As someone who isn't well versed in this Node ecosystem, why is omitting a standard library a separate project? It sounds like something you'd do as a Node feature, or variant of Node, or some command line switch or env var or whatever else is needed to avoid whatever it is you are trying to avoid.
There's no way to not bring along the entire Node.js standard library when you're using Node.js. It also doesn't provide a way to fully abstract over the underlying JavaScript engine, which Bare needs to be able to support swapping out the underlying JavaScript engine without any code changes. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43559532 for more on that.
Isn't this thing going to be subsidized by taxpayers in the end anyway?
California already a dumb communal insurance thing, the "California FAIR Plan" for people who can't get insurance due to high risk. They force insurance companies who operate in the state to fund it. So basically everyone has to subsidize the high-risk people... but then the insurance companies leave.
As someone who's home insurer pulled out of California and so I had to scramble to find another carrier, I looked at the FAIR plan and it is completely untenable for most people. My insurance was already high, ~$2000/year for coverage that would rebuild our house, and under FAIR it would have gone up to $12000/year.
I mostly agree with the article that insurance is grounded in statistical measures of risk and there's no point railing against it. Norms are going to have to adapt to increased risk and how we build homes and infrastructure needs to shift away from short-term, low-cost thinking to longer-term solutions with a higher-upfront cost and lower TCO given the new constraints. Things like burying power lines, aggressively managing fire danger, and homes that are built to be more sound to natural disasters have to become the status quo.
Most of these things are already possible today. In my neighborhood, PG&E did an assessment and it would cost every homeowner on the street ~$25,000 to have the power lines buried. I would have opened my wallet immediately to reduce the fire risk, but it got caught up in politics and policy. When we had some renovation on our house, my wife and I insisted on some of the work being done in ways that would make the house safer and easier to maintain over the long work. The contractor balked at first saying it would cost us an extra couple of thousand dollars. I had to point out that an extra $3000 to make sure things lasted an extra 5 - 10 years and was easier to maintain and upgrade meant nothing. But people have to insist on doing better because right now the norm is to cut corners on everything to save in many cases a negligible amount of money over the life of the work or against the cost if there is a disaster.
The building codes will need to reflect the new normal. Defensible perimeters, metal roofs and masonry or cementitious exteriors are a must for many areas going forward. Log cabins amongst the pines just aren't tenable in the West any more.
You say that... but a well built log cabin, with a Class A fire resistant roof, is rather likely to survive a wildfire unbothered if the ground a couple feet around it is kept cleared.
They're simple (not a lot of corners for burning things to wedge in), they tend very well sealed with smaller windows (so less chance of a window breaking and allowing embers in), and the amount of thermal energy it takes to light a full log on fire is quite high. Radiant heat from a forest fire isn't going to bother a log cabin. It might darken the wood somewhat, but it won't light smooth logs on fire. Even random firebrands and such lack the energy to bother wood.
The only concern would be a shake roof - that would catch fire easily and burn the place down. But a well built and "tight" roof (no massive eaves with vents into an attic, just minimal overhangs) of Class A fire resistance would work just fine.
Metal roofing is not inherently fire resistant, either - it depends on the materials, and what's below it. Some metal roofing can transfer enough heat to the wood below to light that on fire, even without direct flame spread. And, non-intuitively, a lot of asphalt shingles are Class A fire resistant when properly installed.
What doesn't work well, obviously, are the sort of expensive homes with "all the architectural features," lots of inside corners that trap debris, and an incredibly complex roofline.
People forget that you don't have to modify a McMansion to whatever requirements you're adding - you can build something entirely different.
"Earthships" or other hobbit-hole like houses are almost completely fireproof as long as the entries are handled correctly - anything that can start a fire through three feet of earth is probably a volcano anyway.
Don't most of those suffer from serious ongoing humidity problems? I've looked into that style of housing in the past, and it seems like it's always having issues with mold, mildew, and ohter "issues of running 90-100% interior humidity for long periods of time" sort of problems. I think they're okay in drier climates - IIRC they were developed in New Mexico, which is "bone dry nine months of the year, and somewhat drier the other three."
They do - and there are ways to counteract it (the usual problem is similar to damp basements compounded by the lack of air movement and humidity control).
It’s a matter of cost (it’s almost never worth it) and tradeoffs.
But if fire survivability is paramount, it is an option.
A "log cabin amongst the pines" with a decent sized "yard" clearance area, a good roof, and where the sides of the house are kept reasonably moist is pretty much fireproof.
The advantage of a metal roof as opposed to most others is the reduction of nooks and crannies where embers can get trapped and light the roof on fire. Metal roofs are also more slick, and dangerous to work on, than any gritty material. A hipped standing seam metal roof with a moderate pitch is going to shed embers pretty handily on both the windward and leeward sides.
Yes, the relevant blur here is in your retina, as it tracks a moving screen object, called "sample and hold" blur. 60 fps is not enough when the pixel persists for the full frame duration -- the pixels smear across your retina.
Anyone know of articles that deep dive into "snappiness" or "feel" computer experiences?
Everyone knows SSDs made a big difference in user experience. For the CPU, normally if you aren't gaming at high settings or "crunching" something (compiling or processing video etc.) then it's not obvious why CPU upgrades should be making much difference even vs. years-old Intel chips, in terms of that feel.
There is the issue of running heavy JS sites in browsers but I can avoid those.
The main issue seems to be how the OS itself is optimized for snappiness, and how well it's caching/preloading things. I've noticed Windows 10 file system caching seems to be not very sophisticated for example... it goes to disk too often for things I've accessed recently-but-not-immediately-prior.
Similarly when it comes to generating heat, if laptops are getting hot even while doing undemanding office tasks with huge periods of idle time then basically it points to stupid software -- or let's say poorly balanced (likely aimed purely at benchmark numbers than user experience).
Kids can’t switch their own school because they’re not their own legal guardians until they’re 18. You can’t switch nationalities just because you want to. That doesn’t make your country a penal colony.
You can OBVIOUSLY it be in school. No country on earth forces kids to join any school (let alone to attend it).
Most people didn’t choose to be at their jobs and hate it, the main way out is waiting for retirement.
Maybe this varies by location but at least in the UK, adults can usually leave the grounds of their place of work during a lunch break. Not true for school kids. And the difference in population density between schools and offices is usually stark.
This paragraph looks wrong.
"In 2005, when D.R. Horton sold a record number of homes, it made $1.47 billion. In 2023, when it built roughly half as many, its profit was a little over three times as high, or $4.7 billion. "
It did not build half as many homes, it was 82917 homes in 2023 vs. 51172 in 2005. Also, the profit number should be corrected for inflation when comparing across almost 2 decades.
Thanks for doing this calculation! It would be interesting to know if the average square footage of houses built by the company has changed. If they have increased by 25%, the profit per square foot would be roughly unchanged.
D.R.Horton home sizes have remained mostly consistent for the past 20+ years that I am aware of*
* My family worked with home builder marketing departments, and I use to enjoy seeing home & price progression in the area over the years (D.R. Horton has been and is, mostly 1200-2200sqft with a few going past that on either end). One of my many issues with this article is making the mass production builder into a bad guy. D.R. Horton IS the "Starter Home" builder, few other builders can compete for that market because the cost and time it takes to build. It's why local small builders tend to build higher quality homes, they only have the resources (money for permits, legal etc and manpower) for a few houses a year. If the profit on a home is $55k with all the marketing and construction bulk prices DRHorton gets, whats that profit for the 2-4 homes a year local builder this guy wants to replace them with? Probably not much to want to keep doing the job; always on the verge of financial collapse if 2008 happens again (many small home builders disappeared and did not come back. I dont think many people want that kind of risk to start up again). If we wait for small local builders to build homes we would be in a far worse situation than we are now.
I had the opportunity to talk, in length, to the owner/CEO of a mid-sized builder who had to sell the remaining lots from one of three communities because he couldn't keep the prices within: both a price that they would sell and price to make a profit (or break-even); the shortage of construction workers and regulatory delays and cost were a large drain on resources. It had nothing to do with having land or needing to buy land, he already had, it was simply taking too long to get through the building process. Not sure if home builders are still doing it, but many in the area were working together to try and get high-school students into construction apprenticeship/vocation programs to make up for the shortage.
Maybe. I’m not a domain expert so I’m not sure that’s a meaningful metric, especially at this scale. But in general I think anyone would be happy if their business improved units sold and per unit profit. Naively I’d expect an inverse relationship.
A topic tagging system could potentialy help people filter stuff.
"Hacking" is a mindset that can still be applied in interesting ways to social problems and assumptions. The standard political discourse does not generally operate with such a mindset (ideally intelligent, thoughtful, humble regarding uncertainties or alternative views etc.)
The audience here and moderation structure creates somewhat different takes on things even if comments are too limiting to have "debates".
These are fuzzy topics where it is difficult to objectively prove arguments, difficult to agree on philosophical scoring/ranking of various social states or end goals. The academic background is lacking in rigor and apparently ignores or suppresses large swathes of potential investigative topics.
There should be more attention given to the meta level of these topics. Having a more precise language and names for concepts would help have higher-level discussion without repeating basics all the time, and without the "appeal to emotion" type of anecdotal/moral/rage-filled discussion.
It sounds like the pilots and hence the unions have an intent to hide things from the FAA. What's the significance of this report existing and why do they openly promote this "etiquette"?
Maybe the FAA should actually encourage neutral third-parties to observe pilots.
