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tortarga

103 karma · joined February 7, 2017

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tortarga··on Why can't we build nice neighborhoods anymore?
These are most likely two separate problems. Car based urban planning which requires large wide roads, giant carparks and 'boxey houses' due to garages can overwhelm any other aesthetically pleasing design (notably green space).

Admiring the old brick styles of the ivy leagues is simple confirmation bias due to their academic prestige. There are plenty of beautiful Modernist buildings, it comes down to if the college is willingly to pay for it.

tortarga··on Why can't we build nice neighborhoods anymore?
As the article hinted at the simple answer is Car Dependency. Suburbs are regulated and built to accommodate cars now and not people.

The topic is explored thouroughly on the 'Not Just Bikes' youtube channel. https://www.youtube.com/c/NotJustBikes which uses information from urban planning group 'Strong Towns' https://www.strongtowns.org/.

tortarga··on OnlyFans drops planned porn ban
Analyst Ben Evans frequently refers to cycle of bundling and unbundling of produtcts in tech.

Once the market becomes completely fragmented, a new service offering to bundle it back up will inevitably come along.

tortarga··on Report: Tesla is building a giant 100 MW battery in Texas
Even the battery cells themselves are made by Panasonic, the packaging of a complete product is the value of the PowerPack.
tortarga··on SpaceX launches and nearly lands starship on its first suborbital flight
Seems to be planned. Elon tweeted in response to Tim Dodd that the engines were "working great" on ascent.
tortarga··on The polls messed up
Mandatory voting would be the fastest way to "fix" America. Turnout based voting means you win by radicalizing your side to show up to vote. Most voters would fall into a bell curve of political preference and in the US that middle stays home. In Australia it forces both major parties back into the center so they don't scare off the majority of voters, and the extreme wings of either side typically hold little sway.
tortarga··on Netflix raises monthly charges for U.S. subscribers
Music streaming solved this problem by remembering they were combating piracy not each other. Each music service has all the music and they all pay royalties.

TV streaming services have come full circle and are repeating the same cable tv mistakes that caused piracy to flourish in the first place.

tortarga··on Have Disneyland fans finally reached their limit?
US dollar is pretty much steady against the Euro from 2016 levels. The AUD fall is because of our mismanaged economy.

The fall in US tourism can better be attributed to Trump trashing America's foreign image.

tortarga··on Many more trees could be planted without encroaching on crop land or urban areas
Trees that had their leaves stripped by acid rain, flowed into stagnant seas and the nutrients caused ocean-wide algal blooms.
tortarga··on Stadia Founder's Edition
People viewing gaming subreddits most likely already own a console or gaming PC and aren't the target audience for Stadia. Google's aim is to open up gaming to new markets of people who only have low end PCs, laptops or mobile devices.
tortarga··on Riot Games workers walk out to protest forced arbitration
Being in the US, which from an outsiders perspective appears to have little in the way of employee rights, what risk do these workers face of simply being fired and replaced by the company?
tortarga··on SpaceX just got FCC approval to launch 7,518 satellites
There was recently a video posted theorizing this here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdKNCBrkZQ4

Very interesting watch.

Based off the paper: https://twitter.com/awm22/status/1044512585599602688

tortarga··on E-waste mining could be big business and good for the planet
Does "Obsolete" only apply to consumer grade applications though? Can there be a market for refurbishing old phones, laptops etc for IoT controllers that don't need massive processing power?
tortarga··on Eve is a modern relational language for writing data-driven programs
Eve is a serious game about internet spaceships.
tortarga··on Goldman Sachs automated trading replaces 600 traders with 200 engineers
Fishing?