Yeah, I'm getting the same feeling. They've announced that semi will use 4680 and Cyber Cab as well, right? If that's the case, this would point to a specific supplier issue rather than something more general.
It isn't something that I've looked into in depth, but it feels like a lot of the discussion isn't hitting the mark here.
I don't necessarily see this as a bad trend. Eventually a tax on mileage and weight would make the most sense vs the current attempts to use fuel taxes as a proxy for those things.
Why do we need public funds to build a private authority that pays people absurd amounts of money who don't actually do anything instead of just you know.... building the road like we always have. For the public.
If we're going to spend the money anyways why do we need private profits?
Furthermore, just tax the vehicles that are actually doing damage to the roads. i.e., trucks.
A honda civic barely does anything to a road. Where a semi-truck is EXPONENTIALLY more damaging.
Not literally exponentially, but the damage is proportional to the FOURTH power of the axle load. Imagine how expensive shipping would've become overnight if all these trucks had to pay their fair share and passed the costs to their customers.
Honda Civic weighs 0.7t per axle, or 0.24tttt of wear.
F-150 weighs 0.9t per axle, or 0.65tttt of wear.
A school bus weighs 7.5t per axle, or 3164tttt of wear. That's more than thirteen thousand Honda Civics' worth of road damage. Imagine the driver of the Honda had to pay 1c per mile. The school bus would have to pay $130 per mile. Yes, it's carrying 78 passengers, so the cost would be $1.67 per mile per student, but I think most people would just drive their kids to school.
>Imagine how expensive shipping would've become overnight if all these trucks had to pay their fair share and passed the costs to their customers.
The roads are already being paid for and maintained at their current state. All you'd be doing is making goods slightly more expensive and other taxes slightly less. About 1-4% of your total tax burden goes to the roads. That's a small enough total number to be easily buried among your annual spend on goods.
Like if roads were these huge financial burdens that didn't amortize away to practically nothing.
The civic barely does anything to a road, except require its existence and maintenance, and it turns out that roads are expensive to build and maintain (even if only damaged by weather).
The means of collection and treatment of it as something other than tax revenue are problematic for sure. Those should be solvable problems, though.
Your point about semi-truck damage vs lighter vehicles is exactly why I think moving in that direction is so useful. The most fair taxation would accurately take both that aspect and actual miles driven into account.
Except the impact of even gas prices going up has added to costs in basically anything delivered by truck. Every tax you put on that just eventually ends up in consumer hands.
The US interstates move military equipment across the country without needing to deal with railroad bottlenecks. It is a public good. Just like GPS, it has ancillary civic functions but it still serves its original purpose.
I mean, that's the de jure purpose, but that's really a nonsensical point to make here. We're not talking about one controlled access route with two lanes in both directions to move tanks around.
We're talking about 10 lane monstrosities, with 8 or more flyovers, standing 20 stories high in places like in Houston and Dallas.
> you can definitely use school facilities after hours
Aside from a few things like some playgrounds shared with public parks next door this has often been pretty untrue. I've definitely had police escort me off school basketball courts when school isn't in session, the natatoriums haven't had much public access, it's not like the school libraries are open after hours, etc.
I'm sure some places are more open and some are less open, I wouldn't say you can "definitely" use them.
I'm not aware of any public schools in my area that would allow me to, e.g., use the basketball court or soccer field after school hours or on the weekends.
Have you tried? I've certainly been able to. And I'm definitely not alone in having used those facilities. I've used them personally and for ad-hoc sport events (lacrosse isn't exactly popular in the area I'm in right now).
Not recently, though I have observed locked doors and gates that make it pretty difficult to use. If your caveat is you need to call ahead to organize an event that's a pretty different use-case from what I'd like to do, which is to use them very casually and occasionally.
I've never called ahead or anything like that. There are a fair amount of people using them on the weekends, as far as I've seen.
There is one school that definitely is gated off, but that's because it's near a major point of interest and I can only assume they're worried about non-community members damaging the property.
I'd argue there should be some access to school facilities by the public if you want to call them "public". Otherwise it's about as public as the police department.
I don't understand, there are plenty of other things the public pays for that you can't use for other, unintended purposes. You can't fly your hobby drone out of a public airport just because you want.
Necessary public infrastructure that is paid for with tax dollars is not a public good?
And just in case this fact is being lost / forgotten: Toll roads are primarily, originally funded through tax dollars but are disingenuously structured in a way these bozos can go "see, it's not actually tax dollars" (it is). The same exact dollars that should be used to build fully public, free roads are instead used to privatize public infrastructure.
There has never been a time where a toll raid has failed and the losses were treated as private. The bonds magically get repaid (to the right people, of course).
It's all tax dollars in the end, one way or another.
"Public good" is a term of art in economics which means a good is both non-excludable (it is impractical to control who benefits from it) and non-rivalrous (one person benefiting does not prevent others from also benefiting).
Roads are clearly rivalrous and while it's often impractical to prevent non-payers from entering a toll road, one can certainly record them and met penalties after the fact to discourage it.
You’re both right. Roads can be an impure public good.
At low traffic loading, they are not rivalrous and can be modelled as a public good. At high traffic loading they become rivalrous and thus closer to a common-pool resource.
If roads are made excludable, they resemble a club or even private group.
> Toll roads are primarily, originally funded through tax dollars
This is untrue of all the toll roads I've regularly driven in multiple cities in the US. Their construction was funded through bonds which are paid back from the toll revenues.
why did you ignore my other statements that expressly address this "viewpoint."
The bonds are issued either by the authority itself or some other agency expressly delegated to issue those bonds.
The accounting is done EXPRESSLY with the knowledge of the states general fund, even though there's a "wink wink" don't use the tax dollars to """directly""" pay for these bonds.
Don't believe me? Look at the financial reports yourself.
There is zero point in the fuzzy accounting other than to make something that simply should be public, private, and allow grifters to make a buck or two off it.
In EVERY CASE of a failed toll road the major bond holders have all been made whole through the state directly or indirectly.
If you have the money, investing in a toll road is the easiest way to make lots of money with 0 risk.
But you can only do that if the entity issues those bonds "knows" and "selects" you. :)
I have for the toll roads I drive on. It shows the debt payments being paid by the toll revenues, not other state taxes.
> In EVERY CASE of a failed toll road the major bond holders have all been made whole through the state directly or indirectly.
Sure, the toll agencies are ultimately a creature of the state but it's incorrect (a lie?) to argue it's funded primarily, originally through tax dollars, at least for the toll roads I drive on. What's the rate of these failures? What's the actual percentage of these bonds being paid by toll revenues versus failing and the states being on the hook? Once again you said it's primarily and originally. Being paid because the bond failed to be paid back by toll revenues isn't the original payment plan, and unless it's happening most of the time it's not the primary way of those bonds being paid.
> make something that simply should be public, private
> to argue it's funded primarily, originally through tax dollars
Do you know how bonds work? It's an isomorphic operation. A state entity is issuing bonds out to creditors. A lot of those major creditors will also be secured creditors.
It's the same thing, just covered under a sleight of hand trick.
So the state borrows money from a select few major creditors but it's "wink wink" not against the full faith and credit of the state, then regulates a consumption tax on the road, and the investors and authority get a slice of the pie.
For what purpose?
And when the toll roads fail either the creditors are paid out either through the state out right buying the road or allowing the debt to be a tax write off over X amount of time.
>This "viewpoint" is otherwise known as "reality".
This American brainworm is exhausting, ngl. Buddy you're getting bamboozled by a few vocab words and a 3 step accounting trick, please don't presume to talk to anyone about reality.
Yeah, the toll. One assumes you're not talking about the toll but other tax revenues when you're complaining about tax payers paying for the road. Obviously the tolls go to pay for the toll road, so what's the point otherwise about talking about the taxpayers paying for it?
Buddy it's really exhausting ngl having people always assume every toll organization is a private enterprise. It's not just a 3 step accounting trick, please don't presume you know how every toll arrangement is made.
And if your point is the idea of government bonds going to private investors, well, how do you think the freeways are financed? How does it make a difference then if it's a freeway or a toll road or a library or a playground? It's all financed in largely the same way. Government bonds issues to selected investors.
You didn't link me to the thing that we are discussing. You linked me to a current financial report, that of course just lists the tolls.
Do you understand how bonds are issued?
But, since you're seemingly in Texas and are completely unaware of a vibrant example of the type of outcomes I'm discussing, here's one right in your home state from 2017.
>According to the terms that emerged from bankruptcy court, all of the private entity’s $1.4 billion debt was wiped away, leaving federal taxpayers left holding the bag for the $430 million federally-backed Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (TIFIA) loan given to the private entities.
>Some are asking why the state of Texas didn’t step in and insist the public interest was protected and defended in bankruptcy court. Taxpayers have a right to know why they didn’t get the road back, why their $430 million federal TIFIA loan was wiped out, and why they have to continue paying tolls for another 45 years to use a road that’s lost $1.2 billion of its $1.4 billion original value. The state also had a revenue sharing agreement with the previous owners, Cintra-Zachry. Will the state ever see any of that promised toll revenue?
Would you care to explain that in the course of this discussion, why that very recent and very vibrant example of the exact thing being discussed did not resonant with you?
I mean you clearly implied that you've read these financial reports before, so it raises lots of questions about your motivations and I dare say, honesty.
> The question was never “how do we align AI with human values?” The question was always “which humans get to define those values?” Grok answered that question: the ones with the most money.
Grok is routinely misaligned with Elon, as the article points out in its intro! You don't need to order your engineers to keep fixing what isn't broken...
Years ago Google built a data center in my state. It received a lot of positive press. I thought this was fairly strange at the time, as it seemed that there were strong implications that there would be jobs, when in reality a large data center often doesn't lead to tons of long term employment for the area. From time to time there are complaints of water usage, but from what I've seen this doesn't hit most people's radar here. The data center is about 300 MW, if I'm not mistaken.
Down the street from it is an aluminum plant. Just a few years after that data center, they announced that they were at risk of shutting down due to rising power costs. They appealed to city leaders, state leaders, the media, and the public to encourage the utilities to give them favorable rates in order to avoid layoffs. While support for causes like this is never universal, I'd say they had more supporters than detractors. I believe that a facility like theirs uses ~400 MW.
Now, there are plans for a 300 MW data center from companies that most people aren't familiar with. There are widespread efforts to disrupt the plans from people who insist that it is too much power usage, will lead to grid instability, and is a huge environmental problem!
Not only would I suspect that an aluminum plant employs far more people, it is an attainable job. Presumably minimal qualifications for some menial tasks, whereas you might need a certain level of education/training to get a more prestigious and out of reach job at a datacenter.
Easier for a politician to latch onto manufacturing jobs.
No doubt there is exquisite engineering and process control expertise required to operate an aluminum plant. However, I imagine there is extensive need for people to "man the bellows", move this X tons from here to there, etc that require only minimal training and a clean drug test. An army of labor vs a handful of nerds to swap failed hard drives.
Eh it depends. Properly idiomatic elixir or erlang works very well if you can coax it out — but there is a tendency for it to generate very un-functional like large functions with lots of case and control statements and side effects in my experience, where multiple clauses and pattern matching would be the better way.
It does much better with erlang, but that’s probably just because erlang is overall a better language than elixir, and has a much better syntax.
But even without them getting better, as far as I know there were zero waymo fatalities due to this.
That's more than I can say about Helene, where there was at least one fatality due to traffic light outages.
Lets not forget that a big part of why we want Waymo is that it has already lead to a dramatic decrease in fatal accidents. They are a great company that will do a lot of good for the world. One bad night (in which noone was hurt, in part because of their cautiuosness) shouldn't negate that.
Seeing as how literally nobody died, I'm not sure if I agree with your sentiment.
I was curious if Waymo has even been involved with a crash that killed someone, so I looked it up. The answer is yes - there was a Tesla going 98mph in SoMa whose driver died after hitting a Waymo. Clearly we should shut down Waymo until they can handle that situation!
39,345 People were killed in traffic accidents last year in the US alone [1]. Not including permanent injury. If humans were replaced by self driving cars at their current accident rate, 34,000 less people a year would die [2].
Even if every US city had Waymos blocking the street for every single disaster, as they did here. I find it extremely unlikely that even the indirect deaths would come close to that number. And that's assuming Waymo learn from this lesson. Which they will.
You're being sarcastic, but it's a valid point. I'd love to know if there were any traffic fatalities at all during the affected period. Chances are there were and that they were due to human error.
> Chances are there were and that they were due to human error.
Eh, I don't know. ~40 people die from traffic collisions each year in San Francisco, so about one every nine days. People would be driving more cautiously without traffic signals or street lights, and most collisions at intersections would occur a relatively low speed assuming drivers treat the dead signal as a stop sign. The risk of death for drivers might be higher during a power outage like that, but I doubt it would be 9x (and the outage lasted less a full day).
I often find it sad how many things that we did, almost without thinking about them, that are considered hard today. Take a stroll through this thread and you will find out that everything from RAID to basic configuration management are ultrahard things that will lead you to having a bus factor of 1.
It seems like verification might need to be improved a bit? I looked at Mistral-Large-123B. Someone is claiming 12 tokens/sec on a single RTX 3090 at FP16.
Perhaps some filter could cut out submissions that don't really make sense?
It isn't something that I've looked into in depth, but it feels like a lot of the discussion isn't hitting the mark here.