I already got a heat pump water heater and I love it! I'm totally in the market for a heat pump heater to replace our Heater/AC. the primary concern are three things: up front cost, and electricity costs for heating and 3) performance. the last quote I got was about 11K, so that's pretty steep. and on top of that heat pumps don't perform well for heating: it has to be on most of the time and will struggle to increase temps.
i think it has to do with the vast oversupply of labor (at least for white collar jobs). employers generally pick people with degrees of people without because there's just too many candidates.
Right, but these sort of narratives are rarely linear. In either case they would have been working compilers. At least in this version of events, they got to take a shot at a passion. They could also try again and have a roadmap and the courage to take a leap like that.
I don't think food has gotten that much cheaper in the last 50 years. Don't believe the fake CPI. Just take the average hourly earnings and divide it by something like the big mac index or a basket of food commodities.
I did that. BLS CPI components which don't change much are available from 1988, some of them even longer.
In the 35 years since 1988:
- dairy has gotten 20% cheaper in terms of wages
- bakery/cereal products have stayed roughly flat vs wages (cheaper since the 90s but more expensive since the 70s)
- fruit/veg products have gotten 5% cheaper in terms of wages (though the same level as in the late 70s/early 80s)
- rice/pasta/cornmeal has gotten 15% cheaper in terms of wages
Caveat: Over time frames this long, average hourly wages don't mean like for like hourly wages for the same job... the number of low-paid "deliveroo driver/amazon delivery guy" low paid part time jobs has increased, pushing averages down. (I.e. things have gotten more expensive as measured by minimum wages, but things have gotten much cheaper as measured by the wages of a skilled professional.)
I ran the numbers average wages/big mac index.
And it was showing a decrease in cost untill about 2000 but ever since then the cost of the big mac index has increased in the US, relative to average wages. Not that we should be eating big macs, but it's supposed to take a variety of inputs into account.
Sure, so if I ignore the fake CPI, how do I do that? I can only easily find price of milk from 1995, not earlier; bread from 1980, somewhat dubious sources.
I'm assuming in most countries also, subsidies, formal/official cartels, price controls and other policy instruments would make it very hard to compare apples to apples.
If you don’t think the cost of farming has gone down in 100 years because of better tools, equipment, automation, irrigation, etc, I’m very surprised. You don’t need statistics. Just look at farm implements from 100 years ago.
It's less that it's got cheaper and more that people spend a smaller % of their income on food these days. In terms of personal budgeting it's Amdahl's law at play.
And yet, over 80% of the cost of food is the bringing it to market cost: everything from transportation, to permitting to marketing, etc. what you pay the farmer is just a small fraction.
I think what's needed is a revolution in where food is produced and cheaper ways of bringing food to market.
i'm just wondering how Meta will fair IF the metaverse doesn't take off the way they expect. I mean it's such a big bet. Google has made many bets in the past and some worked but most did not.
I've been thinking a lot about Meta's investment in the metaverse, and while I'm intrigued by the possibilities, I can't help but see some potential problems.
The biggest issue I see is the need for an expensive VR headset to fully experience the metaverse. While many people are willing to invest in a new phone every few years, I'm not sure that the metaverse holds the same appeal.
Even though phones started out as a mediocre experience, the iPhone form factor made them indispensable. I don't see how the metaverse will follow a similar trajectory, especially since it requires such a significant investment.
In hindsight, I wonder if Meta should have focused more on their AI learning, as I imagine they're using AI heavily to moderate the world's chatter. While it's not the kind of AI that's getting all the buzz right now, I think it has huge potential, and could be the valuable asset for Meta going forward.
Correct. They should have invested more in their AI. They have is pytorch right. They had the early lead in the AI. They could have been at the leading edge of LLMs. Instead they focused on VR
I think the Metaverse will fail, but I think Meta can maintain a product in VR and a VR marketplace. Like the game console model that has proven succesful previously.
A metaverse like community platform will probably gain major popularity one day, when headsets are seamlessly blended into a casual consumer product that people feel cool wearing in a room of people. Until then, social VR platforms are niche because the target market is niche too. The network effect is diminished as well because the barrier for entry is so high.
I really think the problem for mass adoption is coolness and seamlessless. By seamless I mean, not removing you from present company and not requiring more than a simple pair of fashionable goggles or glasses.
From that perspective Meta is already dead. The metaverse is an utterly dead on arrival concept.
There's no plausible VR technology that can make it practical in the pipeline at all: it's an idea in the realm of "implanted cyberdecks are cheap and accessible" before it becomes the sort of thing anyone would need.
If they cut the Metaverse spending tomorrow, there's still a huge legacy ads business throwing off a ton of revenue. The company will do fine. It probably will not grow to Apple size.
Also note that from an accounting standpoint, the metaverse spend is not being treated and amortized as an investment. Instead, it's a cash expense. This means when Zuck decides he no longer needs to spend 10B+/year on it, that money will mostly drop right to the bottom line. The existing business is a cash volcano.
Almost certainly the play is going to be to invest more in instagram to steal features from other social media apps. Thats Meta’s strategy. The Metaverse is not gonna work.
well, it's not the root cause. there's many reasons why healthcare is way too expensive in america. the fact is that employers pay a huge sum for healthcare in the US and this makes up a sizable portion of your compensation. if you earn 50K and the health insurance for your family costs 20K per year, that's pretty big.
the solution of course is to get those healthcare premiums lowered: that's going to require some kind of rationing.
Cost controls, not rationing. The problem is that capitalism fails in the case of healthcare. How much is your health worth? Every last cent you’ve got.
I would say consumers should organize, and target a few of the biggest companies supporting this bill and boycott their products until the bill gets changed. If nobody buys another iphone for 6 months, I don't think they'll have any choice but to get the bill undone. right?
i for one, hope that the AI will mostly stick to analyzing the content, rather than search intent because Google has had a history of misreading my search intent, quite frequently.
It's not useless at all. There are countries where the average workers earn 5 times less (even PPP adjusted) than our minimum wage and they don't rack up vast amounts of credit card debt, car loans, etc.
We first need to start changing our values to be more financially conservative. Once that happens and voters start making these values apparent to politicians, they can take actions that will help reduce costs for citizens.
> We first need to start changing our values to be more financially conservative.
Think about the economy! If political leaders were wanted the elderly to sacrifice thier lives to COVID "for the economy", then the overspenders have no chance of being save from bankruptcy. The purpose of a system is what it does, and the American one moves money upwards.
