subsubzero

I think its just a huge burden that certain states are putting on people along with dramatically increased cost of living due to insane govt spending. People are really hurting right now and tempers are short.

- Housing has gone up 50-60% in the past 3 years.

- Groceries have also gone up 30-40% along with restaurant prices.

- Despite the job market for professionals being the worst its been since 2008 you have the media gaslighting everyone talking about a "vibecession" and saying the economy is the strongest its ever been.

- Crime and lawlessness has been out of control, we are approaching 90's levels of crime in a few short years.

- Interest rates are the highest they have been in 30+ years, all loans etc are now very expensive(see housing costs as house prices have shot up).

- Arsonists running wild in California/Oregon/Washington causing record wildfires and releasing tons of CO2 into the air.

- Homelessness hit record high (up 12% from 2022 to 2023)

- All these things are causing a huge drop in quality of life and pushing people to the brink. So many people in my circle of friends - engineers, scientists and mgmt that are out of work I have never seen anything like this.

AI is just the hot "trend" tech is riding the wave on, lets go back a bit:

- The Cloud

- Big Data

- Self Driving cars

- ML (same as AI but more about chatbots)

- AI -> I know when Matthew McConaughey is wearing a cowboy hat shilling AI for salesforce(do they even have any GPU clusters at all??) that we have reached the peak of this wave and its all downhill until the next trend is found.

agree, but also slightly disagree. I was here last year and alot of these geysers erupt like clock work(see Old Faithful). Yellowstone pulls in many tourists from Asia and Europe and and also urban areas of the US and there is nothing like what is there where they come from. Also you have many a placard saying geyers erupt on a regular basis around that area, and also there is a well defined boardwalk around them (for your saftey and to not disturb the area around you) that was vetted by geologists and park rangers. So some of the tourists perhaps thought it was typical, when what happened was extremely abnormal.

How they voted(Name and the party of the administration that picked them):

Majority

Neil Gorsuch (Rep.)

Samuel A. Alito Jr (Rep)

Clarence Thomas (Rep)

Ketanji Brown Jackson (Dem)

Amy Coney Barrett (Rep)

=======

Minority

John G. Roberts(Rep)

Sonia Sotomeyer(Dem)

Elena Kagan(Dem)

Brent Kavanagh(Rep)

Whats really surprising is how Gorusch is quite the wildcard, he also authored the majority decision that said that 1/2 of Oklahoma belongs to Native Americans - https://www.npr.org/2020/07/09/889562040/supreme-court-rules...

This sets a scary precedent regarding reporting and the capture of history in general. If all of a few decades worth of music history disappears due to a companies financial health(no company is around forever). We basically lose that data forever and history is wiped out. With most news data now being online this could happen to any news going forward and a great loss to society. Internet Archive does a good job(they are a very small outfit) but there should be a organization (non-profit that all news/media sites could pay into) that would archive everything ever created online so as to have this content available for future generations.

Uber owns the thing that the taxi companies don't have, a complex, real time transactional application that pairs drivers with riders. They can pick and choose who they want using it(sans discriminatory, see - illegal checks). And they are well within their means to say when a driver can and can't work on their own platform. If drivers want to be rid of this menace - Uber, then they are free to become cab drivers if they wish. Or use Lyft. Nobody gets paid for not producing which is what these drivers seem to want.

People act like this stuff is magic. When Biden came into office he pushed the build back better plan(luckily Manchin did not vote the largest portion of the bill) - 6.25 trillion even though Trump had already pushed a huge stimulus package during covid(which I think was too big also). Massive increase in cash supply led to skyrocketing inflation. Its why houses, cars everything is like 40-60% more expensive since 2019. I mean you can't get away with sending hundreds of millions of people thousands of dollars for free and expect things to just keep on going as if nothing ever happened.

exactly, I mean Boeing can't even make planes with doors that don't fall off in flight. I wouldn't look to Boeing for any engineering excellence in 2024.

I can't think of a larger moat in any industry where the leader has such a gigantic head start than spaceX. The "old guard" is so far behind why would the US Govt. or NASA give those companies any money now as it would be akin to setting it on fire. I mean spacex had 96 launches last year compared to ULAs 3. It just shows how much bureaucracy can just kill a companies innovation.

I read a book called "Brain trust" last year about prion diseases being the cause of massive increases in Alzheimers cases. The idea was intriguing but one fact the author mentioned was about how the US does not test meat in decent intervals for CJD or other prion diseases, while Japan does. The book was written in the early 2000's so alot of the stuff that was posited can be checked today and that was one thing that I did check, comparing Japans rate of Alzheimers to the US and both countries are seeing the same huge uptick in cases. So it seems like its a global issue and not really one that is based in the US due to "potentially" infected meat.

On a side note I know alot of people(not related to me) that are being affected with severe memory issues in their 60's and 70's. A friends Dad is in a memory care facility and he is in his mid 60's and was extremely fit(he was also a avid hunter - unsure if this was a cause). My Wife's aunt's Mom (not related by blood to her) has severe dementia and is in her 70's and needs $7k a month constant memory care. A friends mom has sundowners and every day her memory "erases", my Friend was looking into memory care for her and was quoted $13k a month for this. All these cases seem quite strange as the individuals led normal lives and then just started suffering these extreme memory/brain issues. I do not know what is causing it but I think its alot more widespread than people know.

yeah my numbers were more focused towards smaller yards that alot of folks have in the sf bay area. For me I am on 1/3 acre in Colorado with about 33% of it grass, it takes about 30-40 mins to mow and edge it and after I fixed the dead patches with easy seed etc it just sort of takes care of itself. I think we were quoted $125 a visit(weekly) so $500 a month. I have so many better things to do with that money than spend it on landscapers. And agree with your decision as well, that is alot saved!

A few things you can do to reduce costs, my family does this and hope it helps others.

- Gardening/yardwork - We do all this ourselves, its exercise and gets you outside, plus you have made something better in the physical world(I work in software so get extreme satisfaction from this!): savings per month/year ($240/$2880)

- Cleaning - We also do not have cleaners, our house is not particularly messy and we clean as we go, this saves us money by not hiring a expensive house cleaner: savings per month/year ($200/$2400)

- Shop around for home/car insurance, our home insurance rate was jumping to $5600 a year, we looked around and were able to bundle with a well known company and got it to $2600 a year. Also its cheaper to pay in full, plus if you are a engineer or manager you get a discount: savings per month/year ($250/$3000)

- Switch to lower cost cell phone plans, went with Tmobile over Verizon on a family plan and saved a decent amount: savings per month/year ($60/$720)

- Avoid doordash and other takeout services, they tack on a huge fee with every transaction(ie. 25-30%) that saves you money if you either head out to get food or just make it at home, assuming 5-6 dashes per month and cost per dash being $100: savings per month/year ($150/$1800)

- Make your food at home, kind of obvious but food eaten out is usually 2-3x cost of making the same thing at home. When we do eat out I have been getting 1 glass of an alcoholic beverage as its usually the most expensive thing on the menu, also avoid appetizers. Those two things usually cuts the bill down by 30%. Assuming eating out 10 times a month and average bill is $100(very conservative for a big city) you end up with: savings per month/year ($250/$3000)

- Avoid Cable and other high cost entertainment packages, they are usually over $100 a month and are mostly commercials anyways. if you like sports I usually get peacock as its quite cheap, also HBOgo(or max) has live sports now and both are around/under $10 a month. savings per month/year ($100/$1200)

These things don't add a huge burden to your life and when added up allow you to save more money. All of these cost savings are what my family actually did and it saved us roughly $15k a year and in general are all more healthy alternatives to what would cost money.

What user defrost said. Also $1M is quite hard to do, that would indicate a salary(single not married in my example) of a principle engineer at FANG* or Sr. Director and there are very few of those around. Or you could be a Staff engineer and join a company with a parabolic stock price like NVDA or something similar.

That is quite good and comparable to IB(investment banker) salaries. Meaning a few years ago $200k by 22, and incrementing $100k a year with $1M by age 30, and $10M by age 40 or so. The starting salaries out of college are now about $350k. My question is I wonder if the upward salary trajectory is similar to that IB track, this is assuming the employee has a somewhat upward career trajectory; does Jane street cap out folks at a certain level?

So many things here.

Lets talk pay, US tech workers, lets just say Sr SWE and up, and lets look at SF as the author uses this as a focal point. Salary is roughly $300-400k a year(in SF FANGish company), in Europe or England its about half of that, and maybe even less. I know as I have family I married into that points out this fact, the best workers all go over to the US and make large salaries over there at US tech giants.

Lets talk about taxes, especially in the northern European countries taxes are extremely high when you get into professional wage bands, ie. above 120-200K euros(50% tax rates in some countries compared to 37% top US tax rate) and capital gains which is a huge issue as some employees get a majority of their income through this - 30% cap gains tax rate and above for a decent amount of western/northern EU countries, compared to 20% top tax rates for US.

Lastly lets talk about employees, you hire someone and they don't work. In Europe you cannot just term them and give them a severance package of a few weeks. In France you are not allowed to even layoff employees unless you are close to bankruptcy(I think this was changed a few years back). But in general it is very hard to fire employees who are underperforming in the EU.

All of these facts really highlight why alot of top talent and founders from the EU come over to the US to make money and start companies. I am not saying one way is right or wrong but just want to pint out the points that both ICs/managers and founders have all told me(I am US based).

A friend(neighbor) lived in Austin, alot of bad trends happening right now. You mentioned power and that made the national headlines, but they also said weather(extremely hot) was why they moved, I think it was like 40 straight days where it hit triple digits(summer 2023). Top that off with housing that is really expensive and homeless issues that are very bad and I could see why a company could relocate elsewhere.

I think you are 100% spot on. The socal buyer right now is a mix of SF/norcal deep pocketed tech employees(see my other post on this article) and just folks that are extremely desperate to buy a house, ie. they are cashing out everything they have(pension/401k/stocks/other assets) and getting themselves into a very risky position. If the stock market or housing market were to tank you would end up in a situation where all your assets(remember that you cashed out everything) are tied into the house and it crashes in value and you could also lose your job so you lose everything(a very scary situation).

Seeing this firsthand, Sold our house in southern California in mid 2022. Moved to another state and regretted it. Looking to buy back in our area(also looking at another area if we can't find something in socal). Both me and my Wife are extremely high earners(Staff FANG comp for me and HR Director salary for Wife) and we are shocked at how expensive things have become in our old city(not naming it as I don't want more people looking there!).

Basically when we bought there during the early stages of the pandemic(mid 2020) most decent/somewhat updated 3 br 2 bath houses were between $800k to $1.2M, with some really nice ones $1.4M to $1.6M. Now the same houses are $1.7M to $2.1M which is basically a doubling of prices, and oh you have 7% interest rates which make housing payments insane. The local wages do not support these housing prices and being a rational person myself it is quite frustrating.

Our realtor is saying alot of the offers(about 75%) she has been seeing are coming from either SF or SF bay area as things are falling apart up there and families want to get out while they can(this is what they are telling her). And alot of all cash buyers have beaten us in almost every offer we have made, so a decent amount of these buyers are from northern california.

I had a similar experience while in college, although not as dramatic! While studying CS I was working on problems every night late into the night. I came a across a issue I could not figure out, and went to sleep frustrated. That night I had a dream where a very specific solution was told to me(a voice with text) and it was in a way I had never thought of. I tried it out the next day when I woke up and it worked. It always freaked me out as I don't know how that solution was given to me, my assumption is maybe the subconscious is more powerful than we thought in terms of reasoning.

Highly recommend watching "room 237" a documentary about the shining, some of it veers into speculation but one interesting take was that Kubrick in the film specifically lets Stephen King know that this is his vehicle(the movie) and is quite subtle about the message.

I like each in their own way, I may be more biased towards Kubrick as I consider the Shining one of my top 3 movies of all time. Lynch may be the ultimate auteur in making a certain type of movie or tv show that really no one else was making or thinking about(Blue Velvet, Mulholland dr. etc). Twin Peaks season 3 might be one of the best tv shows ever made(and also one of the weirdest) and its why I like David Lynch so much. Kubrick touched on that side a bit with 2001(my second favorite of his movies) but his style is much more traditional.

Agree, I believe Elon gave $50M or so in 2018 with the intent that giving this money to the non-profit openAI was going to benefit people with open access to AI systems. Sam Altman has completely thrown out any semblance of law and how non-profits work and closed down the companies whitepapers(GPT papers after 2019 no longer published) and embedded it into Microsoft. This should be a slamdunk legal ruling against this ever happening again.

I really want to know why you liked it, reason I ask is I came into the movie wanting to love it and couldn't finish it(ended it half way). I just disliked it so much. For me: the story seemed so childish(like a middle schooler wrote it), the characters didn't seem quite interesting(I did like that the main character was an older lady as you do not see that typically in film), and the dialogue really corny. I know alot of people love it and am curious on what about it made it so entertaining.

agree, Dune for me was one, Inception being another. I liked Moon(small budget but excellent), interstellar was ok. And thats about it.

I'm really excited about this movie, its f/x and renderings of the buildings, world and technology are the stuff of sci-fi dreams. And I am saying this as die hard fan and lover of the books and also a fan of the David Lynch movie. I didn't really like the mini series they made for TV. That being said the only issue I have is with the cast, I feel like the biggest misses were Baron Harkonnen and Paul Atreides. David Lynch cast both perfectly but its a minor nit and overall really enjoyed part one immensely.

Just another ill advised "solution" from this administration. What the drafters of this bill don't understand is you have a huge percentage of unlivable space in the middle of every floor(no windows!). There are building codes and one of the biggest is having windows in rooms. No city in America would allow that. In addition lets talk about plumbing, you need alot more plumbing going to each floor due to bathrooms(sinks, showers and bathtubs), and dishwashers and washing machines. Office space per floor has a fraction of this. Lets also talk about electricity and gas. Each "unit" would require gas and electricity needs which far exceed what is available in most commercial buildings. Having done extensive remodel work on houses I have owned there is a huge web of building codes that would prevent these comercial buildings from ever being converted to residential, I just can't imagine anyone in their right mind putting something like this forward.

I see one space - https://web.archive.org/web/20140403012916/http://www.finney...

EDIT - really interesting, could very well be Hal, every sentence after a period ends with 2 spaces - view-source:https://web.archive.org/web/20140403012916/http://www.finney...

yup, agree, also looking how Len writes, he is definitely not Satoshi. You can see on his twitter(Len) - https://twitter.com/lensassaman that he is quite punctual, ie. sentences end with periods, quotation is accurate. What gives it away is every sentence he writes on twitter is one space after the period, Satoshi is 2 spaces every single time. Also seeing the same thing for Hal Finney(https://twitter.com/halfin), so my deduction is neither of them is Satoshi.

Had never heard of that. What is somewhat common knowledge is alot of the counter cultural movement that was going on in SF and the bay area in general was due to a number of factors, protests against the war being one, experimentation with acid being another, see Timothy Leary, CIA(acid experiments in SF with unsuspecting johns seeing prostitutes etc). Also the music scene(grateful dead, etc) which tied into LSD and mushrooms were heavily influenced by each other and started in SF, along with LA and a few other places.

I have been saying this for years but google is probably the most dysfunctional and slowest moving company in tech that is only surviving by its blatant search monopoly. Given that OpenAI a tiny company by comparison is destroying them on AI shows just how bad they are run. I see them falling slowly in the next year or as search is supplanted by AI and then expect to see a huge drop as they see huge usage drops. Youtube seems like their own valuable platform once search and its revenues disappear for them due to changing consumer behavior.