skybrian's recent activity
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Comment on Nasdaq rewrites its index inclusion rules ahead of SpaceX IPO in ~finance
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Comment on When AI builds itself — progress toward recursive self-improvement and its implications in ~tech
skybrian (edited )Link ParentIt's a web-based coding agent called Shelley. It's open source. It's being written by developers at exe.dev to run on the Linux VM's they provide. It should run on any Linux VM, but you'd have to...It's a web-based coding agent called Shelley. It's open source. It's being written by developers at exe.dev to run on the Linux VM's they provide. It should run on any Linux VM, but you'd have to reimplement authentication since it relies on exe.dev's built-in authentication.
A web UI and a cloud-based VM works well for me because I can switch between laptop, tablet, or even my phone, and it doesn't shut down when I put my laptop to sleep.
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Comment on When AI builds itself — progress toward recursive self-improvement and its implications in ~tech
skybrian Link ParentI've read about people who have connected a coding agent to Slack (or similar team chat) so that the team works together more, and they seem to like the result. I'm a hobby programmer working...I've read about people who have connected a coding agent to Slack (or similar team chat) so that the team works together more, and they seem to like the result.
I'm a hobby programmer working alone, so that doesn't really work for me, but I think it shows that we haven't figured out the best way to use these tools and there will be more exploration of different ideas on how to organize the work.
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Comment on When AI builds itself — progress toward recursive self-improvement and its implications in ~tech
skybrian Link ParentSome people claimed that the code was trash, but is that really proven? I didn't follow it all that closely, but there was a claim that using a regular expression was somehow wrong and it seemed...Some people claimed that the code was trash, but is that really proven? I didn't follow it all that closely, but there was a claim that using a regular expression was somehow wrong and it seemed more like a hot take.
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Comment on When AI builds itself — progress toward recursive self-improvement and its implications in ~tech
skybrian Link ParentYou can think about it if you want to. I usually ask the coding agent to write a design doc first because I care about how it will be implemented. It will go through multiple drafts. For bug...You can think about it if you want to. I usually ask the coding agent to write a design doc first because I care about how it will be implemented. It will go through multiple drafts.
For bug fixes, I ask it to explain the bug and proposed fix before giving it the go-ahead to fix it.
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Comment on When AI builds itself — progress toward recursive self-improvement and its implications in ~tech
skybrian Link ParentBig tech companies have lots of internal code that is never released as a product. I think it's fair to ask what they're getting for it, but we can't really tell from the outside.Big tech companies have lots of internal code that is never released as a product. I think it's fair to ask what they're getting for it, but we can't really tell from the outside.
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Comment on When AI builds itself — progress toward recursive self-improvement and its implications in ~tech
skybrian Link ParentIt seems like the paragraphs you quoted also say that it’s not 8x productivity, and therefore it wasn’t “completely glossed over?” As for the quality of the code, I’ve heard bad things about...It seems like the paragraphs you quoted also say that it’s not 8x productivity, and therefore it wasn’t “completely glossed over?”
As for the quality of the code, I’ve heard bad things about Claude Code and prefer a different coding agent, but we don’t know about their internal codebase.
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Comment on When AI builds itself — progress toward recursive self-improvement and its implications in ~tech
skybrian Link ParentHmm. Okay, let’s hear the details on what they allegedly did.Hmm. Okay, let’s hear the details on what they allegedly did.
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Comment on When AI builds itself — progress toward recursive self-improvement and its implications in ~tech
skybrian Link ParentIt sounds like you will be skeptical no matter what they do?It sounds like you will be skeptical no matter what they do?
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Comment on What do you think of robots in the military? in ~tech
skybrian (edited )Link ParentPutin miscalculated, apparently due to having a very old-fashioned idea of imperialism. Such wars are no longer profitable. Trump miscalculated, apparently because Israel talked him into thinking...Putin miscalculated, apparently due to having a very old-fashioned idea of imperialism. Such wars are no longer profitable.
Trump miscalculated, apparently because Israel talked him into thinking it would be easy.
If leaders didn’t make blunders, maybe there wouldn’t be wars?
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Comment on What do you think of robots in the military? in ~tech
skybrian Link ParentThis isn’t unique to the US. No wealthy country in the modern world is self-sufficient. The benefits from trade are too strong to give up.This isn’t unique to the US. No wealthy country in the modern world is self-sufficient. The benefits from trade are too strong to give up.
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Comment on The rise of build-to-rent housing in ~finance
skybrian (edited )Link ParentMaybe that's true, but I think renters having a place to live is a good thing. The previous owner sold it to a corporation that built two small houses, so now two renters can live there. That...Maybe that's true, but I think renters having a place to live is a good thing. The previous owner sold it to a corporation that built two small houses, so now two renters can live there. That seems good for them.
If the property had been developed as a single, more expensive home, and sold to someone who could afford the mortgage, it seems like that would be increasing inequality and shutting out the renters?
(Also, when a home owner pays their mortgage, isn't that money leaving the area too?)
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Comment on The rise of build-to-rent housing in ~finance
skybrian (edited )Link ParentI don't like the idea of assuming renters are second-class members of the community. Whether you rent or own shouldn't matter.I don't like the idea of assuming renters are second-class members of the community. Whether you rent or own shouldn't matter.
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Comment on The rise of build-to-rent housing in ~finance
skybrian Link ParentMaybe the people who move in will be part of the community though?Maybe the people who move in will be part of the community though?
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Comment on Tokyo land is still >$85 million an acre in ~finance
skybrian LinkFrom the article: [...] [...] [...] [...]From the article:
Thus the right question isn’t whether YIMBYism would lower the user cost of housing—that’s the whole point of the YIMBY movement and the unanimous upshot of the academic urban economics literature—but whether it would lower the value of land overall. The answer will almost certainly turn out to be no, because higher land prices are substantially severable from, and can coincide with, lower structure prices. And Tokyo, the world’s largest city and the only one that features anything like a realistic best-case version of housing abundance at megacity scale, is the cleanest place to see it.
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By the standards of Anglosphere megacities—New York, London, Toronto, LA—Tokyo housing is famously cheap. Builders can put up small-lot single-family homes, midrises, microapartments, and single room occupancy-style shared housing units with ease and in large volumes. (High-rises are not allowed by-right everywhere, so this isn’t a pure laissez-faire experiment, just the closest real-world example.) If “Tokyo regulation” is what real-world YIMBY victory looks like in a global megacity, it’s the best dataset we have.
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The famous (relative) cheapness of Tokyo housing is not a story about cheap land. A one-acre detached house in central Tokyo would cost more than $100 million in dirt before you broke ground. The land is pricey but the structures are cheap. Admittedly, Tokyo’s rents and prices are not as cheap per square foot as buildings in the US Sunbelt’s midsize cities, but cheap by the standards of any 10-million-plus Anglosphere metro area. Tokyo built its way to relative affordability without ending up with low land values, and the values themselves look reasonable for a productive, agglomerated megacity that simply didn’t artificially restrict its own supply.
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When policymakers upzone widely with by-right permitting across a high-demand metro, two things should happen at once. Measured per-acre (like farmland), land value rises, because the parcel has been granted a valuable option to host more buildable area. Land value measured like NYC-area developable land per buildable square foot falls, because that higher per-acre value is being amortized over much more floor area.
These move in opposite directions, and neither one alone is “the land price” in the sense political conversation usually means. This distinction dissolves a lot of the political-economy panic around housing abundance. Again, land prices quoted the way NYC land brokers quote them, on a “Zoning Square Feet” or “Buildable Square Feet” basis, will fall even as the total value of land is at least stable or rises in the metro area being upzoned.
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If American single-family homeowners in the cores and first-ring suburbs of New York, San Francisco, Boston, or LA were maximizing the dollar-denominated asset values Fischel says they care about, they would be voting to become like Tokyo landowners — to unlock the redevelopment option on their parcels. They are not. Whatever they’re maximizing, it isn’t profit. (See Agenda for Abundant Housing for a full-length argument.)
That’s not a fatal blow to the homevoter framework if we’re willing to relax the “objective function” of voters from strictly defined profit-maximization. As any good undergraduate economics professor will remind a student who discovers people valuing non-pecuniary interests: “Firms maximize profit. People maximize utility.” This is of course the beginning, not the end, of the question: It is the task of the other social sciences and humanities to help economists figure out what it is that people see as utility-maximizing or otherwise in their best all-things-considered interests, when consumers are not behaving in a way that maximizes apparent pocketbook dollars and cents.
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Tokyo land is still >$85 million an acre
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Comment on Benjamin Netanyahu backs Republican effort to end US military aid to Israel in ~society
skybrian LinkFrom the article:From the article:
A week after that meeting in Jerusalem — and with Netanyahu’s support — Stutzman, a steadfast Israel ally, on Wednesday is introducing a resolution calling for the U.S. to develop a new memorandum of understanding between the two nations that would end the $3.8 billion in annual aid Israel receives from the United States, and instead have the nation fund its own purchases of American weapons. The resolution, and the fact that Netanyahu has written a letter supporting it, have not previously been reported.
While the specifics of any such arrangement remains under discussion by the Trump administration’s national security officials, Israel would likely benefit from U.S. support through other means, such as a provision currently being considered in the National Defense Authorization Act that would deepen cooperation between the two militaries regarding weapons production and technology systems.
The current 10-year memorandum of understanding between the U.S. and Israel, which includes $38 billion in direct military aid to Israel, is due to expire in 2028.
Stutzman’s effort, while not binding, is the first of its kind in Congress, and it is notable coming from a Republican lawmaker who maintains close ties with Netanyahu and Israel. It represents a growing challenge, even in the largely pro-Israel GOP, to the longtime sentiment that the U.S. should provide direct aid to Israel — a notion facing increasing scrutiny from the American public.
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Benjamin Netanyahu backs Republican effort to end US military aid to Israel
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Comment on The rise of build-to-rent housing in ~finance
skybrian LinkFrom the article: [...] [...] [...] [...] [...] [...]From the article:
A major shift in the housing market in the last several years is the rapidly increasing popularity of “build-to-rent” homes — single-family homes that are built specifically for the purpose of being rented out. According to the National Association of Homebuilders, build-to-rent homes have risen from less than 2% of new housing starts in the 1990s to more than 7% of housing starts today. In 2025, at least 68,000 new single-family housing starts were built to rent (and due to data limitations, the true number may be much higher, 100,000 homes or more).
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The modern BTR industry, where developers build entire communities consisting of dozens or hundreds of single-family homes for rent, is a product of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis. Prior to the financial crisis, single-family home rental wasn’t uncommon — in 2005, there were over 8 million detached single-family homes being rented — but the business was mostly the purview of small “mom and pop” operators that owned a relatively small number of scattered rental properties. As late as 2011, no single company owned more than 1,000 rental homes in the US.
But the financial crisis shifted the housing landscape. Huge numbers of people lost their homes to foreclosure: foreclosure rates in 2009 and 2010 were four times rates from 2005, and between 2007 and 2010, there were four million foreclosures. The homeownership rate in the US fell from a high of 69% in 2005 to 63% in 2016. At the same time, to rein in the subprime lending that had precipitated the crisis, banks tightened their lending standards, and average mortgage credit scores rose by more than 50 points. In 2003 buyers with a credit score of less than 620 made up 7% of all mortgages. By 2011 that had fallen to essentially zero.
The raft of foreclosures and the tightening of lending standards had two simultaneous effects on the housing market.
First, they pushed millions of Americans into renting. Between 2010 and 2015 the number of renter households in the US rose by roughly six million, while the number of homeowner households declined by roughly 800,000.
Second, this shift created a huge pool of homes available for purchase at very low prices. Between 2006 and 2010 the value of US homes dropped by 26%, greater than the average decline during the Great Depression. In some markets the declines were even worse: home prices declined by 60% in Las Vegas, and by roughly 50% in Phoenix, Miami, and Tampa.
In response to these market conditions — millions of homes available to buy cheaply, and millions of Americans who couldn’t afford to buy them — various real estate ventures were formed to take advantage of the situation. In 2010, the Arizona-based housing investment company Treehouse Group began to buy distressed mortgages in Phoenix and turn them into rental housing. Within a year the company had purchased 11,000 homes. In 2012 Treehouse was acquired by the investment group Blackstone, which turned Treehouse into the single-family rental company Invitation Homes. Today, Invitation Homes is one of the largest home rental companies in the US, with more than 86,000 rental homes across 12 states.
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This large-scale acquisition and transformation of single-family homes into rental properties was encouraged by the federal government, as part of broader efforts to keep the housing market from collapsing completely. In 2012 the Federal Housing Finance Agency launched the REO-to-Rental Initiative pilot program, which “allowed pre-qualified investors to bid on large portfolios of foreclosed properties owned by Fannie Mae.” Roughly 1,800 homes were sold to investors under this program. And in 2017, Fannie Mae backed a billion-dollar loan to Invitation Homes for the purposes of purchasing rental properties.
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Building new rental homes had several advantages compared to acquiring existing homes. Being new construction, they typically had much lower maintenance costs than existing homes, and they could be designed by the developer with an eye towards minimizing maintenance and overheads. And because they were clustered together, they were somewhat easier to manage than purchased rental houses that might be spread across a wider area.
As the housing market recovered and the pool of single-family homes available for purchase at favorable prices dwindled, many of the large home rental companies began to experiment with their own BTR strategies. American Homes 4 Rent began work on its first ground-up rental community in 2016; today it owns more than 14,000 BTR homes, with essentially all new home acquisition coming through BTR. Invitation Homes began purchasing BTR homes in 2021 in a partnership with homebuilder Pulte, and as with American Homes 4 Rent essentially all its home acquisition now comes from BTR. Pretium Partners, which owns over 80,000 single-family homes under its “Progress Residential” umbrella, formed a $1 billion BTR venture in 2021. Some companies, such as American Homes 4 Rent, opted to do all their BTR development work in-house, while others preferred to partner with existing homebuilders, buying new houses that developers constructed in bulk.
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Today, BTR is still a small segment of the overall housing market: CBRE estimates that there are about 350,000 BTR units in the US, which is just 1.5% of the overall single-family home rental market. But it’s a rapidly growing segment of the US housing market — or was, until this recent Senate bill.
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“Build-to-Rent” has become synonymous with single-family homes built specifically to be rented out, typically in communities of a few dozen to a few hundred rental homes, but within that category companies offer a broad range of different products. BTR generally gets broken down into several major subcategories (though some use slightly different ones): single-family detached, single-family attached, and horizontal multifamily. These categories exist on something of a spectrum of “very similar to conventional single-family homes” on one end and “very similar to conventional apartment buildings” on the other.
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But while affordability issues seem to be the primary driver of BTR’s popularity, there also seems to be some fraction of residents that simply prefer renting over owning, due to a desire for less maintenance or simply because they don’t perceive owning a home as a major life goal. CBRE, NAHB, and NexMetro all mention various demographics of “renters by choice” (such as retirees), an analysis echoed by several BTR developers I talked to. As construction of BTR communities continues, this growth might create a sort of reinforcing cycle: more people move into rental housing, which makes it more accepted, which draws even more people in, and so on.
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The rise of build-to-rent housing
14 votes
S&P 500 rejects SpaceX, also blocking entry for OpenAI and Anthropic
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