> I believe this cultural divide is a big reason America won't make it back to the top
What top are you referring to?
We're in a thread about a US company announcing its new $30B fundraise from a group of elite US growth investment funds arguing about whether this company will be able to overthrow the $4T US tech behemoth and suggesting that all the other US tech behemoths are actually stifling progress.
I'm in the foothills in Northern California, and I've never met anyone here that changes their ties out for winter. When there's chain controls, they'll let you through if you have winter rated tires, including all-season, and all-wheel drive, otherwise you need chains.
Everyone I know who drives a lot in the snow gets a vehicle with all-wheel drive and everyone else carries chains. (really they're cables, on a small vehicle)
The difference between what winter-only tires can handle vs winter-rated all-season tires is so minimal that they're not with getting. Chance ate conditions are either fine for the all-season tie or there so bad that the difference is inconsequential and you need all-wheel drive or chains.
I've only heard of people changing their tires on the Midwest, where snowfalls are in the inches, not feet.
"If anyone gets an AWD vehicle “for safety” but uses it with all-season tires, they have performed a Consumer Sucka Fail. A front wheel drive vehicle with snow tires would have more grip.
According to this Consumer Reports test (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXjzYbpt9Ow) on snow tires vs. AWD, the tires were by far the most important factor. And only 12% of AWD vehicle owners bothered to put snow tires on their vehicle, meaning 88% of all-wheel-drive vehicle purchases were wasted, because the drivers could have achieved better performance at lower cost in a front-wheeler with snow tires."
> The difference between what winter-only tires can handle vs winter-rated all-season tires is so minimal that they're not with getting. Chance ate conditions are either fine for the all-season tie or there so bad that the difference is inconsequential and you need all-wheel drive or chains.
Interesting, here in Sweden it’s mandatory to change tires. Once I did it a bit late and drove on some ice, just a little. The car was like on ice skates for a little while .
Driving discipline, culture, and rules in North America are Mickey Mouse.
The reality of car dependency there means that there are people driving and owning cars who can't really afford to do it properly, nor do they know they need to do it properly (e.g., having a second set of tires for the winter). You can see this evidenced by the rust buckets on the road that look like they are one pothole away from losing part of the vehicle body. Deferred maintenance and investment everywhere and in everything …
The United States also covers a vast difference in climate. What good are snow tires for people in South Florida, or Texas, or New Mexico? Where I live I switch between summer and all season cause we get enough snow to justify snow tires once a decade for a couple
of days. This year has been the worse with two weekends with a decent amount of snow that was cleaned off the roads by Tuesday.
I wonder if it's a carryover of an old regulation that used to make sense. Modern all-season tires are better in snow than the best winter tires were several decades ago.
Also, you need studs or chains to get traction on ice. The difference between a winter tire and a summer tire is the temperature range where the rubber stays flexible. When the rubber gets hard, it will keep its shape instead of complying with the surface of the road, so it loses traction quicker. Ice is flat, so there's no difference between tire types, and there's nothing to grip on to.
Nordic studless winter tires (different from Central European winter tires so also probably different from whatever you get in the US) do give some grip on ice, while all-seasons can be nearly as bad as summer tires. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-66968-2_...
The government has done ongoing research on these subjects and the regulations do get renewed (e.g. some properly rated all-seasons are now allowed)
Piggdekk in Norway are equivalent to North American studded tires. When I lived in the northern parts of the U.S., I had a set of these for times around freezing rains.
Beyond the questions of winter weather properties, there are adjacent tradeoffs between the tire types (outside of studded):
1. Fuel economy
2. Noise
3. Degree of particulate pollution emission
I'm sure that the all-season tires probably have some negative tradeoffs in these regards to, which yields a choose the most optimal product for the time of year. All-season tires to me seem like a convenience food for places where the weather can be legitimately bad.
One other difference that is hard to articulate to North American drivers with respect to understanding Scandinavia and roads: there are places where snow and ice will literally not be removed (maybe not even removeable) from the road when plowed (I presume until spring melt). It just becomes a thick ice pack over the course of weeks. I never encountered any roads in my life (including Northern Minnesota) that were this inclement. North American roads tend to be cleared (plowing or melting) to asphalt or pavement.
All-season tires aren't simply a matter of convenience, they offer a safety benefit. If you aren't driving at normal highway speeds, even if it's the dead of winter and the air is below freezing, your tires will heat up and the winter tires won't have as much traction. The disadvantage on dry roads can be several times what the advantage was on contaminated roads, including during the winter.
If tires complying with the standards overlap, then the standards are meaningless. When there's requirements for snow tires, but not for X brand or model of snow tire, than it's not doing any good. That's why it's important to have a snow rating that can apply to tires of any type, and if it meets that rating, regardless of the rating for dry warm weather, than it should be good to go, otherwise not.
1) The Michelin is 120 euro tire, vs the 60 euro Barum
2) The test page says nothing about the test conditions in which the tires were tested.
3) The Michelin tire test explicitly states:
The testers explicitly recommended against standardizing cars with all-season tyres in Sweden, suggesting that drivers would be better served by dedicated summer tyres paired with proper winter tyres when the season changes, rather than this compromise solution that fell well short of true summer tyre performance.
Indeed. The first thing I do when buying a second-hand car (I never buy new cars, what a waste of money) is to buy the best winter tires (and summer tires if needed) that money can buy (lots of that available, as I save so much on the car). I never have any problems in any conditions (and there are a lot of "conditions..")
All seasons tires are rubbish. Also the "new" ones (re sister comment).
It actually still is true. I drive on all-season touring tires on my current vehicle because I drive across varied climates, but never in real winter conditions, that said true summer tires have much better stopping distance, better rain/wet handling, and massively better dry handling characteristics than all-season tires, and true winter tires have much better everything than all-seasons in snow and especially in ice.
All-season tires have massively improved, but /so have summer and winter tires/. So sure, your all-seasons today may be superior to very old standards for prior generations of tires, but you are still the absolute safest when you have appropriate tires on your vehicle. Tires are fundamentally all that holds your vehicle to the ground.
Also as much as I love AWD, it does basically fuck-all to help in winter conditions. The thing you need to worry about is /stopping/ not necessarily getting going again, and in both cases a FWD car with winter tires is worlds better than any AWD car on all-seasons. I swap to winter tires on my AWD cars when I spend significant time in areas where it snows (e.g. when I lived for several years in Colorado). It doesn't matter how many wheels are used to drive, all vehicles use all 4 wheels to stop, but if you have no traction you are fucked. Anyone telling you otherwise is ill-informed.
I went to school at Michigan Tech where we would regularly get over 300 inches in the winter. I drove a Honda civic with snow tires. It was fine even on steep slopes. Winter tires keep you from loosing traction and sliding off the road. AWD helps you get back on the road after you slide off.
All-wheel drive doesn't help you at all where it is most important, and that is in braking. Having all-wheel drive only helps you get up to a dangerous speed faster when the grip is low
As others have said, this is very wrong. I live in Vermont an Duse "all season" tires as my summer tires on both my Subaru and my 4wd truck. I absolutely change to winter tires on both vehicles (studded, on the truck), and the difference in snowy conditions is night and day.
Montana here. Everyone that can afford to changes their tires. Costco tire center is a s.show in November and May. Nobody uses chains except for un-maintained roads. Obviously nobody buys a 2WD vehicle here.
> The difference between what winter-only tires can handle vs winter-rated all-season tires is so minimal that they're not with getting.
Yeah.. no. The difference is night and day.
Put on some Nokian Hakkapeliitta tires and prepare to be amazed. The grip on snow is spectacular.
All the years I lived in snow areas I drove a Miata of all things.. RWD, light, no ABS, no TC, 4" clearance. But with Hakkapeliitta tires I never once had any trouble, while people in their trucks and 4x4s were stuck on the side of the road due to all-season tires. A true snow tire is a whole different level.
> Northern California ... chain controls
The whole California chain thing is brain damage. The proper safe answer to driving in snow is top quality snow tires, not chains. Chains is the worst possible idea. The chain laws are laws created by politicians who live in sunny Sacramento and have never seen snow and have no clue.
A car with Hakkapeliittas (Blizzaks are good too) will outhandle a car with chains 100% of the time.
> The proper safe answer to driving in snow is top quality snow tires, not chains. Chains is the worst possible idea. The chain laws are laws created by politicians who live in sunny Sacramento and have never seen snow and have no clue.
Although I understand the sentiment, and agree with the general idea, I must say that living in the mountains, I have encountered snow conditions on uncleared roads where I did not manage to get home due to the icy/slushy/snow depth mixtures encountered on relatively steep sections. I would probably have made it home with chains if I had them, and had bothered to put the on.
The difference between two-wheel and all-wheel drive is night and day, compared to the difference between winter and summer tires. Even then, it all goes out the door when conditions get icy and the only option is studs or chains, to get any traction.
Chain controls, and really all winter regulations, like snow load factors in buildings and whatnot, are created locally, not by the state. Most politicians are from Southern California, and all the state cares about is air condition efficiency and water usage, as though everyone lives in the desert.
> The difference between two-wheel and all-wheel drive is night and day, compared to the difference between winter and summer tires.
No, this is incorrect. Just try it.
Summer tires are hopeless in freezing temperatures (and are not rated by the manufacturer to be used in such cold), as they become rock hard. As much grip as plastic kids big wheel tires.
Ultimately, what you need the most, is grip. You could have an 8-wheel drive vehicle but if the tires have no grip it will just spin in place.
In the snow by far the biggest advantage comes from true snow tires (not M+S or all season) due to how much grip they'll provide.
A 4x4 is an additional advantage, of course. A 4x4 on snow tires will do better than a 2-wheel drive with snow tires. But a 2-wheel drive on snow tires is infinitely better than a 4x4 on summer tires because if there is no grip, there's no grip.
If you are driving on pure ice then yes, chains or better yet, studs, are the way to go. That is a very rare scenario.
> Chain controls, and really all winter regulations, like snow load factors in buildings and whatnot, are created locally, not by the state.
You’re dangerously wrong. Winter tires make a very large difference in braking. If they’re so inconsequential, why are they mandatory in many northern places?
Culture has an impact on what people choose to do. I’ve seen so many Americans with your point of view. It’s maddening. Winter tires save lives!
I have some 3PMS all season tires: Michelin Crossclimate 2. So far seem to be doing well on my FWD Chevy Bolt EV. I live in Boston though and we don't often get enough snow to really need snow tires. Also I usually ride my bike when it's snowy instead of driving.
It depends. I use All Seasons in winter and have for over 40 years without issue because 9 years out of ten winter weather means 0.25” of snow one night during winter. The tenth year we might have three inches over a couple of days.
You’re right usually (about not needing blizzaks) but there’s important nuance here. There are warm all season (with usual M+S stamped on, this just means tread pattern, nothing about compound) and winter all-season with a compatible compound for cold conditions. The industry created a logo for the tires some years back it’s like 3 peak mountain snowflake or something. This ensures the compound is soft enough to keep gripping in freezing temperatures. It’s required in some jurisdictions (Quebec I think and maybe some lake effect zones)
There is lot of variation between tires. From summer, to all season, to European winter to Nordic winter(studdles or studded). Only Nordic ones designed specifically for snow and ice are really usable in conditions where there is often snow and ice. They fare worse in wet not freezing conditions and ofc in dry.
I only trust studded tiers (but i live close to a non-paved road that is always very icy during the end of the season).
But that said - there are lots of research that points towards that studded tires kill more people than they save lives because of the asphalt particles they cause.
But then there are people that claim that non-studded cars rely on at least 10% cars with studded tires to make the surface more rugged/rough.
Following an ambulance a couple years back I was up to 110 mph on my rather aggressive snow tires and was just fine. Not to say it wasn't a little worse, but I was fine. Everything you're saying is an exaggeration. A whole lot of people in snowy areas don't drive with snow tires and are usually fine. Good snow tires are a bit of a superpower up north but we all learn how to drive without them being a requirement outside of times where traveling at all is questionable.
Difference is pretty big if it’s icy like breaking 100 meters vs 10 meters. Especially if there’s wildlife like reindeers/moose’s you are going to do emergency breathing semi regularly.
Just pointing out - a lot of snowy areas are very aggressive about plowing (and salting). For most people this is probably like "don't drive tomorrow" and not some need for knobby snow tires.
Even when the road is dry the rubber compound is a lot softer on winter tires so you get significantly more grip than all season or summer in cold temps when they get hard.
There are laws of physics you can’t hand waive away. Winter tires are really more cold temp tires. The rubber formulation is different to allow for grip in the cold and dry (tread pattern for cold and snow). As such a winter tire wears heavily driven in the summer, rubber formulation is just too soft.
For an all season that level of summer wear would be unacceptable. So a different formulation is used to improve summer wear at the cost of the winter low temp performance. You can’t have it both ways, a long wearing summer performance and good sub 40 degree grip.
Modern high quality all weather tyres are excellent in summer and winter.
Except on actual snow, where they're just ok, because of the hybrid sipe patterns, and ice, where they suck exactly as much as everything else except studded tyres (which suck on tarmac instead).
Even after the streets are plowed there's still a bit of snow on the main roads and a lot on the side roads. Maybe you live in a place with really mild winters, but my car would have drifted into a ditch many times this winter if I didn't swap my tires.
I... Well, I had started explaining point by point how wrong this is but frankly the answer is just "all of it, very".
I've driven summer tires, all season tires, winter tires, and studded winter tires in every season in Canada. (Yes, I live in Canada and own borderline-usless summer-only tires. Yes, I've tried driving them in snow.)
None of what you're saying lines up with my own experience, various YouTube videos on braking distances, or literally anything else I've ever seen anywhere.
Edit: And, well, to be clear... I've lived on the West coast of Canada where it's a bit more mild but you're in the mountains, in the middle where it hits -50, and in the East where it only hits -30 but snows like hell.
Yes, there are. And they show that it's a trade-off well worth investigating. Do you really want 10% better performance on snow at the cost of 10% worse performance on tarmac?
How much do you drive on snow anyway? Probably nowhere near as long as you do on tarmac, even in a tough winter.
Probably not. A vast majority of families in the US raise children without a nanny. If the "only" preclusion is 'I don't have enough money to hire a nanny' but becomes satisfied, the requirements will likely evolve to something greater and continue indefinitely.
I just read both articles and I think his summary is accurate enough to stand behind his claim that putting off having children (if you want them) because of a theoretical situation qualified as 'hysterical' (assuming everyone in your household is authorized). I don't think he was replying in bad faith, even if you two disagree.
People who are hysterical never think (and will not accept) that they are. They think their response is rational and everyone else it’s ignorant or stupid or evil. It’s the exact same as what goes on on the other side when people talk about how Dems want “trans for everyone”.
It’s an irrational, emotional response so it can’t be fought with logic. It seems 100% obvious to them since ICE is doing so much bad stuff (which I agree, they are) that anyone who doesn’t think it’s quite at Gestapo levels is crazy.
I don’t usually engage because what they need is deprogramming, and I don’t know how to do it, and even if I did I would assume you can’t bell a stranger in the HN comment section.
I was not replying in bad faith, I just find it interesting that the brains of so many people, even intelligent ones, have been turned this way in recent years. I see it in here often. I’m sure if I read /r/kidrock I’d see it there too.
I also have just read both articles and think the opposite: We've got accountability-free, armed, masked, criminal thugs acting with impunity:
- Taking face scans of peaceful protestors and retaliating against them later;
- Racially profiling citizens and harassing them if they have the "wrong" skin color -- including local cops!
- Visiting the homes of citizens who have civilly and legally criticized ICE behavior online, to intimidate them;
- Invading homes without warrants and destroying evidence of their crimes (jamming wifi, covering up cameras, arresting and deporting witnesses, etc).
- Arresting people who came here legally, are here legally, and have not committed a crime in their lives, then unilaterally revoking their prior legal authorization and rapidly deporting them and their whole family;
- Raiding schools: kidnapping children and sending them off to torture prisons, while traumatizing the rest of the children (and assaulting some of the children too -- grown-ass men beating up children smh);
- Assaulting innocent, peaceful people for protesting them, whether citizen or not, whether legally here or not, including deploying chemical agents against them;
- Performing summary executions in the streets of unarmed citizens who are helping their community but do not support said masked, armed thugs;
- Etc etc etc
You'd have to be hysterical (or some other form of mentally unwell) to not let that affect your judgement of the wisdom of bringing young children into that world to be victims of it. Unfortunately, such hysterical, mentally unwell deniers never think (and will not accept) that they are. It’s an irrational, emotional dismissal, so it can’t be fought with logic. What they need is deprogramming, and I don’t know how to do it.
I just find it interesting that the brains of so many people in the minority, even intelligent ones, have been turned this way in recent years. I see it here somewhat often (roughly in proportion to the minority they represent). They just cannot process, much less accept, that most people do not agree with them, and are not hysterical and mentally unwell like them.
op had kids before the Nazis started taking over, but police were still performing routine executions, America had invaded several countries to execute their leadership, we live in a capitalist society...
All people hold inconsistent views. We are squishy meatbags.
That said, is this an example of that? Instead of declaring it so, try posing a question like "what is different about this time?" to a member of the majority you believe are holding 'inconsistent views'. You might learn that your prior assumptions were reductive, for example.
> you have to make your country/society a place where people will want to have children and feel/know that their children's lives will be good ones.
Empirically, that group exists, but they're often the minority to the "I just don't want kids" and "focus on other things" groups[0].
As others have pointed out, the world's population grew dramatically in most other times in history when the world around us was more harsh and less certain.
Something I've come to accept and try to remember: people will complain about literally anything you give them to opportunity to complain about.
The world is better today in every conceivable way for more people, than it was at any point in history. But it isn't good enough for enough people, and the people who remind you of that are usually doing the least to improve anything, for anybody.
I don't really understand why. It seems fall under this larger victimization umbrella. The best answers I've seen for it are that it is either some cathartic response to just how good things have gotten, or that the complaint itself represents some marginal effort, enough to elicit a dopamine response.
I was born in the 80s and have vivid memories of the 90s. I absolutely loved everything as it was at that point in time. But to look at the world around us today and to think anything before was the peak is just incomprehensible to me.
If there was serious interest, they would taken a next step by now. They won't give you a hard no unless you're an absolute joke.
They will wait and see if there's any deal heat.
Are you talking to other funds? You need to talk to as many funds as possible in a 2-3 week period to create leverage. Do not talk to a single or small number of funds in a process[0]. Best case they will snake the round at a discount, worst case you'll give up a ton of leverage and kill the process.
[0] unless you have close relationships with a stable of funds. you do not.
I've built up to a very similar process, but it looks like yours is a much better oiled machine. Specifically I struggle with getting enough architecture thoughts in place for the programming agent to really do what it needs to do without me going behind it and refining its work. Your research repo is incredibly inspiring and has given a lot of think about.
It's sort of surreal to feel the change in the software development lifecycle over the last 24 months - what you are describing will very likely become the norm amongst most developers.
> Cursor is happily charging me something like $100 a day. If anyone from Cursor is reading this – is there a “solo dev building absurdly large systems” discount tier I’m missing?
I'm also paying a similar bill (but honestly I think it's incredible value). I'm curious about this comment though - I picture LLM pricing as consumption rather than per-seat (token in/token out) - would it really make sense to offer volume discounts on a single seat versus total volume? These platforms shouldn't really care about how many developers are consuming the tokens, just the total consumption, right?
Sounds like you’ve been bumping into the same wall and asking the same questions.
Since I switched to this layered setup, the amount of “cleaning up after the programmer” dropped a lot. The programmer‑AI has become much more obedient, and most of the real fights now happen with the architect‑AI instead.
You’re absolutely right that it’s hard to front‑load enough architectural thinking. That’s also why this project raced its way to version 12 so quickly – every time the architecture felt wrong, I forced myself to rethink and re‑document it, not just patch the code.
On the token/pricing side, I honestly haven’t thought too hard about the exact math. One way or another, we’re all just helping to pay Nvidia’s bills, right?
Agree, but for example, migration scripts are still often just a bunch of long .sql files (unless it's Liquibase with its own cross-DBMS XML syntax), or test/staging/benchmark schemas. Even today.
And subling commenters say that all you need is raw SQL and results mapping to your code. Which I did for a while, but found that mapping is a lot of copy-pasta with minor diffs, a burden to maintain. So it's easier to use a thin library like JOOQ for mapping, or use only the mapper part of a bigger ORM framework like Django/Hibernate.
And my argument is that it's easier to map to/from a concise strongly-typed ABI/API structs instead of one raw SQL string with its structure designed for human reading/writing, like SELECT before FROM. There are such ABI-s, but they are DBMS-specific, while SQL is less so.
What top are you referring to?
We're in a thread about a US company announcing its new $30B fundraise from a group of elite US growth investment funds arguing about whether this company will be able to overthrow the $4T US tech behemoth and suggesting that all the other US tech behemoths are actually stifling progress.
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