jkestner

  We like plastic because it is lightweight and not biodegradable.

Sometimes. Its plasticity of use means that we use it for for a lot of single-use products. The Clive Thompson Wired article I’m reading right now starts with “a plastic bag might be the most overengineered object in history.” Of course, the problem is that it’s optimized for cost sans externalities.

  I'd not personally be comfortable riding in one since I'm not senile, drunk, teenager, hothead, distracted (using phone while driving), etc - not part of the class that are dragging the human safety stats down.

The challenge is that most people think they’re better than average drivers.

Yeah, it’s a big grid with wide streets. Did it fail there? If so I imagine it’s just due to lack of business—there are almost no taxis in Phoenix. Mostly just from the airport.

Kickstarter works like this too. If you know anything about fixed manufacturing costs, when you see hardware projects with a 4-digit goal, you cringe. Some have other sources of funding, but the reason you set an artificially low goal is that it 1) gets people more excited when they see the % of goal go to 800% or 3000%, and 2) people are more inclined to back a project that's already hit its goal, regardless of how crowdfunding works.

It is hard to tie cause and effect together for people here. Prices may go up months after the tariffs got coverage, they may be slipped in with shrinkflation, they get lost in the noise of your personal budget, etc. My goal here was to provide a different perspective that highlights the problems beyond price.

Depends. Is Grok or a sibling to it being deployed in the government?

Food insecurity is a choice in the US? I suppose yes, if you mean it's the government's choice: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/food-banks-usda-cuts-im...

I like closing the loophole, but the overall turbulence seems to have made many sellers just turn off US sales. I had sourced an off-the-shelf part for our product, so cheap that I wouldn't mind paying 300%, but I can't see the page on AliExpress unless I change my VPN origin.

I mean, aside from the profits.

Very exciting that we can't predict how much extra we'll pay by the time our orders hit the shores.

Yet these superrich people crave respect so much that they endlessly poast on social networks, or buy a social network.

Maybe the fact that you haven't been exposed to the "good enough" third parties is an indictment of the current system of media gatekeeping.

Property is people too.

Yes, I recall there was a war fought.

Intrinsically, of course not, but how about due to laws/culture/training?

What was the app feature you worked on?

Did this a while ago for a table as a design exploration. We encoded a 2D file (because the table only required cutting sheet materials) and still had to use a custom compression algorithm for the proof of concept. https://johnkestner.com/rev/

I've had the same issues of decay. I used to be able to say "call Mom" but now it will call some kid's mom who I have in Contacts as "[some kid's] mom". What is the underlying architecture that simple heuristic things like this can get worse? Are they gradually slipping in AI?

They’re even adding Greek letters, very intelligent. https://x.com/Brendan_Duke/status/1907741651172311353

Hence why they've now said they're a robot company. Yet any bullish targets now are more likely to be based on Musk awarding himself large government contracts than technical advancements.

Pinboard pricing model escapes containment.

Same, except my 2009 Mac Pro made for a better space heater, until I replaced it with an MBP M1 that doesn't have the decency to make noise to let me know it's working. Only downside of upgrading is that I had to get off of Mojave.

Even other more complex appliances get tossed too easily. My spouse’s desire to get rid of our 15yo microwave was replaced a while ago by the satisfaction of being able to keep it going. I’ve fixed it twice with a few bucks of parts (waveguide cover, door switch).

I wonder what the convenience does to our strategic planning skills. I spend a decent amount of effort building up kids’ impulse control, and they’ll need it in a world of marshmallow tests.

Maybe it’s more of a Futurama-style future.

The more relevant quote is Grover Norquist: shrinking government “down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub”

Ah yes, the world is very simple, isn’t it? Private organizations like all of Musk’s companies, built on government subsidies?

80% of this hemorrhaging is due to the prefunding pensions requirement that Congress put upon the USPS.

And it’s a service! It’s not supposed to make money. The government is not an investment firm for taxpayers. You might as well ask when we’re going to scale back the military. We hardly use it and it’s running at a loss!

To my understanding, your board is a subassembly and not subject to the tariffs. There’s an existing semiconductor tariff as well as this product tariff, and various categories that make it hard to untangle. Anyone correct me if I’m wrong - trying to figure it out: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/supermechanical/pickup-...

I wonder how it compares to Svelte for people. I weighed both but Svelte didn’t require me to learn Ruby (as much as I’m sure I’d enjoy it).

I have two geese as well—have you found they help against predators? Anecdotally, we've had no predators steal any chickens since we added them (though a coyote got some goose tail feathers at first), though our neighbors down the street have been decimated by foxes.

Never considered the ROI, but I built a big walk-in coop for maybe $200 in materials. Think that'd pay off with the current price of eggs, if we sold them.

I think it's like the rest of the school experience—your parents are the major influencers here. Our kids like what we like because we've fed them what we eat, from sardines to Sichuan to sushi. They take leftovers to school — cheaper and they don't like most of the cafeteria food anyway.