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altarius

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Turning Downtown Offices into Housing Isn’t the Solution You Think It Is

sfstandard.com
1 points·by altarius·4 года назад·0 comments

U.S. plastic recycling rate drops to close to 5%

reuters.com
11 points·by altarius·4 года назад·10 comments

comments

altarius
·4 года назад·discuss
Fuji has had the film simulations since the original first-gen X100. Every generation gets faster, has better AF and an added film sim or two. The first and second generation are slow by today's standards and AF is not fast or reliable, but generation three ("X100T") and four ("X100F") are quite good and available used. Generation five ("X100V") did get a new lens that's somewhat sharper as well, but it's probably not why you buy an X100.
altarius
·4 года назад·discuss
Some would call that "machine learning". I know it's hard to make a distinction, but the term "AI" is too ill-defined to argue about what constitues "real AI" and what is mere machine learning. Are those examples "thinking machines" (~= "artificial _intelligence_"? I'd say no, they are very good statistical pattern matchers without any understanding of the subject matter for the most part.

GPT-3 and image generators that have somewhat of a world-model are, imo, closer.
altarius
·4 года назад·discuss
In my opinion, housing is mostly inelastic unless people have to sell due to external circumstances (like being unable to pay mortgage). I don't expect the housing market to decline more than 15-20%, as the more people are "underwater" from their purchase price, the more likely they're to just "wait out the slump". And with low interest rates locked in, many probably don't want to roll their mortgages now. Since we've had such a crazy runup [1] ([2]) in the past few years, a 20% decline still puts many sellers ahead, but I don't think they'd sell at a loss if prices dropped further. SF Case-Schiller is up 25-30% from 2020, and ~50% from 2017, for example.

My personal opinion is that once you've bought in you're locked in and along for the ride. If your house is down 20%, so is most likely the house you consider moving to. Unfortunately housing is often seen as an "investment".

[1] https://wolfstreet.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/US-Housing... [2]
altarius
·4 года назад·discuss
Plus, if you want to fly it "really" legally you often can't. In CA, according to my own research:

- you can't fly over private property,

- pretty much _ALL_ parks&rec departments and counties in the Bay Area prohibit flying in their public parks,

- flying over e.g. public parking lots and the likes is probably a gray area as there's potentially people around,

- airspace at least around here is often regulated anyway, many airports, hospitals with heli pads (not 100% sure about legality of flying within their "zone") and national/state parks that are also no-fly.

I tend to fly in smaller parks and just risk the $500 (?) fine and getting the drone confiscated :( It will just get better once this can happen retroactively :/

But this is mostly why I got a DJI Mini, it's pretty quiet and doesn't draw a lot of attention.
altarius
·4 года назад·discuss
It sounds like they need to hire people that have the most basic understanding of security and authentication -- but that's just too expensive when most customers are looking for the cheapest camera and barely care. Also, you know... beg for forgiveness and all.

I wouldn't be surprised if this happened to this company before.
altarius
·4 года назад·discuss
Correct, it was the iphone 7 that launched in 2016. Iphone X or thereabouts hits about the sweetspot for me.
altarius
·4 года назад·discuss
I can definitely tell a big difference in colors and details (sometimes a tad too much) from a 2016 iphone 6 to a 2020 Pixel 4 eg. But the jump from the Pixel 4a 5G to the 6 Pro wasn't that big, maybe 10-20% subjective improvement. I expect the new generation's improvement to be even more marginal and won't update.
altarius
·4 года назад·discuss
Exactly, I wouldn't be surprised if a driver's paycheck is a substantial part of the total cost, so you might end up needing two to four trucks to haul the same payload due to extra weight of the batteries (and there's an 80k combined weight limit afaik). At $25/hour average (googled) trucker pay that 200 mile trip taking 3-4 hours would cost > $75 per driver. Fuel savings are calculated to be $140, every additional driver costs at least $75.

That's maybe the best use-case for FSD I've yet to see.
altarius
·4 года назад·discuss
Late to respond but I'll do it anyway.

I'd estimate about 75% of the US population would have access to an Uber when the car needs to go to the shop (and $650 would buy a few rides). I wouldn't buy a 15 y/o Fiat/Chrysler but a Toyota or Honda should be decent enough not to need repairs every month, maybe every 6?

And (another thing most people skip) that can help a lot is preventative maintenance and regular checkups that you can schedule at your own convenience that would catch a lot of problems proactively. And you'll have to bring in your leased car too lest you want to get dinged even more at the end.

A cheap car isn't just something you buy and forget, it needs some planning and care that i honestly think most people can't handle. Probably because they're so overworked as you said. But is paying be nearly $30k over 3 years really going to get you ahead, just so you to get you reliably to your job every day to pay for that car? Or is it worth the effort to plan and manage a shitty car for 3 years to save 15k?
altarius
·4 года назад·discuss
On the other hand, I'm surprised how few people are worried at all about taking the COVID-19 antivirals.
altarius
·4 года назад·discuss
Is it any worse than paying $650 literally every month (avg car loan payment now afaict)?

The problem is that people can't save. It'd be prudent to buy the car for $2k and save the remaining $3k somewhere to cover repairs instead of the 5k down payment.

Also, to be fair, what used to be a $2k Toyota was probably more like $5+k lately.
altarius
·4 года назад·discuss
If VR takes shape as imagined by Meta, though I personally don't believe it will, they will absolutely be in an excellent position to market to and profile you. I think the vision is that everyone spends most of their online time in VR - so interacting with all of one's interests/hobbies/discussions, online contacts, searches. All very valuable for monetization through advertisement and profiling.
altarius
·4 года назад·discuss
Correct, but historically the price had been stable and predictable.

Imo you're just trading "beholden to the usgovt" with "beholden to miners, whales and wall street" plus wild price swings. Former or latter may be preferable for certain reasons, but for fiscal stability or day-to-day use the choice seems obvious to me.
altarius
·4 года назад·discuss
I had to return one of these because the connectivity was abysmal. The second one feels about average, no more complaints.

I have a feeling that some of these may have assembly or hardware defects, and only kinda sort of work. The difference between my two phones is very pronounced.
altarius
·4 года назад·discuss
I don't know. This comes up all the time in photog discussions but I think it's just a matter of older Pros being used to it. Last Olympics was the first time I saw almost as many Sony cameras as Canon in the stands, so we will see if the pros all go back to CaNikon because they can't live with Sony and their argos - plenty of people have shot Sony now and Canon/Nikon have equal alternatives.

Canon/Nikon and Sony sure have different ergonomic visions. But I think, at the end of the day, it's more about professional support, parts and service availability, turnaround and general reliability than size/ergo.

Personally, I'm in the Sony camp - I use my 200-600 for hours for wildlife with my "bare" A9 or RIV without any issues. I feel like it's really the lens I'm holding and the camera is just an attachment I look through.

Imo, Sony's customizable enough that _anything_ is just a button away without ever taking my eyes off the EVF, no need for a larger body to fit the buttons and dials. But to each their own, and it's a great that we now have all the options.

And wildlife is a bit of specialty field, AF performance ultimately trumps ergonomics for most serious photographers, I think.
altarius
·4 года назад·discuss
So this includes annual issuing, physical transport of coins and bank notes ("cash"), ATMs and points-of-sale and card payments, wire transfers and debit as wells as "banks" (under bookkeeping!). Compared to just "issuing", bookkeeping on chain and payments in crypto.

Imo, completely biased comparison until the whole population (as they include cash) can pay all their groceries, a sandwich at the corner store and a bus ride in crypto as well as pay taxes.
altarius
·4 года назад·discuss
Possible, but not as cheap and easy as it might seem.

https://sfstandard.com/housing-development/turning-downtown-...
altarius
·4 года назад·discuss
Having used both Python and Ruby professionally and Lua in a hobby setting, they all have their place.

To me, Python feels rooted in procedural programming (as imo evidenced by how many of the built-in base functions behave, statements vs expressions and everything mapping to magic eventually), reminds more of 90s object pascal with syntax-magic than lisp or self.

Then ruby feels like a coherent mix of self/Smalltalk-style "pure" OO and Lisp functional programming, though it's a little "weird" at first when coming from python or c-like langs/java (e.g. iteration is just a method on a collection with the equivalent of a lambda passed in, oh, and that block vs proc vs lambda distinction). So it's not as easy to pick up for mainstream programmers. And since it's often mostly used with rails, that's another whole bag of worms - especially again at first.

Lua is just this special, minimal thing. The whole codebase (including VM internals, lang parser and table) can be studied in an afternoon, the single built-in data structure is actually neat once you're used to it and the c ffi is neat and easy to pick up.

I think python has the familiarity for those coming from mainstream languages, nicely readable syntax and easy uptake going for it. Though I don't like that many new features feel "bolted on" and make the language more complex.

Ruby is just a joy to use once you get into it, although that can take longer than py. Imo, it's combining the best of OO with really practical functional programming.

Lua is to a large extent (and within limits) what you make of it, but a joy to study.
altarius
·4 года назад·discuss
The article also states that an expert "consultant" thinks the car will not pass the German roadworthiness inspection and will not be allowed to drive on public roads thereafter (which has to happen every 2 years?). It's like CA smog plus general inspection of every system including structural integrity and even headlights.
altarius
·4 года назад·discuss
> "Recycling does not work, it never will work, and no amount of false advertising will change that," said report author Judith Enck, a former EPA regional administrator.

Yet cross-checking a few other countries, Germany seems to be leading and its plastic recycling rate seems to be close to 100% according to statista.

Am I missing something?