randerson

> You're failing to explain what dictates the price the market will bear.

Most people like to live in the nicest place they can afford. This is a force pulling prices upward when many people with excess cash are competing for a limited supply of homes. Its why you'll pay more for the same size property in a wealthy neighborhood.

> Why are prices for an apartment in SF only 3k/mo instead of 30k?

Because some people in SF can only afford 3K/month. But if you added 3k/month to literally everyone's income, that number would increase.

(In case you're wondering why the many people with more than 3k/month don't crowd those people out: the wealthy depend on those 3k/month people for labor. At least for now.)

I see it more as, we should have taken their money sooner so that we don't have this problem now!

It would be in a sense, because that money is otherwise mostly hoarded by the wealthy, whose spending would look the same whether or not they are taxed. If money is saved and not spent, it is not really part of the economy in this sense.

But if the money is transferred to others and spent on additional goods & services that is when it increases demand and raises prices.

I'm UBI-curious, but surely inflation would be inevitable if everyone suddenly had $x more disposable income per year? Landlords and grocery stores and everyone else would raise prices because they know people can afford it. Obviously if you're living in poverty, anything is better than nothing, but would the average middle class person be better off? As far as I can tell no country has ever tested true UBI (unconditional and for all residents) so its all theoretical.

Musk's idea of a Universal High Income (where money is no longer necessary because robots and AI give us anything we want) sounds great too until you consider scarce resources like land. Who decides who gets to buy the best properties on Earth if money is no longer a factor? What if you want, say, a human hair stylist or therapist: who would do such a job if they don't have to? We would lose the human touch in our lives, and that sounds awful.

A well moderated forum (like HN) is great. I don't have time for the signal-to-noise ratio of X.

IMHO Reddit would be better if it had AI moderators that strictly follow a sub's policies. Users could read the policies upfront before deciding whether to join. new subs could start with some neutral default policy, and users could then propose changes to the policy and democratically vote on those changes.

You are lucky to get lo-bat. I get no-bat. Working perfectly one moment, not responding the next. Not so much as a popup telling me why my PC just got unresponsive.

I've developed a new fear of my 2025 desktop PC being damaged by a power surge or something, because it would cost at least $2K more to replace than I paid for it, assuming I can even find parts now. Compared to the rest of my adult life when I used to secretly pray for something to fail so I would have a reason to upgrade.

Also got tinnitus here. Woke up with it about 5 years ago. I'd recently had COVID and was also on a strong medication. But I've been a lifelong insomniac so this article has me wondering.

I can only sleep when there's another noise in the room for frame of reference, otherwise the tinnitus feels like the loudest sound in the universe. My current solution is an air purifier on its audible middle setting (basically white noise with a use), and a humidifier in winter.

Hypothetically if we had a choice between sending in humans to war or sending in fully autonomous drones that make decisions on par with humans, the moral choice might well be the drones - because it doesn't put our service members at risk.

Obviously anyone who has used LLMs know they are not on par with humans. There also needs to be an accountability framework for when software makes the wrong decision. Who gets fired if an LLM hallucinates and kills people? Perhaps Anthropic's stance is to avoid liability if that were to happen.

But there's practically zero enforcement and everyone knows it. You have the few law abiding people doing 25 while others are doing 50 while stoned and texting.. on the same road.

Narrowing lanes creates new hazards because cars sold are only getting larger and can barely fit. There is too often no margin for error.

There are no roadworthiness inspections in these states. Many people are driving on worn tires and suspensions. Most people don't even know what types of tires they have or what the tire pressures are.

Don't even get me started on how easy it is to get a driver's license with no clue how to drive. If they wanted to reduce deaths they should start by raising the bar on license difficulty.

Because technology companies know more about their product's capabilities and limitations than a former Fox News host? And because they know there's a risk of mass civilian casualties if you put an LLM in control of the world's most expensive military equipment?

In theory you can export your data from ChatGPT under Settings > Data Controls. In practice, I tried this recently and the download link was broken. Convenient bug I must say.

Don't forget teenagers can be extremely skilled technically. Plus they have a lot of time!

But you're on the right track.

I think of a solution like:

1. Browser does one-time age verification through 3rd party service, without disclosing any details about which sites you'll access.

2. Browser stores your age, signed by that service.

3. When a site requests it the browser passes that signed age over. The site simply has to check if it has a valid signature by a trusted authority's public key.

The browser could even use Palantir in this example - but they would never get any data about what users are accessing.

The US is the largest market for most US companies, so if consumer buying power is erased (e.g. through a treasury default or inflating our way out of the debt) those companies will drop substantially in value.

I'll sometimes ask Siri to take me to a local address, and it'll instead pick some random address in a city 2500+ miles away and start routing me there like that's obviously what i wanted

I can think of a many possible reasons offhand:

1. They've been in Growth mode, where it's common for companies to prioritize capturing the market over being profitable.

2. They've had no problems with money since proving their effectiveness. They can raise capital at favorable valuations (and hold secondary sales) whenever they want. It has been one of the hottest private stocks that people clamor to own.

3. As a private company whose dominant shareholder is the CEO, nobody can pressure them to raise prices. This typically changes after an IPO.

4. Previous government administrations would likely have resisted paying them much more than they charge the private sector or other governments. The new administration has proven they will do favors for companies that are friendly to them.

5. For awhile it seemed they might soon have viable competition for manned space flight (e.g. Starliner) but only in 2024 did we see how bad those are.

6. The low cost is a point of pride for Musk who liked to prove how much more efficiently he could do spaceflight than NASA.

SpaceX can also raise their prices for government launches to pretty much anything and still get business, because they are essentially a monopoly.

I think they had no choice but to release that AI before it was ready for prime time. Their search traffic started dropping after ChatGPT came out, and they risked not looking like a serious player in AI.

"Shall we play a game?"

Good handling is certainly somewhat subjective (along the lines of "fun, communicative, begging to be pushed to its limits"). But even when its not about pure numbers, I still haven't seen the Taycan voted best-handling among enthusiast reviewers (except when qualified with "for an EV"). I'm curious what criteria you might be referring to? The "most fun" handling cars still seem to go to the lightweights like the Miata.

Even the ridiculous 1019 hp Taycan Turbo GT Weissach edition (a 4-door car with no rear seats, such are the compromises made for the track) at best achieved 7:07.55 around the Nurburgring.

A gas 911 GT3 RS with less than half the horsepower laps it in 6:49.3.

The 911 by most measures is the slower car (10.9s 1/4 mile vs 9.2s for the Taycan, 184mph top speed vs 190 etc). The difference is the 911s superior handling and braking and that mostly comes down to the difference in weight.

It's a great reminder of how good this feature is that we take for granted. I think this outage has actually improved my appreciation for Gmail (a service I normally only complain about).

International Bond ETFs are normally dollar-hedged. There are some unhedged ones that are in the local currencies and better at tracking foreign exchange rates. e.g. BWX is an unhedged international treasury fund.

The "soccer mom" SUVs are their best sellers and literally saved the company. I beg you to test-drive a Cayenne Turbo GT if you think they can't deliver a sports-car-like experience in a large SUV. Or a Macan GTS (which is only 7" longer than a 911 btw.)

The Taycan is pretty close to being an electric 911. There's a 718 EV coming out soon but Porsche realized there was not enough demand so now they're retrofitting a gas engine into the design.

The lack of demand for the 718 EV boils down to EVs being heavy, and therefore less chuckable than the gas one, and the lack of soul & engagement in cars without an engine. Solid state batteries will eventually solve the first problem. I'm not sure how we can solve the second one. Perhaps kids of today will grow up caring less about mechanical sounds.

EVs as a whole are growing. Porsche however is struggling because of their "sports car" identity. Taycan sales dropped 22% year-over-year [0], and their 2025 EV sales only rose because the Macan EV is new and they discontinued the gas one in the EU. (Even then: Half of all Macan buyers worldwide went for the 11-year-old gas design over the EV.)

The market for EV sports cars is soft. The Rimac Nevera R broke 24 performance world records and yet nobody wants to buy it [1]. Even the CEO of Rimac has said people want an engine sound. Meanwhile Ferrari can launch an even more expensive gas car and it sells out before its officially announced [2].

I'm pro-EV and my partner owns one. They are practical appliances that are perfect for the 90% of people who just want to get from A to B. But the stats show that it's not just my personal preferences. The average sports car buyer wants an engine and exhaust.

0. https://newsroom.porsche.com/en/2026/company/porsche-deliver...

1. https://www.carscoops.com/2024/05/slow-selling-nevera-is-a-s...

2. https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/ferrar...

You can have plenty of fun without putting other drivers in danger. I used to drive a NA Miata that took 9 seconds to get to 60 mph and it was the most fun car I've ever owned. But I'm a slow-car-fast person.

Most people can safely wring out their cars in 1st and 2nd on a highway on-ramp, or from a traffic light on an empty 55 mph country road. I own a fun weekend car that I take out at dawn on a Saturday to carve up a mountain pass - which is fun even at the speed limit. In a lightweight sports car with excellent brakes, I am safer than all the trucks I see on these roads.

I wanted to replace my gas Macan with the new EV one. After a test drive I decided to just keep the gas one.

As an EV it is excellent. But Porsche is known for engaging driver's cars, and without the visceral sounds and vibrations of an engine it is bland and boring. The flaws in a gas engine's power curve give it character. Letting the driver manage that power curve is fun. A perfectly linear sub-3s 0-60 with fake electric sport sound played through the speakers does nothing for me.

I'd have probably bought it at $75K, but at $125K it needs to be more special. Especially considering the rate at which they depreciate. Its not a surprise to me that their EVs aren't selling as well as hoped. The Taycan sure is pretty though.

The E-GMP Hyundai/Kia EV platform is also unreliable. Around 1 in every 50 of these cars will suddenly lose power while driving due to ICCU failure. Search any forum for the EV6 or Ioniq 5 and this is all over. Mine broke down and got towed back to the shop so many times, where it sat for ages because my dealer was sharing a single EV-qualified tech with 2 other dealers. I eventually had the car Lemon Law'd. As far as I know this issue is still unsolved after 4+ years. (The software recall made no difference.) I loved the car when it was working though.

Likewise. I've had the 40" version for about a year. Higher DPI than the 52". It replaced 2 x 27" monitors and I'm glad I made the switch. I generally have 2 apps running side-by-side just like before, but with the ability to go full wide-screen for movies or gaming.

This monitor really does everything. It's crisp enough to read text on all day, unlike many gaming monitors. But the 120Hz is decent for gaming whereas most 5K+ monitors are only 60hz.

Even 1 teaspoon of salt can be twice as salty as the recipe's writer intended. e.g. Morton's has denser flakes which are 1.8x as salty by volume compared to Diamond Crystal.

For baking where its almost an exact science, it baffles me why recipes still use cups and spoons. I specifically search for recipes where the measurements are in grams. SeriousEats is often where I end up.