I agree there's a lot of decisions that have to be made on the basis of "the tech and how it looks on resume" (as I'm finding out by not having React Native on mine).
> There's always been a stigma around social networks and generally big tech companies, but not to the point it's going to hurt them.
I'm not sure it was "always":
The one Facebook developer event I've been to made me feel dirty just to associate with them, but before that I had no negative feelings. It started off as "the new LiveJournal".
Deleted my account for a few years, only came back to it when I started planning to move country and wanted to keep in contact with those who stayed put.
> I think it's important to recognize that a lot of Americans (most? nearly all?) simply don't have a choice in health insurance. If you are on United, it's probably because that's what your employer has offered as a benefit.
As a non-American, this was indeed a big surprise when someone here recently replied to me to make that exact point.
All the disadvantages of a monopoly, none of the advantages of a free market.
Kinda like the UK rail network and water systems, neither of which the British hold in high regard.
>> All the disadvantages of a monopoly, none of the advantages of a free market.
Yes. One thing I hate is the coupling of insurance and employment in the U.S. These things don't belong together. Most employers offer different "plans" but all through the same insurance company. A good question to ask in an interview is "who is your insurance provider?" Some really are better or worse. But again, it's wrong that this can even be a consideration in finding work.
Keep in mind that many/most medium size and larger companies will self insure and pay for administration of the plans.
I suppose the management contract probably won't really include terms about how aggressive the manager should be in rejecting terms (so you get what you get).
Russia is well balanced against the aid everyone else is giving to Ukraine; it's a war of attrition, where both Ukraine and Russia are being worn down and nobody's quite sure which side will collapse first.
Other than just being cheapskates, the west has a fear that {if Putin fears his regime may collapse, he may personally order the use of nukes}, and also that even if he doesn't and Russia does collapse then rogue actors may steal some of the nukes.
building military is much much more expensive than paying influencers.
Russian propaganda machine is incredibly strong, because it was perfected on their own citizens for basically century now. They spend billions on pure propaganda.
While with military - they relied on propaganda as well. They projected power while not picking conflicts with anyone who can punch back.
Ukraine appeared too big to swallow this time and everyone can see, that king is naked. Russian military is a sham compared to US. Like, incomparable to be honest. But problem is that propaganda is much stronger than military. So west made a mistake dismissing russia because of their weak corrupt military while being invaded by propaganda.
West has nothing against russian propaganda machine and this is what thrtuthly terrifying to be honest.
Why would they need additional chances when they have already expressed what they want? Oh, they dared to vote for a candidate that doesn’t suit the powers that be, so they’ll vote again and again until they choose the preselected candidate.
If geopolitics predating the Roman Republic by 500 years justifies kicking people off land they were born in, then I have bad news for almost all of the Americans in the audience. Probably quite a lot of the English too, though with less certainty as nobody's quite sure when even the Celts arrived.
If campaign material was not capable of changing the minds of the electorate, nobody would waste time effort and money on it.
Free speech is valuable and worth defending specifically because it has the potential to change minds, not just because people like the sounds of their own voices.
(For the recent US election, people also point to Musk buying Twitter and getting his president of choice and saying this demonstrates why Musk is smart and $44bn was worth it, so are you sure it wasn't won by the biggest spenders?)
Cost != price/value. You can produce energy cheaply at noon, but it has little value compared to electricity produced at 18:00. The higher the share of renewables in the electricity mix, the more storage is needed, and it grows faster than linearly. You can also not stock electricity in advance for months in northern areas. There are a lot of factors to keep into account, and the cost of electricity production is often a minor one, when considering the total price.
> You can produce energy cheaply at noon, but it has little value compared to electricity produced at 18:00
Batteries literally solve this problem more cheaply than nuclear.
And given the speed with which people have actually been building both reactors and batteries, this specific issue is also being solved with batteries faster than with nuclear, too.
> The higher the share of renewables in the electricity mix, the more storage is needed, and it grows faster than linearly.
What's needed for the grid is also less than needed just for fully electrifying cars.
> You can also not stock electricity in advance for months in northern areas.
Lazard 2024, CAISO scenario: nuclear is cheaper compared to go with renewables + batteries (max 4 hours). It also does not take into account integration costs, such improving network connectivity.
It is quite ironic, because European Nordic countries do not want to build more network because of the crazy electricity spot prices that Germany has because of renewables. I live in Norway and no-one wants to further connect their electricity network to Germany, and the Swedish government blocked the construction of new connections. When Germany needs electricity, people in Oslo start to pay electricity even hundreds of times more, and when Germany has too much power from renewables, the energy price goes below zero, which means that German taxpayers are paying people from other countries to buy their discounted low value electricity, damaging the other producers. It is a terrible system, and it will only get worse without a good base load or accumulators that are not realistic for the foreseeable future.
If Germany had a stable electricity production with renewables+nuclear, it would be beneficial to strength the network, which would indeed be beneficial to renewables.
If there is a place which clearly show how the fight against nuclear caused damaged is Germany: ~700 b€ between investments and subsidies to renewables, has very high emissions in the energy sector, while being dependent on Russian gas (costed ~1500 b€ in the last years) and France export of nuclear energy, high and unstable energy prices, that contributed to an industrial crisis that made France more attractive (where electricity is cheap and stable), while still failing at reaching climate targets.
The alternative would have been to keep the existing reactors open, build new ones, for a grand total of ~36 b€.
Source: doi.org/10.1080/14786451.2024.2355642
The belief that renewables+batteries alone are the only solution (even in hard to abate sectors) is not supported by real world data, nor by simulations. IPCC scenarios clearly shows that there is the need of a nuclear+renewable mix to meet the climate targets. The report from JRC recommends the same.
Historically, German citizens have chosen to be reliant on fossil fuels and highly subsidized electricity to not use nuclear energy. I just hope that at Germany will stop blocking nuclear at the EU level if other countries have different opinions on that and rather prefer not to follow the demise of the German energy policy.
They're probably both fighting at maximum capability already.
That said:
While we all know that Russia isn't fighting all of NATO, it does claim that it is fighting all of NATO.
Do they believe what they say? I don't know.
I think if Ukraine attempts Hail-Mary tactics, if you assume the hypothetical that Russia really does believe that Ukraine is only capable of such things with NATO support, it is still bad for NATO.
There's certainly Ukrainians who want nukes now, who think giving them up was a mistake. Some say it would only take them months to get nukes… and they said that months ago. If they do develop their own independent capability, and Russia just assumes it's an American or French or British nuke, that's still bad for the rest of us, even if Trump is shouting about how the USA didn't do it.
> They're probably both fighting at maximum capability already.
Absolutely not. In my view, NATO should be supplying 1M+ artillery shells per month, so that UA can unleash scorched earth tactics on Russian positions inside UA territories.
> In my view, NATO should be supplying 1M+ artillery shells per month, so that UA can unleash scorched earth tactics on Russian positions inside UA territories
Sure, but that's not Russia or Ukraine, that's us as outsiders.
If Ukraine has secret weapons to fall back on in the scenario that — as per the comment I'm replying to — the US stops giving them weapons, why aren't they already using them? Likewise if Russia has any significant number of other weapons they could actually use*, why did they not use them already?
* while Russia may have plenty of unused submarines, they're not going to be of any significance beyond the handful of SLBMs that might spook the rest of the world into thinking it's World-War-Three-O'Clock
This expression is often misused, it seems. It sounds so cool, 'scorched-earth tactics'... like 'medieval', 'fire-and-brimstone', 'kill it with fire', etcetera.
> There's always been a stigma around social networks and generally big tech companies, but not to the point it's going to hurt them.
I'm not sure it was "always":
The one Facebook developer event I've been to made me feel dirty just to associate with them, but before that I had no negative feelings. It started off as "the new LiveJournal".
Deleted my account for a few years, only came back to it when I started planning to move country and wanted to keep in contact with those who stayed put.
reply