schnevets

The problem is failure seems more costly than the 30-120 minute call that may align all necessary parties. I think a lot of effective work cultures have moved towards the "move fast and expect mistakes" mentality you describe, but most people/organizations are still carrying mentalities from the "old ways"

I firmly believe 20 minutes is the optimal amount of time to meet, introduce a problem and evidence, and make a decision that allows all parties to move forward aligned.

I suspect office work defaulted to 30 minute calls because of TV/Radio broadcasts in the early 20th century, but I haven't researched this theory further.

I usually say if every human being on the planet were placed in Texas, it would be less dense than Paris as an argument against an area being "too crowded", but this is an even more jarring comparison.

This feels timely. Without going into specifics, I built an automation for a non-tech colleague 6 months ago. This morning I heard that he "can no longer see the results of the automation". I have no clue what that means, but I'll be meeting with him in 4 hours so he can share his screen.

I have suspicions about what could be the cause - shifts in privileges, user-amnesia, or maybe the automation had no events in the last 2 weeks and I just need to provide some reassurance that everything is working as expected. Odds are I'll have to reconfigure his dashboard or "shudder" add an email to the process. Whatever, he'll probably message me in another 3 months with a new observation.

Somewhat unrelated to this most recent feedback, I think tech has built great frameworks and underlying technology, but few people are mindful of the "final mile" that puts things in front of people's faces. Tailor-made AI solutions feel like the antithesis of this challenge to me; what has worked is withered technology like the interfaces that people trust.

Counterpoint: My primitive monkey brain likes getting blueberries in wintertime and cheap toys from China.

As a homebrewer, this is a comment I was expecting to see. Barley prices skyrocketed in 2021 due to increased demand (COVID) and geopolitical turmoil (One major European barley producers happened to invade another). These increased prices along with the quality jump in American beers (and becoming a father) reduced my interest in brewing, but it's still a hobby I revere.

Grape sales to hobbyists won't save the industry, but it could diversify the market slightly. Home winemaking is obviously less efficient than manufacturing, but when the supply must be liquidated that becomes a feature instead of a bug.

Pretty cool! I remembered having a brainstorming session with co-workers about all the cool use-cases for e-ink displays over a decade ago. A product precisely like this was definitely mentioned, as was conference room displays, data center cage information, Kanban-style sticky notes in manufacturing, dynamic game pieces, among others. You'd think simple displays like the PaperMono would be as cheap as bluetooth speakers by now, but I know there are some major patent restrictions.

I can tell you this conversation happened over a decade ago because LCD Touchscreens were still more expensive than e-ink at the time.

Why does it have to be a camera? Surely there are other sensors in this age of untethered innovation that could apply. Give me a "smart nose" that will explain whether the unusual smell is coming from the vegetable drawer, dairy section, or no man's land in the back of the top shelf. Give me a top-of-the-line thermometer that can warn me if leftovers are going into the fridge too hot.

"Private chauffeur for your burrito" is proving to be too costly. Time for New Yorkers to rise up and side with the BurritoBus™

Place your order 6 hours in advance and our hyperadvanced algorithm will place your burrito on a hyperefficient route alongside other orders within your neighborhood. Estimated arrival times remain hyperaccurate (15 minute window) and your neighborhood FoodBusser is paid an hourly wage with hyperbenefits.

Everyone is replying to my comment to talk about social nets and failures in the justice system, but I agree that the math is a more interesting challenge. The site I was talking about is thousands of acres in an undeveloped area, and while you accurately note the barrier is more cost effective, the number of patrols and response time for incidents (including false alarms) grows with scale. The owner could lock down the site like a fortress from a James Bond movie, but let's not forget that those thousands of acres are just gathering sunlight, so at some point it stops being cost-effective.

And I mostly introduce this issue as a contrast to panels on developed land like the canals, which serve other functions and are less likely to have the risks associated with such a single-purpose site.

Anecdotally speaking, I have heard of a massive California solar farm in an undeveloped area that has serious vandalism problems. Junkies will find ways through the fencing at night, strip copper and other materials from panels, and cause thousands in damages and lost energy just to extract enough scrap for a fix.

Nothing short of a face-to-face security response will deter these criminals, so there it is a challenging cost-benefit balance. At least panels in parking lots and other developed spaces have the benefit of witnesses. I'm sure a 20 foot climb up a steel beam over running water is a decent deterrent as well.

I'd argue the entertainment industry is reaching a ceiling on the quality that inflated budgets guarantee. Microsoft could throw a billion dollars at Halo 6 and then get an unfavorable response because Master Chief doesn't get the shotgun early enough in the campaign.

Somehow I doubt merging once-competing-now-heavily-downsized studios will be a recipe for success (see also the merging of Bethesda and Obsidian Software). Not that managing an army of game developers among one of the world's largest armies of developers is an easy task... but it does seem like the key is smaller teams with more creative liberty (hopefully working without the burden of an existing IP with such lofty expectations)

Something tells me Troy the Salesforce Admin/BD Analyst did not cause the SAAS infrastructure to go down.

And I think you're confusing crud with slop.

Sounds like a desktop machine with a few USB ports. You could probably sell this architecture to today's home buyers, especially those who have been lionizing the Sears mid-century "homekits". Many of those homes looked "cookie-cutter" when they were assembled, but small alterations to facade, adaptations to account for terrain, and a few customer preferences led to cozy neighborhoods. Too bad HOAs became drunk on power.

People love the promise of renovation and "growing with the home". When my wife and I bought earlier this year, I was enthusiastic about one underutilized wall on the mudroom; I could already imagine a "bump-out" that becomes an in-law suite.

I remember reading this article about Swedish home manufacturing two years ago, and immediately thought of the Hudson Valley (where I lived at the time) https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/08/headway/how-an-american-d...

The Hudson River used to be a main manufacturing artery of the United States but has since become a relic. I still believe that region upstream of NYC could address the housing crisis plaguing the northeast of the United States. Imagine barges of housing components drifting down-river to be assembled in any coastal metro on the Atlantic coastline.

All of the Shaun the Sheep stuff is phenomenal

Agreed. Elsewhere in this conversation people mention simple games that procgen well: Spelunky, Terraria, Dwarf Fortress, Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup

These are games painting with a 16 color palette while the technology exists for any shade in RGB. The more variations, the less likely things will be coherent (let alone brilliant)

I vaguely recall an episode of the Triple Click podcast around 2023 where they had a serious AI fanboy who was rah rah-ing about future procedural generation in games. It might have been Casey Anthony, but I'm unable to re-listen while at work.

The fanboy started saying how they could have endless different levels in Destiny 2... which is absurdly off-base since the entire game is just running through the same 9 sandboxes and 12 raids over and over and over again

He then went on to talk about AI creating an album as perfect as OK Computer on-demand, which was gently putdown by Kirk (who is an exceptional musician but also chill enough to suffer fools)

Yeap. In my pantry right now, I probably have 12 reusable bags. Some of them have been used hundreds of times (and have the battle scars and stains to prove it) while others were used once because I had to run into a grocery store unprepared. The math probably averages out to a slight advantage for reusable, and that doesn't take unique use cases into account: for example, I found every container I owned useful during a recent move.

I'm sure skeptics like the article's writers would tweak some numbers to say disposables have an advantage, so who cares? The fact is there are less gunky, sludge-riddled bags in the gutter of my downtown and that absolutely justifies the bans, despite what this article or the NY Post might argue.

I canceled Spotify a few months ago have been using a free Amazon music trial. It's staggering how the Amazon interface is just worse in every single way.

Concurrent to this streaming evaluation, I inherited a Sonos system and by the gods is that app pitiful! You would think the premium sound solution that is supposed to "just work" would prioritize UI.

Follow-up guide: How to get rid of 100 lbs of potatoes in 6 months

So Vanguard owns one-eighth of ADC, an REIT whose stock price has declined 2.65% in the last 5 years. Surely there is space in the market for a smaller, leaner, possibly privately-owned REIT whose values more closely align with 2026 values and will one day be able to eat ADC's lunch.

  Researchers are careful to note that the Underpants Index most strongly reflects soil fertility, meaning nutrient availability, rather than soil health in the fullest sense. A soil loaded with nutrients will break down cotton fast, but that does not automatically mean the soil is in good ecological condition. In natural ecosystems like meadows or forests, very high nutrient levels often signal human disturbance, not health, and can drive out rare plant species.

To me, this is a more interesting finding than Lawn=Bad, Garden=Good. Natural ecosystems should not have exceedingly high nutrients, which may benefit invasive plants. It sounds similar to algae blooms in ponds caused by fertilizer runoff.

Upvoting this for asking the candid question that so many commenters dance around. I can't imagine a 22-year-old confidently walking into an interview (or getting introduced to a team) and assuring everyone that they have the "harness" or "guardrails" to confidently contribute at the level of a 10x engineer.

If we apply the Gartner Hype Cycle to this disruptive technology, I do believe AI will hit a "slope of enlightenment" where an AI-assisted Analyst is properly understood in industries and can take productive roles. Conveniently, this will probably coincide with a lower interest rate where companies have funds for a talent acquisition spree/rapid growth.

With that being said, today's graduates are stuck in an awful market with a lot of charlatans selling crappy online courses and bad ideas.

I smirk and laugh this little slideshow and then remember that my own work involves internal tools to promote governance and productivity while formalizing requirements to two outsourced developers.

I don't think I'm one of the red team's 7 captains, but I don't exactly have my hands on the paddle every single day. After all, I can find the time to lollygag on HN between 9-5.

I wouldn't even compare it to a tool. People frequently "build their own house" where they sub out 75% of the skilled labor and act as a General Contractor/glorified gopher.

And you won't get purity tests from the layperson: in the end, you're responsible for the build quality so if you tirelessly labor/oversee those teams you're considered capable; if it ends sub-par, then you're a stooge.

Half of my property is woods and there are multiple fallen oaks that are slowly returning to the ground, but the canopy remains exposed. I'm constantly torn between letting "nature take its course" or speeding things up with a chainsaw and carefully sapling.

I have also considered walnuts or fruit-bearing trees and slowly converting my land to something more akin to a food forest.

Feedback loop is right. I think there are parallels to the Blank Check podcast playing "The Box Office Game", where those cinephiles try to determine the Box Office Top 5 on the week a particular film was released (even though the players may have been in diapers or not even born on that particular week).

I have also seen this obsessive focus in sports fans: What was the half-season where Pat Maroon played on the New Jersey Devils as a rental? Well they made the playoffs that year which must have been Taylor Hall's MVP Award Season and ah yes! that had to be 2017-18!

Recommendations have gotten noticeably worse since the glory days of Discover Weekly. It's possible that my tastes have just stagnated in my mid-30s*, but I just found myself listening to ~40 essential artists, so I decided to just buy once on Bandcamp, knowing that the music creators are getting a larger cut than Spotify would ever give them.

Also, I can only give a thumbs down to Paul Simon's Call Me Al so many times. It's not a terrible song, but the way it snuck into every goddamn radio station I request became comical.

*Although algorithm discovery stopped appealing to me, I actually replaced Spotify with Radio Paradise and soma.fm and have been enjoying these public stations a lot more. I'm just a boring dad who now prefers carefully-curated for everyone over automatically-created for me

The growth rate is surprising to me. Anecdotally, I know at least 5 families who have canceled the service and are outspoken in their distaste (even if many just jumped to equally dubious all-you-can-stream offerings). For most folks, it seemed the AI slop made the service objectively worse just as subscription costs increased.