lafay

Not just product placement, and not just "today" either. I can recall so many cartoons from my childhood in the 80's (He-Man and G.I. Joe come to mind) which were nothing but long-form promotional content aimed directly at kids.

The long-standing prohibition of non-compete agreements in California is really the X factor in why it continues to be the innovation juggernaut. So many startups here are the result of founders capitalizing on some element of their experience at prior employers. And the ability to hire top talent away from direct competitors also provides a significant advantage for rising startups.

Even if other states pass legislation to end non-competes (as MA has tried to do a few times), it will take time for regional business culture to adapt. I've worked for a few East coast tech firms where company loyalty is taken very seriously, and defectors were semi-publicly shamed even if not outright sued for violating a non-compete.

This isn't a Florida-specific thing. It's a requirement of the National Electrical Code (NEC) that grid-tie inverters shut down on grid power loss, for exactly the stated reason. Every commercially produced grid-tie inverter has that feature built in.

Yes, this. Whatever was used to share or transfer the files generated a cleartext log with MD5 hashes, which was written somewhere other than the encrypted volume.

The idea that insurance won't cover fires from unpermitted, DIY stuff is mostly urban legend. Most homeowners' policies are what are called "all hazards" policies. They cover any kind of damage for any reason, with explicit exclusions like war, earthquake, flood. Outright arson / fraud by the policyholder would also obviously be excluded.

Banks would object to policies that excluded unpermitted work, since it's relatively common and this type of exclusion would leave them with lots of exposure.

So, they may decide to drop you like a hot potato afterward, but a fire from your homebrew powerwall would likely be covered. Read your policy fine print to be sure.

Author's title is "Why A Lifestyle Business Beats a Startup" which implies that no one should be pursuing a VC-backed startup, in favor of lifestyle businesses. That would leave all of these (subjectively) great ideas by the wayside.

I'm all for lifestyle businesses and side hustles. But some ideas really do require a lot of up-front capital. It's hard to imagine Tesla, SpaceX, Boom, or Nest succeeding as lifestyle businesses.

One thing that always strikes me about this kind of analysis or discussion is that it presupposes we have reached some kind of evolutionary final state -- that humans now possess all of the "competence" and "affordances" that will be necessary to comprehend the true nature of our existence and experience. Personally, I think that's naive, and that we are still very far from true understanding. In the same way that a cat is very far from comprehending geopolitics or calculus.

Related to "final state" is the assumption that there will be no successor beings. Surely evolution will continue to create beings (bio or silicon) that are more competent than humans -- perhaps it already has. Cattle can observe humans and their actions, but the cattle do not comprehend that they are captive and food. I'm not sure why it would be any different between humans and successors.