Sometimes value is not in the code or the product. But the fact that leg work is done and something is generally accepted for the purpose. For me it looks like type of product where the pain is not making the software. It is getting everyone you will deal with to agree that software is acceptable.
the common factor was sort of left as an exercise to the reader to think about moats in the age of AI... but basically anything that has touchpoints to the legal and financial systems im not gonna touch with a 20 ft vibecoded pole.
I’ve sometimes wondered about getting a big plot of land, some cheap old heavy machinery, and letting people pay to play with it.
Probably liability insurance makes it impractical, which is a shame. There really is nothing like playing with a big excavator. Very fortunate that it was one of my formative experiences.
We've thrown some parties on the prop, and have often thought, "Maybe it'd be cool to let people try some of this stuff out," at which point we remember how incredibly dangerous something like an excavator is, even when closely monitored and in a safe environment, and then have nightmares about worst case scenarios. So, it's been a no-go thus far. What we have actually considered, though, is seeing about renting it out to a known-to-be safe / mature user to use on projects when we aren't. But, haven't pulled the trigger on that yet.
Are you willing to share rough numbers? Totally understand if not, just curious. Been thinking about something like this to get away from the AI force-feeding.
Very variable depending on a combination of local/state regulations and what kinds of projects you're willing to tackle. The bottom end of the spectrum is a $50 a month general liability policy.
It was a system in a critical state and the freeze and well telegraphed upcoming layoffs led to a controller covering two roles and work done by supporting staff. This pushed the system over the edge.
Then they tried to baselessly blame DEI, then they tried to shift blame to the controller.
The collision was January 29. On Jan 20, a hiring freeze was hastily rolled out including the FAA. They were in the process of laying off staff, which was finalized in February with 400 probationary staff. These were largely rolled back that year after the impact to the civil aviation system, including substantially contributing to the deaths of these 67 people. The NIST report was produced under pressure. I stand by what I wrote. They threw an overloaded system into chaos with little care for the consequences and this was one of the results.
DOGE was working hand in hand with then new administration the entire time.
I’m a pilot. The controller handed off separation to the helicopter the moment they called traffic in sight. You could have had a dozen controllers in the tower and this still would have happened.
You list some facts, but they are not connected to the incident in a causal way.
I did list facts. And I agree with your causal analysis. I simply disagree with your interpretation of the degree to which the contributing factors we responsible. This is not my words as someone on the internet, this is the NTSB report's contributing factors.
If a shipping company immediately changed policy to force drivers to work 18 hours a day and 7 days a week, then it would be a pretty poor analysis to chalk all the resulting accidents up to driver error. Driver error would be the actual cause, the negligent policy change would be a proximate cause.
I respect your expertise in the area as a pilot but I will stand by what I have said. And I respectfully have said all I have to say on the matter.
(Though for an insurer, it’s the same thing - whether you’re risky because you’re a bad driver or because you drive on poorly constructed roads or around other poor drivers is inconsequential to them)
Yeah well fuck insurers. We are supposed to get spied upon by our cars with their blackboxes, by our insurers, by Google, by national security services of various countries... and what do we get in return? Dinged for other people's bad behavior which we cannot reasonably control. Either you follow the car in front of you very closely and get hard braking events, or other people switch lanes in front of you and in the worst case slowing down during lane change, provoking yet another hard braking event.
Credit scores are universally hated but they make it possible to offer lower interest rates to more people. Without credit scores, fewer people would have access to credit.
Similarly, people often don't like it when insurers track and score their driving. However, this allows insurers to offer lower insurance fees to more people by _not_ offering lower insurance fees (or instead charging higher fees) to people that are driving in a risky manner. This does of course assume a competitive market for insurance but I think in most countries that's a reasonable assumption.
There's nothing fairer than user-pays, especially when users can choose to pay less by changing their behavior.
> Credit scores are universally hated but they make it possible to offer lower interest rates to more people.
That's probably true in theory, but not in practice, given how high US credit interest rates are compared to European countries for instance.
> Without credit scores, fewer people would have access to credit.
Too many people having access to credit is exactly how we got the worst financial crisis of the century, so it's not really something to brag about… People talk about US public debt a lot, but private debt is even more worrisome.
>There's nothing fairer than user-pays, especially when users can choose to pay less by changing their behavior.
If user pays is so fair why does anyone who could access credit or liquid assets in excess of their state's minimums have to pay hundreds to thousands per year for auto insurance?
Most states allow you to go without insurance by fronting the cash. It's called self-insurance. You put up some minimum amount, file a form with the state DMV, and keep the approval certificate in the vehicle like normal.
It's relatively unknown for individuals because most people have no desire to lock up tens or hundreds of thousands of spare dollars just to avoid car insurance. As far as I'm aware it's primarily used by rich collectors who need to insure large collections that don't fit more traditional insurance profiles. Much more useful for businesses.
>Most states allow you to go without insurance by fronting the cash.
That's BS on it's face. Most states don't allow it or they restrict it to big business and government agencies.
>because most people have no desire to lock up tens or hundreds of thousands of spare dollars just to avoid car insurance.
Most people's money isn't making a return greater than what insurance would cost them.
Second, this completely ignores my point about credit. I can easily get hundreds of thousands of dollars in credit secured against my house or tens of thousands in unsecured credit (credit card). Why must I pay to keep the lights on at some insurance firm?
And I'm not particularly rich. If the numbers pencil out for me then surely they must pencil out for millions of people.
That's BS on it's face. Most states don't allow it or they restrict it to big business and government agencies.
It's 11 states, covering roughly a third of the US population. There's a quite few more if you own significant numbers of vehicles. You can s/most/many/ if it makes you feel better.
Most people's money isn't making a return greater than what insurance would cost them.
You wouldn't be making money on a self-insurance bond either. It's locked up with the state or in a surety account. You can also expect to pay a significant fraction of your regular insurance costs to maintain a surety bond.
Second, this completely ignores my point about credit.
Credit lines expire when you die (say in an accident), they're not guaranteed to pay out the full amount at any particular time, and the courts probably shouldn't go around binding third parties to pay out on your behalf.
States' interest here is in guaranteeing that there will always be a minimum amount of money to compensate victims, regardless of what other financial shenanigans you have going on in your life. That's not a standard that lines of credit and investment accounts meet. Self-insurance is simply a terrible option for most consumers, so no one does it.
That's an entirely separate issue, isn't it? In my country (New Zealand) there are no requirements to have auto insurance. If you don't have insurance and you hit a million-dollar car you're gonna be in an awkward situation, but that's a risk you're allowed to take.
Note that you _are_ legally required to pay your annual ACC levies, which fund no-fault cover for injuries. However that doesn't cover property damage.
This. If you're nearly "perfectly" pricing risk on an individual level then you defeat the point of insurance which is to pool risk.
If my hypothetical cost over an N decade period is within a fraction of a percent of payouts in that time what do I gain by paying for insurance other than creating a principal-agent problem?
The goal is not to drive in all conditions; it is to drive in all drivable conditions. Human eyeballs also cannot see through dense fog clouds. Operating in these environments is extra credit with marginal utility in real life.
But humans react to this extremely differently than a self driving car.
Humans take responsability, and the self-driving disengages and say : WELP.
Oh sorry were you "enjoying your travel time to do something useful" as we very explicitely marketed ? Well now your wife is dead and it's your fault (legally). Kisses, Elon.
Amateur. Opus 4.6 this afternoon built me a startup that identifies developers who aren’t embracing AI fully, liquifies them and sells the produce for $5/gallon. Software Engineering is over!
A bit of humour doesn't hurt. But if this crap gets upvoted it will lead to an arms race of funny quips, puns, and all around snarkiness. You can't have serious conversations when people try to out-wit each other.
They're still out there; people are still posting stories and having conversations about 'em. I don't know that CmdrTaco or any of the other founders are still at all involved, but I'm willing to bet they're still running on Perl :)
Wow I had to hop over to check it out. It’s indeed still alive! But I didn’t see any stories on the first page with a comment count over 100, so it’s definitely a far cry from its heyday.
For the unaware, Ted Faro is the main antagonist of Horizon Zero Dawn, and there's a whole subreddit just for people to vent about how awful he is when they hit certain key reveals in the game: https://www.reddit.com/r/FuckTedFaro/
The best reveal was not that he accidentally liquified the biosphere, but that he doomed generations of re-seeded humans to a painfully primitive life by sabotaging the AI that was responsible for their education. Just so they would never find out he was the bad guy long after he was dead. So yeah, fuck Ted Faro, lol.
Ack, sorry, seemed like 9 years was past the statute of limitations on spoilers for a game but fair enough. I’d throw a spoiler tag on it if I could still edit.
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