randomdata

Remember, LLMs are just compilers for programming languages that just so happen to have a lot of similarities with natural language. The code is not the comment. You still need to comment your code for humans.

> It's not very hard to drop any one cloud storage solution (or all of them if you invest in a NAS setup).

Unless you are selling a commodity. There is a good case to be made that what Dropbox sells is a commodity.

> That's capitalism failing.

That's government failing.

1. You can't dig the moats necessary to establish a monopoly without regulation to support it.

2. If/when the government screws up, the onus is on it to fix the problem before the situation gets out of hand.

The thing is, Dropbox is done (as in feature complete). Like when the construction of a building completes, many people are "laid off" because they aren’t needed anymore. Yeah, you need to keep some people around for things like maintaining the building, but not to the scale of the original workforce required to build it.

It is "good" that the excess labour is freed up to go work on the next "building". What may not be good is that the workers didn't think to associate with each other like construction workers do. Construction, being a much more mature industry, typically keeps a clear separation between the workers and the building so that then construction is done the entire excess group of people can be lifted on to the next project instead of all going their separate ways.

Software will undoubtedly go that way eventually. But it is, in the grand scheme of things, still early days for it as an industry. We haven't yet learned the lessons that older industries have.

Perhaps you've misinterpreted that statement? It is the board that takes on greater risk with executives as compared to other employees. The executives are given the keys to the kingdom, which means only an exceedingly small group of trusted individuals can be considered for the job. By the transitive properties of supply and demand, when supply is limited, price goes up.

Are you also finding gains in the latter cases?

A faster compiler was the aspirational selling point. As legend has it, Go was conceived while waiting for a C++ program to compile.

Before what was called "Go 2" transitioned the project away from Google and into community direction there was some talk of adding no more features, instead focusing on improving the compiler... But since the community transition took place, the community has shown that they'd rather have new features.

The "Go 1" project is no longer with us (at least publicly; perhaps it lives on inside Google?)

If this is a meaningful reason for popularity, why is the Rust the only popular one with it (aside from Swift's popularity within the Apple ecosystem)? Shouldn't we expect other languages, those which have been relegated to the non-mainstream (including Swift outside of the Apple ecosystem), with the same feature to also be popular?

I expect Rust is popular simply because it did well in its marketing. You can't go anywhere in tech circles without seeing an advertisement for it. Which plants the seed for when the next time someone is "I think I'll try a new language"; Rust is first in mind. Swift is a great language. It would be perfectly suitable option for someone to pick up as a new language technically, but since it is effectively never advertised outside of certain Apple developer-focused venues... Case in point: You didn't even think to think of it here, and understandably so.

What gives you that impression? It isn't not about baristas, but namely about a parallel between baristas and athletics. That was the context that was setup at the head of this particular thread branch, and we haven't change the subject (aside from that irrational attempt related to being "put down", whatever that was).

> I guess that’s a no then.

Correct. There is no logical place for pointless emotions here. Save it for human interactions.

Sometimes it is necessary to ignore the blatantly obvious. You can't meaningfully alter the ranking of a sports team because their star player was out with a broken leg. You have to accept the circumstances for what they are.

But I'm not sure that translates to something like shift times which are fundamental to the game.

Because that's what is necessary in a market economy? If they don't put in effort to compete, the customer will find another team of baristas that will. It is not like it is hard to find another coffeeshop.

> you shouldn't have to arbitrarily put someone at the bottom of the curve

What is arbitrary about it? The reality is that more coffeeshops open than can actually be supported by coffee drinkers, so it is an economic necessity that some end up shuttering due to being at the "bottom of the curve".

I can think of 10s, maybe even hundreds, of third paces I could theoretically go to within a short distance. None of them particularly appealing, though, because they don't have enough people to create an engaging environment.

If these third places consolidated their efforts, seeing most of them disappear to focus on one third place, there is a much greater chance that the single community would thrive. Combined, it could be huge, but so long as they each try to go at it alone...

Where'd you dream up that idea? I operate a restaurant, so I at least have first-hand experience in overseeing barista-like workers, and I don't know how you could possibly ignore such details?

I'm sure I'm not perfect at it. I'm certainly not accurately capturing the butterfly flapping its wings in Africa. But you'd never flat-out ignore the blatantly obvious like shift times.

Because that's what the discussion is about...? Did you forget to read the thread?

> Could you possibly express your thoughts without putting down others?

If words shown on a computer screen are putting you down, it's time to go outside. You've lost your sense of reality.

Probably not. More likely you would look at the different leagues individually. I'm surprised this idea is novel to you.

Both? Handling customer orders is how the sport is played, but at the same time they are competing for the most points (money) in that gameplay.

A Blackberry moment, perhaps. There appears to be something there, some groups are latching onto it and deriving value from it, but we haven't yet seen the iPhone come along to transform that initial interest into something that sweeps the world.

There is probably one or two places in the city that cater to that kind of uniqueness, but the chances of it being next door is unlikely. Most likely you'll have to travel long distances to find it. Longer than your feet can reasonably take you. At which point it doesn't matter all that much which direction you are coming from.

It may be harder, but surely you're doing it anyway? It is not like the suburbs have a grocery store either (usually). Driving into the city is the name of the game, much like it is for farmers.

> Plus in the city there are lots of places

Presumably if you pick one, you'll start to see the same faces, though. Certainly in my youth the big city bar I hung out at had a wonderful community of regulars. If you pick a new bar every night you're going to never get to know anyone, perhaps, but there is no reason to do that.

That said, the youth today seem to be rejecting alcohol and thus bars, so perhaps the bar is a bad example for a current conversation? Or maybe it's the right example as it visibly presents something interesting that is happening. When I was young, you'd have 20 year olds, 40 year olds, and 60 year olds all mingling together at the bar. It's just what everyone did. Now the 40 year olds are busy taking their kids to youth sports leagues, the 20 year olds are doing whatever it is 20 year olds do nowadays, while the 60 year olds are still there hanging out at the bar.

Which appears, to my eye, to have created a huge division in communities. There are still micro-communities found within that, or nano-communities, particularly with the sports leagues (the parents don't really seem to mingle outside of their immediate team's social circle), but the cohesion of an entire community seems to be devastated by that separation.

Maybe that's the source of isolation that people are feeling?

The US definition of urban includes towns with 2,000 people, though. Not exactly density city. Only around 60% of the population live in places with >100,000 people, and of that it seems a significant portion of them live in the suburb portion. So it seems that most of the population live in what is colloquially considered "rural". I'm not sure that is a coincidence. It seems most people would much prefer to live on farms (how often do you hear I want to give it all up and become a farmer around here?) – but most can't afford farmland (the same reason we ended up with the urbanization movement in the first place), so they settle for pretend rural as a compromise.

> But it only takes one move to another city for the "several multi-generational families in close proximity" dynamic of many rural areas to be disrupted.

While I think it is fair to say that rural dynamic was already disrupted generations ago, was that not already rebuilt in the urban areas? With housing affordability being a hot topic of late, the idea of having to leave one's friends and family behind to build a new life in a more affordable place was met with shock pickachco face, as if these were the first group of people to ever have to do such a thing. Suggesting that multi-generational family dynamics had been built elsewhere once urbanization had been settled. Otherwise it would have been considered normal to leave.

> When I share urbanist material with friends and family that haven't been exposed to it before, they tend to be pretty receptive. Anecdotes yes, but I'm not being disingenuous.

How do they react when you present your vacation slide show, for sake of comparison? Do you get a "that's nice, honey", are they booking a vacation to the same place, or "thanks for the invite, but I am not interested" People can be quite good at faking being receptive.

But, regardless, you don't have to sell me. It all does sound like good ideas. I'll not disparage that. But at the same time, I'm not sure it is better that what could be, more of a "we're stuck with this, so how do we improve upon it?" Improve it does, seemingly (but that is ultimately for the people who live there to decide), but then if you are the type of person who wants better, wouldn't you go for where the best can be found?

> I think that most suburbanites haven't deeply considered other alternatives given that they've mostly only been exposed to "default US suburbia."

That's intriguing. When I was a kid, albeit not from suburbia, we spent a lot of time talking about different lifestyles and which were to our tastes. Some were happy with what they had, others were ready to escape as soon as possible. What do you think it is about suburbia that kills that zest to consider the world around you?

> There's a lot of red tape when it comes to building and zoning

Only if the constituents want there to be red tape, of course. There is no magical deity in the sky that created this. It only exists because the people want it to exist.

> (NIMBYs) can often block or delay efforts that have popular support through lawsuits

Which, again, exists only through recognition of the very same population (albeit probably a larger one, granted). Clearly the majority are, at very least, not bothered by this or it would have been done away with long ago.

> whole areas can't simply be rebuilt overnight.

Absolutely, but we've been talking about this for at least 20 years! It was never going to happen overnight, but when we're still saying the policy – never mind the actual work – needs to change decades later...

While I do not live in a suburb, I do live in a place that had similar goals to what you are describing. The policy literally did change overnight as soon as the people decided that is what they wanted, and the work started underway soon after. It takes no time at all to do away with the red tape, if that's what the people want. If that hasn't already happened, one has to look at why the people don't want it to change.

The background of the people involved is irrelevant to the nature of the product. Someone who works on developing a cure for cancer by day can very well go home and build a fart app at night. There is no reason why you have to constrain yourself to just one thing.

Maybe there's a language barrier here, but isn't a suburb defined by being at the edge of a city? So wouldn't a bar in the city be the communal place for the suburb, just like the bar in town is for those out on the farms?

Granted, I've known of a small number of bars operating on farms (usually farm-based craft breweries/cideries/wineries), but is not the typical use of rural properties. Having one next door that you could walk to would be unusual.

Doubtful. Moving somewhere for a career is fairly abnormal. There is good reason why job search places always lead with: "Location". The vast majority of the population choose where the want to live first – in fact, the majority of the population still live within a small radius of where they were born! – and then figure out what they want to do for work.

Yeah, there is a small segment of the population who will chase work at the cost of where they live. Let's say this is who ends up in the suburbs. Perhaps that's the problem? As in they end up being comprised of people focused on their career, and thus don't prioritize community? Perhaps want isolation is too strong, but how about doesn't care about isolation?

> We're proposing more ability to build denser suburbs (i.e. some multifamily housing in suburban areas), mixed-use zoning (so you can walk to stores), and better public transit in suburbs.

Does that actually appeal to the people of the suburbs, or are you projecting? Presumably these people are constituents of a democratic government, and therefore can already have anything their collective hearts desire. Why isn’t this already the reality?

> Anyone claiming this is bad is just being disingenuous IMO.

Are you unfamiliar with what a conspiracy theory is...? Regardless, it resonates precisely because a lot of people don't want to live in cities. If the listener was all "Hell, ya! Get me out of this hellhole into the dense city!" it wouldn't garner any attention at all, but that's not the reality.

Yes...? Comes with not understanding the subject very well. I mean, logically, if I were an expert I wouldn't be here wasting my time talking about what I already know, would I? That would be a pointless waste of time. Obviously if I am going to talk about something I am going to struggle to talk about it in an effort to learn.

> These other comments put it better:

These other comments don't even try to answer the question...? Wrong links? Perhaps I didn't explain myself well enough? I can try again: What is it about this particular podcast that has given you the impression that it normally asks the hard hitting questions? Be specific.

Are you confusing expectation with desire? I can understand why you might prefer to listen to a podcast like that – and nothing says you can't – but that isn't necessarily on brand with the specific product in question.

In the same vein, you might prefer fine dining, but you wouldn't expect McDonalds to offer you fine dining. It is quite clearly not the product they sell.

So, I guess the question is: What is it about "People I (Mostly) Admire" that has given you the impression that it is normally the metaphorical fine dining restaurant and not the McDonalds it turned out to be here?