cameldrv

Seems like it massively advantages domestic French companies. If they only operate in France, they pay 2%, while YouTube pays 15%. I imagine there could be games played where a French only subsidiary pays 2% of their global income, or maybe someone sets up a French only CDN that pays the tax.

I was just listening to the EconTalk podcast, and the guest was a Spanish demographer that specifically said that Spanish train system was being starved for funding in the past 10 years or so. This is because the population is aging, and all of the growth in the economy is being directed towards pensions and health care for the rapidly growing number of retirees.

The real problem is the incentives. Since privately owned electric companies are monopolies, they usually have some sort of utility board that has to sign off on the rates, and usually this is through some sort of "reasonable" profit margin or return on capital. Therefore, the only way for a private utility to make more money is to spend more money. It's a complete inversion of normal capitalism.

In California for example, PG&E has an incentive to propose the most costly projects, make the worst deals with the union, etc. Of course the union is also very happy with this and will provide political cover for PG&E. Every extra dollar they spend on capital is an extra 10 cents every year they can charge the ratepayers and then pass on to shareholders.

You obviously see the result here where it's not just the profit margin of the private utilities that's causing the higher cost. Even if you zeroed out their profits and reduced rates accordingly, you'd still be paying more, because the private utilities spend more. So much for privatization saving money.

The fact that co-ops are even cheaper than private utilities is doubly crazy since most co-ops are rural, and the amount of wire to serve each customer is way higher than private utilities which tend to serve cities more where it's cheaper to provide service.

IMO the solution would be to make profits based on some sort of quality/cost of service benchmark rather than just expenditures. The problem of course is that it's hard to make fair metrics that aren't gameable.

I don't know exactly what the state of the art is now in MEMS gyros, but I'm pretty sure the tomahawk uses mechanical or ring laser gyros. Those systems are expensive.

For the reliability/storability parts though, the electronics are probably the least of the issues. You've got a jet engine in there that needs fuel, oil, and has a number of high speed moving parts. Having something like that sit for years in a ship and work with high reliability is not so simple.

Yeah that movie is almost completely unwatchable though. They took this conspiracy story and tried to make it into a zany slapstick comedy. I have no idea what Soderbergh was thinking.

Right it was in fact the embezzlement that originally got him to become a whistleblower. The FBI was investigating the embezzlement, and he told them that he could give them a bigger fish. Anyhow he wore a wire in several price fixing meetings and was generally extremely cooperative with the FBI. I think he embezzled on the order of $10 million from ADM, but the Lysine conspiracy was on the order of a $200 million overcharge to Lysine customers.

Now Whittacre was crazy and unstable, but what the DOJ did by giving him a bigger sentence for the embezzlement than the heads of ADM that he made the case against IMO sent a message that cooperating with the government on a price fixing case is not going to help you.

What the story really says IMO also is that one of the only ways for the government to actually get enough evidence to prosecute these cases is to have someone who is part of the conspiracy that has committed some other crime, and the feds can flip them. That's not going to happen too often.

Ultimately the government also proved that ADM was also part of a completely separate citric acid price fixing cartel involving different players, but the MO was exactly the same mustache twirling crazy conspiracy theorist's dream of the players sitting down together in a hotel conference room dividing up the market.

IMO price fixing is a lot more common than most people assume. The normal textbook economics say that in a pure commodity market like eggs, the average producer should make near zero profit. There are a few ways to make a profit in these industries, such as economies of scale or innovative use of byproducts, but it is very tough.

On the other hand, price fixing is relatively easy, and as long as the players don’t get too greedy and don’t leave a paper trail, they’re unlikely to be caught. The only way it usually happens is if there is a whistleblower.

The ADM lysine case years ago also threw a lot of cold water on whistleblowers when the whistleblower ended up getting more jail time than any of the other conspirators.

Anyhow, the fact you even see any successful prosecutions given how hard it is prove, and the paradoxical fact that in some commodity industries, you actually do see decent profit margins tells me that this sort of thing is actually probably very common.

A tomahawk has a good INS, which is still expensive, and it has to be able to sit for years in a tube getting banged around with the waves, and launch on a moments notice.

That’s not to say that it should cost 2.5 million, but Ukraine doesn’t need storability and durability because I think they pretty much get driven from the factory to the launch site in a matter of days.

It's not just a home automation system though. People setup HA for a lot of reasons, but one of them is that they don't want other people/companies in control of what goes on in their home, spying on them, etc. The sort of people who go to the trouble to set up a server, deal with all of the integration issues, etc so that they can get something that they have control over of.

Anyhow that sort of person might not take kindly to having a hash of their password sent to some random web server without being asked first.

+1 on the inner game of tennis. It had a big influence on how I think about my own mind.

Noticed this in the Withings app too. Sadly I've seen this trend with a lot of apps. For example 98% of the time I open the Audible app I want to play an audiobook, but they make you click multiple times. They want you to buy books, not listen to them.

I had a similar experience. They'll show you the x-rays, but honestly I can't see anything. Having moved around a bit and had a few dentists, I've noticed a distinct pattern where the ones that have the nicest looking offices with the highest tech equipment will recommend the most aggressive things. Look for an office that's functional but slightly shabby.

This is fine, good for Amazon for setting up an excellent logistics system and having a good return policy. The problem is that Amazon charges a lot for this service. If you don't need super fast shipping or a good return policy, or don't want to pay for Amazon's profit margin, you can't go anywhere else, because Amazon will restrict your sales if you charge less somewhere else.

Given that Amazon has 40% of the e-commerce market (I'm surprised it's not more actually), this is exactly what antitrust laws were designed to stop. Customers and vendors/manufacturers should be free to use the distribution channels that meet their needs of service and speed and price the best, but Amazon, through its big market share, is preventing that.

One measure of progress is not having to think about something. I don't want to have to think about when to wash my clothes or my dishes or whatever. I want to push the button and have it go. I'd be willing to make a concession for an EV since it consumes a lot of power, but it should be automatically controlled and not make me think.

If we're going to electrify everything, we need a clean, plentiful, reliable electrical supply. There is no technical obstacle to having this.

Saying "we can save $1000 per person in capital costs, they just need to deal with 5 extra minor inconveniences per day" is not how you run a developed country.

AFAIK OpenAI has not directly responded to the claims. If they ignore it, I don’t see what choice you have except to assume the worst.