laszlojamf

Also, as a friend noticed when he bought a ver nice apartment next to the railroad is that they have to (at least in Sweden) maintain the tracks once a month. They do this by going very slowly with a special train that basically runs with the brakes on throwing sparks all over with all the noise you can imagine. And since it's going to slowly, they have to do it when there are the fewest number of other trains running, i.e. at three in the morning.

Huh. My first question is whether it was the tap water that killed them? Fentanyl is pain medication right. You'd think people would notice something was up before they _die_...

EDIT: nvm, says infections.

1. Anonymizing PII data is way harder than you first might think.

2. Users will do _anything_ you let them do

3. The customer almost never knows what they actually want

Google tracks most users by them simply being logged in everywhere. I was working in this space a while back when FLoC was the next thing and the joke was that FLoC was just for the rest of us. Google always holds all the cards

TIL So is there like a flat imprint of all the biological residue or is it more like a shell, if you know what I mean? Also, what kind of crystals are w usually talking about?

Also, I feel there is an inherent flaw in democracy that hasn't become obvious until we became hyper-connected. Or rather it's the combination of democracy and nation state. The US is the most obvious example of this but I bet that India has a lot of the same issues, i.e. that their citizens have lives and worldviews so disparate that they really maybe shouldn't be the same country. At some point borders were drawn on the circumference of control, right? Whatever a central government could control, it called a country. And that was largely due to cultural factors, how willing the population was to be controlled (in reasonably modern times of course). But with the internet people are realizing that they really have less in common within the borders of a country than they previously thought. Living in a European capital and speaking fluent English I probably have more in common, at least culturally/politically, with somebody living in Los Angeles than I do with somebody living in the countryside of my own country. But me and the that person in the countryside vote in the same elections.

That's assuming western countries let refugees in. Right now, that's not on the political agenda. That might change if the housing market forces their hand but between xenophobia and greed, I'm not sure which one wins out in the end

Yeah, I don't know about the housing thing: https://edition.cnn.com/2023/09/23/business/china-too-many-h...

Also Germany is an interesting comparison since their population is _also_ in freefall and their are looking down the barrel of a major demographic crisis.

And as for China not being democratic, the Chinese government is still very much in the hook for keeping people happy. Just look at what happened with the Covid restrictions when the population eventually had enough. The question is how bad it's gonna get next time around

At the same time, their population is in freefall, they have a massive housing bubble, and they import most of their energy and foodstuffs. Not saying that you're wrong, but it's definitely more complicated than what you are making it out to be.

Seems at a glance that most of the data is based on U.S Gen-Z:rs. Does anyone know of this phenomenon holds up worldwide?

Nevada has _no_ income tax? How do they pay for anything? In Sweden, income tax accounts for 60% of the entire tax base. Do states in the US have other revenue streams other than taxes? Because I just assume that corporate tax is also a non-starter

Although it's nice to hear an optimistic perspective, I can't help but think it's overly optimistic. 1. I don't think moderation works for most people who struggle with addiction. I think this is fairly incontroversial. AA doesn't give out "only-one-drink-a-day" chips. 2. The reason we got smoking under control, I suspect at least, is because the downsides are so obvious. And even then it took a long time. I feel like the negative effects of technology usage are so much more varied and subtle that it's going to be hard for society to rally around an opposition movement the way it's done for smoking.

I hope the article is right and I'm wrong, but it feels a little bit like another "the solution to tech's problems is more tech"-argument

Yeah, I wouldn't bet against it XD but it doesn't follow that it will stay irrational _forever_

I think the parent was thinking of the US. There, natural gas is an abundant predictable, and cheap base energy source. Not so much in Europe. In Sweden the mix is nuclear, water, and the rest, but we're still suffering from the rest of Europe not having a cheap base alternative, since the markets are interconnected. Europe would _love_ to have it's own natural gas source right about now.

And also didn't it just turn out that people weren't really interested in spending a lot more money to get to where they were going a little bit faster?

I agree that housing prices are somewhat decoupled from local population trends, but at the end of the day _someone_ has to live on the property for it to be worth anything. In order for the speculation to pay off, somebody, at the end of the day has to pay for it to use it, otherwise it's just a ponzi scheme.

It might take a long time, but at some point the chickens will come home to roost. Or roast...

Isn't that the thing though? If they credit the source, it's fine, but ChatGPT usually doesn't

On the other hand, not wanting to insure someone who obviously likes to go really, really fast isn't such a crazy idea when that person is about to go out on a public road rather than a race track, with regular other drivers, rather than with expert race track drivers...

EDIT: right, the insurance company backed down. Apparently it's fine

Could have been worse, hehe. Finland had a (in)famous nuclear power plant project which went years and billions over budget only to be effectively terminated after the Russian invasion of Ukraine (Rosatom was a major investor)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanhikivi_Nuclear_Power_Plan...

What school did you go to? We played this _a lot_ at Norra Real, Stockholm XD

Plus no tests, no original developers, and most of the time - _but just most of the time_ - it "just works"...

Reminds of a non-techie friend who had a shirt which said 503, which apparently was a brand name for some vaping liquid. Wasn't my first guess.

100% agree. A tangent to this which I’ve found striking when talking to friends in other professions, is how spoiled I’ve been as a developer. I’ve _never_ had to apply for a job. Whenever I’ve been ready to move on I’ve just flipped that “open for suggestions” switch and within a couple of weeks I’ve signed on for a new company. As far as I’ve heard, that doesn’t happen in other industries. People work their asses off _looking_ for work. Even if I also sometimes get annoyed with particularly generic outreaches, I check myself and remind myself how lucky I am to have that problem.

Actually, found it: https://www.klgates.com/The-Federal-Reserve-Pushes-Back-on-N...

But my reading is that their problem is that having all your deposits with the fed is risky too, since it's over-exposed to interest rates.

I also had a start when I read this but I can't find another source for this. Anyone have one?

Had to google it. Made my day

So once we all live forever we can spend our days improving gadgets just because it's fun?

https://www.grammarly.com/blog/diaeresis/ Could have googled that first I guess...

A bit tangential to the actual article, but this is the first time I've seen preëminence and reëlected in writing. Is that a correct spelling? Does that work for all vowels?

I agree with you about all of this, but I have one problem:

Does this mean no more awards? Like, will the Nobel prize always go "to the institution" that made the discovery? Should biographies be titled POTUS: Period X-Y?

You see what I mean? Part of why we attach credit to people, is because people are inherently interesting. Institutions are inherently boring, and supposed to be. Storytelling is maybe not as important as the actual achievement, but it's not nothing either. No child will ever want to grow up to be a nameless crank of the system.