gottorf

I'm not familiar with turbos, but to me it sounds like a CFD? How does a short position on a turbo prevent you from losing more than what you "put in"[0]? If you're shorting underlying X at price Y with a turbo, and price moves to Y+10, you're going to lose 10 times the leverage factor. You could have stop orders, but those are not guaranteed to fill at a price that would cap your loss to a desired amount.

the broker is required by regulation to "just close and not ask for more"

Some American brokers will also forcibly close your position instead of issuing a margin call. Do you mean that under those national regulations, the broker is required to eat the losses?

[0]: in quotes, since with a short position it's not really the case that you put something in.

And if you are buying an instrument where you can lose more than you invested, the approach maybe wrong? :-)

This is precisely why shorting can lose more than you "invest", because you're not buying an instrument, you're selling it with the intent (or promise, depending on what kind of instrument it is) to buy it back later, hopefully at a lower price.

The risk is unbounded.

An interesting look at America's building history.

Of course, today's housing issues are not technological in nature, but political. It's an almost entirely self-imposed constraint on building. Building a house isn't very difficult; one or two people with a few tools can throw up a livable, if small, house in just a few days. For the beginner, Larry Haun's learning material[0] is enlightening.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GP-JfA5RPLs

I think the GP's point was that the college is also bound, privately by accreditation bodies and publicly by a duty to society not to devalue the meaning of a degree, to not grant you a degree in XYZ if you fail to learn.

The immigrants they are specifically looking to remove are middle eastern and african. they certainly dont have canadians in mind

Well, of course. Canadians generally don't cause trouble in the countries to which they immigrate and are not net fiscal burdens.

Who country did Sweden bomb and steal resources from? Why should a Swedish political party be concerned about the collective guilt of "the west"?

Furthermore, is your position that large-scale migration from the third world into developed Western economies is a punitive action designed to correct historical wrongdoings (whether or not that's legitimate)? Because that's certainly how not it was sold to the populace.

Do you believe in punishing the son for the sins of the father, or the great-X-grandfathers?

Cheaper energy unlocks all of those things. All human problems are energy problems, in the end.

Only theoretically. PG&E's dividend yield is worse than savings accounts currently, and its stock price hasn't gone anywhere in 40 years. In fact, if you invested before the 2017 fires, you could have lost 85% of your money and, to compensate for your trouble, not even received a single red cent of dividend in six years.

"Borderline government entity" seems more reflective of reality.

But governments are basically the only party that can act in the best interest of citizens rather than shareholders

The best interest of shareholders can at least be defined, because it's narrow in scope. What is in the best interests of citizens, especially in diverse countries where there is not a lot of things with overwhelmingly broad agreement?

people tend to miss all the successful things governments fund, like science research

People also tend to miss opportunity cost in government funding (where else could that money have gone, with greater positive outcomes?) as well as alternative sources of funding (could research have been funded privately, especially with lesser tax burden?).

We valued privacy and freedom over surveillance and “results.”

The relative value of one over the other depends on the absolute value of either. In a Mad Max scenario, very few would value the principles of privacy and freedom over the immediate need to reestablish basic order.

Take auto theft as an example. Depending on how old you are, the recent spike in auto theft is either "nothing compared to the 80s" or "entirely unacceptable in civilized society"; in select cities, the rate almost tripled in five years[0] (an incredible jump), though remaining well below the historical peak.

However, case clearance rates are at an all time low, which I'm sure furthers frustration for the victims. That is, you're statistically less likely to be a victim of auto theft today than during the historical peak, but if you are, you're statistically more likely to be SOL.

You're probably approaching this from a civil libertarian point of view, but the Constitution is not a suicide pact[1]. Members of society who collectively uphold the law also have a vested interested in the maintenance of the conditions that would further perpetuate upholding the law, i.e. law and order.

[0] https://counciloncj.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/motor-veh...

[1]: Terminiello v. Chicago, 337 U.S. 1 (1949)

These day's it's a common problem in all of the Anglosphere, but it does seem especially bad in the UK; they appear to have just given up the ability to build literally anything.

Quebec's geography is so favorable for hydropower that they don't need nuclear, or any other source of electricity.

You’re missing the point which is to create jobs

I sure hope that the ultimate point of a government push to build nuclear powerplants is in fact getting nuclear powerplants on the other side, not just jobs along the way. The latter seems responsible for so many ills in today's Western societies.

Pre-Fukushima, the Koreans were able to pop out a gigawatt every 5 years or so. Things dramatically slowed down afterwards, so even they are not immune to whatever it is that makes constructing nuclear powerplants slow as all hell around the world.

The Barakah plant in the UAE, built by the Koreans, took 9 years.

Cutting Starlink and stripping drives from a NAS? This seems like a pretty sophisticated operation, much more so than the usual copper thieves and the like. Do you have reason to believe your shop was specifically targeted?

Your point is totally and completely wrong. Germany has public benefits that actually matter.

Objectively wrong, because Germany does better in the things that subjectively matter to you?

Germany's average life expectancy is ahead of Mississippi by 10 years.

Comparing like for like, that gap drops down to 5-6 years and puts Mississippi on par with, say, Thailand or Latvia. Hardly grounds for condemnation.

Germany ranks as one of the highest in the world in general satisfaction of the people, Mississippi does not.

Those rankings are all stupid, but in most of the ones I've seen, Germany ranks a scant few spots higher than the US. Sure, if Mississippi were a country, the distance would be greater, but how meaningful is it? I just saw one that ranks Saudi Arabia and El Salvador ahead of Spain and Italy[0].

And in any case, why do people keep leaving those satisfactory countries for America?

[0] https://data.worldhappiness.report/table

Why is the median considered "poor"

Because most big-city coastal Americans think of the median Mississippian as that way.

If you neglect everything it takes to live a good life [...]

We're speaking past each other somewhat. You seem to have a belief system that says a good life is not possible without the stuff that Germany provides via taxation and redistribution. Whether that stuff is a necessary or sufficient condition for a good life for you, I'm not sure; but it is clear you place a lot of importance on it.

I'm saying that in America, more of those things are left to choice to the people, and that a good life, even a great life, is available to the average Joe (hence my banging on about the median) in one of the poorest states in the union, to a degree that is not matched anywhere else.

Put another way: you've defined a good life in large part as access to taxpayer-subsidized goods and services, or at any rate the lifestyle outcomes enabled by such access. By that metric, you're right, Mississippi comes behind Germany, and America as a whole likely behind Germany. But if you look at people voting with their feet over the past few decades, more Germans settled in America than the other way around in absolute numbers; which is even more striking if you consider the difference in population. Clearly there exist people who value the stuff that America has to offer that Germany doesn't.

There are, of course, many ways to measure this, some of which are slightly higher for Germany and some for Mississippi. Many are in the same ballpark, which is pretty crazy to think about. Many of these statistics take into account the taxpayer-funded programs you mentioned.

Broadly speaking, the median Mississippian is about as rich as the median German, with the tradeoff being that the Mississippian has greater access to private goods (e.g. a fishing boat or a big car), whereas the German has greater access to public goods (e.g. socialized insurance or college).

My point is that even "the poor" in America are really quite well off, and not just in historical terms.

Yes! Almost every human problem boils down to an energy problem. I welcome the future in which we have so much nuclear power (and other power sources) that electricity is too cheap to meter.

"The rest" is still quite wealthy, even by today's developed economy standards. Median household disposable income is higher in Mississippi, a state widely panned for its poverty, than Germany, the richest major EU nation.

In American discourse, there's a ton of talk about inequality from the haves against the have-mores, pushing policy that often times will lead to worse outcomes for the have-nots.

More people will suffer and die over the next 50-100 years from efforts to counteract climate change than from climate change itself.

Alarming doesn’t begin to describe it. This is an existential crises for our industry.

In my (admittedly vibes-based) opinion, this is just a result of there being a huge supply of CS grads in this country due to it being popularized as a path to a stable, high-paying job. Those degrees are now more often than ever held by people who aren't necessarily passionate about, or good at, the field.

The signal-to-noise ratio in hiring, therefore, is worse than ever. AI exacerbates the problem, of course. But I don't think this is an existential crisis; I think the market will sort itself out, as those less-qualified entrants leave.

the Supreme Court case where they found standing

nobody had actually asked for one and the person didn't even make wedding web sites

There was no actual case

303 Creative v. Elenis started out because the web designer sought injunctive relief from a Colorado state law that would have made her unable to refuse to make a website for a same-sex wedding. She had received a request to make a wedding website (for a heterosexual couple), and preemptively wanted to preserve her right to refuse in light of the Colorado law and to put up a public-facing notice stating as much. The case was appealed all the way up to the Supreme Court by the designer herself.

It doesn't read to me that any standing was "invented" here. Notably, the dissent in this 6-3 decision does not discuss standing at all; and in fact, the Tenth Circuit that decided against the designer (prior to the SC appeal) did find that she had standing.

It sounds like you have your own personal gripes with this decision, which is fair, but an attack on the grounds that there was no standing is misguided.

conservatives eat up the dehumanization of it all

One could argue that's really dehumanizing is the callous disregard the system displays for the victims of such repeat violent offenders.

pressure the representatives

In the GP's case, it sounds like they were on a road show, and they do not live in Illinois at all. Of course, that doesn't prevent them from contacting a IL state representative for redress, but it is an edge case of sorts.

Considering the IRS mileage rate is 72.5 cents per mile, sounds like there's no way any kind of vehicle is going to get operating costs that low!

For one, when someone should not be remanded on bail because they are a danger to society, judges will often set the bail at eleventy zillion dollars, knowing that they won't be able to post bail

Why can't they just deny bail in such cases? Is it local laws that forbid them from doing so? In which case, it seems that the ability to set a ridiculously high bail is a net benefit to society.

The assumption that all these people are stupid sheep probably won't be a productive way to approach this public policy question

I agree, and I do not assume that these people are stupid sheep. However, having said that:

Data centers absolutely are loud

Compared to undeveloped land, sure. Compared to other uses of industrially-zoned land? Most likely not. I've been to a lot of datacenters. They're not very loud from the outside.

They consume large quantities of water

I honestly do not understand why they don't just build closed-loop systems, or geothermal where they have a closed loop with the ground acting as the heat sink. Open-loop systems where they consume water just to evaporate sounds stupid to me. But I don't know how common that is.

Politicians showing off in front of the camera with a dirty jug of water, of course, is just grandstanding and has no real relation to datacenters other than they made construction happen.

huge, absolutely staggering amounts of energy, which typically has the effect of raising rates for everybody else

This isn't just true of datacenters. They're building an aluminum plant near me that will consume on the order of 100+ MW, which is comparable to a fairly large DC. Any other large industrial plant would consume a lot of electricity, but nobody's blaming them for utility capital investment needs.

Dubai to SFO is also a possible route

Is there really that much premium traffic between Dubai and the Bay Area?

The ratio of jobs and taxes to local resources tied up has to be one of the worst possible trade-offs of any industrial use that you can envision

Why? There aren't much "local resources tied up" since it's land that isn't that valuable for the most part. DCs, once built, don't emit fumes or loud noises, or make traffic worse like other industrial land use might. They just sit there quietly and generate tax revenue for the locality.

Sure, there aren't many ongoing jobs at an operating DC. But I can't see why it's one of the worst possible industrial uses, from the point of view of the residents around one.

data centers are proving to be profoundly unpopular

From what I can tell, this is just from a combination of AI being unpopular plus opportunistic fearmongering on the part of politicians.

They're called hyperscalers for a reason.