skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
116 of those people don't own homes of any kind; partially because children can't buy homes, elderly people can't maintain homes, and everyone else is too poor (or married).

Of the remaining 234, 38% are boomers, who almost never sell homes.

There are now only 146 people. How many want to sell homes? Only 8.7% of people move each year, so only 12 of those people are open to the possibility.

Now it's 1 out of 12. That's significant. That's not even considering other factors, like Gen X becoming increasingly hesitant over time to the prospect of moving, while being the second largest generation to own homes. They own 24% of the homes and are very "sticky", so it might easily be more like 1 in 9 in terms of actual sales.

It's actually even more amazing than that - we don't even need the above napkin math. 4.62 million homes were sold in 2024, 4.09 million in 2023, 5.03 million in 2022. Add a million homes, increase supply by 20% (1 in 5), that's going to leave a dent. After all, according to Redfin, only 2.5% of homes change hands every year.
https://archive.is/Fv1yU
> You keep saying this like it's a good thing. That's a disaster - China has 93%. Romania has 95%. Russia has 92%. India has 86%. A 2/3s homeownership rate is an embarrassment, and shows we haven't addressed this problem sufficiently.

I'm specifically responding to the idea that "most Americans" would love to see house prices drop. Only 1/3 of Americans would like to see house prices drop, the rest would be mad. That's why this hasn't been addressed in the past.

> "Don't fix the system; better think of those short term equity values! Even better, don't build housing!"

I'm advocating for building more houses, and am pointing out that the immigration axis is irrelevant to the cost of housing in HCOL areas.
> a growing attitude.. to rid society of.. elites

No there isn’t. We just collectively elected a billionaire real estate developer from NYC to be our president. He’s friends with other members of the ownership class, and has demonstrated, before even taking office, that their elite interests are far more important than those of the average American.

I guess I can see why you’d think this because of the UHC killing, but you need to zoom out and see the big picture. We are headed full throttle towards oligarchy and plutocracy, while the masses cheer gleefully.
There is no diet that will even intervene with cancer, unless the patient dies.

Cancer is the patient's own cell that has mutated to a point beyond apoptosis and adapted to be able to draw nutrients from cells around it. It started from just one cell. It has already evaded dietary fluctuations and adapted.

EDIT: the reason I'm a spaz about this is I feel too many people focus on diet as the focus of cancer. While it might be good for some prevention, it will not stop it, and I want people to focus on real treatments.
I disagree. In fact they’ll be the FIRST to be replaced, as that is the richest target for replacement. Think about it. You wouldn’t build a robot (R+D costs) to do the job of someone cheap unless you can build many many robots and amortize the cost over millions.

Soldiers for instance are EXTREMELY expensive; so in modern theaters they’re being replaced with drones and missiles.

And executives are being replaced with automation in that there are less and less of them and the ones that remain have much higher leverage.
I think it's a blessing that these fires have mostly hit lower density homes. I'm not saying we can't think about more density but I'm not sure we should pack the Palisades and and Hollywood hills to to the gills.
I don't find any difference in how much I enjoy a movie/show from the picture quality, down to a certain limit. The projector is above that limit.
I feel like the thrust-to-weight dynamics on multicopter drones don’t really lend themselves to heavy payloads like water bombing in the quantities needed. An additional issue is that, due to wanting to maximize power density for the high amperage motors, you often end up using lithium-polymer battery formulations that are less than adequately shielded for the possible impacts the drone might incur. I would be concerned that the risk of a drone failure itself igniting a new fire in a remote area would outweigh the potential.
The reality is that the government backs house prices by preventing construction via zoning rules. Japan shows us that 0% central bank interest rates do not affect pricing so long as supply meets or exceeds demand. [1]

[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/JPNCPIHOUAINMEI
In a free, fair, and regulated market. Yes. I agree with you.
"I'm shocked, shocked to find out that piracy is going on here!"

"Your LLM, Captain Zuckerberg."

"Oh, thank you very much!"
Housing is one of the most highly regulated markets there are. There are all kinds of rules and regulations - primarily zoning codes - that have the effect of limiting the amount of housing in a given area.
I saw none but I did see some spots where they might appear.
I'm not sure what's sillier, banking on 3rd party bullshit generators to handle work product or ignoring the likelihood that executive tier depravity extends to these kinds of depths when the prospect of cutting labor costs is presented.
So why are prices still going up at the exact same rate despite 30Y mortgage rates going from 2.x% to 7.x%
To your point of: "... suspending a professional resource for one year will create a hardship for me. And, I’m one of the largest producers of content on the network ..."

https://stackoverflow.com/users/124486/evan-carroll?tab=answ...

Evan is only suspended on Stack Overflow. Compare https://stackoverflow.com/users/124486/evan-carroll and https://dba.stackexchange.com/users/2639/evan-carroll ... or for that matter any of the other parts: https://stackexchange.com/users/42701/evan-carroll?tab=accou...

Likewise, the "largest producers" ... https://stackoverflow.com/users/124486/evan-carroll?tab=answ... and https://stackoverflow.com/users/124486/evan-carroll?tab=ques... would bring that into question.

Even on the site with the highest rep... https://dba.stackexchange.com/users/2639/evan-carroll?tab=an... the most recent answer was August 12th. The next most recent answer was October 1st (of 2023).

The self-aggrandizement and over the top tone does not do any favors for taking the content seriously.
This compulsive need for data is such a mental crutch. Reason from first principles. Use logic. You don’t need to be spoon-fed data from a scientifically rigorous study in order to deduce basic cause-and-effect relationships.
They already are, but that's kind of besides my point. I don't doubt that California can throw billions of dollars at subsidizing housing built on parcels so dangerous no insurer can underwrite there. I don't live or die based on whether people can afford to live in Pacific Palisades. But it's somehow sanity-preserving for me to watch insurers exit markets (or drastically increase rates). At least one party to this system has to acknowledge reality, and no organizing or speechifying gets you around it.
There is a huge difference between killing someone who is actively organizing terrorist attacks versus killing a bureaucrat who is in the unfortunate position to catch heat no matter what because he has to say no to some people. Acts of war are seldom considered murder, even by religious people. Vigilantism against someone who didn't even break any laws is definitely murder.
Here’s a business idea for someone: find the best open source/self hosted business and start up tools (such as a chat app, a project management tool, a wiki, etc) and offer startups a managed hosting service of those selected apps. Toss up a cheap but decent vps per client, run some open source monitoring tools for yourself, price as a flat rate per app under management (vs scaling rate of a per user seat in most SaaS products).

Seems like a pretty damn easy lifestyle business that many early startups would find valuable because it saves them money and the headache of doing it themselves.
The whose a what?
Offshoring and AI …. Twin threats to all IT jobs including SWEs.
At my job (eng count ~1k), the EM's are responsible, with TPMs helping monitor the metrics.

Teams are given a fixed budget per micro-service and if that spend exceeds that budget, you need to find the money from another service in our org.
It could be true or false, but it’s unknown. For example. a user doing a survey is yet to fill in the answer. That doesn’t mean there is no answer, it’s just unrecorded.
Ha, configurable tightness is precisely what I love about Hack (though using side swipe to upvote as it's the most frequent action, so better be convenient), and the colored vertical lines are as good as indents to delimit comments.
To be fair, EU working conditions are pretty bad compared to Canada. Sure, Chinese conditions might be worse, but EU conditions aren't good to begin with.
So... he's not a fan of Elon Musk, I take it?
Not for the majority of people. I've even heard it's becoming a common practice for HOA's to require homeowners insurance so even if you are cash buyer you could still be forced to buy insurance.
I admire your optimism in epidemiology. In point of fact, though, we have a rough natural experiment in the form of a food that doesn't cure a disease, but rather makes half of all drugs worse. That's very valuable knowledge, and under ideal epistemic conditions it might have been discovered within a few years of organized drug discovery as such. Yet was not widely known until the 1990s. So that's a failed positive control, which suggests that our practical capabilities to detect these kinds of effects are limited. Understandably so, given that there is no general requirement for dietary logging in clinical trials.

That said, "a food that cures cancer when eaten" is not the bar for experimentation. More realistic might be something like "a dietary or behavioral protocol that, in some way, ameliorates this or that illness".

For organisms with our body plan, "a cure for cancer" is like talking about "a cure for defection". But clearly there's "stuff that is efficacious against particular instances of cancer", a lot of which we found through techniques like natural product screens, i.e. "just trying stuff", rather than via rational drug design.
Engineering is about focusing on what matters. There's no point in talking about flying cars: they will exist when portable fusion exists, so just talk about that.
Maybe they'll hire some people back as bodyguards for the CEO?
Some discussion at the time (56 points, 21 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31315516
I don’t know, we manage all right with the 1st party bullshit generators.
It could also be neither. It's whatever you define it to be. Null could mean you don't know if it's true or if it's false, or it could mean you know it's neither true nor false.
I tried doing some back of the envelope math but it doesn’t come out in favor of drones.

The CL-415 that you shared in the link has a reported capacity around 6100 kg of water. When I searched for “heavy lift drones” I got the Draganfly Heavy Lift, which can reportedly carry 30 kg but only for 18 minutes of flight time (according to the company’s web site). I think the plane’s flight time is around 3 hours but obviously the math is a little more complicated than that.
> what TVs (or any other consumer electronic product) aren’t reliant upon software for basic system control nowadays?

How many of them can't get basic volume control to work?

Yes, the fact that modern TVs are so filled with SW is one of the reasons I haven't upgraded my TV in 15 years. More importantly, can anyone explain to me the benefit of these TVs (other than display) compared to the old ones? What smartness in modern TVs can I get that's important to me that I can't get via a Roku or similar device?

> Hardware isn’t inherently bug-free and the “quality” of old hardware is usually due to its narrow scope of functionality;

Same question as above: Why not have narrow scope? What expanded scope in new TVs is actually something I would care for?

And I've never come across a "HW" TV that failed at the very basics. I've never had to return one for a recall. One of the things that makes adding SW to any device really crappy is the "ship now, fix later" mentality. And a lot of things often never get fixed (e.g. my old, ATI video card had features that were broken in Linux, and they never got around to fixing it - never bought ATI/AMD cards since).

> the ability to (theoretically trivially) modify software means that hardware can/does become better/more capable.

Until the manufacturer stops supporting it. I recall when I bought my (dumb) TV, smart TVs were just coming out, and most of my friends opted for smart ones ("it already has Netflix"). Fast forward less than 3 years, and they all switched to Roku or something similar because the TV apps either sucked or stopped working.

Owning a TV is something one should be able to do for over 10 years. Can you guarantee that most of the nice features on your TV will work more than 10 years from now?

Likewise, I should be able to buy a 10+ year old used TV and have basic stuff just work without having to register, etc. If it doesn't, then these manufacturers are simply adding much more waste to the ecosystem than the dumb ones did.

(As you can guess, I have often bought old, used TVs and never had trouble with them).
> For example today, SaaS tools exist for so many things you’d have had to hire for in the past. Thanks to SaaS you can get started really easily - take payments, get a storefront, send email newsletters..

By definition, SaaS is something you hire a company to do - you're paying for a service

> it will be a net good on a scale we can’t imagine
Why?

> megaliths of today also have more market power than optimal, hence so much anti-consumer shenanigans

Are you suggesting that large corporations will shrink market-share because they can all increase automation? How would that work?
Designing Code for Forward Progress
Prices are not going up at anything like the rate they did during the impulse event of low interest mania. They're flattening out but not lowering, as the price of buying out the opportunity cost of losing someone else's fixed low interest loan rises as interest rates rise.
??? Everyone I know in the EU gets like 4x more vacation than most people in Canada. And work 30-40% less hours weekly.
Nothing blew my mind like watching my first girlfriend reset her password every single time she wanted to log into anything because she never remembered a single password.

God hope she never gets logged out of her email.
10 days per year.
> 41% of incendiary articles are purely written to gather clicks.

Agreed. This is just fear-baiting.
Anyone have any insight into how they translate on scale location data to usable marketing data like you describe?
The same happened to me last year, on a company trip people voted to not go to a bioluminescent swimming, but when I confronted them everyone was really wanting to go. We ended up going (I can be a bit pushy), and everybody loved that experience.
Let affected people take time off work without requiring them to use sick hours or PTO.
It's now been picked up by the local news stations.

https://www.king5.com/article/tech/university-of-washington-...
I use Google Docs and Office, and I guarantee outside whichever bubble you and the OP live in, millions of "trivial personal users" around the world also use Office, therefore didn't "move to free alternatives".
Ok let's look at Case-Shiller instead. [1]

So you're saying lowering interest rates raises house prices and raising interest rates 5X ... also raises house prices, and therefore monetary policy is responsible for house prices? Are you sure it's not supply and demand? Because to me, when you do X and Y happens, then you do ~X and Y still happens, X and Y are uncorrelated.

It would seem like a more reasonable assessment is that we're 5M houses short in the US [2], mostly in and around major metros where the jobs are [3], and that changes to interest rates symmetrically impact both supply and demand.

[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CSUSHPINSA

[2] https://zillow.mediaroom.com/2024-06-18-The-U-S-is-now-short...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_housing_shortage
Waymo's current operational area in the bay runs from Sunnyvale to fisherman's wharf. I don't know how many people that is, but I'm pretty comfortable calling it a big chunk of the bay.

They don't run to SFO because SF hasn't approved them for airport service.
The plural of anecdote is not data, but at some overwhelming quantity it is as demonstrative as data.
It’s irrelevant whether they were writing filler or not, they had jobs, and someone was paying them, which means their produce had some value, both to the publisher and the consumer.

Otherwise, they’d simply be cut at some point, not replaced.
Also no one knows what the main events/news drivers will be in 5 years: climate, water, energy, war, peace? AI and economics, employment are way too little of concern at this point.
A 53% poverty rate is economic suicide.[1] Scrambling for food is not economic activity, it's idleness and ruination.

Incidentally, this conversation parallels the one that would follow mass deportations. People complaining of the crashing economy, and the fans of racial cleansing claimimg that it had to be done and that it's a good thing in the long run.

This is exactly the point I was making.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/sep/27/poverty-rate-a...
> China has 93%

Note that "homeowner" in China means leaseholder. So strictly speaking, they aren't really homeowners. Land in cities is owned by the state as per the Chinese constitution, and then pieced up and handed out to citizens via temporary (decades long) leases.
I can guarantee the opposite will happen.

Just have to read some history. A great example is the Gilded Age and what followed after the peak.

Why didn't the grand masters like Rockefeller, Carnegie, JP Morgan control where the story went? How did the system prop up an Ida Tarbell, Upton Sinclair or Teddy Roosevelt? Similarly when interesting characters like that don't emerge eg China or Russia the story goes in very different directions for the people who run Companies. Companies and what they are upto can look very mesmerizing but they really aren't. The British East India Company had more resources and land than the British Govt yet where are they today?

Firms (or any large grouping) and what ever they believe, are a part of much larger systems. They are not The System but part of the Ecosystem.

People inside and outside the firm forget that all the time. History is full of examples of what happens after that. Another great example is why did Central Banks emerge all around the world? What do you think was happening before when the power to issue Currency was in the hands of individual Banks or Kings?

If AI does replace jobs massively we will get UBI type systems just like we got Central Banks whose goal is Ecosystem Stability.
It worked for me last year, and entertained a few of us for a good while. Been meaning to revisit.

Side note: Elite Dangerous is on offer at the moment and that has been the only thing to give me that unnerving sense of scale you get when travelling between systems.
Off-topic: The exact phrasing of this question is probably going to mean something completely different in a generation or two.
With lead free use SAC305 with "no clean" flux (I prefer the name "low solids"...since you still need to clean it).

For leaded Kester44 is my favorite.

Set the iron temp to the datasheet of the solder...then never touch it.

For larger pads use larger tips...a lot of people get into trouble cranking things out of range.
The more I work with Ai the more I feel like a programmer in 1950 dreaming about the www.

It will get here eventually, but barely within my lifetime and only if hardware keeps advancing the way its been for decades.
It's not typically considered, but it matters when comparing against an economy that primarily manufactures goods.
All a little odd given that AmigaBasic was pretty sweet.
You want to review the hiring slump in software development or perhaps the massive layoffs in middle management nationwide? We could also go take a look at what generative AI is doing to creatives income streams. Careful with that "we", it may not cover as much as you think. Edit: it occurred to me that I may not fully understand what your comment was meant to convey Are you saying labor is doing fine or work product created by generative AI is of acceptable quality?
> Citric acid and phosphoric acid likely have the same impact on your teeth and no impact on your bones and kidneys

"Recent findings show that increasing dietary phosphorus through inorganic phosphate additives has detrimental effects on bone and mineral metabolism in humans and animals. There is new data supporting an educational intervention to limit phosphate additives in patients with chronic kidney disease to control serum phosphate."

"Cola is a unique source of additive inorganic phosphate that has been studied over the years in its effect on bone health. Cola delivers a load of phosphoric acid that is absorbed readily and rapidly and is often consumed between meals. A 20 fl. oz. bottle of cola, for example, provides 55 mg of phosphorus, whereas non-cola sodas are phosphate-free. In addition, cola may displace milk in the diet, so it can contribute to lower calcium intake concurrent along with greater inorganic phosphosphates intake (12)."

But, you could be correct regarding bone effects:

"It seems likely that any potential negative effects of cola on bone when it substitutes for milk in the diet would be driven by decreased calcium intake and other bone health nutrients (e.g. protein, vitamin D) in milk, rather than the difference in phosphorus load. This is because milk has about ten times the phosphorus content of cola by volume,"

Though I still wonder about possibly different effects from inorganic phosphorus additives in cola vs. naturally occurring phosphorus in milk and other foods.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5693714/
That is putting intent where it is neither needed nor in capacity. Greed is enough.
> It's just not a solved problem yet.

Human driving isn't a solved problem either; the difference is that when a human driver needs intervention it just crashes.
>but real wages can be easily lowered by giving out annual raises that are below inflation. Since 2020 the CPI is up more than 18%. [1] So if you're not earning more than 18% than you were then, you're receiving a lower real wage.

If you looked around on the same st louis fed site, you'll see that real (ie. inflation adjusted) wages has not gone down.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q
> The main takeaway is that this is inevitable

No, the main takeaway is that this might be ATTEMPTED. Success is not inevitable and to take such guarantees from those most motivated to sell AI is foolish.
How would you handle unmatched outer joins?
If Japan fixed everyone's house at 0% for 30 years than jacked the rates, the owners would be idiots to sell for anything but a hefty added premium as they're sitting on a money printing machine of negative real interest rates. Unless something else is going on like the property having weird upkeep laws that make it tough to just use as is for decades.
>You also haven't answered what help men are receiving but choosing to refuse. I realize I'm wasting my time since you're not arguing in good faith so I'll end the discussion here.

I am not the person you were talking to before. I don’t have to answer questions you didn’t ask me…