that’s assuming he actually leaves office which is not a given.

I don’t agree with your opinion but I think you make a great point. They are definitely very different situations which at least warrant some differences in policy.

I just quit Spotify because they kicked my family off the family plan without hardly any warning. Apple Music has a family plan and they don’t require that you live at the same address

Never looking back!

If they aren’t growing, and barely breaking even, the chances of going into the red are not low. Idk if the bonds have a rating but I don’t think X would have a AAA rating right now?

If it’s really worth 95%, it’s only held up by the political situation and investors’ general Elon bubble.

I meant that it takes a long time to build and costs too much to build. But like another commenter said, externalities and the implicit subsidies that other modes of transportation get make it a difficult comparison.

Cleaner forms of transportation should be subsidized. The fact that it costs me $8 to cross the Bay Bridge into SF but costs $10+ round trip on BART is a shame. Especially when you have two or three people in the car.

People want infrastructure and then when it gets built, they say it’s too expensive and takes too long. Valid criticisms but many throw the baby out with the bathwater.

I think that although there are rational tradeoffs in bringing in too many dependencies, a lot of these arguments are just rationalizing a personal preference and a tendency of engineers to want to build more and more.

Is managing your software supply chain more work than writing it yourself? Probably not if there are thousands or millions of LOC involved. But if you have infinite money, go ahead and build everything from scratch..

Yeah there is a huge amount of rationalizing how the debris aren’t a problem. Everyone is certain it will burn up before hitting the ground, and if it doesn’t, it will land somewhere that doesn’t matter… but I don’t think anyone knows that for sure?

Rockets are cool but it’s everyone’s planet, if this continues to make a huge mess, do us regular earth citizens have recourse?

Decades ago, when I was a teenager, and saw that “master/slave” was a technical term, it made me uncomfortable- like, it has so much baggage for a technical term.

I’m guessing that the master branch is not a master/slave reference, but “master copy”. But I think main is just as good, so I really don’t care that it got caught up in the movement. This is just language naturally evolving, which I know many people are fundamentally against on an ideological basis.

To me, fighting the changes of language over time is like yelling at the wind. Just let it go and focus on what’s truly important (almost everything else). People will advocate for changes and they will stick or they won’t. If you are an effective communicator, you really shouldn’t have too much trouble keeping up.

I think the nuance they are advocating for is twofold.

For the technical part, people do use cargo cult to refer to real, proven effective processes, tools, etc when those are misused as the wrong solution to a problem. But any example is subjective since this is ultimately a pejorative term.

The other side of the nuance is this: people imply some amount of foolishness or laughable nativity when they use the term. The reality of the original phenomenon is fairly dark, IMO, and can better be described as desperate and complex more than naive. So when you understand the deeper background on cargo cults, the metaphor feels off. It’s one of those things you “can’t unsee”.

I don’t think the author made a single judgment call on people who use the metaphor. However in the first paragraph of your comment, you lumped them into a strawman group that you use profanity to refer to. So my point is just that readers are taking personal offense to an untargeted opinion piece, and then directing that back to the author and unknown other people with uncalled-for animosity.

Edit: “delivering to an image of me he had created in his head” - the author doesn’t know you, afaik. He probably didn’t send you this link personally after writing it. You yourself have decided that the article is targeted at you and that it is intended to be negative.

I’ve used the term cargo cult a hundred times. I generally think it’s a useful metaphor. I do not feel offended in any way by this article.

“An aggressively performative focus on social justice.”

Paul is giving the strawman definition (or, ironically, the PC definition) of “woke”. It’s a code word that can be anything the user doesn’t like, and isn’t anything they do like. It’s used as a weapon along with its alias, DEI.

But people aren’t using it with that “performative” definition in practice. People are using it to label social justice topics that they don’t agree with. So it’s disingenuous to try and define it in a way that is much more narrow than its practical usage.

I think reading in detail about the origins is just sad, and while it doesn’t invalidate the metaphor, it does make me think twice about using it. Just like I think twice about “drinking the kool aid” or similar metaphors.

The author has a great point that “cargo cult” is used to describe anything in tech that someone doesn’t like. You could even say there is a cargo cult of calling things a cargo cult...

Someone’s personal conclusion can be summed as “you should feel bad”? I think that’s if you feel bad for using the metaphor after reading this, that’s on you. The author just wrote up a deep dive into the problem and concluded that it’s not a great metaphor, in their opinion.

Zero inclines? No rain? Waymo operates in San Francisco

This is 10000% false. Straight up misinformation.

The only reason that matters is “$20 billion to $25 billion in subscription revenue by 2030”. How they plan to accomplish this after laying off 1000 SWEs last year is questionable, but I worry that there isn’t enough competition and GM buyers will just be stuck with whatever garbage gets put in.

Maybe we’ll be back to the days of people ripping out their car stereos for aftermarket ones?

Everyone reports it this way. It used to bother me, but I think it does provide some interesting information vs the % day-to-day. Because % is relative to the previous day, number of points isn’t.

Personally I prefer the %

To be honest, this looks more like OpenAI playing catchup to what Google’s done since 2023. The fact is that ChatGPT, which people thought would kill Search, is falling behind Google in some ways.

I think it’s great that competition is driving both companies to improve, but I’m not seeing anything about this that screams “Google-killer”

Looks a lot like Google’s AI Search features. I don’t think it’s the most efficient way to get information - LLM summaries don’t add value for me.

It’s called a “provisional ballot” and the exact process varies by state

It leaves you wondering what other WaPo coverage is being edited by Bezos. Erodes trust in the publication.

You can agree or disagree with the endorsement they were going to make, but the fact that the owner blocked them from making it means that they lack journalistic independence.

No, what’s your rationale?

No, but I don’t think its clear that Tesla deserves its valuation at its current rate. They aren’t demonstrating any competitive advantage or particular skill in the space vs Waymo

One of the best things about Waymo vs Uber and Lyft is that they drive smooth and comfortable, they aren’t zooming around between every stoplight and making me carsick.

I don’t understand how Tesla is continuing to ride so high on a borderline-vaporware robotaxi when Waymo is so far ahead.