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AnimalMuppet commented on The F-35 is losing the trade war   jalopnik.com/1945910/f-35... · Posted by u/rntn
jltsiren · 3 hours ago
Defense is a bit like advertising or finance. It has some aspects of a zero-sum game and a negative-sum game. All the money you invest in it is wasted. But if your enemy/competitor chooses to waste more money, you may be in trouble.

From an European perspective, the entire purpose of NATO from 1992 to 2022 was to prevent wasting too much money on defense. Because, for some reason, Americans were willing to do it instead.

Then Russia invaded Ukraine, and the calculus changed. Now European countries are rebuilding their defensive capabilities, while Russia is still bogged down in Ukraine. Given the lack of credible short-term threats, limiting defense spending was clearly the right choice until 2022.

AnimalMuppet · 3 hours ago
After Russia took Crimea and part of the east of Ukraine in 2014, I'm not sure that calculus was valid.
AnimalMuppet commented on From $479 to $2,800 a month for ACA health insurance next year   npr.org/sections/shots-he... · Posted by u/laurex
epistasis · a day ago
Universal healthcare doesn't change the overall cost. To a large degree, the ACA/Obamacare was a good stab at getting universal healthcare! The change in this article is about undoing universality, by changing the subsidies for those with lower income.

To structurally reduce the fraction of GDP devoted to healthcare, we need to make far bigger changes. A lot of the setup right now is to subsidize those on Medicare by those on private insurance programs. The cross-subsidization goes very deep, and anything that might reduce costs also has the risk of undoing cross-subsidization. With half the country refusing to reform health care for the past 30 years, and the other half having their hands tied behind their back on trying to improve health care, we have built a gigantic overly complex system that's very hard to unwind.

AnimalMuppet · a day ago
> Universal healthcare doesn't change the overall cost.

It can, at least to some degree. Every doctor's office has people who run through the insurance maze, trying to get services paid for. And every insurance company has people on the other side, trying to find ways to not pay for stuff. Having only one organization to deal with would simplify that; having one organization with clear, transparent rules would simplify it more.

AnimalMuppet commented on Privately-Owned Rail Cars   amtrak.com/privately-owne... · Posted by u/jasoncartwright
Llamamoe · a day ago
Why can't the locomotive pull it from the wires? It's not like it maintains a constant draw with all the speed changes and such.
AnimalMuppet · a day ago
Most of the US doesn't have wires.
AnimalMuppet commented on Does MHz Still Matter?   ubicloud.com/blog/does-mh... · Posted by u/furkansahin
Aurornis · a day ago
AMD’s fastest consumer CPUs are a great value for small servers. If you’re doing just one task (like in this article) the clock speed is a huge benefit.

The larger server grade parts start to shine when the server is doing a lot of different things. The extra memory bandwidth helps keep the CPU fed and the higher core count reduces the need for context switching because your workloads aren’t competing as much.

The best part about the AMD consumer CPUs is that you can even use ECC RAM if you get the right motherboard.

AnimalMuppet · a day ago
Wait, what? ECC RAM for a consumer CPU? Does anyone sell motherboards like that?
AnimalMuppet commented on The Open-Office Trap (2014)   newyorker.com/business/cu... · Posted by u/cebert
Zigurd · 2 days ago
Management performance measurement depends on KPIs. KPIs that don't look vague depend on measurability and/or visibility. Code isn't measurable. Functionality sort of is but it's too vague. Visibility often amounts to having a room full of people that you can see working. As a technical product manager, who uses a set of tools that make my work measurable, I don't have much incentive to make the team visible by putting them in a room with tables and no dividers. Managers who were never coders, and who therefore are flying blind when they say progress is being made are the ones that need a KPI dashboard and an open office.

The quest for measurability is also driving fake agile. The real measurement of agile is right in the manifesto, but if you can't read the code, you can't measure.

AnimalMuppet · 2 days ago
This. It's not (at least mostly) a power trip. It's mostly about control. They don't know how to control what they can't measure, and they don't want to have to trust people who can see what the manager cannot.

Agile... I've seen a good agile environment ruined in exactly that way. There is an "impedance mismatch" with upper management, because upper management wants their usual progress reports and burn-down charts, and wants them in the normal terms, and agile doesn't produce those... unless there's someone who has that as a part of their job on the agile team.

AnimalMuppet commented on Privately-Owned Rail Cars   amtrak.com/privately-owne... · Posted by u/jasoncartwright
blakesterz · 2 days ago
I'm not into trains at all, but the American Association of Private Railroad Car Owners has some pretty nice looking cars you can charter:

https://www.aaprco.com/charter-a-private-car

I guess it starts at $30,000? Though that might be for an entire train, not just the cars above.

https://www.amtrak.com/charter-your-private-train

AnimalMuppet · 2 days ago
That seems to be chartering the cars from Amtrak, though, not from the private car owners.
AnimalMuppet commented on Privately-Owned Rail Cars   amtrak.com/privately-owne... · Posted by u/jasoncartwright
righthand · 2 days ago
This better than every wealthy person owning an RV. Though there is still the last mile problem. Does my personal train car have a vehicle on board (probably I’m rich in this scenario)?

Groups of wealthy people could split a train car. Private Train-car time shares?

AnimalMuppet · 2 days ago
If you're actually wealthy, you don't have to split a train car.

Last mile problem? Have your personal assistant drive whatever vehicle you want and have it waiting when the train arrives. They can take an Uber back to wherever they need to be next.

AnimalMuppet commented on Margin debt surges to record high   advisorperspectives.com/d... · Posted by u/pera
FollowingTheDao · 2 days ago
It is not that the markets are tricky. Predicting what the Fed will do with interest rates is tricky. By lowering rates they feed more money into the market. Take a look at the last 15 years and you will realize the only thing that gave us a minor recession was COVID, adn that was becasue intrest rates were zero.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FEDFUNDS

But they can't do this for much longer, inflation is the first sign, which is why Trump is raising tariffs.

You can see Bond prices going up. Trumps tarrifs are aimed and lowering T Bill rates:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DGS10

AnimalMuppet · 2 days ago
> which is why Trump is raising tariffs.

I question this bit. (That may be why he's raising tariffs; I question whether it will work.)

When tariffs go up, prices go up (delusions that "other countries will pay" notwithstanding). That shows up in inflation statistics, which in turn will (probably) show up in T Bill rates, but as a higher rate, not a lower one.

Except... tariffs might be a one-off increase. They may not compound the way "regular" inflation does. So maybe it will work in the medium term?

AnimalMuppet commented on Privately-Owned Rail Cars   amtrak.com/privately-owne... · Posted by u/jasoncartwright
mhalle · 2 days ago
Private collectors offer them for charter.

https://www.aaprco.com/

AnimalMuppet · 2 days ago
They do. But I didn't see anything on there about cost. Does anyone know, even rough numbers?
AnimalMuppet commented on Giving people money helped less than I thought it would   theargumentmag.com/p/givi... · Posted by u/tekla
firesteelrain · 3 days ago
No it’s not obvious. I was pointing out that it’s not cheap to go on vacation. I think you are the one missing the point. Several points up GP says “1000 to go on vacation?”
AnimalMuppet · 3 days ago
The conversation was about the expense of going on vacation. You then said that you went on a business trip (not vacation), and that the cheapest fare plus a cheap hotel was more than $1000. They replied that they went on vacation (more relevant than business travel) for $100. That is, they supplied a counter-data-point to your data point.

Then they pointed out that both your data point and theirs were anecdotes (I guess that's what a single data point is), rather than actual data.

So their point was that they have experience that contradicts yours, and that neither their experience nor yours does anything to advance the conversation, because they're both just anecdotes.

As I said, I thought that was very obvious from their post.

So, we're back at Jensson's post from a day ago, with both you and IAmBroom having supplied contradictory anecdotes, and neither having supplied any data. So, do you want to add some data?

u/AnimalMuppet

KarmaCake day26894December 24, 2013View Original