It's really location dependent. The one near me missed opening time by more than 30 minutes one day last week. I don't have more data because I only would splurge for a fast food breakfast when I need it.
Highway expansion is already here in many areas! Waymo has been laying the groundwork for this rapid rollout for so many years and it's amazing to see it all come together.
Waymo's usually something like 50% more expensive than Lyft in SF, in my experience. But the drivers don't tailgate, have colds, listen to your conversation (AFAIK)...I'll generally opt for Waymo now if I have a choice. The biggest problem I have is that it's usually a longer wait due to the smaller fleet size, but if I'm planning ahead, I'll just book one for a given time, and that takes care of it.
Lyft from MV to SF is like $100 I think? It's definitely not enjoyable but for Bay Area prices it's not ruinously expensive.
You /should/ be able to save by using shared rides, but in practice when I tried the driver was so mad they just dumped me on the side of the road and I had to call and get a refund.
The new Caltrain schedule isn't half bad though, if it came twice as often on the weekends we'd be cooking.
You don't need a lot of space to see everything, because you can store information in your memory.
You narrow down your options by having knowledge like "I have points on these airlines so I want to fly on Star Alliance which has partners that fly out of (quick check) these airports, so let's plan the itinerary in this way..."
I just got back from traveling the last 3 months (40 flights, 6 continents) and planned all of it from my phone. From flights, to hotels, to visas.
And it's simply better than a laptop. 4 tabs in 4 browsers means you're distracted, you're not pruning useless information, you don't know what you don't know.
I do 95% of my work on my phone too, and I wouldn't have it any other way.
There is a book written about this topic. SA is the classic manipulator. He talks to each person whatever they want to hear, irrespective of what he really believes. Many of the things he says about AI and OpenAI are clear BS, but he'll sell that to anyone with a different flavor.
(0) Be exceptionally intelligent and capable of applying that intelligence to people, not just code or math — necessary for everything that follows.
(1) Keep attention diversified as long as possible until the winning path becomes obvious.
(2) Focus on fringe bets, but pursue many simultaneously until one clearly dominates (see (1)).
(3) Extreme social manipulation — people-pleasing, control- and power-seeking, selective transparency, skillful large-scale dishonesty, and a willingness to hurt or betray when it serves (1) and (2) and the relational cost is acceptable.
(2) brought him into the startup ecosystem and the first YC batch in the first place (he had to start somewhere); combined with (3) he made an early fortune from a failed startup. (3) also ingratiated him with PG and others in those years. (1)+(2) ensured he always had exposure to every plausible frontier of the industry; when he was effectively fired from YC for (1)+(3), (2) made the OpenAI pivot the next obvious move — and a better one. (3) almost cost him his career a second time when the board fired him from OpenAI temporarily, but he survived because (3) also ensured he had enough to offer everyone else that he leveraged his way back in.
I can only speculate so take it with a spoon of salt... But people who are really good at sussing out other people's wants can find ways to make more people happy. It's like a maze of interests and I guess he's just really motivated and good at navigating and aligning them (at least among the rich and powerful).
He also seems to understand something about power and perception, in that he takes calculated risks that seem to keep working out.
So in other words, he seems to be an extraordinarily skillful politician (in both the general and the Patrick Lencioni sense).
It's too early to say if his risks "keep working out". Restructuring is not a risk. His, and others', original decision to make the company a non-profit was also not a calculated risk in this sense.
When he was fired from OpenAI, his use of employee manipulation to regain his position is not a risk; it is the only option he had. It was his bond maturing, of carefully cultivated loyalty he had accrued over years. Gaining that loyalty was not really a risk. It was smart politics.
One risk he took is: signing away such a large portion of the company to Microsoft. I'm not sure whether that is working out.
Another risk he took is: neglecting and sidelining the "safety" portion of his organization. This caused a talent exodus and led to the formation of many competitors. I'm not sure whether that is working out either.
This is the guy who had everyone here rooting for him when the OpenAI board tried to kick him out. Which was almost certainly the result of a very successful PR campaign carried out by him.
He's not really comparable with Jobs. This guy is a politician and Jobs was a product guy.
Lol what? You need to do more research fella. Did it not ever occur to you that Jobs got the recording industry to dance to his tune to offer music for under a dollar? He did the same with the iPhone - smashing the control cellular network providers had over handset producers.
"This is the guy who had everyone here rooting for him when the OpenAI board tried to kick him out."
Finally... oh this is just funny. Who rooted for S Jobs when he was kicked out of Apple, and cheered for him on his return?
It's a bit much to say he goes into situations with nothing - he, along with others created OpenAI. It's a decent sized company now and they have sway with governments. All decent sized companies do as employers. This kind of stuff happens all the time and it just doesn't get reported as much.
It's a great question. Here are two Paul Graham (PG) quotes on Sam Altman (Sama) from 2008 and 2009.
Note, PG is the founder of YC, Sam's former boss, and the one who removed Sam from the position of President of YC after first appointing Sam to succeed him as President of YC. (Sama was more focused on OpenAI than on YC at the time, which doesn't work when you're supposed to be leading YC.)
Sam Altman has it. You could parachute him into an island full of cannibals and come back in 5 years and he'd be the king. If you're Sam Altman, you don't have to be profitable to convey to investors that you'll succeed with or without them. (He wasn't, and he did.) Not everyone has Sam's deal-making ability. I myself don't. But if you don't, you can let the numbers speak for you.
5. Sam Altman
I was told I shouldn't mention founders of YC-funded companies in this list. But Sam Altman can't be stopped by such flimsy rules. If he wants to be on this list, he's going to be.
...
What I learned from meeting Sama is that the doctrine of the elect applies to startups. It applies way less than most people think: startup investing does not consist of trying to pick winners the way you might in a horse race. But there are a few people with such force of will that they're going to get whatever they want.
from OpenAI to Helion energy (Fusion), to Retro Biosciences (longevity), Neuralink (brain computer interface), to Reddit
Sama really wants to "build the future," and when some of those investments "hit", like OpenAI did - basically become the first new company with a clear path to a $1T valuation since Facebook or TikTok), you gain immense credibility for "betting the future will happen and getting your organization there first."
If YC's motto is "build something people want," and OpenAI is now serving 800M active users while delivering incredible revenue growth (and investors want to see both). Sama gains power by giving investors what they want, by giving users what they want, and basically authoring an entire new type of software company and a new part of the economy.
A thing to note here is that, being a YC partner and top angel investor from 2011 to 2020, you can argue that Sam himself is "the most successful YC graduate." He saw thousands of companies go through YC. He saw hundreds of 'hard tech companies' go through YC. And in that decade, he could only have learned an immense amount about how VCs/successful CEOs think and make decisions. Certainly, we see the learnings of those experiences in what he's been able to pull off since.
I share my realtime Google Maps location with 30 people, friends, family, people from the internet.
They can see where I am, down to my address, at any given time.
Why not?
The very real upside is that they casually see me while looking at Google Maps and strike up a conversation or invite me somewhere, something that's happened many times.
The article talks about private and public life... but people will go to all the effort to post the very same things their location reveals on social media. Might as well make it real time.
If you're sharing location data with people who would use it to harass you, that seems like a selection issue, not a systemic issue.
Location data is hardly private. Everyone should share theirs with as many interesting people as possible. If only I had done so back in school.
I'd be fine sharing my location with my immediate family, but they refuse it. When they wonder how close I am to being home, it isn't supposed to be such a serious thing as to have my precise GPS location. It's a reason to think about me or message me.
I've come to think that it's one of the many "problems" that many people don't actually want to solve, and being so heavily connected is taking away some of the "magic" of social behavior and replacing it with efficiency.
As a random example, waiting for a date to show up is probably more exciting than having a precise read of their location. Or, when my parents were visiting, they'd often say they were just thinking about how I'd be getting home soon.
The nice thing is that everyone has the ability to decide if they want to share their location or not. But even on social media, I only reveal my current location when I'm somewhere that I'd be open to running into people. Otherwise I intentionally wait till I'm somewhere else before posting about where I was.
"Your date's previous date is running long. Please wait awkwardly at the restaurant at the table by yourself while everyone rolls the dice on whether you got stood up or not."
I do the same thing, just smaller group. Answering the questions you’re asking just requires candor: I need some me time. I wasn’t feeling up to it. Will catch you next time.
> just requires candor: I need some me time. I wasn’t feeling up to it. Will catch you next time.
Great! You tell them honestly, what could possibly go wrong. I'm sure nobody's feelings would be hurt when you tell them you weren't feeling like meeting them.
Now next time you drop by and still don't manage to catch them for whatever reason. Now your prior "candor" becomes a lie -- one that never needed to arise in the first place.
Maybe you enjoy getting yourself into these kinds of situations, but hopefully you can understand why others might not.
The obvious one being your wife noticing you're at your mistress' house when you told her you were over at your girlfriend's, but outside of that, the problem the people that are positive about sharing their location is that it's also being abused by the abusive. That's a social problem, and not something technology can solve. I share my location with people I love and trust and will understand that I was busy and had an itinerary I needed to stick to and couldn't see them even though I was right next door, and if they ask we'll have a conversation about it that isn't awkward. Good for me but the problem isn't that I have good people in my life that I share this with, but that other people have bad people in their lives that they're forced to share it with, for whatever reason. I don't have an answer for that.
If those risks outweigh the benefit of having an impromptu lunch with them, or the sonder comfort of seeing them enjoy a Friday night at home, then don't share your location with that person.
If you feel that way about everyone, then you are a very different person to me (and probably OP).
> If those risks outweigh the benefit of having an impromptu lunch with them, or the sonder comfort of seeing them enjoy a Friday night at home, then don't share your location with that person. If you feel that way about everyone, then you are a very different person to me (and probably OP).
If you feel these are the only two possibilities, we're definitely very different people.
These seems to be about guilting and pressuring rather then lying. That person does not have issue because they lie, they have issue because others feel entitled to pressure them.
> Maybe if you don’t lie to people you wouldn’t have that issue?
The heck? Is it that hard for you to imagine these occurring without lying? You have X planned, and now your plans change to Y. Now you owe everyone whose invitation you'd declined an explanation, or they wonder if you're a liar. Or I guess if they're like you, they already assumed you're a liar.
Because having to keep track of who might have noticed you on the map—then explaining your choices to them—is draining and makes you feel like you can’t make a basic personal choice without justifying it.
Because sometimes people can be unreasonable. (Bad day, drunk, generally difficult personality, etc.) The more people you add to your circle, the more you are likely to run into this.
Because it’s none of their business. You are not owed my time just because I’m nearby. That’s not a healthy boundary to have. Location sharing encourages “boundary creep” that forces you to more frequently justify and reinforce your personal boundaries, adding friction to the relationship.
Then just don't? If it's none of their business then it's none of their business, if they're unreasonable then that's their problem, if you don't want to justify it then just don't?
Or just don’t share your location and sidestep the whole problem? It’s not like you won’t be invited to a party because you don’t share your location 24/7. (If this is somehow actually the case then you need new friends.)
Well that's just going in circles. The question was "Why would you share?" and someone gave their list of perceived benefits. These were written off on the basis of creating a responsibility of explaining yourself to everyone. I was only responding to that assertion. But you're right, we could just not have this conversation at all...
> The question was "Why would you share?" and someone gave their list of perceived benefits. These were written off on the basis of creating a responsibility of explaining yourself to everyone.
You seem to have missed a crucial step in the conversation.
What happened is that the person listing said benefits explicitly asked "Why not?" and so received a response answering their question.
Nope, I was responding to one of the Why Not? rationales. What I said just now was in response to a complete sidestep of the issue, which is something else and honestly quite frustrating.
You got direct answers to your question, nobody is going circles or avoiding your question. If anything your responses seem confused.
E.g. "it's draining" is... self-explanatory? I'm not sure what else you want to hear on this. Keep throwing draining problems in front of people and they will get tired of it and try to avoid the situation entirely. And if somehow it's not draining for you, surely you can understand your stamina doesn't generalize to that of the entire human population.
"If they're unreasonable then that's their problem" is just a silly strawman. If unreasonable people have a problem with you that can and often will quite easily become your problem...
"If you don't want to justify it then just don't" is basically the same as above.
I'm not asking to hear anything more and I'm quite astonished that you feel the need to continue this. I read a point, and I made my counter-point and the response was "well you could just not bother." Why are we still bothering to talk about any of it?
All of this "surely you can see" that you're saying is presumptuous and a strawman. Of course I understand not everyone feels the same as me, should I just shut up because my experience isn't universally transferable? Why aren't you telling the people who find it draining that not everyone finds it draining?
Yeah but can't you just post an announce "i'll be in X for Y days" on SNS like the old way ? It's way nicer and a much more explicit invitation for hangout than an icon on on map ;)
I suspect that they are trying to recreate the experience of bumping into someone they know. Since the destruction of third-spaces, it is increasingly unlikely that you'll serendipitously interact with someone in an unplanned, but welcome, social environment. Leaving your location on for friends and family in this way signals something close to "If you see me, say hi". Whereas announcing "I will be at X for Y time" is a bit more heavy handed. And just knowing that isn't sufficient to actually act on the information, you still have to reach out and plan something unless you are an granular as the actual building you are in, which feels weird. It feels a little intrusive to constantly be announcing my location. Like "Hey! Hey! obk0943t! I'm gonna be in NYC just so you know!" If I just left my location on, then /if/ you care, you can find out. But if you don't, you are not interrupted with the information. Finally, posting leaves a record, whereas location sharing is always "right now". Sure, someone can use that to construct a timeline, but that takes effort on their part (and possibly malice).
Modern lives may or may not be more spontaneous (doubtful), but not everyone has the same capacity for planning as you do. Sometimes I'll randomly find myself 30 miles from home on an spontaneous side mission, and would love to drop in on friends I don't usually see, if they're around.
I don't think I even have 30 different people in my contacts list who I've talked to more than once in the past month, let alone that many living close enough to me to casually invite me somewhere because I'm nearby.
Europe is struggling with soaring energy costs and a lack of alternatives. Whether it's red tape or unfortunate geography, Europe cannot afford to turn off the Russian gas tap.
A benevolent US would see this and find ways to bridge the gap for Europe and lower its energy costs, further choking Russia.
A less benevolent US would see this and encourage it to continue, weakening both parties and sowing internal feuds within Europe.
We already turned off the tap (look at the link above). It is just unimportant countries like Hungary and Slovakia that still import pipeline gas (and they're not making any friends...) . Would be great to pressure them more. Till this year Ukraine still imported nat gas from Russia btw.
LNG is a fungible commodity that is traded world-wide. Don't see much beyond symbolic value here in refusing it. Trying to enforce a price cap would be great there, but needs coordination.
Hello from Slovakia. The gas pipeline from Russia through Ukraine into Slovakia (and further west/south) does not work since January 2025, it was turned off by Ukraine. If there is still gas flowing from Russia, it's through other pipelines, most likely Turkstream, and that too will end in time:
https://www.politico.eu/article/bulgaria-end-russian-gas-flo...
We, as far as I know, also sadly import oil from Russia. I expect that to end soon too, because of a combination of political pressure and Ukrainian attacks.
Our current government is pretty close to Putin and Orban and it would be very welcome if the rest of EU attacked this issue more, as you mention.
Wind and solar can not replace oil and gas without a working energy storage solution which is not feasible for many if not most countries except for those with suitable geography for hydroelectric storage. As it stands now every GW of solar/wind generating capacity needs to be combined with a similar GW of either nuclear or fossil capacity. Especially in the case of nuclear power it does not make sense to build generation capacity and not use it since it is in the planning and building phases that the largest investment lies. Once built a nuclear power plant should run at capacity to recuperate the costs of building and the coming costs of dismantling it. Fossil plants do have relatively high running costs so they are more suitable as backup solutions, especially quick-started gas turbine installations running on natural gas. Of course these power plants need a fuel source which ties their use to all the geopolitical politicking around supply sources, emissions and supposed 'climate impact'.
One good solution would be for wind and solar and other renewable power to be used for the creation of an easily storable fuel which can be used in e.g. gas turbines.
When I was a boy I learned about this cool new technology of storing energy in chemical reactions. Fascinating stuff.
Super convenient for balancing the power demand curve.
Cheap too. (See economics examples from southern Australia)
You could even deploy it at the edge by simply splitting the cost with residents. Imagine if everyone drew power during the demand trough and then replayed it during the demand peak. Now grid balancing is way easier for providers, green power can produce as much as it wants whenever it wants.
Although every country should invest in home-grown battery technology just in case China bites off Taiwan and we gotta cut them out of the global economy too.
I am not backing Trump here at all, but in his first term he pointed out how over reliant Europe is for Russian energy. A few Euro leaders practically laughed in his face (publicly, on TV) and told him with smirks on their face that he was mistaken. They attempted to frame him as a crazy person for even suggesting it's a problem. A man like Trump does not strike me as somebody that will forget and forgive that. I would not expect a benevolent US after. Why would anybody help Europe after their refusal to even admit the problem?
> Indeed, if current trends in the decline of European defense capabilities are not halted and reversed, Future U.S. political leaders– those for whom the Cold War was not the formative experience that it was for me – may not consider the return on America’s investment in NATO worth the cost.
Feels kinda like you're removing Europe's agency here. "Red tape" is just another way of saying "terrible policy decisions for decades". If they dug themselves into a hole before, what's to stop them from doing it again when after you help them fill in the hole a little bit?
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