magnuspaaske

The debt thing is amazing since it ignores the interest on the debt and cherry picks Google's revenue from 2019 for some reason (which is then adjusted for inflation for the comparison).

If you have 20 years to pay off 5 trillion dollars, it doesn't come out to a neat 250 billion per year as that suggests there's 0% interest and no servicing cost. Servicing costs would probably be at least 3 times the stated figure, corresponding to 10% interest paid. Some of the debt may obviously carry less interest, but the financing is opaque (as the author admits to), we have seen interests rates creep across the economy and big tech has had hits to their credit ratings.

I hope the Liberal Party can find a better candidate than the author of this piece ...

Even if you go back to using react it's still useful and fun to read about how people can implement things like virtual doms to get an idea about what's happening under the hood. From there it's easier to figure out if react is the best choice or other choices might be better.

From there one big question is if everything needs to be dynamic or not. You often have menus and navigation that you don't need a framework for and that even something like jQuery is well suited for. On the other hand a framework would probably slow things down for the writing experience in Obsidian, which is the main draw for me to use Obsidian. Once the writing module is written from scratch, it won't seem like such a big lift to also do all the navigation and controls by hand.

That doesn't mean this is the right way for everyone. A lot of times the speed to releasing new features is more important, while the handicraft of the UI/UX is less important and in those cases using a framework is absolutely the right choice.

I think the difference with earlier UI redesigns is that the supposed benefit of liquid glass is the whole opacity thing, where several things are laid on top of each other while trying to show what's underneath. That just creates a much more messy interface, making it harder to see what's going on since they've dropped UI-classics like using contrast to make text readable. That's also why the setting to tune down liquid glass is found in accessibility and not, say, display preferences.

I'm a bit too old to have been privvy to any Win XP design backlash, but I think the more apt comparison is with Windows Vista, where transparency was also a major part of the design philosophy (usability be damned). We have pretty good ideas about what makes a good UI/UX and none of those ideas involve using transparency to make readability worse while also not really making what's under the half-transparent element visible or readable.

There was also an article in Wired about this and I'll just say this: the fact the most discussed thing about the new iOS version is how to make their terrible new UI (that no one asked for) off is telling something about the state of innovation at Apple. It's annoying to see apps adapt to the new design, making a lot of the navigation in the top and the bottom worse (and great to see a couple of holdouts like Bluesky). A design philosophy where the full width of the screen is used is pretty good, not sure we needed Apple to prove it with a counter example.

Can't wait for them to release iOS 27 and announce they've made a useable UI again. "Hey friends, those accessibility settings you've used for a year? You don't need them anymore. Apple is where innovation happens!!"

There are people who use pyrolysis to turn left over biomass to biochar which can then be added to the soil and, depending on your energy use for other things, can turn the process carbon net negative. It is a roundabout way to sequester carbon though as you need to consider the opportunity cost of doing other things with the land (like leaving it for nature to take over and sequester carbon that way).

It's always worth being sceptical about some of these claims about processes magically being carbon net negative since cleaning up the atmosphere might not actually be what's paying the bills leading to inherent conflicts between selling a product (ethanol) and doing an environmental service. Switching to EVs will allow you to use much less land to fuel the cars with wind or solar energy and then the leftover land can be used for carbon sequestration and rewilding/biodiversity projects where that's the sole focus of the operation.

The problem with counterfeiting dollars is that it only works until the design is changed and it's hard to transfer your capabilities. On the other hand hacking is convenient since it can be use for political leverage, espionage and similar.

In Denmark the electricity price is calculated per hour for consumers, allowing us to move tumble drying, dishwashing and laundry to times, when it's cheaper to use power (= more renewable energy in the grid). This obviously requires some digital solutions to work and I think it's a great example where digitalization drives value in other sectors (in this case the power sector).

The food is still microwaved on the ICE and presumably in other countries too, but the presentation is fantastic. The experience of eating in a proper restaurant while seeing the landscape roll by is amazing and while not all services need a restaurant or can support one I don't expect restaurants to go away. More automation might mean more people can work on the presentation of the food while the kitchen can take up less space which should overall improve the economics of the onboard eating experience.

I think this is right. I don't have a car but I rent cars periodically and pick based on the UX more than the "tech" features. Most EVs are fast enough and have enough range that it doesn't really make a difference to the driving experience but the UX and all the screens do make a difference.

I like the Audi E-tron because I can mostly ignore or turn off the center screen and have everything important in front of me behind the wheel. The center screen on the Polestar 2 is a bit more pronounced but can be muted when switching to the music screen. Teslas and VW EVs have way to much happening in the center screen so I avoid those. It's sad to see Volvo go down the same path but a correction should be in order.

Anyways, all the tech is commoditised so you need something else to differentiate yourself. For me that's not a big center display to show how "tech forward" you are, as it ends up suggesting you're anything but.

It might have helped that the Nordics were pretty advanced with developing mobile networks and mobile network technology. There was also SonyEricson in the region and it kind of makes sense that companies making network technology would also make handsets in the early innings and only later would people realise those are actually two different skillsets and market and need different companies.

The beautiful thing with the iPhone was that it wasn't a "smartphone" per se, but rather just a beautiful new kind of device and then people would get used to the smart features later. I had a PDA a couple of years before the iPhone and while it was certainly novel to have a digital planner as a teenager the "electronic calendar" or "email on the go" use cases just weren't really big. Listening to music and reading news on the go were great use cases though

Not really, there's a real cost of ownership for real estate that is more expensive than for owning stock in a company for instance. You still need a place to live and owning can be great for that – as to being a landlord there might still be better ways to make a return.

But the real problem with real estate "investment" is that the return doesn't come from doing something productive but rather is predicated on preventing someone else from doing something productive, namely making more buildings.

The problem with that framing is that those big companies aren't just responding to consumer demand but have also actively lobbied for policies that create said demand. For instance shipping companies pay a much lower corporate tax rate than other companies and car companies have lobbied against everything from efficiency and clear air regulation to creating alternatives to a car-first transportation system. Oil companies are in a league of themselves and we're only starting to see shenanigans they've done to stall dealing with climate change.

That's how most electric cars are set up already

This is the wrong way to think about it since there's little that suggests AV-taxis also need to be larger than the cars already on the road. When I'm renting a car or taking a taxi I know exactly what my needs are and can decide to not pay for luggage space if I don't need that for instance. Further you can just put a smaller battery in AV-taxis since you can optimise the charging schedule. And lastly, when we've gotten rid of air pollution from tailpipe emissions air pollution from tires would be the next problem to fix and it intuitively seems that all electric, digital cars could have their pollution reduced via a software update.

And obviously the technology making these cars possible also make self driving busses possible, which would allow new ways for urban mobility.