Just wait till Google spins it off to private equity; it'll be barley running bits of vehicles patched together by the cheapest mechanics they can find.
Enjoy it while you can; I'd love to give it a go myself, but even though I live in a city where they are supposedly in commercial operation, I can't get one to either of the two houses on either side of town that I currently split my time between. I have a buddy who lives a few blocks from one of their zones who walked over just so he could try it out. As of now, our sub-standard, minimally-invested-in-this-century bus system is actually much better suited to my needs.
> rural red states where they welcome the construction
The state legislatures might be all for it, but I can say as someone who lives in South Texas, the actual communities are up in arms against datacenters. Of course there's lots of irony in that one of the reasons the datacenters like the area is that there is a gas pipeline that the locals welcomed that can be used to run turbines.
I'm quite capable of snark and I wouldn't say that I was being particularly so, but maybe something adjacent to it. Mostly I think this is amusingly naive. America has a history of attempts to create utopian communities, but I'm unaware of any that have persisted for terribly long. I think the one I'm most fond of are the Shakers, whose biggest legacy is their carpentry skills which is a hobby of mine.
I didn't really get an explicit yes or no out of the above, but I take it to mean no? That's the interesting question to me - who would be allowed to join such a community, and if someone was discovered to be undesirable for one reason or another, what would be done with them?
Does it recommend taking a break? Mostly I've seen it ask if I'm still watching. I've always assumed this is not for user benefit, but in order to not spend bandwidth on a screen that is not being looked at.
The only site I'm familiar with that has somewhat decent self-limiting functions built in is HN's no procrastination settings. But that's of course because HN isn't run to make money, but as a hobby.
I think my favorite interaction with a dev around this was when I was explaining how his java program looked like a big juicy target for the OOM killer and it had killed it in order to keep the system working. His response was, "I don't care about the system, I care about my program!" And he understood the irony of that, but it was a good reminder that we have somewhat different views and priorities.
> JP Doherty did not want to sign the email. But he knew he didn’t have a choice. His son, Rhys, was scheduled to have strabismus surgery in January, correcting an eye issue that made it difficult for him to walk on his own. The procedure cost $10,000 out of pocket. Doherty discussed the decision with his wife, and while she wanted him to be able to quit, they both knew the kids needed his health insurance. [0]
The hip seems like such a bad example to me. First of all, who do you think needs hip replacements? It's not young people; surgeons don't even like to do them on young people (and to a joint replacement surgeon, "young" is under 60) since there's a good chance they'll outlive the joint itself. And it's a one-time cost for a surgery that increases an old person's independence vs an ongoing cost of palliative care (whatever that means) and having to provide more care for someone who has a potentially treatable disability. Hip replacement is considered "the surgery of the century" - the 20th century that is, because it is one of the most successful in terms of function and satisfaction provided to patients.
I got a junk Precision workstation last year as a "polite" home server (it's quiet and doesn't look like industrial equipment, but still has some server-like qualities, particularly the use of ECC RAM). I liked it so much that it ended up becoming my main desktop.
I believe your experience is with the top end of the distribution.