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jlj

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Increased gas taxes would drive behavior change towards electrics. Similar to tobacco and alcohol taxes to discourage their use.

I don't see diesel going away so soon though because of industrial, agriculture, and military use. It will probably be taxed differently according to it's use. In fact it already is taxed differently in the US for home heating, vehicle, and aviation use.

In the US there was a "cash for clunkers" program about 10-15 years ago that tried to clear out ineficient older model cars. It was fairly successful and stimulated purchases of newer cars. The downside was that some perfectly fine cars were scrapped.

I suspect that gas stations will start swapping pumps for chargers, and that will motivate people to switch too.

By the time this all happens though we will have more car sharing programs and maybe autonomous vehicles, so the ownership paradigm will be different in 2030 compared to now. Why buy a car that sits idle for 90% of the day?

Gas taxes set a floor for how low prices can go. They'll probably increase as gas motor cars are phased out before the process ever sink too low.

In Washington, US, they increased the registration fee for electrics to make up for the shortfall in gas taxes that pay for road wear, congestion, etc. So that's already happening.

Agree, and will add that this should be backed by LEO's tracking online posts inciting violence to people's doors, arresting them, and letting courts decide if it's a free speech issue.

The western liberal value of free speech has never extended to incitement of violence

Here is the court precedence behind this in the US.

"Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444 (1969), was a landmark decision of the US Supreme Court interpreting the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.[1] The Court held that the government cannot punish inflammatory speech unless that speech is "directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action""

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg_v._Ohio

It is common for software development expenses to be capitalized and expensed over time (depreciated).

A lot of what shows up as intangibles is from M&A activity. If the acquirer paid more than book value for a company, then all of the remainder goes into intangibles (goodwill).

The write-up argues that non-physical assets (software) show up as intangables (balance sheet) then argues that they are expenses (income statement). It doesn't make sense.

I don't follow what the article is arguing, and it seems to draw big and likely incorrect conclusions from loosely related accounting terms and data points.

I meant something slightly different (and I did not write it very well at all), but to give an example I spent the first 15+ years of my career chasing success, upskilling, focusing on self improvement. And my identity became tightly coupled to my work and each little win felt good for a day or two, then felt empty pretty quickly after that. When I let all that go and found a stronger sense of self worth, I found much more career success than I ever had before without really trying so hard for it. It came more naturally. Therapy helped me with this journey.

How do you end up with a network of the good ones?

I have wanted to escape the dreaded cycle of dealing with these terrible recruiters

Focus on yourself. When you are in a good place yourself you will find non-terrible recruiters. And when recruiters reach out, have a copy/paste response to say thanks for reaching out. +1 bonus points if you have a friend looking for a job and you can share their LinkedIn profile in your copy/paste response.

And don't run away (escape), run towards something.

I grew up fishing for salmon and live near streams where this issue is happening. Some bright and young researchers worked very hard to identify this root cause. Yes, I felt annoyed by the snark and dismissiveness in your comment. It rings of cynicism and tears down their hard work as a corporate PR scheme.

If you cared to read a little bit about the study, you could find the funding sources. If you want to connect the dots to this mystical tire manufacturer waiting to take over the market please share your sources.

"This research was funded by the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington State Governors Funds and the Regional Monitoring Program for Water Quality in San Francisco Bay."

https://www.washington.edu/news/2020/12/03/tire-related-chem...

"The poorest way to face life is to face it with a sneer. There are many men who feel a kind of twister pride in cynicism; there are many who confine themselves to criticism of the way others do what they themselves dare not even attempt. There is no more unhealthy being, no man less worthy of respect, than he who either really holds, or feigns to hold, an attitude of sneering disbelief toward all that is great and lofty, whether in achievement or in that noble effort which, even if it fails, comes to second achievement. A cynical habit of thought and speech, a readiness to criticise work which the critic himself never tries to perform, an intellectual aloofness which will not accept contact with life’s realities — all these are marks, not as the possessor would fain to think, of superiority but of weakness. They mark the men unfit to bear their part painfully in the stern strife of living, who seek, in the affection of contempt for the achievements of others, to hide from others and from themselves in their own weakness. The role is easy; there is none easier, save only the role of the man who sneers alike at both criticism and performance."

https://www.brainpickings.org/2018/04/30/theodore-roosevelt-...

I once saw something similar where a co-worker on a newly formed team wanted to keep design documents in a git repo. Those types of documents can have dozens of small changes, or in this case commits, each day. It was also painful to read and edit. Luckily our manager stopped the practice early before it took root.

Another anecdote, I was once in a tech lead role and spent a lot of time pairing and guiding others on their development work. My commits were low but impact was high. Low commits counted against me during promotion review.

If a company needs early-career talent H1-B might not be the right avenue. It was intended for highly skilled talent not available in-country.

Experienced talent in software engineering should clear 200k no problem.

H1-B portability would be great to see. It would encourage companies to treat people as humans, not endentured servants.

I didn't see the connection between the article and fascism. Maybe if mental health was a priority then individuals wouldn't be as susceptible to fascism or other control systems that prey on peoples' vulnerabilities and insecurities.

I am looking for a small non-smart TV for a workout area in my home. My last TV purchase was around 2010.

The options seem very limited. I may end up using a computer monitor with a streaming box and or a tv tumer card on an old computer. I already have a good OTA signal from an outdoor antenna that is used by the main TV in the house and can easily run a splitter.

Any low cost recommendations?

PostgreSQL 13 6 years ago

I've never not installed software because of the version number.

But this made me realize that Oracle skipped from database version 12 to 18, and eBS from 12 to fusion.

I would say this is more of a reflection of an organization's motivations. Postgres doesn't have the same marketing and commercial motivations as Oracle.

This book talks about in mental models in depth, "Deep Survival" by Lawrence Gonzales [1]. Mental models can contribute to death in survival situations because they are biased by past experience. Being adaptable and practicing resilience is a much better survival strategy. A dark sense of humor helps too.

It's a really great read on how the brain works. It helped me understand some of my own fears about the COVID pandemic. It also helps me understand (but not agree with) why some people are so resistant to wearing masks when it might keep their loved ones alive.

The book gives examples of mountaineering accidents. The mental model says that the group is roped in together. Symbolically, everyone is a team, in it together. But guess how much physical force is generated by gravity when 150+ pounds of person and gear when a fall reached the end of a 50ft rope? More than what physical strength and crampons can support. That one mental model comes up a lot in mountaineering accident reports.

[1] https://smile.amazon.com/dp/0393326152

Employed engineer here. I use linkedin to network and as a result I get a few inbound recruiting requests a week. Most are contract roles I'm not interested in, but some are for interesting companies that I wouldn't have found on a job board. I try to take interviews for the latter.

Going through an interview with nothing to lose helps me keep up my networking and interviewing soft skills. The best time to find a job is when you don't need one.

A mortgage payment is always less than rent for an equivalent property, anyway.

Not always, though they often track closely to reach other, they can also diverge. If rent is high and home prices are low that could be a good signal to buy.

And you also have to consider what you equity would be doing if it was invested in something other than your house.

This is mixing up liquidity with asset vs liability. A house is a depreciable asset. The land beneath the house holds it's value and doesn't depreciate. That's why the assesed value for tax splits them out. Both are less liquid than cash, but I can convert my equity in the asset to cash very quickly with a loan, or put the house up for sale and maybe it takes a little longer to get the cash. The loan would be a liability. But a house is never a liability on financial terms.

My current plan is to buy, live in the house for a few years, offer the house up for rent, and rent a new house for myself. I'm currently on step 2. I don't want to overcommit myself in real estate so buying a second residential property doesn't make sense for me. Because of rent appreciation I will have positive cash flow while renting out my current home. That hedges for any future rent increases in my future place of residence.

I'd consider buying an income generating vacation home too. But not another primary residence. That's just my opinion. And my opinion doesn't make my house an asset or a liability.

Now that said, I feel one non-financial aspect where owning a house is a liability is the opportunity cost of time spent maintaining the house. In a rental the landlord takes care of it.

AWS Boilerplate 6 years ago

I've found that creating a new isolated AWS account works well for this type of issue. In AWS organizations you can setup the new account using "+" in your email address, such as {your-email}+experiment-project@example.com. Then if you need to burn down everything and start over there is no impact or risk, and naming conventions are less relevant because everything in your "...+-example-project@" account is related to that one project.