I am surprised that Alpoge wasn't using Anthropic.

And based on this comment section we get seriously offended when you point it out.

Housing is expensive in our prestige cities, but that's true in much of the world.

And if you are away from the city, where the rent is less, the incmme is also less. The income:expense ratio is still steep.

That's not really true. Rent to income ratio varies quite a lot

Can you tell me where?

Data from US gov since 2000 show this (BLS, SSA), as do multiple university studies (MN, KY). And the ratio for rural areas is getting worse, more pressure, than urban.

That it varies is not interesting, lots of things have variance. The data shows its generally true.

I think you are mixing up a couple of things.

Income to rent ratio, which is what this thread is about, varies geographically. Rent eats 30-40% of income in prestige cities like NYC or SF or LA. It's only 25% in Kansas City or Columbus.

You seem to be thinking about overall cost burden over time.

> downsizing in the current market basically means that you pay way more for way less

Can you elaborate on that? It's pretty common for people to sell their 4 bedroom family house and retire to Florida. But it's not "way more for way less"

For seniors who sell a house they've owned for years (even decades), they're paying way more for each unit of "house" in this market.

Price per square foot tends to go up the smaller the home and the types of homes older people prefer (single-level, near hospitals, newer/lower maintenance) are in higher demand so they're also harder to find and more expensive.

Transaction costs (agent commissions, closing costs, moving) can be 8-10% of a sale. The capital gains exclusion is only $250,00 for singles and $500,000 for couples, so if you're sitting on big gains, a sale can come with a significant tax bill. In places like California, where assessment caps like Prop 13 keep property taxes low, buying a new home means that you could end up paying more in property tax on a much cheaper home. If you move into a condo, you have to deal with HOA fees. And so on.

Renting isn't always easy either. Senior independent communities can be really expensive (under some models you even have to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars up front) and even if you just rent a regular apartment, you need to compare the rents to drawdowns. $400,000 (the median net worth for 65–74 year-olds) provides $16,000/year at a 4% draw. The median rent for a 1 bedroom apartment in the US is somewhere between $1,200-$1,500.

Really? Given you're on this site I imagine you know at least some technical people. And for the most part we're all very well off.

Of the two-dozen or so technical people whose lives I am familiar with, three are doing well (not at all wealthy, just comfortable). Two got there with good jobs, the third gets everything from wealthy parents. The rest live with parents or in dingy apartments in suburbs, with savings so modest as to possibly not even support that lifestyle in old age. We're all in our late 30's to late 40's. They're all smart and went to good colleges.

I don't think that's true. Prop 13 for example is priced into the market. Buyers bid higher because their taxes are frozen. This doesn't take decades to correct.

Market reactions are instant. Once the policy is fixed we don't have to wait for a generation

Buyers bid higher because sellers are giving up their low property tax, not because the buyer will have a low property tax in a decade or two. Sellers are hesitant to sell because they are giving up a lot, California had to pass a special law just to let old people downsize without losing their low property tax on the big home they raised a family in.

> prices for land go down, which means it is cheaper to build

By this logic San Francisco should be one of the cheapest places in the world to build

The federal government is paying energy companies to cancel plans to build wind farms:

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1e1vg0gjl5o

Yes we're still building renewable energy, but goddamn is our government making it hard.

We are still building renewable energy even with a stupid government because it's now cheaper than fossil fuels in many markets.

Those are refunds of money already paid, it's not any extra money

It's an unspoken rule in the data center debate that every metric is completely batshit.

Doesn't matter what side you're on, it's always "enough water to irrigate 27 soccer fields" or "as much energy as 1/5th of the average hamburger"

It comes from Our World in Data, highly reputable, and I included the source link.

I'm sure that figure is accurate. And the other person in this thread who commented "the entire energy consumption of two Swedens or half a Thailand" is probably also accurate.

It's not about accuracy, it's about the units people choose when having these discussions

I lead with 1.5% of global electricity use. But its import to contextualiza that normal AI usage requires less electricity than an evening of watching TV.

Micropayments never work. It's too much friction for the median user to decide if they want to spend a quarter on an article.

https://nakamotoinstitute.org/library/micropayments-and-ment...

Used to be you would trade a yak or a horse for something. Then you could trade little pieces of metal. In the future, why not something smaller? I mean, people are trading virtual things (like an app). Why not something small for something as small as a website view?

Look at the paper. There's a floor to mental work. Even if it's a nickel, having to make that decision is enough friction to kill the whole deal

But we charge for tokens, and sites like youtube and spotify reward in collected chunks.

I'd argue it's still a product issue, one that will eventually be solved.

The reason a payment is too much friction today is because it's surrounded by a raft of cruft: is there an extra "processing fee", am I signing up for a recurring charge and didn't realize it, I have to enter my card details and address, or I have to log in to some system, I have to OTP with my bank, etc.

It hasn't been solved yet, but someone will solve it to the point that it's a single swipe to buy an article for 25c, and it'll work. I would argue the NYT is in the best position to do so, but they are addicted to their scummy business practices where it's hard to cancel, you pay "$2/mo introductory rate" that suddenly escalates to $40/mo, and so on.

I could see Substack taking a crack at it also.