OrwellianChild

Pure speculation on my part, but on a first flight when you're shaking out the fundamentals, it's safer to not retract landing gear in case there is a catastrophic failure in, say, your hydraulic system.

One dynamic that may be at play: Designing a new engine is a gamble. For a company who already makes money with existing designs, there may be little upside on a small-volume new product. This is likely the reason the "Big 3" passed on designing an engine they don't have an off-the-shelf option for.

Boom would probably be the primary beneficiary of such an engine existing, so it isn't all that surprising that they will have to fund the development. The second supersonic airframe that can use their engine would be the one to turn that R&D profitable for Boom (and ease the introduction of more supersonic airframe options).

HN title is wrong. From the article: "Sure, sales of EVs keep going up — a record 300,000 cars sold in the US in the third quarter of 2023 were electric..."

Discussion is about a more slowly growing market - not one in decline. YoY sales are up like 40%. This is FUD.

"Natural Gas" is 97% methane, so it's probably most direct to just refer to it by it's primary component...

Rent control only fights against upward pressure for existing renters... When you describe rents continually going up, it's due to more people competing for limited rental units. Cities can and do see rent declines (they first show up as "first month free" etc. before landlords bite the bullet and reduce rate). Seattle has seen temporary competition for rents in some neighborhoods as new construction started in 2019/2020 comes online. It won't last since we've seen such a decline in new construction starts, but the mechanism is sound.

Worth getting a bit specific about terminology here... The article states that _insurance_ profits are capped, but that PBMs and other stages of care are not. That's why they're all vertically integrating - so they can steer margin to the un-regulated entities. Can't help but feel like this is a simple anti-trust issue just like you'd see in other industries. If they were truly separate companies with robust competition, we could see a lot more efficiency and less rent seeking.

I mean that the reason you'd need semaglutide is that you can't keep to a diet. If you could keep to keto IF, you wouldn't need the drug in the first place. It's not option A or option B. It's "if A fails, fall back to B".

Not trying to single you out as this has been brought up in multiple comments in-thread, but I think this is apples-to-oranges. Diets work when followed. The problem is that the vast majority of people struggle to adhere to them. This drug aids in reducing the urge to eat, which reduces/eliminates the need for scrutiny over intake. It's "diet autopilot", which is why it's so powerful.

3rd hand anecdote, but a friend who used Ozempic spoke to the psychological impact of seeing the cravings for food vanish that went beyond just the timeframe of the dose. A drug that effectively shuts off the compulsion helps demonstrate the disconnect between the desire and the need for food. She specifically called out that experiencing the absence of craving helped with willpower after the Ozempic dose was withdrawn.

California likely has more stringent seismic regulations as well, while much of Texas is sitting on bedrock. Matt Risinger (TX builder with a YouTube channel) decries homes sheathed in nothing more than cardboard, so other building code items may also be more lax in Texas.

Is this a housing issue?

I sympathize with the desire for a utopian government-run housing arrangement like this, but I think it discards the practical for the ideal...

With less restrictive zoning, more properties and building projects become financially feasible with the banks, builders, and contractors we already have. It costs the government zero money and happens automatically with the stroke of a pen.

It's much more difficult to re-engineer our entire mode of government, taxation, and housing provision than simply removing a few legal restrictions.