bko

My understanding is that water used in data centers is recirculated, much like all water is. What's the alternative? Does the data center somehow destroy water through a chemical reaction such that is ceases to be water? Or pollutes and releases the water and makes it unusable and incapable of evaporating and being recirculated? Am I missing something?

This whole thing is incredibly cringe. To think someone would rely on a piece of software built on this kind of faux activism and anger about being laid off is laughable.

In the AI age, no one buys software because it's "worth it". You pay a premium because you expect reasonable thought and care about the about the product and support. Sure we can switch over to ICQ or Microsoft Teams or Google chat, which is all essentially free for most corporate customers. But people pay for Slack because it's a known entity, slightly nicer to work with and frankly I just don't want to think about the decision so I pay $8 or whatever per user to not have to think about it.

It helps your point. That the social media agencies are interested and willing to coordinate and suppress opposition.

It's not really competitive. She's down by ten points.

You miss the big one where all the social media companies deplatformed a sitting us president but point taken. But I think this is all too low stakes for that kind of action

Isn't the more likely reason due to suspicious bot activity? I doubt a trillion dollar org cares much about these small candidates.

I don't rule it out entirely. In 2021 we saw a coordinated deplatforming of a sitting president across practically every social media platform. But this seems too low stakes

I love the main character syndrome on display. You have this regional Florida race, not particularly competitive. They do campaign events all day every day. They see an issue with their Instagram account which gets fixed an hour later and they immediately think it's Zuck behind the scenes in his war room following her race and rally with a big red button on his desk to cut her off at the crucial window. Incredible stuff.

It's in incredible how hostile this tax is but I have to give them credit. They just see something that's productive and valuable and they just see money they can extort from people.

No justification, like gasoline tax, which is used to fix the roads and fund green technology. Or tax on stock buybacks which have questionable value in society. Or carbon tax.

Just see something people do and tax it.

Yes but you're not going to like the solution.

Basically make a pledge to never raise taxes. It was called norquist pledge. Signers promise to oppose any and all efforts to increase marginal income tax rates for individuals and businesses.

Questionable whether this actually constrained spending. Ideally would be paired w balance budget amendment

I agree. Money, as defined by a storage of value and means of exchange, is uniquely qualified to benefit from blockchain technology. It shares many of the properties of gold (essentially fixed supply, unique history, lack of centralized control, consistent predictable mining, easy to verify, etc). It's better in that its supply is somewhat more predictable, could be more efficient to store / mine and could be sent digitally. Whether that's worth the downsides (mainly that its newer and easier to steal) is up for debate.

I think there's a lot of "slow" companies that get hacked. The core problem is that the idea of blockchain is incredibly flawed. One should not allow ownership of a string to be definitive to that thing.

I heard people want to put things like deeds on the blockchain but what happens if someone steals your keys? Do they own your home? Of course not. A system should have trusted intermediaries and centralized sources of record. If someone hacks my municipality and updates the record that says that they own my home, obviously that wouldn't hold up and that should be reversed. Why would I sacrifice that safeguard for technical elegance or promised efficiency? Why do I want to allow permissionless transfer of my deed to any party? What problem are we trying to solve here?

Might be diff with others but I delivered maybe 5m out most. Mostly less than a mile (sense suburb). I drove maybe 20-30 miles in a 3 hour shift

Thanks for the breakdown. I guess the bigger question is why? Don't they want profit? Or are they optimizing for something else like expenses and enterprise value (size of spend)

Who is rich? The platforms aren't making a lot of money, they've been losing money for a very long time. The valuations were pumped by VC money and maybe the founders are paper rich.

Stop hand waving about capitalism. Give me a real answer.

I think the original business model included giving restaurants a fax machine and just faxing over the order. There is a lot of efficiencies with using an app and not having your guys tied up taking phone orders. Loop in credit card processing as well. Should have stopped there.

One thing I don't understand is how the rise of food delivery has gone up so much and is terrible for everyone.

For context, I used to deliver pizzas in a the early 2000s. I made

$4-5 an hour

+ $1 per delivery

+ tips (~$3 average)

My typical night made me about $20/hour (3-4 deliveries per hour). Someone would order $20 pizza, pay $4 for delivery fee and tip (16% markup). Restaurant paid $1.5 per delivery (amortized $5/h). Everyone was happy.

If you look at it today, the typical take home for delivery people is still $20 (same from 20 years ago, not inflation adjusted).

Here is what typical order looks like today:

Pizza cost: $20

Delivery fee: $3-5

Service fee (10-15%): $2-3

Optional tip (15-20%): $3-4

Possible small order fee: $0-2

Total customer cost: $28-34 (40-70% markup)

Restaurant commission (15-30%): $3-6

Restaurant makes less, customer pays a lot more.

And these companies managing this workforce still manage to lose money! So where the hell is the money going??

I wrote more about it here

https://mleverything.substack.com/p/what-happened-to-food-de...

> you'd rather autistically defer to the bizarre overlapping and bureaucratic rule-making nuances of a flawed, regularly-abused legal system

What is the law besides "bizarre overlapping and bureaucratic rule making"? You can't charge people on vibes like "underlying values and beliefs"

So you believe math is a jobs program. We do more work, don't need as many mathematicians, although there doesn't necessarily mean fewer as they're now a lot more productive.

Knowledge and discovery isn't the point, it's that this particular group of people are in sole control of the pace and what gets discovered

You think if researchers in math got tens of millions they would have solved these problems?

What's your mental model here?

Again, oai is giving mathematicians millions, they're hiring them to work on purely academic problems. Funding has increased considerably.

What is the problem?

So explain it. Is it press releases?

This technology lets you do research a lot more efficiently. It's all there. If you're interested is solving interesting problems there has never been a better time. If you're interested in being the first to solve outstanding problems from decades ago, maybe not as good, but then again let's be honest, chances are you weren't going to solve them anyway.

I don't know what "the credit" means. They're spending tens of millions to solve these problems, hire academics at insane salaries and give out millions in research credits. You care about language on some press release?

Academics are paid tiny sums at post doc and professor levels. Oai comes along paying millions to these people and giving them the tools and support to actually solve problems.

It's funny you compare it to bicycle racing rather than automotive technology which I imagine you would have to concede that pushing the frontier of things like fuel efficiency and safety would be good.

This stuff reads as cope by scientists who spent their entire careers chasing these problems. The idea that someone was just around the corner to solving a problem that's been outstanding for decades, and the model used their brilliant recent insights to crack it (ignoring the cutoff date, that would have to be fabricated as well).

Why aren't you excited for pushing the frontier of knowledge. Unless you think math is really a jobs program for gifted individuals keeping them busy and unproductive.

Congrats! You just hit the clever hypothetical on my anti flock bingo card!

Step one: find two things that differ in nearly every relevant respect

Step two: identify the broad category they share.

Step three: ask, “If you accept one, why don’t you accept the other?”

https://mleverything.substack.com/p/anti-flock-activist-bing...

Or they move to a neighborhood not patrolled by flock?

You hold such a ridiculous position I don't know how to argue with it. Cops don't care about crime or stolen property? Why have cops at all? It's like arguing w a third grader

I think his point is that the people that are against the technology will never change their mind, regardless of what you do to assuage them. It's a lost cause.

Everyone and every business makes mistakes. We don't go on an apology tour every time we make a mistake. On the net he believes he's doing good in this world.

For instance, a mistake he spoke about was not providing strict enough guards on operators, allowing them to conduct unlawful searches. He's since corrected that and looks for new ways to restrict and audit platform access. What's the point of dwelling on this? Is the anti-flock lunatic cutting down cameras going to read the press release and think "gee, Flock is turning a new leaf", obviously not. It just adds more fuel to the fire taking away from the good work they do.

SF has (had?) a lot of car thefts.

Suppose there was a technology where, when you report your car as stolen, police would be able to track exactly where this car is currently and it's history over the last 2 weeks.

You don't think this would have ANY impact of police being able to apprehend the thief?

In Houston, three cameras near an attempted child abduction had been cut down. Police Chief Noe Diaz said investigators consequently could not use them to identify and track the suspect's red sedan.

Why do anti-flock activists insist that it doesn't help police apprehend criminals. It obviously does. It only makes sense that a police officer having access to cameras that track license plates in real time would help apprehend criminals escaping capture. Come on, you don't seriously believe this. What would have to be true about the world, police, criminals etc of this not to be true.

https://www.police1.com/alprs-in-focus/why-cities-are-rethin...

> A small sample of this is people cutting down Flock cameras. That's a "crime" that wouldn't even exist had these mass surveillance networks not been constructed in the first place.

You can't destroy public property because you disagree with a policy. Let me give you an example.

Suppose I am against abortion. Firebombing an abortion clinic is a "crime" that wouldn't exist had these places that kill unborn children not been constructed in the first place.

Do you get it now?