neogodless

There's money in politics and money in social media.

And the money decides how to run the circus. Not for the benefit of all.

So it is a really hard problem.

I usually say to myself "ladder" and that helps. But this time I slipped. Rough morning. Wheels fell off on the way to work.

I KNEW I was going to get that wrong.

Wait until you find out how many gas and diesel powered trucks are RWD!

At least in the U.S. below a certain ~longitude~ latitude it's quite common.

The main difference is "lifestyle creep" is an individual problem / choice. You make more, but you spend more of it. Your lifestyle is improved, but there's a diminishing rate of return.

The collective "lifestyle creep" where the consumers are competing can cost everyone more while resulting in worse outcomes overall. Almost like reverse capitalism. Instead of producers / sellers competing (on quality and price), there is just so much demand from consumers that they are forced to sacrifice quality while paying a higher price.

Hmm not agile or waterfall....

Tsunami?

For business, software applications are tools that facilitate "the thing" that generates money. (We in the software world think that _thing_ is software and software _features_, but outside that world, there's usually a different _thing_.)

The bottleneck for making software applications better at being used by (non-software) businesses is making sure the software does all the software things that actually benefit the business. Save time. Make humans more productive. Reduce human error. Make the business more efficient. Increase profit margins.

All of those things are a bit difficult to predict and quantify. You start with ideas of what might help the business, you maybe design, prototype, trial. Ultimately you build or enhance software applications, and try to measure how well they're making the business better.

In all of this, making sure software is addressing the right problem in the right way, and ultimately making the business better - that's a hard problem! Regardless of how fast and easy it is to make software.

But yes, the speed can really help. You can prototype and trial and improve the feedback loop.

Since there's anecdotal debate against your comment, here are some sources:

https://www.fastcompany.com/90774779/heres-what-science-says... (2022)

> On average, cars moving at around 30 mph on local roads will produce sound levels ranging from 33 to 69 decibels.

> To ensure that pedestrians will hear electric and hybrid vehicles coming, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration requires these vehicles to emit sounds ranging from 43 to 64 decibels when they are moving at less than 18.6 mph.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S24685... (2025)

> Electric vehicles (EVs) are effective in reducing noise levels, primarily at low speeds and frequencies.

> at speeds over 50 km/h, EVs do not contribute significantly to noise reduction

https://carconfections.com/all-car-confections-sound-level-r... (2026, comparing 527 models at 55mph)

https://backend.orbit.dtu.dk/ws/portalfiles/portal/399523477... (2025)

> Acoustic Vehicle Alerting Systems (AVAS)

> Results align with previous findings that EVs and ICEs exhibit similar noise levels at low speeds, particularly post-AVAS implementation. Earlier studies reported larger differences (3–4 dB lower for EVs than ICEs at 10–20 km/h), likely due to the absence of AVAS

> Additionally, a deeper investigation of how AVAS contributes to annoyance could inform improved design standards for EV noise emission, encouraging a balance between functional safety and acoustic quality in urban environments.

You forgot EVs that come with an add-on that generates electricity by burning fuel!

I wish this worked! I have to go to the office on my hybrid schedule. When I switch between home and office, Windows is "smart" enough to keep the windows on the correct window in the task bar while generally placing the windows on the opposite window where I want it (and literally opposite where it is on the task bar!) It's so annoying and I dread the days I'm switching between office and home for this reason, as I have to drag each window to the opposing window before things are back to how I want them. It would be less bad the old way, where they were just stupidly thrown on the "primary" monitor and I only had to drag half of them over.

> The point of FIRE isn't that you invest in your future

Huh? "Financial Independence, Retire Early" Sure sounds like you're saving money and investing it in such a fashion that at some future date, you're no longer obligated to do paid work -- before the traditional retirement age.

> I think it's unreasonable to say the opposite of FIRE is to save nothing, when it is in fact saving at good rate while aiming to retire in your 60s.

Again you confuse me. Most people do not save enough for a solid retirement in their 60s, so it does not seem like you can say that is the "opposite" of FIRE. The "opposite" is simply being financially dependent on your working income (at least) until traditional retirement age.

"Retire early" does not force you to "never work again" if it's something you desire. It means you have the financial independence and means to decide how to spend your time. If you really like working for money, being financially independent does not prevent you from doing it, and I can't see how it will make you miserable.

> many people who get into FIRE commit themselves to a lifetime of slight misery instead of learning to be okay with living life when they can

Source for this assertion?

I've been in contact with various people at various points on the FIRE journey, and I haven't seen a lot that go "too far" towards being miserly, cheap, and miserable. Especially when they are high earners like the parent comment. They live lifestyles that may appear lavish, but are done while spending well below their means, because they are also investing in their future, while being mindful about spending today.

Should all women seek out wives then, so they can have two great minds to put to the task of living frugal and fulfilling lives?

> Mental space dedicated to watching your expenses is space you aren't using to improve your top-line.

Not inaccurate, but you have "24 hours in a day". Even if you spend 1 hour on frugality, it's not like you spend 23 on "increasing your income." Why not both?

> Stay focused on earning more money > You'll enjoy life a lot more

Needs sources. We know that earning more is helpful up to a point, but it reaches a point of diminishing returns.

Similarly spending money can help you enjoy life, but we tend to be bad at predicting how happy any particular spending will make us. Learning this lesson and evolving our spending so that we do "enjoy life a lot more" can be well worth the time invested, even if it doesn't help us earn more.

If you compare a Porsche SUV to a Lexus SUV, there's almost no difference.

If you compare a Porsche Boxster to a Toyota, the Porsche is much more of a driver's car and if you're the right kind of driver, there's simply no comparison. (We'll ignore the FT86 / 86 for the moment ;)!)

If you buy a Bentley... you probably pay someone else to drive it for you.

Something to remember in all of this is hedonic adaptation. Buying a Porsche will feel in the moment different from buying a Toyota. But a few months later, you will be driving "your car" and much of the time, you'll be thinking about driving, traffic, signs, speeds, lights, pedestrians, bikers, the song you're playing, your next turn, a dozen other things. For the most part, you won't be thinking about how much "better" your car is in comparison to the alternative. You'll be used to it. You'll have adapted.

Different cars are certainly different for a personality who is drawn to the merits of automobiles. My favorite car was a $20K used Mazda 3 hatchback. I liked it much better than some much more luxurious cars (including the Polestar 2 Performance Plus I have now.) But that wasn't because of luxuries (the Mazda had luxury and heated seats and climate control and swivel headlights and adaptive cruise control and... and...) but because I enjoyed pressing the clutch, pulling the gear lever into second, releasing the clutch, putting my foot down, and steering through a corner. (The Polestar has some merits as well, but they are very different merits.) The Mazda 3 had a whopping ~186 HP... but it was fun. (Don't get me started on my 2007 Honda Fit... oh the memories!)

Above from 2016 (87 comments), and original from 2013:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6263724 The Science Behind Honey’s Eternal Shelf Life (smithsonianmag.com) 86 comments

Expanded:

AWS engineer reports PostgreSQL perf halved by Linux 7.0, fix may not be easy (phoronix.com) ~24 days ago, 165+ comments

I've bought Corollas for less than that ...

> America has undergone a VERY rapid secularization.

If I understand correctly, connecting the dots from the article and your comment, beginning in 2020, everyone moved away from religion towards atheism in some kind of rapid shift?

Is this supported by the demographic data?

Previously / related:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47806973 Average new UK electric car price is now lower than petrol vehicles (theguardian.com) ~5 days ago, 4 comments

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47823179 In the UK, EVs are cheaper than petrol cars, thanks to Chinese competition (electrek.co) ~21 hours ago, 202 comments

Is taking concepts to logical extremes a good way to govern?

(No.)

But are you saying we don't care if things have negative effect on people? If we go to extremes, well then obviously everyone should have 100% autonomy? Oops that doesn't work.

So, this is the hard part - you have to find balance, compromise, a reasonable middle ground. That's always going to be the hard part. Not black or white, but the grey areas.

You can kind of tell when people think about only themselves or the community when they present arguments for things like smoking and vaccination.

"I don't want to be controlled" is a perfectly valid argument, and I prefer humans can make choices for themselves and have reasonable autonomy when it does not have a negative affect on others.

Vaccination and smoking affects people around you. Drinking does too - in certain cases, but much less directly, in most cases. For example, drinking and operating vehicles is already illegal. Drinking and punching someone is already illegal!

When I was a kid I was taught not to walk in the street.

When you walk, you go in the opposite direction of cars and can see them coming and, if necessary, move off to the side more.

I know it's survivorship bias, but it worked for me.

Now I get that population density is increasing, and probably so is traffic. Though so are automatic safety features that cause cars to brake rather than hit things.

Are there statistics on vehicular fatalities in suburbs?

Related:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47778308 AI ruling prompts warnings from US lawyers: Your chats could be used against you (reuters.com)

~3 hours ago, 43+ comments

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47555642 Be careful: chatting with AI about your case is discoverable (harvardlawreview.org)

~18 days ago, 13 comments

Overall this is a neat result, and the interviews are a nice part of the process. I've tried to (on occasion) make a habit of asking about more (mundane) details from my elders. But knowing what to do with that data...

And that brings me to my point. I've been thinking a lot lately about digital legacy. When I was a kid, it was neat to see photo books that showed my parents as kids, living their lives, having fun. Though those memories stand out to me, it's not something you revisit often. With digital memories, you can share them constantly, in great quantities. But what if you want them to stick around?

First, I think in early 2000s brain, and I think about how I've got domain names and web sites, and some of them include family photos and forums. The only way to keep them around is some kind of durable host, and a way for someone interested to get to that hosted data. Cloud + domain names = unmaintained software but subscription-based expense in perpetuity.

What about a box? A server you could plug in anywhere, uses dynamic DNS to "hook in" to the internet, and you just maintain a domain name. You could update it while you're alive, but eventually it would just be a "photo book" people could choose to pass around and connect if they so wished. And the domain name could be pre-paid for a while, but eventually die, many years after you.

Now whether you need/want a digital legacy is probably more a question of ego, and how much those you leave behind want a way to revisit memories of your life and the lives of those you touched. But if you do want that, it's not as easy as printing out a photo book, or printing photos and sliding them behind those plastic sleeves, and passing that from household to household.

I'm currently in the very early stages of going through several DVDs worth of digital photos my late grandmother took, and thinking of ways to organize them and share them with my family. And I'm wondering if I can make whatever I come up with "reasonably" durable.

A few lessons hidden in here:

Perfect is the enemy of good: Don't obsessively edit. Cull obviously bad photos. Find a few pretty good ones. Pick one at random. Edit lightly.

Photography can focus on captures or edits: analog photography necessitates a focus on the capture. Be in that moment, frame the shot you want, and your only edit might be some color correction.

While the above might not make you a 99th percentile photographer, that probably isn't a goal you need concern yourself with. I always find photos online that blow me away. Artists with the patience to plan and wait for the perfect shot, possibly for hours. Artists that meticulously cull until they find an exceptional photo. Artists that spend a half hour editing a single photo adjusting sliders.

If that's not you, you still don't have to give up editing photos if you like the result better than the camera's JPG. You just have to focus on the parts you enjoy, and find balance in the quality of the end results.

(And personally I love DxO PhotoLab. Purchased once on sale, no subscription. Fun to use, and I love the results!)

Related:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47437516 Iran war energy shock sparks global push to reduce fossil fuel dependence (reuters.com)

~3 days prior, 447+ commments

Show the math.. only about 12% of buyers buy new cars. Economical, efficient EVs can be had for $20k. Renting a big truck occasionally can be as little as $20, but even at $5000 for a truck rental... most people are buying trucks that cost $10, $20, $30K more than an enconomy car.

Most of those benefits were available in Windows 10, with less of the pain and shortcomings of Windows 11.

I like that list, and appreciate those items. I run Windows... begrudgingly 11.

But why can't I have the above without...

- full screen ads for Microsoft 365 / Copilot

- inserting Copilot everywhere

- changing the UI and removing user choice, such as where you pin your task bar, how you like your start menu to work / look

- forcing your documents and desktop into OneDrive without asking and making it hard to separate them back out

Windows didn't necessarily go backwards with some of their moves, but they confidently went anti-consumer and pro-adware in quite a few of them.

EDIT: Like this... https://blogs.windows.com/windows-insider/2026/03/20/our-com...

(See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47459296 )

Was anyone able to discern from this (or official sources) what the actual battery capacity, and estimated efficiency / consumption is under ideal conditions?

(e.g. 100 kWh, 400 miles -> 10 kWh / 100 miles or 4 miles / kWh)