I wouldn’t worry about that. There’s plenty of software yet to be written, in many languages. If anything, Rust’s success has shown that it’s definitely possible for a new language to succeed if it offers something new.
The other tailwind for Zig is that it’s easier than ever to translate an existing codebase with tests into a new language with AI.
Their own libc project is wicked. They are gradually replacing C implementations with zig and in the mean time the C implementations effortlessly link and compile in the same compilation unit as the zig code.
I agree with Joan here, communities aren’t fungible. Building something where something already exists does carry a cost.
But I can also see how this will be used as one more arrow in the quiver of NIMBYs. In addition to environmental, economic, political reasons not to build something, also consider the cost to potentially breaking existing community bonds. We shouldn’t build new high density housing because the new residents will never be able to replicate the community of the previous low density single family home neighbourhood.
You can tell this is a NIMBY piece because it doesn’t touch on how to build new communities, just that existing ones exist and new ones can’t be built and even if they can they’ll be poor imitations of the old ones. So instead of trying to build new things, let’s preserve what we have already. It would have been more interesting and honest if it had explored the role of say, third spaces and how consciously creating the right conditions can lead to community formation.
After all, even the communities that exist today were empty land once upon a time, until we built the infrastructure and community within. If all we ever did was preserve we wouldn’t even have the communities today that we value so much.
It's not only the transition from low -> high that removes communities, there are multiple examples of public housing communities (of medium to high density) replaced by similar (or effectively low) density (as new expensive apartments) within Sydney.
I think, unlike what the author writes, communities CAN be moved if they are sufficiently small and loyal to the leaders who do the move, and the leaders don't screw it up. Moreover, the move is sometimes an improvement.
I've witnessed it myself. For example, Commander Keen fans moving from various InsideTheWeb forums to a centralized phpBB following the ITW shutdown announcement in the late 1990s. I can't think of anybody that got lost, and it was actually an improvement because the new discussion infrastructure was better than it had been before. The community didn't scatter to the winds, far from it; it consolidated and grew.
Of course, such a situation is probably rarer with the enshittification these days, but it would be worth it to figure out when it works, too.
And history is replete with stories of groups who became most successful AFTER a migration, or at least were not so negatively affected by one.
Digg to Reddit was a positive migration. I can think of many small Reddit communities that couldn’t have flourished under Digg or the old phpBB style boards.
Things can get better over time. When they don’t acknowledge this I can’t help but see the authors article as a dislike for any change of any kind.
If you are in America, that 'empty land' was not 'empty land'. It was Native land. Displacement of Native Americans was genocidal and destroyed communities and cultures.
Also, the article touches Moses, right, but it is about communities as a concept, with a heavy emphasis on online communities, where 'new things to buy' do not come at the expense of 'tearing down the old' - and where, when you tear down the old, behaviour patterns change. Take, for instance, the reddit re-design, which changed the page's culture. Or usage patterns of RSS post Google-Reader-shutdown.
You will be pleased to know that I’m not from America, nor have I ever lived there.
My point stands: there are a million excuses not to build more. And when we make that choice not to build, the costs are invisible but they definitely exist. But hypothetical benefits are not as easy to point to as the costs of building.
> But I can also see how this will be used as one more arrow in the quiver of NIMBYs.
How much are NIMBYs actually a problem these days? It seems to me that YIMBYs insisting on building anything, anything, anything at all, damn the cost, be it a privately developed five over one or a publicly funded ferris wheel downtown, are a much bigger issue now. We should be intentional about the communities we are developing (say, FUCKING PUBLIC HOUSING), and ideally not spoonfeeding capital more of our lifeblood as most YIMYs insist on
I live in a city that consistently builds about 3-4% of the number of homes we need to build each year. We don’t build rail, we don’t electricity transmission infrastructure, all of which increases our cost of living.
This sort of construction failure is present everywhere where the public is allowed to make extensive inputs into what gets built. It is not just a US-specific reaction to urban engineering by Robert Moses.
We've let the pendulum swing too hard and instead of a dictatorship of technocrats, we have a dictatorship of vetocrats. A relatively small group of people, sometimes one single individual, can make new construction more complicated than lunar exploration, and there are indeed neighbourhoods whose permitting process took longer than the entire Apollo project.
I live in a house built on a former brownfield, 32 semi-detached houses in total. The whole project was delayed by four years by one dedicated octogenarian who didn't like the idea of new people in "his" neighbourhood and pulled out all stops he could (or even couldn't).
Owning land. Whoever came up with this idea needs to be hung and revived a million times, and then tortured to death a million more. Our society has been mutilated as a result.
I think you could ascribe this to either NIMBY or YIMBY harebrained thinking. We need a third option that's pro-human.
Most of NIMBY legislature and processes that block private construction also block public construction. So most YIMBY arguments to improve the situation apply to both public and private constructions. (Not to mention that public construction has a plenty of problems specific to it.)
There is no trade-off or contradiction between public housing and YIMBY deregulation to allow more private development. I want both. They are complementary.
There's also overlap between YIMBYs are Georgists, they share some skepticism around private land ownership.
This is a fictitious trade-off. Deregulation (of parking minimums, height limits) helps ensure public housing is affordable for the taxpayer and environmentally friendly. If it also helps private developers as a side effect, and that is no loss for public housing.
> I suspect most who go by YIMBY would also oppose this.
Well I'm not sure what you're proposing but if it can be characterised as "mass public housing" it sounds like a terrible idea on the face of it, and most people would probably oppose it on that ground. But the YIMBYs would have to agree that you're allowed to try it if you want, otherwise they'd be NIMBYs, on the basis that they are telling other people they can't build on their land.
You can tell the difference by observing that, intra-city (not inter-city, inter-state, or inter-country, which introduces confounds), the suburban locations with the highest land values build the least. Enclaves like where Marc Andreessen lives, where his family unit has been involved in successful NIMBY activism. That is an outcome that can only be explained by asymmetric government interference due to more effective lobbying from politically active NIMBYs.
I've seen people live with their parents till 40 while waiting for a tiny room that will cost 2 or 3 times what their parents pay for their large villa with large garden.
Its quite simple to me. We the grown ups (together) are to facilitate housing for the kids. If we can't do that anymore we should ask ourselves why we don't want to do that anymore?
Quite interesting is how the (now proverbial) 40 year old isn't really attacking the problem.
I won't be around but I'm curious how their kids in turn will share the tiny room till 40.
In 1962 China launched a surprise war against India. They did it in the same week as the Cuban missile crisis, ensuring that the US and USSR would be too distracted to intervene.
This was after 13 years of friendship between India and China, where India had supported China in many ways including supporting the Communists getting the UN Security Council seat reserved for China. China and India had signed a friendship pact just a few years before.
> Perhaps there are not many instances in history where one country has gone out of her way to be friendly and cooperative with the government and people of another country and to plead their cause in the councils of the world, and then that country returns evil for good
That’s how India’s PM described this barbarous act of betrayal.
This was a good demonstration of how China views its neighbours. As vassals to be brought to heel from time to time, rather than equals. And China will use violence to achieve these aims. That’s the Mao doctrine, followed by every Chinese leader since.
And before you try any nonsense of “oh that’s old news”, China is annexing Bhutan today to put pressure on India to make territorial concessions. (https://youtu.be/io8iaj0WYNI). China is annexing international waters in the South China Sea. China is attempting to annex islands controlled by Japan. China also has border disputes with Russia.
Educate yourself instead of uncritically spreading Chinese propaganda.
You make it to look like if, out of the blue, they attacked they neighbor. Not mention of what the reason of China (right or wrong) could be. Then you complain of uncritically spreading propaganda.
From Wikipedia: "There had been a series of border skirmishes between the two countries after the 1959 Tibetan uprising, when India granted asylum to the Dalai Lama. Chinese military action grew increasingly aggressive after India rejected proposed Chinese diplomatic settlements throughout 1960–1962, with China resuming previously banned "forward patrols" in Ladakh after 30 April 1962."
It literally was out of the blue. There were minimal troops stationed there. India had streets named after the friendship agreement with China, there were slogans that went “Indians and Chinese are brothers”. Brothers can have minor disagreements, but we have their back and they have hours.
The border was guarded about as well as the US-Canada border on the Indian side.
The surprise war caught India completely off guard. The surprise was so effective that China captured all the territory they wanted, killed thousands of Indian troops and declared a unilateral ceasefire before India could marshal a response.
Prime Minister Nehru was badly shocked by this betrayal. He never recovered from it. His health deteriorated rapidly and he died a little over a year later.
Consider that maybe a 2 minute skim of Wikipedia teaches you very little. Certainly not as much as reading many books on this subject, which I have.
>This was a good demonstration of how China views its neighbours. As vassals to be brought to heel from time to time, rather than equals. And China will use violence to achieve these aims. That’s the Mao doctrine, followed by every Chinese leader since.
This is the Chinese way since at least Zheng He and treasure ship voyages.
I guess China was entitled to a reset in expectations after 1949. But what’s surprising is how little their world view changed before after the Communists came to power.
The 1962 war secured the road route between Tibet and Xinjiang. Very strategically valuable.
It also had the effect of uniting India, killing some budding separatist movements. It also made the Indian government prioritise strengthening the army for the first time, which meant the army was ready to fight Pakistan to a draw in 1965 and a victory in 1971.
So the war strengthened both China and India, and poisoned relations between them. Which was fine with Mao, he didn’t really care about good foreign relations.
I haven’t used a laptop other than a mac in 10 years. I remember being extremely frustrated with the Intel macs. What I hated most was getting into video meetings, which would make the Intel CPU sound like a 747 taxiing.
The switch from a top spec, new Intel Mac to a base model M1 Macbook Air was like a breath of fresh air. I still use that 5 year old laptop happily because it was such a leap forward in performance. I dont recall ever being happy with a 5 year old device.
Instead of both-sides-ing this, you can look at objective data. Here's BoxOfficeMojo: https://www.boxofficemojo.com/release/rl4287397889/. Right now it says $8.1M in the US, $75k worldwide. Not bad for a movie that cost $40M to make and about as much to market, huh?
One rationalisation I've heard is that it made more money than expected for a documentary. If we take that at face value, it's worth asking why Bezos felt the need to pay Melania tens of millions more than the budget for the typical documentary.
Your case study in media bias writes itself. All it took was a google search.
The other tailwind for Zig is that it’s easier than ever to translate an existing codebase with tests into a new language with AI.
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