> How did it meaningfully impact their revenue in a positive direction?
It probably allowed them to avoid hiring as many people to build a certain amount of software. Even if it didn't increase revenue, it could have lowered human labor costs.
> 128 GB machines that can run local LLMs are a bargain even if priced $5-8k.
Don't forget the energy costs. Searching around, advanced models use an average of 25 Wh/1000Tok.
$1500/month gets you about 150M tokens.
At the aforementioned energy/token, that's 3750kWh.
What are your local office electricity rates/tariffs? (Hint: they are going up because of AI data centers). Even if my price and energy assumptions are wrong above, you probably aren't going to get the rates that the hyperscalers do.
Even at cheap (i.e Texas) retail electricity rates, that many tokens will probably cost you hundreds per month. In most other electricity markets, probably far more.
> How much more software does Uber need?
> Unless they are iteratively replacing expensive vendors and optimizing other headcount costs?
Yes and yes. Also the world changes and software has to evolve to model that change, especially at a place like Uber whose software models phenomena in the real world.
> Entire civilization flourished for 2000 years and then disappeared without any clue why.
I think it's well understood that upliftment/desertification of the lower Indus valley resulted in many of the rivers the civilization was built around drying up.
Ancient DNA studies (Reich et. al) have shown a scattering of Indus peoples in all directions after that - including back to the southern Iranian plateau where they came from originally, and across the Indian subcontinent, forming a substratum of various populations across South and Central Asia.
They also reverted to smaller scale settlements, although with echoes of their previous material culture, eventually merging with later migrants and pre-existing indigenous populations.
After that, they very likely played a significant role in the second great urbanization of the Indian subcontinent [1], which took place in the first millennium BCE in the Gangetic plain, and also possibly in the parallel development of Iranian civilization. It is thought they were the original inventors of the famous Indo-Iranian oven known the tandoor, which seems to have remigrated back into South Asia long after the Indus people took it to Central Asia.
So while their original cities were abandoned, their influence was felt far and wide in the ancient world.
1. The first being the Indus Valley Civilization itself a few millenia earlier.
> Some people never recognize this and many never successfully adapt to what seniority entails.
> > However, this requires a level of initiative and agency that most employees never exhibit
Even if some aspects of that might be true on the individual level, this take is the classic "blame the individual, but don't question the system."
Nothing about the concentration of capital by mega-corporations (enabled by tax policies they pushed). Nothing about the unfolding multigenerational disruptions by AI on the white collar job market. Just the old well laundered "bootstraps" argument.
What OP said is definitely true on the micro level-- not "even/might/some aspects", but the whole thing. It's true that in any given organization there are fewer senior roles because of hierarchical nature, it's true that as you progress up the ladder the demands change and increase, and it's true that many people fail or choose not to adapt.
The macro argument seems right as well. If you measure it longitudinally the numbers don't stay constant. It's 1 in 4 today, maybe it was 1 in 10 fifteen years ago. Anecdotally there is definitely something strange going on with the labor market that's new, and that you can't explain by micro realities alone.
The article's somewhat dubious argument is that the 2012 budget estimate was $1.5B, the actual cost by 2017 was $1.9B, and the $400M difference was caused entirely by Atherton's law suit.
Which is obviously a bit sus, because the actual lawsuit froze everything for only around 18 months from Feb 2015 to Sep 2016.
there was also a delay in the decision for funding until may 2017. that's another 8 months. but then we don't know when that decision would have been made originally.
No. It says the direct payments created other funding gaps that caused further delays that added costs, but provides no information about what those were, much less any evidence that they are due only to this lawsuit.
In fact the article comes dangerously close to admitting that there is correlation without correlation, it opens with:
> Here is the short version. In 2012, Caltrain budgeted its electrification project — the backbone of the Peninsula's transit future and a prerequisite for high-speed rail to ever reach San Francisco — at roughly $1.5 billion. By 2017 that number had ballooned to $1.9 billion. In between, the Town of Atherton sued.
While I don't agree with what Atherton did here (in general, I did not look at the specifics), you have to be fairly negligent to think you're going to build something in California without a massive legal headache. This is a legislative problem which it sounds like, for this narrow case, the legislature actually solved (shockingly to me). I find it hard to blame the residents of the city for exercising their rights.
> This is a legislative problem which it sounds like, for this narrow case, the legislature actually solved (shockingly to me). I find it hard to blame the residents of the city for exercising their rights.
Filing frivolous lawsuits is also a right but we don't withhold our criticism of that practice. What Atherton did seems like the wealthy person's equivalent of that, down to it being dismissed. Legal? yes. Cynical and amoral, also yes.
I agree, and I do not take issue with the general complaint (frivolous lawsuits) I am merely pointing out that your ire should be directed more at the legislature not at the people.
> assuming we're all 10x more productive - we'll still be working 5 days and enjoying 2 days a week, but we'll consume 10x more, or everything we consume will be 10x higher quality
Who is "we all"? To me, it sounds like the relative few who happen to have those jobs that have the 10x productivity boost but also receive the monetary upside (via ownership).
The rest of the hard-to-automate jobs will likely see their wages crater as the workers whose jobs got automated flood those labor markets - i.e. office worker turned skilled physical laborer.
This will further enrich the previous small group relative to the masses, as they will pay lower prices and receive higher quality goods and services due to competition between everyone else. Prices will fall not by miraculous AI robots but by squeezing labor.
This is the scenario - neofeudalism - that may await us absent strong mechanisms to replace the broad productivity redistribution the social technology known as "jobs" provided. Hardly a good thing.
You’re speculating about the effects of AI specifically but responding to a comment is about productivity generally. Historically we’ve seen massive productivity gains, and yet we’re all still here working.
> The middle ground is integrated solar panels, where you have normal sized panels but they are flush with the rest of the roof and there are no tiles underneath them
Flush with the rest of the roof seems like a mistake. What if you need/want to replace them with a different sized panel?
Horses for courses relly. I think the panels are all standard sizes now as well? When done tastefully, they almost seamlessly blend with the tile (limits tile choices), certainly from a distance. Some new builds near me, you can’t really see the panels until up close. Raised panels do have an issue in that birds/rodents/etc. nest below them and can cause major damage if unchecked. This is why pest protection (unsightly up close) is a must. The major cost of dealing with nesting under panels comes from the labour and probable need for scaffolding etc. to resolve - i.e. minimum of £2k.
That and op said it's more expensive. Why would you do it flush, then? Looks? Eh, I prefer practicality over form and many architects would agree with being more honest.
Looks, no need for bird caging to stop nests underneath the panels, and I don’t believe it is particularly more expensive if you do it when replacing the whole roof. It’s more expensive if you don’t want to replace your roof.
For those who aren't aware, A123 made the batteries for the GM EV1, which GM famously killed after killing the CA clean air regulation that gave rise to it.
Not a natural language, but they are certainly a language as in a symbolic representation of information.
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