Readit NewsOn the other hand, where I remain a skeptic is this constant banging-on that somehow this will translate into entirely new things - research, materials science, economies, inventions, etc - because that requires learning “in real time” from information sources you’re literally generating in that moment, not decades of Stack Overflow responses without context. That has been bandied about for years, with no evidence to show for it beyond specifically cherry-picked examples, often from highly-controlled environments.
I never doubted that, with competent engineers, these tools could be used to generate “new” code from past datasets. What I continue to doubt is the utility of these tools given their immense costs, both environmentally and socially.
* We achieved Level 2 autonomy first, which requires you to fully supervise and retain control of the vehicle and expect mistakes at any moment. So kind of neat but also can get you in big trouble if you don't supervise properly. Some people like it, some people don't see it as a net gain given the oversight required.
^ This is where Tesla "FSD beta" is at, and probably where LLM codegen tools are at today.
* After many years we have achieved a degree of Level 4 autonomy on well-trained routes albeit with occasional human intervention. This is where Waymo is at in certain cities. Level 4 means autonomy within specific but broad circumstances like a given area and weather conditions. While it is still somewhat early days it looks like we can generally trust these to operate safely and ask for help when they are not confident. Humans are not out of the loop.[1]
^ This is probably what where we can expect codegen to grow after many more years of training and refinement in specific domains. I.e. a lot of what CloudFlare engineers did with their prompt engineering tweaking was of this nature. Think of them as the employees driving the training vehicles around San Francisco for the past decade. And similarly, "L4 codegen" needs to prioritize code safety which in part means ensuring humans can understand situations and step in to guide and debug when the tool gets stuck.
* We are still nowhere close to Level 5 "drive anywhere and under any conditions a human can." And IMHO it's not clear we ever will based purely on the technology and methods that got us to L4. There are other brain mechanisms at work that need to be modeled.
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/06/cruise-confirms-robotaxis-re...
A few look like they might, but don’t: Increasing taxes on expensive real estate just pushes demand down the chain, reducing supply for all.
If empty houses are actually a problem, fix the root cause. I can think of two reasons a house would go empty: Speculation (betting there will not be enough houses built), or planning departments that prevent the house from being repaired.
Making it easy to build houses solves both those problems.
If you attack landlords, who do you expect to build and maintain rental housing?
The affordable housing requirements are similar nonsense: Say you have some cash to invest. If you put it into building housing, the government will require you to sell the houses at a loss. Are you really going to build houses, and not invest it in something that can at least break even?
The yimby folks in CA are useful idiots that serve people that want housing prices to stay up. If you don’t believe this, go take an introductory micro and macroeconomics course.
Or did you know the National Bureau of Economic Research just published a study concluding “Supply Constraints Do Not Explain House Price and Quantity Growth Across U.S. Cities”?[1] Directly contradicting the YIMBY narrative that all we need to do is unleash market rate supply.
Simple economics tells us that when you have a boom town with strong demand from white collar professionals migrating in, driving up incomes, they will outbid lower income folks for market rate units ten out of ten times. Per the law of supply and demand, all of that demand needs to be satisfied before market prices even have a chance of declining to affordable levels - and that’s only if the real estate industry decides it is profitable to keep building. Older units get renovated into luxury units as well.
That creates a real scalability problem for cities because you get a labor shortage. That drives up the cost of everything: education, restaurants, and you guessed it, construction itself.
That’s why social housing is such an international standard. Without affordable working class housing, the local economy becomes dysfunctional. And it echoes the debate we had about socialized medicine some years ago, the solution favored by pretty much all other developed countries, but always said to be too expensive or impractical to be done here, the richest country on the planet.
But we’re beginning to see some cracks in the narrative. And it clarifies why these right wing movements find the Abundance agenda so appealing.
Class solidarity with a guy who moved directly from undergraduate school to living in a $3 million Nob Hill apartment is, as the online socialists love to say in that incredibly irritating way, "a bad look".
Edited to add: I will be disengaging from this thread because it's so bizarre that I, advancing a Marxist materialist analysis, am being accused of aligning with fascists, while you, licking the boots of a millionaire who owns a REIT, cast yourself as a socialist. I will actually lose my mind.
But you've made the larger point of the article: The oligarchy that funds the YIMBY movement uses it as a political tool to slander and fight anti-oligarchy activists. Just moments after pointing to seemingly neutral, technical legislation on the minutiae of zoning reform, you descended into crazed mudslinging against tenants rights advocates and socialists.
Addendum:
I looked up Red Bridge Strategies and find no evidence they have opposed affordable housing developments. What I do see them supporting:[1]
* Yes on H! Rent Control for Pasadena
* Yes on M! Empty Homes Tax
* Tax on $10M Real Estate Sales to Fund Social Housing
* Gross Receipts Tax on Large Corps to Fund Homeless Services
and so on. These are all genuinely progressive/socialist positions consistent with promoting working class affordable housing and opposing landlords.
It seems like you've just been taken by this well-funded right wing disinformation campaign. I hope you can see the larger point of the article that this is indeed a coordinated political strategy designed to radicalize people like you (and tech industry professionals generally) into fighting to defend the oligarchy and undermine the kind of populist progressive movement we see Bernie/AOC trying to start up again lately, and that folks like Preston genuinely were a part of.
YIMBYs rightly looked at these fake socialists and said "pick up a hammer or GTFO".
- The real estate lobby funds CA YIMBY and YIMBY candidates, not socialists.
- Dean Preston was a major tenants rights attorney who authored key legislation protecting tenants from evictions, not a landlord.
https://alfredtwu.medium.com/2024-california-housing-legisla...
>What began as the Yes In My Backyard (YIMBY) project’s narrow focus on zoning reform evolved into a sweeping pro-growth, neoliberal, and socially moderate brand of politics. “Abundance!” now serves as a rallying cry for a new kind of Democrat: techno-optimistic, skeptical of government, and supportive of a welfare state only when it comes with harsh restrictions.
There was a time when progressive social housing and market rate development advocates were united against NIMBY zoning rules. But these more conservative forces have come to dominate Yimby (through enormous amounts of funding) and direct its ire more generally against progressives that see oligarchy, not just zoning, as the primary problem in our society.
Obviously, rallying around “diversity” or “girlboss” or “degrowth” is not a durable winner. “MAGA” unfortunately might be a durable winner. “Abundance” has a fighting chance, and it’s even morally defensible.
The answer is staring us right in the face.
It’s a catchy slogan and pulling tens of thousands even in deep red MAGA country.
https://www.sltrib.com/news/politics/2025/04/13/fighting-oli...
https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2025-04-12/bernie-san...
Your premise is these right-wing anti democratic ideologues are on the fringes of the YIMBY movement. That is not supported by the facts. I quoted just one passage demonstrating the literal partnership between a major tech leader / CA YIMBY / Abundance funder and a Peter Thiel funded right wing “Libertarian” with dark visions of police city states.
They are not at the fringes, they are at the heart of it and provide the major funding for it.
You can't let the Koch Bros. fabricate a conference called "YIMBY America 2024" or whatever and then point to it and say "see, I warned you about those YIMBYs!" You have to engage with the substance of the debate.
One of the “California Forever” billionaires, Patrick Collison, CEO of Stripe, looms large in Abundance world. Along with Open Philanthropy, he donated to fund a $120 million “Abundance” grant tied to Klein’s book release. Collison is a key backer and inspiration for the Institute for Progress (IFP), a think tank which works closely with others in the Abundance network, including at the Abundance 2024 conference. Collison co-founded “Progress Studies” with economist Tyler Cowen, born from their Atlantic article, “We Need a New Science of Progress.” While IFP isn’t officially a “Progress Studies” think tank, its mission aligns closely, and it has received funding from both Collison and Emergent Ventures, Cowen’s Mercatus Center grant program established with funding from Thiel. Klein and Thompson were interviewed by Collison on their book tour.
Cowen has his own interest in Network State style projects. Balaji Srinivasan, a cryptocurrency billionaire and Próspera funder, defines a Network State as “a highly aligned online community with a capacity for collective action that crowdfunds territory around the world.” In this alternative governance structure, tech elites would create private, blockchain based enclaves—Srinivasan calls this “tech zionism.” Network States are founded on empty land, or by taking over an existing city—as Network State evangelists have attempted in San Francisco. Srinivasan even called for “ethnically cleansing” San Francisco of non-tech people.
Cowen is an early backer of Praxis, alongside Srinivasan and Thiel. Praxis describes itself as “a grassroots movement of modern pioneers,” aiming to build an autonomous, cryptocurrency city. Initial plans proposed a Mediterranean location, but last fall, the Praxis CEO tweeted “I went to Greenland to try to buy it.” Greenland, however, reiterated that the country is not for sale.
Cowen has been a protégé and friend of Thiel’s, citing him as a major influence. He advocates a form of government called “State Capacity Libertarianism” which, unlike anarcho-capitalism, includes a strong state apparatus. In Cowen’s words: “a good strong state should see the maintenance and extension of capitalism as one of its primary duties, in many cases its #1 duty.” He explicitly credits Thiel for inspiring this idea: “You will note the influence of Peter Thiel on State Capacity Libertarianism,” Cowen writes, “though I have never heard him frame the issues in this way.”
[1] https://www.housingisahumanright.org/why-is-california-yimby...
- It saves paper
- It's easier and faster to reprioritize tasks
- It's always with you in your pocket
Personally I use Apple Notes which has checklists, as opposed to a task management system or even Reminders. The flexibility of just writing things into a freeform note and hitting a button to turn them into todos is the right balance of low friction and just enough structure. Hitting that circle to check it off when done is actually quite satisfying.
Bonus: I added a keyboard shortcut for strikethru which adds some extra satisfaction of crossing off the task (or portions of a task that i've written out).