I don’t think it’s entirely a mentality issue. I think North America created an environment where you wouldn’t want your 8 year old to navigate New York City. I would let my kids wander Tokyo before I would let them wander Chicago. Japan would not tolerate people spitting at and harassing children where Chicago does indeed tolerate that. I’d say ask me how I know but you could probably guess.
LA is full of those. Mostly junkies. My girlfriend often has such encounters when she takes the bus. It is awful. I am in Hungary and there is no such issues here. It is extremely safe in comparison. There was a stabbing (one in 30 years) and everyone rushed to help and to catch the perpetuator (who ended up stabbing himself anyways).
BTW I am a junkie myself, but I do not engage in such behaviors at all. And by "junkie" when referring to myself, I mean that I have an addictive personality, but I do take opiates ("only") for my mental and physical problems. I was never a safety hazard for anyone, including myself (there were times when I was, but had nothing to do with drugs). I do it at home (and before going out, too, due to its positive effects on my mobility and pain), and it makes me more emotionally stable. It sucks though, because when people think of opiates, what they picture is homeless people being unconscious on the streets with a needle coming out of their arm. No one could ever tell me that I was ever on opiates and this includes a lot of doctors. For one, it affects me differently (just like any other psychiatric medications and other drugs).
Anyways, yeah, junkies are an issue in LA and it pisses me off that my girlfriend has to always pay a lot of attention because one never knows what they might do. They are also loud, they create conflicts, and so forth.
Never trust google for anything important, because they will mess with it to get money or cancel it if they can’t get the money, regardless of anything they’ve claimed in the past.
ASUS Proart P16 with the 4070/64gb configuration. Has usb a and c, hdmi, sd card reader, and can be powered over usb c though if you are using the 4070 you’ll want the ac adapter. The build quality is only matched by the screen which is awesome. Battery life is also excellent. If I was to have a laptop for 6 years this is the one I’d invest in.
The idea that style and linting define the “craft” is bizarre. What it sounds like you are saying is that you prefer style over substance. Not a single developer I’ve ever revered cared about styling. It’s a means to an end for large teams because to make it easy to read you need commonality.
It’s kind of like what Bruce Lee said about punches. Before you know how to code, styling is just styling. When you become proficient in coding, styling is more than just styling. But when you’ve mastered coding, styling is just styling again. Be like water my friend.
The whole point of the mocking the database is to not test the database! If you need to test the database then test the database! Just like mocking an API can hide hidden issues with the API… which is again the exact point of mocking the API. This article should really be named “mocking your database isn’t testing your database” which seems like it should be obvious.
The point of mocking the database is to avoid the hassle of spinning up a database to test against. If we ignore that, why not test our use of the database? Are we disinterested in the schema and query errors we might catch?
Unit testing is useful because (a) it's easier to test all the code paths in a unit when that unit is isolated, and (b) unit tests don't need to be modified in response to changes in unrelated modules. But (a) is irrelevant since we can easily put dummy data in the DB, and (b) isn't a concern since the relevant DB schemas and queries are tightly coupled to the module in question anyway.
Primarily slowness and brittleness. Tests with side effects are much more likely to be flaky, and flaky tests are the worst. Especially if they're slow and hence hard to debug.
Of course, you do test your use of the database, but in a much smaller test suite. For the business logic tests you just spin up a copy of your app with fake adapters, and you're done. Quick, deterministic tests.
I agree that integrated tests tend to be brittle, but if we need database tests either way, the database harness can't be flaky. So any flakiness there is something that has to be fixed regardless. Slowness, I agree, but unless you're spinning up new containers for every test, the overhead of each query being real is going to be small.
If the database interactions are trivial, I agree—just use stubs. But if you've got non-trivial joins, then you'll need a separate database test suite anyway. And if there's stateful logic involving the database and you want to use fakes in unit tests, you need a whole extra set of tests to validate that the fakes behave the same way that the real database does.
I do actually prefer to avoid relying on the database for unit tests—it's cleaner, it's faster—but often testing with the database is simpler & reliable, and I can't justify the extra lines of code required for fully isolated unit tests. That's extra surface area for tech debt that could lead to stuff like fakes behaving differently from their production equivalent.
The point of mocking the DB isn’t to avoid hassle, it’s to not test your dependencies. Technically the calling code might not even know it’s a DB, and it might not even care, or it might be a DB sometimes or an API other times, or even a command line once in awhile. They are only tightly coupled if you write it that way. And yes, we would be disinterested in the schema and query errors we might catch because that’s not the point of the test.
Grown adults are prevented from making decisions all the time. Wearing a seat belt for example. Why should it be OK to force someone to wear a seat belt all of the time, but not OK to have a waiting period if someone decides they want to die?
Well, partially, because it’s hell on the first responders to have to clean up a fatal accident scene, which is made worse if the death(s) could have been prevented.
I don’t disagree, but you are making the case for regulating grown adults. For the parent post “who decides how long the waiting period should be?” The answer is society. Right now society says none, but it shouldn’t be looked upon in horror if that changes. If I had to choose, I’d choose seat belts optional over on-demand euthanasia.
Are they underfunded though? How much is enough? Chicago for example pays probably at least 15k per student yet scores poorly. How much do they need? 20k? 50k?
It was an interesting read, but it only says how much they spend on school vouchers. I didn’t see a spend for the standard public schools. They said the average voucher was 7k which is almost for sure lower than what public school is charging per student. Maybe they just need to add an income requirement to it and if you make too much no voucher.
~$10k, so yes the voucher is less than what the public school students are getting (directly from their teachers and indirectly through other school services and faculty).
I think the lack of quality is not being driven at the individual teacher level and isn’t related to covid at all. Covid made the issues that already existed visible. Removing AP classes and charter schools, graduating kids missing credits, downplaying test results, and failing to properly address poor student behavior are all usually made at the district level. I don’t think increased funding would change any of that and I think a lot of good teachers would still quit.
There are two main things reducing quality of the schools as this goes on:
1) There’s a really bad staff shortage. The ways schools are trying to compensate without significantly raising pay are making school worse. Three examples are reducing the length of the school week, cutting “specials” (art, music, languages, non-“core” classes), and replacing instruction with crappy computerized solutions (believe me, they’re mostly crappy).
2) Because there’s a shortage of teachers, it’s harder to turn down an applicant or get rid of a bad or mediocre teacher. These also aren’t disproportionately leaving—plenty of good ones are among the ones moving to other sectors, in part because they tend to have the best prospects outside of school, and it’s not like schools can really offer them more to try to keep them. So, the pool of candidates is at least not improving as it shrinks, and it’s tougher to get rid of teachers that otherwise might be let go. Further, the teacher pipeline is drying up and it’s quickly becoming a less-attractive option for students entering school. Result: average teacher quality may be expected to trend down.
the highest per student spend is at the most failing and underperforming school systems: Chicago, DC, Baltimore - and they haven't showed a trend to improve at all and keep demanding more and more resources
Low-performing inner city schools do sometimes pay quite a bit more than easy suburban schools—but the work environment is so incredibly terrible and the job so difficult that they struggle to retain good teachers anyway. They have to pay extra just to keep anyone at all.
Everyone seems to be saying this but whenever I get quotes they are always the same, for every dollar the hardware goes down the labor seems to go up the exact same amount… strange how that works.
Solar energy comes up often on HN, but it is misleading to talk about solar without differentiating between utility grid solar and consumer rooftop solar. Simply put, utility grid solar provides low cost power and consumer rooftop solar does not and will not. The rooftop solar price is usually hidden because no power source has been as subsidized as rooftop solar. Besides direct subsidies, wealthier home owners have often been paid the retail rate for the electricity they sell to the grid which causes higher electricity bills for those who can't afford to put panels on their roof - sort of a reverse Robinhood scheme.
The thing with rooftop/local solar is that it doesn't need to compete with wholesale electricity prices, it only need to compete with retail prices. It's already competitive there, to the point that most places are removing subsidies and retargeting them at storage (batteries), transmission, or EV charging infrastructure.
It isn't very clear what you mean. If utilities are required to do net metering (i.e. buy all power whenever it is produced at the retail rate rather than buy what they need at the wholesale rate) it is a huge unsustainable subsidy to wealthier homeowners paid for by the less wealthy. It's free riding on the reliability provided by the grid, putting large costs on the less well off. As these costs grew, that also provided an incentive for consumer solar installations to increase. Eventually the issue was impossible to ignore and states are starting to remove the subsidies. It is strange that anyone thought net metering ever made any sense.
As the statista.com report says
>...Rooftop solar photovoltaic installations on residential buildings and nuclear power have the highest unsubsidized levelized costs of energy generation in the United States. If not for federal and state subsidies, rooftop solar PV would come with a price tag between 117 and 282 U.S. dollars per megawatt hour.
Looks like that report is a year old, but I doubt the installation costs have really gone down much since then. (Panel prices come down, but labor costs, etc don't.)
I don’t know where you live, but I can speak to how it works in Australia.
Your energy bill has a fixed daily rate to be connected to the grid. That pays for poles and wires, maintenance etc. To oversimplify a bit there’s also your cost per kWh to buy energy and to sell it. Someone using their own PV system during the day and buying from the grid at night isn’t “free riding” like you think. The connection is paid for by the fixed connection fee.
I guess it all depends on the prices the utilities have to pay to buy the power and whether they are forced to buy the power if they don't need it. If the price is higher than the rate the utility would pay for utility scale solar, than I think you have to admit the owner of the solar panels is getting at least a small subsidy - likely paid for by other rate payers who are unable to put up solar. If the price paid is basically the same, then there should be no complaints from the other rate payers.
Sure, but they are not in most places. IMO subsidies made sense to kickstart the industry given the external costs imposed by climate change, but I agree that they don't anymore.
> >...Rooftop solar photovoltaic installations on residential buildings and nuclear power have the highest unsubsidized levelized costs of energy generation in the United States.
I don't think levelized cost for generation is the correct metric here. That ignores the costs imposed by grid transmission (and utility profit margins). It's also worth noting that installation costs in the US can be much higher than those in other countries (even other wealthy countries).
>...IMO subsidies made sense to kickstart the industry given the external costs imposed by climate change, but I agree that they don't anymore.
In general, if a dollar of subsidy spent on utility based solar will go much further than a dollar of subsidy spent on consumer rooftop solar, then it makes sense to spend that dollar on where it will go the furthest. That is true now, and was true 10 years ago.
>...That ignores the costs imposed by grid transmission (and utility profit margins).
But aren't those installations also attached to the grid? If not, the costs go very very high if you have enough battery that you don't need to attach to the grid.
>...It's also worth noting that installation costs in the US can be much higher than those in other countries (even other wealthy countries).
I wouldn't be surprised if some or all the OECD countries also subsidize rooftop solar, so it might be hard to compare actual costs.
Providing the infrastructure and reliability of the grid is very expensive, so there is a huge difference between the wholesale costs and retail rates for delivered electricity. From the latest Lazard report on levelized costs, they estimate utility solar has a cost range of about $29 - $92 per megawatt. Rooftop residential has a cost estimate of about $122 to $284. Both are subsidized, but money is limited and is fungible - a dollar spent subsidizing utility solar will go much further than a dollar spent subsidizing rooftop residential solar.
An earlier comment said "The thing with rooftop/local solar is that it doesn't need to compete with wholesale electricity prices, it only need to compete with retail prices."
You seemed to disagree with that? I'm pointing out that, at least where I live, it appears this commenter was correct.
Generally people who install solar also want to have power at night and when it is cloudy or raining. I think the earlier comment was maybe implying that there would be no grid connection - but that only works if you have enough backup battery to cover all the times the sun isn't shining. Battery costs have not fallen like solar panels have fallen and buying power from the grid would be noticeably cheaper. Even with the subsidies, few people who install solar panels also install enough battery backup that they don't need to use the grid.
The price of batteries has been falling pretty quickly. They're not quite affordable yet, but I'll eat my hat if they home batteries don't hit affordability in the next 5-10 years.
If rooftop solar costs me $300/MWh, that's a third cheaper than the $450/MWh charged by my local utility provider. So, even without any subsidy or feed-in tariff, it would be rational for me to install solar, use it when available, and fall back to the grid when it's not.
Again, the only point I'm making is that this this statement appears to be true:
The thing with rooftop/local solar is that it doesn't need to compete with wholesale electricity prices, it only need to compete with retail prices. It's already competitive there [without any need for subsidies]
>If rooftop solar costs me $300/MWh, that's a third cheaper than the $450/MWh charged by my local utility provider. So, even without any subsidy or feed-in tariff, it would be rational for me to install solar, use it when available, and fall back to the grid when it's not.
If you want the capability of using your own rooftop solar, you need to install a much more costly battery backup system. With a typical solar system, the electrical output is sent to the grid. (So, if there is an outage on the grid, it will also shut down your panels since they don't want you to possibly electrocute the electrical workers.)
Yea, it is pretty hard to understand the point you are trying to make and simply repeating yourself doesn't actually help. But to go through in more detail:
>If rooftop solar costs me $300/MWh, that's a third cheaper than the $450/MWh charged by my local utility provider.
The $300 is an estimated LCOE for the intermittent power produce by rooftop solar, not some charge you get in the mail. Utilities can buy or produce that power for much less than that cost.
>So, even without any subsidy or feed-in tariff, it would be rational for me to install solar, use it when available, and fall back to the grid when it's not.
Except as I pointed out, you can't "use it when available" unless you have a battery backup system which the LCOE will be much higher than what you will pay your utility over the life of the system. That might change in the future, but that is the reality today.
>Again, the only point I'm making is that this this statement appears to be true:
>> The thing with rooftop/local solar is that it doesn't need to compete with wholesale electricity prices, it only need to compete with retail prices. It's already competitive there [without any need for subsidies]
I guess you should ask yourself why you think that statement was true? The person who made that comment adjusted their comment to add that actual battery systems weren't competitive at this point:
>>"They're not quite affordable yet, but I'll eat my hat if they home batteries don't hit affordability in the next 5-10 years."
- Retaining the existing grid connection but not connecting the solar to it (or not connecting it in such a way that power is sent back to the grid).
- Running household electrical loads off of the solar when available, falling back to the grid connection when it isn't.
You don't necessarily get full utilisation of the solar energy this way, but you can often still save a whole bunch of money compared to not having the solar. Especially if you are willing/able to load shift energy intensive things like washing/drying to times where the sun is shining.
You can also potentially gain additional savings by having a smallish battery that gains you some additional utilisation without it necessarily having to cover your entire daily usage.
Except as I pointed out, you can't "use it when available" unless you have a battery backup system
Maybe I've misunderstood, but aren't people already using these systems when available, without battery backups? And just reverting to paying PG&E when the sun isn't out?
ok, I think I misunderstood what you meant. Yes, when the sun is shining and the power grid is alive, you can use your power. People are usually shocked to find that when there is a power outage, they generally can't use their solar panels to have power (unless they have a battery backup system which can isolate them from the grid). But the costs for installing consumer solar are high enough that these systems only had a reasonable payback period when people could sell the power back to the utility at a very high rate. I see that in CA when they finally had to lower that subsidy, demand for consumer solar is estimated to have dropped by 80%:
While solar panel costs have dropped very low, the soft costs for installing rooftop solar (labor, permitting, etc.) have only gone up, so one off rooftop solar will always be more expensive than utility solar.
I feel that this is true for my area as well. I think for now the installers are taking the savings from cheaper panels and increasing their profit. I think the only way to reap those savings would be to do a self installation but that is becoming harder with permits and such and this is okay because we need safe electricity. I am in Canada and we don't get the most optimal sun for solar. It is still worth it but takes I believe about 15 years to finally break even. So not a huge amount of people are installing it so there is not a huge competitive market. If panel prices fall enough other companies will start offering it at a cheaper price and that is when we will start to see benefits.
