Even still, over more than two decades, only a ten percentage point increase is still somewhat mind-blowing.
As someone who grew up upper middle class in a wealthier suburban area, I lived in a bubble where the vast majority of people I went to high school with went off to college and got bachelors degrees. To me, it seemed that that was the norm for most Americans, but that's far from reality.
For that reason, my default docked setup uses a Magic Trackpad 2 alongside my keyboard so I can have the best of both worlds. I know it’s excessive, though, and not for everyone.
This is the way, though. I do exactly the same thing. I was a trackball user for many years on Windows (due to wrist & arm pain from mouse use), but the Magic Trackpad works way better with macOS than trackballs (primarily because the Kensington software is garbage).
I also use the magic trackpad. I even tried the renowned logitech mx master 4 but returned it the next day, heavy and straining for the wrist. And all of the extra buttons and actions on that mouse don't make much sense when the trackpad has gestures.
I find that rent control is a good idea in theory, but leads to a lot of deadweight loss. As a former renter, what I really wanted was a predictable cap on rent increases. For folks who are long-term renters, without controls and predictability, their only option would be to move every few years, which is incredibly disruptive.
From my understanding, European countries tend to have restrictions on what lease renewals can look like and with declining home ownership (and ownership being priced out for many), I think we should look at European models for real solutions to our housing crisis.
Rent control is not good in theory, it's the most universally hated policy among economists because it has so many horrible unintended effects on housing development and maintenance.
That’s because it’s not an economic policy but a humanistic one. Stable housing should be a right. If rent control was the default, then obviously no renter would vote for arbitrary rent increases in exchange for maybe, someday in the future, rent going down due to increased housing supply.
You can feel however you want about it, but people will vote for rent control if they start getting squeezed out of their housing. Hate it as an economic policy? Then make sure enough housing gets built before people get squeezed.
It doesn’t really harm people. Housing crisis cities with rent controls are built out to the limits of their zoning. This suggests zoning is the limiting factor and not rent control.
Call it meaningless if you want, but this is a policy that renters getting priced out of their housing markets will eagerly vote for. And prioritizing existing residents over newcomers feels just to me. Focus on making it easier to build new housing instead of getting pissy about the safety net.
"Newcomers" to the rental market include every person who already lives in that city and hasn't moved out of their parents' house yet. Why should they be penalized even more for not being born sooner?
rent control (which realistically for all but the most idealist is some sort of capped rent increase policy) can only work if its done and owned by the state/nation. It can't work for private sector as the ROI will be relatively poorer on doing that vs many other investments so it'll actively disincentivise investment into more rental housing long term & in short/medium term disincentivise all but necessary capital/maintenance investment as it'll quickly erode whatever small return they're making on their rental investment.
State/National government are far more likely to stomach lower ROI than the private sector because they can arguably have a more holistic view of what their investment is. However, to be able tod that you also need robust finances in government which has certainly not been the case in most developed western economies since the 80s
This is an important distinction. Most "rent control" laws are intended to be "rent stabilization" not outright price fixing. Their goal is to prevent insane swings in rent happening too quickly, which disrupts families and local economies (and even infrastructure development).
But the worst/most aggressively laws are always used as the examples, skewing the conversation to edge cases and ignoring the fact that these laws can and do take hundreds of different forms.
Dark versus light, in general, is fascinating. My fiancee and I have really different light sensitivities. She'll struggle to see in dimmer/only natural light indoors and I'll be able to see fine. Turning on overhead lighting really bothers me and causes a stress-like reaction. I'm much more amenable to artificial light after sunset and if it's indirect, diffuse light (i.e. a standing lamp).
Yes, kind of. It has a subscription option, but you can also pay for a lifetime plan. They've done several major upgrades/redesigns and the lifetime plan is still honored.
Indeed. With the future of the tariffs in some question with the upcoming SCOTUS case, why would any business choose to invest in manufacturing here when the barriers might be gone in a few months (or mid-next year if SCOTUS slow rolls a decision until the end of their session)?
I believe that Battlefield 4 was the last good Battlefield game. Biggest asset was fully self-hostable servers that provided progression, community control, and allowed gaming clans/organizations to actually community-build. Nowadays, forced matchmaking and limited party sizes really eliminate the ability to build large communities.
The consolidation of publishers/developers in controlling all of the online experience has started limiting online gaming's ability to be a reasonable third place.
BF4 was broken on launch, with servers crashing from people simply playing the objective. These studios have been serving people garbage for close to two decades by now. They deserve their fate.
Battlefield was always jank built on top of an innovative (or just finally achieved) idea of large battles with vehicles that worked. 1942 wasn't really innovative but the technical achievements of player count and not shitty vehicles made it a novel experience.
The further they moved away from that, the more generic it became. I don't want to say any one was really the "last good one" but the last one I put significant time into was BF2 but I played all pc versions up to 4 and you're right, it was absolutely broken on launch. It's not why I haven't played one since but I never did go back to BF or even really FPSs since. They all seem like CoD clones now, even (or especially) the CoD franchise and it's tiring.
BF4 was a massive redemption story. It started rough, yes, but it went on to become probably the best sandbox shooter ever released. Sorry if you didn't have the patience to make it through the initial 6 months. You missed out.
> I suspect this is going to be one of the next big areas in cloud FinOps.
It already is. There’s been a lot of talk and development around FinOps for AI and the challenges that come with that. For companies, forecasting token usage and AI costs is non-trivial for internal purposes. For external products, what’s the right unit economic? $/token, $/agentic execution, etc? The former is detached from customer value, the latter is hard to track and will have lots of variance.
With how variable output size can be (and input), it’s a tricky space to really get a grasp on at this point in time. It’ll become a solved problem, but right now, it’s the Wild West.
As someone who grew up upper middle class in a wealthier suburban area, I lived in a bubble where the vast majority of people I went to high school with went off to college and got bachelors degrees. To me, it seemed that that was the norm for most Americans, but that's far from reality.