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milesskorpen

1,399 karma · joined November 4, 2011

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milesskorpen··on Toyota is taking the Corolla electric
It's a concept - little to no chance the production vehicle will look like this
milesskorpen··on Transit rewards
Cars are also subsidized (roads) - isn't that what taxes are for?

If we could go back to pre-pandemic ridership levels, the subsidy rate would be inverted (fares covered 70% versus 30% now). Public Transit struggles with low utilization. It'll take 10+ years to get back to that ridership level though.

milesskorpen··on Bill to Ban Private Equity from Owning Medical Practices
This is not my family's experience on distinctly not-concierge-medicine Kaiser Permanente in the Bay Area. Always meet with doctors (and NPs), have gotten in quickly when necessary, etc.
milesskorpen··on What do Visa and Mastercard do? An intro to card networks
Also debit cards run by smaller credit unions charge credit-card like fees (and then are used by fintechs to earn fees while making it harder to pass those fees on to end users).
milesskorpen··on The AirPods Effect
While that does happen occasionally in SF, it's <5% of my commutes.
milesskorpen··on The death of the brick and mortar toy store
Americans save at a much lower rate than Europeans (5% US vs. 15% EU), which I think makes your whole thesis backwards. Maybe Americans SHOULD be saving more for retirement, but they aren't!
milesskorpen··on OpenAI is connecting ChatGPT to bank accounts via Plaid
It's read-only data, fwiw
milesskorpen··on RSS feeds send me more traffic than Google
My RSS reader downloads a local copy of posts so I can read offline (Reeder). I imagine that would trigger his analytics.
milesskorpen··on Is anyone actually using OpenClaw?
Yes - I've set it up as an 'office manager,' where it mainly snakily interacts with the local team via Slack, and controls an office TV to show our quote board, PTO calendar, and upcoming events. The Clawe is overkill for the use case, but sometimes is fun.
milesskorpen··on A new way to measure poverty shows the US falling behind Europe
Huge amounts of cash were given to many Americans during Covid.
milesskorpen··on 72% of the dollar's purchasing power was destroyed in just four episodes
1950-1985 and 1985-now are pretty steady. Decreased inflation volatility over time.

I think your chart shows the "that inflation slowly erodes purchasing power over time." That doesn't mean there aren't periods of change - if you study economic history at all you know about the Great Depression and stagflation - but for ~50 years it's been pretty well managed.

milesskorpen··on Mark Zuckerberg creating new Applied AI engineering company, reorganises teams
Facebook stock is up 6x in ~3 years, so the market does not agree with your assessment of his track record.
milesskorpen··on A party balloon shut down El Paso International Airport; estimated cost –$573k
Reading between the lines, it sounds like the FAA maybe did not trust CBP to "test" operate the high powered laser near civilian aviation, in part given that they mistakenly identified a balloon for a cartel drone.
milesskorpen··on A party balloon shut down El Paso International Airport; estimated cost –$573k
Yes: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/airspace-closure-followed-spat-...

FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford on Tuesday night decided to close the airspace — without alerting White House, Pentagon or Homeland Security officials, sources said.

...

Customs and Border Protection used the laser weapon earlier this week after training from the U.S. military, according to multiple sources familiar with its deployment. Officials had recently given the FAA a 10-day window in which the technology would be used.

The anti-drone technology was launched near the southern border to shoot down what appeared to be foreign drones. The flying material turned out to be a party balloon, sources said. One balloon was shot down, several sources said.

The Mexican cartels have been running drones on the border lately, the sources said, but it was unclear how many were hit by the military's anti-UAS (unmanned aircraft systems) technology this week. One official said at least one cartel drone was successfully disabled.

milesskorpen··on Europe's $24T Breakup with Visa and Mastercard Has Begun
I agree the risk transfer is very important, but Visa and Mastercard don't do that (they just facilitate it)
milesskorpen··on French streamer unbanked by Qonto after criticizing Palantir and Peter Thiel
It's extremely improbable that a random critique of Thiel led to one of the many many many companies he invests in banning this guy. It's not impossible, but - Occam's razor, it's not the simplest assumption.

Your initial post suggested that we should assume that there is a link; now you're backing up to "Thiel takes some blame from bad actions by companies he invests in," which is a much weaker but more defensible claim.

milesskorpen··on US will ban Wall Street investors from buying single-family homes
But you'd have an asset you own at the end of that period, and your mortgage payments wouldn't go up over time whereas rent likely would.
milesskorpen··on NYC congestion pricing cuts air pollution by a fifth in six months
I was thinking autonomy, but you're right for EV alone.
milesskorpen··on NYC congestion pricing cuts air pollution by a fifth in six months
1/6 is a lot lower (good!) but is that sufficient to say they're not a large source of particulate air emissions?
milesskorpen··on NYC congestion pricing cuts air pollution by a fifth in six months
EVs help with air pollution & congestion, but a huge part of the AQI impact of cars is tires, and I don't think there's a solution for that yet short of "fewer cars"
milesskorpen··on AI is a front for consolidation of resources and power
It's a big number - but still less than tech industry profits.
milesskorpen··on We're in the wrong moment
What?
milesskorpen··on The pivot
Yeah. He starts with reasonable points about the economy changing into the Electronic Era and then starts making increasingly less-evidenced points by the end.
milesskorpen··on TigerBeetle is a most interesting database
He clearly says this is in the context of "transaction processing" in the comment you're responding to.
milesskorpen··on Accenture to 'exit' staff that cannot be retrained for age of AI
I doubt it's her husband. She's more powerful than he is.
milesskorpen··on Death rates rose in hospital ERs after private equity firms took over
There are extremely high fixed costs + we require hospitals to do unprofitable work (they aren't allowed to turn anyone away from the ED, for example). In many small regional chains, their profitable hospitals in one area fund unprofitable hospitals in other regions.

Overall we have a crisis of hospitals shutting down, not a crisis of oversupply.

milesskorpen··on Are OpenAI and Anthropic losing money on inference?
While this could be true, I don't think OpenAI is investing the $hundreds of millions-to-billions that would be required otherwise make it actually true.

OpenAI's fund is ~$250-300mm Nvidia reportedly invested $1b last year - still way less than Open AI revenue

milesskorpen··on Why insurers worry the world could soon become uninsurable
At least in the US, insurers have been losing money in recent years. Definitely not price gouging. Insurance is an amazing service.
milesskorpen··on “No tax on tips” is an industry plant
yes
milesskorpen··on Allianz Life says 'majority' of customers' personal data stolen in cyberattack
Does it matter? Wasn't a technical breach of their systems, but instead social engineering.
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