D_E_Solomon's recent activity

  1. Comment on "Shower thoughts" and other things to ponder in ~talk

    D_E_Solomon
    Link Parent
    My dad had a friend who moved from China to LA. The friend would follow the same norms for driving in China in LA and would use the horn as a signaling device to tell people that they were...

    My dad had a friend who moved from China to LA. The friend would follow the same norms for driving in China in LA and would use the horn as a signaling device to tell people that they were changing lanes, to watch out, that they were passing etc. And he kept getting people giving him the middle finger and couldn't figure out why until a colleague set him straight.

    2 votes

  2. Comment on Doctor fired after running emergency department warns about effect of for-profit firms on US health care (2022) in ~health

    D_E_Solomon
    Link Parent
    I see housing as a human right as well - and I wish I wouldn't be perceived as not caring or not having an interest in seeing more people housed with better quality of lives because I'm skeptical...

    I see housing as a human right as well - and I wish I wouldn't be perceived as not caring or not having an interest in seeing more people housed with better quality of lives because I'm skeptical of a lot of government owed housing.

    I'm an American and in a midsized city. There has been government owned housing in my city - and many others - that bluntly nobody would want to live in. Examples like Robert Taylor in Chicago or Marcy in New York show where government housing has been a failure.

    I get that council housing wasn't as bad in England - but I'm not sure the narrative that they were great until Thatcher showed up is accurate either.

    Broadly, I think housing should be done with private sector with governments not placing barriers to supply. San Francisco has so much red tape around zoning and permits that housing permits and starts are the lowest in 13 years. That lack of supply drives up prices to catastrophic levels. I prefer to give people who lack the means to afford housing a choice by giving them cash and subsidies so that they are empowered to make the choices that make sense for them.

    1 vote

  3. Comment on Doctor fired after running emergency department warns about effect of for-profit firms on US health care (2022) in ~health

    D_E_Solomon
    Link Parent
    Sure... but that's one landlord versus the government. Government policy - zoning, building requirements, and so on already drives major housing shortages. We also already tried community project...

    Sure... but that's one landlord versus the government. Government policy - zoning, building requirements, and so on already drives major housing shortages. We also already tried community project housing - and it became terrible. There's a role for government in housing and there are changes that can really help with affordability - but to say that government should build and manage housing is probably not it if you care about affordability and quality of life.

    1 vote

  4. Comment on Doctor fired after running emergency department warns about effect of for-profit firms on US health care (2022) in ~health

    D_E_Solomon
    Link Parent
    It's great until a conservative government decides that you only get housing if you meet their moral & ethics clause that includes no sex, no drinking, no marijuana, and no rainbow flags.

    It's great until a conservative government decides that you only get housing if you meet their moral & ethics clause that includes no sex, no drinking, no marijuana, and no rainbow flags.

    1 vote

  5. Comment on When the mismanagerial class destroys great companies in ~finance

    D_E_Solomon
    Link Parent
    Kodak started shifting their business from film to digital in the early 90s and started really heavy M&A in the late 90s. And despite that, Kodak would have earned a better return by not investing...

    Kodak started shifting their business from film to digital in the early 90s and started really heavy M&A in the late 90s. And despite that, Kodak would have earned a better return by not investing at all in digital after the early 90s and hung up its gloves.

    Fujifilm shows an alternative approach, but they ironically didn't go into digital photography primarily and instead focused on excellence in using its chemical portfolio to build products.

    1 vote

  6. Comment on When the mismanagerial class destroys great companies in ~finance

    D_E_Solomon
    Link Parent
    It's easy to make an argument that the engineering company should keep engineering and be entrepreneurial and swashbuckling... but there's counter examples to that as well. Kodak had the...

    The gist of what this article is arguing is that when these companies started, they were daring and innovating through their focus on engineering innovations. But as leadership changes hands, the focus on the companies change to maintaining the bottom line rather than surging forward the same way, causing a zombification of the company which then leads to these situations. It returns to what Intel's decision should have been later in the article but it's not framed as "What an engineering CEO would have chosen" but rather what the focus of the company should have been as an engineering company overall:

    It's easy to make an argument that the engineering company should keep engineering and be entrepreneurial and swashbuckling... but there's counter examples to that as well. Kodak had the fundamental engineering for digital photography and spent copious sums of money to grab that market. And completely failed... in retrospect, it's hard to see a strategy where they could have been successful. On the other hand, Fujifilm also was facing extinction, and used it's portfolio to focus on completely other markets and doesn't make any money on photography. The engineering swashbuckling startup answer - was wrong for Kodak, but right for Fujifilm.

    2 votes

  7. Comment on When the mismanagerial class destroys great companies in ~finance

    D_E_Solomon
    Link
    One of the hard realities is that leadership is difficult and it's much easier to manage something that you have a background in. I'm much better at managing technology and ERP systems than I am...

    One of the hard realities is that leadership is difficult and it's much easier to manage something that you have a background in. I'm much better at managing technology and ERP systems than I am at managing manufacturing for instance. Moreover, single mission firms are much more likely to be successful than conglomerates. You can see this mostly in the fall of General Electric and their idea of success through management expertise.

    I disagree with the author that Chaebol or the Japanese equivalents - Keiretsu - represents a viable path for most businesses. These structures lead to tunneling and propping up failing firms. So you end up with several strong firms propping up zombie firms. Moreover, since there is usually a bank in the middle, the bank can be then propped up which has larger ramifications for the country's economy.

    Boeing ironically tried to get more focused by divesting the parts manufacturing into Spirit. I don't think that was as well thought out because Spirit was still integral to their overall supply chain with Boeing as their largest customer. So in essence, it made a multi headed hydra and they lost the single direction of one company owning soup to nuts. Spirit + Boeing is a closer to a chaebol than two single focused companies doing what they're good at.

    Finally, beating up MBAs is entertaining, but most firms are led by an expert in their industry who has industry chops plus MBA plus lots of additional training. Focusing on the MBA is fun, but probably missing the major issue.

    5 votes

  8. Comment on San Francisco becomes first US city to ban automated rent-fixing technology in ~society

    D_E_Solomon
    Link Parent
    That's great, but again, it's not going to make a dent on real estate prices in San Francisco. If the goal is affordable housing, this change won't significantly help.

    That's great, but again, it's not going to make a dent on real estate prices in San Francisco. If the goal is affordable housing, this change won't significantly help.

    3 votes

  9. Comment on San Francisco becomes first US city to ban automated rent-fixing technology in ~society

    D_E_Solomon
    Link
    Banning software isn't going to solve the San Fransisco property crises. Removing regulations that prevent building more buildings and adding supply is the primary issue, as San Francisco has...

    Banning software isn't going to solve the San Fransisco property crises. Removing regulations that prevent building more buildings and adding supply is the primary issue, as San Francisco has approved construction on 16 houses in the first half of the year.

    8 votes

  10. Comment on <deleted topic> in ~life

    D_E_Solomon
    Link Parent
    Dude.... that was like tiktok level socialist discourse combined with personal attack combined "I'm just asking questions" sea lioning.

    Dude.... that was like tiktok level socialist discourse combined with personal attack combined "I'm just asking questions" sea lioning.

    2 votes

  11. Comment on <deleted topic> in ~life

    D_E_Solomon
    Link
    In my neck of the woods, the city has been working towards easing zoning restrictions that only allow the construction of single family houses and increasing funding for public transit. That seems...

    In my neck of the woods, the city has been working towards easing zoning restrictions that only allow the construction of single family houses and increasing funding for public transit. That seems like a good step in the right direction to increase supply which would decrease rental and purchase price. There is a lot of pushback from nimby groups that are trying to 'retain their historic charm', but those seem to be getting swatted down so far.

    The other group strongly opposed has been the socialist types. They've put up two ballot issues over the last two years for rent control and rent subsidies which were both overwhelming rejected by voters.

    I'm not really sure how government maintaining a bunch of private housing doesn't turn into a terrible political football. Like "yay, cheaper housing" followed by a conservative administration who immediately evicts anyone on that housing and/or jams up the pricing and/or makes living in one dependent on drug testing, not having children, and working three full time jobs. Moreover, public housing has been done before... and it was terrible. From Jane Jacobs: "Low-income projects that become worse centers of delinquency, vandalism, and general social hopelessness than the slums they were supposed to replace. Middle-income housing projects which are truly marvels of dullness and regimentation, sealed against any buoyancy or vitality of city life. Luxury housing projects that mitigate their inanity, or try to, with vapid vulgarity"

    1 vote

  12. Comment on All the good email clients go to hell in ~tech

    D_E_Solomon
    Link
    I use SparkMail on Mac and Iphone. It handles multiple mail accounts and it deals with the massive amounts of notifications and spam and sales stuff effectively - to the point that I don't spend a...

    I use SparkMail on Mac and Iphone. It handles multiple mail accounts and it deals with the massive amounts of notifications and spam and sales stuff effectively - to the point that I don't spend a lot of time on email and I'm only looking at what I really need to look at. It's very opinionated - Spark focuses on reading important email quickly and is very anti filing every email into a separate folder.

    Yeah, it's a subscription and it has a 'modern' ui, but the productivity has been life changing for me.

  14. Comment on Cloud exit - cloud is NOT cheap in ~comp

    D_E_Solomon
    Link Parent
    At least for Azure, folks going to them tend to be enterprises who already have a Microsoft commitment. So they're not just negotiating the Azure, but their entire usage. Moreover, often Microsoft...

    At least for Azure, folks going to them tend to be enterprises who already have a Microsoft commitment. So they're not just negotiating the Azure, but their entire usage. Moreover, often Microsoft is giving breaks on software licensing for workloads running on Azure. So it's less the price of the service and more of the entire deal.

    6 votes

  15. Comment on <deleted topic> in ~health.mental

    D_E_Solomon
    Link
    One of the things that really helped me in life was to recognize that the brain is going to chatter and I have no control over what it chatters about. The intrusive thoughts, self talk, and...

    One of the things that really helped me in life was to recognize that the brain is going to chatter and I have no control over what it chatters about. The intrusive thoughts, self talk, and whatever else will happen but I am not the conversation or chatter - just the witness of it. So I don't have to buy into it, agree with it, or argue with it. I just have to be.

    5 votes

  16. Comment on Hyprland is a toxic community in ~lgbt

    D_E_Solomon
    Link
    The orange site's posting on this turned into the usual railing about wokeness, code of conducts, and anti trans complaints about pronouns. The tech geek community is at its best in part when it...

    The orange site's posting on this turned into the usual railing about wokeness, code of conducts, and anti trans complaints about pronouns. The tech geek community is at its best in part when it accepts people who are not typical and encourages them for their differences. I'm always sad when I see it turn into a place of hate.

    11 votes

  17. Comment on It’s the breakfast of champions no more: Cereal is in long-term decline in ~food

    D_E_Solomon
    Link Parent
    I really like cereal and have been eating grape nuts religiously for the past few years. I finally added Quaker Oat Squares - which aren't that healthy honestly - to the rotation to get some...

    I really like cereal and have been eating grape nuts religiously for the past few years. I finally added Quaker Oat Squares - which aren't that healthy honestly - to the rotation to get some variety. I usually need carbs in the morning and preferably something that isn't difficult to make. So breakfast is a struggle.

  18. Comment on Please suggest me some books from past decades and centuries that are not widely known classics but you value and would like people to discover in ~books

    D_E_Solomon
    Link
    I really enjoyed the Alexandria Quartet by Durrell which was written in the 1950s/1960s. The books are set around WW1 and WW2 in Alexandria, Egypt under the very volatile end of the British...

    I really enjoyed the Alexandria Quartet by Durrell which was written in the 1950s/1960s. The books are set around WW1 and WW2 in Alexandria, Egypt under the very volatile end of the British colonial rule there. It's a big ball of romantic drama all told by different characters in each book. Durrell spent time living in Alexandria and it's also a love letter to the city.

  19. Comment on Anthony Fauci on Larry Kramer and loving difficult people in ~lgbt

    D_E_Solomon
    Link
    Larry Kramer was a major organizer in Act Up! - which organized in reaction to the HIV/AIDs crisis especially back in the 80s and 90s. Anthony Fauci, before becoming the right wing bugaboo of...

    Larry Kramer was a major organizer in Act Up! - which organized in reaction to the HIV/AIDs crisis especially back in the 80s and 90s. Anthony Fauci, before becoming the right wing bugaboo of COVID, coordinated much of the US government's response to HIV/AIDs. They were often antagonists and argued heavily while pursuing much of the same goals. I thought Fauci's memorial article to Kramer to be touching.

    7 votes