Reading this was a relief, I've only got a hobbyist's knowledge of impedance matching in the electrical sense and felt like I was going crazy... Good to know I'm not alone
Hm, it seems like it'd make sense to automate a script to send one small prompt at, say, 7 or 8am so that you get your reset around noon instead of having to wait until 5h or more into the workday.
I never quite understood why they picked 5h, it seems oddly arbitrary
> They should be underground (that’s not shockingly expensive at the scale we talk about)
... I'm not sure you realize the size of a modern hyperscale datacenter? They're pretty dang big.
The amount of earthmoving to bury one would also be awful for the environment. There's really no need to complicate it that much, they're big warehouses full of computers, just shove them on some unused industrial land somewhere as is already being done.
They should be required to pay for new renewable generation, I agree. That much is common sense.
Sure, that's much more feasible, but there's no real point. We don't do this for any other kind of industrial infrastructure (except the kind that HAS to go in residential areas, like utility substations). It's like the ultimate first world problem, spending money and gas on earthmoving so that the few dozen people who might occasionally drive past this thing can glance at a grassy berm instead of a concrete wall.
People in my area are complaining about data centers being built in rural fields and on former aluminum plant and power plant sites. The debate has become pretty detached from reality. What remains rooted in reality mostly comes down to electric bills / power consumption and the fact that, as everyone is saying, it's the only way for people to push back against big tech billionaires.
Wow, greebling is a good metaphor for it that I never would have thought of.
> "every pod has a machine"
Everything you mentioned is annoying, but I think this one is the worst. I don't know why it loves slapping on meaningless info blurbs like that. I guess it carries over from training on test/demo programs where the functionality is clearly spelled out, but on a production UI it looks so bad.
> Congestion pricing is one of the few policy ideas that's so overwhelmingly positive that even the people who try to argue against it end up strengthening the argument. Love it.
> "What about all the people who need to drive into the city for work?" Uhh... don't!
... Look man, I'm in favor of the policy too, but this reads like straight satire. Please tell me you're trolling.
No. People should not expect to free-ride on an adjacent city's economy while inflicting severe negative externalities on the local community and its infrastructure.
The entire point of the policy is to reduce the number of people driving into cities. "Well how am I going to drive into the city?!" is the position that's indistinguishable from satire.
Yeah, I know, I agree with all this. I'm still saying that if your entire argument for the absolutely giant section of society that drives into cities for work, which includes the rich, the poor, the disabled, those with large families, etc etc is "lol just don't do that stupid" don't be surprised when you find it hard to win support.
You kind of have it backwards. Cities that overbuild commercial space and underbuild housing get to reap the sales taxes without having to provide the same level of services.
And then the residents complain that people keep commuting to work in the offices they zoned for instead of housing towers.
> People should not expect to free-ride on an adjacent city's economy while inflicting severe negative externalities on the local community and its infrastructure.
Are you kidding me? Free riding?
I pay the same taxes on my NY income as if I lived in NY plus congestion pricing atop that. Your transportation in the city free rides on me after NY/NYC do their voodoo transfers.
You shut down soooo many lanes then pretend the problem is the commuters.
Consider: "Broad"-way is effectively 1 lane southbound in the southern part of Manhattan.
People who live in NY pay NY taxes and NY rent. The reason you do not live in the city is because you prefer to arbitrage the difference in rents. The reason this arbitrage exists is because the costs incurred by e.g. taxes and congestion tolls are not sufficiently high to fully eliminate the free-riding.
I don't think taxes and tolls should be high enough to fully eliminate the arbitrage, but the existence of the arbitrage is an existence proof of the gap internalized and externalized costs.
I also don't think the problem is commuters per se. The problem is cars. But commuters are the primary source of cars.
Why stop your argument at rent? The cost of living is higher for everything in the city! Food, concerts, clothes all higher! That doesn't make free-riders out of everyone not paying NYC prices for a hot dog.
Even if I could afford my house+land smack dab in the middle of Tribeca I would choose to live where I am now.
Once, years ago, I preferred the city. The reason I do not live in the city today is because I now prefer not to. Rent has nothing to do with that preference changing over time.
The cost of everything being higher is principally due to rent (in particular land rents). Food, concerts, clothes, coffee, all of them have a "land upon which this was retailed and sold + land upon which the person behind the counter lives" line item. In high-COL areas, this invisible line item makes up a gigantic portion of any bill you pay anywhere.
I'm not sure what the rest of your comment is about? That's fine if you have that preference. Expressing that preference generates negative externalities on the people who do live in the city, and you should have to internalize those costs to whatever degree possible.
Your rents, by the way, do not just pay for your house and land. Your rent pays principally for location. So the idea that you're not engaging in rent arbitrage because you wouldn't want to pay the same amount to have the same unit in Tribeca is nonsense. The question is: would you pay more to have the same house, land, surroundings, and also have immediate access to city amenities and jobs.
The answer to that is already empirically yes. Because you pay the cost you do for your current house, land, surroundings, then you pay an additional cost (an insufficiently internalized one) to commute into the city. Time, tolls, stress, vehicle ownership, parking, etc. So obviously the exact same set of facts minus the commute, despite being physically impossible, would be a more preferable product.
Or to put it another way: would you pay more than $0 to have a teleportation portal from your home in the suburbs to your work in the city. My suspicion is yes.
> I'm not sure what the rest of your comment is about...
You said I live where I live to arb rent. I said, no I simply prefer where I live.
> Would you pay more to have the same house, land, surroundings, and also have immediate access to city amenities and jobs.
No. I prefer the collective surroundings and amenities of the 'burbs over those of the city. It's why I left during early Covid--- right about the time Rick Moranis was sucker-punched.
> Or to put it another way: would you pay more than $0 to have a teleportation portal from your home in the suburbs to your work in the city. My suspicion is yes.
Sure, who doesn't love a portal? But I would pay more than $0 for a portal to anywhere on the planet. Can my portals be like the ACME-brand black circles from Looney Tunes, the ones you throw on the wall?
> Expressing that preference generates negative externalities on the people who do live in the city...
...by choice. Most everyone who lives in the city chose to live in the city BEFORE the congestion pricing and therefore ACCEPTED all those externalities. You really didn't expect traffic when you chose to live in Manhattan?
Congestion pricing is a pure cash grab from NJ residents, retroactively justified by making me an other-ed villain. The tri-state is a powerhouse because we all cooperate through the free market, not because of punative transportation barriers.
Congestion will gradually return and the city will be just as much a traffic snarl in 20 years as it was before.
In the long run the city will still be traffic-y (because it's a city!), the MTA will still be underfunded because its fares are irrationally low, and we will all be poorer for this frictional government intervention.
Until that certain eventually, enjoy the crosstown busses running faster. When's the last time you personally took one? I haven't since Moranis took that hit to the face.
---
Thank you for the discussion. I am going to cut it off here because, as you can tell, it makes me stupid angry when someone tells me that I free ride on NY given what I pay in taxes+fees to this state in which I do not live.
I'm not disputing the negative externalities from traffic, nor the laudable goal of reducing the number of vehicles entering cities. I'm not even disputing the effectiveness of congestion pricing at achieving that goal.
But the mechanism here is highly unfair. It's obvious why rich people support congestion charges--they're rich! They don't give a shit about the $20 or whatever, and it clears the roads of those dirty poors making traffic. Bring it on!
Meanwhile the poor--already struggling with affordability and cost of living--are the ones who bear the burden. They can't afford the congestion fee, so they're forced to find some alternative way to get into the city. But that comes at an obvious utility cost; if that alternative was the best way for them to get into the city, they'd already be using it! And poor people are the ones with no time to spare, so choosing between spending $20 they don't have or spending 30 more minutes that they don't have is a Hobson's choice.
Here's my proposal: Every vehicle gets 60 free days per year with no congestion charges at all. Days 61-100 have a $1,000,000 congestion charge. Days 101-365 have a $10,000,000 congestion charge. Congestion charges will be reduced, however, to 0.1% of the driver's AGI (for days 61-100) and 1% of the driver's AGI (for days 101-365) upon application. Now even hedge fund managers in Connecticut will be inconvenienced in just the same way as poor people.
Yet somehow I believe that if that were how congestion pricing was implemented, all these Econ professors would magically discover what a bad policy congestion pricing really is!
Simpler idea that will get 90% of the benefit: amplify congestion pricing based on KBB value of the car. Zero enforcement complexity. Yes rich people could drive a shittier car to save their $5k per year or whatever, but most won't, and the few ultra-cost insensitive people will pay for vast numbers of the most cost sensitive.
Imperfect but much better than existing implementations. Really, though, the goal ought to be not only to reduce congestion, but to fairly distribute the net gain of utility among those affected.
A marginal $20 has very little utility to rich people, but 15 minutes saved in traffic has large utility. Congestion pricing results in large utility gains to the rich.
A marginal $20 has tangible utility to poor people, and 15 minutes spent finding alternative transport also has tangible utility. Congestion pricing results in large utility losses to the poor.
KBB values are an imperfect proxy for individual monetary utility but could definitely be used to more fairly distribute the utility gains from congestion pricing.
The main problem with that scheme is that its imprecision falls exactly where I think we need the highest precision: The ultra-rich. If they're just a passenger in their driver's black SUV (maybe $100k KBB tops), they're not paying anywhere close to a commensurate share of their income on congestion fees. The upper middle class BMW driver, on the other hand, gets screwed (relatively speaking).
The congestion charge should reach each person using that infrastructure in a way that fairly impacts their available individual utility. The impracticality of achieving this goal is why, in my opinion, congestion charges are bad policy.
Avoiding a policy that makes life better for nearly everyone because it doesn't make life bad enough for the top 0.0001% is so absurd that I honestly can't believe it's the source of your real opposition.
Given the extreme wealth disparity in this country, there will be virtually no policies at all that achieve your platonic policy-making ideal. Should we just have no laws at all?
If you really care to deal with the extreme high-end, there are other mechanisms that are easier to do at small n, such as having a superlinear vehicle registration tax.
Good, because it's not. The inevitably unfair distribution of utility gains and losses is why I think congestion charges are bad policy. The fact that your proposal leaves a giant loophole for those whose utility gains are the largest is, I think, quite a reasonable objection.
> If you really care to deal with the extreme high-end, there are other mechanisms that are easier to do at small n, such as having a superlinear vehicle registration tax.
The extreme high end don't register super fancy vehicles, and if they do, even superlinear registration taxes would be a much smaller marginal utility hit than would be fair--and once again, would be an unfairly large marginal utility hit to the upper middle class.
What ideal, exactly? A fair (re-)distribution of utility?
How about "free" school lunches?
Progressive income taxes come close, though ideally they'd have more brackets with higher rates and the brackets would be graduated by both wealth and income.
The "gas guzzler" tax in California seems pretty fair to me, as does the "polluter pays" principle in general.
Specifically traffic-related: I like how California does HOV/FasTrak lanes. There is a separate lane (or even a separate segregated roadway) with free access for "high occupancy vehicles" (2+ occupants, rarely 3+). However, individual commuters can pay (with FasTrak) for access to the lane. The cost is set dynamically depending on traffic conditions; it's a realtime market for spare capacity unused by actual HOVs. (It could still be improved, though, with an AGI coefficient, but I digress). Anyway, the most important part is there are always cost-free freeway lanes available; there's always an option just to sit and wait without additional payment.
I think that this is true to some extent, but that people often underestimate how much Discord and group chats get used compared to "traditional" (feels weird calling it that, in this context) social media.
> it's not actually obvious who's running these bots
This is fascinating to me. It's a large enough phenomenon that it's affecting the entire Internet and yet nobody seems to know yet who's actually doing it. Which isn't surprising, of course, it's hard to trace back to a source through all these proxies and it's probably a bunch of distinct groups anyways, but still!
Personally I have to wonder how much of it is "scrapers for training data" vs just tool-use LLMs. Even if you use chatgpt in thinking mode you can clearly see it searching and visiting a bunch of different websites to answer a question, presumably faster than any human would. That's got to add up. It's got me wondering why everyone seemingly discounts that as an option
> and it simply got replaced by more time on HackerNews and YouTube
I don't disagree with you at all, but doesn't this go against what most people are claiming in this thread (that Meta products are uniquely engineered to be addictive, to a significant degree)? Hacker News doesn't have any especially "addictive" features. They don't make money off this site, there's no ads, there's no personalized algorithm, no promotion of ragebait, etc. Yet plenty of us use it day after day or find ourselves distracted by it.
Youtube is more obviously addictive, but it's hardly social media. It's just media.
Meta has done a lot of harm in the world, don't get me wrong, but I think people are stretching a bit when they act like none of these technologies would be addictive on their own if not for the company's design.
Upvotes, downvotes, trending, there's still an algorithm on HackerNews.
Meta is the one being sued currently, obviously they are the biggest one, and have tried even harder to keep users coming back in addictive ways, and likely targeted children more directly.
I'd say HackerNews also has better moderation where they actively will remove ragebait, where Meta services often encourages it.
I see your general point though, but I don't think people act like these technologies wouldn't be addictive separate from some corporate endorser. A homemade cigarette is still an addictive cigarette, but that doesn't stop you from suing and regulating tobacco companies.
The other question you might raise is, what alternative isn't addictive? I think many have said that feeds should simply be chronological, same for comments. Instead of upvote/downvote, there should be reviews (score how much you liked the video/article), and users could sort by review score as well. You shouldn't be allowed to push content that users didn't explicitly subscribed too (ads should be ads on the side, not promoted content injected into your feed for example). And so on. Is it too restrictive, maybe, I think it's an interesting debate to have though, like what do we lose/gain making it less addictive, and what is actually less addictive?
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