fintechjock
I don’t feel bad for them anymore. Their voters seem to be fine with this status quo. And I get why other countries see these fines as trying to raise taxes by other means because it hasn’t and won’t change anything.
It's easy to just read about the breakthrough and see it as one neat, linear line to get there, and hard to comprehend the hours, months and years that so many spent to get there. Big congrats to you, Sean, Nat and the entire team!
Very interesting, thanks!
The tweet is from Mark Henry who updates that chart often. It’s cited pretty often. There is a bit about the methodology here: https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/chart-of-the-day-or-century-8...
My original list was just some brief examples, all of which I think hold up, but not nearly the entire list of data center benefits to all consumers. (One of those other benefits being the means to have this very conversation). There isn’t much of a way I can see to remove data centers from the technological progress we’ve benefited from over the last couple of decades.
Software prices are down 73% since 2000: https://x.com/Mark_J_Perry/status/2015463505298878746
> Nearly unlimited cloud storage
$9 / month for 2tb of cloud storage is a pretty sweet deal for anyone. And unfathomable if you travelled back in time before data centers were scaled.
Data centers are a net good for all consumers. Pretty significantly!
I agree with your take on tradeoffs when it comes to DCs that are built with tax abatements, which are a terrible deal for consumers. Those that are not receiving tax benefits will make up for short-term energy prices with long-term property tax benefits, that will eventually pay back the grid upgrades and fund even more upgrades in the future.
Considering utility rates, I would happily pay more for utilities in the short term to have 30+ years of lower property taxes. The data centers property taxes would go to paying for that buildout, and over time it's a great deal for consumers. That said, I'm in Texas so the property tax issue is more prevalent than it would be in New York.
Nearly unlimited cloud storage - AWS / Google / etc. Data centers are the Cloud
Lower property taxes - data centers increase the property tax base, creating tax compression, which shift property tax from consumer –> company. I'm in Texas, so can only be sure that is true here. I have not looked at all other states.
But a new iPhone Pro is $154 cheaper than it was in 2020 when adjusted for inflation, and that is probably all the average consumer really cares about
I would think that consumers would vastly benefit from cheaper software, nearly unlimited cloud storage, lower property taxes. Heck, the next generation of data centers are looking like they will actually be net energy producers.
Consumers might not know that they benefit from data centers, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t
It is also worth noting that the non-wealthy pay for higher education in two ways: first through tuition, and second through the taxes required to fund the very programs that provided their "discount."
Only about 10 minutes into Bard right now but this is the first time its been stumped. Haven't tried much code yet though
Overall, UX and speed are good. Results are not bad.
Other sports didn’t handle it so well (baseball, cycling, etc)
Just as people were asking “did Lance / Sammy / Barry / Arnold really do that incredible feat without juicing?” I think that we will now be asking “did Janice really write that blog post or was it GPT-4?”
Scary world
I'm betting that your biggest hurdle will be post-purchase. If I remember correctly, Tony Fadell talks about how hard it was to disrupt the contractor model when building Nest. People often just bought whatever thermostat their contractor recommended, and those contractors were incentivized to push them towards specific brands. They beat this by just making the product super easy to install by the consumer and cutting out the contractor all together (something I doubt is feasible with a heat pump).
Maybe that won't be a problem with the DTC model considering the contractor is only brought in post-purchase, but I wonder if this really takes hold if competitors start trying to corner local installers. Good luck!
And they shut down the wrong Magnolia’s!
We won’t be able to spend our way to adoption at that rate. And people aren’t going to adopt public transit in a city built around cars (93.4% of Austin families own a vehicle).
Sounds like we both wish mass public transit was the reality, but sadly it’s just not realistic.
My read of Austin:
- I was born here in 1995. Except for a few years, I've seen double-digit growth in most measurables every year of my life. Growth is the only thing I have ever known so I am comfortable with it, and I can also see why previous generations (I.e. my parents) are not.
- Change is painful. Especially at this clip and for this long. But man, it is beautiful.
- The City Council here is undoubtedly the worst part of the problem. They consistently buckle to NIMBYs, and allocate money in just unreasonably idiotic ways. ("No one riding the train that cost $1.1 billion? Easy fix! Spend $7 billion more!") They are making the change much more painful.
- Natives were largely fine with the first wave of California refugees in 2008. This COVID wave is different though. The new movers kept their jobs and are working remote from Austin – meaning that they still have their Cali / NY inflated paychecks. It feels like a money fight, and we keep losing.
They’re phasing out older variants of the F-15 C. They will be replaced by F-15 EXs when they are ready, and until then the old F-15s will be replaced with F-22s
Productivity almost always goes up in a recession, especially one accompanied with massive layoffs (like early COVID).
Productivity is going down right now compared to 2020 because we are pretty much at full employment.
These productivity measurements aren’t really tracking individual productivity at all.
Agree with your overall point. However, this probably isn’t feasible considering most companies will follow Tesla’s FSD upgrade model.
Autopilot / FSD upgrades are often more safety than feature related. Allowing people to opt out of upgrades but keep their older FSD just means a bunch of vehicles on the road with depreciated safety features.
I’ve run a US Senate campaign. We raised tens of millions of dollars, and I can confidently say that corporate donations made no impact in any policy decisions - on the campaign or the official side.
That extends to individual donations as well. The caps are ~$10,000 per couple. Considering the cost of a federal campaign, no person or corporation can buy a campaign when costs are in the tens of millions and contribution caps are in the thousands.