skybrian's recent activity

  1. Comment on AI usage patterns in software teams in ~tech

    skybrian
    Link
    From the article: [...] [...] [...]

    From the article:

    Executives are personally active on AI at rates that match or beat their teams. CEOs at companies of 201 or more people went from 9% to 36% in six months, the largest jump of any cut in this report, suggesting the most senior leaders are learning the technology by using it rather than reading about it. Company size comes from third-party enrichment, so this cut covers fewer workspaces than the rest of the report.

    [...]

    Two years ago, fewer than one issue in a thousand was created by AI. Teams now use AI to write just under half of everything created in Linear, and at the current pace it will soon author more than people and integrations combined.

    [...]

    Teams that connected a coding agent roughly tripled their weekly pull requests over two years, from 21 to 65, while teams without one went from 8 to 10. These teams were already higher-output before coding agents existed, so the levels aren’t directly comparable, but each cohort against its own baseline tells a clean story, and nearly all the growth sits on the agent side.

    [...]

    The clearest indication of AI’s influence on product development is the dramatic output gains experienced by teams using coding agents over the last two years. We have no way of knowing whether this increased output led to positive business outcomes, but it shows a very clear correlation between AI adoption and acceleration.

    Perhaps more intriguing is the makeup of that adoption, and how it appears to be blurring roles. Senior leaders are doing more of the hands-on IC work, adopting AI aggressively to help them do it, and non-engineers are committing code. The suggestion that everyone in an organization is becoming a “builder” seems to be directionally true.

    Those gains haven’t shown up as time saved, though. Time spent on existing tasks in Linear held while AI usage appeared as a new layer of work, meaning the overall time spent on product development is going up rather than down. As far as we can observe, teams are working more, not less, suggesting AI has a Jevons paradox quality beyond token consumption.

    Many will rightfully argue that looking at pull requests indicates motion rather than value, which is certainly true, but it’s still a step forward from measuring tokens. A mechanical refactor might burn lots of tokens while a meaningful bug fix or code review doesn’t, so token spend and value don’t line up at all, and using one as a proxy for the other will be remembered as a relic of AI’s early days.

    5 votes

  3. Comment on Guyana’s oil-driven economy has seen the world’s fastest growth in GDP per capita in recent years in ~finance

    skybrian
    Link
    From the article: [...] [...] From the "some kinds of economic growth are better than others" department. But it sounds like they're handling it ok so far?

    From the article:

    Guyana, a small country in South America, has seen the fastest growth in gross domestic product (GDP) per capita in the world over the past decade.

    [...]

    A large and sudden expansion in oil production has driven most of this growth. Between 2020 and 2025, the country’s oil production grew 860%, making it a key contributor to global crude oil supply growth.

    [...]

    It’s too early to see the full effects of this, and hard to measure how far the oil boom has translated into better living standards in the country. Official poverty estimates, for example, have not been published since production began. But there is early evidence of the government channeling oil revenue toward citizens, for instance, through cash grants for every adult, free tuition at public universities, and increasing health spending.

    From the "some kinds of economic growth are better than others" department. But it sounds like they're handling it ok so far?

    2 votes

  5. Comment on How a giant battery is transforming a town centre in Cannington, Ontario in ~enviro

    skybrian
    Link
    From the article:

    From the article:

    The glowing phone booth, it turns out, is actually a giant battery. Built by Toronto-based startup Civic Grid on behalf of The Nourish and Develop Foundation (TNDF), it helps power the neighbouring food bank for cheap while providing residents with a mini town square to gather and recharge. For Civic Grid, the pilot project is a demonstration of a new kind of community infrastructure.

    “This square provides … lighting, shelter, seating, [and] an open courtyard to be an extension and to strengthen the TNDF’s existing programming,” Civic Grid founder and CEO Max Fine told BetaKit in an interview on Thursday. “Having these spaces within these communities, big or small, I think, are really essential as we electrify our systems and we go through this energy transition.”

    The courtyard’s 60 kWh energy system charges during the cheap, off-peak night hours, then powers the TNDF’s two buildings for six hours the following day. That keeps its fridges and community kitchen running at less cost, while also providing insurance if the power goes out.

    Fine said a battery like this shows how important energy access is for people to participate in society. Already, multiple people are charging their phones in the courtyard in the morning, and it has helped an electric wheelchair user get moving when they ran out of juice. This philosophy is also reflected in the design, with the stone base meant to evoke a community water well.

    1 vote

  7. Comment on We economists have done the maths: ‘growth’ is a doomed strategy – there is a better way in ~finance

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    If a purely socialist system succeeded at exporting, say, cars that consumers in other countries will buy, that would be quite an achievement! And tough to do now when competing with China. But...

    If a purely socialist system succeeded at exporting, say, cars that consumers in other countries will buy, that would be quite an achievement! And tough to do now when competing with China.

    But the place to start is probably something like manufacturing clothing. The bottom isn't a country that has a clothing export industry like Bangladesh. It's the countries that can't even do that. There was an attempt to build a clothing industry in Haiti after the earthquake, but it's collapsed further since then.

    4 votes

  8. Comment on We economists have done the maths: ‘growth’ is a doomed strategy – there is a better way in ~finance

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    "intrinsic inevitable" is doing a lot of work there. You can rule out a lot of failures by saying they weren't intrinsic or inevitable, but they're still failures, at least until the country...

    "intrinsic inevitable" is doing a lot of work there. You can rule out a lot of failures by saying they weren't intrinsic or inevitable, but they're still failures, at least until the country finally succeeds.

    Meanwhile, the track record for growth due to export-led global trade is pretty good. It's certainly not "pure" capitalism since it's often due to intentional government policy. (China is an example!) But it's embedded in a trade-based global framework.

    4 votes

  9. Comment on Fifty years ago, cosmic rays may have caused Apollo astronauts to see lights (2023) in ~space

    skybrian
    Link
    From the article:

    From the article:

    The mechanism behind the flashes described by Apollo astronauts remains a mystery. Perhaps the particles, which are components of c­osmic rays, emit radiation as they pass through part of the eye. Or perhaps they trick nerve cells to create the illusion of light. However the flashes happen, they are still an issue for astronauts. In 2006, about 80 percent of NASA and European Space Agency astronauts reported experiencing the flashes. How the phenomenon impacts astronaut health after months or years in deep space is unclear. As NASA plans crewed missions to Mars and the moon, scientists are devising new ways to protect astronauts from radiation (SN: 7/4/20 & 7/18/20, p. 18), such as portable magnetic shields that can deflect cosmic rays.

    3 votes

  11. Comment on We economists have done the maths: ‘growth’ is a doomed strategy – there is a better way in ~finance

    skybrian
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    When you write “growth of the economy as a whole,” do you mean for the entire world? Generally speaking, less economic growth in one country doesn’t imply more economic growth in a different...

    When you write “growth of the economy as a whole,” do you mean for the entire world? Generally speaking, less economic growth in one country doesn’t imply more economic growth in a different country. It’s more like economic setbacks are sometimes contagious. Example:

    Asian Financial Crisis

    A financial crisis started in Thailand in July 1997 and spread across East Asia, wreaking havoc on economies in the region and leading to spillover effects in Latin America and Eastern Europe in 1998.

    More spending in the US on imports has helped growth in many other countries that have exporting industries. Cutting back on spending (as threatened by Trump’s tariffs) doesn’t help.

    A major exception is that increased carbon emissions are bad worldwide. That really is zero-sum. But that’s not true of most kinds of economic activity.

    5 votes

  12. Comment on We economists have done the maths: ‘growth’ is a doomed strategy – there is a better way in ~finance

    skybrian
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    Yes, there are many success stories. I’m saying that economic growth for the poor countries where it hasn’t happened yet (mostly in Africa) is very important.

    Yes, there are many success stories. I’m saying that economic growth for the poor countries where it hasn’t happened yet (mostly in Africa) is very important.

    9 votes

  13. Comment on We economists have done the maths: ‘growth’ is a doomed strategy – there is a better way in ~finance

    skybrian
    (edited )
    Link
    "Economic growth" is an extremely vague concept. What kind of growth is it? Some kinds of economic growth have to be better than others, and we should make distinctions. There are some kinds of...

    "Economic growth" is an extremely vague concept. What kind of growth is it? Some kinds of economic growth have to be better than others, and we should make distinctions.

    There are some kinds of economic growth that I'm quite dubious of. The gold rush to build datacenters as rapidly as possible, for example. What's the hurry? Seems like it's due to greed and competition.

    However, I don't see how anyone could deny that some poor countries are severely lacking in economic growth of nearly all kinds. To say that we don't need any more economic growth seems like the sort of "luxury belief" that would only make sense to rich people in rich countries.

    Edit: clarified wording.

    9 votes

  14. Comment on The consequences of caste in village India in ~society

    skybrian
    Link
    From the article: [...] [...] [...] [...]

    From the article:

    The principal concern of the farmer is risk. The crops cannot fail. If they fail, you die. It is much more important to avoid a catastrophic fall in income than to have a higher standard of living most of the time. So, people shade their decisions – they spend less on intermediate inputs, choose crops which are less dependent on rainfall, scatter their fields rather than have them all in one place, and invest in livestock with a low rate of return but which provide something all year round.

    They also save, and when that isn’t enough, they importune their relatives. These obligations to provide to your relatives is a form of insurance, of immense quantitative importance and surprising effectiveness.

    [...]

    But this insurance comes at a cost. It is not the insurance you sign with a company which has clearly defined obligations and benefits, but a latent claim of relatives against anyone who should come into money. It is a tax, and a punitive one.

    Some of the idea of the magnitude can be given from a clever experiment conducted by Carranza, Donald, Grosset-Touba, and Kaur (2025), in the Ivory Coast. They offer cashew processors the option of a blocked savings account into which they can deposit a part of their paycheck. These savings accounts do not pay interest. They exist solely to prevent one from being able to access the money for nine months. It is surprising that anyone would take up the offer, and yet many do. Because they are working at a job with pay tied strictly to productivity, through a piece rate system, we can observe how much more people are willing to work when their relatives don’t know how much they’re making.

    The effects are tremendous. Earnings rise 9.4%, and attendance rises 6.5%. These gains are observed only when family members don’t know about the accounts. When they do, very few people are inclined to take up the account, ruling out that this is about self-control for the worker. The implied tax rate of the family cannot be directly known without knowing the labor supply elasticity for the workers, but we can put bounds on it through estimates elsewhere. The high end estimates of the labor supply elasticity imply that the workers who took up the account faced a tax rate on the order of 65% of additional earnings, and the lowest tax rate it could plausibly be is around 20% of income.

    This finding is extremely well-replicated. Frankly, you can just go out and talk to people and see that this is true, but there are also numerous lab experiments (e.g. Jakiela and Ozier, 2016). Munir Squires (2024) also does a lab experiment, and points out that the effects of the social tax are especially binding on those with the most skill. This misallocation, in his model, lowered productivity by a quarter. People will also borrow at a considerable interest rate money which they already have themselves in savings. Baland, Guirkinger, and Mali (2011) report that in their sample in Cameroon, a fifth of borrowers pay a net interest rate of 25% a year just to hide away their income.

    The social obligations which sustain coinsurance make it much harder to migrate. If you move to a far away city, who are you going to marry? India is surprisingly non-urbanized for a country of its level of development. I believe that caste is substantially connected to this.

    [...]

    The need to maintain kinship networks leads inexorably to dowry, and the pattern of marriage in India. Marriages simply must be arranged in such a world. You cannot chance your children falling in love with someone outside of the caste, and the cultural separation needed to sustain endogamy without force is on the level of the Amish. In any case, once you have restricted your marriage prospects in each village to a cluster of 30 households, you would become hopelessly inbred. It would be too costly – more so in the past – to have people travel tens of miles just to interact with potential suitors, so instead it’s treated as a business decision and negotiated.

    Daughters go to live with the groom’s family, and for this a price must be paid. This is not universal, however. Many other places have the sons live with the family of the daughter. The fundamental cause is the form of agriculture, and whether it requires the hoe or the plow. Hoe agriculture, commonly used for root crops, is labor intensive, but does not require anyone to be unusually strong. Women can do this, and in places with hoe agriculture, work in the fields. The plow, on the other hand, requires considerable upper body strength to operate. (It also reduces the need for weeding, which women and children might specialize in).

    It is little surprise, then, that the direction of where people go to live, and where the price for marriage flows, varies with agricultural opportunities. Much of Africa pays a bride price, because much agriculture is hoe agriculture. Much of India – including our village of Rampur – is plow based agriculture, and women are not involved with cultivation. This has a long run effect on gender attitudes – Alesina, Giuliano and Nunn (2012) find that places which kept women in the house due to agriculture in the past have worse attitudes towards gender equality today, and that these norms are carried with them when they migrate elsewhere.

    The payment of dowry is bound up with informal insurance. The timing of marriages are affected by droughts and other shocks. In India, a drought increases the age at which marriage occurs, while in Africa it decreases the age at which it occurs. In the former, the shock to savings means that the family must wait longer before they can afford it, while in the latter the family is more eager to sell the bride for cash to get by. Dowry thus forces families to maintain a stock of savings above what they would otherwise, and allows other people to make claims against it.

    The transaction is not concluded when the dowry is paid on the wedding day. The groom’s family will continue to make claims, prompted by some necessity – sickness, Diwali, the breakdown of a motorbike – and backed up by the threat of violence against the bride. Violence against women is incredibly common in India, with 28% of women across the country reporting having been physically abused in the past year. About 5,700 women a year are killed due to disputes over dowry, with Uttar Pradesh accounting for 2,000 of them. The paradigmatic example is the bride burning, where the woman is covered in kerosene and set alight, with the aim of blaming it on a household accident or suicide. It’s a really ugly part of rural life, yet common. (I’ve received some pushback on this claim. Yes, 28% in the past year is correct. NFHS survey, page 680. The most common form is that 25% of women report being slapped by their husband.)

    [...]

    They run a second experiment where they surprise people who they’ve hired to assemble paper bags with a request that they perform a task for a bonus. The results are even more astonishing – 43% of workers would refuse to do a task outside their identity for 10 minutes, even for 10 times their daily wage. It’s not a matter of effort expended, as it’s flat across the time increments. Instead, people have a conception of themselves as a person who does x and not y, and will not budge for filthy lucre. This tracks with historical evidence – Alexander Persaud (2023) found that immigrants to Fiji from high castes were willing to pay much more – 2 and a half years of wages – in order to return home.

    [...]

    It goes without saying that caste solidarity leads to discrimination. Soumitra Shukla (2026), working with multinationals hiring from elite Indian colleges, shows that despite lower-caste individuals being more likely to be promoted and less likely to leave, they are weeded out by higher caste interviewers before they can be hired. It is striking how people with unambiguous surnames get stricken early on, while people with ambiguous surnames are removed only after the interview stage. Going back to Rampur and villages like it, low caste households have much worse access to water for irrigation if someone from a higher caste owns the water supply – Siwan Anderson (2011) finds that lower caste water buyers would have yields 45% higher if they were in a village where the water supplier was also of the same caste. It is striking that trade could even break down in the water market, because the good to be traded and the contracts needed are so simple. In kinship based societies, though, people have limited trust. Moscona, Nunn, and Robinson (2017) show that in places in Africa with similar customs, they trust the central government and outsiders less.

    1 vote

  16. Comment on Car break-ins drop in San Francisco as drone use increases in ~transport

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    I wouldn't say this is a more reliable source, but apparently there are rappers are saying it's the drones too?

    I wouldn't say this is a more reliable source, but apparently there are rappers are saying it's the drones too?

    3 votes

  17. Comment on Is AI profitable yet? in ~tech

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    A new run rate was allegedly reported to investors: $65 billion. I asked ChatGPT to add the point to the chart where I keep track. The area under the curve for the year so far looks like about $23...

    A new run rate was allegedly reported to investors: $65 billion. I asked ChatGPT to add the point to the chart where I keep track.

    The area under the curve for the year so far looks like about $23 billion.

    1 vote

  18. Comment on Car break-ins drop in San Francisco as drone use increases in ~transport

    skybrian
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    Also: A dark thriller about San Francisco car break-ins is selling out theaters

    Also: A dark thriller about San Francisco car break-ins is selling out theaters

    The dark and deadly serious film follows a pair of brothers, Juju (Reed Shannon) and Slim (Zach Sowers), as they navigate the criminal underworld of San Francisco. Slim is a promising basketball player with his choice of scholarships, while his brother Juju becomes wrapped up in a crew of thieves who use spark plugs and brute force to smash their way into car windows. The film feels like something of a modern day interpretation of the 2004 drama “Sucker Free City.” The movie was co-directed by Alex Ferrufino alongside San Francisco rapper and Cookies cannabis entrepreneur Gilbert Anthony “Berner” Milam Jr. (Berner also has a co-writing credit alongside David Mansanalez).

    5 votes

  19. Comment on India's Serum Institute partners with Gates MRI to make experimental tuberculosis vaccine in ~health

    skybrian
    Link
    From the article: [...] [...] [...]

    From the article:

    July 16 (Reuters) - Serum Institute of India said on Thursday it would manufacture an experimental tuberculosis vaccine under an ​agreement with the Gates Medical Research Institute, in what is ‌likely to be the first new TB shot in more than 100 years if approved.

    The novel vaccine candidate, M72/AS01E, has been in development for two decades and ​is currently in a late-stage clinical trial.

    [...]

    Serum Institute plans to invest ​more than $100 million to scale up manufacturing capacity and prepare ⁠for future vaccine supply, pending approval, the company said.

    Under the agreement, ​Gates MRI, founded by the Gates Foundation, will transfer the technology and ​know-how needed to manufacture the vaccine antigen and enable large-scale production, Serum Institute said.

    [...]

    Tuberculosis is the world's leading cause of death from a single infectious agent and is among the top 10 causes of death, the WHO said in a report ​last year.

    Nearly 11 million ​people contracted ⁠tuberculosis in 2024, while 1.23 million died from the disease, according to the WHO's data.

    [...]

    "The World Health Organization estimates a vaccine with this efficacy profile could prevent 76 million new TB cases, save 8.5 million ⁠lives, ​and save $41.5 billion for TB-affected households over ​25 years," Serum and Gates MRI said.

    4 votes