Favorites April 10th 2024

Some Random Person’s Lawn, October 2023

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This is an amazing resource, and one that people in cities across the country can use *today*. Bad news for Mountain View, by the base measures, we're doing quite poorly.

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Journalists get quotes for free, but hedge funds have to pay for consulting. Is the NYTimes source relationship standard a form of collusion? (this is mostly a joke).

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I enjoyed Dune 2, although I think it may be the least funny movie I've seen in a long time. One commenter said that this particular shot "conveys menace without any of the whimsy of flying"

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Here's the paper, which is from Google Deepmind, seems like a cool way to reduce inference costs.

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Somehow I found myself explaining the concept of acting by showing my daughter the "You Shall Not Pass" scene, followed by the Ian Mcellen Extras scene.

Longer Reads

• A long thread explaining a new paper about inclusive zoning in LA. TL;DR: "16% IZ requirement reduces market-rate production by 180k units over 10 years; almost half. If that reduction causes rents to increase at least 4.8% instead of 4% per year, the costs may outweigh the benefits" He also points out that "At best, every below-market unit produced by IZ reduces market-rate production by more than 4 units". (src)(cached)
• A thread explaining that there's likely to now be an oversupply of Lithium for batteries. It's becoming very clear that Toyota screwed up with their "Hybrids+Hydrogen" strategy. (src)(cached)

Flotsam and Jetsam

– Higher wages for fast food workers have lead to productivity improvements, some of them just involving changing the kitchen processes. To some extent we're just matching what other places that have had high wages for longer have done. (src)(cached)
– Jobs report came in strong again, above expectations. (src)(cached)
– Somehow it's unclear if anyone connected to the ship that hit the Baltimore bridge will be held liable in any way. (src)(cached)
– If the US allowed nurses from the UK to move here, they could approximately double their salaries! Cops too. (src)(cached)
– Nate Silver plays a lot of poker, and argues that up to the intermediate some robust advice is: "when in doubt, just bet 50% of the pot" and "mostly raise or fold, not call" (src)(cached)
– Many writing tasks have historically been signaling exercises, like a letter of recommendation: just a demonstration that a professor was willing to put in a bunch of work to help a student. Automating these will make them useless for their intended purpose. (src)(cached)
– A lot of people seemed to like this article where an Atlantic writer went on a cruise for the first time. (src)
– Too many people think that Native Americans are Tolkien-esque elves (src)(cached)
– Tesla 'FSD' was offered as a free trial to all Tesla owners, one person is theorizing that it may be because it was being used *less* recently. Worth noting the number of miles where the car was truly driving itself (src)
– Merlin Mann recommends Taskmaster, and even has a specific episode to start with. (src)
– XKCD's April Fools game is a collaboratively constructed ball machine. (src)
– The guy who wrote the prison arc in Andor is going to be making a 'discovery of the force' biblical-style Star Wars prequel. (src)
– Great discussion of how content moderation can look insane from the outside, especially to someone incorrectly flagged. It means everything to them, but for the content moderator, it was Tuesday. (src)
– The lottery has a much larger 'house take' than most other forms of gambling (src)(cached)