I'm not sure a faster loop is helping. It may actually be the problem. I have taken to creating 'collaboration' and 'temp_code' folders that I am spending more and more time in. By the time I am actually ready to touch the real code I have often written and re-written the problem statement/plan and expanded it to several files and some test code. I tell the other devs at my company that I spend 90% of the tokens on understanding and clarifying the problem and let the last 10% generate an answer. If I don't do that then I get prototype code that won't survive a single feature change and likely has intentionally hidden bugs, or 'defensive' code as some like to call them (try, except, ignore is a common claude pattern). My favorite is when claude hits the unit tests and says 'that failure was there before we started so I can ignore it...'. To get it to write actually good code you have to have caged the problem to a space that the LLM can optimize without worry, but to do that you have to still do work to understand how to break the problem into pieces small enough that the right answer is the obvious one. At that point letting it take the syntax is just fine by me.
Maybe the right answer is to sometimes slow down, explore and think a little more instead of just letting it try something until it (eventually, sort of) works.
There are two aspects to this. The desire to learn and the utility of learning. These are two very different things. Arguably the best programmers I have known have been explorers and hopped around a lot. Their primary skills have been flexibility and curiosity. The point here was their curiosity, not what they were curious about. Curiosity enabled them to attack new problems quickly and find solutions when others couldn't. Very often those solutions had nothing to do with skip lists or bubble sort. Studying algorithms is useful for general problem solving and hey, as a bonus, it helps sometimes when you are solving a real world problem, but staying curious is what really matters.
We have seen so many massive changes to software engineering in the last 30 years that it is hard to argue the clear utility of any specific topic or tool. When I first started it really mattered that you understood bubble sort vs quicksort because you probably had to code it. Now very few people think twice about how sort happens in python or how hashing mechanism are implemented. It does, on occasion, help to know that but not like it used to.
So that brings it back to what I think is a fundamental question: If CS topics are less interesting now, are you shifting that curiosity to something else? If so then I wouldn't worry too much. If not then that is something to be concerned about. So you don't care about red black trees anymore but you are getting into auto-generating Zork like games with an LLM in your free time. You are probably on a good path if that is the case. If not, then find a new curiosity outlet and don't beat yourself up about not studying the limits of a single stack automata.
If there's a single trait that divides the best developers in the world from the rest it's what you described there - curiosity and flexibility. No academic course could bring you on par with those people.
The best software engineers I know, know how to go from ambiguous customer requirements to solutions including solving XYProblems, managing organization and code complexity, dealing with team dynamics etc.
Do you feel yourself losing interest, curiosity, "spark"? If so, then maybe worrying is right.
If you're just (hyper?)focused on something else, then, congrats! Our amazing new tools are letting us focus on even more things -- I, for one, am loving it.
When I start a new project with a team I start off with asking 'how we will work' and part of that is 'how we will communicate'. Less is more in that world. Jira, confluence, github, slack, email, standup, ad-hock meetings, bongo drums, etc etc. The more places you communicate the harder it is to keep everyone on the same page. I have always been a fan of putting docs next to code for this exact reason and, as far as I can tell, it has been the right decisions every time.
With AI code assistants I personally spend 90% of time/tokens on design and understanding and that means creating docs that represent the feature and the changes needed to implement it so I can really see the value growing over time to this approach. Software engineering is evolving to be less about writing the code and more about designing the system and this is supporting that trend.
In the end I don't think AI hasn't fundamentally changed the benefit/detractor equation, it is just emphasizing that docs are part of the code and making it more obvious that putting them in the code is generally pretty beneficial.
The writer asks for it, so I will be blunt. They are demanding people have perfectly formed thoughts crafted in a way to give them just the information they wanted with no consideration for the process of thinking or consideration for the person speaking. It is selfish and impossible. Articles like this, I think, expose how bad we have gotten at both speaking and listening.
"I personally value directness, so when someone communicates with me in that way, it deos influence how I perceive them, even subconsciously."
Communication is mind control. The point isn't the words, it is literally trying to get a person to do something. I often point out to people that if you just couldn't see people's lips move then speech would appear like the sci-fi definition of psychic powers. The better a person is at communication the more they will fit their message to the audience to get the action intended. If 'direct' really works then over time it will be used but the fact that direct isn't used often implies strongly that it doesn't work for most people or it has secondary effects that are too negative. Demanding the exception is a pretty big ask especially if your aren't willing to meet half way.
A second aspect here is that while communicating we are developing our thoughts. We need time to tease out our real intentions and filler conversation helps that. Arguing 'they should have just said x from the start' is 20/20 hindsight a lot of the time. Expecting me to come to you with a terse, perfect information drop tailored to your quirks or else you will get annoyed with me is your problem, not the speaker's.
In the end speakers are practicing a really hard skill and the author ignores how hard it is. Learning to listen when someone has a hard time communicating something is also a really hard skill that this article completely ignores. If I could sum this article up it would be 'I want to give up trying to learn how to listen so now it is your fault I don't understand you'.
> Communication is mind control. The point isn't the words, it is literally trying to get a person to do something.
You're describing manipulating people, not communicating with them.
The point of communication between engineers is usually to establish a mutual understanding, not make them do something you want. Through that mutual understanding you both come to agree on what should be done.
Often, coming to that mutual understanding on complex projects with experienced engineers can be difficult, because we're human and we inevitably misunderstand complex systems in a multitude of ways on our path to understanding them.
Being able to be brutally honest with each other about our misunderstandings is what the author is talking about. When you work with people who get that individuals misunderstanding things is part of the process, and nobody takes or imputes it personally, you are suddenly free to focus on the actual meat of the problem instead of worrying how people may or may not feel about it.
> The point of communication between engineers is usually to establish a mutual understanding...
I tried to let this pass in the discussion, I really did, but since it came up in various other replies I felt like I just couldn't. We need to get the hell over ourselves as a profession: the fact that someone is an "engineer" says nothing about their communications styles, needs, or preferences as a person.
There is absolutely nothing intrinsically different about two engineers discussing a software codebase and two doctors discussing a surgical plan. Or two artists discussing a mural design. Or two musicians discussing a score. Or two stone masons discussing an arch design. Two professionals are discussing a professional issue as peers, and they are both people, which means they will have preferences about their communication styles and needs and none of that is dictated or predictable based on their choice of profession. I have worked with engineers who valued social interaction buffering comments about their code; I have met musicians who valued just being told what to do better in the next run-through.
If you[0], as a person, value directness, bully for you. Express that need to your peers, ask them to respect it, be prepared to be annoyed when they don't. But don't assume or expect them to assume that that's your communication style — or that it should be your communication style — because you are an engineer.
[0] The reader of this comment, not directed specifically at the person who posted this.
You read far too much into my word choice. I think you could substitute any technical profession (I would include everything you mentioned explicitly) for "engineer" and what I wrote would be equivalently true. I just happen to have the most direct experience with engineers, and the original article was about engineers.
It's true of the technical aspects of art too: professional musicians rehearsing, for example. It's less true when you get into the ingantible parts of art, though... taste is inherently personal.
That’s fair! There were a couple comments that used similar language; I didn’t mean to call you out. Yours was the first I saw with it, so I hit reply. Thanks for clarifying.
Sometimes what you're trying to get them to do is understand something that you (think you) understand.
There's a reason software has tutorials as well as reference documentation. Sometimes telling someone something directly isn't as effective at getting them to understand it as explaining it more slowly or obliquely. Sharing your learning journey to arrive at the understanding is (one possibility for) presenting a working path to understanding.
It's also the case that, especially when someone's knowledge diverges a lot from your own, it may not be obvious to them what information is relevant to you — and it may even be surprising to you. As an extreme example, there was a bug where OpenOffice wouldn't print on Tuesdays [1]. This happens a lot with non-technical users, but can also happen with other technical people who don't have the same level of understanding of a particular subsystem (in both directions — if you understand it better they may not know what information is key to understanding its behaviour, and if they understand it better they may not realize what information they're taking for granted that you don't know — e.g. the famous joke about ‘monads are just monoids in the category of endofunctors, what's the problem?’). As I've spent more time in technical discussions I've got better at homing in on the information I need — but I can't materialize information that wasn't given to me in the first place. So I'd rather people shotgun information at me than narrow it down to just the one point that they think is relevant.
> Being able to be brutally honest with each other about our misunderstandings
Being specific to misunderstandings is an element that's overlooked.
This advice tends to be taken onboard (often to extremes) by those who take it as a free pass to just say whatever comes to their mind, whenever they like, without explaining how they arrived there. Any excuse to avoid putting in effort to be understood or be conscious of the fact that human beings have emotions.
We are not robots.
I'm glad commenters here are aware of this, as HN sentiment is getting close to the point of treating each other as machines, whilst we train bots to have better communication skill such as empathetic reflection, and allow them more creativity and freedom.
Some people are more patient and sympathetic towards computers making mistakes and not following commands perfectly, or being too verbose, than we are with our fellow human beings.
Totally agree with this! Being "kindly honest" is way better than being "brutally honest". Being honest and direct is important of course. I have often found that delivering constructive criticism in the so-called sandwich manner often obfuscates the message, so delivering it directly is much better. However, being kind to the receiver of the feedback by having empathy for them and supporting them as they process that feedback will help land that message far more effectively than being "brutal" about it.
The point of communication in general is to alter the recipient’s mental state in certain ways. Maybe you want to alter their mental state such that they understand a technical problem. Maybe you want it to be a state that causes them to explain something. Maybe you want to alter their mental state such that they pick you up from the airport.
The key thing is that there is a particular goal, and if you want to achieve that goal, you need to work with people as they are, not as you wish them to be.
Unless you are as open to having your mental state altered by the other person as you expect the other person to be to having theirs altered by you, I don't think you're really communicating.
This is patently false because no one can actually understand something from just trading RFCs or understand things from just purely reading the code. 90% of the time the damn thing is unspecified so you have to give motivating examples
> You're describing manipulating people, not communicating with them.
You interpreted the parent comment in a shallow and uncharitable fashion. You missed the deeper insight the statement has.
> The point of communication between engineers is usually to establish a mutual understanding, not make them do something you want. Through that mutual understanding you both come to agree on what should be done.
You are describing a form of mind control, just not the sci fi/fantasy version of total mind control.
If I start a conversation with you about a problem and we end with a mutual understanding (meaning I understand your perspective and you understand mine and we share perspective about the facts of the issue) then I literally used my words to directly impact your your mind (and you did the same). Assuming the "mutual understanding" lands in a place where we both agree the problem needs to be fixed, there's a really good chancw my words also impact your actions.
Mind control. Manipulation. Whatever. Communication literally controlled your mind and your actions or it wasn't effective communication.
At lot of this isn't true in practice because we live in an async word. Perfect example is giving bad news. So much dancing verbal dancing around it when people really know the answer.
The best team I've ever worked on had little social cushioning. This doesn't mean people were being mean to each. The directness of everyone on that team was great because we could work towards resolving issues quickly and without any fluff. This also allowed us to find the best solution.
> The best team I've ever worked on had little social cushioning.
It is HARD to build this sort of thing in the modern workplace. We dragged politics into the workplace, in a way thats more about social signaling. We moved to work from home, removing the social interactions around the coffee pot and lunches that let you ask about peoples lives outside of work. Furthermore corporations took over the social channels: Slack/chat, email, zoom etc leaving people less inclined to be personal there. Where is the outlet to go bitch about your boss, your PM, your scrum master with your co-workers.
The blunt, no nonsense request to a colleague, who you just asked about their kids in a separate interaction, reads a lot different, without these interactions.
You communicate differently in person vs with async text.
If you don’t have your thoughts together, if you see a problem but are not sure of the fix, just say that.
Make it clear why you are communicating with me, do you have a specific request? A question? Just want to chat? Have a general discussion about an issue?
I totally missed/muddled the 'clarity' and 'unity' arguments in my response. It would have been a great final point. There is a big difference between being direct and being clear. When there is an issue, what I am often trying to communicate is my goal to get information and to get the rest of the team on the same page. I am seeking clarity and unity and the tool I am using is communication. But there is a difference between seeking clarity/unity and being direct. My points stand about the process of thought and the style of communication there. You can be clear without being direct and being direct is often not the right answer and not even possible.
In a previous life I was a pilot. Communication in aviation is exceptionally clear and direct. It is that way because time matters and understanding matters but also because the vast majority of situations have been clearly identified, thought out and formalized well before you are in the air. I suspect other environments have this too, like an operating room. In training we had a system of 'shacks' where if you messed up on the radio in the pattern the day before you owed a 'shack' (a beer to the common fridge) by the next day. The comms there were ridiculously direct and clear but also incredibly formalized. There were exact words for exact situations and the tree of possible interactions, and the communication required, were almost 100% memorized. However, as soon as things got a little out of the norm so did the comms. You really can't have perfect 'direct' communication with dynamic systems. The shack system was great because it shows both sides of the communication world. It emphasized the incredibly direct communication world but then when your mistakes came to light there generally was a lot of indirect communication involved discussing the shack.
I would hate to think that software design is so well thought out that all communication could be formalized like aviation or an operating room. It would mean the age of the code assistant really is going to take engineering away because anything so perfectly formalized can also easily be learned by an LLM.
> They are demanding people have perfectly formed thoughts crafted in a way to give them just the information they wanted with no consideration for the process of thinking or consideration for the person speaking.
No, this is not what the author asks for. There's nothing in their article that says that people need to have "perfectly formed thoughts" or "only give them the information they asked for".
> It is selfish and impossible.
You fundamentally did not understand the point that they made (quite clearly). The thing that they are actually advocating for turns out to be neither.
> Communication is mind control. The point isn't the words, it is literally trying to get a person to do something.
Author also does not say that they think Crocker's Rules should be applied in all cases or that convincing someone of something is unnecessary.
> A second aspect here is that while communicating we are developing our thoughts. We need time to tease out our real intentions and filler conversation helps that.
Author is not (specifically) talking about filler conversation.
And on top of that it's really clear that they're primarily talking about digital communication - where filler conversation is unnecessary, unlike verbal communication.
> The writer asks for it, so I will be blunt.
Before being blunt, try being correct. And responding to the points that the author actually made instead of constructing a whole field of strawmen.
> The better a person is at communication the more they will fit their message to the audience to get the action intended. If 'direct' really works then over time it will be used but the fact that direct isn't used often implies strongly that it doesn't work for most people or it has secondary effects that are too negative. Demanding the exception is a pretty big ask especially if your aren't willing to meet half way.
'Direct' can work and does work, depending on culture. There are direct cultures, where communication is primarily intended to convey information. There are indirect cultures, where communication is primarily intended to convey social status, manipulate social bonds, or perform culturally necessary rituals. With the actual information being secondary. In a direct culture you will tell say "I want to buy this bread". In an indirect culture, it might be more like "Hello, be greeted, o nicest and finest of all shop clerks, nice weather, $deity be praised for her mercy of having me walk this earth for one more day. All your wares look magnificent, but might I inquire if it would be possible, if it isn't inconvenient, reserved or forbidden, to maybe ask about how that very fine loaf of bread came into your possession? ...". All the while tourist me, back in the queue rolls his eyes in total annoyance, having suffered through innumerable minutes of waiting for people to get on with their useless diatribe.
Since HN is primarily engineers, time is precious on this earth, and secondary considerations should be secondary really: There is only one desirable mode of communications. The direct one. Everything else is a waste of time. Being indirect and long-winded isn't "bad at speaking and listening". It is being inconsiderate and rude. It is putting secondary things before the main issue. I think cultures need to be changed to be more direct.
Your last points are valid, sometimes you need some time and collect your thoughts. But in this case, you should just ask the other person to help you think, and directly tell them that you haven't fully formulated your issue and need help with that. That is a far more productive way to deal with the issue of half-formed thoughts and questions. Beating around the bush and using another person as a involuntary rubber-ducky is also rude, and only excusable in rare circumstances.
The Gladwellian direct/indirect dichotomy (or continuum) is a misapprehension of how language works. All communication is indirect in some sense because we don't have mind control powers over our fellow humans. Even saying ‘I want to buy this bread’ is indirect in a sense: you're not causing the baker to sell you the bread, nor even explicitly instructing them to, but just stating your personal internal desires. It is a cultural construct that being told someone's internal desire is supposed to function as a ‘direct’ instruction to satisfy it, and even in that there is a lot of room for ambiguity depending on context etc. For example, if I were speaking not to the baker but to my friend as we peruse the bakery together, ‘I want to buy this bread’ could have a variety of intended impacts on their actions. It could mean ‘let's come to an agreement about whether we should collectively buy this bread’. It could mean ‘pass me my wallet so I can pay for the bread’. It could mean ‘go and find me a shopkeep who can legally sell me the bread’. It could just mean ‘you are my friend and I'm telling you my internal monologue so that you can understand me better’.
If you interpret the language of a different culture (separated by space or time — try reading the ‘flowery’ language of Victorian or Elizabethan literature) too literally, it reads as ‘indirect’. But that doesn't mean that the native speakers from that culture consider it so. You're simply missing the cultural context that makes their phrasing as ‘direct’ to them as ‘I want to buy this bread’ is to you.
> The Gladwellian direct/indirect dichotomy (or continuum) is a misapprehension of how language works. All communication is indirect in some sense because we don't have mind control powers over our fellow humans. Even saying ‘I want to buy this bread’ is indirect in a sense
If you take 'direct' vs. 'indirect' literally, you are right. Everything is somehow indirect, because language tries to represent reality, but isn't identical to reality.
But you are missing the point. The real issue is information density. Indirect communication generally has lower information density: You give examples of various possible interpretations of one phrase, and the more possible interpretations there are, the lower the information density is. The longer the phrase is, the lower the information density. One can come up with a few counter-examples, where for example a very long and very indirect phrase might just have one very unique and direct interpretation, but those are rare. In general, direct communication conveys more information with less words.
Sure, if we want to shift topic from directness to density, but that's not a cultural difference either: all (spoken) languages famously transmit at about 39 bits per second [1]. Specific idioms, especially newer ones, might be a bit more or less information-dense, but there will always be others that make up for it. And if an idiom falls too far below the 39 B/s rate it'll get worn down over time to something shorter.
If you are shortening your communication you are doing it by reducing the information content. In some cultures it's acceptable to spend longer buying bread than in others, so you might take the time to exchange more information with the baker. But that is a (to them, if not to you) valuable interaction that they have chosen to have, filled with information whose exchange is (to them) just as important as the price of bread.
>There are indirect cultures, where communication is primarily intended to convey social status, manipulate social bonds, or perform culturally necessary rituals
Aside from the poor tone of this style of writing, short declarative statements don't convey the same information and leave a confusing message.
Without knowing how you arrived at "the point", you are pushing all the work onto the recipient (or worse, every reader of your comment on HN) to verify what you say and how much they can trust you. That could involve researching, checking your credentials, or putting in effort to understand/overlook the emotional tone.
"This is the answer. I have the answer" style dumping of information is a poor form of human-human communication, unless you are directly answering a closed-ended question.
Out of curiosity, are you a reader? When was the last time you read a full length chapter book for fun? Does it feel like work to you? Is it a slow process?
I ask not to insult, but to understand. I can't help but wonder if a lot of this demand for terse language comes from a simple inability to read well? Reading is really not supposed to feel like work to the educated, and it does not to me. For me its just a state of consciousness, and doesnt require any more effort than being awake does.
I am genuinely surprised to hear otherwise educated people imply that simply reading something a coworker wrote significantly slows down their work.
Not the GP, but I'm an avid reader. One of the books I read (Strunk & White's Elements of Style) had this to say to aspiring writers: "Omit needles words."
I think the point is that some of the extra words OP is complaining about aren't needless. It's on the writer to know their audience, but it's also asking a lot to tune a message in a PR review to the one particular person who demands bluntness, especially if they don't know that person well. If the majority of people in the organization respond positively to a certain style (which may involve some amount of phatic speech), then the person who is "over-writing" here is probably making a good decision.
Once I build rapport with someone, I tend to be more blunt, but still balance that with the fact that other people may be reading the interaction, and I don't want to model a rude communication style.
An organization can choose to promote a very direct approach to feedback (Bridgewater is famous for this), but it requires top-down work to get everyone on the same page, not just expecting one developer to mind-read another.
Nobody is advocating for a rude communication style; the disagreement is over what constitutes rudeness.
Some people/cultures see being blunt or to the point as rude.
Others see beating around the bush, wasting time and hogging the listener's brain space with fill material that serves no purpose other than delaying the actual closure/completion of the thought (including insisting on various rituals, either verbal or, in some cases, physical, such as drinking a cup of tea (or coffee) and not broaching the actual subject until both parties have finished drinking), or perhaps (though I suspect this is less common as an actual motivation than generally supposed) taking pains to respect the imagined feeling of the listener, and possibly most importantly, to reaffirm the social hierarchy, as rude.
Very much so. I started reading adult novels at 7 years old, and by the time I was 12 or so, I could if I was hurrying read 5 or 6 novels a day. I read the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy for the first time in 5 days at that age. I've reread it again another 4 times or so.
My personal library is somewhere in the region of 5,000 to 7,500 of my favourite books. I estimate that I have read at least twice as many books as I own, and probably more: in the tens of thousands, I'd think.
I am also a professional writer and have been for 30 years. I've had 2 short books published, many hundreds of articles for about 15 different print magazines and professional paid articles on 3 commercial websites.
Currently, I am the Linux and FOSS reporter for the Register:
I knew little of the man. I had to read at least 30,000 words about him in a single morning in order to learn enough about the man to write his obituary. It was hard work.
> When was the last time you read a full length chapter book for fun?
I have about 25 on the go currently. Most recent start was Polostan by Neal Stephenson. I also have 1 print magazine subscription on top of that, but mostly, I read online now, several tens of thousands of words a day every day.
I think it is far to say I am a big and voracious reader.
Why? Do you think I object to excessive verbiage because I struggle through it? No. I can at a push read about 3000 words a minute but I normally cruise along at 1,500 or so. When I see "estimated reading times" on things online, I typically find they are approaching 10x longer than I take.
FWIW I can also read 5 or 6 other languages than English, but I am painfully slow in all of those. Currently I'm reading a copy of Charlie Hebdo I bought at FOSDEM and the new Astérix album. :-)
> Do you think I object to excessive verbiage because I struggle through it?
That was the heart of my question, yes. The only way I could fathom it was to think that maybe some people just found reading generally difficult. The hypothesis being that those few extra words hurt, because reading in general was high effort.
It seems I was very far off the mark, at least in your case. For what it's worth, I've enjoyed several of your recent pieces and found both the Mills and Hoare obituaries to be both informative and empathetic.
Now I wonder if it is sometimes the opposite problem: A skilled writer losing patience when someone less skilled is at the wheel. Others in his thread explored that theory, and it seems they may be onto something.
> Now I wonder if it is sometimes the opposite problem: A skilled writer losing patience when someone less skilled is at the wheel. Others in his thread explored that theory, and it seems they may be onto something.
Could be.
The KISS principle applies in communication as in the rest of life.
Anyone have a good take on how well Asahi linux keeps the power management working on mac hardware? The biggest killer feature for me of mac hardware is the battery/weight. I have found it hard to get a good laptop in the linux ecosystem mainly because of power consumption. If Asahi doesn't really impact the battery life then I would seriously consider going that route. Similar question about support for pytorch on linux/arm64 / Asahi.
Bought a used MacBook Air M2 past summer to run Asahi linux exclusively on it, the installation went hassle-free. One charge lasts 9+ hours easily, sometimes up to 12 hours. Thunderbolt, DP Alt Mode and TouchID would be nice to haves, but I'm super happy how everything runs. Thank you everyone on the Asahi team!
I think the support for linux/arm64 is already very good in general, can't answer on pytorch though. The only app I'm really missing is Signal Desktop. The virtualization to run games is a noticeable performance hit and shows occasional glitches in the Steam overlay, but all my games run smoothly.
I think it's improved from when I last tried it, but it still isn't great. You can get like 60% of the battery life compared to macOS.
Someone with more recent knowledge correct me on this, but I believe idling is the biggest power drain in Asahi. You will want to shutdown and/or hibernate whenever possible.
I have wrestled with the concept of 'classified' many times. The question is always how you balance democracy's need for information with the real need to keep some things away from adversaries. I think the only answer is to vigorously enforce automatic declassification AND dissemination but also ensure that this happens within the useful lifetimes of those involved. This last part is especially important for accountability. Laws need to apply, without a statute of limitation, to abuse of classification and for that to happen this stuff needs to come out while those involved can still be held accountable. Additionally, if abuse is found while something is still classified there should be an immediate evaluation if the public interest in understanding the abuse outweighs the danger of releasing the information with an explicit understanding that the public has already received real harm compared to a theoretical harm of release.
Another aspect is that we need to lower the bar for declassification in general. The reality of classified information is that it is almost universally boring and time limited in its value. Also, so many people have access to it that it leaks out slowly anyway. Just look at how much of the US military and contractors have or have had secret and higher clearances. [1] When multiple percentage points of Americans (and other governments) have access currently or have had access in the past to supposedly 'top secret' information then hiding it from the rest of the population just sounds silly. It is time to start re-asserting the public's requirement to be informed even if that has some potential risks or even actual harms associated with it.
- We likely don't have the assets to move the amount traffic that needs to get through
- We probably can't protect them perfectly (we don't have maritime supremacy) so ships will still take damage and that will stop the convoys pretty quickly
I suspect the escort ships would be fine though. They can defend themselves.
So if we did start them, they wouldn't continue for long until the economic pain was pretty massive and the cost of loosing ships was worth it.
I know nothing of the rise of the underwater drone but I highly suspect they are loud and slow and no match for ships designed to look for modern submarines.
> It seems logical that ending the use of existing coal energy infrastructure puts upward pressure on prices
Only if you externalize environmental costs. The point is that coal is actually really expensive. The only real argument is how fast the implicit subsidy on these externalized costs should be removed. The world has had decades to slowly remove these subsidies and failed to do so. The impacts caused by these externalized factors are starting to stack up and so should the prices.
Hm. It seems that use actually goes two ways. They continue to use my information even when I leave their platform. Does this mean I can email info@google.com updated TOS, since I am a party to it I guess, and if they keep selling my info they accept it?
Our public discourse is focused mainly on 'things are terrible because of the other person'. MAGA shows this since it is predicated purely on this concept. You can only make something great again if it isn't great now. The challenge is that yelling it just to make the other person look bad hides when it actually happens and makes avoiding it hard since you are taking the wrong actions at the wrong time.
Even if we are in a recession, we need to start fostering looking towards the future. Not just trying to 'fix' things, but actually looking towards doing new big things. As John Green might say, there are two basic ways you can make the world better. You can decrease the suck or increase the awesome. I take this to imply that if you only decrease the suck then you can never be better than you were. It may be necessary but you also need to increase the awesome to keep growing and America hasn't been focused on the awesome for a while now. Let's increase the awesome even if there is suck still around.
Maybe the right answer is to sometimes slow down, explore and think a little more instead of just letting it try something until it (eventually, sort of) works.
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