[-] grahamsz@kbin.social 16 points 2 years ago

Also I can understand taking that risk for yourself. Certainly it's way outside my comfort zone, but I'm not going to tell someone else they can't do something dangerous. But how can you go out and hire people to help you knowing there's a 25% chance they'll be giving their lives for you?

[-] grahamsz@kbin.social 10 points 2 years ago

It'll be interesting to see if Americans would ever go for a "City Car". I believe Citreon are bringing the ami to the USA and I'd be tempted to get one a second car - it's certainly well under that pricepoint.

[-] grahamsz@kbin.social 8 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

As a resident of Longmont CO who's had municipal fiber for 5 or 6 years it's been nothing but a win for the city. Conveniently Centurytel and Comcast both offer gigabit (or faster) speeds, but they didn't do that before they were forced to compete.

Hard to say if the number of tech people buying homes here is a result of that or a result of the increase in prices in Boulder, but I'm sure it's helped bring people here (and further drive up prices). Plus it meant during covid that the city was able to give free fiber to low income kids who needed to switch to remote school.

Plus it's had a 60% take rate, which is way higher than the original projections. That did certainly increase the capital costs of the rollout but it's meaning the bond payback is ahead of schedule. I'm just trying to find a good excuse for why I need 10G service.

[-] grahamsz@kbin.social 36 points 2 years ago

Yes - it's been the job of the DRAM controller for almost the entire history of computing. But that's still a part of the computer and if it stops working then your RAM will go blank in a fraction of a second

[-] grahamsz@kbin.social 38 points 2 years ago

Even if it's powered, RAM will lose its data on the order of a tenth of a second. RAM doesn't just require power, it requires that your computer constantly read and rewrite it - so every 64ms your computer has to read every gigabyte of RAM and write it back.

[-] grahamsz@kbin.social 33 points 2 years ago

Yeah, especially when you imagine that they are accustomed to not having to seek out knowledge or even entertainment. When algorithms feed you everything and your attention becomes a commodity you don't need to develop the skill to actually find it, or the wherewithal to even imagine that you need to go out and find it.

I believe those of us who were online in the 1995-2010 era remember what it was like to have an internet full of possibilities that you could explore and discover, but that was the exception.

[-] grahamsz@kbin.social 13 points 3 years ago

Generally, insurance companies aren't taking that risk. They can decline to renew your policy if they give you 120 days notice, so, for the most part, they are only insuring the next year.

This is all about the immediate risk of major hurricanes and the rapidly climbing costs of rebuilds. I know people in Colorado are really struggling to rebuild because costs have risen so much recently and insurance didn't keep up. I recently moved insurers (to Farmers, ha) and increased my rebuild amount by nearly 30%. That certainly came with a policy hike, but gives me enough that I have reasonable confidence I could indeed rebuild a comparable house.

I suspect there's also a risk concentration problem with some insurers. I've got to imagine they are looking at massive computer models of possible hurricane tracks and seeing scenarios where there's an outsized exposure. Still, what is curious to me is that they can't price it in as that's essentially the business that they are in. Would the required rate increase really be that unpalatable?

[-] grahamsz@kbin.social 16 points 3 years ago

But I think we focus on the wrong loopholes. The ability to accrue capital gains forever and not pay taxes on it, then die and let your heirs take advantage of a basis step-up is fucked up. Maybe if your net worth exceeds a certain amount then you should have to mark-to-market annually and pay taxes as if you sold and rebought at the market price.

[-] grahamsz@kbin.social 18 points 3 years ago

I think the problem is that most of us define "rich" by the accumulation of wealth, but for tax purposes it's usually defined as annualized earned income. Many billionaires pull no salary, and manage to defer capital gains so effectively pay very little tax.

[-] grahamsz@kbin.social 17 points 3 years ago

Well yeah, it wouldn't be 52% if they were doing it on purpose.

How did the twits possibly not foresee this happening? Surely they have someone with some SEO experience left, anyone.

It'll take a while to recover from this - google aren't going to add half a billion pages back in nearly as quickly as they take them out.

[-] grahamsz@kbin.social 8 points 3 years ago

Also worth noting that reddit control the metrics that they release for a lot of this.

There's no real measure of good engagement vs shallow engagement, so they can find a way to show that user visits are up even if the worthwhile content is starting its slow slide. Shit, i probably used to visit reddit once a day for 12 hours, but now i visit 5 times a day when i instinctively enter the URL.

[-] grahamsz@kbin.social 11 points 3 years ago

On point 1, i was discussing this with my partner and she replied "I know you'd keep the 2.75% mortgage". I felt seen

view more: next ›

grahamsz

joined 3 years ago