Favorites July 11th 2023

David Watson

Jul 12, 2023

alecstapp 9h Looks like permitting reform is back on the menu, boys — (src)

Energy permitting reform is super important and it's great to see it moving forward! Apparently chip fab permitting reform is also in the cards.

_natbullard 16h Thought experiment: in a market where there is a 20% gap in future product expectations between buyers and sellers, which group will prevail? coxautoinc.com/wp-co… — (src)

I think that consumers are more likely to be right on this, but it's also a reminder that car dealerships are the worst.

If you're trying to figure out how this happened, it's because we left Afghanistan, and providing arms to Ukraine is much cheaper than fighting a war ourselves. Noah Smith points out that we're spending very little on defence at a moment when China is our most formidable adversary in a century.

hausfath 13h It’s been a pretty grim summer of climate news, with monthly and daily records falling nearly non-stop. But among all the gloom there are some reasons for hope. Let’s take a look! First, the world is no longer on track for the darkest climate futures: theclimatebrink.substack.com/p/emi… — (src)

This is the start of a short thread with a few more graphs. The grim news, if you're wondering, is that coral bleaching in the gulf is going to be extremely extremely bad this summer.

Ethan Mollick @emollick Maybe AI is more of a replacement for Google than we thought? A pilot study randomizes users into performing factual tasks using Google search & ChatGPT (3.5). Googling takes 65% more time & gets no better results, but people don't check AI answers enough https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.01135 — (src)

Worth noting that this is ChatGPT 3.5 without browsing. Using version 4 will definitely get better results, and the browsing extension could help as well. 65% faster results seems significant to me.

Great drone video of Icelandic volcanoes. via kottke

Threads

• Short thread about how Pandora managed to get their iOS app ready earlier because of all the practice they had on earlier mobile platforms that never panned out.

• Thread by Meta's deputy chief privacy officer about privacy on Threads. Includes an explicit explanation that they're not launching in the EU yet because the newest privacy laws there aren't yet finalized, and it's too dangerous to launch until the law is clarified. Is this good for EU residents? Do normal people understand privacy the same way regulators do? Seems doubtful.