Greg's recent activity
-
Comment on For $700 a month, sleeping pods make San Francisco more affordable, but at what cost in ~life
-
Comment on For $700 a month, sleeping pods make San Francisco more affordable, but at what cost in ~life
Greg (edited )Link ParentIf hostels or homeless shelters were run for profit, I'd likely be expressing similar concerns about incentive structures and wider implications [edit: and people absolutely do express related...If hostels or homeless shelters were run for profit, I'd likely be expressing similar concerns about incentive structures and wider implications [edit: and people absolutely do express related concerns about extended stay motels, for example]. As charities or public services, they fill the need of a true safety net, not the bottom of the market.
College dorms are an interesting one, actually, because I split my time at university between the UK and US and the difference was stark in favour of the UK university when it came to accommodation - because at least at that time and for those particular universities, it was treated as an at-cost service for students at the UK one and a profit centre for the university at the US one. The fact it's normalised for young adults to share rooms without privacy in US university accommodation is a perfect example of "we get what we demand", actually.
Again, all that said, it's not even that I'm dead set against this idea; it just makes me twitchy. It just feels like another collective example of compromising to accept worse rather than forcefully demanding a realistically achievable "better".
-
Comment on For $700 a month, sleeping pods make San Francisco more affordable, but at what cost in ~life
Greg Link ParentBecause to an extent, we as a society get what we collectively accept and tolerate. Obviously that’s not the only factor, there are also practical limits to what’s plausible - and even in...Because to an extent, we as a society get what we collectively accept and tolerate.
Obviously that’s not the only factor, there are also practical limits to what’s plausible - and even in situations where there aren’t, “collectively changing what we tolerate in order to demand better” is absurdly difficult to make happen in practice - but it applies to employment rights, food quality and nutrition, acceptable housing, healthcare model, and many many other comparable things. They all can be done in ways that are better or worse for overall quality of life, and to a reasonable degree the level provided in any given country is correlated to how aggressively the population as a whole will demand that level for that particular thing. If a given baseline for “acceptable” isn’t almost universally defended by the population, it’ll generally be degraded in a way that grinds the average down for everyone so that providers can increase their margins.
So it concerns me for the potential that it will in time be normalised, bringing quality down and price up by one more notch across the board, because people won’t be angry enough about it to say a unanimous “no”. As I put it in another reply, even though I also see safety as a sensible overall baseline, this rubs up against my sense of “individual choice vs collective good” in an uncomfortable way.
-
Comment on For $700 a month, sleeping pods make San Francisco more affordable, but at what cost in ~life
Greg Link ParentThere was a tangent I nodded towards but didn’t write out about the fundamental line of safety, because yeah, that is kinda where we’ve collectively come to on these questions at the moment. You...There was a tangent I nodded towards but didn’t write out about the fundamental line of safety, because yeah, that is kinda where we’ve collectively come to on these questions at the moment. You can’t put lead in people’s food, but you can put as much sugar and fat as you want. You can’t block the fire escape, but you can live in a shoebox if you’ll fit.
And honestly I think that’s a pretty decent line, as far as things go. Like I said, I could even have seen my younger self making use of a living arrangement like this, although I wouldn’t have been thrilled about it even then.
But I do still question the second order effects enough that I’m not fully comfortable about it. Unlike a lot of things I can be very opinionated on it’s not even that I think I’m right about it per se, it’s just… prodding the boundary of my internal compass for “individual choice vs collective good” in a way that makes me pensive.
-
Comment on For $700 a month, sleeping pods make San Francisco more affordable, but at what cost in ~life
Greg Link ParentIt's a question of balance, as with a lot of regulatory issues. Running with the Costco example, there's a lower limit where something's considered unfit for human consumption regardless of how...It's a question of balance, as with a lot of regulatory issues. Running with the Costco example, there's a lower limit where something's considered unfit for human consumption regardless of how cheap it might be - society as a whole has decided that there's a point beyond which you can no longer say "it's better than nothing". There are also a lot of people who'd love to shop at Costco, especially for nonperishables, and would be better off financially and nutritionally if they were able to - but they simply can't due to access or cashflow or a combination of both (insert Vimes boots theory here). We treat food safety as a societal choice but treat nutritional content and package size as a personal choice, and that's reasonable in a big picture sense, but it masks a reality where it's not really a choice at all for a significant number of people.
Very much the same goes for housing. You could argue that people would be even worse off if the cheap but bad options went away - you can even argue that they aren't necessarily bad options for some subset of people. And in some cases I'll probably agree, I've primarily spent my life living in absurdly expensive cities and I've definitely rolled my eyes at some minimum space requirements when I'd rather live somewhere than be priced out. But you also have to recognise that one person's freedom of choice is another's forced hand, and draw a line past which you say "this is dragging society as a whole down, the race to the bottom stops here". If you strike the right balance (as I understand it the early FDA was a good example of this, going back to the groceries example) you don't take away options, you just force providers to increase their standards rather than normalising and embedding a harmful baseline.
Where do sleeping pods sit on that spectrum? I'm not sure. Teetering on the line, I'll say that much. My gut says to me it's already over the line in a negative way, and in terms of the society we want the line is far gone given that we're having this conversation at all. But I can't say with 100% confidence that I'd be fully against the idea as a less than ideal patch on our imperfect reality if my twenty-year-younger self were offered a life changing opportunity and I had to scrape together what little I had and move to a city I couldn't afford in any other way.
-
Comment on Robot golf vs holes that keep getting harder in ~tech
Greg Link ParentHe’s one of my favourite creators, and one of the few I absolutely do watch every video for. Reading between the lines, I think he founded or was a very early employee in one of the major resin 3D...He’s one of my favourite creators, and one of the few I absolutely do watch every video for. Reading between the lines, I think he founded or was a very early employee in one of the major resin 3D printing companies, left in his early 30s with enough money to do what he likes from there on out, and decided that for him that means a nice house for his family along with a supervillain-tier workshop where he can challenge himself to build very silly inventions at NASA-level precision with the overengineering dial cranked to eleven.
He’s living the life I want, basically!
-
Comment on Traders placed over $1bn in perfectly timed bets on the Iran war. What is going on? in ~society
Greg Link ParentOh yeah for what it’s worth I’d been more or less assuming from the start that the oil trades as executed were institutional - if nothing else they kinda have to be to execute at that scale - the...Oh yeah for what it’s worth I’d been more or less assuming from the start that the oil trades as executed were institutional - if nothing else they kinda have to be to execute at that scale - the question in my mind was how whatever information enticed them to place such unusual trades made its way to those institutions, whether they were placed on behalf of a third party, and what might have been given in return.
-
Comment on Traders placed over $1bn in perfectly timed bets on the Iran war. What is going on? in ~society
Greg Link ParentI’ve been working on the assumption that the Columbia professor who thought it worth publishing a paper on had ruled that out. It’s not a guarantee (seriously, I’ve seen some depressingly bad...The fact that the "unusually successful" group contains correct bets on Taylor Swift suggests that it's just people on the right side of the bell curve, right?
I’ve been working on the assumption that the Columbia professor who thought it worth publishing a paper on had ruled that out. It’s not a guarantee (seriously, I’ve seen some depressingly bad statistics get into ostensibly prestigious publications), but it definitely is guiding my view.
-
Comment on Traders placed over $1bn in perfectly timed bets on the Iran war. What is going on? in ~society
Greg (edited )Link ParentFrom what I've seen the oil futures executed in a way that suggests a single large move from one or a small handful of major players:...From what I've seen the oil futures executed in a way that suggests a single large move from one or a small handful of major players: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/traders-place-large-950-million-bet-oil-price-falling-hours-ahead-ceasefire-2026-04-08/ - it's a significant volume executed in a single minute (possibly much faster, that's just the granularity of the public data), in an out of hours trade, where it would be far more usual to spread that kind of trade algorithmically and execute before the daily close when overall volumes are much
lessmore likely to absorb that kind of nudge without shifting the price as you buy.In short: it's the kind of trade you only make if you know something's going to happen and you have to get in beforehand regardless of price, not one you make based on your model's statistical analysis. I'm pretty sure the articles using "investors" plural is the same as them using "alleged" in criminal reporting: good news outlets don't speculate beyond their information (and rightly so, it's not proven from the data that this was a single actor and I respect the journalistic integrity).
Still not a smoking gun, maybe they had their own legitimate sources of information other than administration insiders to give them the edge, but that's why in a less corrupt world we'd be seeing an immediate investigation by agencies who can access the full, raw data, see who placed the orders, and have them testify under oath where their information came from.
On the polymarket side, the statistical analysis was mentioned in the Guardian article:
In a paper published last month, Mitts, the Columbia law professor, and other researchers screened more than 200,000 “suspicious wallet-market pairs” between February 2024 and February 2026 and found that traders in this group achieved a nearly 70% win rate, making $143m in well-timed bets tied to everything from the capture of former Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro to Taylor Swift’s engagement to Travis Kelce.
These trades are outliers. As with the oil, there's a possibility that they're outliers through luck or legitimately good statistical modelling - if nothing else, I doubt the Trump administration is leaking information about Taylor Swift's personal life - but it's not just intuition that's driving my thinking, it's research from people with expertise in the field who are saying that at the very least, something smells funny here and would warrant investigation if the law still applied.
[Edit] less -> more
-
Comment on Traders placed over $1bn in perfectly timed bets on the Iran war. What is going on? in ~society
Greg Link ParentWhat about “placing billion dollar bets on oil futures minutes before something happens”? And/or getting kickbacks from people who want to do so in exchange for the tip. You’re getting into free...What about “placing billion dollar bets on oil futures minutes before something happens”? And/or getting kickbacks from people who want to do so in exchange for the tip. You’re getting into free jet kind of money for the profit on those trades, after all. It seems more likely to me that’s the case than someone happened to make a bet that irresponsibly large at that precise moment.
Even on the polymarket side, Occam’s razor says to me that it’s more likely “Magamyman” is or knows a low-to-mid-level staffer with access to info that’s not so dangerous it’d damage the US’s interests by leaking a few minutes early, but absolutely gives them a five minute edge to run to the bathroom and place a big bet on their phone.
-
Comment on Dual national Londoner stranded in Spain by new border rule in ~travel
Greg Link ParentJust came back to this thread and wanted to say thanks for such an informative reply (and an actual citation!) - the fact it's not an autodetection issue but one where you're obliged to...Just came back to this thread and wanted to say thanks for such an informative reply (and an actual citation!) - the fact it's not an autodetection issue but one where you're obliged to self-declare and at least in theory obliged not to lie or make omissions in that declaration puts that final missing piece in place for me. It makes sense that they can end up in a "we know, but we haven't verified" situation from that.
But yeah, sounds like that legal nuance of the offence not applying to British nationals is a pretty solid practical answer for her if she'd known about it, not that I'd remotely expect her to know that level of detail!
-
Comment on Vibe coding is just the return of Excel/Access, with more danger in ~comp
Greg Link ParentOh yeah there are absolutely meaningful upsides too! I see it as a mixed bag, like a lot of situations where the barrier to entry drops significantly and quickly - eternal September kind of...Oh yeah there are absolutely meaningful upsides too! I see it as a mixed bag, like a lot of situations where the barrier to entry drops significantly and quickly - eternal September kind of situations - where you do end up with the ratio of good <whatever> to bad <whatever> going down because a lot of people who don't have the skills, or at least don't have them yet, start giving it a go where wouldn't have even been able to try before. But on the other hand, the absolute volume has gone up so much and so many people who do have the skills are now able to participate that even the new smaller percentage of good results is a much bigger absolute number of good results, which is great!
...and then on a third hand you've got to deal with the absolute volume being so high that the if good results are up on a lower percentage, the bad results are now an overwhelming flood that needs a radical shift in thinking to properly deal with. Which even then isn't necessarily a bad thing, it can force better processes and tooling to be put in place, generally push whatever field to mature a bit, but it tends to be short term dangerous at best, and sometimes long term too.
tl;dr: shit be complicated
-
Comment on Vibe coding is just the return of Excel/Access, with more danger in ~comp
Greg Link ParentFor sure, but LLMs do make it a lot easier for someone who doesn’t really know what they’re doing to get to something large, complicated, and deployable in place. It’s a business problem for sure,...For sure, but LLMs do make it a lot easier for someone who doesn’t really know what they’re doing to get to something large, complicated, and deployable in place.
It’s a business problem for sure, but that business problem becomes a lot larger and higher impact when there are an order of magnitude more more people taking part in it, and they can make things an order of magnitude more complex and harder to verify.
Kinda the same way we’ve gone from a world where photoshop and general VFX software in skilled hands could produce very convincing results but most images/videos still fell into the “probably legit” bucket, to a world where anyone can fake any image at zero effort and you really can’t trust anything you see, actually.
-
Comment on Allbirds announces pivot from running shoes to AI compute; stock surged over 700% in ~tech
Greg (edited )Link ParentThrow a rock at any of the techier tech conferences and you'll hit at least one of us who was there in the <$10 days playing with GPU hashing algorithms or working on the early VHDL code because...Throw a rock at any of the techier tech conferences and you'll hit at least one of us who was there in the <$10 days playing with GPU hashing algorithms or working on the early VHDL code because it was interesting, and unknowingly held what would be a meaningful chunk of a billion dollars when you look back at it now.
Weirdly for someone with as much anxiety as I have in day to day life, I've never actually had serious "what ifs" or regrets about not holding on to that back in the day. It was so literally unknowable even with hindsight that it's just abstract. I think the one thing it really did do is put the final nail in the already pretty well closed coffin of my belief in our assignments of value being anything other than an absurdist joke, and honestly I do think holding onto that knowledge actually has served me well.
-
Comment on Allbirds announces pivot from running shoes to AI compute; stock surged over 700% in ~tech
Greg Link ParentI'm more or less with you - I think "investor inside baseball" is actually a great way of putting it - and that's why I thought it was worth shining a bit of a light on. For people familiar with...I'm more or less with you - I think "investor inside baseball" is actually a great way of putting it - and that's why I thought it was worth shining a bit of a light on. For people familiar with this kind of stuff it makes sense (like I said, spinning their own new startup into what's effectively a SPAC is how I read it), but for people outside baseball I think it can simultaneously be technically correct but still misleading to suggest nothing's really changed.
They've fairly deftly used their publicly traded status, investor recognition, and honestly probably a decent bit of investor ignorance and/or inertia to boost the profile of their new venture well above where it would've been as just another datacenter startup from people who have no real reason to be exciting as datacenter startup founders. They've also saved themselves seven, maybe even eight figures in real concrete overheads from not having to do another IPO.
It's nothing too wild for someone immersed in this world, and it's certainly not "shoe factory is now full of GPUs lol" which is obviously how the press are spinning it, but it's the kind of thing that sits far enough outside the baseline simplified understanding of how markets and companies operate and close enough to how they actually operate that I think it's good to show the working, so to speak, rather than just jumping to the fact that the result of the big scary equation all just cancels out.
-
Comment on Allbirds announces pivot from running shoes to AI compute; stock surged over 700% in ~tech
Greg Link ParentOn the other hand, you have pivoted from a vending business to a laundry business by doing that. Allbirds the company - as in, the legal entity and investment vehicle that people have bought...On the other hand, you have pivoted from a vending business to a laundry business by doing that. Allbirds the company - as in, the legal entity and investment vehicle that people have bought shares in for any number of reasons over the last few years, rather than the people and machinery who make shoes - really has changed from one thing to another while bringing those investors along for the ride.
I'm sure those investors are happy enough about it, given the numbers involved, but there is a continuous entity making a big change here in a way that it wouldn't be if the founders had wound down Allbirds and then used the money to start NewBird AI.
I also don't really understand the spike, I don't see what qualifies these guys to get into the GPU datacenter space any more than any random startup, but I guess it's effectively a datacenter startup with a built in SPAC, and perhaps that has some additional perceived value to investors compared to any other equally untested startup.
-
Comment on Dual national Londoner stranded in Spain by new border rule in ~travel
Greg Link ParentI guess the disconnect for me is that she does have the right documents to board transport and even enter the UK as a Spanish citizen. It’d perhaps be a better idea for her to board the plane on...I guess the disconnect for me is that she does have the right documents to board transport and even enter the UK as a Spanish citizen. It’d perhaps be a better idea for her to board the plane on her Spanish documents and then explain the situation at the UK border, but even then I don’t see that she’d be breaking any law (although I’m far from an expert) by entering as Spanish but remaining as British. Or is it the case that she’d actually be blocked from getting an ETA on her Spanish passport due to the system picking up her British nationality? (In which case I’m with @stu2b50 - if the system picks her up as British, that should be enough for her to travel as British! If it doesn’t, she can travel on an ETA, no?)
-
Comment on Dual national Londoner stranded in Spain by new border rule in ~travel
Greg Link ParentYeah, this is the bit I can’t square. The BBC article makes the rule sound pointless and bureaucratic, @LumaBop’s explanation makes it much clearer why the rule exists - similar reason you’ve...Yeah, this is the bit I can’t square. The BBC article makes the rule sound pointless and bureaucratic, @LumaBop’s explanation makes it much clearer why the rule exists - similar reason you’ve gotta use the same card to tap in and out at the train station, by the sound of it, the system has to link entries and exits.
But neither seem to account for why she can’t just enter as a Spanish person rather than entering as a British one… she might have a bit of annoyance on her next trip if there’s a hanging entry or exit unpaired in the system because of it, but that’s life when it comes to automation that needs to interact with the real world’s many edge cases. She crosses the border as a Spanish person (which she is), and then remains in the UK as a British person (which she also is), and someone in the Home Office call centre somewhere manually cleans up whatever record is messed up by the mismatch when it becomes apparent.
-
Comment on I’m traveling internationally for the first time and could use tips! in ~travel
Greg Link ParentI wonder if this is partly a (somewhat blunt!) filter on how they want to approach the interaction, more than an accusation towards you? Obviously you were there and you can judge best, it might...The German stereotype of directness has some merit, and some Germans will feel completely comfortable asking questions like "what do you think about what Donald Trump is doing to the world" to a total stranger.
I wonder if this is partly a (somewhat blunt!) filter on how they want to approach the interaction, more than an accusation towards you?
Obviously you were there and you can judge best, it might well be that they really were skeptical of Americans first and foremost and wanted you to prove yourself (which is a bit shitty of them if so), but I can also see a possibility of “a plurality of Americans voted for that psychopath, and I’m speaking to an American, so I should rule out the ~25% chance they’re one of them before continuing the conversation”.
-
Comment on I’m traveling internationally for the first time and could use tips! in ~travel
Greg Link ParentYou'll be fine! Assholes are assholes regardless of nationality, so it's not like you can avoid them by staying at home, and anyone who isn't an asshole is very aware of the fact that individuals...You'll be fine! Assholes are assholes regardless of nationality, so it's not like you can avoid them by staying at home, and anyone who isn't an asshole is very aware of the fact that individuals are not their government.
I mean this with love: I think you might actually be genuinely relieved when you get a change of scenery and see that people don't care quite as much as you might think about the US as a whole, let alone the fact you happen to be from there. Problems closer to each of us absolutely fill our view, to the exclusion of anything else, and that's totally natural. The US's problems right now genuinely are pretty catastrophic for the country and seriously damaging for the world. Of course they're on people's minds. But ultimately all the rest of us out here have got our own shit going on too, positive and negative, and I think it might help you take a breath when you see that the problem filling your view is a bit more peripheral in ours.
For what it's worth I follow US and international politics closely, used to live there, and travelled over multiple times per year until the current administration took over. I've seen a whole lot of footage and discussion around the various protests, and totally get the context of why that's the patch you'd go for. And I still wouldn't be able to identify a Minnesota flag on sight without looking it up ;) Having done so, I think it was also one that CGP Grey called out as a good design and I still forgot it!
Come, chill, enjoy yourself, and take comfort in the fact that we're still bickering amongst ourselves about a thousand things closer to home before we notice you!
I appreciate this, and it’s actually very reassuring to hear that state institutions are still a bit more public service oriented!
I definitely should have been more specific when I said “those particular universities” and mentioned that I somehow ended up at a private US university with fees high enough that I don’t think I would’ve been allowed to breathe the air on campus without the incredible good fortune I had with scholarships. The university as a whole was technically a non profit, but when the university president is getting paid multiple millions per year (literally, her compensation broke $5m/year at one point) it seems kinda moot that the spreadsheet column is labelled “staffing costs” rather than “dividends”.
I seem to remember there was also an investigation going on into how Sodexo ended up with a very lucrative contract that ended up costing the students thousands more even than eating at local restaurants for every meal would have done, but it was many years ago and I don’t know what came of that in the end…
So on the one hand it’s very fair to say my experience was at least a bit atypical, and it’s genuinely good to know that there are a lot of US universities that absolutely don’t fit that mould. The last thing I’d want to do is tar the people who actually are on the ground working towards the goal of housing and educating people with the same brush. But on the other hand, it is still an experience that hundreds of thousands of students in the US will have, simply because the education system is set up in such a way that high budget private universities do hold an incredibly important place in the overall structure, whereas in a lot of other countries they’re barely a thing if they even exist at all.
I guess in a way it goes back to the individual choice vs good of society question? Some countries put strict limitations on all of their institutions, for the net benefit of the education system as a whole, others let some portion of the bigger “brand name” institutions go off and do their own thing in a way that really can bring unique opportunities even if that siphons away money that might otherwise be available to better maintain those state university buildings that aren’t currently able to charge enough.