Tech, cyclist, 'master'-ranked backgammon player, nlhe dilettante, lapsed banker. early @founderscoders. currently CTO at @BookPebbleUK. opinions mine alone
the Belgian Prime Minister today at the “One Europe, one market” event: "there are twice as many people working on compliance compared to innovation in Europe."
Dad tears up watching his son make his Major League debut. Seeing your kid reach the highest level of the sport has to be one of the greatest feelings in the world.
Street racing at 125+ mph on the I-10 in LA led to a crash, but the Waymo Driver saw it coming: it detected the anomalous situation early, tracked the reckless vehicle post-crash, and maneuvered defensively to safely bypass the scene.
@NielsHoven calling in from England: my 3.5yo daughter corrected me tonight for saying "muh" instead of "mm"
'she doesn't like being called muh! it hurts her feelings!'
Probably the funniest graph ever published by the FT: our 3 possible futures are either 1) infinite wealth and abundance, 2) human extinction or 3) 0.2% faster GDP growth 🤣
According to Natural England's modelling, the fish disco will save just 0.083 salmon and 0.028 sea trout per year. That works out to over £280,000 per fish saved.
For £700 million, we could wipe out Somerset’s £41 million council deficit for a decade, fix every single pothole in the county, build a rail link to Minehead, and make every bus in Somerset free for years.
Or we could just make the electricity that Hinkley produces cheaper, and we'd all benefit.
Being a poor country is a choice.
Waymo is so good at saving lives that if it were a new drug in trial, it would hit the bar for being unblinded and made immediately available to the control group for ethical reasons.
@MorePerfectUS would prefer to keep killing pedestrians.
Reminder:
Waymo is so safe that if every car was driven like a Waymo, about 9% of America's life expectancy gap would disappear.
9 percent!
Americans die in car accidents *that often*.
AI medicine is inevitable.
In fact, it has arrived.
We're excited about this agreement with Utah to allow our AI to prescribe psychiatric renewals.
Yes. AI prescribing medication.
This is monumental and will collapse the cost of care.
(1/
Related fact from David Shor's recent Odd Lots episode:
If you poll people on whether they want data centres in their area, they say no. But if you add literally anything else to the question, like "and it would lower your tax bills by 10%", it becomes extremely popular
NEW: How our planning system makes the weekly shop more expensive.
We all know that more competition means lower prices, yet our planning system is allowing big supermarkets to block Aldi and Lidl from opening new stores.
- Between 2020 and 2022, Aldi’s rivals submitted 77 planning objections and launched 12 separate judicial reviews designed to block the low-cost retailer’s expansion strategy.
- In 2022, there were 40 separate Aldi stores delayed from opening due to legal challenges and planning objections.
- Tesco managed to get a Lidl store's planning permission pulled merely by threatening legal action.
- In other countries, such as New Zealand, businesses are banned from lodging planning objections against competitors.
- Most objections and legal challenges are based on the 'Town Centre first' policy. The idea is to protect the high street by stopping out-of-town supermarket development. You are only allowed to build out-of-town if you can prove there are no more central sites available.
- The problem is that after 30 years, it hasn't shifted shopping patterns. It has however made shop rents in the city centre more expensive as independent retailers have to compete with Tesco Expresses.
- Economists studying the issue found that it also means we have smaller supermarkets in more expensive (but awkward) locations. This is a disaster for productivity.
- One study found that the policy was responsible for 40% of the post-1996 slowdown in retail sector productivity.
- Another study found that supermarket productivity was 20-25% lower in England as a result.
- And because profit margins are tight in the grocery sector (3%) that means most of that lower productivity is passed onto consumers in the form of higher prices!
Rachel Reeves and Sir Keir Starmer claim that their top priority is cutting the cost of living. If they're serious, they would get rid of a 30-year old Town Centre first policy that pushes up prices and fails on its own terms.
https://t.co/v6Zc6uPJrN
@s8mb where I grew up in the US, you were literally excluded from public schooling if you didn't have your vaccines. feels pretty simple to do if you want to live in a society