Ben Conrad

Oooh graphite

@zachglabman Factories are way too closed, to their and our detriment

idea: news channel that has a factory correspondent (like a weather guy) who is in a different American factory every day with the production forecast for that day and the production forecast is the cool stuff they’re making

@xwanyex benconrad.net/posts/230610_i…

I don’t have to be convinced that LLM’s make programmers more productive. But where’s all the stuff? We’ve now had months and months of 100x or 1000x programmet productivity improvements. Where’s all the stuff they’re building?

@codyaims Not necessarily

We’re reinventing RC cars & planes from first principles

@ImJasonDunn Its the 3d printerers

I can’t believe 3D printers are still this dumb

@_baldtires @grok upscale this

please someone help me find a very high resolution version of this Robert McCall piece

@build_boost California: where *serious* people go to carry water for fools

literally every government metric vs spending looks like this in california and we shall be judged as a people for not hanging elected officials over it

@DeveloperHarris Competing with Amazon isn't that hard #competing-with-amazon" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">benconrad.net/posts/220113_i…

amazon but its not filled with chinese junk, who’s building this

Units are types, eg github.com/mechanomy/Unit…

Macro-mini ftw

@jasoncrawford Everything should be user-pays. Arbitration courts provide an example

How much of the regulatory burden (permitting, licenses, visas, etc.) is due to the *time* it takes to get a decision, and the uncertainty in the meantime? Suppose we kept exactly the same legal/regulatory regime as today, *except* all decisions were magically rendered in 5 minutes. Construction permit on housing? 5 minutes. New nuclear power plant design approval? 5 minutes. H1-B visa? 5 minutes. How much of the problem would this solve? How much value could be unlocked without changing the rules, just by making processing more efficient?

5/9 But when a manufacturer operates with an undervalued currency, subsidized financing, repressed wage costs (relative to productivity), subsidized land and logistics, and subsidized commodity inputs, even if it makes a profit, it isn't necessarily efficient.

What's funny to me is that the value of the spectrum here is kind of an answer to why we don't see a ton of other Civilizations blasting out with radio waves. Early in the history of radio, spectrum was free, but the station and the people to run it were expensive, so they wanted to build simple broadcast stations blaring AM radio at up to a million watts. But as we utilize the EM spectrum ever more, we try to squeeze ever more data through the same spectrum. That means we've moved towards far, far more transmitters and receivers broadcasting at much lower power. So powerful radio signals that would be easy to catch and decode are likely an aberration of the early history of radio, and Civilizations do not waste spectrum and power like that for long.

This left some marks :/

I don't get why people love instagram when they require a full face scan just to login. How are people ok with that?

Elon literally built a fleet of planet colonizer class rockets for <$10b investment at SpaceX. The state of California spent $150b to build 1/2 mile of high speed rail There is no limit to the incompetence and fraud of bureaucrats

@afshawnl x.com/i/status/17883…

the thing I love about Blake's updates is probably a company like Boeing would have just done the same thing and never shown it but to people eager to understand how you even do something as daunting as aviation how do you even decompose the problem. super valuable resource.

...It is truly right and just, with ardent love of mind and heart and with devoted service of our voice, to acclaim our God invisible, the almighty Father, and Jesus Christ, our Lord, his Son, his Only Begotten. Who for our sake paid Adam's debt to the eternal Father, and, pouring out his own dear Blood, wiped clean the record of our ancient sinfulness. These, then, are the feasts of Passover, in which is slain the Lamb, the one true Lamb, whose Blood anoints the doorposts of believers. This is the night, when once you led our forebears, Israel's children, from slavery in Egypt and made them pass dry-shod through the Red Sea. This is the night that with a pillar of fire banished the darkness of sin. This is the night that even now, throughout the world, sets Christian believers apart from worldly vices and from the gloom of sin, leading them to grace and joining them to his holy ones. This is the night, when Christ broke the prison-bars of death and rose victorious from the underworld. Our birth would have been no gain, had we not been redeemed. O wonder of your humble care for us! O love, O charity beyond all telling, to ransom a slave you gave away your Son! O truly necessary sin of Adam, destroyed completely by the Death of Christ! O happy fault that earned so great, so glorious a Redeemer! O truly blessed night, worthy alone to know the time and hour when Christ rose from the underworld! This is the night of which it is written: The night shall be as bright as day, dazzling is the night for me, and full of gladness. The sanctifying power of this night dispels wickedness, washes faults away, restores innocence to the fallen, and joy to mourners, drives out hatred, fosters concord, and brings down the mighty. ...