thomas_ma

Apple’s “way” for many years included a maniacal focus on nailing the details.

Are there any states where Medicaid funds "emergency situations" for people who are not otherwise eligible for Medicaid? I've never heard of that. EMTALA requires hospitals to treat anyone in emergency situations, but doesn't to my knowledge provide a mechanism to pay for those treatments. The patient still gets billed and hospital likely just doesn't get paid.

Homes in greater Boston are definitely not all or even mostly up to code now. My old ~1900 greater Boston apartment still had live knob-and-tube wiring. Fortunately the 1880 home I own now was thoroughly rewired and now more or less in line with the electric code, although it’s still far from modern building code in other domains (plumbing, rafter spacing, insulation, stair rise/run, list goes on).

In some important ways quality was due to the availability of materials, but cheap labor played a big role too. Many building practices before WWII were extremely labor-intensive compared to today. Lathe and plaster walls, knob and tube, board sheathing, fieldstone/rubble foundations, mortise door hardware, etc.

Immobilizers had an order-of-magnitude larger impact on car theft than LoJack. It used to be relatively trivial to start a car without the keys once inside. Now (disregarding certain Hyundai/Kia models) it’s essentially impossible to start without the key.

How can a consumer actually try this to send money? This says Wells Fargo is live now but after logging into Wells Fargo I don't see any obvious new feature.

I've been following this series. It seems like the journalists are trying to make a scandal where there really isn't one. I don't see how buried cables if left undisturbed are really an issue at all. The ones in the water maybe, but even there how much lead can a single cable really leach into water such that it rises to an unhealthy level? Maybe the ones strung on poles are an issue, but even then--how much is lead really going to flake off an intact cable? Remember that in many parts of the country we still have lead water pipes and tons of lead-painted surfaces. What's the relative risk of these cables compared to, say, houses that kids live in that have accessible lead paint surfaces?

It does seem reasonable to ask that if a lead cable is overhead on poles and not in use anymore it should be pulled down. In general we shouldn't leave a ton of abandoned infrastructure up in the air on poles.

I can believe there are health issues for telco workers who historically worked with lead cables, and the telcos absolutely need to protect their current workforce from lead if they are regularly working around and disturbing this old infrastructure.

In what sense did the iMac G4 fail to live up to the hype? That was my first Mac, I still have it. Thought it was an incredible computer for the time--the iMac + OS X 10.1 Puma was absolutely magical coming from Windows 98 on a beige Dell.

The design still looks incredible too, 20+ years later.

I will grant that the Newton failed. In the Apple hardware category, I'd also add the iPod Hi-Fi, the butterfly keyboard, and the touch bar.

That said, Apple's failures are rare and their multi-decade track record of delivering on hype is unsurpassed.

Energy efficiency is going to be better with induction in that scenario since it only heats the food, not the pan, stovetop, etc. On top of that, the pollution is dramatically reduced. A modern natural gas turbine at a power plant is dramatically cleaner burning than an open flame in a kitchen stove.

This is very true. I’ve been in a bunch of “luxury” apartments in the Boston area…the finishes are modern maybe but rarely luxury. Vinyl flooring, cheap (albeit stainless steel) appliances, small bathrooms, etc.

But, why is universal wired broadband in very rural areas of the US an unreasonable expectation? We did the same thing 100 years ago with universal service requirements for telephone. As I understand it, the build out was subsidized by the government along with a universal service fee for all phone lines.

Is the infrastructure for low-broadband in low density areas inherently more expensive than POTS infrastructure was 75-100 years ago?

I think most people agree with you that Google can beat OpenAI on the eng/tech. Scary part for Google is: how do you monetize it? They might “beat” OpenAI with a better chat AI, but if that cannibalizes their $100bn search ad business…they are in trouble

I mostly agree with you on this, although I do think in the case of modern China to be intellectually honest one has to be careful to not attribute all the good things to capitalism and all the bad things to communism.

The consumer-facing user agreement rarely applies in corporate settings. Customers negotiate master agreements with the vendor (in this case Slack, or maybe Salesforce) which limit ways the vendor can use their data, and often have significant financial penalties for sharing data without customer permission.