tanaros

> 85% of Canadians live within 100 miles/160 km of the border. These are very integrated communities.

Yes, but the culture and values start shifting as soon as you cross the border, and they shift more the further south you go.

Total EU defense spending is around $450M USD. The US defense budget, prior to 2027, is about $950M USD. Are you saying the US could have all those social policies for $500M USD?

Whenever somebody makes a benchmark, people complain that the benchmark results are meaningless because they’re gamed. I don’t know why those same people don’t understand that grading on vibes is strictly worse.

Google stupidly positioned their service as if it was a separate console you had to buy games for, which then couldn’t be played anywhere else. The successful streaming services sell you games for non-streaming platforms and then just allow you to stream them as an option.

> The purpose of a federal government should be to grant rights, not restrictions.

If the federal government is about granting rights, does that imply the default state is “no rights”? That seems objectively worse.

> Good gaijin are welcomed, bad ones need to leave.

This is always the rhetoric in anti-immigration movements. You may find that the definitions of “good” and “bad” vary wildly.

> A lot of people are missing the fact that the Steam Frame is Valve's attempt at staking a position in the wide-open and malleable VR space.

It is their third attempt.

> which would help reinforce the idea that what we sacrifice as the price of scientific knowledge, is absolute knowledge.

I don’t think it is possible to have absolute knowledge of anything. Scientific knowledge is the best (only) thing we have.

I enjoyed it!

Admittedly, I went in with extremely low expectations. It was fun, though, and I liked the visuals and the music. The plot was … something.

The link says:

> Some teams in the Google Cloud org just laid off all UX researchers below L6

That’s not all UX researchers below L6 in the entire company. It doesn’t even sound like it’s all UX researchers below L6 in Google Cloud.

The notion of “PhD-level research” is too vague to be useful anyways. Is it equivalent to a preprint, a poster, a workshop paper, a conference paper, a journal submission, or a book? Is it expected to pass peer review in a prestigious venue, a mid-tier venue, or simply any venue at all?

There’s wildly varying levels of quality among these options, even though they could all reasonably be called “PhD-level research.”

> buying an EV does not actually reduce emissions like magic, unless the owner drives that car for a looooong time. Like 10-15+ years.

I find this timeframe surprising. I did some quick searches and there are models like GREET that suggest the break-even point is much sooner than that in the US. It is difficult to know for certain, of course, as there are many variables.

Regardless, it is of course better to incentivize long-term ownership as well. I think of HOV access as similar to a tax deduction on purchase. It’s a cheap way to provide a carrot for initial EV adoption.

It makes sense if you view the HOV lane primarily as a way to reduce emissions, not traffic. This is also why e.g. single-rider motorcycles are often allowed to use HOV lanes as well.