>it turns out that they got dozens of speed camera tickets per year
To me the answer is quite simple for any of these. Treat repeated small infractions like bigger and bigger infractions. E.g. double the cost every iteration if it happens within a specific time frame.
Ok, you speed once? $100. Twice $200. Thrice $400. And so on. We only reset if you don’t reoffend for any speeding in 5 years. If you want to speed 20 times in 5 years, ok, go ahead. You pay $52,428,800.
Bonus points for making it start at something relative to your salary. People will stop at some point out of self-preservation.
If you don’t believe high fines work, drive from Switzerland to Germany. In Germany the Swiss have no problem speeding, because the fines are laughable. While south of the border they behave very nicely on the street.
You could extend this to other crimes. Google and Microsoft happily pay fines, since it’s cheaper than what they make from breaking anti-trust regulations. If you doubled it on each infraction they would at some time start feeling the pain.
I’m strongly in favor of exponential punishment with very light punishments for first offences. It allows fluke infractions or bad luck to go without being punished too hard, but severely punish the small anti-social group that brings the rest of society down with it. So maybe if you accidentally run a red light once it is a $10 ticket, but next time it is $100, and then $1000, and then $10000, and then $100000.
I have noticed this going between Switzerland and Italy in particular—all of the cars going incredibly fast on the autostrada seem to have Swiss plates!
Some countries have a points system, where every infraction gets points in addition to the fine. At a certain amount of points you lose your license. Pretty effective dissuade serial petty infringers!
Most US states do, too. But people will drive without a license because it’s the only way to get to anywhere in most of the country. And I suspect we’re light on enforcement for the same reason.
"In Germany the Swiss have no problem speeding, because the fines are laughable. "
That is because in germany, cars are a religion substitute and just like there can be no speed limit on the Autobahn in general, there can be no real enforcement of speeding.
The fines actually increased a lot in recent years. Still cheap, though. And if there are radar cameras, they are often in places where speeding is quite safe to make money from fines vs places where speeding is actually dangerous (close to schools etc)
It is basically a archaic thing, the bigger the man, the bigger and louder his car and the faster he goes. It shows status.
So I imagine in New York City it works just the same. When the big guys like speeding and the big guys control the state .. then how can there be meaningful regulation of that?
(To confess, I like to drive fast, too. But not in places where kids can jump or fall anytime on the road)
I've also been hiring before and if my colleague told me he had a list of people he didn't want hired because they didn't write him back, I'd laugh my ass off and continue on with my day.
>enjoy and appreciate something on a daily basis is beneficial to overall satisfaction with life.
I'll couch this in a warning that you need to have the money for it, but for me an espresso machine and good grinder was such a great investment.
It's this thing I appreciate a lot every day.
If you're a drip coffee person I guess this won't apply and you can save a few thousand. Although I'd still recommend getting a grinder (not necessarily an expensive espresso worthy one) and good beans then.
Drip coffee is amazing: A consistent grinder; fresh, light or medium roasted beans protected from oxidation; and a machine that heats the water to the correct brew temperature (190-195 F)is all you need.
The flavor profiles are akin to wines; no decanting required.
Espresso is my soft spot given my origins, but a good drip on paper filters (to remove some oils and cholesterol) is akin to good tea, full of aromatics. I disagree with the temperature, for me a blonde roast calls for 72 degrees Celsius (162F).
To be accurate, I should qualify that for me it’s “light/medium” and not a true blonde roast.
I haven’t had the pleasure of trying to brew my own blonde roast yet.
But I was amazed when I first tried a black coffee brewed properly, and it took me far longer than I want to admit to learn the basic nuances; it was a very fun journey though.
Exactly, and a lot of people that don't like black coffee never had a solid experience: a cup full of aromatics — like tea — instead of just burnt, bitter, over-heated slurry.
I'm a hater of drip coffee as it almost always contains under-extracted (outside of cone) and over-extracted (middle of cone) coffee. You're correct about the importance of brew temperature, although I take issue with the strange units you use.
For me, full immersion brewing is the best as it's far easier to control than expresso - you can fine-tune the water temperature, the grind size and the brew time until you get coffee that astonishes people. Personally, I'm a big Aeropress fan, though I don't know why so many people make horrible coffee using french presses. I think most french press coffee I've drunk has had far too little coffee or too much water in the brew.
I wasn't complaining about the actual temperature (I tend to 80°C water for my Aeropress brews), but the use of freedom units.
I'm sure there's ways to make quality drip coffee, but all the drip coffee that I've had has been very poor. I've also lost count of the number of times that I see people using boiling water for making coffee.
To my mind, it's easy to get obsessive over making good coffee, but what I'd like to see is just more people knowing how to not make bad coffee. If you're thinking about water temperature and pyramiding the grounds, then you're likely making great coffee.
This is also why I kind of hate it when rich people say that money doesn't make you happy. It's true, it doesn't but if you don't know how to pay for your next meal or worse your kids next meal, or you're sick and can't afford good care, then money does make all the difference.
In mathematical terms money might not be sufficient to make you happy, but it's a necessary condition indeed.
> A failing company may still be right in identifying other companies failure modes.
Agreed if this is what they are doing, but what if theyre spewing claims to try and discredit an industry in order to quell their shareholder concerns?
They are not the only ones looking at the money spent in AI datacentres and concluding most of the investment will not be recovered anytime soon.
A lot of the silicon being deployed is great for training, but inefficient for inference and the training to inference ratio for usage shows a clear tendency to go the inference way. Furthermore, that silicon, with the workloads it runs, doesn’t last long and needs replacement.
The first ones to go online might recover the investment, but the followers better have a plan to pivot to other uses.
I'll one up you: at this point I'm becoming pretty sure that this is a person who actually hates LLMs, who is trying to poison the well by trying to give other people reasons to hate LLMs too.
>A pity. Saw Zig as something rising but with this kind of toxicity, no thanks.
Don't get me wrong, it is a bit toxic. However, I feel like taking one comment in a larger article and blowing it up out of proportion is just as toxic.
If you put more salt into this rather thinly-stretched metaphorical cup when telling me what Microsoft did you are not going to endear yourself to me. Why muddy your message?
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